I'm Not Carrie Bradshaw

Recently I have been watching reruns of Sex and the City on E! because I missed the show when it originally appeared. I had never seen an episode when I caught the first movie on HBO one evening. I greatly enjoyed that (though the second one deserved the thumbs down it received) and after the viewing I was sorry I had missed the series.

Carrie Bradshaw, as most of you know, is a freelance writer who pens a sex column. Apparently she is paid well for this, well enough that said column is all the work she does.

In an episode last night, she discovered that she had a total of $1,600 to her name and needed to step up her freelance efforts (apparently the column did not pay all that well after all). At the end of the show, she said Vogue had agreed to pay her $4.50 a word.

I've never made $4.50 a word at anything I've ever published. The best I've ever done is $1.00 a word. Locally the going rate is about $0.05 cents a word. Yes, that's right. A nickel. A nickel a word. A few places may pay double that but they are few and far between and hard-sought  as well. Those gigs are hard to come by.

At $4.50 a word, Carrie Bradshaw is making $4,500 for 1,000 words. That's just a few paragraphs longer than the average op-ed column in The Roanoke Times, which, I assure you, pays nothing close to that.

One thousand words is about four double-spaced 8 1/2 x 11 pages in MS Word.

With 1,000 words, you can describe almost anything. In four pages you can bring a character to life. You can write a really long blog entry. You can talk about politics, religion, your mother, and your dog, or all of them at one time (wouldn't that be an interesting read?).

And you can get paid $4,500 for those words, if you are good, lucky, connected, and Carrie Bradshaw.

Which I am not.

Lately I have been mulling over how to become a more prolific freelance writer. I don't write about sex so I am not going there. I write about more mundane things - history, local government, features on the lady dentist or the female airplane pilot or some such. I don't live in New York where things are happening, so I have no idea about best restaurants. Food is out as I am a mashed potato and baked chicken kind of girl who doesn't even know what creme brulee is, much less how to write about it.

I also am not a fan of writing about health, though I think that's a hot topic to pursue if you like it. However, writing about it makes me nervous as I am afraid I will write something like, "experts advise taking Vitamin D-3 every day now because as a society we receive too little sun," and someone will read that and swallow too much D-3 and then sue me for it. People do that, you know. Also, when I have written about health in the past I have found doctors to be real assholes when it comes to interviews or offering up information. Maybe I should have interviewed proctologists.

This little blog entry should come to a point here, wrap itself up neatly, and refer back to the first paragraph, maybe. However, it's a musing, it's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and I'm still wiping sleep from my eyes even though I've been up for two hours because that's what farm wives do. They rise and shine, though I don't shine all that much at the crack of dawn. It's more like I glimmer. Or maybe go off and on like a broken switch.

Anyway, to make a long piece even longer, I have practically stopped freelancing and am focusing on school. My masters level courses are a lot of work, rather like tearing apart a water pump and trying to put it back together when you don't know how. It takes a lot of grease.

I still miss writing for the local newspaper - so much that it's like a little mini heart attack sometimes when I stop and think about it - but that's getting easier. However, I had to stop writing for newspapers completely to ease the pain.

To become Carrie Bradshaw, I need to do a lot of things (besides lose weight and about 20 years). Mostly, I need to come up with ideas and send out query letters to magazine editors, if that is the way I want to go.  And this I do not do. And do you know why, dear reader?

Because I'm terrified they'll say no. And I'm terrified they'll say yes and I won't be able to produce. So isn't it better then, to do nothing at all, says the little timid mouse as it hunkers down in its little house?

So to become Carrie Bradshaw I must overcome this fear, even though I am highly published, with my byline under several thousand articles (really!) and move on, yes?

Maybe.

Sci Fi (or SF or Syfy)

I have long been a fan of science fiction and fantasy works. I love books, movies and TV shows that deal with these topics, though I prefer my science fiction to be mild and not violent. Some science fiction can be very violent, so I am not a fan of something like a Clockwork Orange.

When I was around six or seven I was enamored with a TV show called Land of the Giants. I do not really remember the show but I do remember being upset because we were at a circus and I was missing the show. Apparently it was must-see TV.

I liked some cheesy shows, such as Land of the Lost (not the 2009 movie), the Batman series (the one with Adam West), and others like The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, and the Six Million Dollar Man. I never saw much of Lost in Space; we couldn't get the channel.

Later I enjoyed shows such as Quantum Leap and Sliders, but managed to miss seeing Star Trek: The Next Generation and similar shows of that era (doesn't that make me sound old?).

These days, I like to watch TV while I am walking on the treadmill of mornings. I have gone through the entire Xena: Warrior Princess series several times, mostly because it was all I had here. Then I bought Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and walked through all seven seasons of that show. I've also walked through a season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and am getting ready to walk through yet another one.

Over the summer I walked through the first season of Babylon 5 and I am just finishing up the first season of Star Trek: Voyager.

Until someone gave me the DVD, Babylon 5 was a show I had never seen. This is because for a very long time we could only obtain two television stations, CBS and NBC. We could sometimes see ABC if the clouds were right.

It was not until 1994 that we purchased a C-Band satellite. That's one of those huge satellites. Suddenly I knew what MTV and VH1 was. I could watch HBO!

And series that were already in progress, like Babylon 5, went right on by me because (a) there was so much stuff to watch and (b) I didn't want to jump in the middle of something and (c) I am not sure we subscribed to the channel it was on.

So I watched the first season, or maybe the first two seasons, of Star Trek: Voyager but then my satellite subscription for the channel it was on (UPN? the WB? something like that) went away and I never finished the series. Hopefully as money permits I will eventually see all of B5 and Voyager.

Fortunately we purchased the satellite in time for me to see Hercules, Xena, Buffy, the Lost World and a few other shows.

Now we have DirecTV. The C-band satellite began to lose programing after the turn of the century and in 2004 we went to the smaller satellite. We are not unhappy with it. I don't watch a lot of TV to begin with and aside from losing the picture in heavy rains or other bad weather we don't have any trouble with it.

But they don't seem to be making very many TV shows like Voyager, Buffy, or B5 these days, although it is quite possible that there are things out there I am missing since I don't check out news shows very often.

I was never able to get into Lost or Heroes. I'm not sure why.

Anyone have recommendations for completed SF or fantasy series that I might look for?

Jumping the Shark

I do not watch much TV and I make no apologies for that.

If I have to relax or just waste time, I would rather do it while reading a book. If I must do something else, then I prefer the computer to the TV. At least playing a video game gives you the illusion of doing something.

I am loyal to just a few shows. At the moment, I am watching Ghost Whisperer, Legend of the Seeker, and Survivor.

Ghost Whisper has jumped the shark, or so it appears. I am withholding actual judgment on this until I see how the latest story line, which involves the death of Melinda's husband and his return as a ghost and now as a ghost in the body of a dead man, is completed.

This is looking pretty shark-worthy, even if this story line has apparently increased the show's audience.

Ghost Whisperer is in its fourth season.

Legend of the Seeker is based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth fantasy series. The show is brought to us courtesy of Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, the Renaissance team that gave us Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess.

I was a great fan of both those shows. I don't know that Hercules ever really jumped the shark although I recall that several of its last seasons were rather dark.

Xena jumped the shark in season 3 by some estimates and for sure in Season 5.

Legend of the Seeker is not staying true to the books, a fact which rankles my husband. We listened to Goodkind's books over the last 10 years on audiobooks and my husband enjoyed them. To my knowledge they are the only works of fiction he has "read" since school.

He has been unhappy with the show's inability to adhere to the books. I told him book readers deal with this all the time when their stories are transformed to screen.

"The books would have made a good series, they didn't have to make all these changes," he growls on the nights we watch the show.

Legend of the Seeker reminds me of Hercules more so than Xena. Xena's music creator, Jo LoDuca, has done the score for this show, and I recognize many of the names from casting and directors when the credits role. It has the same feel as Hercules in its characters.

I guess that is what happens when you are Xena:Warrior Princess fan and you read the credits. There was a time when I could have named a long list of people associated with that particular show though I thankfully have forgotten most of that trivia now.

As best I can tell Legend has only nine episodes created. I suppose if the show has decent ratings it will move forward.

I have always been a fan of fantasy shows (as opposed to SF shows like Star Trek, though I like those, too). There hasn't been a fantasy that I really enjoyed since Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena were on so I have been looking forward to this new Legend series. So far it is okay although I am not engaging with the characters as much as I would like. Still, I recommend it to fans of the genre in the hopes it will grow on me.

Survivor has been around forever and I have watched every season although I honestly don't know why I do. The shows are so unremarkable that there are only a very few contestants that I recall with any clarity.

Yet I make a point of watching it every Thursday night, so there must be something to it. It is the only reality show I watch.

This year I am not a fan of any of the contestants, which means I am rooting more for people to get tossed out of the game than I am for someone to win.

I think Survivor probably jumped the shark long ago but I couldn't begin to identify when that was.

Anyway, those are my current TV-watching habits. Three hours a week. I also have the news on when I'm cooking dinner and I sometimes sit down to watch a movie, but not very often.

It takes a very good movie to make me put down my book.

The Word is "Joint"

Last night while watching a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert on TV, I noticed the interesting censorship that is going on this silly country.

In the song You Don't Know How It Feels, they messed with this line:

Let's get to the point. Let's roll another ????

WTF? (They do it on the video I linked to above, also.
Here's an uncensored version of the song.)

The censured word is joint. As in a marijuana cigarette. I am about 1000 percent sure that when this song was released in 1994 that the word joint was NOT censured. I wonder if it's censured these days on the radio, too. Maybe they just don't play it anymore.

Let's get to the point. Let's roll another joint.

And what doesn't get censured? What objectionable things did I hear Tom Petty sing about last night that wasn't bleeped out?

How about ... drinking booze and getting into a woman's jeans? It's not okay to roll a joint ... but it's okay to mess around and possibly impregnate a woman. And it's okay to get drunk.

I am so glad we have our priorities straight in this country. (That was sarcasm in case you missed it.)

I suppose this is part of the war on drugs. Another government initiative that has never made sense to me.

No, I don't use drugs but I think the policy of locking up someone for smoking MJ is ridiculous. Europe treats drugs as a health issue, not a criminal one, and I think that is the better way to go about this.

Obviously our way isn't working, so it's time to look to something that seems to be modestly successful.

In the meantime, government and TV and everyone else who thinks they know what is good for me, stop censuring my art. And everything else. What are we, a bunch of wilted flowers?

I hate censorship.

John Adams

Last night husband and I watched the first two parts of the HBO special on John Adams.

Adams was the second president of the United States and one of the first members of the Continental Congresses, which approved the Declaration of Independence and began the United States.

The show is well done and we're looking forward to watching the remaining segments. What a relief to have some decent television to watch for a change.

My husband was quite caught up in the show. During one scene early on, Adams was lecturing to a crowd in a church.

"That looks just like that church we saw in Williamsburg," husband said.

"They filmed a lot of this in Williamsburg," I replied, having read that online somewhere previously.

After that, he watched even more intently, searching for buildings and structures he remembered from our two trips to Colonial Williamsburg. He delighted in pointing out the buildings to me.

When the show ended, husband was wound up. "Look at what all they went through," he said, referring to scenes of smallpox. "Look at how little they had. We're a bunch of softies now, aren't we."

I agreed. Indeed, we are quite pampered and toil seems to be beneath us, each and every one.

"We're also getting stupider," my husband declared. He noted how learned Adams and his compatriots were. They knew lots of stuff. Philosophy and religion and the law.

"People today just know what's on at the movies," husband said. "They don't know anything real or important."

It took a long time for him to wind down and go to bed.

The series obviously did its job for him.

TV: Celine Dion

Last night I went to bed with a book and the TV on for background noise, like I generally do when my husband is working.

CBS had a special - Celine Dion. I like her music but own none of her work.

From the first song, the book soon lay forgotten beside me. I had no idea Celine Dion was such a compelling performer. I was impressed.

What I liked about it was she was so personable and comfortable on the stage. It was like watching an old friend. I really enjoyed her song with Will. I. Am; I thought that was exceptional, and her rendition of the Beatle's "Something" with Joe Walsh was extraordinary.

The hour went by very quickly. We need more shows like this, and less reality TV.

Miscellaneous Media

My husband likes to laugh. He loves Comedy Central and he enjoys watching comedians and funny movies. When we first started dating, he was constantly quoting lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I had to watch the movie to see what he was talking about.

These days, he is fascinated with Jeff Dunham. Jeff is a ventriloquist and comic. You can view some of his skits on his website here.

I just wanted to point the ventriloquist out in case someone hasn't seen him. Some of his work is a little irreverent. I like his character Peanut the best. You can find more of his stuff on youtube.com if you care to look.

Moving on.

I have seen two movies in the past two months. While not a record, it is close. We don't get to the theater often. We both have a thing about paying $7.75 for a small soft drink and a bottle of water. We can stay at home and drink out of the tap for free.

Anyway, I saw The Golden Compass in December. I was disappointed in the movie because it could have been so much more. It had the potential to have the scope and depth of Lord of the Rings, but it did not. I think it failed the book. Philip Pullman's vision was not realized. I found the lead character unappealing and I never felt I knew her or her motivations. Others have said otherwise, of course.

Sunday we saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I enjoyed this film, probably because I took no expectations into the theater with me. I enjoyed the first movie, too. I love history and I love mystery so these movies work well for me.

For Christmas, I received all but one of the remaining seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I was missing. Buffy was a show I enjoyed but until this year I did not see the seasons beyond Season 4. I thought overall the series ended better than Xena: Warrior Princess, which is the only other set of DVDs for which I have the entire show.

After the New Year I ordered the last missing Buffy season, and while I was at it, I ordered the first season of Cagney and Lacey.

If you're seeing a pattern as to the kinds of TV I watch, well, then you know why I don't watch TV much anymore. You rarely see well-produced and written shows these days about strong women who overcome the odds and move forward with their lives. Apparently those women have turned into ... well, I watch so little TV these days I don't even have anything to compare them to.

The only show I make any effort to watch now is Ghost Whisperer and while Melinda is an interesting character she is not in the same league as Buffy, that's for sure. I attempted the new Bionic Woman and it didn't do it for me - she was just a puppet, not a thinking woman.

Other shows that I used to watch include La Femme Nikita, Murphy Brown, and Designing Women. I even liked Charlie's Angels, the (real) Bionic Woman, and Wonder Woman when I was (much) younger.

I am always up to checking out a show, so you if know of something that might fit the "strong woman" bill, let me know. I rather miss knowing that on X night of the week, there will be good TV.

In the meantime, I have this big pile of books... and I will continue to read.

No TV For Me

According to this article, Data Says 2.5 Million Less Watching TV, we're all watching less TV.

Hurray for us.

The article goes on to hypothesize why we are watching less on the boob tube. Maybe we're gardening, working on the computer, "or just plain bored. . . . Everyone has a theory to explain the plummeting ratings: early Daylight Savings Time, more reruns, bad shows, more shows being recorded or downloaded or streamed," the article reads.

The programs on TV are terrible, I think. Maybe we're all "reality show" tired. I'd like to see something fresh and exciting. Something that has a pulse. Something with strong characters, fresh plots, unique ideas.

Something that makes you go "huh" when you're done, and you're glad you watch it.

I don't watch shows on FOX because I won't support the network. I have never seen an episode of "24" or "American Idol." It leaves me out of conversation at the water cooler, but I don't have a water cooler anyway so I don't really care.

My show? The local news. That's pretty much all I watch. I never have the TV on during the day. The only show I make a point of catching is Ghost Whisperer on Friday nights on CBS.

That's because Friday nights are about the only nights I watch TV, and CBS has generally had decent shows in the 8 p.m. time slot. So Ghost Whisperer it is.

The rest of my time I spend reading, writing in this blog, working, doing the laundry, etc. I haven't the time to spend watching reruns or reality shows. Why would I want to watch people make idiots of themselves over money when I can read a book that takes me worlds away and gives me something to think about?

These are some of the shows I have made a point of watching in the past: Cagney & Lacey. Beauty & the Beast. Xena: Warrior Princess. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. I liked comedies, like Murphy Brown, Cheers, Frasier.

You don't see TV like that anymore. Now everything is Law & Order something or another or its the newest CSI in Iceland. All the same.

Some people don't like to watch forensic science on TV. I am one of them. I don't read Patricia Cornwell books, either.

Give me substance. Give me character. Give me plot. Give me a reason to watch!

Then maybe I'll turn on the set.