What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Thursday, January 11, 2007

   I'M A BELIEVER

Despite once knowing a guy who insisted that government-sponsored flu shots were part of a grand science experiment on the public, I've faithfully taken one for the last few years. That guy was too paranoid -- even for me -- and I knew that the government's motives were more mercenary: the cost of flu shots is far less than the cost of nursing a public epidemic. Even with doubts as to their efficacy, I always got the shot.

This year, however, a packed work schedule combined with an apathetic 'oh, what's the worst that could happen' mentality and I skipped the shot. One week into the new year and I have been destroyed -- brought low by the worst thing I've had in years.

So yeah, I think the flu shot works.

This past week has been a nightmare of phlegm, no sleep, body pain, cough syrup, diarrea and...oh why go on? We've all been there.

If there's any bright spot, it's that my cover story on New York photographer Joe Oppedisano was already put to bed before I was, and I've certainly been able to catch up with what's on TV. I've been watching Dexter and The L Word and Nip/Tuck -- all them fascinating, clever and taboo-busting in various ways -- but I confess it's the sitcoms that have really helped me through this flu.

First up, I was able to track down 30 Rock, the new show from former Saturday Night Live headwriter Tina Fey, who also wrote the witty movie Mean Girls. As a parody of her former workplace, I expected her new show to be more snide but instead, it's like soda pop, sweet and fizzy like its adorable 50s-pop credits. The best thing about the show is that it's providing a solid showcase for the man-who-can-do-anything, Alec Baldwin. If Fey's aiming to be a 21st-century Mary Tyler Moore, Baldwin is playing Ed Asner and Ted Knight at once.

Of course, it also reminds me of the days when Fey and Baldwin first met -- he's always been great hosting SNL and this National Public Radio parody still makes me laugh out loud:



Meanwhile, there's the aforementioned How I Met Your Mother, a show that seems like a standard Friends clone until you realize that, with each week, it's getting smarter, funnier and stranger -- like this bit with the gang worried for Robin's little sister, followed by the now-nearly...wait for it...legendary "Slap Bet" episode where she reveals her dark Canadian secret:





Of course, if that's all just too silly for the rest of you, there's always the intense 24, a show I've long avoided, out of a belief that its politics and mine wouldn't get along. From what I'd heard, the show's hero was way too fond of using torture as a quick-and-simple way to foil terrorist plots (by that logic, the horrors of Abu Gharib should've ended the War on Terror by now) and the show is absolutely beloved by right-wingers. Last summer, the Heritage Foundation hired Rush Limbaugh to host a panel discussion called "24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" "Does it matter?" What the hell kind of question is that? Oh wait...next week's seminar is "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." Never mind.

At any rate, all this had me avoiding a TV show that people have talked about for years, one that then won the big Emmy awards this year -- Best Drama, Best Actor. Meanwhile, in his Entertainment Weekly column, Stephen King echoed my misgivings about the show's "gleeful" use of torture while still calling it "the best thing on TV" so when the first four episodes started floating around the Internet this week -- in advance of this weekend's two-night, Sunday-Monday premiere -- the curiosity finally got to me:



Hours later, I can see exactly both why I resisted the show and why so many people love it. The opening episode hinges in part on whether or not the nice Muslim family down the suburban California street are terrorists. That's the kind of paranoic race-baiting that makes my teeth clench. Meanwhile, an innocent Muslim leader is unfairly detained (okay, some balance, I guess) but wait -- he uncovers part of the terrorist plot while in custody. You see? Locking him up was a good thing!

Yes, the underlying biases in 24 are unsettlingly fascist if you stop to ponder them but the reality is that the show never stops moving long enough to let you. I've never seen anything so relentless -- not on TV, not on film. Kiefer Sutherland is indeed terrific and the plot grabbed me in, held me there and then, at the end of episode four, threw out a truly-jaw-dropping climax to an hour that was already the most harrowing thing I'd seen on TV since the infamous car-jacking on Six Feet Under. Yep, I'm forced to admit it -- I'm hooked, dammit. I was already watching too much TV as it is!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, Orwell says hi, silliness, TV, writing