Dick van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore Show and the modern sitcoms

Having watched at least partially some older sitcoms like the ones mentioned in the title, besides their old-fashioned charm, it seems obvious (to come back to an older theme, where I discussed the resemblance between older and modern actors) that the jokes and plots are often to be found in the newer sitcoms, like Seinfeld and Friends, aka newer and famous sitcoms.

I suppose it all comes from the old tradition of Borscht Belt entertainment, and that type of humor just gets updated with time. Or that it gets harder and harder to be original nowadays. The modern humor, nevertheless likable, is more a result of a mending process that of a creation process. It figures, since life gets somehow sadder and more monotonous by decade. With all the politically correctness obsession, the tolerance and the "being good and unoffensive" dogmas, the original humor has a hard life in our times...

Examples:  the gag with one character having a bath and the others coming in on his relaxing moment and turning it into an embarrassing, funny one - in MTM season 7 and in Friends; the idea of a character who finally writes down his memoirs/ life  and they actually become the sitcom we are watching - in DvD Show and in Seinfeld; the presence of a witty character which "zings" the other with his sharp and mean observations and who suffers when he must pause this habit - MTM Show (Murray and Ted) and Friends (Chandler and his New Year Resolution). The connections are frequent and punctual. Often one can exclaim: "just like in X or Y series!". They are hard to remember once a lot are gathered, that it why they pass into the "movie world subconscious".

This is a term I made up in order to denominate that area in our thoughts were all the movie experiences, all the empathic impressions we gather from the cinematographic experience, all the preconceptions related to some facial type or other resulting from a certain casting stereotype that we resent from seeing this or that movie gather and form a base we are hardly aware of, but which acts in the way that we suddenly feel attracted of repulsed by some places, ideas or people without having had any real previous experience on which those reactions would be based. We are in fact reacting to a false experience gathered from the cinematographic culture we have been exposed to.

Is silence stupid or golden?

This is a dilemma quickly dismissed by - to quote the previous post- our best toy from these days. Silence is horrible for the digital medium, no comments, no blogs, vlogs and other daily displays of show-off-ism, no posts, no feedback... the lack of passivity is a necessary act in the commercial go around of modern society. "Express yourself" is a slogan pushed to its limits, emptied of almost all its valuable content.

The silents therefore are maybe poor (aka have no access to the worldwide communication), maybe stupid (have nothing to say), maybe just feeling alien to this huge huge world full of people who are crowding the wires or the wireless in order to express themselves.

Looking for meaning in a culture which has broken this notion into pieces... tough. No one personality, no one talent, instead the power of the many "heterogeneous" voices. The meaning is pumped up, lobbied for, publicized, until we're not sure anymore if it means something important or not.Almost everything one may think of has been thought or done, previously or simultaneously, in another part of the world. Big sigh.

Yet this is parallel to life. In nature no flower is identical to another. A second can turn worlds around. The false meaningless, the false noise, the been there-done it all is just an illusion. I may chat with someone from the other side of the globe, yet I do not feel how he or she is, what life that person has, I cannot smell the air from out there... this would be the open paradox.

The sad and closed paradox is when, having a person face to face, you feel the need to close the chat window. When all you get are just clichés, phrases copied, false ideas, wishful thinking. When the air of the encounter wreaks of... digital.

Silence is sometimes needed to protect us from the truth that so many people are astray and will not even admit it. From hearing the same old stuff, from seeing the deceit as clear as an oil painting, standing on the wall between us.

Then we talk, just because it has been repeated to us that is is socially polite and normal and healthy to talk, chatter, gossip, fill the gap, blabber, express ourselves, create, debate, stand up for some idea, make others feel comfortable, seem adequate and intelligent...

Greatest toy ever made

The slinky was invented by an engineer... all those those studies blooming into a toy!
The Internet is kind of the same, a serious thing turned into a toy by the millions of people that give it this purpose. it is the most versatile toy ever... its only flaw is that it cannot be felt, touched, it is mono dimensional.
Probably some serious adults are planning right now to confiscate it, one way or another...

Aren't toys always used as a means to condition the kids who became too independent?
Yet it will remain in our lives or in our memory as the greatest toy ever made... at least in the minds of those who were childish enough to take it as such, for laughs, pictures, games and stories.

It Chaucer was saying in Napoleon of Notting  Hill that God may have created the world as a joke, yet the people transformed it by taking the joke seriously... then the Internet might have been created as a serious matter by some grumpy adults, yet it has been transformed by the childish of us into a toy...

Happy New Year 2013, lots of laughs  and play nicely!

What to do?

I just browsed an article about the horrendous state of the world and of the humanity. The solutions (proposed from the "higher floor"), were drastic and harsh, but given the ecological needs of the globe and the system that is about to collapse so on and so forth...

This does not sound like a honest, well intended solution plan, it just sounds as an excuse for drastic measures meant to cover the interest of a few to the detriment of many. Those many cannot be idealized either, they lack culture and are greedy and reduced maybe to the consumer state, as the plans of the last decades want them to be. But the few chosen ones are not the geniuses that need to be saved the first either. they are (or many of them are) just as greedy and materialistic as the mass of poor souls the humanity is pictured like. So this "we and the others" image does not seem at all true and in good faith.

Going back in time is not possible either, we cannot run away in the woods and start foraging and hunting. Unless a catastrophe chases people there, we must keep whatever we achieved good and go on from here on. Considering that the individual initiative either lacks, either is quickly hijacked and turned evil, yes, ladies and gentlemen, the solution must come from the alleged enemy. The big companies must be convinced to relinquish part of their control in order to heal the communities. A dead horse will not carry your weight, and a desperate penniless person will not buy and consume the goods that they sell. of course it will keep on doing that until he or she is completely penniless, but then - what?

The companies have the power, more that the states. Not showing it is just a protective measure for the already week psyche of the people, and a maneuver used in order to impose wicked stuff easier as "coming from the state". They must turn - yet the big question is how?

If a big entrepreneur really puts some effort into preserving the environment and does not cheat in this department, if they open up some schools and do not use them for brainwashing, but instead they welcome the good kind of teachers and help their work, if they eventually grow some satellite small business and allow regular people to be in charge of them, gradually the world might actually lift itself up.

Instead of going toward a weird "no leader" dictatorship of a global dimension, those who can (financially and power-wise) should pray or whatever to be able to feel what is right and what should be done, to shift towards a more human like thinking.

The snake in the tree is here the marketing and management department, the sociology and economy man-hating freaks who produce theories based on cutting the humanity more and more out of the global policies. They should be banned as they are, and someone should revolutionize this field.

The neo hippies eating roots are not the solution, they are just some dudes who simply surrender themselves based on some ideas who also come from the corporate side - the strategy department :) The over spending corporate drones are also not the solution,. they just deepen the gap between the suits and the masses...
And it is scary to think how many brainwashed people might be roaming out there deeply believing in what is not true, but has been taught to them. the religion is not the solution either, as it has been acting for too much time as a political branch, and not a good one, unfortunately.

Common sense is something that people lost on the way, maybe we should look for its real meaning and re-discover it. Why have 4 or 5 cars if you and your family can arrange to manage with just one, or maybe one and a hybrid? Why build huge houses in which lonely old bitter people end up living alone, making a hell out of each others lives? Why spent desperately in order to impress the in-laws, the friends, the people we merely know? It is not a philosophical or a religious thing to stop before it is too much, to put an outgoig gesture of helping someone else in the place of an accumulating gesture...

Even charity is mean these days, it is everywhere, yet when you need it it comes with lots of string attached, and when you want to give to it, it is also mysteriously vague and numerous times crooks have interposed in this field. Why not make it easier for those who give to be able to give or to reach those who need? It's a matter of common sense.

it is the same with people who have skills but do not use them , instead being almost poor, while those who would need their skills are forced to be content with crappy things or services.

The faults of the intermediary mediums are only serving those who try to hide their misplacement and their mediocrity. When one does something wrong, he can pass it for a good thing only via lack of comparison. The mean and mediocre are tolerated and this has proven a mistake. Not tolerating does not include violence, just a simple gesture of making things right. people should be able to do what they are best at, not wait in line because the place is taken by a fraud. The frauds should nicely be sent home to discover what they are really good at - a constructive thing.

Ooo, the theories are so slippery when it comes to humanity. And the history has proven that putting the theories into practice has over and over again lead to chaos and abnormalities. Maybe that is why no theory is really welcomed - just common sense technical solutions and the cooperation of those who really pull the strings. If they do not turn good, then it is useless, because they already have the power for which year after year they reached, grasped and grabbed. And their actions had the outcome that we see today - they should not blame it on the humanity; nobody is allowed to use its own wrongdoings as an excuse... and for other wrongdoings, also...

Note: by religion is not to be understood God, or divinity, or the universe... these are entirely something else.
Note 2: the post is too long, so I will not spell check it, hope it is pretty much lisible :)

The eagerness to create

Someone once said (and it was a person who said this out of the bitterness of a life full of mistakes), that destiny is what one tries to avoid and still can't. This sprung to mind when I was eating some vegetables stew while imagining what the new press of our days should look like. In my mind I was already putting together a weekly publication and almost wrote an illustrious article... then I remembered. I remembered that I do not have the time, money or energy to waste my life with long dissertations. What if the press nowadays is big club of copy-paste with no personal contributions along the line? What if I have just read a robotic, meaningless article about a subject that could have aroused an interesting debate? The tendency is to go shorter and shorter and forget about explanations and arguments, to go to the core, to write just a few words and letters and impose one's opinion like this. So, the utopia revival of argumentation belongs exactly where I left it: in my mind, for a flash, for a few minutes... If it has some meaning in it, it will come back, to me or to some other member of humanity, more endowed to put it into practice.

From here to the title... well, there are sooo many creative debauches nowadays. That is because the once positive encouragement to enjoy our creative impulses has been turned into a way of life for soo many mediocre creators, who are more enjoying themselves than giving the opportunity to the others to bask in some art. Every little thing someone does, folding napkins, building stuff with matches, writing so and so poems now it can become art by the means of some "investment". Well, it is not. It is just a way to blur the lines between art and hobby and maybe even crap. Art is changing, but it is not going back or fragmenting itself. Craft is also a relative of art that is confronted with the same situation. There is a clear feeling that makes the difference between dilettantish and  art or craft. And it is not in the eye of the viewer, it is or should be in the eye of the educated public opinion... well, as long as such a group still exists.

As for the one seeking to produce some authentic maybe-art, perhaps not being too eager to create could get one on the right path. Does the wish to create haunt you? Push it back, postpone it, refuse it. If is shows up again and again, then give it a try, it might be genuine, and not induced by a trend from a self-help book shelf, calculated to please one and and all and to score big sales.

And a few examples of misplaced creativity: http://craftastrophe.net/

Some of these slowly might become "cult" or "chic" or "fun" because of the unintended celebrity given to them not via creative intention, but via "it's so ugly that is becomes nice".

As for art, the many many critics have already stated that taste is a personal matter, and that it is not allowed to point the finger to bad art and call it so, for fear of being named obtuse or uneducated. I just might add that I would rather admire a piece of street art or some kinetic sculptures than the static contents of an art museum, but of course - beware the TASTE!

And I do not stand for any piece of art to torment the already gloomy human existence - art better make one feel good and sublim-ish during or at the end of an artistic experience... beware the soft-heartiness!

Looking ahead from down the memory lane

Having visited the city I grew up in, it feels the only way I can say it would be "this is not the future we once dreamt of". In fact, I don't really know who could have dreamt of such a filthy, crowded and hideous cramming together of buildings and people. Only the enemies of those once living in the said city. It is not applicable only there, I know, other places have been also filled by business and dirt and by the invasion of an unhappy life, dragging the people from here to there to nowhere. But there I can place myself back n the time, looking upon the future.

Maybe the mistake with the world we live in was the lack of dreaming - 30 to 50 years ago the surroundings were taken for granted by most of the people. Why dream of a city so and so? It was already worse than before for the older ones, and the younger ones had a busy life... Maybe the young ones of today see nothing wrong with the ugly buildings and the filth, either. I wonder... People were busy dreaming of having food on the table the next day and to be getting by in a better way with their money, relatives, health, colleagues, love life and so on.

But somebody must have had the dream of the ugly city - filled this gap left by the lack of wonderful dreams with it - otherwise why this hideous urban future? Like a huge container, the city I once knew - and also started to see falling down - seems to be waiting for that unbearable point of breaking down into pieces.

Never had I imagined my house locked with not one, but three iron gates (probably now it is inhabited by three paranoid families), never have I imagined the sad sad death of old houses left to fall down in order to sell the land easily to some investor... the layer upon layer of unfamiliar things unpleasant to the eyes, that have enveloped almost every landscape I once knew. Like the familiar faces that have turned into sometimes unfamiliar, unexpected people, the city has changed in a way that pertains to no dream of it I have ever knew.

I suspected that what I knew is now locked not in a "where", but in a "when", but I should add that I feel not having left far enough from the "where", maybe not even soon enough. The road, maybe, was not supposed to be so short. The sadness of seeing how much and worse the change is asks for a bigger distance between where I used to know stuff and where I am now.

In a new city one is never quite sure of this evolution or involution - it is not within the newcomer's memory to perceive this shift.

But there are still known points where this shift comes like an unbearable conclusion. It brings out all the unfulfilled dreams also. And, weird enough, the smell of wanting to gallop further in order to forget, like a horse follows the smell of grass onto new horizons...

The value of dislike

On Facebook, we are able to express out opinions or our presence only by no action or by using the like button. The comments are nor here nor there, but negative comments can be considered trolling - I am not sure who establishes the thin line here between not agreeing and being offensive. Anyway, the mighty button is oriented versus "Like" and this might be not just a random thing. People are forcibly pushed towards tolerating everything and being ashamed of not liking stuff. The dis-likers must be mute and ashamed of themselves...

Well, disagreeing verbally or in a written comment is not such a bad thing - it is an educated form of expressing an opinion, and it can lead to clearing up repressed feelings, that otherwise would miscellaneously erupt or would distort people bit by bit. Being able to dislike things or people in a social, acceptable manner  actually is a valuable asset. It is against the current of nowadays, I admit. But the humanity should be sincere. If on the inside we are not at the point of being a huge fraternity, we shouldn't lie about it on the outside.  Yet, it is recommended to be optimistic, tolerant, polite and as much as possible emphasize one's connections to the others rather than one's particularities, but more important that all these should be honesty. If someone feels different, his thoughts and reasoning should come to the surface...

Not to be content is a right for whose expression people fought in different times. Without the "not content" ones how could the world have changed time and time again? Inventions have appeared because someone had not been content with the speed of the horse cart, with the light of a torch, with the rules already established. It is the circle of life that the ex-criticizers become the new critique-es.

The right to speak your heart or to not be content is sold in our days, is renounced because people are entangled in circles. It kind of goes without saying that we should like the policies of the company we work for, its sympathies and its friends, or of the person who in a corrupt system manages to help us with a problem, or that we should adopt gradually the ideas that prevail in the city, neighborhood or family we are in. It's a big no-no to have an independent stand and sadly it is completely uninteresting for the other people. The disliker is not even raising curiosity, and the modern psychology took care of that by labeling this attitude as one of social failure and attributing dark possible reasons to it.

Sometimes I do not like my own outcome, sometimes the things others do. Some other times, I do not even like other specific people, and this is not out of rudeness, it is an educated dislike. And it is my right and the right of each of us. We kind of use it anyway, so why be hypocrite about it? Why pretend we are the number one fan of all and anyone whom we meet and fill ourselves with resentments meanwhile...

A healthy - expressed dislike has its own value and it is a way to be sincere and to part the water around us and see the path towards the ones we share opinions with, towards the ones whom we naturally like and we feel comfortable around because we can be ourselves in their presence.

O poveste de vacante...

In vizita la Cetatea Regilor

(preluat de pe orastie.info)

Tenisul chinezesc si frumosul romanesc

Nu ma pot abtine. Pentru a suta mia oara. Ma uit la imagini cu gradini, apartamente si case prin poze, de prin alte parti ale lumii, imi mai aduc aminte si ce am vazut in rarele, foarte rarele, ocazii live, pe urma ma uit cu un ochi bleojdit la toate "frumusetile" autohtone si ma ia cu un foarte mare oftat.

Copiile noastre palide (caci de mult am parasit autenticul, hai sa luam ca un prag exemplificator folosirea folclorului pentru propaganda in comunism, care l-a distorsionat si aranjat "frumos" cu rigla in sabloane; nu-i bai ca si in perioada regala exista o imagine romantata a aceluiasi folclor in virtutea careia diverse dame se pozau in costum popular si cu marama in cap) sunt un fel de tenisi chinezesti. Se strica repede, arata jalnic si put de departe.

Nu neg ca mai gasesti cate o distractie autentica pe langa aranjamente si evenimente de prim plan stil "tenisu' chinezesc", insa ea are frumusetea buruienilor: creste si traieste de capul ei pana nu o smulge vreun propagandist bine intentionat. Apare ad hoc, graieste in soapta si in general exista doar daca nu te astepti deloc la ea.

Hainele cele noi ale imparatului fac cariera la noi, noroc ca viata s-a retras undeva in subteran si e ocupata sa spuna NU ... prefera sa ramana cu izmenele cele vechi ale taranului. Din pacate, de voie-de nevoie, si taranul isi mai cumpara tenisi, al de mai exista, caci multi sunt niste strutocamile de nu mai stiu nici ei ce or fi si ce nu.

Ca si concluzie, daca arata jalnic, pute vag si acum vreo doua trei generatii oamenii nu s-ar fi apropiat de asa ceva... nu merge. Tone de brosuri care ne spala pe creier cu meritele unor astfel de trebusoare nu acopera jalea si tanjeala dupa ce ar trebui sa fie.

Autumn again...

Stating the obvious. Raising  with a vague toothache, vague yet present, and with two days of rain would be a bit more interesting. But this is not a grumpy entry, I have my favorite set of books with me, totally unexpected, almost all of them... and I am working my way through their pages, rediscovering the same feelings of content while reading that I had about ten or fifteen years ago.

The newer books - appreciated and all that - forget to bring any comfort to the simpler, untwisted minds. They bring intellectual affirmations, knowledge of all things that were and, arrogantly enough, are to be, and so many times they just share the depths of some troubled minds'... take it or leave it.

The old fashioned more comforting books are the orphans of today's critique. Very well, I don't really give a flying  you-know-what on the critics and their modern choices.

Let it be autumn with a bowl of perfumed grapes, a nice old comfy book and whatever weather this autumn chooses to wear...