I had my first real interview yesterday, and I thought it went very well. Since The Company Gobsmacked me in early August, I’ve applied for 29 different positions. I’ve been casting a wide net, and I know I’m not a good fit for a lot of them, but you never know. The position I found in 2004 under similar circumstances came from just such a wide cast, and it was one of the best I’ve had at TC.
So far, I’m 13-16 on those applications (it was 16-13, but this morning’s email reversed the score). Sixteen have come back with, “Gee, thanks, but you’re not the one.”
Yesterday’s interview was for one of the 16 13 that are still pending. As I said, it’s the first actual interview, although I had two “Information Interviews” a couple of weeks ago. (An information interview is when you sit down with the person who would offer the job and find out a bit about the job — and they about you — but it’s not a real interview. Call it a preview interview.)
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20 Comments | tags: Babylon 5, Häagen-Dazs, ice cream, Ode to a Mouse, Oolong, Pontiac, vapor lock, work | posted in Life, Philosophy
The next time I decide to do a week-long series of articles about television shows, somebody hit me with a baseball bat! (But if you would, please make one of those plastic whiffleball bats; wouldn’t want brain bubbles scattered everywhere!)
Suffice to say TV Tuesday was a grueling exercise. Trying to pack so much into each post without going over my self-imposed limit of 1200-15oo words was tough, and I’m not entirely happy with the results. There wasn’t much depth to any of it, but I’m going to look at them as foundations for future discussion. And it was nice to record a list of my television raves and rants in interweb stone, so there is that.
Today I’m going to kick back a bit before getting into much meatier topics and just serve up some post editing notes:
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9 Comments | tags: Amy Heckerling, Google+, Johnny Dangerously, Johnny Mnemonic, Klaatu, Marshall McLuhan, Wikipedia, Wiktionary | posted in Brain Bubble
This isn’t about the astrological sign of Leo, the Lion; it’s about television shows with LEOs in them. That is to say, Law Enforcement Officers. Cops. Heat. The Fuzz. The term covers civilian and military police, the FBI and any member of an organization charged with enforcing the law (Secret Service and Treasury agents or LEOs).
For our purposes, the term also covers lawyers and judges and others who adjudicate the law. As put by a hugely successful TV show, there are “two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.”
So here on the last day of this edition of TV Tuesday, “cop shows” are in the house! And some court room dramas! (You have the right to keep reading. If you choose to keep reading, any thoughts or memories you may have can be written down as comments and won’t be used against you.)
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5 Comments | tags: cop shows, Dragnet, Hill Street Blues, JAG, Jethro Gibbs, LEO, Leverage (TV series), Mission: Impossible, NCIS, Perry Mason, television, The Closer | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
TV Tuesday now turns to the third serious contender for All-Time Favorite television series. I’ve taken the liberty of excluding Star Trek from consideration, because it’s so integrated into my life, so big that it transcends being just a “favorite TV series.” That leaves four in the Fave Five, and in the last two days I’ve celebrated the two top contenders.
Today I celebrate the series that, until it was knocked down by the other two, was easily my favorite show ever. It’s one of the only two series I tried to fully capture to video tape back in the 1990s (before DVDs made all that effort a sad, silly waste). The other series was Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The third-place contender, formerly number one, is M*A*S*H.
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23 Comments | tags: Alan Alda, Frank Burns, Hawkeye, Loretta Swit, Margaret Houlihan, MASH, Radar O'Reilly, television | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
As I mentioned in yesterday’s episode, there are two shows that vie for All-Time Favorite television series. Today’s episode of TV Tuesday is about the series that would — by just a nose — place in the race rather than win. (Tomorrow’s episode is about the show that shows. That’s the Friday Trifecta here: my television picks for win, place and show.)
And I have to say, it’s a really tough call, a photo finish. It’s quite possible that if you asked me at the right time, the order would change. In particular, if you asked me while I was in the middle of re-watching the series (which I may do this coming election season), I might be inclined to say that this horse was the winner.
The horse in question is The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin.
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2 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, C.J. Cregg, Charlie Young, Jed Bartlet, Josh Lyman, Leo McGarry, television, The West Wing, Toby Ziegler | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
The next two episodes of TV Tuesday concern two shows that are easily in my Fave Five and sure contenders for Top Three. As I mentioned in the first post, there are two that really vie for the top slot, and one that would probably win. This episode is about that show.
This episode is about House, M.D.
As I’ve mentioned before, I watch television for stories that engage me, but more than that I watch television for the characters. This is one place where television shows — especially long-running shows — are superior to movies. A well-drawn character on a television series has a longer “life span” than any movie character can. To approach the life time of a TV character’s life, even for just a single season, requires something like the Harry Potter movies (eight movies amounting to almost 20 hours).
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15 Comments | tags: Dr. Greg House, Dr. James Wilson, Dr. Joseph Bell, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, House M.D., Lisa Edelstein, Sherlock Holmes, television | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
TV Tuesday now takes a slight detour from the public airwaves and shows of our past to consider what’s been happening in the cable TV world. Some of the shows mentioned here deserve their own article, but in this post I’m going to fly over the landscape as quickly as I can manage (those who know me are laughing their ass off about now). If I don’t (at least try), this will be even longer than my usual lengthy longitude.
The problem is that the landscape has gotten huge! Even taking just the “premium” cable channels, such as HBO and Showtime, I find a large selection of shows to mention. In fact, HBO and Showtime each offer so many shows, either one alone offers much territory to explore. With that in mind, the flight won’t be stopping at any one destination very long. We have a very tight schedule today!
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6 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, cable shows, Game of Thrones, HBO, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, news, Nurse Jackie, television, The Big C, The Newsroom (TV series), Veep, Weeds | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
Before TV Tuesday can proceed to the television I love, I need to clear the airwaves regarding an entire genre of television I cannot stand.
I suspect I’m about to offend some people while causing others to cheer. To those who cheer, you are clearly members of a discerning, intelligent television audience. To those who are offended, your presence in the gene pool is no longer required, please hit the showers.
As you may have gathered, yep, it’s another opinionated rant. This one is about what I consider the worst thing to hit television since Manimal or The Ropers. In fact, it’s worse, far worse, than those two combined, plus Cop Rock and Mr. T. and Tina.
It’s about the form of video excrescence known as “Reality TV.” And that really does need to be in quotes, because there isn’t one thing “real” about it. Quite to the contrary, a more accurate term is “Unreality TV.”
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6 Comments | tags: reality shows, television, trash, voyeurism | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
Welcome to TV Tuesday here at Logos CC. Today begins a series of posts concerning that daily invader to most of our lives: television. For good or ill, television has become a fact in the fabric of our families. And there certainly is both much good and ill to be found on the video airwaves. That is an ongoing topic on this blog, but this series is about the shows I love (and some that I don’t).
I suppose TV Thursday might have been a more logical choice, though it doesn’t have quite the same ring. I say that because Thursday nights was the NBC Must See TV night that brought us such classics as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Friends, Night Court, Mad About You, Seinfeld and Wings.
(How many old friends did you find in that list?)
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34 Comments | tags: Cheers, House M.D., JAG, Mad About You, MASH, Must See TV, NCIS, Night Court, Star Trek, television, The West Wing | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
I was wondering what, if anything, to post today. I woke up with a headache (okay, a hangover), and I find it hard to focus on writing when my head hurts. And today begins what is seeming more and more likely to be my last three weeks in a 33-year career. So I’m feeling a bit down, which also makes writing difficult.
I have been writing a lot lately. Some of that is catching up after nearly a year of writing very little here. I started strong a year ago July, kept it up for two months and then fell off the metaphorical horse. There was a personal and a work-related aspect to that. The latter involved beginning new tasks at work, so there were new systems to learn, and that took a lot of energy. The former is private; suffice to say it involved one of those life disappointments that takes some time to absorb and integrate.
The longer I didn’t write, the easier it was to not write. (Exercise is the same way for me.) I tried several times to get back into it, but never really got up a head of steam.
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13 Comments | tags: Cowboys & Aliens, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, RSVP | posted in Brain Bubble
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