Author Archive - JessB

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What You Should Be Watching: House

House Tuesdays @ 8PM on FOX In a Nutshell: CSI meets Columbo, or Dr. Monk It's been a while since my last installment of "What You Should Be Watching" but that's because I've been doing some research. In the name of Blog Science I have endulged myself by watching the first 2 seasons of House - all 46 hours of it - within 8 days so I could give the most comprehensive review possible. By in large...this show sucks. Although I have never actually watched any medical-themed shows with regularity, I can pretty much tell that this show is cliched. Godlike doctors who can perform any surgery on any part of any body, wildly expensive tests and procedures given without the blink of an eye, a little sexual tension, climactic commercial breaks - it's all there. If you ever end up at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital with an affliction that cannot be explained by the ER or your examining physician, note that two or more of the following WILL happen to you: 1. You will have an unexplained seizure 2. You will bleed from your rectum without knowing it 3. Your throat will close up and you will be intubated 4. You will have an MRI 5. You will have a rare and debilitating reaction to one or several tests - with the doctor in the room 6. You will lie to your doctor 7. You will either deeply move or deeply piss off the doctor 8. The doctors will break into your home to find the source of your affliction 9. You will be declared healed only to go into relapse on your way out the door 10. You will be cured All that being said...I still managed to be glued to the television for 46 hours watching this show, so something's got to be right with it. Besides my undying love for Sherlock Holmes and the House writers' attempts to link the two, there is a major reason to watch House. That reason is Hugh Laurie. The Prince RegentFor the past 10 years or so, I have known Hugh Laurie as this guy, and this guy. As this guy and this guy. Basically a lanky, clean-shaven, British doofus with an easy-going manner and a heart of gold. In fact, the British tv-watching public has known him like this for the past twenty years. Now, as Dr. Gregory House, Hugh Laurie plays a crippled, unshaven, American genius with a stick up his ass and a heart of meat. Not only is the character well-played but if you consider his 20 years of playing exactly NOT this guy...well, mad props to Hugh Laurie. Pulling off the American accent alone is quite a feat. Oh, and seeing him on the cover of TV Guide as one of TV's Sexiest Men, I had to take pause. For me, it's like watching your goofy, class-clown older brother grow up to be the genius, straight-laced CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It's like seeing Michael Richards (Seinfeld's Kramer) portraying Lincoln on a PBS documentary. It's unreal. If you get past the cliches, bad acting by some co-stars and some of the silly little love trysts, House is an ok show. It thrives on Laurie's acting abilities and some decent mystery writing. Not to mention some eye candy for both the boys and the girls. Since House's specialty is diagnostic medicine you get to learn some things about some outrageous afflictions and medical procedures (if you can pay attention long enough to understand them.) House is on hiatus until October 31 (after the baseball playoffs) but if you want to start watching season 3 at this point, I'd suggest picking up Season 1 and Season 2 at Amazon.com, through Netflix or your favorite torrent site. Unfortunately it seems that checking out one or two shows, while still entertaining, leaves an un-initiated viewer in the dark about some of the personal issues that go on in the hospital. But I guess this is what makes "good TV." More than just House, I HIGHLY recommend checking out these other Hugh Laurie titles. They're the watch-a-few-times sort of shows, and really give you a feel for what an amazing actor and comedian Hugh Laurie is: A Bit of Fry and Laurie - Comedy sketch show written and performed by Laurie and partner Stephen Fry Jeeves & Wooster - BBC production of the classic PG Wodehouse books staring Laurie as the British playboy Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as his "gentleman's gentleman" Jeeves. Blackadder - Absolutely classic BBC show staring Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) and Tony Robinson, featuring Hugh Laurie (and Stephen Fry!) in seasons 2-5.   Š

Disposable Income, Consumer Confidence and Fake Nature For Sale

So Jason is asking why consumers aren't confident. And Ryan is realizing the technological future while his wife throws their dishes away. In a different generation, Annie Mo's parents buy gads of technology they're hesitant to use. We need something that we can all come together on, and confidently waste our money on. We all share a basic understanding of nature, right? You can't escape nature. Even old folks can't be afraid of the simplest and most important form of nature - water. So I submit to you, for your splurgey sense... Ice Rocks and Spray On Mud. And after you're done freezing and enjoying your 8-cents-per-cube hypoallergenic ice, and spraying down your SoccerMomMobile with mud that you didn't actually drive through, why not pay to change the state of your water one more time and dip your buttocks into a soothing Jelly Bath? Š

What You Should Be Watching: Weeds

Weeds Mondays @ 10 PM on Showtime In a Nutshell: Desperate Housewives meets Trailer Park Boys It's rare that a show on a premium cable channel catches my eye. The Sopranos and Sex In the City pretty much did nothing for me. It very well may be that I was turned off by the hype at the beginning. Oh, that and I don't have premium cable. Well now I don't have cable at all and I don't read entertainment rags, so I am not bombarded with ads at all and am able to freely traverse the Interweb for links to shows I might find interesting. I'm not exactly sure how I found this show - and to be honest, it's squeaky-clean home page made me a little leery at first (too Desperate Housewives for me) but I nabbed it and consumed it - and I can't WAIT to consume more. The plot revolves around Nancy Botwin (played by the amazingly cute and fit Mary-Louise Parker, whom I love in a very heterosexual-but-I'd-make-out-with-her way) who recently lost her husband to a heart attack. She is raising her teenage and pre-teen sons in a disgustingly upper class neighborhood in California and not having the best of times financially. So how does she keep up her grand lifestyle? With a grand idea - become a pot dealer. She buys her stash from a black family in the inner-city. The scenes with this family are amazingly well written and well acted. The writers hint at the family's involvement in the Nation of Islam and anti-white sentiments abound. The matriarch of the family, played by Tony Patano, has a trace of a soft spot for our heroin - "the white lady" - but is ultimately hard-nosed, because after all this is business. Her nephew, Conrad, has a harder time being so crass to Nancy. Kevin Nealon (yeah, THAT Kevin Nealon!) does an amazing job playing Nancy's constantly-high accountant. He's her biggest customer, along with his bigwig poker pals. The role is perfectly suited for Nealon, who's only talent is for playing clueless goofball characters. Not a stretch for him to act high. The pace of the show is what keeps me coming back. Continuity is spot-on, and big events occur that affect the scripts in following episodes. Characters don't always do the expected and there's always a lot of surprises that will keep you roped in. And damn - these people are nasty. Who doesn't like watching nasty people on TV? I can't go further into the plot to describe why I love this show without spoiling it. Just note that on more than one occasion during the 15 episodes I've seen, I've uttered "no WAY!! OMG!!!!1one!!" That alone should be sufficient. Oh, and while many people don't like the show's theme song - the folky "Little Boxes", which by season 2 found the original version scrapped and in it's place a weekly rendition sung by a popular artist - the show's soundtrack features amazingly apt songs from indie and not-so-indie bands, which adds a whole new dimension to why one would keep watching. When a compilation CD does finally make it to market, you can bet it'll be hot. Thanks to our wonderful TV-show-capping friends, Weeds is avialable in part on YouTube, your favorite Torrent site, and for those of you on the up-and-up, season one is available at Netflix and your DVD retailer of choice.

No Room for Porn at the Inn

Holy Christ on a cracker! The ultra fundies are at it again. Now they want to remove porn from hotel rooms. "There's porn in hotel rooms?" you say. No, not in the nightstand (there's a Bible there) and no, you can't get complimentary strippers. They want to get rid of the porn that's hidden deep inside the Idiot Box. The Boob Tube. The TV. That porn that you can't get unless you turn on the TV, go through 10 menus, choose the right one and put in a PIN to get. The porn you get charged megabucks for. From the article:"These are places that you take your family -- these are respectable institutions," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Anything that brings porn into the mainstream is a concern. It just desensitizes people." Someone needs to make these Fundies hip to capitalism, and soon. Do they actually think that hotels are making all their money SOLELY off of families blowing in for one night on their way to Grandma's? Of course they aren't. They're making their big bucks off of business travelers - companies with huge accounts that send their guys out to Wichita, Kansas to consult the owners of Wichita Widgets for 2 weeks in June without their wives or their families, who have nothing better to do once they get back to the hotel than to WATCH PORN because, heck, they're guys in Wichita for two weeks without their wives or families. There's also the Cheaters and the Escort Service Clients and the People Who Want To Go To A Hotel To Watch Some Porn. Sure, there's families. There's families with Mom and Dad and 2.5 kids on their way to Grandma's or enjoying 3 glorious nights in Sandusky so they can visit Cedar Point. But if you're doing things right, your kids shouldn't be glued to the tv with the remote in one hand traversing the PPV menus. Surely 2 adults (the Christian Family Rule) stuffed in a room with their kids can manage to keep their kids from seeing a little T&A on the tube. Luckily, the heads of Marriot and Hilton aren't going to bow down to the Insaninites. "In-room movies are a revenue stream," he [Roger Conner of Marriot] said. "This is a business matter." Amen. The Fundies have the right to NOT patronize any hotel they want. They have the right to tell other people to NOT patronize the hotels. They even have the right to set up Web sites telling people all about Clean Hotels. But do they have the right to tell the government to tell the business owners how to run their business? Fuck no. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go take a cold shower. And it's not because I was just watching porn.