Currently, three of the most prolific and brilliant minds working in modern television are without TV shows at the moment:

• Joss Whedon recently wrapped up "Dollhouse" after two seasons with the (constantly mucking about) Fox.
• Conan O'Brien left "The Tonight Show" after a very public mess with Jay Leno and NBC. 
• Bryan Fuller, creator of "Pushing Daisies," "Wonderfalls," and "Dead Like Me," has a development deal with NBC - but no series on the horizon.

So what should these titans of broadcasting do?  I say it's time for them to get out of the business of television.  Yes it's time to leave behind the main networks and cable channels for...the internet!  Buh?

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Today's word of the day is Deodand:

Deodand

-noun, English Law

(before 1846) an animal or article that, having been the immediate cause of the death of a human being, was forfeited to the crown to be applied to pious uses

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

-Michel de Montaigne

The Song: "Waste" by Phish

The Event: My Ex-Girlfriend

“Waste” by Phish, from their great album Billy Breathes (which I will defend to the death in a hipster thunderdome of coolness), was “our” song for my relationship with someone I'll call "Rachel."  It’s a sweet little song with the main hook of “come waste your time with me."  What I think is interesting is the many phases my feelings and memories have gone through in regards to how I react when I hear this song. 

While I was dating her, the song was a sweet reminder of how cute we could be and how weird it was to be in love.  After she dumped me and started banging the guy down the hall from me, I was a little less optimistic when listening to the song, and more often than not just skipped it altogether.  For a while, I thought I had ruined one of my favorite love songs - at which point I resolved that I will never have another song with a woman, for fear that I really do like the song and it gets ruined by tainted memories. 

Now, however, as time has passed, when I hear that song, I think about the relationship as a whole, good and bad, and take it all in.  The pleasure of waking up besides her is coupled with the annoying regularity of our bickering towards the end.  The song represents a particular time in my life, but it also reminds me of how time changes our perspective on all things and people.  And that’s one to grow on!

Today's word of the day is erinaceous:

Erinaceous

Of the hedgehog kind or family

"Damage makes you wise."

-Swedish Proverb

Today's word of the day is Jiggery-Pokery:

Jiggery-pokery

–noun Chiefly British.

1. Trickery, hocus-pocus; fraud; humbug
2. Sly, underhanded action
3. Manipulation: After a little jiggery-pokery, the engine started
   

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.

Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Neil Gaiman

Today's word of the day is Hypnopompic:

Hypnopompic:

Of or relating to the partially conscious state that precedes complete awakening from sleep.

"Let us first of all and before all be kind, then honest, and then - let us never forget one another."

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov



(Note: yes this will be a recurring segment that usually will be published on Mondays.  Oops?)

The Song: “The Funeral” by Band of Horses

The Event:  My Grandmother’s death

While it’s very clichéd to relate a song about death to an actual death, at least it’s not a song from The Big Chill.  But more specifically, there was an actual reason to link the song with the event of my grandmother's passing.  When I got the call from my mother that my grandmother had died, I emerged from my bedroom and told my roommate.  As was custom in our tiny New York City apartment, iTunes was playing on random in the background – to cover up the numerous awkward gaps in our conversations.  We were talking about how I’d have to go to New Hampshire for the funeral when this song came on in the background. 

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“Salvation is for the feeble, that’s what I think. I don’t want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow--what’s his name?--cannot respect that, then I’ll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods."

-- Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins 

Here's another video for the musical I've created with my collaborator, Keith Doughty, based on The Goonies.  We got mentions in /Film, Topless Robot, JoBlo.com, Cinematical, FilmDrunk, The Nerdist, Fandango, HeyUGuys!, IMDB - so that's awesome.  Here's one of the videos, for "Piano Lessons."  Lyrics and a recap of background info on the project after the jump!

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