woke up this morning...
...no really, i did. at 6:30am no less. why did i wake up so early? like last year (when i was somewhat baited with promises of IHOP pancakes), a small group of us made our way to the Ann Arbor Triathlon (which is of course in Pinckney...yeah, i don't understand it either) to watch my crazy roommate damon do his thing. once again, it was quite interesting and those of us observing felt quite out of shape (albeit much more sane than those competing), but overall the experience was a fun one, and damon appreciated all of us being there.
that's why i woke up this morning, but there was something else on the agenda, something that a small group of my friends had been expecting, anticipating, and theorizing about for weeks. it was going to be the end of an era in a way. queue up that song by A3...if you don't know what i'm talking about yet, you MAY have been living under a rock for the past few weeks.
the time had come to end the relationship with a certain family in new jersey. creator david chase was bringing The Sopranos to a close. things had come a long way since 1999, and most fans of the series, including our small group that got together every sunday evening (double, gwen, myself), were sad to know things were coming to an end.
it's one of those things where you anticipate it for quite some time, wondering what it's going to be like, what are you going to do, how is one going to react...and then before you know it, the moment has come and gone and you realize you don't really feel that much differently than you did before. or maybe you do, and it will just hit you later.
trite, you may say, it's just a tv show and who really wants to invest so much interest in the stories of a mob boss and their criminal life? if that's what the show really factors down to for you, then you really weren't paying much attention. that and there is a timeframe to consider...my old roommate jeremy (who i've known since 7th grade) once told me about the show way back around 2000, and i dismissed it as it just didn't sound interesting. movies were my thing, why i would i want to pay any attention to a mob-based tv series?
then my first field season came up here at UofM. i spent several consecutive weeks in muskegon michigan, only to come home for brief periods during the summer (not home to Ohio, but back to my one-bedroom apartment in Ann Arbor). i was bored out of my mind during those times. those of you who know me know that i'm not one for sitting around by myself that often, and it will eventually drive me crazy. at the time, i had little choice, i didn't know many people here in Ann Arbor, and most of my other friends were either out of town or too far away to visit. i should have been doing more research (especially in retrospect), but i can't function properly when i'm that bored or stir-crazy (which will eventually be my undoing, i'm certain of this).
anyway, i left my quaint spicetree apartment and visited the nearby blockbuster...i couldnt find anything i wanted to watch in the movies section (often a dilemma for me) and so i wandered by the tv section and saw some season 1 discs of The Sopranos. i remembered that jeremy said i should check the show out, and figured i had nothing better to do, so why not...i rented the first two discs of the first season, which was about 8 episodes. i should also note that jeremy and i shared virtually identical interests in movies, pop culture, etc etc over the many years leading up to grad school, so i don't know why i was so hesitant to listen to him in the first place.
i got back to my empty apartment and popped in disc 1.
now, it's no secret i don't like birds. ok i like some birds, but why some mob guy was so fascinated with ducks kind of escaped me. and therapy? i was not interested in watching an hour-long program of said mob guy sitting in a chair talking to an overly-quiet psychiatrist about panic attacks. but then came the stories with what he had to do over the course of his day...he left out the exact details when talking to the shrink, but we got to see them on screen. we met his nephew christopher (one of my favorite characters) and you're thrown into this anti-hero's world. slowly over the course of that first episode i became interested in what was going on with this guy's family. i watched episode 2, then 3, before i knew it, i was ready for the next disc. i was hooked.
i rented all the other discs i could, and when i couldn't get a particular disc of episodes, i ended up renting the godfather movies (they were of course heavily referenced, and i'd only seen bits and pieces over the course of my life so far). i ended up watching all the godfather movies over the course of 24 hours.
i should have been doing more research, but i was sucked in. i had sporadic field work trips to go on, and i even brought some of the discs along with me for one of them, and watched episodes during my downtime (you know, instead of sleeping).
i also became REALLY hungry for italian food whenever i watched the show...still happens to this day. unfortunately i could only make spaghetti, but that worked for me. sometimes (now this dates pretty far back in the city of ann arbor) i'd travel across town to fazolis to get some ziti just to eat it while watching the show. i wasn't greasing my hair back or pretending to be paulie walnuts, but the show had become a part of life...and kept me entertained during my first (and in several ways worst) year of grad school.
HBO of course has a crazy schedule, and so later seasons of the show were (seemingly) randomly on over the next several years. who i lived with, was friends with, and dated all changed over those many years, but tony and the family kept trudging along...even though they lost a few members along the way, new ones were added on, and some of the annoying ones always stuck around. and i kept getting this pavlov-esque craving for italian food.
fast foward many years to the present. we don't really see the ducks anymore, the feds and the family get along a bit better, meadow is still hot, AJ is still a moron, and most of the family doesn't quite have their grammar and literary references at 95% accuracy. but it's time to go. double and i had been equally anticipating and thinking about this finale for a while now, and it's honestly been a shocking last several episodes, but we knew chase wouldn't tidy things up in a neat box to send us off. he's been regularly quoted as saying he doesn't want to follow the rules of normal tv, and that this show is supposed to be somewhat like real life...and real life doesn't often tie up all the loose ends.
i won't say anything to spoil the end for anyone who eventually wants to see it, but i'll say that i was satisfied with how things "ended". a lot has changed since that month of june in the hot summer of 2001; people have come and gone, moved on, stuck around...a lot has changed. with this major story coming to a close, maybe another one will begin...OR maybe it's time to get more of that research done...
addendum:
if you are interested in what the New York Times had to say about the final episode, and need more background information, check out:
"One Last Family Gathering: You Eat, You Talk, It's Over"
<"//><
music:
"Don't Stop Believin'" - Journey (featured in The Sopranos finale)
"Before It's Too Late" - Goo Goo Dolls (Transformers motion picture soundtrack)
pic:
as if an entry could be made without bringing up Transformers. the first song released from the soundtrack is "Before It's Too Late (Sam & Mikaela's theme)" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and well worth checking out.
that's why i woke up this morning, but there was something else on the agenda, something that a small group of my friends had been expecting, anticipating, and theorizing about for weeks. it was going to be the end of an era in a way. queue up that song by A3...if you don't know what i'm talking about yet, you MAY have been living under a rock for the past few weeks.
the time had come to end the relationship with a certain family in new jersey. creator david chase was bringing The Sopranos to a close. things had come a long way since 1999, and most fans of the series, including our small group that got together every sunday evening (double, gwen, myself), were sad to know things were coming to an end.
it's one of those things where you anticipate it for quite some time, wondering what it's going to be like, what are you going to do, how is one going to react...and then before you know it, the moment has come and gone and you realize you don't really feel that much differently than you did before. or maybe you do, and it will just hit you later.
trite, you may say, it's just a tv show and who really wants to invest so much interest in the stories of a mob boss and their criminal life? if that's what the show really factors down to for you, then you really weren't paying much attention. that and there is a timeframe to consider...my old roommate jeremy (who i've known since 7th grade) once told me about the show way back around 2000, and i dismissed it as it just didn't sound interesting. movies were my thing, why i would i want to pay any attention to a mob-based tv series?
then my first field season came up here at UofM. i spent several consecutive weeks in muskegon michigan, only to come home for brief periods during the summer (not home to Ohio, but back to my one-bedroom apartment in Ann Arbor). i was bored out of my mind during those times. those of you who know me know that i'm not one for sitting around by myself that often, and it will eventually drive me crazy. at the time, i had little choice, i didn't know many people here in Ann Arbor, and most of my other friends were either out of town or too far away to visit. i should have been doing more research (especially in retrospect), but i can't function properly when i'm that bored or stir-crazy (which will eventually be my undoing, i'm certain of this).
anyway, i left my quaint spicetree apartment and visited the nearby blockbuster...i couldnt find anything i wanted to watch in the movies section (often a dilemma for me) and so i wandered by the tv section and saw some season 1 discs of The Sopranos. i remembered that jeremy said i should check the show out, and figured i had nothing better to do, so why not...i rented the first two discs of the first season, which was about 8 episodes. i should also note that jeremy and i shared virtually identical interests in movies, pop culture, etc etc over the many years leading up to grad school, so i don't know why i was so hesitant to listen to him in the first place.
i got back to my empty apartment and popped in disc 1.
now, it's no secret i don't like birds. ok i like some birds, but why some mob guy was so fascinated with ducks kind of escaped me. and therapy? i was not interested in watching an hour-long program of said mob guy sitting in a chair talking to an overly-quiet psychiatrist about panic attacks. but then came the stories with what he had to do over the course of his day...he left out the exact details when talking to the shrink, but we got to see them on screen. we met his nephew christopher (one of my favorite characters) and you're thrown into this anti-hero's world. slowly over the course of that first episode i became interested in what was going on with this guy's family. i watched episode 2, then 3, before i knew it, i was ready for the next disc. i was hooked.
i rented all the other discs i could, and when i couldn't get a particular disc of episodes, i ended up renting the godfather movies (they were of course heavily referenced, and i'd only seen bits and pieces over the course of my life so far). i ended up watching all the godfather movies over the course of 24 hours.
i should have been doing more research, but i was sucked in. i had sporadic field work trips to go on, and i even brought some of the discs along with me for one of them, and watched episodes during my downtime (you know, instead of sleeping).
i also became REALLY hungry for italian food whenever i watched the show...still happens to this day. unfortunately i could only make spaghetti, but that worked for me. sometimes (now this dates pretty far back in the city of ann arbor) i'd travel across town to fazolis to get some ziti just to eat it while watching the show. i wasn't greasing my hair back or pretending to be paulie walnuts, but the show had become a part of life...and kept me entertained during my first (and in several ways worst) year of grad school.
HBO of course has a crazy schedule, and so later seasons of the show were (seemingly) randomly on over the next several years. who i lived with, was friends with, and dated all changed over those many years, but tony and the family kept trudging along...even though they lost a few members along the way, new ones were added on, and some of the annoying ones always stuck around. and i kept getting this pavlov-esque craving for italian food.
fast foward many years to the present. we don't really see the ducks anymore, the feds and the family get along a bit better, meadow is still hot, AJ is still a moron, and most of the family doesn't quite have their grammar and literary references at 95% accuracy. but it's time to go. double and i had been equally anticipating and thinking about this finale for a while now, and it's honestly been a shocking last several episodes, but we knew chase wouldn't tidy things up in a neat box to send us off. he's been regularly quoted as saying he doesn't want to follow the rules of normal tv, and that this show is supposed to be somewhat like real life...and real life doesn't often tie up all the loose ends.
i won't say anything to spoil the end for anyone who eventually wants to see it, but i'll say that i was satisfied with how things "ended". a lot has changed since that month of june in the hot summer of 2001; people have come and gone, moved on, stuck around...a lot has changed. with this major story coming to a close, maybe another one will begin...OR maybe it's time to get more of that research done...
addendum:
if you are interested in what the New York Times had to say about the final episode, and need more background information, check out:
"One Last Family Gathering: You Eat, You Talk, It's Over"
<"//><
music:
"Don't Stop Believin'" - Journey (featured in The Sopranos finale)
"Before It's Too Late" - Goo Goo Dolls (Transformers motion picture soundtrack)
pic:
as if an entry could be made without bringing up Transformers. the first song released from the soundtrack is "Before It's Too Late (Sam & Mikaela's theme)" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and well worth checking out.
posted by Solomon at 12:46 AM
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