TV Rots Your Brain (caution: Spoilers)

Hey...I just had this brainstorm as I'm watching the series finale of Nip/Tuck...they're about to reveal the identity of the Carver, a homicidal maniac who's been stalking the main characters on the show. They showed a commercial for the new season of The Shield, & it hit me...I really get involvedwatching these cable soap operas. No, really...I get way too into them. I'm a different person when it's The Shield season, & I can't help but watch Nip/Tuck, it's a guilty pleasure. And I even started watching repeats of that Rescue Me. Not really my cup of tea, though. Weird...they're all FX shows. Go figure. Oh yeah, but how about The Sopranos...I was reading the episode guides of the end of season 5 the online the other day. See, I asked if I could watch a UFC at my girlfriend's place (she has a more comfortable living room & a bigger TV, plus I felt sure she'd want to see the long-awaited rematch of octagon-throwbacks Ken Shamrock & Kimo Leopoldo as much as I did), & when I plugged it into her TV, for some reason all of a sudden she had like, 500 channels. So we watched The Sopranos; that's what you do when you have fancy cable. And even though I'd missed the last TWO seasons, I was right back in the thick of it. Then, one day, those cruds in Eagle Rock took away the high-end channels that we weren't supposed to be watching in the first place. And then they have the temerity to casually go out of service during a) Monday Night Football, 2) the season premiere of Lost, & d) during the Detroit game on Thanksgfuckinggiving!

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah...stay outta my booze! Sorry folks, thats just a little Simpsons humor for you all. Sheesh, talk about jumping the shark, huh? Why won't they let that show die a humane death? Anyways, I just saw on FOX Sports that Damon just got traded to the Yanks. Well this is a dark day for baseball. See how they retaliate for having Nomar snatched away from their tentative grip by a free-wheeling Dodgers front office?


Whoa...they just revealed who the Carver is...or should I say, who the Carvers are? Who woulda thought that it was a secret brother-&-sister team, both of which were known characters on the show. And they would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!


Whoa...I just realized that more than half of the shows I'm talking about are on FOX. Well played, Mr. Murdoch...well played.

I write haikus instead of telling people they're full of shit

"Bullit" is better
Than "Bad Boys II", you pea-brain.
What are you smoking?!

None of us have yet
To die of Asian bird-flu;
Don't you feel stupid.

Your opinions on
What's wrong with America
Are irrelevant.

Bennifer, Tomkat,
Brangelina, Vaughnifer;
Guillotine fodder.

Listening to you
Is a Herculean task.
Must...not...kill...again.

When I said hello
I didn't think I'd have to
hear your life story.

You just spat on me
While you were blathering on,
You ignoramus.

For God's sake, people,
It's October in L.A.;
Please take off your scarves.

Just ask Mycroft Holmes

The first step in conquering an addiction is admitting that you have a problem. At least that's what I hear. So it's with a heavy heart that I bare my soul & tell the world: I can't stop reading. I walk to Borders on my lunch breaks & lose track of time. I borrow books from my brother, since I can't afford to buy a new one every week. When I bring a lunch to work, I sit in the cafeteria reading, blissfully oblivious to the buffoonery around me. I pick up catalogs for the Learning Annex when I walk to the liquor store, & read about the absurd classes they're offering. I read, re-read, & re-re-read trade paperbacks, mostly Peter Bagge's "Hate" & Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor". I...read...while...I...poop. Sometimes I get lost in the book & end up sitting there after I'm done. Yuck. When I lived in Portland, some of the best times were spent sitting alone in a coffee-shop, with a cup of joe & a Lucky Strike, reading H.P. Lovecraft while I waited for the waitress to bring my biscuits & gravy, miles away from any acquiantances who might threaten to disrupt my concentration.

Back to reading on my lunch break. It's the one time of day that I sepcifically set aside for reading. Not talking, not listening, not interacting...reading. One of the things that really frosted my beehive back when I rode the bus to work was that there was always some cretinoid who would ask me, "Whatcha reading?" I got into a couple of scrapes with people over it. Sounds dumb, I know, but when you're immersing yourself in the world a book has transported you to, it really sucks to be snapped back to reality, & it can make tempers flare.

So now when I'm sitting there, eating my sandwhich & minding my own business, my nose buried in a Raymond Chandler novel or a Chuck Paluhnik book my brother has loaned me, my temperament has mellowed, like a fine scotch, to the point where I don't go ballistic when someone pokes at the cover so they can see what it says, or they ask, "Oh, you like to read? Well, you must have read such-&-such! What did you think?"

9 times out of 10, the book they assume I've read & cherished is "The DaVinci Code", written by some pitiful hack, & soon to be a major motion picture that I won't see. Not only have I not read this much-ballyhooed piece of drivel, but I have no intention of wasting a perfectly good week of lunches wading through it. The fact that so many of my co-workers have gushing reviews is warning enough. Let's approach the situation logically. If the people who adore this trite tome have nothing incommon with me, besides the fact that we're both bipedal carbon-based life forms, I would say it stands to reason that our tastes in literature would not fall in the same realm. And no, I haven't read "Memoirs of a Geisha" either, people! Life's too short. Not to mention I've already taken up a costly amount of brain cells committing Star Wars trivia to memory. I'm not going to waste any more real estate in my cerebral cortex with selections from Oprah's book-of-the-month club. There's no room for literary Twinkies when I still haven't tried all the main courses sitting on the bookshelf. So why do I read the catalog to the Learning Annex, you ask?

Because I have a fucking problem! Didn't you read the beginning of this post?