Beh...

...no drabble after all. The idea I had didn't really pan out, plus it wasn't really worthy of a Halloween posting. I'll come up with something Halloween-worthy soon, I hope.

In the meantime, I want to recommend the new TV show Pushing Daisies to anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to check it out yet. In short, Pushing Daisies is about a pie-maker named Ned who discovered as a boy that he can bring the dead back to life with a touch and also that a second touch will re-dead them permanently. Ned and partner PI Emerson use Ned's ability to solve murders and claim rewards. The thing gets complicated when Ned restores his now-grown childhood sweetheart. It is, of course, more complicated and delightful than that, but that's the gist of it.

While it has gotten several people I know to start using the word "twee," it's also really deserving of the attention of anyone who has even a passing interest in the following:

Tim Burton
Dead Like Me
Broadway musicals
bright colors
Amelie
pie
rhyming narrators
television shows actually doing something original, for once

The most common remark I've heard (and made myself) about Pushing Daisies is that in a lot of ways it feels more cinematic than TV show-like. While this can be taken as a criticism (the assumption being that it won't be able to keep up its energy and quirkiness for a season's worth of episodes), I think it speaks more to the originality of the product. It feels different than anything else on TV, and I like that about it. Plus, the fear of "where will they go from here?" hasn't been an issue at all; while there is a chance that the death-mystery per episode could get old, Pushing Daises has also used each episode to develop the main characters and their relations with each other (as Doctor Who shows us, even the monster-of-the-week formula of a show can avoid feeling like a rut when the writing is good).

And Pushing Daisies just looks and feels like candy! Delicious, pretty candy. The fact that most of the cast comes from Broadway really comes across, and in a way that gives life to what is, at heart, a fantasy (this is a point that must be remembered if we are to have any tolerance for this program).

Anyway, please just go check it out. It's been picked up for an entire season, so it's going to be around for awhile, and this delights me to no end.


Something else that's been on my mind lately is careers. Specifically, ones that I would enjoy having. Obviously, I would like to write, but that's not currently something I'm picturing as a full-time occupation. Below is a list of things that are or sound like careers that I am potentially interested in:

• copyright law (of the sort that Cory Doctorow discusses...think digital rights, blog law, stuff like that. Future-fast-becoming-the-present kind of stuff...or at least something having to do with creative people's rights)
• web programming/design
• movie reviews (so, journalism?)
• working for NPR (radio journalism or sound engineering...on a show like This American Life or Radio Lab)
• non-profit management (hey, look how this one moved down on my list...I'm still really vague about it, and my experience this summer was not especially beneficial in giving me any better idea)
• editing (also vague, but I do enjoy copy editing and imagine I'd like other sorts of editor duties)
• podcasting (specifically, running a site like Escapepod, Pseudopod, or Drabblecast...though I'm not sure this is really a full-time kind of option, either)

Reviewing this list, it looks like I should start looking into ways to get involved with journalism/radio on campus, perhaps take the LSAT next year, and start reading books on CSS. I wrote for the school paper in middle school...but that was about the last time I did anything like that. I feel like it would be difficult to break into entertainment journalism here on campus (and I'm not sure I want to fit article deadlines into my class schedule), and WHPK just does music DJing as far as I can tell (I think I've only listened once, which is also a valid reason not to get involved). I am trying out a new extra curricular activity this quarter, but I don't think that being a film projectionist really opens up many opportunities for me other than working in movie theatres, which I have not been led to believe is a really great job.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, suggestions, or places I can look to give myself more stuff to think about, let me know!

EDIT: I am definitely going to apply for an internship with The Onion! This one sounds just about right.