FEAR AND LOATHING

I've decided my new goal is to acquire an IBM Selectric typewriter like the great Hunter S. Thompson used.

I'll write the best letters on it. I promise.

Christmas is right around the corner, you know.

NINE INCH NAILS - TENSION 2013

Hi.

Remember how I've spent the last month or so talking about how excited I was to see Nine Inch Nails, then how much fun I had at the show and how amazing it was?

Now I can prove it to you. Last week Vevo released a high-definition video of the band's show in Los Angeles last month. I've watched it a couple of times already and I love everything about it. There's a full-length DVD in the works for next year, which I'm sure I'll buy because why the hell wouldn't I?

There's also a two-part behind the scenes video (part 1 and part 2) that shows Trent Reznor, Rob Sheridan and the rest of the crew putting everything together for the festival shows they did this past summer. Right when that was finished, and before they left for tour, Reznor decided that everything they'd put together was a "cop out" and they should do something different for the U.S. tour. A month before they left, he brought in a bass player and two back-up singers and had Sheridan re-imagine the entire design.

Reznor seems kind of hard to work for, but amazing to work for at the same time. He's constantly pushing everyone to make things better, and I bet it makes things incredibly difficult at times but immensely rewarding after it's all finished.

Like I wrote in my other piece, The Joint (where I saw the show), was basically a theater so there were limits to what they could do with the stage show. They couldn't raise and lower the huge LED screens that you see in the video, which is kind of disappointing, but again, I think I'd rather have seen them in a small theater than an arena. I don't know though. I'm still working through it in my head.

Either way, the video is embedded below. You should watch it. Better yet, you should pull it up on your giant HD flat screen and watch in your living room.

Now that this is finished, I'll probably stop talking about Nine Inch Nails for a while and we'll get back to random other things that make you love me.

 

ROYALS

Many, many times on this site I've admitted to being way behind the curve when it comes to music.

I only heard about Lorde a couple of weeks ago, and I've been kind of obsessed with her ever since. It's one of the things I've been listening to a lot at work, and one of the times that I'm filled with terror whenever I remember that since Spotify is a social media-based site, other people can see what I'm listening to. I'm sure all the HC street cred I've accrued over the years flew out the window once people noticed the only music I've been listening to lately is Lorde, Queen, M.I.A., Hanni El Khatib, Nine Inch Nails and New Orleans big-band Jazz.

I'm also 100% okay with that.

Lorde's song "Royals" is by far her most popular. It's kind of a send-up of all the famous people that just want to be famous for the sake of being famous. Recently, she was giving an interview to VH1 in which she spoke about the inspiration for the song.

“I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs," she said. “He was a baseball player and his shirt said, ‘Royals.’ Obviously I’ve had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they’re like rock stars. If there was a TMZ 500 years ago, it would be about Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.”

Who was she talking about? Why none other than Kansas City Royals legend (and probably the best Royals player of all time - behind Bo Jackson, of course) George Brett.

Good photo for inspiration, if I do say so myself.

VEGAS BABY!

"Timely" isn't something I'm great at - especially when it comes to this blog. I'm generally a little bit behind the times and when it comes to reviews, I'm way behind the times.
The plan was to do a review of the Nine Inch Nails show as soon as I got back last week. Then one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was waist deep in JFK conspiracy theories for a good 5 days straight. Writing a recap of the trip and the show wasn't nearly as important. Who wants to focus on writing about one of the best live shows you've ever seen when you can listen to 6 hours of podcasts about magic bullets, missing brains and LBJ ordering pants that don't feel like he's riding a wire fence?

Quick side note here: LBJ was sitting at the White House and decided that he needed to order pants, so he called Joe Haggar. When was the last time you think any acting President ordered his own custom pants, shirt and jacket?

Okay, back to the task at hand.

Casey and I left Salt Lake about 10 AM on Friday morning. We made pretty good time on the way down and, as usual, we stopped in Scipio at the petting zoo. Even ran into a friend of mine also on his way to the show. Got back on the road, pulled in to town and checked into The Plaza in old Las Vegas at about 3:30. We grabbed some lunch and wandered around the strip for a bit before meeting some friends for a late dinner.

Old Las Vegas is pretty great. It's far less crowded than the strip, but still full of weird stuff. When we got back to the hotel, we decided to walk across to Fremont Street, which is just weird. The Strip is full of tourists and mostly younger people looking for the "hottest" clubs. Fremont Street is full of older people that still want to get wild, but don't want to hang out with any of those other people.

About halfway down the street, we saw a huge crowd of people and heard a lot of shouting. We kept going and met the crowd just as there was a fight about to break out. There was an honest-to-goodness motorcycle club feuding with some street performers and drugged out hanger-ons. One the MC guys was in a shouting match with a guy in a wheelchair and the two of them kept moving in circles. Eventually, the MC guy got sick of it, got along side of the wheelchair and pushed it over. As he walked away, feeling triumphant, a guy in an Elmo costume took his head off, held it in his left hand, walked up behind the guy and threw a haymaker at the side of his head. That's when all hell broke loose. Pretty soon the place was swarming with cops and a guy in cut off sweat shorts and no shirt was screaming at everyone wearing an MC cut trying to fight all 15 of them. We stuck around hoping things would get really out of control, but the cops were able to keep it in check. We made our way back to the hotel listening to the sweet sounds of "Enter Sandman" coming from the Fremont Street house band.

The next day, we grabbed breakfast as Society Cafe in the Encore and did a little more wandering around. Casey wanted a sweatshirt, but after looking in about a half-dozen stores, he changed his mind and we hit up our usual Las Vegas snack spot, Twin Peaks. The food there is pretty terrible, but we went there as a joke last time, so we decided it was now a tradition. The best part of the whole meal was the table full of guys next to us. Twin Peaks is basically a knock-off Hooters with an outdoorsy theme. There's a climbing wall at one end of the restaurant, and for a certain price, you can challenge any of the girls that work there to a race to the top.

One guy chose the hostess and while the server went to get everything set up, they started talking about how good of a climber the guy was and how it would be a piece of cake. Casey and I watched them get geared up, then watched as the hostess climbed the entire wall before he could even get two moves finished - all while wearing Ugg boots. It was amazing. He didn't say much when he got back to the table. It was actually kind of great.

We headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel to check in, get our wristbands and wait in line. Since I signed up for the Nine Inch Nails fan club to get tickets early, we were let in before the rest of the crowd in a slightly disorganized fashion. While we were waiting in line, Casey spotted some actor that's on REVENGE and kept taking pictures and video to send to his wife. Then he spotted someone from GHOST HUNTERS. He was really excited about both of them. I had no idea who either of them were.

The Joint holds about 5,000 people and is more of a theater than the rest of the venues Nine Inch Nails were playing on tour, which was why I wanted to see the show there. The more intimate the venue, the more fun I have. When we got inside the venue, pretty much everyone rushed to the front, and camped out right in front of the stage. Casey and I stopped about 20 feet from the front, where the venue started to divide into tiers about 10 feet deep with railings and a small step separating each one. We camped out on stage left, leaned up against the railing and waited for the show to start.

Explosions in the Sky were the opening band, and while they're great musicians and I really like their stuff, I don't much care for watching them live. There was a guy standing behind Casey and I filming everything and he kept getting a little too close for comfort. Seriously, Casey and I were basically standing shoulder to shoulder with a few inches in between, and he had a camera right between our faces for the whole set. Just to piss him off, Casey and I started a conversation that lasted about 15 minutes. So if you ever find a shitty video of Explosions in the Sky in which the sound is compromised by some dudes talking about seeing Def Leppard play live, that's me.

Nine Inch Nails started just about 9 PM and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. I'd done some research to find out their set list so I knew what to expect and what they were probably leaving out, so I was ready to hear "Copy of A" and "1,000,000" right off the bat, but they tricked me. They played two shows in Las Vegas and played their regular set the night before, so they switched things up the second night. Good and bad came from that, since they cut out a couple of songs that I wanted to hear, but added a few, like "Reptile" that they hadn't really been playing.

Aside from all that, the performance itself was incredible. They had an amazing light show that was tailored to each song that was just awesome. They had to scale back on some of the bigger effects they'd been using because they wouldn't fit on the stage at The Joint, but I didn't mind. I liked seeing them in a smaller place.

Trent Reznor was interviewed about the setup and the show recently and the way he explained it made total sense.

“My goal is that — I can usually see the audience because I’m lit from behind a lot — is that I want to keep you from looking at your phone,” Reznor said. “I want to make you hold your pee because you don’t want to miss something. We’ve thought about all this stuff, and want to make this experience something that was worth your time.”

(*That link goes to a Buzzfeed article. It's there because I don't want to blatantly steal, but Buzzfeed is awful, so you don't have to click it unless you want to.*)

The whole month before I drove down, I'd wondered why I hadn't seen very many YouTube clips from Nine Inch Nails shows (granted, I hadn't been trying very hard), but the light show kind of explained it. They played for about two hours and worth every last penny I spent. One of the highlights of the show was when Reznor came back onstage for the encore and asked the crowd to help out.

He'd befriended a photojournalist named Andrew Youssef over the last year that was dying of cancer. Youssef was nearing the end of his battle and planned on making two more shows before he got too weak. He was able to hit the November 8 show in L.A. but had to cancel his trip to see the band that night in Vegas. Reznor found out he couldn't make it, so he called Youssef from the stage, chatted with him for a second then dedicated "In This Twilight" to him. It was pretty damn amazing and the perfect ending to the show.

The next day, we hit up the Mob Museum, which is in a renovated courthouse right near Fremont Street. The building itself is one of the last remaining historically significant places in the city. Everything else has been bulldozed and rebuilt, but the courthouse that held some of the Kefauver Committee hearings has been turned into a three-level archive of everything related to the mob.

There were a lot of great things, but since the mob is such a sprawling enterprise, there was almost too much going on. A lot of the exhibits were little snapshots that didn't go into too much detail. There was enough in there to spawn probably 20 great movies or TV shows (and probably 100 bad ones).

It was pretty great, but the mob is almost too expansive and has so many different aspects that it's hard to include everything. It ended up being more of a "greatest hits" type place, but it was still really, really interesting - though not as cool as the neon sign graveyard we saw last time we were in town.

By the time we were out of there, it was about 3 in the afternoon and time to head back to Salt Lake. We made pretty good time back and the soundtrack of Prince, Billy Joel, George Michael, Kenny Loggins and Ludacris. It was a short trip, but it was a lot of fun. Much like Los Angeles, every time I go to Vegas I like it a little bit more.

Oh, also on the ride down, Casey started talking about what he wants to have happen when he dies, so I recorded it for an irregular podcast-type feature that I'm calling "Riding in Cars with Dudes." Here's Episode 1 - Casey's Dying Wish.

NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Another day, another story about how Greg Ginn just gets worse and worse.

The Black Flag saga has been going for about a year now, and I've been keeping up with it pretty much since the beginning. Go here and then here if you aren't aware of what's going on, but by now you probably know.

Quick rundown - two different versions of Black Flag have been touring this year. One, simply called Flag has Keith Morris, Dez Cadena, Chuck Dukowski, Stephen Egerton and Bill Stevenson. The other, called Black Flag, has Greg Ginn and some other people. For a while, Ron Reyes was the singer of this new version. He was the vocalist of Black Flack for a hot minute between Keith Morris and Henry Rollins, but that was it.

Flag has been playing shows and getting good reviews because they're trying to play solid music. Black Flag is just trying to make money and show up Flag. They're not doing a very good job. In this open letter (which, by the way, I hate open letters but this is necessary) to Greg Ginn and the Ring-Ins, it seems pretty clear that Ginn's version isn't very good.

Ron Reyes agreed. Then Ron Reyes was fired in the middle of a set and replaced by Mike Vallely.

Reyes ranted about the situation through his Facebook, but then promptly deleted it. But, since this is the Internet, lots of people were smart enough to grab it while it was up. Nothing ever goes away once it's been on the Internet. You should know that by now.

Here's a little snippet:

“So many things went wrong from the start. I was into things like having a good drummer, rehearsing and spending time on things like beginnings and endings of songs, being a little less distracted with tour life and a little more on the ball. You know things that would make our efforts worthy of the name Black Flag… Yes it is my opinion that we fell very short indeed and the diminishing ticket sales and crowds are a testament to that.”

Like I said, it was deleted pretty quickly, but you can read the whole thing over at Consequence of Sound.

We may never know who will win this epic battle, but...

Actually. We probably do. And it's not Greg Ginn.

DAVE GROHL IN "FRESH POT!"

Them Crooked Vultures is pretty great and I love Dave Grohl. Here's a little something to break up your Monday afternoon monotony.

Enjoy!

MONEY

The Jazz are the team just keep on giving.

They're terrible, but somehow I've figured out a way to write about them three times over the past week.

Earlier this week in New Orleans, Gordon Hayward had a terrible game. He's usually pretty good, but that night, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. It wasn't for lack of effort though. He shot 17 times. Only one of them went in. Hayward was 1 for 17 in 39 minutes and ended up with 6 points (four came from free throws). He did have 6 rebounds and 11 assists, but still, 1 for 17 is pretty bad.

Everyone has bad games and it's bound to happen over the course of a season.

The next day, former Jazz center and 3-point guru Mehmet Okur reached out to Hayward and offered him some encouragement. It was an amazing gesture and one that I'm sure Hayward appreciated.

Okur just picked the absolute worst Tweet to respond to. The wording he used didn't help a single bit, either.

The Jazz play in Dallas tonight. Yesterday, on their day off, Corbin took the team to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Woops.

WAR IN THE SUN

I’m a “glass half-empty” kinda guy. That’s just the way it is. I try to judge things by the finished product and not do the typical Internet thing where I hate a project before it’s even started, but sometimes I just can’t.

PREACHER is a project that I’ve hated pretty much since its live-action inception was announced almost a decade ago.

Let’s back up a bit. PREACHER is a comic written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Steve Dillon. It’s about a Texas preacher possessed by a supernatural creature named Genesis. Genesis is the product of the coupling of an angel and a demon, making it the most powerful thing in existence. Once this power is manifested in Jesse Custer, God quits ruling Heaven and goes into hiding. Custer goes looking for him. Along the way, he picks up his old girlfriend Tulip and brings along an alcoholic vampire named Cassidy. Oh yeah, he has to avoid the Saint of Killers, too. He’s basically the angel of death out to get rid of Genesis and whatever form it’s become.

It sounds ridiculous on paper and it’s a little ridiculous in the comic, too. But it’s also fantastic. I re-read the entire series last winter and it still holds up really well. There are a few filler stories to pad the run because Ennis wanted the final issue to be number 66, but overall it’s brilliant, crazy, sweet, heartbreaking and just flat out awesome.

But the chances of it being anything other than a great comic were slim to none. I’m a firm believer that anything that spends over a decade trying to get made doesn’t need to be made. There’s always a reason that it hasn’t worked and most likely won’t work at all, no matter how hard you try. See: GANGSTER SQUAD, RUM PUNCH, etc.

Mark Steven Johnson was the first guy tasked with taking it from a comic to TV. You remember Mark Steven Johnson, don’t you? He wrote classics like GRUMPY OLD MEN, GRUMPIER OLD MEN and directed great, legendary films like SIMON BIRCH, DAREDEVIL and GHOST RIDER. That was the guy that was supposed to bring PREACHER to life. No one held their breath and after a few years the project died. It kept bouncing around and everyone from James Marsden to Kevin Smith was attached at some point. Eventually it landed in the lap of Sam Mendes and while I didn’t get excited, I was a little bit hopeful. Mendes made AMERICAN BEAUTY, ROAD TO PERDITION and SKYFALL, so there was a little bit of promise. But he’s pretty committed to a couple more James Bond movies, so that fell apart.

Things were pretty quiet on the PREACHER front until a few days ago when AMC announced that they were taking the series to pilot. Just like that. No other information was provided.

When I saw that, I didn’t really know how to feel. AMC aired amazing shows like BREAKING BAD and MAD MEN, so that was a plus. But AMC executives are also fucking morons. They almost cancelled BREAKING BAD after the fourth season because they didn’t want to pay anyone. They panicked at the last minute when FX stepped in and said, “If AMC doesn’t want you, come over here. We’ll let you do whatever you want.”

They also don’t own either of those shows. Sony owned BREAKING BAD and Lionsgate owns MAD MEN. AMC is just the network it airs on, so they don’t really have much say in what happens within the show. The two shows they own outright are THE WALKING DEAD and LOW WINTER SUN. I still watch it, but for every good thing it does, THE WALKING DEAD does two or three other things that I absolutely hate. It’s just not very good, but has the potential to be great. All AMC cares about is the numbers it gets. They couldn’t care less about the actual quality. And LOW WINTER SUN got such bad reviews that I deleted it from my DVR without watching a single episode.

So if it was going to be a full-on AMC enterprise, I was preparing for the worst. Then more details started to come out and I started getting a little excited.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were the guys behind it. Sony is the studio producing it, AMC is just the network it’ll air on. I was already hopeful with two guys like Rogen and Goldberg (they wrote SUPERBAD, THIS IS THE END and THE GREEN HORNET) on board, but then I read that Sam Catlin was also on board. That’s when I got more excited.

Sam Catlin was one of the main writers and executive producers on BREAKING BAD. He wrote and directed the Season 5 episode “Rabid Dog” where Walt has to try to convince Skyler that he had a pump malfunction when Jesse tried to burn down their house. He wrote a bunch of other great episodes throughout the series, too.

With those three calling the shots, Sony picking up the tab and AMC relegated to simply airing the episodes, it might actually work.

Then again, there is the little question about how you market a show that boils down to one man’s quest to tell God to go fuck himself while talking to the ghost of John Wayne and being chased by a guy in a duster and cowboy hat that can’t be killed – even when a nuclear bomb is dropped on him. Also, let’s not forget the vampire, the inbred, mentally challenged child with the last pure bloodline of Jesus Christ and a guy that makes sex toys out of raw meat.

If they can get over those hurdles, anything is possible.

FELINA

BREAKING BAD ended a while back. It's been a rough couple of months without a TV show to get invested in. I always save BOARDWALK EMPIRE for full-season binge watching, so that's out.

I dove right in to season 6 of SONS OF ANARCHY, but the quality of the writing and storytelling and characters was so different and so much worse that  it was hard to watch. But then I spent 6 weeks watching the slightly entertaining but utterly horrible execution of everything that is THE WALKING DEAD. After that, SONS OF ANARCHY has been looking pretty god damn brilliant.

But it still makes me miss BREAKING BAD. They're rolling out the complete set on DVD pretty soon, so a few of the special features are starting to make their way around online. On one of them, a documentary crew filmed everyone for a huge documentary about the making of the last season. They had cameras in the room when Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul read the final episode for the first time.

They divided the parts between them and read it together in Cranston's living room. It's just great. These two lived with those characters for so long that it must be hard to let go. I can only imagine what it's like to finally get to the end of something that you work so hard on.

If you guys don't see me for about a month this winter, it's because I'm holed up in my apartment watching these 62 episodes all over again and pretending that some day I'll be able to write something so god damn awesome.

FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Freddy Mercury and Queen.

NOVEMBER 18, 1985

On this day 28 years ago, Calvin set his tiger trap and Bill Watterson kicked off one of the best (and by far my favorite) comic strips of all time.

If you haven't picked it up, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes is something that everyone should own. Seriously. Grab it. If you have kids, get them started on it and if you don't, skip out on Netflix for a night and read that instead.

THE BALLAD OF FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

I broke down and watched the majority of the Jazz game last night (they won!) and they, surprisingly, looked half-decent.

Richard Jefferson had something of a breakout performance and gave the team a little lift late in the 3rd quarter. It seems that everyone was kind of surprised by it - even the crew in the production department. They made a little snafu when Bolerjack and Harpring (the home announcers) asked them to get the KFC Bucket Chart up so they could show how much better he was last night than in just about every other game so far this season.

Even the @utahjazz production department has lost all interest in this team. #NOPatUTA pic.twitter.com/1HojypBfU8
— Trevor Hale (@trevorhale) November 14, 2013

I noticed the "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" error, snapped a picture and sent a Tweet. I figured I'd get a few laughs and that would be that.

Wrong.

The replies blew up for about an hour while I cooked some delicious Top Ramen and I got a kick out of it. Definitely the most popular Tweet I've ever sent out - even more popular than those hilarious Twilight Concert ones.

Didn't think much about it today until my brother sent me a text that said, "Did you see your Twitpic is a top story on Yahoo!?"

Sure enough, it was. Must have been a really, really slow news day. But hey, at least they gave me credit.

THE GOD VOICE HAS ITS WORK CUT OUT

The buzz for Tulip is getting louder.

We officially sold out of the first print about two weeks ago, but people are still talking about it.

Jay Meehan, a columnist for The Park Record, wrote a piece about Mike Farfel and his debut novel yesterday. It's great. I'm a little jealous that Mike got dropped in the same sentence as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett because those guys are a couple of my literary inspirations, but I'm also proud as hell.

Here's a little preview, but if you want to read the whole thing, head over to The Park Record and check it out for yourself.

We're working hard to get a second printing together and back in the shop and this thing kind of gave me that extra push. That's really the only thing that I regret about this piece - that he's giving press to a book that I don't have any more of at the moment. Total first world problem, I know, but it's still a problem.

Oh well. Soon. I promise.

The Park Record -- When I first met Mike Farfel, I heard a voice in my head telling me to focus, to pay attention, to remain in the moment. I was sporting the glazed look I usually wear to a Dylan show but I knew immediately there were some layers to this Wasatch High School freshman that might elude me if I spaced out in my normal fashion.

Although he didn't flaunt it at all, you had the sense that there was this intellectuality lounging just out of camera range awaiting its cue. His Dylan-IQ, of course, was off the charts but, no matter what the topic, he appeared to be well ahead of the curve. He was obviously on the lam from the ordinary.

Read the rest.

"THE AMPLITUDE OF THEIR INEPTITUDE"

The Jazz are a terrible basketball team. They haven't won a game yet and have lost 7 straight times (*update - 0-8) to start the season.

Everyone knew they were in for a tough year, but it's hard to say that anyone expected them to be as bad as they are.

Well, that's not true. I fully expected them to be terrible. I told people the Jazz would be lucky if they hit 20 wins this season. The best player on the team (Gordon Hayward) would be the 2nd or 3rd best player on any other team. Enes Kanter and Derrick Favors might be pretty great players someday, but no time soon and I think Alec Burks is the second coming of C.J. Miles. Those are the guys we're going to war with. Those are the Core Four that Jazz Fans thought were going to set the NBA on fire and were happy to get rid of Paul Millsap, Al Jefferson and every other professional basketball player on the roster to make room for.

Trey Burke, the injured starting point guard might help when he comes back, but unless as Spencer Checketts said "Trey Burke better be a solid combination of Chris Paul and Jesus," the Jazz are out of luck.

I admit, I'm taking a little too much pleasure in how bad this team is. After they let every single one of their free agents walk, traded for Richard Jefferson, Andris Biedrins and Brandon Rush then signed John Lucas III in order to turn the team over to the young guys, I knew it would be terrible. Very few people believed me and I spent the summer listening to the accounting dorks on the other side of my divider at work talk about how good the Jazz were going to be this year and that they were going to surprise a lot of people.

They are surprising a lot of people - but not in the way they hoped. After a 115 - 91 loss on Saturday night (which the Raptors lead by as many as 38 points at one time), Toronto Star columnist Cathal Kelly wrote a pretty scathing column about how as bad as the Raptors are, the Jazz are worse.

Let's look at some quotes:

Coming in, we knew Utah was bad. They hadn’t won a game. They hadn’t scored more than 93 points since opening night. They have the worst defence* in the league.

In reality, we knew nothing. The awfulness of the Utah Jazz is a full-on sensory experience. To appreciate the amplitude of their ineptitude, it has to be suffered through in person. Like waterboarding.

After two hours of this dreck, I’m not sure what the Jazz play. It isn’t basketball. It’s a strange cross between Red Rover and inside-out dodgeball.

Halfway through the second, the usually invisible Quincy Acy was inserted. In the second quarter. Hopefully, the Jazz understand how shaming that should feel.

So we're in for a long, long season here in Utah. It's only a matter of time before Jazz fans start booing their own team. Hell, I'm surprised they haven't started yet.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jazz fans are some of the worst people on the planet. I'm always happy when they get a nice reality check.

*I don't know if that's a typo or just a Canada thing.

RIDE WITH A TRICKSTER AND A JAVELIN MAN

I put it off as long as possible. I just couldn't commit to the kind of heartbreak I saw at the end. I knew I'd only be setting myself up for disappointment, but I did it anyway.

Afterwards, when it was all over and I was alone in my apartment, I just felt... sad. I wasn't angry at anyone, and there was no one to really blame, but I was still more than a little depressed. Of course, I knew going into it that it would happen, but I still went through with it. I'm glad I did. It was a learning experience, but it still hurt like hell.

Now I just really, really miss TERRIERS.

If you don't remember that show, you're not alone. It ran for one 13-episode season on FX back in 2010. It was about two private investigators (Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James) in San Diego who continuously bite off more than they can chew. The writing is great, the characters are fantastic and I loved literally everything about it from top to bottom. There's a larger story throughout the season, but there are also a few "case of the week" type stories that are just perfect for the kind of show that it was.

It was the perfect mix of detective-noir, comedy and drama. Logue and Raymond-James had amazing chemistry and everyone else on the show always gave it their best. Ted Griffin, who wrote the OCEAN'S 11 remake created it, and then teamed up with Shawn Ryan, creator of THE SHIELD to make it happen.

There was so much talent behind and in front of the camera that it should have been around forever. Sadly, no one watched it while it was actually on the air. Shortly after it was cancelled, John Landgraf - who is actually a really, really smart TV executive, which is incredibly rare - did an interview with the LA Times and laid out just why he made the decision to cancel it. Basically, it was the lowest-rated show FX had ever aired.

I'm chalking it up to two things: A terrible title and a horrible ad campaign.

I visited some friends in New York just before the show started airing that year and there were ads for it all over the subway and taxi's and busses and billboards so no one can say they didn't spend money on advertising. But the ads totally misrepresented what the show actually was.

The ads had no effect on me, but once it started airing, all the comic book writers that I admire started raving about it. By then, the season was half over and I didn't have a DVR or Netflix. I was kind of out of luck and not long after, it was cancelled. But it was always in my mind that I'd get to it someday and when I finally did, I just really wished it had gone longer.

Now that ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT has been brought back to life through Netflix, TERRIERS is the next show that everyone is hoping they'll revive at some point. I really hope that happens because I just want to hang out with Hank and Britt for a few more hours.

And in addition to everything I've just written about it, TERRIERS has one of the great TV theme songs and it gets stuck in my head for days on end. Seriously, listen to it then go home, fire up Netflix* and binge through all 13 episodes. And call me when you do. I'll come over and watch them all again. I'll bring popcorn.

*March 2020 Coronavirus Update - It's now available on Hulu. I probably won't come over since, you know, we're not allowed. But text me when you finish it and we'll chat.