Mighty Forces

When I watch "30 Rock," things seem a little better, for a while.

Well not really. But it makes a great post headline, don't you think?

Actually I had an extremely vivid dream that Martha Stewart had hired me to do flower arranging for a party she was giving. Which is funny, because I don't know anything about flowers or arranging them.

When I got to her house, she asked me to cut up lemons into perfect little segments, something I know from watching Top Chef is called making supremes. I did that for a while, and then all the flowers arrived, just in big bundles like from a flower wholesaler. And I was supposed to arrange them. But I just sat around and didn't do anything, and I worried when Martha was going to come back and yell at me.

In other news, I've reached a Survivor sort of point with Top Chef. It's just too similar, and I'm not getting enough entertainment out of it considering the amount of time you have to dedicate in order to watch a whole season. Actually, this happened to me with Survivor at exactly the same point - the very beginning of the fourth season. I had watched the first three seasons of Survivor with great interest, and wrote a lot about it on my old site, words mean things. I had quite a crush on Ethan from the Africa season.

But the fourth one rolled around and I thought, oh, another jungle with random people. And that was it for me. Now the same thing's happened with Top Chef. It's just the same thing over and over. And since I'm one of the little Caligulas created by the YouTube saturation of our culture, I demand to be ENTERTAINED!

Dance, monkey, dance!

"I am qualified to represent America. Because, like America, I am heavily in debt, I'm about ten percent gay, and I have a really bad gas problem."

-Tim Calhoun (Will Forte) on SNL

I am often a bigger fan of the second- or third-level characters than I am the main ones. My favorite Simpsons character of all time is probably Dr. Nick Riviera ("See you in the operating place!"), and I also love Hans Moleman. And on Saturday Night Live, I love Tim Calhoun. He was on the other night and it was a treat.

"I propose we start a Cow College where we teach cows how to talk. I propose we start with the word 'moo' to build up their self confidence."

"There are times when I'm not gay at all. But then there are other times I'm so gay it more than makes up for it."

Of course, a big part of it is Will Forte's halting, whispery delivery. Calhoun in '08!

I don't think it's too shocking of an admission that I watch a fair amount of trashy reality TV. And since Ben "I don't believe in evolution" Stein's model show finished up, I've been watching "Make Me A Supermodel." Yes, I know. But hey, I could be addicted to crack or spend my nights mugging old ladies. So it's not really all that bad, is it?

Last night's episode was particularly surreal. Some of my favorite moments:

• Tyson Beckford wearing a paisley ascot, and exhorting Perry upset over problems with his girlfriend that "This could kill a normal man. But not a supermodel."
• Perry lying in bed with his legs spread, openly fondling himself over his black briefs.
• Holly, transported to a luxury hotel in New Orleans for a fashion shoot, getting teary-eyed at her obligatory Habitat for Humanity assignment. "She {sob} lost her house in a storm!" It was more than two years ago, Holly. That woman is over it, why can't you be?

In an online discussion of Hillary Clinton's campaign talking about which states matter and which don't, someone brought up this classic from C. Montgomery Burns:

"This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you."

"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."

Of course it's Grandpa, but it's also fun to read the quote in your head using Fred's voice.

(This post is dedicated to The Other Adam, who I think loves Grandpa Simpson as much as I do.)

Are the hosts on HSN envious of the QVC hosts?

Woody: "I believe I was elected to the City Council as an agent of change. And I fully intend to live up to that pledge: I will make change."
Dr. Crane: Change 'change' to 'a change'.
Woody: A what?
Dr. Crane: You see, in here, you make 'change'. There, you make 'a change'. So, just make the change. Change 'make change' to 'make a change'.
Dr. Crane: [frustrated and yells] Oh, just change it!
[Frasier storms off]
Woody: [to Norm] Boy, I think I see why Dr. Crane never cures anybody.

Thanks to Balloon Juice for finding this wonderful bit of dialogue from "Cheers."

1. Jo
2. Tootie
3. Natalie
4. Blair

Last night Bill O'Reilly called DailyKos.com a "hate site," run by "far left hatemongers." He rattled off some random comments from the site, like how someone said "Better luck next time" when Dick Cheney was almost blown up in Iraq. And then O'Reilly said this about the site:

"It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. There's no difference."

I swear, irony is lost on these people.

It reminds me of this story from the late Molly Ivins:

I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat'n'Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their members is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, "I think Rush is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don't know what the niggers will find to gripe about now."

Through a strange path of web searches this morning, I came upon an "Alias" parody I wrote during the show's first season. People probably barely remember that show now, and I don't think my parody was entirely successful. But it gave me a chuckle.

Saw a few "Bionic Woman" previews on TV over the weekend. I couldn't care less about the new show, but bring on those Lindsay Wagner DVDs!

I believe that HBO's "Big Love" is the best-written and best-acted show on television right now.

When I first heard the premise - a middle-class Utah family with one husband and three wives tries to co-exist with the outside world - I thought it was too much of a stunt, too high-concept to be entertaining. Boy was I wrong. This is a roller-coaster of a show, swinging from comedy to drama with ease and packing more into one epsiode than most committee-created network products do in an entire season. It's also one of those rare treats that uses its high-concept premise to illuminate our "real" lives in unexpected and fascinating ways.

It doesn't hurt that the leads act the hell out of their parts. Jeanne Tripplehorn in particular, who I mostly think of as a joke for starring in both "Basic Instinct" and "Waterworld," is a revelation. Another hallmark of a great TV show (or movie or book) is how even the smallest of bit players inhabit characters that are engaging and real. The lineup is impressive: Bruce Dern, Grace Zabriskie, Mary Kay Place, Harry Dean Stanton, and more. I read online that Ellen Burstyn is joining the cast this season - can it get any better than that?

Like every other TV show in existence, "Big Love" will have regular DVD releases. But right now, with Season Two just starting, the show is one of the few things on TV I look forward to each week.

Highly recommended.

Over the weekend I watched an entire double episode of the original "Bionic Woman" series. In a tiny window on a series of chopped-up video segments. On YouTube.

Clearly, if "Bionic Woman" doesn't come out on DVD in the United States soon, I may suffer a mental breakdown of some sort.

There's no denying the charms of John Krasinski, "Jim" on "The Office." But I must admit, especially after last night's episode, I have quite a crush on Toby, the downtrodden, Eeyore-like HR guy who was left at the office while the rest of the staff went to the beach. Life just can't cut Toby a break. He's definitely my favorite second-tier character on the second-best-written show now on TV.