Less Criticisms Please…

My friend, T Banky is one of the Sages…

Most of the feedback I get hardly comes from the Comments field of my blog. Those that really care send me e-mail highlighting points that I struck squarely on the head or missed badly. Others like T Banky call me late at night to seriously discuss.

The problem with most of us Bloggers, if I get T Banky right, is that we are trying too hard. We all are striving to be too DEEP. But you can’t really blame us. With the rapid population explosion of blogville’s citizens and the even shorter time to read, comment and post, we break our literary backs probably hoping that our intellect will reflect in every sentence we put down and keep that reader coming back not only to drink deep of the well of our knowledge but to refer their friends to the fountain as well.

I came to this sudden realization when I asked my dear friend to give me her impartial criticism of my MN blog. Now I know I probably stand as Number One accused of the very same crimes which I continuously point out. My midnight calls with Banky have been a real eye-opener and taught me a few things.

First of all is the length of my MN posts. Whatever I may not possess when it comes to conversation, God made up for me when it comes to the written word. The total lack of brevity when I am writing has always been my curse. And as Banky told me, so many impatient people are going to get lost even before they get to the very end of the post. I have to learn how to be as concise as possible.

She also wasn’t too happy with the amount of sarcasm in my writing or certain instances where she says I am trying too hard to be witty. Now, that was tough coming from a friend but I had to swallow it as well. MN was created out of my frustrations with stomaching too much bad entertainment from media developers who could have just tried a little bit to inject a tiny bit of creativity into their work. A lot of the terrible stuff we are continuously bombarded with stems from this laziness on their part. Sometimes the frustrations make me just let loose of the vitriol.

Then, I know I work too hard. I’ve edited and tirelessly re-edited some posts countless times before publishing thus sacrificing the very core of my literary soul for the sake of political and grammatical correctness. Some issues I have felt strongly about have gathered dust on the shelf as I try too hard in vain to remain reasonable. The ironic fact that the N.V.N.V. piece which I slaved on draws far fewer responses than the ATM gist shows me there’s something I must be missing here.

We talked for long that night - she and I - and by the time we were through I almost wanted to turn my back permanently on blogville. I am glad I didn’t.

Now I think I finally get it. We all are citizens here for a purpose. Each blogger possesses a vision and a mission and we hope to somehow reach our respective intellectual destinations (my apologies to a certain man of God). Every blog has a reason for being.

Of course, every one of us loses the rudder once in a while. It is left for us to ride the roughs, swallow the criticisms, take them to heart and improve.

Banky has somehow shown me that if I continuously hack and hack away at the system, I would be taking everything away without putting anything back in there. I now have to learn how to criticize less and constructively criticize more.

I am also learning to consult more with the Oracles of blogville, thank God for them. When I’m drifting it’s a consolation to know that Funmi will still be fiyanda, Wole will always remain laspapi, Esquire will undoubtedly still be esquire and Woomie - loyal, unpredictable, DEEP Woomie - will still be the President of the Next Generation. We all have, and are still passing through this threshold.

Reading this, one might wonder: did I take any of Banky’s corrections at all? I can’t help it. I spent years creating this writing style and I will spend years refining it. But I am learning the constitution that governs blogville.

MN will surely still be around for some more time to come. Blogville utopia may not even be around the next corner but slowly and surely, we are getting there.

My friend, T Banky is one of the Sages… Thanks, Banky for keeping it REAL!

Woomie's Comments

At June 10, 2008 3:00 PM, Woomie O! commenting on my blog wrote:

4NE, i have been embittered by the TV content for our young children. Their brains haven't formed well as a result of what they see on TV.
I say this because a great part of the things i know today, i learnt on TV as a child (you will agree with me). Now, when i tune to local TV stations, I don't see the Sesame Street, Barney, Sarafina and other educative Sci-Fi cartoons I saw as a child, instead, these stations 'hammer' our children's brains with Johnny Bravo, Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain, Cow & Chicken, I am Weasel etc etc.
I try not to let my neices watch too much of these things, they learn ablsolutely NOTHING postive from them...truth is, they don't even understand any message (if any) behind these cartoons.
I look at these kids and I want to cry...I am embarassed by what this new generation do with their spare time.
911!!!
our loval TV stations are brain-draining our average Nigerian Kids.
Somebody should ask the Bruces of Silverbird TV, John Momoh of Channels TV, Tinubu (or whoever is in charge) of LTV and the now-reduced-to-mediocres of NTA network, if it is what they watched as kids on Nigerian TV stations that they have reproduced and are presenting to our kids...If these things didn't work for them then, what makes them think they will work for our own kids (and their own too) now?
Did the defunct ClapperBoard and the old NTA network emmigrants leave with the tapes???

4NE's Reply : Well said! There's NOTHING more for me to add... For those of you who don't know, Woomie is a very intelligent young female and I'm not just fronting. Check out her blog here

Inform, Educate and Entertain… And VOLTRON

TV - Flashback - The Gist

Turn your TV to the NTA every morning and it’s a mantra you are bound to catch at least one of the A.M. Express presenters reciting as they flood into your living rooms or wherever your TV set is kept. The flooding this time is pleasant. Believe it or not, you don’t have to cringe every time you see the words “Nigerian Television Authority” on the glowing end of the TV tube. Even a mediocre has to excel once in a while.

OK, I digress… back to the issue at hand...

I love Television, no two ways about it, but for some years now, our relationship has started becoming shaky as I begin to seriously doubt the authenticity of its mandate. Is Television keeping true to that Inform, Educate and Entertain (I.E.E.) Broadcast Creed we swore to on that day when I told her “I do”?

Yes, watching the TV can be very entertaining at times, and if you bother to watch the increasingly socialized social diary called the News you just might get a nugget of information here and there but as for getting an education, I’ve been very skeptical if the idiot box dishes out much in that line.

Fact is, the only set of people who got any proper sort of education from TV were those who were lucky enough to watch programmes like “3-2-1 Contact” and “Sesame Street” in the hey days of B & W programming or even the early episodes of NTA’s “Tales By Moonlight” (as a kid then I used to love any story that featured animals. I felt I must be very smart because I realized early that animals didn’t talk so it must be humans in those costumes! I digress yet again…).

What fun it was in those glorious days of watching “Voltron” and longing to possess the gymnastic skills of Pidge, or Lance’ suave looks or Keith’s leadership abilities or marrying the Princess Allura for that matter. We flew across the skies in their aerodynamically-challenged space vehicles and our fantasies were limitless for even when the black-and-white screen failed us, we filled in the colours with our vivid imaginations. Television taught us how to D.R.E.A.M.

In those days Science was a daily discovery and you could master the rudiments of killer courses like Mathematics or all the tongue-tying complexities of Oral English straight off the TV set. Television programme schedulers were always all too conscious of the slightest details of the school calendar and would arrange programmes accordingly to sooth the tastes of their young audiences during holidays.

Those days are long gone. The youth of nowadays simply have no imagination.

I was therefore pleased when I spotted a tiny glimmer of hope for this generation. From amidst the Babel that is daily programming we occasionally catch a little ray of insight as it shines out to Inform, Educate and Entertain us. Take for instance, A.M. Express, Wednesday the 4th of June. A doctor comes on-air from the Benin Network centre some time around 6:40 am to Educate us on Infertility. Now that’s an important subject so I put a hold on my breakfast preparations to watch.

What really grabs my attention is his definition of infertility which I will try to reproduce as well as I can. In his own words (all the emphasis are mine):

“… Infertility is medically described as the inability of a couple to conceive after participating in active coitus, that is full sexual exposure, for a period of one year”.

(And here I am thinking, slowly chewing on a slice of bread: what does this guy mean by “full sexual exposure”? He isn’t talking of photography, is he? Or radiography, for that matter.)

And he continues:

“…It is medically agreed that the normal frequency of full sexual exposure for a couple in that one-year duration should be at least three exposures in a week...”

Three exposures a week! My hackles immediately rise, I don’t know why. Okay… Cool down. Quickly discarding breakfast to do the math I come up with this:

3 full sexual exposures a week (medically agreed) x 52 (chronologically agreed) weeks in a year = 156 full exposures! For those of you that don’t get this, that means you have 156 chances to get Junior.

Now isn’t that Education? I won’t vouch for the authenticity of this M.D.’s statements neither will I swear by all things terrible that his quoted sources for the “medically agreed” definition are accurate. The only thing I can be sure of is to say I was well and truly E.D.U.C.A.T.E.D.

PERIOD…

So all you lovebirds out there trying for a shot at replicating handy toy-sized copies of yourselves, here’s some very good advice: If after 156 full sexual exposures successfully carried out within a duration of 366 days and the female in the equation isn’t throwing up in the mornings and getting a belly that you can’t attribute to excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages, then YOU BOTH NEED TO GET YOURSELVES CHECKED by a doctor who specializes in full sexual exposures. A pity they never scrolled the Doc’s name onscreen so I can’t help all you desperate peoples with that vital piece of info.

As for all them people who always strive to break all the records in the Guinness Book of Full Exposures, I have nothing (yet) to say to you. And if you find you aren’t batting at the A.M. Express endorsed average of 156, then what the hell are you waiting for?

Breakfast temporarily forgotten, I take a stroll through my cerebral garden, rocking on my mental rocking chair, smoking an intellectual pipe and reflecting on all these. (Would Keith have been too busy defending the Planet Arus from Hagar’s Robeasts to worry about giving Princess Allura her due 156 full exposures whenever he’d eventually get to marry her? How innocent Black & White TV romance can be.)

Yeah, I miss the Glory Days of Television. I do miss Voltron.

PS: Yes, I’m still trying to work on my TAA review titled “And Then There Were Three…” but the devil seems to be in the works. I’m thinking of re-editing it for posting it later this week tentatively re-titled as “And Then There Were Two…”

Stay posted!

Commenting on the Comments...(PS: Help! An I.D.I.O.T. Is Spamming Me!)

Online - Blogs - Comments

I can hear them gasping! There, I've done it. I have shed the cloak of objectivity and brought the battle to their doorstep. I have challenged them and I know they are going to post Comments.

It isn't easy to do but I believe I've done the viewing public a wee bit of favour with my recent posts. But many of them will never thank me for this. It takes quite a struggle to shift my neutrality but it's been done. So someone special (you know yourself...) told me I sound too formal! Ok... from now on, the perspective has changed.

To that someone, I think now is as good a time to defend myself. I ain't too formal I think. Just that reviewing can be such a tiring process most times especially when trying to sound as neutral as possible, even when the particular reviewed piece in question is crap. Just how objective can you be when describing the beauty of an orangutan?

And so I turn to formal speech to mask my disappointment. People who have seen me cuss in public (after wasting hours of my short life watching a crapy movie for instance) can attest to the fact. But it doesn't happen too often. And this objectivity thing dey tire me more nowadays...

As I go through all the Comments that have been sent to my blog, I am humbled. I'm still stumbling. I can only say Thank you to all of you for bothering to drop by... and read.

Except of course for that I.D.I.O.T...
When I joined Blogspot.com, one thing I didn't count on was for spammers trying to use the Comments field of my blog to spread their filthy pop-up advert links. Sorry, I'm too smart for that. Comment moderation is a blessing to any serious blogger.

Next time someone sends me a shopping link or one of those foolish online lottery links with an heading like "I love this blog's topic. It seems you have a strong personality, etc, etc" disguised as a Comment, I'll calmly delete them as usual.

Then I'll calmly walk over to you, politely tap you on the shoulder and personally kick your online ass... HARD!

MN: The Philosophy

All Media - The Gist

Hi there everyone! Good News… Media Nemesis is still up and running. Better News… the anticipation is building. Best News… expect my very first review next post.

Want to know what I’m reviewing next post? Well, I’ve let the cat out of the bag at the end of this piece. But that is a post for another day. What I’m going to try and do today is get really serious and explain the Philosophy / Ideology behind Media Nemesis without using too many ambiguous words. (Did you ever notice that the word “ambiguous” sounds well… ambiguous?)

First, the Name:
Take the name Media Nemesis literally and you get this -

media: mass media - organizations such as TV, radio and newspapers that provide news, entertainment and information for the public

nemesis: literary - a punishment that is deserved and cannot be avoided; retributive justice

Figuratively though, the Media Nemesis name embodies a stage where the elements that make up what the Nigerian public sees, hears or reads as entertainment are appreciated, studied and x-rayed through my limited microscope. Limited? Yes! Even I am not so vain as to assume I’m Mr. Know-It-All.
Despite the negative connotation of the word ‘nemesis’, the key word here is JUSTICE. Due praise will be given to those who have earned it and due punishment, meted out literarily to those that deserve it.

Second, the Philosophy:
As explained in the previous post, the Philosophy behind Media Nemesis is this: Get shaped, give us the Best Possible Entertainment within budget costs, encourage Talent, Imagination, a bit of Radicalism and lots of Creativity OR get EATEN!!! With the number of years we’ve devoted to making and embracing entertainment, Mediocrity is no longer acceptable neither is Budget Limitation an excuse for lack of talent or a similar absence of Creativity.

Third, the Audience:
MN is for everyone who possesses two simple attributes: A Love for Entertainment and Objectivity. For those who possess these two qualities, even the obligatory long lengths of review reading material pose no deterrent.

Fourth, the Motto:
One of the mottos (out of the several) of MN is: No Friends, No Foes, No Godfathers… All are equal in the MN Arena and the views of friends, foes, critics and no-good busybodies will be welcome and where appropriate, even PUBLISHED.

Fifth, the Areas:
News, reviews, TV, movies, books, multimedia (even encompassing video games and interactive content), websites, blogs, etc. You name it, MN covers it!

Lastly, the Contributors:
In sharp contrast to several blogs and in tandem with the fourth point I just made, MN is an Open Forum blog. All objective contributions will be acknowledged and published where applicable though MAINLY at MY discretion.
Why encourage Public Contributors? Well, it would be impossible for me to personally cover and review every bit of local and international entertainment and moreover, a contributor might write a Review or a Rejoinder to one even better that I do.
And not even the Media Nemesis blog is too sacred to be criticized…

Want to be a Contributor, Correspondent or Respondent? Just send your contributions via e-mail to medianemesis@gmail.com or click on the Comments links to publish your comments. ALL contributions (stating name, nickname or e-mail address if possible) are welcome providing that the contributor acknowledges that the blogmaster has the discretion to edit the submitted material for relevance and brevity before publishing and to use same in any other way or media deemed fit though firstly with permission from the original contributor when possible… OK, I shut up!

PS: What better way to start my very first review that to kick-off with the Musical Album Review of Storm Records’ self-proclaimed 1st Lady, Sasha and her debut album aptly titled… you guessed right! “FIRST LADY”. Watch out!
See you next post!