It's a weird world out there.

Today started a little strangely.

In my ongoing effort to shield a certain husband of mine from my SportsCenter addiction and statistical / win-loss observation / bracket preparation, I watch ESPN in the mornings at the gym. I don't mind that it repeats, but I do mind when someone "accidentally" changes it from Sports Center to plain ol' ESPN News. BO-RING. Anyway, this morning ESPN was covering the much ballyhooed appearance of Roger Clemens before members of the House committee on steroids in baseball this morning. Somehow, the whiz collection at ESPN managed to create a montage using highlights of Clemens' lawyer talking, George Mitchell delivering the report, any and all follow-up news coverage, and Brian McNamee's lawyer talking. I'd never seen a lawyer highlight before, but there's a first time for everything.

Here's something that's not at all weird - today my Grandma (we call her Gommy) turns 90. I asked her today if she was excited to be getting past 89. Her answer: "Man Alive!" In May she had a stroke - or a series of strokes - and was on the mend for most of the summer. Now, though, she seems mostly recovered and is in good spirits and relatively good health. What a blessing!

We moved in with Gommy in 1984. I know my brother, sister, and I have benefitted from her wisdom, her sharing life lessons regarding not drinking any water if you've been bombed on champagne, and her immesurable contribution to our lives, our projects, and our day-to-day well- being (including and especially the introduction of Apple Jacks to my diet circa 1987). I told her as much today, and I'm grateful that despite the strokes and other health challenges she's faced in the last year, she's seen it through to this day. I wished her as many more as she can handle.

Relief!

First: 207 improv types freeze simultaneously in the great hall of Grand Central Station. Amazing!

After a few weeks in the desert of American Gladiators, Pros vs. Joes, reruns of The Office and The Biggest Loser, LOST has returned. It could not have come at a better time. Last week we recorded Antiques Roadshow in HD.

I was really impressed with Thursday's episode because the writers have managed to move the story forward. Moving the story forward is not the same as answering questions, but in the age of overblown plot-lines and questionable character development being able to advance the plot is an achievement to behold on network television. Lance Reddick asking Hurley "Are they still alive?" cemented the future trajectory of the show. It also managed to give us the specter of a villain, which the show needs. Sorry to those of you opposed to binary oppositions, but a good story needs a villain (or at least an entire cast of characters with questionable morals - cue the Wire).

I am part of a telly-obsessed family, so most of us gathered last night for tapas and LOST deconstruction. The hawkeye - my sister, KK - confirmed that it was Jack's dad in the rocking chair. Cue speculation! This will send a few of us hunting for Christian Shepherd in the next few episodes.

According to AICN, no Jack flashback/forward in sight. Michael is guaranteed to return in the last ep of this short season. Good! Who cares about Jack!?

Also returned (to my great joy): Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBCA - it's not as good or as entertaining when bleeped, but the stories are still horrifying. We watched the first episode of Eli Stone, and I thought it was pretty good. The George Michael soundtrack didn't hurt.

At least Hurley liked it.

On a tip from a friend, I started looking for reviews of LOST and Philosophy. The amazon customer reviews are nice (my chapter even gets a direct mention). It appears Jorge Garcia - who plays Hurley on the show - likes the mention of his character as exemplifying Mill's Utilitarianism. Hmmm.

So much for that idea ...

We have spent the last week playing the Nintendo Wii with AV's family. I have tennis/bowling elbow. We tried other games, but tennis and bowling were more fun, faster, and captivating to watch (which is weird, I know) than the real thing ... mostly.

In more news about things I like, season five of The Wire starts on Sunday night. I can barely contain myself. We recently worked our way back through seasons three and four, and could not believe the storytelling, craftsmanship (in terms of writing, directing and acting). Even AV, champion of David Milch and Deadwood as the best show on television recanted after seeing these last two seasons. It's like a novel on television, and almost every article out there makes some kind of comparison to Dickens. That's good, because I don't read novels anymore I may as well watch them. Certain circles of mine will be horrified by that statement.

Two articles: The Angriest Man in Television; The Believer - Interview with David Simon (by Nick Hornby). Follow at your own peril, since social realism generally employs bad language.

Susan has indicated her plans to blog about her in-process thesis - I begin the research phase of mine this semester, and so I am interested in bits and pieces here and there. No New Years Resolutions (or erroneously-titled "Long-Term Projects," which faded by June last year) this year - just hopes for health, happiness, and full Intro to Philosophy courses.

Back, Looking

I'm relieved to announce that all that is left is grading. I shouldn't say "all," I guess, because that is pretty much everything. In the last week I finished up an internship, finished up an article on lies and special effects (that I thought wasn't due until next week, but there's nothing like working under pressure, right?), and said goodbye to the 106 students who made it through to the end of the semester.

As a celebration, we saw I Am Legend this afternoon. Some individual decided it would be a good idea to bring his young children to see this film. There is a series of gut-wrenching scenes - even for adults - that made one of the kiddos cry. That poor kid continued whimpering for a little bit, and that little sound of despair set me crying. Fortunately, the family left shortly after that ... and a good thing too. The movie was a little more than intense. Exhibit A: I spent about 75 minutes with my hand over my mouth in an attempt to muffle a scream that I was certain would come out of my mouth at any second. Exhibit B: the woman two seats over who insisted on narrating the film for us at regular speaking volume: "Oh, he must need that specimen for scientific purposes."

Those who know me and tolerate my company know I'm a regular reader of Ken Jennings' blog. After last week's announcement that Alex Trebek suffered a minor heart attack, he wrote this post. Best wishes for a swift recovery, Trebek. Come back soon to continue putting the screws to folks in the studio audience asking you poorly-conceived questions!

There's a lot more in my mind than I can muster the typing strength for, but I hope that the next week or so will return this pasttime to a semi-regular status. I'm looking forward to a spring semester threatened, not by the grading required by 121 students, but by Husserl and Heidegger (and maybe even Levinas and Derrida ... but who knows), preparation for a Master's Thesis, and another go-round with Intro to Philosophy and Logic. At least in the interim, I'm looking forward to a break.

Week Seven

I am counting weeks.

This weekend I attended a departmental gathering (perhaps one of the most enjoyable of these sorts of things, ever) with my former professors and now colleagues. In particular, it was funny to hear Tom Duggan (the Grand Ole Opry of R's philosophy department) relate a story from one of his first outings as a Jesuit Scholastic, which involved scaring the living crap out of a study hall full of freshman boys. And one of the freshman boys in this story is the father of one of my former classmates and acquaintances. This acquaintance of mine won the venerable "Mr. Regis" competition by stuffing 78 grapes in his mouth, which I - in my co-hosting Vanna White get up (an old prom dress) - had to catch as they came out of his mouth in a hail of spit and grape juice. Memories. Pretty entertaining, if I do say so myself.

Speaking of memories, AV and I are s-l-o-w-l-y making our way through The War. We just finished the second episode last night, and one thing I found myself enjoying immensely was the color photographs and color film, particularly of Tunisia. It's a habit of students of history to imagine things in black and white (or in bland half-color, thank you Steven Spielberg*), thanks to newsreel images. It's a surprise and a kind of visual shock to see events of WWII recorded in color. We are still with last week's observations about all the foley work (Crash! Bang! Boom! Explode three times for effect!). But, the stories are still good and riveting, and I even teared up a little bit when I saw Rosie burning holes in airplane parts. Women's lib, man!

*The notable exception is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), which is in full color and features a pre-JC Jim Caveziel in a heartbreaking role. It's Malick, so it's poetry and amazing, but I'm not sure if it aspires to be the historical document that Saving Private Ryan (also 1998) does.

In other news, I had "the talk" with one of my classes about the persistent text messaging. One of our class meetings last week was an absolute zoo - people were talking, texting (you know, as if I can't see what you're doing), sleeping, the whole works. It's exhausting to try and teach in those conditions, because it's so damned distracting. I told my students as much this afternoon, and as I was giving the talk I'm pretty sure that one of the students was sending a text message. AV and I had an enjoyable conversation with another teacher this weekend, and she suggested a kind of in-school scrambler for cell phone signals. It's like the TV-B-Gone but for beleaguered teachers. A battle I'll never win, I guess.

I'm planning to spend at least part of the evening watching the ROCKIES hopefully pull out one of the most exciting playoff chases in recent memory. I need something to distract me from the a-miserable Mets' catastrophic collapse yesterday. This picture, which was on the front of this morning's NY Times, really is worth a thousand words:

PHOTO: JOHN DUNN - NEW YORK TIMES

Story ... Straining

Behold the appearance of Beardy MacJugface!

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Heroes manages to get worse. The insistence on adding more characters is really a bad move, because in trying to keep up with them all we learn absolutely nothing in terms of plot advancement. Either they get rid of half the characters or they fire the writers who can't hold the story together. Also, what was up with that totally belabored (and belaboring of the nothing that followed) sequence of shots around the Bennett/Butler dinner table? What the heck was the point of that? Oh man.

I've said it before, but one of the reasons LOST is so much more conceptually successful is that they pick a character and tell that story for the ep. I'm with the slow-moving, no-end-in-sight problems that plague LOST, but they're nowhere near as bad as the monster that is Heroes.

I will keep watching, I will continue holding my poor spouse hostage for 40 minutes once each week to determine where the train wreck will go next ... and hopefully I'll have the dander to keep blogging about it. Because if blogs are useful for anything, they're tailor-made for groundless rants about television shows.

And Again

In a self-imposed break from the near-fanatical pace I've been working at over the last few days (nine days, to be exact, with no precise end in sight), I've taken some time to prepare myself for the approaching fall telly season. As regular readers might imagine, I'm particularly excited to watch (tomorrow night, recorded) the return of JUGHEAD PETRELLI et als. Rumor has it that Jughead will be sporting a beard. And thank goodness, because the only thing his long face, square jaw, and poorly conceived mind uttering terrible lines needs is more hair.

We were completely disappointed by the US version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. The present farce is a total sham compared to the UK version, which remains one of the only series we could - and have - watch more than once ... four times, to be exact. The whole series. On the UK version, there is no spanking-new kitchen for the downtrodden chefs. No, even Ramsay is (by all appearances, anyway) scrubbing, dumping, scrubbing, tossing, etc. It's a dust-to-dust kind of operation, and so the FOX program budgets have ruined it for everyone.

We started watching Ken Burns's The War, despite highly mixed reviews. It's true that the sections on the contributions of Hispanic Americans seems tacked on, and for sure some of the footage and foley work is way over the top. (AV: "He could have saved an hour if he had shown one explosion instead of three.") Is the account exhaustive? Certainly not - and I don't think it has pretensions of being exhaustive. But it does tell an American story about a war that was not singly American.

In addition, it's living history. Who better to learn from than people who lived through it? The subjects tell their stories with candor, and frankly I find it mesmerizing - it's because I'm learning and watching at the same time (*gasp!*). I don't think every single bit of the criticism is warranted - the more I watch, the more I think I understand how Burns has conceived this part of history to fit in our collective experience.

When I was in college, our history department initiated the Stories from Wartime Series, which morphed into something called the Center for the Study of War Experience at the Reeg. Each spring, the Center brings in veterans to give first-person accounts of their experiences. Among the speakers I was fortunate to see in college were Paul Murphy, a survivor of the USS Indianapolis; Gen. Felix Sparks, among the liberators of Dachau; Clay Decker, a survivor of the Bataan Death March (he's the spry fellow in the photo of the rescued marchers at the front of the pack); WACs and WAVES, a member of the Tuskeege Airmen, Japanese-Americans interred on the basis of Ex Order 9066, you name it ... we saw it.

I joke that my history degree in college was really a degree in one of two things: WWII or Germany. This of course is not true (thanks to Father Guyer), but Ken Burns's project is bringing back a lot of latent information, lodged in my "history department" of my brain, and and memories of our exposure to those veterans.

A running commentary to continue ... provided I stop working and have a break.

Telly in Brief

So disgusted were we with the finale of John from Cincinnati that we've started the true Milch masterpiece Deadwood all over again. Yes, horrified fans, we love Deadwood. It is the reason for our very expensive cuss jar. Just watch the show for an hour, and you'll see what I mean. Well, maybe you won't.

In LOST news, besides the impending publication of the text next month, Ain't It Cool News is reporting some new additions to the cast, all of which already sound better than the Paolo and what's-her-face (you know, they were buried alive or stunned or whatever) of season three. The highlights? Jeremy Davies - late of Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" and that weaselly fellow in Saving Private Ryan who wimps out at the end - and Lance Reddick are joining the cast.

Don't know who Lance Reddick is? You should watch THE GREATEST SHOW ON TELEVISION, The Wire to find out. In the show, Reddick plays Daniels, who experiences a meteoric rise through the police brass. He starts as the lieutenant of the special investigation unit (in season one) and last we saw him (in season four) has become the head of the Baltimore Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division. The last season is set to begin in January.

AV will say that Deadwood is better (more literate, more poetic), but I still think The Wire is better. Except for the third season.

Updates and General Disgust

Update: Regular readers of this blog remember a couple of weeks ago when my computer failed while on vacation. The saga concluded this week, and happily. The lesson? Buy the extended warranty.

When we arrived back to Denver on Thursday, we took old Holmes (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - all my electronics are philosophers) to the Apple store to drop off and see what happens. The person AV talked with over the phone was enthusiastic about the possibility of Holmes being replaced as a brand new MacBook. I was excited about this. The fellow at the Apple store was more cautious in his promises, and so Holmes went to pasture in Cupertino. On Tuesday this week, the doorbell rang and a computer showed up. I opened it to find the shell that once housed Holmes, but with brand new hard-drive, logic board, battery AND keyboard! A new computer! Maurice is up and working fine (yes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty). This is all very fortuitous, especially since this week I'm teaching Descartes and we're coming to the point where he's going to (try to) put his mind back in his body.

Update: This first week of teaching was pretty gruelling. I'm especially looking forward to next week, once all 141 of my students are in my face. The tough thing about this week is that I'm only kind of half in my work life - next week I should be able to figure out the rhythm of things.

General Disgust: The producers and geniuses at Top Chef have really done it this time. Last night, they booted off Tre, the most capable - seeming cook of them all. This is totally bunk, especially since Howie remains. The talent pool seems a little less than in previous seasons, and I suppose I'd better be steeling myself for the win by Hung, the over-confident, dangerous-with-his-knife Vegas chef (although, he did break down those chickens quickly, cleanly, and impressively last night ... he's still a jerk, though). Frank Bruni has already dismantled this challenge and all its pitfalls in his blog over at the New York Times. I agree categorically with everything he's said.

I received a funny e-mail from a former student this week, and of course it has to do with Jughead Petrelli. In MARCH last year, my student totally called the way last season of Heroes ended. He wrote me an e-mail this week to tell me that he totally called it. He wished me a nice semester. I can't WAIT for crappy television to begin again. I'm so tired of being amazed by Les Stroud and laughing at Mike Rowe. Dang.

All's Well that, Well, Ends

Harold Perrineau returns to LOST in the fourth season.

I received the publisher's proofs from my editor this week, and got to see how my writing will look on an actual book page. I'm responsible for reading through and correcting some typographical errors (if and where they exist), so that seems to be the last hurdle until the book appears in December. Now that Michael's on the verge of returning, I'm concerned that everything I've said will be wrong. But in truth, I'm only kind of worried about that. I guess we'll have to wait and see - I'm especially excited that now there's something to wait for.

The Most Unkindest Cut of All

Last night we attended the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of Julius Caesar. During the outdoor performance, a bat was flying around over our heads. I hate bats. In addition to bats, I strongly dislike performances that use abstract staging techniques and re-set the play in a future period. Neither of these choices were well-explained, and so when the techno music accompanied the stabbing of Caesar I could only chuckle. In fact, someone (who will remain unnamed) leaned over and said, "Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!" HBO's Rome (too short-lived and masterminded by Michael Apted) clouded my ability to watch the play well, since it tells the same story as Julius Caesar without the abstract staging, techno music, and setting.

Speaking of HBO, David Milch, creator and writer of such television glories as NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and (our new favorite) John from Cincinnati admits he doesn't know what John is all about. This doesn't bother me, because he manages to tell everyone's story eventually.

My feeling about Deadwood is that it was a complete story. The characters and their connections revealed themselves slowly, so anyone looking for immediate clarity won't be satisfied - you have to watch every show to understand what's going on. The thing about Deadwood was that there wasn't an extravagant mystery tying things together - it's just good storytelling in the hands of especially capable actors (Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, Molly Parker, Paula Malcolmson, Dayton Callie, Jim Beaver, Gerald McRainey (as the most evil television villain EVER), and Garrett Dillahunt, among others). Although it's not a Milch idea, The Wire has the same kind of completeness.

I will go out on a limb here and say that The Wire and Deadwood are better shows that Lost (blasphemy, I know) and even John from Cincinnati. I'm not sure that 's much of a claim, since it's so general, but it's something.

On Like Donkey Kong

This week proves to be a busy one - teaching starts up again (and it couldn't come sooner ... I've turned into a heap of something over the last two weeks), my independent study starts, and we're moving at the end of the week. Not to mention that there are three deadlines - including the final, final draft of the LOST chapter - and a Jeopardy! audition on Wednesday. Yeegh.

Speaking of LOST, I'm still processing the season finale. Regular reader Wanda (!) thinks it was Ben in the coffin, and after a second viewing I think she is right. I was mostly cheered by the reappearance of Walt, although sans Michael, it didn't quite have the KAPOW! I was hoping for. In retrospect, though, it works out for me because I don't have to make any major revisions to my chapter. At any rate, I still don't get quite what was happening, but since I have until January to stew on it I'm not too concerned. Something will come to me, I'm sure.

Heroes ended predictably, and badly, although one of my ethics students predicted precisely how it would end about four weeks ago. After a season of half-hearted devotion, my favorite (and, IMHO, the best written) character is HRG aka Noah Bennett. I think it is because they took some time to devote to his backstory a la LOST, and so we have a better sense of him than any of the other idiots on that show. A constant MST 3K dialogue is running every time we watch Heroes, especially when Jughead appears (and in this case, disappears into the sky with his nuclear weapon of a brother).

We're into concert season. Friday night we saw The Bad Plus at the Boulder Theater. They were awesome, but someone heckled their opening band (who were not so hot, but that's just me), and that was strange and disorienting. But the Bad Plus delivered, and it was fun to see some of my new acquaintances and friends from my occasional radio gig there at the concert. On Saturday (6/2), we'll see Cyro Baptista and Billy Martin at the Boulder Theater - crazy anniversary drumming - and on the following Saturday, we'll hopefully see Wayne Horvitz and crew at Dazzle. June 10 we have nosebleed seats to the POLICE and I am really excited. I just hope they play my favorite songs.

Once we're in our new house I hope to start blogging again at a regular clip - much like I did last summer - although I'm not sure what form my philosophy posts will take anymore. I've rediscovered the joy and wonder that is continental philosophy (and for all accounts, I'm a sight better in the continental area than in the analytic one) so I'm anxious to spend the next eight or so weeks reading more deeply in the discipline. I'm also looking forward to the eight pounds I plan to shed in advance of my 10-year High School Reunion at the end of July (which I will attend sans AV, who will be hand-making film and shooting pictures on said handmade film while I am reuning). Should be fun.

My Life's Goal ... Achieved (Almost)

Ken Jennings, that guy who won all that money after a 74-day stint on Jeopardy!, answers an innocent-looking question from a reader and faithful Tuesday Trivia participant named Becky. So happens, that Becky asks Ken what to study in preparation for her Jeopardy! audition. So happens that the person who asked the question is me.

I have an audition for Jeopardy! at the end of the month here in town. There is no guarantee that I will make it onto the show, even if I do well in the audition. My goal is modest, however. I need only make enough money to pay off my student loans. That's about two good days of Jeopardy!

Two eps plus Two Seasons left...

E Online is reporting that LOST will end in 2009.We'll finally get to find some things out, and perhaps won't get left hanging a la Twin Peaks. Wednesday night's episode was GOOD (and guess who wrote it ... yep, those brilliant geniuses who penned the Desmond and the time-space continuum AND the Sayid torture victim episodes). Hopefully the last two won't stink. I cannot say the same about Heroes. Heroes stinks, but it is like a disaster that I can't stop watching. Especially with President Jughead in the white house.

PostScript: The New York Times telly writer, Allesandra Stanley explains the problem with Grey's Anatomy and all the hoo-hah over the impending spinoff with Kate Walsh: even if you're a lady doctor, your hormones still govern the landscape. Calling Laura Mulvey!

Inching. Towards. Break.

Spring break is next week. I'm looking forward to having some time to collect errant thoughts (of which there are many). A few pop-culture related comments:

Last week's LOST was exceptional. It is really at its best when Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse are writing it -- they were responsible for the Desmond ep a couple of weeks ago that nearly made me weep with nerd joy. Drew Moser has some good thoughts on Sayid and forgiveness. I swear, as long as Jack stays over with the Others (and we don't see hide nor hair of him, Juliet, or Ben, or Kate, for that matter) the show is really, really good.

Reports from the Paley fest indicate that some major plot developments in coming episodes of Heroes look suspiciously like plot lines from The Watchmen series. We all knew that Heroes was stealing lifting familiar notions from other comics, and those of us who have read some comic books (me) and many comic books (Patric(k), AV) were getting to be okay with it. Is it "creative liberty" or plagiarism? Another reason -- besides that psuedo-philosophical narration that I've rejected before and Jughead Petrelli-- for me to watch with eyebrow lifted. Now we have to wait until late April for comic book forgery.

Seen anything good lately? We went and saw David Fincher's Zodiac on Friday night. It was looooong (2h 40m!), but good. It's great that there are some significant, interesting films in the mainstream (I'm thinking of Zodiac, Children of Men). Manolha Dargis really loved Zodiac -- read her review here. Last week we saw The Lives of Others, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film, and it was outstanding -- a perfect example of Bernard Williams' "moral squeamishness" critique of Utilitarianism, and perhaps the topic of my in-the-hopper master's thesis. I think we're also planning to see Bong Joon-ho's The Host, for fun and for looks.

Tomorrow night we'll be heading to Dazzle for live music -- Ralph Alessi is in town with Ravi Coltrane. On Wednesday night (as long as all is well) I'll be running the boards for the Jazz Odyssey at KUVO. I might not talk, but I'll be pushing the buttons that will bring you Matt or Teke's fine musical choices. Tune in from 10p-12a if you're up. According to my pal at KUVO, next Wednesday (3/21/07) will guarantee not only my presence, but my voice over the airwaves as well.