Lost in GroVont : a blog

Snow Day!

It's October 9th, and it's snowing here in Jackson Hole. Big giant flakes of snow. I was not prepared and had to purchase a toque after breakfast at Bubba's. Here's Daisy experiencing her first taste of snow:

A few more pictures of snow on Flickr.

Umbrellas are needed today.

It's a rainy day here in Jackson Hole. A perfect day to read a good book. And I finished reading the first Umbrella Academy book, Apocalypse Suite.

As the title suggests, The Umbrella Academy are fighting to prevent the apocalypse. Sound familiar? Sounds like the plot of most comics, science fiction, Whedonverse, etc. stories, but there's a reason why it is so popular. We long to see good overcoming evil, and Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá do justice with first installment of The Umbrella Academy. (Let go of Way's rockstar status, and look at him as a kid who's been reading comic books forever.)

The next installment of The Umbrella Academy is Dallas with the first issue releasing in late November.

Rocketship to Mars from an unlikely source, AMC

Disregard the cheesy opening line of this article and skip right to the good stuff.

There might be a green light in the red planet's future. AMC is looking to outer space as it beefs up its slate, developing a series project with writer/executive producer Jonathan Hensleigh based on the sci-fi novel "Red Mars." "Mars," a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet.

I'm a bit cynical on this announcement. Robinson's Mars Trilogy is my favorite set of science fiction books. However, the cost of a television show to portray the series is going to be astronomical. Does AMC have the money to produce a show the quality of Battlestar Galactica? Or will look like a bad tv movie?

The the concept reminds me of Earth 2 which wasn't given a chance to fulfill its promise of colonizing a new planet. Robinson's story is focused on the characters first which gives it an advantage as a character driven drama, like Battlestar Galactica.

It will likely be a couple years before we see the results of this discussion. In the meantime, I'm going to re-read the Mars books.

Out from under the bright lights, Friday Night Lights can exceed expectations on DirecTV

Today is the premiere of the third season of Friday Night Lights on DirecTV. Due to some odd circumstances, I'm actually going to be able to watch the show in real time on an HDTV. As you may or not be aware, I've moved back to Jackson Hole where I am currently staying in a vacation rental where one of the amenities is DirecTV on a very pretty television. Personally, I have no interest in getting DirecTV as cable with my TiVo suits me just fine especially since everything else is available online in some form. Though it is nice to get to watch one of my favorite shows without having to wait for it or download it illegally.

This summer I borrowed my brother's copy of H. G. Bissinger's book on which the TV show is based. The book chronicles the life of a town which lives and dies by the Permian high school football team in 1988. The struggles of the residents of Odessa outside of football are comparable to current events. In an election year, the first President Bush has a campaign stop in Odessa, and the town's economy goes up and down with the cost of oil. It's an excellent read. The book is controversial as it paints an honest portrait of the town of Odessa, and it was understandably not well-received after it's release by the community.

The movie based on the book, however, was a disappointment. Unlike the television series and book which focus on the entire town, the movie narrows its scope to the football season. I tolerate football mostly because it is a large part of my family's life (my brother is a punter on his college team, my stepdad calls the high school games for local radio). The book focused on the community and football. The television show excels at exploring the relationships, high school, and small town politics with the common thread being football. The movie's emphasis on football is where it fails to live up to the expectations set by the book and the television show. Unfortunately, I saw the movie sometime during the second season of the television show, so my opinion is tainted and maybe a little too harsh.

The television show is often dismissed by the pasty award shows, but it is comparable to other overlooked greats such as The Wire in the quality of production, acting, and storytelling. It's not about just football, and I think it is hard for some to move past the uniforms and see the realistic stories of the hard-working people in the middle-class town. Television viewers seem to seek the escapism of the shows with far-fetched portrayals of snotty rich kids instead of Friday Night Lights. It's been a struggle for Friday Night Lights to remain on the air even though its relatively inexpensive to produce. Only a bizarre deal between NBC and DirecTV is keeping the show in production. Watch it.