Television Isn’t Worthy of One Eye

Broadcast television just isn't what it used to be.

Remember when you turned on the tube, sat down, and within seconds you were enjoying something interesting?

Even with the over 500 channel digital television universe, most things “aired” by broadcasters aren't worthy of one eye, let alone both. They hit below the belt – way below – for content these days.

Just ask Matt Lauer.

The television personality that has the honour of co-hosting NBC’s flagship morning show 'Today' was making his own news – if you can call it that – by doing a bit on how one of his colleagues slapped him on the butt behind the scenes.

They did a whole “bit” on how inappropriate it was, trying to make us laugh. Instead, if you have half a brain cell left after watching fellow co-hosts Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb drink themselves silly before most of us even have had a cup of coffee, were left wondering – WTF?

Gifford and Kotb both deny being alcoholics, yet they drink wine every morning. It’s just their thing – to drink first thing in the morning, at work, on TV.

If a high school teacher was doing the same thing at work in front of a class of kids, that teacher would be fired and sent to AA.

NBC isn't the only major American network producing brain numbing content, leaving us wondering what the hell?

Most American and Canadian networks produce crap these days – it’s a sad reality in this era of tasteless reality shows.

The Learning Channel – TLC – doesn't teach us much anymore. Unless you enjoy learning about someone crazy’s addiction to eating her dead husband’s ashes, in their show ‘My Strange Addiction.’

There are still some great shows on television. Showtime’s ‘Californication’ and HBO Canada’s ’Call Me Fitz’ are really amazing shows. They are well written, shot and directed.

'Californication' follows the wild life of novelist Hank Moody played by the undervalued David Duchovny, while 'Call Me Fitz' stars Canadian Jason Priestley as 'Fitz' -- an egomaniac used car salesman constantly battling his conscious.

The writers are both those shows is a thing even Shakespeare would give a nod too.

And that’s the real problem with most television these days – it’s not well written.

Writers are always undervalued – I was one – once. It doesn't matter whether it’s television, radio, print or even the web – they are still underpaid, overworked and treated like second-class citizens.

Which is why the shows are so poorly structured – you’d produce crap if you were treated like a slave.

So we get poorly written shows, with talent-less drunken hosts on major broadcast networks talking about butt-slaps, as our brain cells melt away in the miserable million channel universe.

Where’s my remote control? I can’t take it anymore.

How Tech Killed the Cocktail Party

Years ago, when I first got into the writing business, whenever I went to a cocktail party, a BBQ, or other social function, people would always ask me to write their stories.

During the initial small talk, when we’d go through the routine “so what do you do for a living?” after I said my bit, inevitably someone would always start telling me their whole life story.

No kidding – we’d go from “hi, nice to meet you,” to suddenly the person telling me about their childhood, secret unfulfilled high school crush, to how they just killed their boss and were wondering where to hide the body.

Well, maybe not the last one – but looking back on those days, I’m amazed at how open and frank people were, revealing their inner-most personal experiences with me, seeing as we’d only just met.

I heard some interesting stuff --I think. 

My mind usually wandered during those experiences, half-listening to what this complete stranger was confessing to me, half-listening to the others around me, as I desperately looked for a way of escape.

At the time, I didn’t like being cornered by someone I’d just met, having their whole life story forced upon me. I’m not anti-social, just as with most of us, it takes time to get to know someone.

But back then, tell someone you’re a writer, and they’d assume their story had the next New York Time’s Bestseller prize written all over it, and they’d want you to write it.

Times have certainly changed – thanks a lot technology.

Now when I tell people I write, they tell me they do too. They write blogs, podcasts, have their own YouTube channel, or post to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any of the other social networks.

They brag about the number of friends, fans and followers they have reading their posts. They tell me about the process of writing, asking if it is the same thing I go through in creating my work too?

They don’t need me to tell their stories anymore, because they get to tell them in their own words and way.

Thanks to technology, everyone is their own publisher and producer. All you need these days to tell your story is a computer, an Internet connection and the time it takes to hammer it out on the keyboard.

No longer do I get pulled into a dark corner at a cocktail party by a complete stranger, and force fed his or her stories about their misunderstood youth, the prom date that never showed up, or their lost lucky sock that they finally found and have never taken off to this day – ew – and other whacky things that happen to us all.

Well, except the last one -- I don’t have a lucky sock.

The Best Thing About Blogging – Originality

Tonight in Canada, a television show from the 1980’s returns with much the same cast, only older. Dallas, one of the biggest night-time dramas in the era of big hair, neon colors, and parachute pants has been re-done, in a “new” series which premiers tonight on BRAVO.

Hollywood – and most of the mainstream media – seems to be chock out of ideas, because they keep re-hashing the same old ones in an attempt to draw us into their movies and television shows.

Classic television hits Hawaii Five-Oh, Charles Angels, The Smurfs, The Dukes of Hazard, The A-Team, Starsky and Hutch, even MacGyver were all re-made – the latter in the form of a comedy spoof McGruber. 

Aren’t there any original ideas anymore? 

Yes there are – and you don’t have to pay outrageously high prices for a movie and an oversized bag of stale popcorn to enjoy them.

Thankfully bloggers are coming up with really original content, or else we’d really have nothing interesting to pass the time.

The blogosphere is full of well written, interesting, and original content on everything from current affairs, space, science, technology, fashion and more.

Granted, you probably won’t see big blockbuster movie action on a blog, but at least you’ll be entertained and informed about something that really is new – not labeled as new, but just recycled by lazy writers that don’t want to take risks.

And that’s what it all comes down too. Risk. It costs millions to create a television show, and even more to create a movie, so many writers opt for the easy way out, and instead of trying something new, they fall back on past hits.

That’s why a TV show from the 1980’s is being revised over 20 years later yet being sold as “new.”

Television viewership is down, so too are movie attendance figures. Many blame the Internet, podcasts, television on-demand and other digital media.

I beg to differ – although the Internet and digital media do have a role in taking us away from TV and the movies, that’s not the primary reason.

Nope.

It’s lazy writers afraid to take risks.

Although I enjoyed watching television shows in the 1980’s, I’ve been there and done that. I don’t need or want to watch the same characters living out the same old plot lines, as they get old and grey. 

Are we going to have a geriatric version of Dallas, as the cast continues to age?

I can see the plot thicken, as JR desperately tries to find out who stole his dentures. They can make it a two-part season finally, much as they did in the 1980’s original version of the show, when they ran the “Who Shot JR” episode. Only in the “new” revised series, JR mumbles something incomprehensible, as he points to the jar that usually stores his dentures. Oh my god! It’s empty!

Who stole JR’s dentures?

Tune in next season to find out.

Shh...Here's the Secret to Unlocking Your Creativity in Three Easy Parts

Whenever someone asks me what I do, and after explaining that I’m a writer, I almost always get the same response:

“WOW – I’ve always wanted to do that, but I’m not creative enough.”

Or alternatively, the other person’s eyes light up like a solar flare as they respond:

“I have a story that needs to be told, wanna write it?”

I tell those people to go write it themselves.

“But I’m not a creative person,” they usually fight back.

We all have some element of creativity buried deep within ourselves – it is just a matter of digging within to uncover it.

Without creativity, you wouldn’t be reading this blog right this very second. The first sign of creativity is a sense of curiosity – and it is that sense of “need to know” which drove you this far in this blog.

Curiosity drives us to do many things. From the simple, such as clicking on a blog and reading it through, to the more adventurous – reading a blog, becoming inspired to write your own, to the more – uh er – well you decide – tasting that mysterious brown clump of food that’s been sitting at the back of your fridge for the past six-months, to figure out what it is or was.

Provided you don’t get food poisoning from tasting mystery foods left in your fridge, creativity is driven by a sense of curiosity – interest in the people, places and things around us.

Unless you really live in a vacuum – which in of itself would be quite the tall tale – chances are you are curious about something.

So curiosity is one of the key characteristics – which we all have – of being creative. Still don’t think you are a creative person? What if I told you there really are only three elements to being creative – you’ve just discovered you have one, what if you have the other two?

Ask yourself: “If I won $35 million in the lottery today, what would I do with the money?”

Take a moment to salivate over your winnings – thirty-five million dollars is nothing to sneeze at!

What would you do?

Would you buy a new house? Get a red hot exotic sports car? How about take a trip around the world – no! Even better than a trip, a cruise around the world.

Just by thinking about what you’d do if you won the lottery, you just proved you have one of the other two characteristics embodied in being creative.

The first of the remaining two characteristics is the ability to imagine – using your mind’s eye to see other possibilities. Imagination is key to creativity, as curiosity drives us to imagine what it would be like to do something, be someone else, meet a celebrity, or win the lottery.

Our imaginations give us an alternative perspective on the world around us. At night, when we sleep, our imaginations power our dreams.

Psychiatrists, neural surgeons and other medical experts on human thought patterns and brain activity still don’t know much about how our brains actually work. They have told us that our brains are electro-chemical nerve centers, where each thought – a neuron of electronic and magnetic impulses – whizzes from one nerve center in the brain to another one faster than they can realistically measure.

But one thing most of these experts agree on is that our dreams are our mind’s way of sorting and organizing the infinite amounts of sensory data we collected since our last deep sleep. We imagine many things when we sleep – that’s our mind sorting out all the information into bits and pieces. 

Very often we influence our dreams, by adding in our own wants, needs and desires. Maybe you wanted to say something to that mysterious person you ran into on your way to the office, but didn’t have the courage – but in your dreams, you are the boss – anything goes.

As your mind goes about its sorting and organizing of information, you dream a nice dream, where you tell that mysterious person what you wanted, and then the adventure begins. It is sort of like a play within a play – your mind is dreaming what you want, while cataloging all the other information collected since your last deep sleep (to be scientifically accurate, since your last Rapid Eye Movement (REM) deep sleep cycle).

We all dream – even if we don’t remember our dreams. Unless you don’t sleep – ever – then chances are you dream. The average human being can only go for seven-days without REM sleep, before suffering nasty side effects – such as sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, and eventually death.

I take it because you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably had an REM deep sleep cycle within the past seven days. Which means you’ve dreamt. Which means you’ve now experienced two of the three key characteristics of creativity:

• Curiosity
• Imagination

Only one more key characteristic and you too will be oozing creativity.

Okay, the third key characteristic of creativity is the hardest one to acquire. You might as well stop reading this blog and give up now – there’s no way YOU could possibly have it – is there?

You might as well just point and click your mouse to the next web site you were going to check out before stopping here.

Still here?

Good.

You just proved you have the third key trait of creativity.

Determination – the will to complete something to its conclusion. The desire to see things through. The need to read to the end of the book, or in this case, blog.

You’re almost done! And you have all three key characteristics of being creative:

1. Curiosity – the driving force which compels us to seek things out.
2. Imagination – the ability to visualize alternative realities, paths, roads, outcomes.
3. Determination – the desire to see things through until the end.

YOU are a creative person!

Now go out there and put your creative juices to the test – do something – well – creative!