The First 48, which I started watching a couple of years back, is the best show on television.  Following two homicide crime scenes in different locations, the cameras track the detectives as the detectives track the murderers.  The show is fascinating on many levels, as I've noted before.

But the biggest thing to come out of it for me in the past year of viewing it is my absolute appreciation for the true "stars" of the show, two detectives from the Memphis, TN location, detectives Caroline Mason and her partner Tony Mullins.  They are both brilliant characters, hard-working dedicated officers, and just simply sublime. 

Caroline Mason is my absolute favorite.  Where the show excels in most of its cases is in the interogations.  It's fascinating to see how the detectives work, trying to get information or ultimately confessions.  Mason is superb in this.  She knows how to approach people, how to talk to them.  The "good cop/bad cop" scenario is often set, but not in such terms as to ever become boring.  Mason's language and delivery of her queries and questioning effects a naturalized drama that actors would admire. 

But this is Mason herself.  Born and raised in Memphis, in the areas in which many of the crimes seem to occur, Mason is a mother, sensitive to the people of the community, to the tragedies on both sides of the murder, and just an amazing woman. 

I keep thinking to myself how there must be others out there like me who totally admire her.

Mullins, bald, savvy, and good-natured is a terrific partner to Mason, personality-wise.  They seem to be the most interesting characters that the show has uncovered in the differnent police departments in which they film.  He has an easy charm, too. 

One of the things that I hate on some crime shows is the attitude a show might take toward the criminals, treating them as "evil" or "pathetic", deserving the harshest of punishments.   Part of the nature of The First 48 is that these cases are not tracked to their closure, through trial, and punishment.  These detectives are focusing on getting the person or persons who have killed someone, working hard and fast, relying on experience, intuition, community help, hard work, and luck to find out what happened and who is responsible.  They are rarely judgmental in the way that a show like America's Most Wanted is.

I still wonder a lot about the production of these shows.  How much is filtered out?  What depiction of a city is this?  A true snapshot or is it based on what they are allowed to show.  I recall reading that the police departments depicted in COPS, a show about beat officers, an organization representing the police force has final say on anything going out, assumingly to show nothing that makes them look bad.  When we look at the ethnicity of the criminals and the victims, how representative is it?

And also, how does it effect the detectives who are now becoming television "stars"?  Are they recognized?  Does it change their work, their approach?  I would hate to think that anything would hamper Caroline Mason and Tony Mullins' approach and work, as well as any of the other detectives who work is depicted.

But, I do love it.  These are excellent shows, showing a fascinating view into a world that most of us will hopefully never be a part of.

 I only still have one of these, the Running in Fear.  All are acrylic, mostly on canvas.  The period of production ranges from 1993-1999, I think.  This is not everything that I did, just the ones that I have digital photos of.

 Who knew, eh?

It's funny, but when I first saw it, I hated it.  Martin's drawing style is intensely sloppy, loose, and almost unaesthetical.  It really put me off back when I first encountered it in the early 1990's in the San Francisco Chronicle.  "Mister Boffo and his amazing dog, Weederman" (known by some of my friends at the time as "the penis dog".  I didn't get it.

But somewhere along the way, I figured out that he's funny as hell.  Maybe it's just that my mentality finally merged with the humor of the strip.  I now think it's the best out there.

I actually like several other strips in the Chronicle, including Baby Blues, The Fusco Brothers, Dilbert, Bizarro, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, and even Sherman's Lagoon.  There are others that I like quite well, or well enough.  The only ones that I don't read are The Elderberries in the dailies, and a couple others that only show up on Sundays.

But I am a pretty religious comic strip reader.  But I am writing this to site Mr. Boffo.

Here are some strips I like plus a link to Joe Martin's Mr. Boffo site where I've linked them from:

Enjoy!  http://www.mrboffo.com/

Also someone sent me Garfield Minus Garfield, which is uber genius.

Definitely visit it!

Also, I just don't know if I always feel like I have enough to say topically.

Even now, though I feel like writing, I don't have any particular topic in mind.  We'll call this scattershot.

I've saved this image of the snow monkeys of Japan, bathing Zen-fully in the hot springs in the mountaious snowy peaks.  Apparantly it is now a tourist attraction.  Well, as long as people leave the monkeys alone.  They exude peace, or at least the surface appearance is that of some deep, meditative tranquility.  Who knows?  They probably beat the shit out of each other when they're not in the hot tub.

I am reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyordor Dostoevsky which is totally brilliant.  I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I wish I was reading it right this very moment.

My other latest discovery is the work of Tove Jansson, creator of the many things Moomin.  A friend had mentioned the novel-style books as a favorite, but I recently discovered the newly bound editions of the comic strip that she wrote and drew.

Go here: http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/shopCatalogLong.php?st=art&art=a43cd43019761a

The children's books are lovely as well.  We are currently reading Comet in Moominland, which I am maybe enjoying more than the kids.  Oh well.

Lastly, I watched Buster Keaton's The General (1927) with four kids between the ages of 4-7.  Reading the intertitles and explaining the anachronisms of an older age, and watching the brilliant Buster Keaton in one of the greatest films ever made.  Brilliant.

So much on my mind, but it is so nice to find new and wonderful things, especially if I can share them with my kids.

There, I've almost cheered myself up.

Meaning, true crime, real crime, but not my own crimes.

I've been into a few television shows lately, and a pattern has emerged.  On A&E, which used to stand for Arts and Entertainment and is now pretty much reality programming up the yin-yang, manages to host the two best crime shows on television. 

Cold Case Files has been around for a long time now, at least four or five years, and hosted by Bill Kurtis, who I recently discovered was also the show's producer and more of a creative force behind it than just that wonderfully dramatic voice, narrating the stories, the show focuses on interesting cases that were revived after initially "going cold".  I have seen several stories on this throughout the years that have been quite fascinating.  The show is well-produced and lacks the vindictiveness of tone that hurts some shows that further "criminalize" their criminals, judging them beyond simply catching them.  Not all episodes live up to this, but the best ones tend to.  They have excellent production values, dramatic though sometimes demure crime scene photos, and a very good judge of quality content.

The First 48, is a newer show, which I only discovered about a year ago, though it is on it's fifth season.  This show follows different detectives as they research and try to solve a murder in "the first 48 hours".  The premise is simple, that if detectives do not get a solid lead in the first 48 hours of an investigation, their chances of solving the murder and cut in half.  The show usually has two narratives, following two different investigations in different states, without any real attempt to draw them together.  The investigators that they have worked with are tough and interesting and follwing them through the process of investigation and interrogation is truly remarkable.  Again, these guys aren't the tough-talking "hard on crime" types from COPS or America's Most Wanted, but rather realistic folks doing their jobs.  Sometimes the stories follow beyond the first 48, but most of them, even if they get a lead and make a solid arrest, or even get a confession, do not follow through the court system.  But it is a fascinating show about which I wish that I knew more. 

For instance, how do they sort through the crimes to decide which ones air?  The bulk of the murders tend to be African-American or Latino.  Does this reflect the stories that they were able to follow because people have signed waivers?  Or is this genuinely reflective of the racial breakdown of the murders in the area? I have had these questions about COPS as well over the years.  But this show really is interesting on a lot of levels.  The production values and style are good, too.  It's seriously a great show.  But I have a hard time figuring out when it's on.

The A&E site itself isn't the greatest for finding the types of information that I would like, though it does provide a schedule of upcoming showings.

The second tier of shows that I have been into are all on Court TV: Forensic Files, a workman-like forensic science show with lower production values than the A&E shows, but solid and seemingly endless in the array of episodes.  I've only caught a couple of episodes of North Mission Road, which is a show about the Los Angeles City Coroner's office.  The couple of shows that I caught were very good.  Suburban Secrets has proved pretty good, as have Body of Evidence: From the Case Files of Dale Hinman (one of the country's leading forensic profilers), and rounded out with L.A. Forensics which sounds like the same deal as North Mission Road but isn't as well-made or interesting and The Investigators, which I actually don't feel like I care for as much.  There are other shows on there, and I have to say that when I am slumming it, I will watch Psychic Detectives, which is pretty hokey but reasonably entertaining.  Court TV also airs a lot of shows with car crashes and video of crimes in action...I hate those.  I don't even like the incessant commercials for them.

But they don't play those forensics shows on Discovery anymore, at least as far as I can tell, so what are you going to do?

But I also recently stumbled on William Roughead, a writer who documented true crimes of his era: 1870-1950's, writing for "the signet" in Scotland, he also wrote narratives about famous crimes of times past, meticulously researched and written with something that can certainly be called "aplomb".  The quote from the New York Times on the back of the book reads: "The cornerstone of any library of crime," which was certainly a selling point for me.  It's such a different era and understanding of science, psychology, and detection, also rising through the modern world of crime.  He has a wonderful sense of narrative, weaving the stories superbly, certainly enhancing the art of the treatment more than any of these televsion documentaries. 

I read a lot of crime fiction from the 20th century and as recently as last year became totally fascinated with the crime literature of the 19th century as well.  I have a relatively good library of fiction and feel fairly well in depth in this topic.  But Roughead is something altogether different, and pleasurably surprising.  But somehow, reading Roughead while going back and forth with the various television documentaries (note, I do not consider these "reality" television), I realized that I have a significant fascination here, something that I think ultimately I shared with my father, though I think the angles we approached it were extraordinarily different. 

So what does this say about me?  Well, I am not alone.  There is a whole lot of people out there who probably share this fascination to an extent or to even deeper extents. 

It's just something that has been coming clear to me of late, that's all.

Despite the fact that I have more or less run a blog since 2002 in my film diary, I myself, don't really follow many blogs except a couple of friends.  I don't know who or why anyone would want to read my thoughts or ideas or perspectives, but that is the beauty of the internet.  The cost to publish, the ease of publish, just pushes the abilities out so easily.

I guess that I am trying to get back to some aspect of my roots.  I used to write avidly and I also spent time in the small press world, publishing comics and magazines.  I have thought over the years about starting a web thing that wasn't just movie stuff.  This isn't really as ambitious as my thoughts then.  This is yet undecided.  Maybe that is how these things all start.

So, even though this is a non-momentous beginning, here we go.