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A week or so ago, the US broadcast networks announced their lineup of new and returning shows for the fall of 2013, and since then the internet's premier TV sites have been abuzz with a flurry of analysis.  Trailers have been dissected, ratings and demographics calculated, schedules critiqued.  It's all a lot of fun, in an inside baseball sort of way, but in the midst of all this excitement, it's

The original plan was for this post to go up a month or so ago, when all of these shows were really at the pilot phase or just a bit after it.  But with one thing and another, here we are already at summer's doorstep (and thus, at the doorstep of the summer pilot season), and some of the new shows I'm about to write about have already wrapped up their debut seasons.  Still, there's a lot here to

I posted last Wednesday about our early progress with Screen Free Week (which was April 29th through May 5th). Baby Bookworm ended up having a quite successful Screen Free Six Days.This doesn't quite have the same ring to it as Screen Free Week, but it was the best we could do. She woke up with a cold yesterday and was miserable and in need of the comfort of Mary Poppins (plus I was in need of the comfort of a shower and time to fold the laundry). But I did still distract her from watching television by taking her on a Barnes and Noble run yesterday. So all was not lost.   

In the end she had a week without any iPad or iPhone use, not even looking at pictures. And she had six days with no television (at least at home - not sure if she saw any when she was at her friend's house). As I mentioned last week, this resulted in:

• More time for creative play (e.g. pretending to be on airplane, or camping).
• More books read.
• More direct interaction with my husband and myself. 

These are all good things. And the whining over not having the iPad or being able to watch TV definitely declined over the week (though the requests did not cease completely). I found that I was able to use my iPhone in front of her - she seemed to accept that as a different thing, and didn't ask for it. Of course this was a bit hypocritical on my part, but I was doing my best.

I'm sure that we'll try Screen Free Week again next year. And I'm considering only allowing television on weekends going forward (we do all love to watch movies together). How about all of you? Did anyone else attempt Screen Free Week? What were your outcomes? 

This post © 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Screen Free Week is being observed this week, April 29th - May 5th. Random House has been urging families to Unplug and Read. As you might infer by the fact that I'm blogging right now, I'm not going screen free myself. However, I am attempting to keep my 3 year old daughter, Baby Bookworm, free of screens. Because she never uses screens during the day anyway, this mainly consists of three things:

1. Not letting her use the iPad in the morning after breakfast (something that I often allow, so that I can read the paper, shower, etc.).
2. Not letting her watch television in the evening (we sometimes watch a movie or television episode after dinner - she's currently in the middle of Season 1 of Full House). 
3. Not using my iPhone when she is around (because this makes her want to play with it). 

So how are we doing on these three things?

1. Monday morning she cried for a few minutes over not using the iPad. But then we did some gymnastics, pretended we were taking an airplane to Los Angeles, and read two books. Tuesday morning she didn't even ask for the iPad, wanting instead to play a game in which I was the baby, and she was the daddy. I convinced her that "the baby" wanted to read books, and she went and dug out some of her early baby books for us to read together. Wednesday morning, again, no request for the iPad. We did puzzles, read several books, and packed up for a pretend trip to the beach. 
2. Monday night she protested quite loudly about wanting to watch "a movie" (she calls everything on the TV a movie). But only for a couple of minutes. Then we went into the playroom and played Little People, and she went on a pretend camping trip with my husband. Tuesday night she asked a couple of times for television, but was even more easily deflected by puzzles and pretend camping. We also read a lot more books before bed than usual, because we got started earlier (see stack to the right).  
3. Not looking at my iPhone screen when she's around has been the hardest one for me. Baseball scores! Facebook! Checking my email! But I don't think that she has even noticed. This one is going to be a lot harder on the weekend, when I'm with her all day. 

We're only a couple of days in, but already, I'm noticing a few things.

• It doesn't take very much time to make or break habits when you're dealing with a three year old. I was surprised that on the second day she didn't even ask for the iPad. It's possible that we'll get the to end of the week, and she'll completely stop asking for the iPad at all. 
• When she's not watching TV or using the iPad, she is engaging in more creative play. We did at one point pretend to be watching television, I must admit, but she was perfectly happy to pretend, and didn't ask for the real thing. While I do think that she learns some things on the iPad (we have apps that are helping her with letter recognition, for example), I have to think that active pretend play is more beneficial at this age. We are also reading more books, which is certainly a good thing. 
• I think that the reason she is ok with giving up the screens (which she loves) is that she gets more of mommy and daddy's time and attention. If I was trying to send her off to play by herself in the mornings, I don't think that this whole thing would be very successful.

There's no question that this is a sacrifice in terms of my time. I feel like I'm starting off every day behind, because I get so little time to myself in the mornings. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to continue after this week is over. But there's also no question in my mind that this Screen Free Week is having good outcomes for my daughter.

It's not too late to jump in to Screen Free Week, if any of this sounds interesting to you. My personal view is that it's a good excuse to look at how much time your kids are spending on screens, and see what happens if you scale that back a little bit. I'll report back again after the end of the week. 

© 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook. 

Random House Children's Books is strongly promoting this year's Screen Free Week, April 29th - May 5th. They are urging kids and parents everywhere to Unplug and Read. Today they published this video, in which four well-known author-illustrators (Bob Staake, Chris Raschka, Dan Yaccarino, and Tad Hills) call for kids to unplug, and spend their time doing other, more active things. It's well worth a look. 

There are lots of great reasons to get kids to unplug, though of course it's hard to do. More time to read, more time to play, more active play, more use of the imagination.... The list goes on.

Here are a few things I've noticed about screen time and my three year old:

• The more time she gets, the more time she wants. This goes for movies and iPad time, her primary sources of screen time. Screen time is highly addictive.
• When she's absorbed in the iPad, she is oblivious to things going on around her. 
• When she watches movies in the evening, she doesn't sleep as well. She tends to wake up during the night, and wake us up, because she's afraid of something. Presumably, she is having bad dreams.
• When we watch television in the evening, we end up with less time for reading books, mostly because my husband and I get tired, and can't stay awake to read as many as our daughter would like.

This is not to say that we don't derive any benefit from this screen time. Most of the apps that she uses on the iPad are educational in some way. She does puzzles, she learns some vocabulary, she does some concentration-type practice, etc. And when we watch movies as a family, we build a common frame of reference. My husband and I can share movies that we love with her. We now sing songs from The Sound of Music most nights before she goes to sleep. And of course, screen time sometimes provides a break for me, time to read the paper or take a shower in the morning. But I try to keep it to minimum, because of the above behaviors that I've noticed.

So what I plan to try to do during Screen-Free Week is replace my daughter's several mornings per week iPad time with reading together, even if it means I have to find time to shower and finish the paper later in the day. I'll also see what I can do about not watching any television in the evenings. (We don't watch much, but as I said, she gets a bit addicted, and always asks. She doesn't get any screen time during the day as it is.) I'll be interested to see how that affects her sleep. I'll report back.

How about you? What are your plans for Screen-Free Week?

© 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook. 

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While the Nerdist Industries’ arena event at WonderCon this year was ostensibly about the future of the Youtube based pop culture conglomerate, and, indeed, plenty was said about upcoming projects, the question and answer period really expanded into a call to arms for fans to help directly determine the future of pop culture.

Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick took the stage, joined by panellists Paul Provenza, Troy Conrad, and Matt Bennett, on March 31^st, in the lead up to the season finale of The Walking Dead. Hardwick’s job as host of Talking Dead meant there was plenty of frisson in the audience about the upcoming show, and Hardwick teased, but didn’t deliver, spoilers on the show’s finale several times. In fact, he informed the audience that he was about to “get into a car to film Talking Dead” following his WonderCon appearance. Envy at his early viewing of the finale was palpable.

While Hardwick has a cult following as host of Talking Dead, and also from plenty of Nerdist projects, his presence live is even more dynamic, bringing with it plenty of his stand up comedy background. Since it was also Easter Sunday, Hardwick opened with a relevant quip: “That’s one person who came back from the dead and didn’t do it to rip someone’s heart out. Just put the love in it”. About a thousand attendees found this hilarious. Hardwick showed a promo video preview of upcoming Nerdist projects, often punctuated by applause and cheers from the audience when they recognized an anticipated segment or a celebrity guest coming up on a project, and followed by discussing several of the projects in a little more detail with his panellists.

Bennet’s new series, currently being filmed, entitled Nerdy Jobs, a play on Dirty Jobs, got particular attention. The series will involve him visiting nerdy “cool” companies like tech industries and comic book shops to give an insider’s view of working there. Hardwick pondered what Bennett would find to say if he visited NASA for the show: “Uh, sorry about your funding?”. Another big push for Nerdist is the launch of a comedy combination of stand up and improv based on the British series concept Setlist, a competition that will tour around the world. As a veteran of stand up, Hardwick was particularly enthused, commenting that forcing stand up comedians into an improv situation is like “looking for the God particle of comedy”. His request to the audience about the upcoming new shows: “Please don’t feel compelled to say horrible things IN ALL CAPS in comment threads”.

This led Harwick to speak for a moment about Youtube as a venue for hosting programming. Though delivered in a comically serious tone, the message had some bite: “No longer do companies tell us what to watch”. It was the first of several comments that indicated that Hardwick still has a lot to say about the role of open access and its giant-killing capabilities in relation to big media. Nerdist Industries, he said, is going to be expanding, but not along the lines of some of their peers on Youtube, who branch out into “piles of channels”; instead, they are aiming for a “hyper-curated partnership” with 6-8 channels and plenty of intensive “cross promotion”. They are also considering a move, based on fan request, to try out video podcasts, though Hardwick is a little skeptical of why people would want to watch them. Demand has been high enough that he’s prepared to yield to the experiment. Upcoming guests for the video podcast will include Seth Rogan, Steve Young, Scott Adsit and “surprises” too. Nerdist will also, finally, launch a major app to link to its content and, even more surprisingly, will be venturing into filmmaking following their purchase by Legendary Entertainment. They hope to work as producers on smaller budget films in this new role.

While Hardwick was delivering his energetic spiel, Provenza interjected, “Do you ever sleep?”. It was true, Hardwick looked a little peaked. “I have a robot heart”, he intoned, and continued on to the question and answer period. Questions began with a repeat offender from SDCC who Hardwick had once hugged in the past for his super fandom regarding Superman. “Comic Con is about getting super freaked out about stuff you love”, Hardwick reminded the audience (and he would deliver another hug later to a girl dressed as Wario in sympathy with his own Mario Brothers t-shirt). Harwick was then asked what he would do if his girlfriend was found to be “patient zero” in a potential zombie apocalypse. “Oh, I’d shoot her in the fucking head. That’s what you do for your loved ones”, he said without hesitation, to much hilarity, and added that he hoped she’d do the same for him.

He seemed pretty serious about that topic, but not as serious as he became immediately after the question on the subject of open access production. “There is literally no excuse for you not to pursue things that you love now. You are living half a life if you do not pursue the things that you love”, he said, referring to the tools now available for fans and pop culture creators alike. When a middle school teacher asked him for ideas to keep her students interested in pop culture in their newly formed lunch club, he gave a very invested answer, repeating that the most important thing the teacher could do for them would be to get them to “make things”, whether videos, or other media. “Teach them to be creators vs. consumers”, he pleaded, to much approbation from the crowd.

One of Hardwick’s winning qualities that keeps him from drifting too far from his fanbase  due to his ever increasing media success is his earnestness, often placing himself in the role of the fan once more. He described himself as a “lamprey” feeding off the “giant sperm whale” of pop culture products and feeling grateful, trying not to “impose” when working with actors from major shows. The Nerdist panel emphasized again that Hardwick still sees himself as an outsider in the mainstream, and an insider to “nerd” culture, no matter how many celebrity friends he accrues. That lends credence to his requests and his advice that fans continue to interact directly with the things they love through becoming “creators” too.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

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And speaking of the Center for cartoon studies, perusing their front page there’s some unbelievably exciting news on a variety of fronts, including news that Jon Chad has been accepted into the US astronaut program, and news of the CCS kickboxing team triumphing over Dartmouth. What caught our eye was the news that after vewing the CCs movie, a producer thinks White River Junction would be a great setting for a reality tv series. The ‘Junc?

Charismatic and talented young people chasing their dream? Check. A picturesque, isolated location? Check. Mounting pressure and plenty of deadline challenges? Check. After the documentaryCartoon College caught a television producer’s eye, NBC exec Miles Bradford knew he had all the elements for a hit show.

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Any illusion I had that I was the only human being watching the new History Channel drama THE VIKINGS was shattered walking into a fully occupied large capacity convention hall, already packed fifteen minutes before the panel actually started. The description for the panel stated that some of the cast members would be there, but in fact, all three of the main cast members appeared, moderated by journalist Kate Hahn, and joined by History Channel EVP of Development and Programming Dirk Hoogstra.

And by the way, there are no aliens or Nazis in THE VIKINGS, at least not yet, but there is plenty of reasonably seasoned research into early medieval languages, cultures, and locations. The titular Vikings of the show are presented, refreshingly, as the protagonists, though the darker side to their pillaging lifestyles are equally represented. Visually stunning, the show’s on location shooting in Ireland and Northern Europe is one of its big selling points. The others virtues are strong acting and just telling a ripping good story of ambitious Ragnar Lodbrok as he seeks new territories to terrorize and vies for authority with a resentful and scheming local Earl. The strength of the show’s writing in the hands of Michael Hirst of THE TUDORS is also particularly apparent.

The panel opened with a season recap so far, highlighting Ragnar’s motivation in life. “Odin gave his eye to acquire knowledge but I would give far more”, he tells his twelve year old son. This quest drives the series and illustrates with plenty of axe swinging the maxim “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”.

The impatient crowd were delighted when dynamic leading man Travis Fimmel appeared (Ragnar), but ecstatic when he was joined by female lead Katheryn Winnick (Lagertha) and the triad of central characters was completed by George Blagden (captured Anglo-Saxon monk Athelstan). Despite the simple entertainment value of hearing from the main actors on the series, the panel also revealed a lot about the research behind the series and the development of characterization for the central roles. Hoogstra mentioned the “struggle” the show faced in casting the key role of Ragnar until they met Fimmel, who “clicked” for them immediately, the difficulty of developing a “believable” mother/warrior role for “shield maiden” Lagertha, and constructing the character of Athelstan as a “go between” for the two worlds of pagan and Christian Europe.

When asked why they agreed to play their respective roles, the actors replied with personal anecdotes. Travis said, “I’m a bit of a kid at heart. You get to run around with an axe. Who wouldn’t want to be married to this lady?”. Travis was particularly animated and had the audience amused with his commentary, seeming to slip in an out of character. Winnick, a martial arts expert, said she was drawn to the strong writing, historical characters, and a fascination with Viking culture and mythology.

Some highlights from the panel discussion included Fimmel’s narration of working on replica Viking boats, one on the open water and one on a sound stage being battled by simulated storms, and Blagden’s very personal story of visiting the ruins of Lindisfarne, the monastery sacked by the Vikings during the show, and home to Athelstan, for character research. The actors displayed an impressive degree of enthusiasm and knowledge of the show’s subject matter, and spent plenty of time joking amongst each other about how their characters interact on screen, especially about sexual tensions.

The audience, particularly, wanted to know if the show would be renewed for future seasons, and Hoogstra said that he wasn’t able to comment on that yet, but that so far THE VIKINGS is a big success. Though the audience was sad to see the panel end, a preview of a tense, upcoming episode displaying some spectacular escapes by the diehard Ragnar consoled them. The rampant fandom displayed for THE VIKINGS at WonderCon was one of the most surprising panels of the show for sheer media wow factor.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

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Cynthia “Cindy” Martin worked in mainstream comics at the very WORST time to be female in mainstream comics — the 80s and 90s — despite this, she racked up a solid run on Marvel’s STAR WARS that’s considered some of the definitive comics work on the title. She also drew Wonder Woman and Spider-man. In recent year’s she been illustrating a number of non fictionYA graphic novels for Capstone. She’s also been made an honorary member of the 501st Legion—the Stormtrooper cosplay organization.

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As I tweeted the other day,. I am now definitely HOOKED ON STRIP SEARCH, the Penny Arcade produced reality show about cartoonists. We’ve now seen the first challenge and the first elimination (both above) and in case you are wondering THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

By chance I happened to watch Strip Search Ep. 4 right after watching The Ultimate Fighter Ep. 8, and they both melded together in my mind! So the recap below may be confused.

In Episode three, all 12 cartoonists—who are living in a house filled with chocolate pudding and wacoms—have their first challenge, designing a T-shirt. This was kind of a genius challenge, because as a webcomicker, designing a t-shirt is an important part of monetizing. In fact, the guy announcing the challenge said “Since you need to monetize your strip, you need to make a t-shirt.” Bam. This was the much dreaded non visual “drawing contest” that has previously made a comics-based reality show unlikely. Maybe it’s just me, but I wasn’t bored at all and enjoyed seeing the contestants take varying stabs at the concept, each explaining what they were going for.

In the end, some weren’t iconic enough (Katie) and one, the guy with the hair (Alex) drew a little Hogwarts-type crest which was, I thought, an acceptable concept, but the execution was lacking. The winner was the insecure, ambitious one, Amy! She never even took off her fingerless gloves! And in a brutal twist, she got to choose the two contestants for elimination! She ended up choosing the guy with the hair and Katie Rice, whose t-shirt had been maybe not the best but she is clearly one of the finest artists in the house. So maybe a little rival elimination there?

Throughout the contest, the cartoonists kept behaving like young cartoonists, and saying how dubious they were about their designs and talent overall. Self-doubt, the badge of the cartoonist! After one disparaging word from the judges one of them says (I don’t remember who but it could have been anyone) “My confidence was already low and now it was shot!”

Welcome to commercial art, kid.

Anyway, flash forward to Episode 4 in which Katie and The Guy With The Hair are brought before Mike and Jerry to engage in a final battle: after drawing random concepts from a wastepaper basket they have 90 minutes to create a comic strip using those two elements. The concepts were
Space” and “Ping Pong.”

To be honest, this was no contest. Hair man has been drawing comics for about a year, and Katie worked on Ren and Stimpy. (What was that I said about the women being way more accomplished?)

While they drew, Mike and Jerry taunted the contestants and made jokes about letting bats into the room.

Meanwhile, back at the fighting house, we learned that Australian Dylan Andrews grew up on a hydroponic farm surrounded by marijuana plants as tall as elephants, and he began fighting because he knew he was good at it and the rest of his family was stoned senseless and someone had to DO SOMETHING.

His opponent, Zak Cummings, is from a tribe known only as The Jaw People. He never worked on Ren and Stimpy and neither did the Australian pot refugee. Instead they are two kinda mediocre fighters whom no one expects to excel. In fact Zac tried out for the show SEVEN TIMES before he got on.

Meanwhile, the cartoonists are drawing.

Back at the Ultimate Fighter, to liven things up the two coaches—master psychologist Chael Sonnen who is an incredible coach and champ John Jones  who is not— have a coaches challenge that involves the two of them piloting gigantic tractor claws (or whatever you call them) to pile up dirt and throw tires and stuff. It’s like the climax of that Tintin movie only real and I have to say it is the most all-out display of pure real life fighting man Transformers shit I’ve ever seen. It is EXTREME. It’s like that testosterone patch where if you touch it and then touch your wife she starts growing a beard.

Back at the cartoon challenge, Mike Krahulik ask Katie if she was aware that Amy was probably just trying to get her eliminated. Did Katie go after her with jiu jitsu? No, says Katie because, “I didn’t want her to feel bad.”

Did we mention these are cartoonists and they are nice people? Hair Alex, who draws a lot like the Penny Arcade guys, is under no illusions that he’s better than Amy. He knows she’s more experienced and draws better at this point, a fact backed up when the Penny Arcade guy looks over his shoulder and says “What’s interesting is … seeing you copy my mistakes.” Alex begins to wonder when he’ll be able to audition for that road company of Jesus Christ Superstar.

While all this banter is going on, Dylan and Zak get in the cage and start banging and although Zak opens a nasty cut on Dylan’s scalp, its in a non-dangerous place, and Dylan’s superior position enables a crimson rain to pour down on Zak and everything. Extreme, I tell you. Extreme, blood, half naked men. Back hoes.

Katie and Alex keep drawing on their wacoms. Although Alex’s cartoon is in color, even a glance shows that Katie’s looks much fresher.

The Zak/Dylan fight has turned boring, as most fights between evenly matched by mid-level fighters do. More blood. Dylan stays on top for most of a low-energy round and to no one’s surprise, is the winner.

Finally, time’s up and Mike and Jerry banish Alex and Katie to sit in the car while they look at the drawings. Both cartoons look good, but Katie’s joke is better, so it’s no surprise when she comics back in and, in a gruesome montage, Jerry opens a cut above Alex’s eye Jerry tears up Alex’s cartoon! It was only a color copy so no actual drawings were harmed in the making of this web series.

Katie walks into the house where she’s greeted with applause. The cartoonists, clad in jammies from Old Navy, are gathered and told that Alex never even got to spend a night in the house, but their challenges will continue on the morrow morn.

Back in the shame car, Alex is surprised to be joined by Mike and Jerry! They comfort him by telling him that 14 years ago they were in the same place, and he just needs more time to practice but he’s already well on his way to being a good cartoonist.

So that’s how this is going to be? Pajamas and support? Next thing you know everyone is gong to be drinking hot cocoa or playing Five Card Nancy or something.

Back at the Ultimate Fighter house, John Jones has to chose between his homier Bubba and the talented puncher Clint whom Jones stupidly put in a fight against a PanAm champion wrestler so he lost (great wrestlers nearly always beat good punchers). In the end, John must go with his homie Bubba, because he is named Bubba. Bubba squares off with the other wildcard, Casey, who he will fight next week.

Finally, at Strip Search we see Amy who explains that she didn’t chose her most talented rivals for banishment because “One of them would come back” and would be pissed. Unlike every other person on this show, she has watched other reality shows and knows that politics is half the fun! She is interesting and talented this Amy! And she took off her gloves!

So that’s it for these episodes of Strip Search and The Ultimate Fighter! Will the next art challenge be conceptual or illustrative? Will a puncher ever beat a wrestler? Which house would YOU rather stay in?

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Webcomics, TV and Kickstarter you say? Speak of the Devil.

STRIP SEARCH, the reality show about a house full of cartoonists competing for $15K and a year of “being embedded” at Penny Arcade, debuted earlier this week. You can watch the first episode above and the second episode is now up as well. The show is produced by the Penny Arcade crew, with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins as judges. (They ran a half million dollar Kickstarter to fund the show last year) 12 cartoonists — six male, six female, are flown to a house in Seattle to compete for the prize, in the classic format. The 12, chosen from a thousand entrants, are mostly webcomickers, but more on that in a bit.

I’m not a reality contest addict, but I watch a few. American Idol (because you CAN’T be a nerd all the time) and I’m back watching the Ultimate Fighter this season. In fact I watched last night’s Ultimate Fighter immediately before I watched these and it was fun to see reality show staples transferred to the comics milieu with greetings, threats, and a big house stocked with alcohol at their beck and call. In addition. STRIP SEARCH has elements that will be all too familiar to anyone who is or is involved with a cartoonist:

• The cartoonist who cannot leave the house until she finishes sending a file
• A fridge stocked with hot pockets and soy milk
• Severe self doubts about being good enough to win
• Excitement about pudding

In the first episode we meet the 12 contestants and they travel to the house to see who they are up against. The female cartoonists seem to be way more established than the men, including Erika Moen, who I would say is a star already, and Katie Rice, who works on Kung Fu Panda. Not too much happens in the first episode, but it’s a good set-up. Surprisingly, unlike the MMA fighters who bodly predict victory until they end up lying in a puddle of their own blood, the cartoonists are all given to huge self doubts. Many don’t think they are good enough to win, and they all doubt their art chops. Yep, this must be a house full of artists all right.

In episode two, there’s a game of Fax Machine (artists take turns sketching based on sayings or writings sayings based on sketches) and it turns out they are all very talented, and able to turnout funny sketches pretty quickly. And the first character begins to emerge: Amy Falcone who had to quit her data entry job in Noank, CT in order to compete. Amy thinks she will clash with the other women in the house, and seems to be the most ambitious and insecure of the lot, based on the fact that she wears fingerless gloves inside while drawing.

Aw, see now, I’m doing it. I don’t know Amy Falcone. Her comics are cute. But already she’s fallen into the “reality show” jungle of viewers making assumptions about who she is as a person. I only know one of the contestants personally (Moen) but it’s going to be weird seeing them transformed like this.

The episodes are only 15 minutes long, but someone is going to go home on the very first day. I already feel bad for whoever that person is.

Production is competent if a bit sparse. I believe host Graham Stark (Loading Ready Run) is also the narrator, and here is where I wish hat they had the lady from Snapped or some other portentous voice. Even if it isn’t quite ready for The History Channel, STRIP SEARCH is well enough done, and the premise is engaging enough, that I’m going to be back for more episodes—if only to see mild-mannered indie cartoonists uttering reality show staple lines like “I didn’t come here to make friends!”

I tell you what would be great though, an Ultimate Fighter/Strip Search crossover. The fighters could scribble and the cartoonists could eat six hard boiled eggs for breakfast and see who felt more comfortable in the end.

And what do YOU think? Will you watch “America’s Next Top Webcomic?”

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Just why is The Walking Dead the most popular cable show of all time? It’s gory, unrelentingly grim and even the most likable characters act out of brutal self-preservation. There are no feel good moments, only increasingly distant memories of what it was like to feel good. (When a Tom Waits song, which closed last week’s episode, qualifies as a gentle lullaby, you know things have gotten tough.) I guess all of this explains why it’s a guilty pleasure: soap opera with the threat of a horrific death at any given moment.

Last Sunday’s episode “Clear” was the best of the third season, and maybe the best episode since the first few. For the first time in a while, you could see that his was a show put together by the man who made The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and especially The Mist. Even though Frank Darabont is long gone, his favorite themes of faith and survival were on display. The TV show is getting to be as good as the comic. Oh yeah, spoilers below.Rick, Carl and Michonne go on a run. When this episode was coming up, I turned to Ben and said “Oh boy! A town run!” After the stop and go tribal warfare of the Governor storyline, a palette cleansing simple tale of fighting zombies for supplies seemed like a pleasant change. The Woodbury vs the Prison storyline has the potential to be a great examination of what price safety, but too often it’s reminded me of the worst of the Losties vs The Others — endless raiding parties and skirmishes to kill time. “Clear” also reminded me of Lost, but in the best way — an eerie isolated survivor with messages that no one will hear, and a few characters spotlighted to good effect.

This run is going to be different, Rick and Carl are going back to their home town. I’m a little surprised that this was within a gas tank of where this has all been taking place but, whatever. The Grimeses are returning to the last place they were happy and a family. It’s another heartbreaking, brutal reminder of what they’ve lost. On the way, they pass a hitchhiker…who begs them to stop. They don’t even slow down. A bit down the road, they get stuck in some stalled cars and zombies. Just as they finally get free and start to drive away the hitchhiker, his face never shown, comes running towards them screaming for them to stop and begging for help. They never slow down.

This is where our heroes are. Survival means allegiance to the tribe. It’s also another window into Rick’s state of mind—you’d think maybe someone who had survived that long on his own could be a good human resource, but another outsider can’t be risked. The margin for survival is too tiny, the struggle for resources too relentless.

Arriving at the town, they find it booby trapped, animals in cages luring zombies into spikes, warning messages scrawled everywhere. Rick’s old police station is stripped of guns, but they set off to find if some weapons might have been stashed in bars or stores. Suddenly the owner of the traps appears on a rooftop, covered in armor, as faceless as the hitchhiker they left behind, but this time he’s the one protecting his territory. After some gunplay, Carl, who was supposed to be safe in the car, appears and calmly shoots the mystery man, who is wearing body armor and just knocked unconscious.

Who is this mystery man who has survived on his own and created an armed fortress for one man? Removing his helmet, we’re shocked to see it’s Morgan, the kind man from the very first episode who, along with his son, took in Rick when he awoke from his coma.

While Carl and Michonne go off to find supplies for Judith—a crib and a mystery gift that Carl seeks—Rick catches up with Morgan, but not in a friendly way. Morgan has lost his mind, as anyone would. His son Duane, who we also met in Episode 1, is dead, killed by his own zombie mother when he couldn’t kill her. Morgan and Duane couldn’t make the harsh choices Rick and Carl have….and they have paid the price.

In a wonderfully acted scene by Lennie James who plays Morgan, he begs to be killed, then delivers the signature line of the show, and perhaps the season. “People like you, the good people, they always die. And the bad people do, too. But the weak people, the people like me, we have inherited the Earth.”

Is Rick even good anymore? Morgan is a good kind man who once helped a stranger. Now he’s a deranged vigilante with nothing left to live for. Rick has no goal except survival for his people, but an end game of a return to actual human society is nothing but a fantasy, as the Governor’s corrupt town proves.

Meanwhile, Carl and Michonne fight some zombies and we learn what Carl was trying to retrieve: a photo of him, Rick and Laurie. “I wanted Judith to know what her mother looked like,” he says, without emotion.

Rick, who has rejected seemingly sane people time after time, like Tyreese and his crew, wants Morgan to join their battle. “This can’t be it. It can’t be. You’ve got to be able to come back from this,” he begs Morgan, perhaps speaking for all the survivors. But Morgan would rather rule in his own hell then serve in another prison heaven and stays behind while Rick, Carl and Michonne return with guns and a crib, the most necessary supplies for the zombie apocalypse.

As they drive back, they pass the bloody remains of the hitchhiker along the road. In a wordless, devastating sequence, their car stops, picks up his backpack, and drives on.

So that’s the world, then. This episode, written by future show runner Scott M. Gimple and directed by Tricia Brock was full of many wonderful details revealing the horrific world we only have to live in an hour each week. Upon seeing a literal welcome mat, our survivors rightly figure out it’s a trap, with a spike filled pit beneath. In another heartbreaking scene, Rick finds the walkie talkie he gave Morgan back in season one, saying he would check it every morning at down. Morgan sent messages, but Rick never got them. Even good intentions are destroyed in this ruined world.

The story is full of parallels that drive home the theme: Duane couldn’t kill his already dead mother and died. Carl could and lived. Morgan is the future for Rick, if he doesn’t stop having visions and being just as ruthless as the Governor in his own way. And of course, as many have pointed out, the title of show refers not only to the zombie army but the increasingly dehumanized survivors. Andrew Lincoln is always a fine actor, but this strong script really allowed him and the rest of the cast to shine.

And Michonne finally got to say things and become an actual character and not just a cool looking but uninteresting badass. We learn she not only has ninja stealth but terrible taste in housewares. (She brings a ghastly paper mache cat back with her as a trophy.) In a show that hasn’t always known what to do with its black characters (I laughed last week when Carol had to remind Andrea that there had been a character named TDogg who was now deceased) this entire episode was a welcome change.

So why is The Walking Dead TV show so popular? Unlike post apocalyptic movies such as 28 Days Later, Zombieland, I Am Legend, Mad Max or On The Beach, the story doesn’t end after two hours with hope as everyone heads north. It just goes on and on and on and on, as we follow characters gradually getting stripped of what we used to think of as humanity. How bad will it get? Isn’t there any hope out there somewhere? Would I do any better? Is survival even worth it?

Imagining the answers to these questions is why people come back to the TV show and the comic week after week, month after month. Sure it’s a fun scary thrill ride full of gruesome special effects. But the core, when it’s there, is this merciless examination of the social contract. What’s going to save Carl and Rick? It may be a long time before we find out, if we ever do.

Television, we're often told, is a writer's medium.  The combination of limited budget and little scope for fancy visuals, and the need to keep feeding the hungry beast of continuous story--be it a serialized drama, a character-based soap, or even a procedural--serves to prioritize the writer's toolbox.  It's the reason, I think, that television so easily amasses obsessed, engaged fandoms, and

I just found Blog30. I liked their questionnaire and thought I'd share my own answers:

Where do you look for inspiration?

Life. Truth. Music. Stories. Nature. People.

What's your favorite book?

I have favorite books in different categories. My favorite books include, but are not limited to:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (fantasy classic)
The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende (fantasy)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (modern classic)
Body Bags by Christopher Golden (contemporary thriller)
The Boys are Back in Town by Christopher Golden (contemporary horror)
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (mystery)

What's your favorite movie?

As with books (and anything else you can categories), I have favorite movies in different categories. For example:

Favorite musical picture: Singin' in the Rain
Favorite film noir: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Favorite Hitchcock film: North by Northwest
Favorite screwball comedy: Bringing Up Baby
Favorite Barbara Stanwyck comedy: Ball of Fire
Favorite John Hughes film: Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Favorite Cary Grant/Irene Dunne performance: My Favorite Wife
Favorite Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movie: The Odd Couple
Favorite book-to-miniseries adaptation: Anne of Green Gables, 1986 version starring Megan Follows
Favorite Disney animated musical: The Little Mermaid

Again, give me a genre, theme, time period, director, writer, or actor, and I'll tell you my favorite film for that topic or person.

What's your favorite line from a play?

I just realized I don't have any lines from plays listed on my page of favorite quotes. I'm going to have to think on this and get back to you.

What play or production changed your life?

Since I've been on the acting/performing/writing/creating path since birth, I don't know that any play has changed my life, but many have touched me - either the script or the storyline really spoke to me, or the experience I had performing them. This includes but is not limited to Spring Awakening, The Polar Express, and the first school play I ever did. I'm also a writer - screenwriter, playwright, (hopeful) novelist, and poet, so I've performed original works, and had works published, and all of those experiences mean a great deal to me.

Is there anything you still dream of doing?

Everything I haven't done yet, but will: Have a great career, working regularly in television (including work as a series regular), film, and theatre (both musicals and straight plays) as an actress, writer, and director, creating and sharing roles and shows and songs that make me happy and inspire others.

I feel most like myself when I... am performing, singing or acting - or discussing something I'm really passionate about, or retelling the story of something I've experienced.

What is your best escape?

Performing. Writing. Reading. Watching films and TV.

What's the one thing nobody knows about you?

If I told you, then someone would know.

Every month, the PBS Kids show WordGirl has a word of the month. For March, the WordGirl Word of the Month is VILLAIN (a deliberate scoundrel or criminal). Where would literature be without villains? 

Downton Abbey (which I’m discussing elsewhere so as not to put spoilers in Jane’s path) got me thinking about the man behind the curtain (or the woman, as the case may be)—the writer. My frustrations with that show have to do mostly with the way the writing is sometimes so very visible. Much of the conversation I’ve seen around the web today, including in my own post, questions decisions made by Julian Fellowes. In a way, he’s as much a character in the series as anyone on camera. We’re always aware of his fingers on the keys—this well-turned quip, that infuriating plot twist, this theme stated baldly and repeatedly by numerous characters until we feel bludgeoned by it.

It’s unusual, and therefore interesting, to see a show of this calibre (clearly there is something above-the-pack about Downton that keeps us all panting for the next episode, and has so many of us talking talking talking week after week) fail on a suspension-of-disbelief level with such regularity. We’re constantly thinking about the writing, and therefore the writer. This is seldom the case with other fine shows I’ve been hooked on. Mad Men, for example—I hardly ever think about the writing while I’m watching it. Afterward, yes, generally with admiration, always with fascination.

The Wire: I don’t believe I ever once considered the people behind the curtain during the entire run of that show. I was pulled so thoroughly into the world that it became absolutely real. Sometimes I’ll see one of the actors in another role and get a jolt: but I thought you were still walking a beat in Baltimore!

LOST is an example of an excellent show which nevertheless featured The Writing as a supporting character. Indeed, there were entire seasons when I was pretty sure the writers had no idea where certain strands were going, and sometimes The Writing seemed to wander off into the jungle and be eaten by a polar bear. (I mean, that whole thing with ghostly Walt popping up now and then, after he’d been returned to the mainland—did they ever explain that? I have the feeling the young actor grew up too much over a hiatus and they had to just let the plotline fizzle away—which would be an event outside the story affecting the storyline.)

And yet I loved LOST (and still miss it), just as I have loved Downton, despite the enormous footprints The Writing leaves all over the house. (The poor housemaids, always having to clean up after it—and then it repays them by giving them the sack, or throwing their husbands in jail.)

The Downton incident that so many of us are bemoaning today is a particularly egregious case of The Writing leaping in front of the camera and announcing it’s ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille. An off-camera, real-world decision by an actor seems to have annoyed The Writing, possibly outraged it, and it rummaged through the cupboard until it found a rusty old overused implement and flung it through the fourth wall.

As a writer myself, I like to ponder the people behind the curtain—after the fact. When the show’s over and I’ve emerged from its world, that’s when I like to imagine the discussions in the writers’ room or trace the artful seed-planting that bears delicious fruit somewhere down the line. Arrested Development is one of the best examples ever of a show whose writers are so perfectly invisible that I never think of them at all during an episode—and then afterwards, or four episodes later, or on the seventh viewing, I’ll find myself marveling at their skill, their cleverness, their patience (allowing a joke to bide its time and blossom half a season later). That’s a show in which the writers are never onstage, but upon recollection I’ll wish I could have been a fly on the wall when they came up with some of their bits. What I wouldn’t give for a YouTube clip of the day they came up with Bob Loblaw! Who thought up that name? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click the link; you have to hear it spoken aloud.) Did the rest of the team all fall out of their chairs laughing when one of them uttered it for the first time? Were they able to get any work done for the rest of the day or was it overthrown by helpless giggles?

The internet, of course, puts us all in closer contact with the creators of our books, television shows, films, and music. Many of you probably know me better than you know my books. And if you’ve read my blog for a while, it may be hard to approach my books without thinking of me, the writer, on the other side of the page. At least, that’s how it is for me when I open books written by people I know, either in person or online.

Sometimes this familiarity works in the writer’s favor, and sometimes it hinders full enjoyment of the work. Returning to LOST, for example: much as I loved that show, much as I hung on every next episode, I had an uneasiness in the back of my mind the whole time, because early on I’d seen a TED talk by J.J. Abrams, in which he told a story about buying a mystery box at a magic store as a kid—a box marked only with a question mark, so that you didn’t know what was inside until you took it home and opened it. He never opened his. He displayed it right there during his talk, still sealed up decades later. It held more meaning for him as a possibility, a mystery; he’d kept it as a talisman all those years, a symbol of the joy of the unknown. I listened to him describe this—it was early in Season 2, I think—and I thought, Ohhhh NO, he likes unanswered riddles. LOST had us up to our ears in unanswered riddles, and by golly I wanted answers; but knowing what I knew about one of the most powerful people behind that particular curtain, I no longer had confidence answers would be provided.

(And yet I dove eagerly into that quicksand pit of riddles week after week.)

With novels, it seems generally easier to tuck the writer back behind the curtain and forget about him or her. Not always, but usually, if the story is well told. This is probably because there are fewer variables; your novel’s characters can’t quit on you, or send unfortunate tweets, or be arrested for drunk driving. It’s only when a book has plot holes or something clunks that I’m back to thinking about the person behind the page. Sometimes it’ll even be the editor who draws my focus; I’m thinking: Why didn’t you catch that? This story didn’t start until chapter three, and it’s your job to break that news to the writer. 

(Perhaps I think this because I’ve had the good fortune of working with truly excellent editors who perceive all things visible and invisible.)

It’s a strange age we live in. What I want as a writer is to be invisible on the page; I don’t want the reader thinking about me at all. I believe that if I’m doing my job right, you’ll have forgotten about me within a few paragraphs—or perhaps a few pages, if you know me with some degree of familiarity. And yet, as an author (i.e. writer of published books), I’m aware that my publishers expect, and my books’ survival may in part depend on, various kinds of visibility. And then I’m also a blogger, eight years in love with the form—a medium which is all about person-to-person sharing, and which sometimes brings me more direct satisfaction than my books.

(Am I allowed to admit that? It’s true, though. Most writers I know go on being critical of their own work long after it’s been published. Not to mention the blunt reality of things sometimes going out of print.)

So our various selves are all intertwined, these days: the reader, the writer, the viewer, the performer. I’m reading your novel on one screen and chatting about your hellish commute on another. I’m watching your movie and thinking about that perplexing remark you made in a blog post. I’m head over heels in love with your television show—and desperately wishing you’d written yourself out of this particular script.

Which I suppose is where my point is. I don’t mind the intertwined identities; in fact, I rather enjoy them, as long as they don’t affect the work. The more I respect your talent and skill, the less I want to think about you while I’m enjoying your art. I’ll eagerly go and hear you speak about it later—that’s a joy, hearing creative people discuss their work. But I don’t want to be in a writing workshop with every single creator I encounter. I don’t want to think about your writerly choices, and what drives them, not in the moment, not while I’m immersed in your work. Give me invisible craft. Let me believe, just for this hour, that there are no puppet strings, no hands pulling them. Let me believe there’s no one there behind that curtain—let me forget the curtain exists at all.

AMC's The Walking Dead continues to be an unstoppable ratings juggernaut — last night's premiere of season 3.5 debuted with even higher ratings than the full season premiere in October:

The pilots of winter continue to pour in, and I think we can identify a trend: fall is when the respectable doctor and lawyer shows premiere; winter is when TV puts on fancy dress.  This latest bunch of shows includes fantasy, thrillers, science fiction, and lots of weirdness.  Not all of it works, unsurprisingly--in the time between starting this post and publishing it, the most rancid of the

CBS Studios is developing a television show adaptation of the 2010 travel memoir, The Lost Girls. Hollywood showrunner Rebecca Sinclair will serve as both a writer and an executive producer.

The book chronicles the globe-trotting adventures of Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett and Amanda Pressner. Prior to publishing the book, the three friends wrote about their journeys online at the Los tGirls World blog. The writing trio currently have a second book project in-the-works.

Here’s more from Deadline: “The TV project, which adds a mystery element to the story in the book, centers on four very different 20-something American women, each at a point of crisis, who decide to escape their lives and their country, and go abroad.  While in Cambodia, the wanderers bond, happy to find friends who are equally lost. But when one of the women vanishes under mysterious circumstances and the remaining three pledge to find her, they embark on the real journey, a quest that leads them off the beaten path, around the globe and on the road to finding themselves.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What do anaesthetists do? How does anaesthesia work? What are the risks? Anaesthesia is a mysterious and sometimes threatening process. We spoke to anaesthetist and author Aidan O’Donnell, who addresses some of the common myths and thoughts surrounding anaesthesia.

On the science of anaesthesia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The pros and cons of pain relief in childbirth:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Are anaesthetists heroes?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aidan O’Donnell is a consultant anaesthetist and medical writer with a special interest in anaesthesia for childbirth. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1996 and trained in Scotland and New Zealand. He now lives and works in New Zealand. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2002 and a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists in 2011. Anaesthesia: A Very Short Introduction is his first book. You can also read his blog post Propofol and the Death of Michael Jackson.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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This time last year, it seemed like Homeland and Dexter couldn't have more different trajectories.  Dexter was coming off a plodding, padded sixth season that had devolved into the butt of a sad joke, full of nonsensical plot twists, increasingly boring subplots involving the show's perennially underserved secondary characters, and an growing sense that no one involved with the show knew what to

It's long past the point where new shows are a fall thing--long past the point, in fact, where I ought to have been making this sort of review a quarterly business.  But somehow this winter season seems particularly fecund, possibly as a result of the fall's disappointing crop, possibly because British TV seems to take the end of the year as its time to launch new shows, which means this report

Pilot season is upon us in Hollywood, and Cullen Bunn's acclaimed The Sixth Gun has gotten a pilot order at NBC with Carlton Cuse (Lost) on board to produce.

By Ron Rodman

The New Year is a time of looking forward to the future and back to the past. Looking back, last year witnessed the death of Dave Brubeck, one of the all time great jazz musicians. Brubeck became famous through his live performances and his recordings, especially the seminal Time Out album released in 1958. But he also became famous through his many appearances on American and international television, beginning with The Colgate Comedy Hour in 1955, and appearing on variety shows such as The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1958), The Timex All-Star Jazz Show (1957), and The Ed Sullivan Show (1955, 1960, 1962). As his fame grew, Brubeck also became the subject of several TV documentaries, including prestigious programs like The Twentieth Century (1961) and The Bell Telephone Hour (1968). He was also an honored guest in the few exclusively jazz programs that aired in the 1960s. He appeared on Jazz 625 in 1964 and made several appearances on Jazz Casual, an occasional series that ran on the National Educational Network from 1961-68.

Here’s the Brubeck Quartet performing for a broadcast of Jazz Casual in 1961.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brubeck made many more TV appearances throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s, many of which can be seen on YouTube.

As important as Brubeck’s TV appearances were, perhaps no one furthered the cause of jazz on television more than Billy Taylor, who also died recently in 2010. After graduating college in 1942, Taylor got his professional start with Ben Webster’s Quartet on New York’s famed 52nd Street. He then served as the house pianist at the legendary club Birdland, where he performed with such celebrated masters as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. He went on to receive a masters and doctor’s degree in music education at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and served as Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale. He divided his career as performer, writer, jazz advocate, and educator for the remainder of his life.

Taylor’s contributions to television music were manifold. He was the music director and band leader for The David Frost Show from 1969-72, becoming the first African American musician to hold that position on a TV talk show. He served as “Jazz and Modern Music Correspondent” for CBS News Sunday Morning from 1981-2002. He also was a contributor to many jazz documentaries, notably for Louis Armstrong (1971) and Duke Ellington (1981, 2000).

Taylor made his TV debut on the Steve Allen’s Tonight! show in 1956. Next, he appeared on Jazz Party in 1958. That year proved pivotal, as Taylor was asked to be music director for a new TV series, The Subject is Jazz, produced by NBC.

Before his death, Dr. Taylor was interviewed for an upcoming book of his memoirs written by Teresa Reed, The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor (Indiana University Press). Taylor had this to say about the program:

“A second opportunity in 1958 came by way of Marshall Stearns. By that time, his deep interest in jazz had turned to television, and in collaboration with Leonard Feather, he came up with the idea to do a series of thirteen shows as part of a program called The Subject is Jazz. Although jazz had been on radio for decades, The Subject is Jazz would be the very first program of its type to come to television. Stearns and Feather were both writers, however, and neither knew a thing about the practical aspects of musical direction or doing a television show. So it was for this purpose that they hired me. Having experienced rejection from MENC, it was crucial to me that The Subject is Jazz develop into a high-quality, educational show. The Subject is Jazz was distributed through NBC network facilities to educational TV stations. Although a variety of different musicians performed on the show, my basic combo included Osie Johnson on drums, Eddie Safranski on bass, Mundell Lowe on guitar, Tony Scott on clarinet, Jimmy Cleveland on trombone, and Carl (later known as “Doc”) Severinsen on trumpet.

“The show featured some great music and stimulating conversations with people like Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, all of whom were serious connoisseurs of jazz. But a major flaw was the show’s dry, stoic, and overly academic presentation. There were lots of people who knew and loved the music, people who would have made excellent commentators for the show… Rather than get some known radio personality, the producer hired Gilbert Seldes, a Harvard-trained cultural critic who read to the television audience from his stack of handheld notes. I knew that the audience for The Subject is Jazz was vastly different from the audience I typically encountered while I was performing in clubs. Gilbert Seldes was a conservative, grandfatherly type in his mid-sixties who sported a professorial bowtie and spoke in a sort of scholarly monotone, using carefully measured language as one does while delivering a lecture. He was an intellectual speaking to a Saturday-afternoon television audience of intellectuals who wanted to understand the music with their minds as much as they enjoyed it with their ears and hearts. Working in this context, it was my job to combine clear, articulate answers to Seldes’s questions with musical demonstrations of whatever I was explaining.

“By today’s more sophisticated, high-tech standards, The Subject is Jazz may seem like a very primitive and ‘square’ attempt at using mass media to educate the public about the music. Yet, in some ways, the show was quite ahead of its time. During the thirteen-week run of The Subject is Jazz I also had an opportunity to perform some of my own compositions… The last episode featured a composition that was my tribute to Charlie Parker, titled “Early Bird.”” (Teresa Reed, The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor, p.137-38)

Here is a video of that last episode:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television. His thanks to Dr. Teresa Reed, Professor of Music at the University of Tulsa, for this “sneak peek” at her upcoming book, The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor. Look for it on bookshelves soon!

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In case you missed last night's PBS documentary on Superheroes, you can watch it above—or at this link if the embed isn't working. The program includes Wizard World all-star festival of folks like Lou Ferrigno, Burt Ward, Adam West and Lynda Carter talking about playing superheroes. They are all veteran charmers, and when we have a spare 53 minutes, we plan on watching the whole thing. A supporting webpage has background and stills—such as the above one of Julie Newmar as Catwoman—and some extra videos.