Next Big Thing prediction

Tom and I watched 45 minutes of the pilot for ABC's GCB last night. I am going to go out on a limb and predict this will be a big hit.

Why? Because we both decided after 45 minutes of the hour-long program that
a) we would not be watching it every Sunday night; and
b) we had no desire to watch even the last fifteen minutes of the episode we were watching.

My experience has been that when I think a show is terrible, it is likely to explode across the dramasphere. (This does not mean that shows I like are doomed. Some of them do quite well, some implode. No predictive value there based on previous experience.)

The classic example of this in my case was the pilot for Dallas. Brother Michael Tiernan and I watched in in DC and I remember telling him confidently, "This won't be back next week."

Was I wrong or what?

Anyway, if you saw and enjoyed GCB, more power to you. As I say, I am not good at picking hits.

On a side note, why is it that shows set in Texas rarely get the accent right? It always sounds false. Reba was a notable exception, but she grew up in Oklahoma and knew whereof she accented.

Mama would remind me that Texas is so big there are different accents in different parts of the state. This is true. But that accent actors seem to think is Dallas leaves me cold. I didn't grow up in Dallas, but I lived there for almost a decade.

But I can't complain about any of this, can I, it still being Lent? So pass these off as mere observations, please.

Nice shirt?

I was reading the news online this morning and noticed a link to a men's clothing site. Some of the things in the ad looked good, so I hopped on over.

Lots of good stuff, some dressy, some casual, mostly looking like things you have to be 25 and skinny to wear. I picked this shirt to show you because it is pretty normal. It is a dress shirt and the checked pattern is in subtle blue and yellow.

Price?

$425.00.

The good news: It's returnable if you don't like the fit.

Like the fit? I'm having one just thinking about that price tag.

On the other hand, it may not be as bad as one polo shirt I liked. That one cost less, only $375, but it is, after all, just a polo shirt, not a polo pony!

Must see, must hear

I happened across the soundtrack from this movie today online, and listening to it again brought tears to my eyes. I excerpted these remarks from an article by Brian Vaszily on IntenseExperiences.com. The article is about the music, and I have cut out much of the heart of his message, which is get the music and hear it before you see the movie. Whatever. If you have not seen this heartbreakingly beautiful movie, run out and get it. When I saw it during its original theater run, at the end of the movie, no one got up and left during the titles. We all waited until the last credit had run and the last note in the music had ended. Then we sat in stunned silence for a few minutes until people began to drift out quietly.

See it and you will understand why.

The Mission Soundtrack:
The Most Powerful Music of the Last 21 Years?

by Brian Vaszily, founder of IntenseExperiences.com

If you seek hope, peace, beauty, and clarity -- especially during a time of apparent confusion, ugliness, strife or hopelessness – there are few things I recommend as much as music. And there is absolutely no music I recommend more than this:

The Mission Soundtrack by the great film score composer Ennio Morricone.

If you appreciate music and how it can move through you like nothing else can (aside from possibly nature itself), how it can transform you so completely, do your heart and soul a favor and let them experience this uplifting masterpiece.

The late Italian Ennio Morricone, who composed more than 300 motion picture scores over his 45-year career including the soundtracks for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Bugsy and Cinema Paradiso, and who received an Honorary Award for his lifetime of work at the Academy Awards in February 2007, composed this 47-minute score for the 1986 film, The Mission.

The Mission movie was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Directing, Costume Design, Film Editing, and Musical Score in 1986, and it won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

That film, about the physical, emotional and spiritual experiences of a Spanish Jesuit missionary in eighteenth century South America that stars Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, and Liam Neeson, was excellent and is definitely worth watching. But in its power, beauty, and timelessness, The Mission Soundtrack-- which many consider Morricone’s crowning achievement to date, and which itself was nominated for an Academy Award in 1986 -- far transcends the movie it supported.

...

Like only the immortal music can, the soundtrack’s Spanish guitars, chorales, native drumming, solo oboe and other perfectly woven sounds, and its softly recurring themes, will plumb to the depths of you and gently pull forth the hope, peace, beauty and clarity that, though they may be hidden, are already yours. Every time. This is the type of music through which you endlessly discover, forgive, love and glimpse the greater glory in everything.

...

With a positive force that few other works of art can match, ... it still moves me now. In its strange and wonderful mixture of sorrowful and uplifting sounds, it moves me when things feel bad to a bigger and beautiful place. And it moves me when things feel good to an even better place.

Will it be that profound for you? Well, that’s hard to say for sure as music is such a subjective thing, but that said I still think so. This one, The Mission Soundtrack, feels about as universal as it gets.

Maryland