I was laying on my bed the other night, letting my thoughts wander with the flipping channels on my TV, and for whatever reason I paused on Larry King Live. And I was struck by a pressing question. Who the hell watches this show?On this particular night he was interviewing Sharon Stone, who I didn’t know was still alive, which is a joke not quite as funny in this case because she did have like a brain aneurism a few years ago and I guess came very close to actually not being alive. Fortunately, I’m tactless enough not to care. For those of you who can’t remember, Stone is most famous for flashing her crotch at the camera in Basic Instinct. By that standard, my local video store has a back room full of the work of starlets equally if not more famous for their willingness to flash certain unmentionable parts of their bodies.

I’m talking about Larry King here, though, and Sharon Stone is only worth mentioning because she’s the kind of has-been guest that seems to fill the show’s airtime when somebody genuinely interesting or influential can’t be found, which happens most nights. And you know who is in no way interesting or influential? Larry King himself. He’s got no personality. He’s funny looking (maybe a low blow, but I’m a child of the TV generation and I only listen to pretty people, dammit). I can’t understand for the life of me how this show is still on the air. I work in television. I know that ratings are the end all be all of the industry, and that means Larry King has a dedicated, loyal viewership of what must be exceedingly dull people. Where are these people? I’ve never met them.

Show yourselves, Larry King watchers!

At least change the flippin’ channel.

We’ve all got guilty pleasures when we watch TV. For me, it’s been Perfect Strangers, or MacGyver, or, yes I’ll admit it, Friends. What can I say, I’m a slave to the marketing machine. These are the shows you hesitate to mention in intellectual company (unless you are like me, and you intentionally mention them in such company to spice things up a bit).

I’m adding a new show to the list.

Quite by accident, I caught the first episode of NBC’s new series Chuck. Chuck is a dramedy send-up of the spy genre. The title character, Chuck, is a computer tech who get’s top-secret stuff uploaded into his head (this idea was stolen from any one of a number of episodes of Star Trek and/or Stargate SG1), and ends up being protected/used by the CIA and NSA. Stupid plot points – beautiful CIA-lady poses as his girlfriend, but she dated a now-dead spy who once got Chuck kicked out of college. Ooooh, tension. Really, all of that is irrelevant. Each of the stand-alone episodes focuses on some horribly contrived mission where the info in Chuck’s head proves useful, and in the end his everyman’s savvy pulls him out of a pinch when the super spies are unable to do so.

Sorry if I ruined it for you.

Looking back, I’ve just spent a good amount of time trashing a show I like. I guess the impressive thing is that I like the show in spite of all that. There’s something about the characters, likability we’ll call it, that sucks me in and leaves a disgusting warm fuzzy feeling in my chest when the obvious resolution is reached. Zach Levi as Chuck is very likable, and sometimes when I turn off the TV, I forget for a few moments that he’s not actually my friend.

Adam Baldwin co-stars as the hard-boiled NSA agent, and maybe I just feel obligated to support whatever he does since he did play the greatest character from anything ever as Jayne in Firefly.

Chuck is really not a very good show, but turn off your brain for an hour and give it a shot. It’s at least better than Dancing with the Stars.

LeVar Burton played the blind engineer Geordi in Star Trek the Next Generation. If I may politicize for a moment, I fully support blind engineers everywhere. Not train engineers, though. That would be scary.

Cue awesome segue.

Speaking of Star Trek, George Takei got a freaking asteroid named after him. Takei is best remembered for playing Sulu, The Man with the Most Beautiful Voice in the Galaxy, in the original series and movies. I mean it. His voice is awesome. If I had his voice for just one day, oh, the places I’d go. Someplace with an echo at the very least. I think when we all go to our reward and the great golden gates of heaven open before us and brilliant white light bathes us in peace and tranquility, God will look down from his throne and when he speaks it will be George Takei’s voice.

Takei has been flexing him vocal chords most recently with guest appearances on the hit NBC show Heroes as the father of everyone’s favorite bungling but well-intentioned hero, Hiro. Hey look, homonyms. Very clever, Heroes creator Tim Kring. Takei speaks in Japanese for much of his screen time, proving that his pipes are awesome in any language. Sadly, at the beginning of this season, Takei’s character gets offed, and then he goes up to heaven where he is GREETED BY HIS OWN VOICE!

Incidentally, Takei was once in an episode of MacGyver, in which he also died. Takei guest appearance = dead character. I guess that’s the plight of the gay Asian.

Now I have to decide whether to talk more about MacGyver or give in to my inner geek and talk about science fiction. The geek is strong in this one.

In a little over a month the long, painful Battlestar Galactica hiatus will come to an end when the two-hour special Razor airs on the SciFi channel. For those unfortunate few of you unfamiliar with this show, I command you to go buy the first two seasons on DVD, watch them, then name your firstborn child after me for introducing you to its greatness. This is said not as a guy who just spent half a typed page talking about George Takei, but as a video professional and storyteller who was unexpectedly and absolutely blown away by this series from the very first episode. In a word, it’s beautiful. It’s revealing. It’s topical without preaching. And there are, in fact, spaceships flying all over the place.

The production value is equal to that of most movies, and the special effects are innovative and astounding. The effects artists take advantage of complete freedom of motion inside the virtual 3-D space, shifting the camera in impossible ways, but still owing to real camera movement. There are no lasers in Battlestar. The technology is intentionally anachronistic – bullets, missiles and flak make the setting seem as much WWII battleship as far-future starship. But effects are incidental to the real value of the show.

The drama is real and intense. Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Aaron Douglas, Michael Hogan and James Callis in particular give acting tour de forces. The young Sackhoff is destined for great things (has already achieved them). The setting: the human population has been all but obliterated by the Cylons, an evil race of robots (who become less evil and more conflicted as the show progresses). Against this backdrop, the crew of the Galactica and the few other survivors of the massacre live out intense but believable personal dramas. The social dynamic, not contrived sci-fi scenarios, is what is studied, and the show delves with abandon into issues of religion (the Cylons are monotheists acting out what they believe to be their god’s will), politics and psychology. It is simply a stunning accomplishment.

But wait, you say, aren’t there three season of Battlestar? Why yes, but season 3 isn’t out on DVD yet, and I have to admit parts don’t live up to the impossibly high standards of the first two seasons. The beginning of season 3 is fantastic, and there are a few great episodes thereafter, but the writers, in a half-witted attempt to flesh out the Cylons, wrecked the wonderful enigma they had created. It’s not a total loss, and it seems like halfway into this effort they realized their mistake and did their best to write their way out of it. Season 3 is still great, but it might have been too aware of its greatness, and became a bit self-indulgent.

Battlestar is the best thing ever on television. Strip away the spaceships, and you have one of the smartest, most meaningful shows ever created. Put back in the spaceships, and you have friggin’ spaceships and that should be enjoyable enough for anyone.

Hello people of Rivet,I’m Zach. I saw that you were looking for bloggers. While I am not a blogger as of yet, I am interested in perhaps becoming one in the near future, through your website if such an arrangement would prove beneficial to both your publication and myself. I noticed that most (maybe all, but who’s tabulating?) of your staff lives in the Seattle area. I do not. In fact, I live about as far away as possible (Savannah, GA) while remaining within the contiguous 48 states, and culturally the gap may be even wider between the Pacific Northwest and the Deep South. But I’m not really a Southerner except geographically, and in this age of interconnectivity maybe we should be trying harder to connect like minds in disparate places. Just look at what it’s done for World of Warcraft.

But about me. I have a Degree in Music, so I’m quite knowledgeable about, well, music. I’m a two-time Emmy-winning Television producer, so I have extensive experience in visual mediums, particularly with visual storytelling. I know movies and TV. I’m an author with a couple published short stories, hopefully with more on the way, and I’m working on my MFA in Creative Writing.

If you’re interested in my potential as a blogger, I’ll be glad to send a couple writing samples, but I wanted to make sure the geography wasn’t a problem before I did, and I’m lazy and didn’t feel like doing it right now, and Heroes is on. I mean, seriously.

-Zach Powers

[Editor’s Note: Did we hire him? What do you think?]

Listen to our very own Ryan Trager on KUOW today discussing this issue’s POWER soundtrack on “The Beat”!

Pretty cool!

Martha Stewart’s boyfriend was a space tourist earlier this year. Join her mile-high club (and prepare for the FAIR!) with this recipe from marthastewart.com.

Mile-High Apple Pie

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
• Deep-Dish Pate Brisee
• 5 1/2 pounds firm tart apples (about 14), such as Empire or Granny Smith
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 1 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 large egg yolk

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the smaller piece of pate brisee into a 15-inch round about 1/8-inch thick, dusting surface with flour to prevent sticking, as needed. Brush off excess flour. Roll dough around rolling pin, and place over a deep-dish 9-inch pie plate. Line plate with dough, pressing it into the corners. Trim dough to within 1 inch of the pie plate. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate.
2. Roll out remaining piece of dough into an 18-inch round. Transfer round to a baking sheet; cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate.
3. Peel and core apples, and cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Place slices in a large bowl; sprinkle with lemon juice to prevent discoloration. In a small bowl, combine flour, sugar, and cinnamon; toss with apple slices.
4. Remove remaining dough from refrigerator; place apple mixture into prepared pie plate, mounding it in a tall pile. Dot filling with butter. Place dough round over the apples. Tuck edge of top dough between edge of bottom dough and rim of pan. Using your fingers, gently press both layers of dough along the edge to seal, and crimp as desired.
5. Using a paring knife, cut several vents in top of dough to allow steam to escape. In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolk with 2 tablespoons water to make a glaze. Brush surface with egg glaze; sprinkle with sugar. Place on a baking sheet, this will catch any juices that may overflow during baking. Bake until crust is golden, about 15 minutes.
6. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking until crust is golden brown and juices are bubbling, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool completely before serving.

The smartest kid in my grad program wanted to write his first critical theory paper on the commodification and subsequent devaluing of literature using Oprah’s book club as the focal point.I knocked him around for this, with many snide asides about intellectual elitism, and encouraged him to look at NWA and Public Enemy as a better outlet for his Marxist critique.

Now, nobody needs to get Oprah’s back. She could hire a hit on me with the change in her seat cushions. And that wasn’t at all what it was about. I took him to task because the extension of the postmodern moment, the realization that art does not contain meaning but makes meaning in concert with audience, is that meaning is made both in conversation with and about a work.

(Maybe such distinctions only tickle me, a postmodern filtered Formalist.)

Whatever other critique you want to level at Oprah, her book club has meant more readers of serious works, and to me that is an absolute value. I look forward to being punched in the face by Jonathan Franzen when I one day try to rope him into this argument at a bar.

Regardless, it’s time for me to walk my talk, because a book that has arrived in my library queue at inopportune moments, was once purchased for me and then lost in the mail, a book I’ve flirted with for three years, is Oprah’s next - Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides’ tale of Calliope Stephanides and more precisely of the gene that turned Calliope into a hermaphrodite.

Perhaps the payment for my sin of waiting so long to read it will be to watch it mauled by two million red state housewives. Perhaps I’ll be vindicated and enriched by the breadth of conversation. But 100 pages in and this book totally has me. Does it matter that Oprah was my tipping point?

I just heard the Violent Femmes on a Wendy’s commericial for dipped chicken sandwiches. Is nothing sacred anymore? My college days are now commodified.

Tonight, you are cordially invited to go to the library and make some noise.

Between 6 and 9 this evening in the Seattle Public Library’s main auditorium, Seattle will have its only public-comment hearing about the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to remove restrictions on media ownership. The FCC’s proposed change would allow one company (and, consequently, one point of view) to control an unprecedented number of local news sources, including TV, radio and newspapers.

Tonight’s hearing affects you. Here’s how.

Six multinational corporations own most of what you see, hear and know. It’s called media consolidation, and it’s the reason why mainstream radio, TV and print media look the same, sound the same and bore the hell out of you.

Now the FCC might loosen the already lax legal reins on companies, allowing a single entity to own and control more local media than ever before. If media-ownership rules are scaled back, expect to see…more of the same: Small media outlets wither in the shadows of big-money media monoliths. Minority ownership dwindles. Genuinely local news coverage, and local public access to media, disappears. Media becomes a bullhorn for a few companies’ preferences and perspectives. Your voice and your views are not heard.

Learn more at tonight’s FCC hearing on media ownership—and make some noise. For more information, visit Reclaim the Media, one of the hearing’s co-sponsors.

Holy Cow Batman!

The BBC will transmit, via satellite, a free TV News and Information Channel in Farsi to Iran as early as 2008. Richard Sambrook, BBC Director of Global News, writes:

the new channel will of course be editorially independent. Since the launch of the World Service in 1932, successive British governments have recognised that for the BBC’s international news to be credible, trusted and respected by diverse audiences around the world, it must be truly independent.

Interestingly, he also writes, in the same post:

The service will reflect the BBC’s core editorial values of impartiality and fairness and crucially bring a broad range of international reporting to an audience which cannot always get access to free and independent information.

Hmmmm . . . “editorially independent”? Do the core editorial values of impartiality and fairness transcend the independence debate? Will the Iranian people buy into the BBC, or will they see it as yet another minion of the “Great Satan” ? Is this fancy schmancy colonialism cloaked in PC values, or are does this represent a new media evolution?

Time will tell. This bloggers fingers are crossed in the hope that history will view this move favorably.