December 4, 2003 - permalink

Line of Fire Out of Steam

Richmond had it's 60 minutes of fame (minus commercials) this Tuesday on Line of Fire, a drama about FBI agents fighting crime in Richmond. While it was nice to see Richmond get a little national exposure, the show was a disappointment:

• The cast seemed to pit a band of female and male models (the FBI) against a band of unshaven male models and professional wrestlers. Admittedly, you could make the criticism of most shows. However, that sameness is in itself a serious flaw.
• No one had the slightest southern accent - not even one "y'all" in the whole half hour that I watched. The crime syndicate sounded like they were from Illinois and the agents had a routinely bland mid-west non-accent. Admittedly, if you put a heavy downtown Richmond accent on the characters, you'd need sub-titles.
• No interesting cameo locations. One scene happened on Grace street amidst supposedly heavy morning rush hour traffic - everyone knows that rush hour is going the other direction on Franklin and Main. Also, the agent was supposedly taking her kids to school - there aren't any schools downtown. And if you were heading west to a private school, you certainly wouldn't be on Grace Street. The only other location that I recognized was the Canal Club, which acted as the headquarters for the Malloy crime syndicate. I've always thought something was fishy about the Canal Club. Who opens a pizza parlor across the street from Bottom's Up? For my vote, I would have picked Bryam's Lobster House as the crime boss's HQ with its proximity to the warehouses and factories in Scott's Addition.

The only interesting facet of the program was David Paymer as crime boss Jonah Malloy. After countless movie and television roles, Paymer has a great role and does a great job. Paymer plays Malloy as a disturbingly curt and business like thug, who is impatient yet relatively mild mannered even when beating a drug dealer across the head with a lead pipe. If the show had more of Paymer, it'd be worth watching. However, I can now say that my Tuesday nights are still free.

Trashing Places - Behind the Facade

On Marketplace yesterday, Apryl Lundsten shared her experiences after being on a home decorating show. She expected that her husband and her might not like how the room looked. They did not expect that the work would be so slap-dash that they would have to fix it. In the initial glare of the lights, they were delighted with the new look - done on a budget of $1500. However, once the crew left, they saw that they had an uneven paint job, gaps in the wood floor and cheap curtain rods. A contractor told them fixing the paint would cost

In terms of cost, a painter to do this...should be about $500.00 to fix all of this, plus materials.

This was smaller than the $1500.00 to fix gaps in the floor along with repair damage to the baseboards.

Apryl was not alone in her experiences. After talking with several other participants in home decor shows, she heard other stories about the shabbiness of the work done:

They put up wallpaper and we could see the creases...the fabric on the couch slowly started to come apart.

Everything was really done with like...toothpicks and bubble gum.

Like a movie set, you know, everything's a facade. And when you take it down...realistically, it's not a place to want to live in.

Apryl's producer informed her that the makeover wasn't a professional redesign, but was a "decorating suggestion". Apryl's final suggestion? Don't trust the shows, just do the job yourself

December 1, 2003 - permalink

Pretty Girls Make Graves (and Need Amps)

In the Inferno, Dante came up with some pretty grizzly punishments for thieves. However, I'm sure he'd dream up something particularly nasty for thieves who steal musicians' instruments. A couple of weeks ago, someone stole Pretty Girls Make Graves' van. In addition to the loss of their wheels, the band lost several vintage amplifiers. Now, if you've every played an electric guitar, you know that vintage analog amps often have a one of kind sound. So, the band even posted on their web site saying that the thieves could keep the van; they just wanted the amps back - no questions asked.

This week, police were able to recover the van after the thieves dropped it off at a building site. Unfortunately, their amplifiers weren't there. Fans can help out the band via Pay Pal on PGMG's web site. Maybe they need Jimmy Neutron on the case in Seattle.

Michael Chabon and Comics

Metafilter had an interesting story on authors' web logs. I found Michael Chabon's particularly interesting. The author of Kavalier and Klay, Chabon is interested in comics in general. He writes about the opportunity to write for the X-Men movie, James Steranko and golem making. On a related note, Chabon's comic book protagonist from Kavalier and Klay - the Escapist - is now in a comic book released by Dark Horse.