Tag Archives: Television

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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I went to see the Daily Show!!

From the set.

From the set.

At the early hour of 11:00 a.m I awoke, showered, and joined the Wooten family for a train ride out of Metro Park into New York City. I wore two pairs of pants, tall boots, a thermal shirt, my winter jacket, a woolen cap, and gloves. Even with all that paraphernalia, the cold was biting and I constantly tried to cover my frigid lips and neck with the top of my jacket. Taking off one glove for just a brief second left my fingers numb even when shoved back inside my glove. My boots, worn in anticipation of snowfall, bit at my ankles and left my feet raw by the end of the day.

After a brief wait in line, the staff shepherded us into the studio, where the famed desk of John Stewart sat dead center in flurry of monitors, cameras, microphones and lights. The lady in charge of seating the audience in an orderly fashion came out when we were all seated and spoke to us. She wore jeans torn at the knee and a bulky red jacket.

“Normally by now you’d all have had a chance to go the bathroom . . . but we tried to get you inside as fast as we could because it’s fucking cold out there.” Then over the loudspeaker, Samantha Bee reminded us to turn off our cellphones and, if we were from 1987, our pagers. The monitors told us to turn off our own phones before assisting the elderly in turning off theirs. People seated around us joked about their favorite episodes, and about poker and smartphones and heckled each other.

A warm-up guy came out who made us shout and clap a whole bunch and chant for Jon, then we had to shout and clap more and shout and clap more and shout and clap again and then chant for Jon again and then shout and clap. My voice was sore.

“This lady’s been drinking,” he said to one woman who had shouted a lot, and was very enthusiastic. We were all so riled up that we couldn’t help but laugh. He called another a Jewish farmer. Then we shouted and clapped and laughed and chanted for john and clapped and he finally brought the guy out, Jon Stewart himself, all five foot six of him, and Jon Stewart was a riot. People fired Q&A at him:

“Are you upset over the packer’s loss?”

“I’m torn up over it. I had to tell my kids to put their cheese-heads away and go to bed.”

The air was electric. Every question fired, he shot a joke right back, something clever and cutting, like a knife.

“Medical Marijuana in New York?”

“Uh, yes I guess? Because I have a headache?”

We were doubling over in our seats. The mics were picking it up perfectly clear.

“What’s it like making a movie, Where’s the premier of your movie, and are we invited?”

“It’s a real touching true story – not without it’s artistic license of course, Shaq’s in this, and he plays a Geenie, but still . . .”

ITS RIGHT THERE, RIGHT ON TOP. NOW LAUGH, DAMMIT.

ITS RIGHT THERE, RIGHT ON TOP. NOW LAUGH, DAMMIT.

And then the show started and we stomped and clapped for him and laughed like high hell, and he made fun of corruption in New Jersey and pointed out the severed horse head that is a part of our state flag and my body shook and my smile widened. For all the time and effort and train rides and waiting and cold it took, it happened in a flash, like a brilliant, bright spark of electricity arcing off of a giant cold circuit breaker, but the spark was so bright and hot that it warmed up my cold, cold bones. And then, just like a spark, it was over, and we were out again in the blackness of the New York City streets, hailing a cab and descending into the subway.

I got home, removed my boots, and rubbed the puffy white blisters all over my toes and the ball of my foot. I hobbled over to the couch and collapsed, exhausted.

Worth it.

Darker Than Black: Effective Storytelling and Anime

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The main characters. The guy front and center is Hei, a contractor with the power to control electricity. Behind him is Lin, the mysterious girl with the power to track others through water. In the back are Mao, a talking cat, and to the left is Huang, their boss.

My friend Eric introduced me recently to Darker Than Black, a shonen anime revolving around superpowered killing machines beings called contractors who operate in and around Tokyo in a dystopian future. Like most enjoyable shonen I’ve seen, it skews heavily towards character development and action, often both at the same time.

Darker Than Black likes to throw you in the middle of the story, give you very little context, and let you fill in the gaps as the plot progresses. We’ve watched through the first twelve or so episodes, and the basic premise of the world and why it is the way it is has not been addressed in any revealing way. On the episode level too, characters, plot threads, symbols and scenes are introduced with as little context as possible. It’s very mysterious, often confusing, and honestly . . . really compelling. I can’t say I’ve watched or read to much in my life that went about telling a story in the same way, leaving the viewer in the dark as much as possible.

Denial of information can, in fact, be an effective tool for storytelling. It’s the classic reverse-psychological trick of saying you have a story to tell, but then insist that it’s not worth telling: people become naturally curious, and that curiosity can serve as the fuel that lights the engine of a compelling story.

MINOR SPOILERS. For example: The second episode revolves around a girl who slowly is becoming a contracter and her relationship with her father. It took me until deep into the second episode of this two-episode arc to understand just how complicated the episode was, and just as I came to that realization, the plot resolved itself in a fiery dynamo of emotion and action.

Lingering in the background of its distinct storytelling style are, of course, the conventions of shonen anime, too. The climax of every single arc (the series, at least on the DVD bundle Eric has, is cut up into a collection of short two-episode story arcs that are, for the most part, stand-alone) involves combat, and the aftermath of that combat always brings insight into the inner emotional workings of the combatants. In the aforementioned episode, the girl’s relationship with her father is fleshed out. As the episodes continue, we get bits and pieces of Hei’s relationship with his now-deceased sister. And of course, the basic premise of the story allows for each character to have unique super-powers that define them.

I’m pretty jealous of these conventions. They’re incredibly flexible and naturally invite conflict, resolution, and growth. And I can’t use them if I want to write a short story without seeming like a bizarre anime child.

Or maybe I can . . . ?