Man The F*** Up

Here's a new editorial from a new writer for the Mothership, The Denver Egotist. Very true.

There's the guy who says,

"This work is pretty good. It gets the point across. I put in the hours, so this will suffice."

And there's the guy who says,

"I won't submit this work until it's absolutely fucking brilliant to my standards—which are impossibly high."

There is a vast chasm of separation between these two.

I grabbed a beer at the Breckenridge Brewery tap house the other day. On the beer menu, the special batch IPA read:

"Hoppy? Brother, 471 IPA redefines hoppy." I love IPAs, and I especially love double IPAs, but I hate bad writing. The description is colloquial, that's neat. And I'm fine with the menu asking me a rhetorical question. But what the fuck, "redefining?" Why would anyone use such fucked-out terminology? Everything has been defined and redefined and re-redefined. "Redefining excellence/media/health care/bear porn." Stop. If you're going to "redefine" something, then fucking redefine it. Writing a word and mentioning that your product has changed the definition does not mean anything.

I'm redefining "redefining" to mean: "Too dumb to think of something with substance."

It's a cop-out. The line is simple and it's been written an innumerable amount. No thinking involved for the writer or the reader. Garbage. It's like what athletes say when questioned in a press conference,

"You know, it is what it is." Stop. Consider that sentence. Incomprehensible. But again, they get away with it because no one has to think about what he's saying—it's a pre-loaded response, it's brainless. It means nothing.

Redefining... bullshit.

I hate thinking that anyone would be all right with such nonsense. ABC, a television network that has struggled in the ratings for some time, has a new fall line-up: family sitcom, family sitcom, cop drama, legal drama, medical drama, reality show about millionaires.

Are you fucking serious?

I hope there is a human being at that network, man or woman, with a set of testicles—they need to take a risk. Why not air a pilot that doesn't deal with detectives or surgeons or lawyers? I'm sure the TV-watching public would love something fresh. But ABC won't do that, because legal/cop/medical dramas have always gotten ratings. But this recycling formula no longer works.

I would guess that within the last 10 years 80% of all new shows got canceled within the first season. It wasn't always that way, because there was a time when cop dramas and legal dramas and medial dramas were novel. But that era is gone. Get over it. If we constantly clung to what has always worked, I'd be listening to music through my gramophone-to-horse-and-carriage auxiliary audio hookup. But I have an iPod, because needs, tastes and opinions mature. Someone at ABC needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility, because it's a cop-out to produce shows that you know will get canceled. But maybe, just maybe one or two will stick around for a second season. Come on-—it's not a fucking lottery. Put something else on the air. Anything

I recently read Atul Gawande's "A Checklist Manifesto." He's a surgeon and a writer. He writes about types of problems, classifying them as simple, complicated and complex. Simple is 2x2. Complicated are the blueprints to a suspension bridge. Complex problems are raising children, or immigration reform, or writing a book.

Creative problems are complex. There is no flight manual, surgical procedure or system for solving a creative problem. A complex problem has no right answer, and no wrong answer. But it's wrong to rely on a cop-out. To concede because something is difficult and you can't technically be wrong, is wrong.

"We couldn't think of anything, so we went with redefining."

"People like cop dramas, and I don't want to get fired for signing that new Adam Carolla pilot."

"Well, the brief was vague, but at least we have something for the client."

No. Don't be lazy. You're a creative person and you solve complex problems because you think differently. Taking a risk is better than conceding—at least you're not a pussy.

Read my other garbage at: www.dingleberrythief.wordpress.com.

Email me if you want to grab a beer and make fun of guys who wear flip-flops with jeans.