30 Day Music Challenge: Day 7 - A Song That Reminds You of a Certain Event

Anyone who's followed this blog from the beginning (or even perused the archives, which, please feel free to do now or at your leisure utilizing the browse-by-date tracker on the right hand side of the page) knows that the one thing we have always supported here are the real adventures of the unreal Sam Tyler.  So for today's song, I have chosen a song that always brings me back to the broadcast of the last episode of Life on Mars:

HOLY SHIT! A FUCKING YEAR! THAT’S RI-GOD-DAMNED-DICULOUS!

A year? Really? A fucking year? That’s fucking crazy! But apparently so. One year ago today I started this blog with the humble aspiration of becoming history’s greatest writer. And I think by now it’s clear to everyone that that’s well, pretty much come to pass.

Wow. A year. Jesus. Think about all that’s happened in the past year. Um, actually, nothing springs to mind. There was that moron in the balloon. This is kind of what our society’s been reduced to. Worrying about morons that aren’t in balloons. Oh, I know what happened. That guy died. You know the one I mean.

Hmm, what else? Oh, health care. Everyone hated their health care up until somebody offered to change it. Sort of like when a baby’s not playing with a ball, but then if another baby tries to pick it up, it becomes a big god-damned deal.

What else? Well, okay reminiscing. Let’s reminisce about the blog. Okay, well we’ve fully posted two full manuscripts, being, of course, the legendary Eternity Burning and the less than legendary Terrifying Revenge of the B Movie. Revenge was definitely a much lighter note after the heavy, heavy EB.

We finished a brilliant, brand new novel in November, with periodic updates! Not that you’ll be seeing that on Manuscripts Burn anytime soon. Oh, no. Braineater Jones is definitely palatable to human beings. (With special thanks to Greg Lynn Murals for the cover! Cheapest cover art I ever got – one bottle of Sailor Jerry’s Rum. Well, also only cover art I ever got.)

I’ll tell you what else happened. We all mourned the passing of Life on Mars. History’s greatest show. But there is no better memorial than the outpouring of support on Manuscripts Burn. From me. And also that one other guy that commented on it. Thanks, Tom.

In other blog news, we changed formats multiple times. Just recently we switched from a 7 day a week update to a more reasonable 3 day a week update. Earlier in the year I came to grips with the fact that I can’t create a multimedia event on demand, even if it does drive up blog stats. Oh, but you should thoroughly check out our newest multimedia event here:



It’s an anniversary! It’s crazy! It’s celebrating. Feel free to share your reminiscences. Or, just do what you normally do and say nothing.

Memento Mori

Please forgive me for yet another moment of navel-gazing. October 9th fell on a Thursday last year, as is wont to happen every 7 years. I was unemployed for the first time, although this was not due to the recession or anything like that. I had actually been coasting along on terminal leave in the army until October 1. October 9th was one week into a whole new world for me: no army, no job, no longer living in Shitsville, Oklahoma. And nothing but time.

I made more while I was unemployed than I did at my first job out of the gate, so I can't say that it was really to my benefit financially to get a job. I would have had to have gotten one eventually, although, in reality, the length of unemployment would have been extended to 18 months during the six months I could have been unemployed for, so I could still be coasting today. So honestly, money was not a motivation for me to get a job. I did need a job to get a house, so that was one motivation. But my main motivation at that point was loss of purpose.

It's strange to go from a job where you're called a hero on the news by both parties every day to sitting around drinking lukewarm blackberry brandy straight from the bottle. For the longest time I had all my energy and thoughts dedicated totally towards getting out of the army. When it finally came I realized I didn't have anything else to devote myself to.

Anyway, fast forward back to October 9, 2008. I watched a lot of TV in those days. I mean, A LOT. I was watching Grey's Anatomy with my wife that night and planned to go play with the computer or whatever else I might do at that time of night. ABC was clever, though, because there was no commercial break between the preview for the next week's Grey's Anatomy and the next show.

The next show was Life on Mars.

I had, of course, seen a few commercials for this show, and felt absolutely no desire to watch it. I had come across the Wikipedia article on the old British series, and found it interesting, but not compelling enough to seek it out and watch it.

The first few minutes was kind of standard, boilerplate detective fare like any other Law and Order or CSI clone. (In retrospect, that was no doubt the point of the first five minutes.) Then David Bowie started playing on the soundtrack and my interest stirred. Then the "big event" that all the commercials had touted occurred - Sam Tyler went back int time to 1973. And things were oddly off. A policeman has no idea what a cell phone or a jeep is, because, of course, at that time there was no such thing as a cell phone and a jeep was a military vehicle. Ho-hum. High concept, but is there anything underneath the surface?

Then Sam looks out at the skyline of New York City and the World Trade Centers are standing there in all it's magnificent glory.

Immediately I was amazed. For any modern American it instantly linked the past and the present. And, sorry, Great Britain, but in the first five minutes this had proven itself to be a fundamentally American show and not just a knockoff. Here was a show willing to take risks, explore strange new places. Places that had rarely been seen in cable or film, let alone network TV.

C'est la vie.

Here we are a year later, and my life is completely different, for what it's worth. Sam is, well, he's on Mars in the year 2035 as it turns out. And you're here reminiscing with me. And I'm switching between second person and first. But that's fine. Everything's fine.

Remembering Life on Mars one last time, and what it's meant to me, and recommending that if you haven't seen it, go buy the DVD and treat yourself. And raise a glass to Sam and Annie and everybody else, wherever they are. Blow up the fucking moon, guys.

Life on Mars: The Complete Series

In a rare (but increasingly less rare) break from the story, I'd like to dedicate the post on this DVDuesday to a very important release. It's no secret that I've always been a big proponent of this show. It ended before it's time, but maybe, in retrospect, it'll be better that it went out before it got crappy. There will still be a big hole in my life on Wednesday nights, but for now there's not a whole lot to do but drive DVD sales into the stratosphere. Tell your friends, and enjoy.

Buy Life on Mars

The Envelope Please...

And the winners are...

Best Supporting Actor

Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt, Life on Mars

This was a toughie. Although Sanchez was obviously the dark horse and not even really on a show in the last year, the choice between Michael Imperioli and Harvey Keitel was brutal. In the end, though, Keitel had more range. He could be sympathetic every episode and still be a dick in the next without missing a beat. And who else can take a bullet in the whiskey flask and not be sure which flask was hit?

Best Character

Commander Felix Gaeta, Battlestar Galactica

The last great martyr of the last great revolution. After all the bullshit that Adama got them into, I'm surprised there wasn't a mutiny earlier. Gaeta represented everything that every fan of the show saw and called "bullshit" on. What goes around comes around, Adama. It's just too bad they fumbled in the final quarter.

Best Show on Television

Life on Mars
A foregone conclusion by most standards, Life on Mars was the best show on television during its run, with the finest supporting actors and the best writing at the time, an original plot (sorry, Great Britain) and probably the best science fiction on network television in a long time. This show will be missed and I predict it will become the next Firefly.

First Annual King of Battle Awards

Since the Emmys have proven their intense suck, I am declaring my own awards: The King of Battle Awards. Who will win the first KOBies? I don't know. But since they will be declared by fiat, I will eventually know. However, if you would care to make a case for your preferred candidate (or even a well-argued write-in candidate) please make your opinion known in the comments section.

Best Supporting Actor:

Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt, Life on Mars
Michael Imperioli as Ray Carling, Life on Mars
Larry Murphy as Don Sanchez, Assy McGee

Best Character:

Commander Gaeta, Battlestar Galactica
Michael Westin, Burn Notice
Godric, True Blood

Best Show on Television:

Life on Mars
True Blood
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Remembering Life on Mars

Thanks for sticking by the blog this week. Since Monday and Tuesday were contest related and yesterday was an April Fool’s joke, we’ll get back to your regularly scripted script tomorrow. But since this blog has always been staunchly pro-Life on Mars, it would be remiss for me not to mark the passing of this magnificent and unusual show.

To me, Life on Mars wasn’t just a show, it was an epoch in my life. I know that sounds trite and I cringe a little just typing those words, but it’s true. When Life on Mars began I was still in the army on transitional leave. As the weeks went by and I sank deeper and deeper into the mire of unemployment I felt just as lost and aimless as Sam Tyler lost in the ‘70s. I finally found a job and it was like a whole new world. Civilian work? Hourly wages? Production stats? My new job felt a lot like the 1-2-5 Precinct must have felt for Sam.

Sometimes it seems strange to miss a fictional character. But TV shows sometimes last longer than friendships or marriages. They say that it’s difficult to quit smoking not because of the physical component but because of the psychological. Cigarettes are good friends to you in bad times. Good fiction can be like that, too. And you can miss people, and be sad about their passing, even if they were never real. That’s how I feel now.

As for the series finale I am ambivalent.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

(Does anybody ever actually stop reading when they see those?)

Anyway, I have to admit there was nothing really missing. The cops solved the mystery of the week, the romance between Sam and Annie was finally settled, all the Tyler family drama was settled once and for all, and the series mythos was finally revealed.

First for the sort of bad. They seemed to waste a whole half hour of the show doing nothing. It didn’t really start until they got to Hyde, and that’s an awful lot of drama to cram into 30 minutes. I guess they really desperately didn’t want to break from the “mystery of the week” format, even if it meant scrambling to solve all the mythos and emotional problems

I didn’t really care about Sam and Annie getting together. That was a foregone conclusion. HOWEVER there was a brief moment where it was implied that the whole series was actually Annie’s fantasy, and Sam was just some nice young boy who read to her that she had inserted into her dreamworld. That was a mindfuck, even if it didn’t turn out to be the “real” solution.

Now, the sort of good. Everybody got their say, with the notable exception of Chris, who has been criminally neglected this whole show anyway. Gene got his little “tell the bastard that shot you it didn’t hurt that much” speech and Ray got his little “we’re all on a rock” speech. I was disappointed, though, that Sam didn’t at some point say to Vic “thanks for the gunshot, dickweed, but I didn't even feel it.” Too cutesy, maybe.

Now for the really good. The whole heart of the episode, the whole core of the whole show as far as I’m concerned, is when Sam grabs Gene and they hug, and the crusty old bastard says, “I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.” There’s love there, and pain, and secret pain, and seeking acceptance, and finding it in strange places, and there’s a framework of a strange world like Oz. That’s the very best of the show, perhaps the best moment of the whole series with the possible exception of the initial car wreck.

As for the actual series mythos solution, on the one hand, I have to give the creators props. It was truly original, truly unexpected, and although it was never even hinted at throughout the run of the series, it truly does fit in with all the little bits and pieces. Salud. HOWEVER, what the fuck? 2035? So neither 2008 nor 1973 is real? So I kind of just wasted the last eight months of my life because all of it was some verkakte little glitch in the system and it wasn’t even the right dream? And Michael Imperioli never really had his moustache? I’m still in the “visceral” stage right now of post-viewership, I expect after I get the DVD I’ll be able to ponder it more, but for right now I still have this feeling that someone somewhere is saying, “ha ha, fuck you, audience.” But there may have been a brilliant, final mindfuck in the very last instant. Was it really all secretly real and the Mars lander bit is part of a greater falsity? Who knows.

Closing thoughts:

- was Future-Sam a 4 year old in 2008? Did he see 2008 the way theoretical Sam saw 1973?

- if Gene (or “Major Tom”) is really Sam’s father, what does that make Vic? The embodiment of his dark side?

- did anybody else notice that Vic told Sam he didn’t look like a cop, but rather an astronaut?

- so in the heaven episode when “god” said that he was giving him an opportunity to be with the dad he really wanted, was he referring to Gene and not black mentor guy?

- the big one and my closing thought. The very last second of the very last scene of the very last episode has Gene’s 1973 white leather loafer being the first foot on Mars. Does this imply that there is an even greater framework than the 2035 world? Is this really just a Matrix within a Matrix? It gives me a little bit of hope that maybe my investment in the whole 1973 world wasn’t just a waste.

Life on Mars Redux

Okay, so I understand you may not consider this a "new post." You might even consider it a "cop-out" (ha!) But an interesting thing happened to me last night. I got an e-mail from an actual guy who works on Life on Mars congratulating me on the quality of this video. That's right, the post production assistant for this show, which I assume is something on par with an executive producer or director, actually let me know what he thought of the original, shaky version of this. So I was instantly motivated to use the knowledge of Windows Movie Maker I developed since then to make this redux. It's identical in every way except that it's not me taping my computer screen while playing a song on a CD player. It was actually all compiled and edited on the computer, and so the quality is much better. Here's to you, Life on Mars. May your series finale be better than your ratings were. Still the best show on television.

Multimedia Extravaganza: The Long-Awaited Return of "Life on Mars!"

In honor of the return of "Life on Mars" this week after two agonizing months, we'll be taking a break from your regularly scheduled web novella. Please enjoy my fan commercial above and my interpretation of the song lyrics below. Please make sure to watch the show Wednesday night and tell your friends. I would hate to see another brilliant science fiction show die an ignominious death because people would rather tune in to "Wife Swap."

REDLEG'S INTERPRETATION OF "LIFE ON MARS" BY DAVID BOWIE

You know how some songs make you say, "Oh I love that song but what the Hell is it about?" David Bowie seems to be a master of this, with dense lyrics that may just be pure nonsense or may be so deep you'll just never get it. Who knows? Anyway, I've been feeling this problem acutely since Life on Mars started playing on TV and I've been wracking my brain over the lyrics of its namesake song. I eventually got fed up and started looking it up online. People have a lot of ideas, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus. So here is my humble interpretation, line by line and then an overall conclusion at the bottom.

It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair

Ok, so this first verse is a little play or story. The girl is getting yelled at by her parents about something utterly insignificant to her (possibly about meeting her boyfriend at the movie theater.) She's disdainful of them because whatever they're yelling about, it's a "god-awful small affair" to her. And why mousy hair? Well, this puts her in contrast with the movie stars. A movie star has blond hair, or maybe is a brunette or a redhead. You would never describe a movie star as having "mousy" hair. So the girl is ordinary, normal, bland, pedestrian - whatever else she is, she isn't a movie star.

But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go

They kick her out of the house.

But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view

I'm not 100% clear whether the parents were yelling about her boyfriend or something else. Either way, her boyfriend doesn't meet her at the movies. So she's depressed as she sits down.

And she's hooked to the silver screen

Now this is important. As I see it, the song is about the difference between the real world and the movie world. Notice how the girl is "hooked" to the silver screen because she is desperate for the movies to take away her pain, or help her forget, or whatever. She desperately WANTS it to be fulfilling.

But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more

But the movie is NOT fulfilling. Either it's a bad movie or she's too full of her own emotions to let it carry her away. Or maybe the movie is not as exciting as the things she's done in real life over and over (which seems unlikely.) More likely she's seen this type of movie so many times she knows exactly what's coming.

She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

She's probably still angry at her parents or her boyfriend. But the "fools" she's consciously referring to is the movie producers (or directors, or whatever) who expect her to like this drivel.

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy

This is where the song goes really up tempo. This is all the stuff that's going on in the movie (or in movies in general.) Sailors dancing like in a musical, cavemen like in a prehistoric flick (or maybe the "cavemen" part is a jibe at the sailors.) A cops and robbers movie. This stuff actually sounds interesting and Bowie sings it like it's interesting and it's clearly nothing that the girl with the mousy hair has lived "ten times or more." This is where I get the impression that it's not actually a bad movie, but she is just still too angry to get lost in the power of cinema.

Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show

Kind of a snarky comment about the cop. He's just a character in a movie, so he can't possible know if his movie is a blockbuster or not.

Is there life on Mars?

The central question of the song. It could mean a couple of things. A) Going with the movie theme, it could be describing a science fiction type movie. B) The girl is so fed up with her terrestrial life that she wants to go as far away as possible to Mars. C) The song's narrator is so disgusted by the crass commercialism of human life that he hopes there's life elsewhere. I think in this first chorus it's a combination of A and B and in the second chorus it's very clearly C.

It's on America's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow

The play or story is over in the second verse. Now we're talking about broad generalities of consumer culture. The girl in the story was just a victim of a society that values pop culture as the remedy for all ills. Basically, Mickey Mouse used to be just a cute little cartoon character. But he grew up to be a cash cow, allowing the Disney Empire with all its pop culture dreck to flood the world.

Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again

This part's kind of complicated. It's kind of about communism, but kind of not. The workers used to strike for benefits and money, but now they're striking for "fame" in other words, they don't understand why they can't be movie stars. John Lennon went from being working class to being bigger than Jesus. But he's on sale again - he sold out. Also, there's kind of a Lennon/Lenin homonym thing, especially implied following a line about workers. Maybe Lenin has sold out, too.

See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads

This is saying people are tiny creatures and is also a callback to the girl with the "mousy" hair. Ibiza is a Spanish island known for English tourists, kind of how Americans see Cancun. The Norfolk Broads is a network of rivers in England, kind of how Americans see Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. So I guess this is a funny way of saying all the English people - sort of how we might say from Maine to California or from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But I also think this refers to humanity as a whole, and Bowie just couched it this way because he is English.

Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns

"Rule, Brittania!" is a British patriotic song, but not the national anthem, sort of like "God Bless America." I take this bit to mean that we satisfy ourselves with the pervasiveness of pop culture by claiming that some things are out of bounds for pop - God or family or country or what have you. So, "Rule Brittania is out of bounds" is a way of saying, "You can commercialize everything else, but you can't commercialize patriotism!" Which he then immediately and sarcastically negates by saying it's only out of bounds to a few people - in other words, you're fooling yourself if you really think you can't commercialize everything.

But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

I guess this is Bowie, or the narrator, saying that he's contributing to the malevolence of pop culture himself. He's the one who's asking you to forget your sorrows in the movies. Not only that, he keeps churning out the same crap over and over again. That's why the girl with the mousy hair keeps seeing the same crap over and over again. He's the fool whose eye the girl was ostensibly spitting in during the first verse.

Conclusion: The impression I get is that people's lives are so miserable that they only have solace in pop culture, escaping into movies. People are the metaphorical mice and the literal mouse (Mickey) is a metaphorical monster preying on us. This situation is so miserable, that we can only hope the people on Mars have it better, and maybe we can escape there someday.