I've been interviewed about Physics Reincarnate, by J. Chris Lawrence!

Hello, all!

I'll keep it short and simple:  J.  Chris Lawrence, an amazing writer and a staple over at Every Day Fiction, has taken the time to engage in a genuinely awesome interview with me.  Check it out below:

http://jchrislawrence.com/2013/09/13/an-interview-with-jesse-pohlman/

Thanks for your time, and make sure to spread this around!

Committing to NaNoWriMo 2013!

There are a lot of things I've wanted to get accomplished, both throughout my life and in the last year or so, that I haven't.  Things come up, things slip the mind, whatever.  Excuses are excuses, and while there is a difference between "excuses" and "explanations," I'm guilty of a little of each.  However, despite an abortive attempt in 2010, I succeeded in completing National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, in 2011.  I produced a little-known work called Protostar:  Memoirs Of The Messenger, released it on Amazon's Kindle, and it's probably my best-selling novel to date.

It was genuinely a blast, and while I'm too much of a coward to venture into the public, in-the-flesh NaNoWriMo gatherings (and I question the sense of having them during the "contest," when everyone is wired on the fifty-thousand-word deadline!), I certainly enjoyed the self-imposed challenge of writing 50k words in thirty meager days.  I took 2012 off for many reasons, not least this - let's be polite! - unpleasant woman named Sandy who strolled through my town, but now I'm back, baby!

For 2013, I plan to pen a sequel of Protostar!

I've written some notes.  I'm assured that isn't cheating!  So far I think I want to go with a sort of jarring start, and while I plan to feature the same cast of characters (the crew of The Messenger), I'm going to make the first chunk of the book about solving a riddle trapped in Captain Lahira Ocean's mind.  At least, that's what I'm thinking I'll do!  Once that's deciphered, her team will have to put that solution into practice - a completely different scenario!

Will Humankind survive it's war against the Orphans?  Well, when the first novel ended we were assured that Lahira had succeeded in creating allies among her former enemies, and a rebellion was afoot in the alien ranks.  Whatever the exact state-of-the-war, this isn't one of those tales where last-minute heroics is the only hope of our future-species.  At least, not yet!  Remember, dear reader, that there are in fact three other alien species out there:  The fish-like Aquarians, the brutish Firions, and the artificially-intelligent Automatons.  Despite Mankind's good relations with all three (and even with military aid coming from them!), is it possible that they could somehow change this war's course for the worse?

Outside of the realm of plot devices and character arcs, I also want to experiment with more editorial precision when it comes to creating the final, distributed product.  Protostar is probably the least-edited of my more recent books, since it was written in under a month and all.  There was no ongoing proofreading process.  Things just got, well, written.  Publication was never a major consideration!  This time, it is.  So this time, after November is done, it will be heavily redacted processed.

As always, I'll blog about it!

Why I Fight To Bring Back Old Shows

Hey everyone!

One of the trends that I have, when writing on this blog, is to cover old television shows and video games I liked as a kid, and to explore why.  Once in a while, like with Arrested Development, there's a level of success that's achieved!  It's sort of like bringing back the dead, in a sense, so let me ask a simple question:

Why do some people like myself get caught up on bringing back old programs from their heyday?  And why, in particular, am I so caught up with it?  Maybe it has something to do with this:

See, I'm a creator.  In particular, I'm a 28 year old creator.  Ten years ago, in 2003, I was an 18 year old wanna-be creator. Two years before that, some other 18-something year old wanna-be creator got a TV show approved by MTV.  It's a complicated story, but in 2001 this Pete Williams guy, along with Josh A. Cagan and Andy Rheingold, basically got this show off the ground.  It was immensely popular...In Canada.  In America, well, MTV didn't want to keep their animation department.  So says Williams in a recent interview on the "Guys With Pencils" podcast!  Plus, I've already looked into other reasons it was unfairly handicapped.  But this doesn't answer the underlying question of, "Jesse, why do you keep attaching yourself to these crazy creative causes!?"


Personal Identification

Well...There are two fundamental reasons.  First off is the fact that this show had an impact on me.  It aired just as I was getting ready to go to college (It aired 2001, I started college in fall 2002).  It's main creative drive was a few years older than me and a local native.  It was, tacitly, about a close-knit group of friends based on real people; and it was a group who, even dramatized, I found resembled my group of friends.  So there's just a great deal of personal identification, there.  Maybe, in my starry-eyed brain, I wanted to be like this Pete Williams guy.

It helped that the show was about an awkward college guy who was trying to become something of a new person, but at the same time tied unbreakably - and pleasantly! - to his friends.  That's the life I wanted, in essence, and to this day I'm proud to be close to many of my old friends.  I could name them, but they'd kill me, so I won't.  I also loved the music; most of it was spot-on, which is actually a surprise given that the show aired on MTV.  The animation was notoriously flawed, having been produced in a korean lab that didn't quite "get" what the show was going for; in fact, a fan going by Steffan B had to actually re-edit the ending to get the damned point across:

So, one thing led to another and, the show died.  At the time I was just sad, and I bought my DVD and wrote my e-mails to MTV without anyone knowing, at the time, just how vain that second prospect was.  And, then, I got older.  I always kept an ear open, but until 2012 I sort of assumed it wasn't going to happen - we'd get little tidbits here and there, but I understood better than many that the problem was simple - MTV and others owned the rights, and that was an impossible-to-procure object.  I moved on, in large part because everyone else involved had moved on.  Then, however, Pete made his way to Canada and discovered his canuck popularity!  This guy realized, to paraphrase him, that he actually had been quite successful!  He just didn't know it.  Him, Cagan and Rheingold got a goat (hah!) and appeared at Calgary Expo, and from there shit took off.  Now, there's a vibrant fan community and there is real talk about creating a movie continuation!

Willliams regularly communicates with the fan-base, answering long-standing questions and soliciting ideas for how we can best make things work in the future.  I'm infinitely proud to say I've actually earned some shout-outs, there.


More Personal Identification

But there's an even more fundamental, selfish reason I do this gung-ho stuff.  This second basic reason I push for old TV shows to get picked up, especially Undergrads, is that, well...I want my stuff to get picked up.  You've probably figured out I write, but did you know that I literally released a novel today?  It's called Physics Reincarnate, it's the sequel to my five-star rated book Physics Incarnate, and it's available now in paperback and on Amazon's Kindle E-reader.  If you count my kindle-exclusives, this is the fifth novel I have self-published (Pillars of The Kingdom 1+2, Protostar:  Memoirs Of The Messenger, and Physics Incarnate), not to mention a short story collection.

Moreover, just like Williams, I have plans to revisit my old work.  Even now, I'm re-editing Pillars of The Kingdom 1 and 2 for re-release as Kindle exclusives (the print versions are honestly not worth purchasing except for historical value, perhaps!).  Eventually I will finish the last few chapters of the third installment of that novel.  Protostar was my National Novel Writing Month project from 2011, and I fully intend to make a sequel this November - even if that, too, is a Kindle-Exclusive.

Using my copy of Abnormal Psychology For Masochists (most assuredly written by the author of Abnormal Psychology For Drunks, Rocko's most beloved textbook from the show!), I have determined that I am projecting my desires to be a successful creator onto the people who created Undergrads.  We have similar backgrounds in terms of geography, friends, and age-group.  We have seen success, faced defeat, and we keep going.  We've learned that the best way to help ourselves is to help other creators - writers, artists, animators, musicians, what-have-you.  Is it any wonder that I would have attached myself to someone similar to me, at least in my own perspective?

Sure, I might just be crazy.  I think all creators are crazy because we're standing here and attributing serious value to the stories we conjure out of our brains!  We're standing here saying, "you will be happy if you spend your hard-earned money on listening to our tale, because this tale will leave you changed."  Well, Undergrads changed me.  It served, most of all, as proof that someone could just walk into a room (in Pete's case, enter a contest), prove they're skilled, and actually get something produced!  Isn't that every creator's dream?

That's why I keep fighting to get this show a proper conclusion.  If you watch the show, you'll understand why you should, too!


My new website can be found at http://www.JPohlmanWriting.com, where I'll keep talking about old TV shows quite a bit, among other things...

Thoughts on Physics Reincarnate

Hello, writing and reading friends!

So, for starters, this is the mostly-official cover art for my next novel, pending a formatting tweak or two.  It's nice because Blogspot takes a picture out of each entry to use, so I'm gonna use this because it's easy and almost automatic promotion.

Awesome, isn't it?  It's by the talented Lawrence Shvartsberg, and it's awesome.  Need I say it again?  Awesome!

Anyway, my fans (I love you, all!) probably remember that Physics Incarnate was written as a single book.  It was meant to be sort of a psychological take on the traditional super-hero story.  Emmett Eisenberg wasn't overtly powerful, from the reader's initial perspective.  He was just strange!  Eventually, readers discovered that he was truly "physics incarnate."  He rearranges atoms at will.  His friends, originally portrayed as potentially delusional, are by-and-large like he is.  They have different powers, but similar circumstances.  They all worked at the Connor Point research facility, under the direction of a group called The Consortium Of Trust, and they were all involved in a major disaster there.  One might think that means they saved the world, or something, but that's not quite true. Emmett, in spite of his friends, isn't a hero by any stretch of the imagination.  He doesn't save cities - in fact, he's come closer to destroying them during moments of emotional instability.  He's not evil, he just lost control over his powers, and they nearly killed him.


Expanded Universes

However, as the book became more popular and as people started asking, I realized there was more to tell about the characters of Emmett's world.  I started thinking, in particular, about James Lowery.  James was Emmett's friend who has mastery over his physical senses:  Superhuman hearing, sight, nervous and muscular systems...Whatever!  It's a very cliche power, but it isn't coupled with anything greater.  No super-strength, no regeneration, no flight; just senses.  Yet James uses them to deadly effect.  Moreover, James was the "Head of security" at Connor Point.  His tale felt incomplete.

I toyed with the notion of a prequel, but I've never been a big fan of them.  I like to paint where things go, not where they've been.  We already know Emmett's crew has super-powers, so there's no "twist" to be found there!  Yet I wanted to talk about Jim's past:  He's Irish, he's got a history with intelligence agencies, and he's the group's unelected ringleader.

But, I also came up with ideas for new villains.  I came up with ideas for new characters in general.  Most of all, I realized that there's some cohesive themes to explore:

 - Physics Incarnate, for example, revealed the core of Emmett's past.  It explained what the Consortium Of Trust was.  It introduced us to Erica Hall, and dealt primarily with resolving Emmett's past.
 - Physics Reincarnate, as the sequel is titled, focuses a great deal more on Jim.  Sure, the book will delve into how each member of this super-group was recruited, but it mainly focuses on a new threat.  It's actually set in 2016, by the way, but it's less "future" and more "present."  Survival is essential, because this new threat is more than well enough equipped to challenge Emmett - never mind the threat they are afraid of!
 - Physics Trincarnate will be the third book, and it is about creating a new world.  I haven't written this one, yet, but I know how it goes in principle.  The world will undergo a complete change and become truly divergent from the one we occupy.  Also, it's 99% certain that this is where the series will end.

The thing with these novels is that nothing is quite as it seems.  In book one, Emmett just seems like an odd guy with a very strange, science-minded point of view.  References to atomic lattices are portrayed as simple metaphors - after all, every "solid" object is truly just a collection of atoms held together by bonds!  And a physicist would be keenly aware of this!  But Emmett isn't just seeing objects as a metaphor, he's literally seeing the bonds that hold our world together.

So, there's purpose behind everything, really.  Even, as a hint of a spoiler, the name of one of my favorite characters - Sari.  A "sari" is a robe worn by women in India.  The idea of an exterior covering isn't anything new to this series, as Sari is originally presented as a 30-something-year-old doctor when in reality she's ten years younger than the bulk of the cast and is, moreover, really just a mystical healer.  I know, "just" a mystical healer!  So even on the outset, her identity is a lie.  And will there be more truths to come, more layers of "saris" to peel away from her?  Well, I wouldn't be posing this rhetorical question if there weren't!

So, all in all, get ready!  Physics Reincarnate is coming soon!

X-Box One: A "How To Kill A Console" Rant.

Howdy,

This is gonna be a quickie.  It's about the X-Box One, and it is a new revision to the textbook on ruining a console.  To be fair, I'm more of a PC gamer, but I have and love both the XBOX and 360.  Well, more love has probably gone to the original, but that's a side-story.

Oh, speaking of the X-Box 1, We'll start with the obligatory "Name makes no sense" entry, calling it the fucking "one" as if this is a very bad pun on the concept of a square serving as a zero, and move on to a file-photo.

X-Box One.  Image Courtesy of Forbes

Now then.  Right off the bat, Kinect.

Kinect Is Terrible

The sub-title should give it all away, really.  I mean, really!  The Nintendo Wii was great, in terms of its motion controls, mainly because they were still controls.  You held them in your hand.  Sony ripped it off, but Kinect went a different way.  And, I can respect them for that.

However, the Kinect has added absolutely nothing that I can think of to gaming.  Sure, I guess it's kind of neat to be able to wave my hand and make something happen on the screen, and I can maybe see that being incredibly awesome in an adventure/puzzle game (think Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People) , or an RTS.  But action?  First-Person Shooters?  Platforming?  No.

Moreover, the Kinect functionality of the 3rd Box is going to subtract something from gaming.  We all know what it is, by now.  It's "Privacy."  Namely, the fucking thing spies on you!  Yep, Kinect's camera must be on, must be attached, and will watch you walk into a room.  So, basically, it's spying on you.

Privacy > Piracy

Oh boy, speaking of privacy, here's a conundrum - who is watching what I do with my games?  Well, if I want to return it, re-sell it, loan it to a friend, or whatever, guess what?  It's a fucking hassle!  It's neat that I can sign in to any XBox One and play my games, I guess, but if I try to "lend" my game to a friend, I can do it once.

Okay, time-machine time.  Back when SNES was still the top dog, my friends and I used to loan each other games all the fucking time.  "What's that?  Secret Of Mana?  And you've already beaten it?  And you're working on Earthbound?  Dude!  Can I borrow it for a week?  I'll let you borrow my Final Fantasy III(6) if you need something in the meantime!"  No more.

Did I mention that, to fight piracy, the "One" is always going to be online?  Yeah, this is another of those stupid gimmicks designed to fight piracy.  "OH!  But now you can run for up to 24 hours off-line!"  "It's a smoother experience!"  "You can have Facebook!"  No.  No, and no.  That's ridiculous, and you're ridiculous for thinking that's a good argument.  Always online?  That shit sounds like a wet dream for the makers of PRISM, the (latest) major scandal involving internet companies like Verizon sending the private data of American citizens to our government in what is certainly a breach of the Fourth Amendment.

Look, I get that piracy might be kind of an issue, but it's apparently an issue reserved for PC games, due to the ability to bring greater game-copying software and distribution to bear.  And, moreover, according to this chart it's not really much of a problem!

Image courtesy of IGN

So with PC gaming set to eclipse console gaming, and with the technical capabilities of consoles having proven pretty much unable to hold up to the versatility and power of a PC - not that they really need to, because "better graphics" are pretty much not a concern anymore - this anti-piracy effort is essentially, as always, bullshit.

Oh, and did we forget the Playstation Network Outage?  Hold on!  Add one plus one real fast, and you get the obvious:  "What happens if Microsoft's network gets hacked or otherwise crashes?"  That's right, you have an expensive brick on your hands - oh, oh, wait, after 24 hours.  How expensive?

Price Tags Talk

By this point, I'm obviously not in the "going to buy this thing" camp.  Two generations ago, I owned all three systems - X-Box, Game Cube, and PS2.  Why?  Because all three were reasonably priced, had reasonably priced and accessible games and controllers (Oh, and the "One" doesn't use 360 controllers.  Ha-ha!), and I liked what it put out.  The X-Box actually was probably my #3 console, with mainly Halo/2 to tide me over; the GC had Smash Brothers, Metroid Prime, some Zelda iteration, and even Phantasy Star.  The PS2?  Oh boy - that system kicked ass!

So why did I ultimately opt to get a 360 first?  And a Wii second?  And a PS3 not-at-all?  Well, economics was a huge factor.  Wii's were un-gettable, PS3's were we'll get to it!, and 360's were applicable!  It also had Halo 3 to serve as a killer app, plus GTA4, plus Final Fantasy support (I never got around to it), plus the Live Arcade or whatever it was that I got Sonic, Scott Pilgrim, and other stuff from.  In other words it was a solid, reasonably accessible, reasonably priced console with reasonably fun games.

Oh.  And here's what really killed the PS3.

You fucking knew it was coming!!  You fucking knew it!  The PS3's fully decked-out model sold for $599, with it's 1/3rd-the-memory selling for $499.  This with virtually no games?  Screwattack did a virtually flawless explanation of why that console had such a shitty life.  Did it eventually stabilize?  Sure!  But it got its ass kicked - hard - early on, largely because it's price point and games simply didn't match up.

The "One?"  Well, it's set to release at - surprise! - $499, as compared to the 360's $399.

The X-Box Breakdown

Let's recap:

 - Five hundred bucks for a system that...

 - Demands to spy on you so it can...

 - Connect you to the internet, another demand...

 - Cannot function without the internet...
 - Could well be leaking your private information to the government...

 - Doesn't allow you to freely move your own games...

 - Isn't something you can purchase if you live, say, in upstate NY due to lack-of-internet...

 - Has a stupid name...

 - Has games which might or might not be good, but can't be just fucking played...

 - Oh, and costs five hundred fucking dollars!

Hey!  Hey!  Here's a newsflash:  The "market" speaks.  That means that consumers have a voice, and when they like something they buy it.  When they don't they don't - and they often buy something else.  You want some real, hard truths about this system?

According to Haverzine, sales of the Nintendo WiiU (Another stupidly-named console) on Amazon's UK portal jumped 875% after the specifications of the "One" were announced in May.  That's specifications, like all the privacy/Kinect crap.  This astronomical price was released today.  And the Wii U's deluxe model is $349 regularly, a full hundred-and-fifty less than the default "One."  Whaddya wanna bet that, regardless of what happens with the PS4 announcements, sales of the Wii U continue to skyrocket as the "market" showers disapproval on Microsoft by feeding Nintendo?

After all, while all I might get out of a Wii U is another meh Mario game, at least I know Mario isn't demanding to watch me wander around in my living room while he's jacked into to the internet in order to stomp a few Goombas.  If you know what I mean.

With Arrested Development Back; Five More Shows We Need To Return

We all had our doubts.  We wondered if it could be true; right up until we saw our friend Gob doing the promos, and even then, we - I - felt like it was just magic.  Or, an illusion.

Gob.  Not Job - Ed.

Arrested Development has returned, thanks to Netflix!  What's more, although I'm only six episodes in and it's sort of a compromise of my values as a critic, well, it's good.  It's damn good.  It's coming together so beautifully that, well, I'm a bit wistful for other shows I loved as a kid.  Or, in Arrested's case, discovered something like nine years after it was cancelled.  So, here's five other shows that need to return - either on TV, on Netflix, or just somehow.

They aren't in any particular order.  I thought about quality-wise, but many of them are different styles of show, so that wouldn't help.  I thought about doing things chronologically, but that's not helpful; do you go with starting date, or cancellation date?  So, this is just five shows in a (mostly) non-deliberate order.  If you disagree...Hey!  I'm just some guy.  You're you!  Surely you have your own view!  And, surely, you've dedicated hours to writing editors and producers like I have.  Right?  No I'm not rabid!

Candidate Number One:  Firefly.

Chance Of Return:  Medium.

Fan Devotion:  Slavish!

Probably the most critically acclaimed and well-known of the shows on this list, I've written about it before.  Is it my personal favorite?  Probably not; but it had some nice stylings, it got a pretty decent movie conclusion in Serenity, and it has a fan-base which is pretty dedicated.  Dedicated fan-bases are important, but there are two problems blocking it's revival.  First is Serenity, itself; in getting that as a wrap-up, it essentially wrote major characters out of any potential new series.  Bringing dead people back, or "having it all be a dream," or whatever?  Not going to go over well, though I suppose it would be forgivable.

Second, and worse, is the very savior of Arrested Development itself:  Netflix.  On May 1st, in the full and raw light of Arrested's return, Netflix bigwig Ted Sarandos said to Stuff.TV:  "..."  Okay, he gave us a paragraph which didn't quite say "No," but he said that Firefly's fan-base had, in his opinion, shrunk down.  I already cited low viewership as a cause for it's original demise.  If that problem is exacerbated, well, I can see Summer Glau needing something else to do...


Candidate Number Two: Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Chance Of Return:  Low.
Fan Devotion:  Medium.

Oh boy.  This is perhaps my favorite sci-fi show, aside from one I'll mention (but decidedy not nominate) later.  I loved the Terminator series as a kid, and boy did I love this show!  Summer Glau did a great job as Cameron, Thomas Dekker did a great job as John Connor, and Lena Headey as Sarah?  Yeah.  It kicked serious ass.  So what happened?

Well, Season One was crippled by the infamous Writer's Strike.  Season Two, besides being poorly promoted, broken up into two halves as TV shows are wont to do (complete with shifting the night it aired), and having an admittedly drunken stupor for a middle-of-the-season, well...I guess that's a pretty complete list.  It's pending death was well known by the time the final episodes were written and aired, which is a damn shame - and it wasn't really well capped off, if only because there were hopes of it being picked up.  And it was - By Syfy, which didn't actually do anything with it.

Of course, the rights to the Terminator series have since fallen into a nightmarish maze of auctions and purchases, and the epic failure of Terminator 4 (That one Bruce Wayne bought his way into) really just kind of left the whole franchise under-ground.  This show was great, with an awesome storyline, very well developed characters, and a devoted fanbase at the time.  Now, however, "the resistance" has proven futile.

Candidate Number Three:  Undergrads

Chance Of Return:  Low.

Fan Devotion:  Canadian!

Well, wouldja look at that!  Another show I did a "Cancelled Before Prime Time" for!  This animated TV show retains a fairly strong Canadian following, vis-a-vis Teletoon.  And that's, honestly, quite awesome.  I try to introduce my friends to it, and they tend to love it, but that doesn't contribute to the still-flagging revival movement.

However, what gives this show a chance of being picked up is the fact that series creator Pete Williams keeps himself engaged with the fan-base, even myself.  Fans produce videos trying to egg the show back into existence, and it still comes up as a leading topic at conventions.  Up in Canada.  Is it forgotten in America?  Not quite; but in Canada, it certainly still lives quite well!

I know, scary - I've actually had, like, something resembling a conversation with a television guy!  Maybe he can help get Physics Incarnate made into a movie...If he can get his own TV show brought back!  Oh!  And speaking of people who ramble on as if talking to a computer screen while they type, but are constantly outrunning the speed of their brains with their fingers!

Candidate Number Four:  Homestar Runner

Chance Of Return:  High.

Fan Devotion:  Crazy-Go-Nuts!

If you don't realize that the above picture is not of Homestar Runner, but of Strong Bad, then you just don't understand, and must immediately go to the linked text within this sentence.  Homestar Runner was one of the biggest things on the internet, pre-Youtube.  Regular Flash animations uploaded once a week, often in response to fan e-mails?  Musical collaborations with They Might Be Giants and others?  A whole five-part video game created by Telltale Games?!  Oh, god, yes!

Homestar Runner is, and was, probably the best free show on the internet.  Yes, I am including The Angry Video Game Nerd.  H*R started off as just something small and fun, but ballooned into a series with inside jokes contained inside of other inside jokes.  It hit on literally dozens of TV tropes, like when a TV show would replace one actor with another without explanation; or, on other, more mundane topics like time capsules.  All you have to do is mash the "random" button about a thousand times a day and you'll understand.

But what happened to it?  Well, after more than ten years of content creation, The Brothers Chaps (and Missy Chapman, and others I'm sure) probably just burned out.  Up until a couple years ago, they'd occasionally drop a new bit of content onto the site, but the latest official update (as per the Homestar Runner Wiki) came via twitter over a year ago, merely teasing another Strong Bad Email that has yet to be made.  There's word that, as Matt Chapman has worked on shows like Yo Gabba Gabba, the "time versus money" equation has led to the need of H*R's creators to focus on real jobs in the face of independent projects, and that would make sense.

But, then again, sooner or later I expect at least one more cartoon to come out.  Or, for all we know, maybe something even crazier - after all, a tremendously huge adventure game was probably never in the original offing!

Candidate Number Five:  Arre--WAITWHAT?!  Arrested Development?

Chance Of Return:  Very high!

Fan Devotion:  Insomniac, today.

Okay, look.  We went from hoping to just get a movie made, to having something like ten episodes on the slate, to what we've eventually gotten:  Fifteen!  I'm six in!  I'm taking time out of my Arrested Development viewing to write this article!  And for what?  Because I am so impressed with what I've seen thusfar that I am confident that any more AD they make will, in fact, be also amazing.  And, frankly, because we have no guarantee that more will be made.

People like to forget that, as explained at the end of Season Three, one of the reasons the show was originally cancelled was that it was not exactly a show which could be carried on indefinitely.  And, people like to forget that writing anything is difficult - writing it at the caliber AD's Mitch Hurwitz and crew do?  Well, Hurwitz himself had said he was exhausted.  Unfortunately, television production is hard to "take a hiatus" from.  Let's mention T:TSCC - Lena Headey played Sarah Connor, but now she's playing Cersei Lannister on Game Of Thrones (an awesome show, by the way!).  So even if she wanted to go back, she's got a whole new contract on a whole new show to soak her life up.  Did I mention Homestar Runner addressed replacing an actor?  This was not an accident.

Moreover, I want to look for a moment at Lost.  Lost was an awesome show.  A lot of people didn't like Season Five, or how it ended, or that it was ever ended at all!  But Lost was the kind of show with a "closed plot," so to speak:  It had an ending which the creators surely had some ideas on, even if they weren't fully formed at the onset of the show.  And even though many hated the ending, and even though I kind of felt a little wonky about it myself, the DVD extra "The New Man In Charge" really gave it a nice cap.  To bring Lost back would probably hurt the series, not help it.

But Arrested Development is not Lost.  Lost is serious - AD is, well, not serious.  Not seriously serious.  True, there may be limits to what the show can become.  And, true, their writing staff is good enough to know when enough is enough!  But here's the trick:  Season Four is proving, so far, that Arrested is a real contender to be more than just fifteen episodes released on one day to temporarily nudge up Netflix subscriptions.  I don't know how Season Four ends yet, and it might end in such a way that the show couldn't possibly go on (for another half a decade, anyway!), but it's good enough that, if the writers wanted, they could always find a way to make it work!

And I think, as long as the writers have faith in what they're coming up with, that we need Arrested Development to serve as a benchmark for other shows which have returned from the cancellation void (Family Guy), and even ones that subsequently failed again (Futurama).

Statute of Limitations: Personal Narratives, Coming-Of-Age, and Employment Tales

Quick show of hands, folks?  Who's seen High Fidelity?

How about Kevin Smith's breakthrough comedy, Clerks?  If you have, you've probably figured out that they both feature protagonists who work in a shop of some sort, deal with romantic stress, engage in all sorts of hi-jinx with their colleagues, and tell a now-legendary "coming of age" story about how the main character comes to terms with their aging.

In High Fidelity, John Cusack's character Rob Gordon deals with a pretty miserable break-up.  He cavorts with the employees he's hired to work his record store (dated?  Perhaps!), and with their help he figures out how to set his life on a "better" path.  He frequently talks to the viewer directly, opening the movie with the story of his Top-Five Breakups.  There's the early-on elementary school disaster, the high school disaster, and the college disaster!  Rob follows up with his past loves, trying to figure out what to do with his present despair.  It's a funny tale, and it's got some great music in it to boot.

More renowned with the budding creator, however, is Clerks.  Filmed by nerd legend Kevin Smith on a shoestring budget, at night, at the convenience store he worked at, Clerks is about Dante Hicks and Randall Graves, two miscreants (well, Randall is) who fuck around at work all day, play hockey on the roof, and - oh, yeah - have to come to terms with the fact that they are getting older.  Dante's conflicted between two love interests, and in the end he has to deal with that problem, as well.

You're not here for a compare-and-contrast essay, though.  There's thousands of points of comparison!  There's equally as many differences between the two.  None, though, are more stark than this one fact:  High Fidelity is based on a 1995 novel of the same name by Nick Hornby.  Did I know this when I first watched the movie?  Nope!  In fact, I have yet to read it.

But I have learned something from this contrast, and from both films put together:  Stories change and become distant over time.

Statute of Limitations

Both stories are about young, disaffected men having relationship issues, employment disassociation, and general-old-lives.  They have fun with friends!  The events of each film (debates over music; debates over Star Wars) are pretty familiar to any twenty-something American male.  It's a universal appeal that practically begs people to tell their own twist on it.  And that's a danger to any writer - tropes are attractive because they're easy to fall into, but virtually impossible to pull off.  You need, at the very least, a hook.

You also need to have something you can still relate to!  After fifty or so years, you just won't remember the details.  It becomes hard to remember exactly why your friend Billy was hilarious, and you'll have boatloads of difficulty explaining why the events of May 27th, 1997 were so incredibly awesome!  And explaining it?  To a reader, or a viewer?  Even when you decide to twist the actual events and embellish it, you're still not doing anything more than patching the core of the story up.

Fiction often has a core of truth; writers draw from their lives all the time.  They're stories about fake people, and the circumstances they find themselves in are only somewhat lodged in what can possibly be real.  An autobiography, a personal narrative, a story about your youth?  These contain facts, or at least are supposed to!  But time adds a fog to certain things, and even well-kept journals and friends who retell their experiences will differ from your recollection.

The point, here, is the same as any other time you, as the creator of art, have an inspirational flash.  If you plan to tell a story, tell it while it's rather fresh.  Sure, you need a few weeks' removal from it, to really process what happened.  In fact, sometimes even a couple years could benefit the wordsmith!  But with each re-telling, each re-hashing, each passing minute, the raw impression of the incidents you were so enamored with become fainter and fainter.  It's a balancing act, just like the act of editing and processing a story can fundamentally change it from it's more primal roots, waiting too long can cause your memory of an experience to go beyond crystallization and into fracture.

Sometimes, you just have to act.