those who live in the united states (wachovia land inclusive) and occasionally flip through pbs on their way to a sitcom stopping point have no doubt noticed the best art our tax dollars are paying for: errol morris' "stay curious" commercials. i dare you to find a piece of pbs programming that is fuller with joie de vivre than these less-than-one-minute shorts that morris has directed. no, not red green or antiques roadshow or (ugh) any of their nature documentaries. (i'm assuming they've never shown microcosmos.) maybe as time goes by but probably not, and certainly no other britcom. during especially long breaks between programs, richmond's pbs station will sometimes show richard kim's five-minute "kung pao chicken"; that's the only adjacent competition that occurs to me.
morris' commercials are endlessly inventive, sure -- i still marvel at the operatic flipbook, and i've seen that one probably 100 times -- but they're inventive and blissful. all the protagonists in the ads are pleased with their discoveries and contagiously so. after watching the commercial, don't you want to put a video camera in your dishwasher? i certainly do. acting out on curiosity doesn't just look fun; it looks like the only possible fun.
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on the pbs slant: would someone at our national television station please explain to me (via a better ad campaign) what makes american family different than any other drama on network television besides the characters being latinos? and if the hispanic angle is the only difference, can we agree that's not enough for our monetary support? then again, compared to much of what pbs shows...
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
