I didn’t plan it this way, but all the links I’ve hoarded lately seem to fit that description. They’re also all from last week because I am living in the past.
Ross at The American Scene makes the case for an HBO White House drama:
It struck me that there’s an opening for a show that gives our nation’s capital the real HBO treatment–not the “Steven Soderbergh filming flacks with a handheld camera” approach, I mean, but the Sopranos/Deadwood/Rome approach. Start with the West Wing formula–idealistic, articulate people working in high-pressure jobs while keeping the nation’s best interests close to their hearts–and shove it through the looking glass. Send an anti-hero to Washington, and follow him (or her) up the ladder, all the way to the Presidency (if he’s a politician) or the Karl Rove role (if he’s an operative). Make the characters twisted, depraved, power-hungry, sexually voracious, occasionally violent–and make them appealing, too. Give us Deadwood at the Palm, the Sopranos with their hands on the nuclear football, Rome in the capital of the modern Roman Empire.
Outer Life stars in his own tale of–well, just go read it. I can’t possibly do it justice and might well wreck it. Be prepared to laugh at the misfortunes of another, is all I’ll say.
At Cathy’s World, Cathy Seipp’s pal Sandra Tsing Loh chips in a magnificent rant. The object of her righteous ire? PEN USA:
So. . . I was excited about the PEN Awards and marked my calendar. Then at my writer’s group meeting yesterday, I asked my friend Samantha Dunn if she was going. She had indeed been honored with a gracious invite to join the table of David Ulin, but snorted a remark along the lines of: “$250? I ain’t got it!”
This gave me pause. Then I went to the PEN website, and realized, in good conscience, what was I thinking? I really cannot go!
In fact, if I had the babysitting I would be standing in front of the Biltmore in a placard literally PROTESTING this event.
Loh is as funny on paper as on the air, plus the sailor in her gets a furlough.