Man in Hightower Netflix

Tue Dec 8 11:38:25 CST 2015

Anyone see the German series, Deutschland 83? It's about spies in Berlin in the same period. My favorite moment: our intrepid hero breaks into a safe to photograph documents, only to discover … a floppy disk.

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Monte Davis 

Sent: Dec 8, 2015 11:35 AM

To: Perry Noid 

Cc: David Morris , Kai Frederik Lorentzen , pynchon -l 

Subject: Re: Man in Hightower Netflix

That's a comfort -- seriously.
On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Perry Noid  wrote:
I can tell you that myself and my friends who were born in the 80s are well aware that The Americans is utter fiction. To me it's like Bond or George Smiley. 

On Tuesday, December 8, 2015, Monte Davis  wrote:
I wonder about the demographics for The Americans -- i.e., how many 20- or 30-somethings are getting their "historical" view of the late Cold War from it? I'm thinking of meme complexes such as the Wild West,  or "Untouchables" crime in the Roaring Twenties (both quite limited and transient in fact, but huge in cultural weight)... or for that matter "24" and some other post-9/11 portrayals of the Global War on Something or Other.
I think I was paying attention in the 1980s -- and I don't remember 1% of The Americans level of espionage-related violence in and around Washington, DC. I thought the whole point of superpower empire was that we got to offshore the dirty work to Beirut, San Salvador, Kabul, Luanda, etc...?
On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 10:10 AM, Monte Davis  wrote:
I 
On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:49 AM, Perry Noid  wrote:
Ooh that looks good and it reminds me. I also love the TV show The Americans. It's junk television and totally preposterous at times but very very entertaining. 

On Tuesday, December 8, 2015, Monte Davis  wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FppW5ml4vdw

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:10 AM, David Morris  wrote:
Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.From 1984, by George Orwell. 
Published by Unknown in 1948
On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 3:23 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen  wrote:

      THE TUBE

Oh ... the ... Tube!
It's poi-soning your brain!
Oh yes....
It's dri-ving you, insane!
It's shoot-ing rays, at you,
Over ev'ry-thing ya do,
It sees you in your bedroom,
And --- on th' toi-let too!
            Yoo Hoo! The
Tube....
It knows your ev'ry thought,
Hey, Boob, you thought you would-
T'n get caught ---
While you were sittin' there, starin' at "The
Brady Bunch,"
Big fat computer jus'
Had you for lunch, now Th'
Tube ---
It's plugged right in, to you!

(Vineland, pp.336-337)

      I'm watching too much TV too, but the thread simply asked for this
      song. And isn't it amazing how Pynchon anticipated 'Smart-TV?'

      On 08.12.2015 05:14, John Bailey wrote:

      A lot of people are loving Mr Robot (which I haven't seen). In the
Black Mirror vein I believe.

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Perry Noid  wrote:

        And oh yeah I did like Breaking bad but that was another one whose ending
annoyed me. The penultimate episode worked better as an ending imo. They
filmed the first season in Albuquerque during my final year at UNM and my
compatriate played the bratty kid in the first episode so it was a mandatory
watch. Show got harder for me to watch after moving out of Albuquerque. Was
like becoming the outsider and seeing the city with a different perspective.
Was a dirty place for me and it became clearer when recognizing the
landmarks with a sufficient physical detachment from the place. I dunno, the
show felt really icky. Great show though overall.

On Monday, December 7, 2015, David Morris  wrote:

          Breaking Bad was superb. I don't know Luther.  Is on Netflix or Amazon?

On Monday, December 7, 2015, Allan Balliett 
wrote:

            Perry - What about Luther ? Or The Wire? You didn't like True Detective?
Or the "recent" BBC Sherlock Holmes shows? I agree about Man in the High
Castle. Too many of the binge tv series get sidetracked into unimportant
character stories. (Good to see that Luther is getting a second coming as an
American series. If its anything like the clip I saw on Late Night the other
night, it's going to be a good un.)

-Allan in WV

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 7:22 PM, Perry Noid  wrote:

              When it comes to teevee, sopranos and mad men spoiled me. Nothing else
has really satisfied me.

On Monday, December 7, 2015, Perry Noid  wrote:

                I couldn't make it through the first episode.

On Monday, December 7, 2015, David Morris  wrote:

                  Ten episodes in, and just tolerating it. Way too slowly paced and full
of irrelevant personal drama interactions.  I haven't read the book, but I'm
sure the plot is more important in the book than it is in this show.

David Morris

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l