Thu, April 8, 2004
Damn Fox
Damn them all to hell! I'm not taking the cancellation of Wonderfalls very well, after all. I thought I'd be okay, but as time passes, I'm just more heartbroken. It was the show that was going to help me get over the unfair cancellation of Ed and now it, too, has been prematurely taken from me! Plus, "Entertainment Weekly" says that Arrested Development is teetering on the brink of extinction, also. (But, what do they know? They thought Lord of the Rings would sweep the Oscars!) You would think that after the Family Guy situation, the network would have learned its lesson. Why, Fox? Why?!
Worst of all, I had just begun to fall in love with the show's peppy, refreshing theme song, created and performed by Andy Partridge of XTC. (A band I'd never heard of outside of the TMBG song "XTC vs. Adam Ant.") It's got a charming, playful rhythm and creative, captivating percussion. Plus, gleeful lyrics that remind me of a fascinating and insightful poem about consciousness and introspection, written by renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman in his youth.
The chorus of Partridge's theme:
I wonder, wonder why the wonder falls.
I wonder why the wonder falls on me.
I wonder, wonder why the wonder falls
with everything I touch and hear and see.
Feynman writes:
I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder.
Pretty special, isn't it? I love the way puncutation and emphasis affect such a subtle yet total change in meaning. It's exactly the sort of thing a quantum physicist-to-be would do.
Luckily, I was able to acquire a copy of the Wonderfalls theme, and its powers are truly magical. It made for a very happy commute the other day, even though some bastard tried to kill me. In it (and hopefully in the release of the full 13-episode season on DVD) the beauty of Wonderfalls will live on. It wasn't perfect, but it was damn close by today's network TV standards.
Tonight, TiVo will be dark from 9-10pm, because Fox will be airing a repeat of its sickening plastic surgery/beauty pageant reality sleazefest The Swan instead of an hour of truly original storytelling. Damn them all to hell.
© onebee · all rights reserved
"kotc" — Thu, 4/8/04 5:23pm
"The cow creamer will be silent this Thursday and forever forward."
"Holly" — Sat, 4/10/04 2:55am
Not that the cancellation of a TV show alone is enough to put me in this mood – things like, y'know, national and international affairs also contribute – but I memorized this poem about a year ago and it hasn't failed me yet.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jeffers1.html
It doesn't exactly bring comfort (especially not, given that it was written in the 1920s), but it gives a voice to things.
"Holly" — Sat, 4/10/04 2:55am
Wow, was that an incoherent thing I just posted or what?? go read the poem.
"Holly" — Sat, 4/10/04 2:58am
It's a poem 'cause, y'know, you were quoting poetry. Good night.
mommymomerino — Sun, 4/11/04 8:10pm
if your passion is for the punctuation, check out "Eats, shoots and leaves" by Lynne Truss an example of the "drama of the comma" (Newsweek, April 12, 2004, pg.12)