Multiple Personality

I was catching up on some Simpsons episodes, and I have a new favorite line:

Y’know, for a bartender/bookie, you’re awfully judgmental.

The Simpsons, for some reason, is still very funny.

NBC is premiering a new, month-long dance competition, produced by the So You Think You Can Dance folks. It’s called Superstars of Dance, and I don’t think Molly Shannon is involved at all.

I have not idea if it’ll be great, or a panoply of international cheese, but meet me back here after it premieres the first Sunday in 2009, and we’ll discuss. (It moves to Mondays after the premiere, so you can TiVo Desperate Housewives for one night.)

As is my annual (and apparently unbreakable) custom, I watched the brazen commercialism and bad camera work that is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. To my appreciative surprise, there is a “Keith Haring Heart Balloon” this year. I’m surprised because Haring died of AIDS, and was an outspoken gay activist; just looking at his distinctive style is practically a rorschach for words like “gay” and “equality.” I’d say it’s nice that an Institution like the Macy’s Parade isn’t afraid to include a message like that, however subliminal, to impact the kiddies.

At the other end of the spectrum of things that should be impacting the kiddies, there was a performance by a girl pop trio called the Clique Girlz. And they looked every bit as Heathers-attitudey as any high school clique that ever made all the poorer/different/less cute kids feel inferior to them. I thought cliquishness wasn’t an aspiration these days. Maybe High School Musical 4 is where they renege on that “everybody’s special” message. “Clique Girlz”….grumble…

But the good outweighted the annoying, as the Macy’s Parade actually did something…hip. Some kiddie-show float was in the middle of their musical number, and it was suddenly interrupted by — Rick Astley, singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” They actually did some Rick-rolling! I love it.

Okay, life should be like this: Real dogs have dog voices. Cartoon dogs have human voices.

But what if a real dog has a cartoon voice?

This is strangely mesmerizing. Perhaps the dog is sending some kind of subliminal brainwashing, and we are doomed as a species. Klaatu Barkata Nikto.

Now that the election is over (and Tiny Fey is trying to make her life a Palin-free zone) it looks like Saturday Night Live has gone back to being a hit-or-miss (mostly miss) proposition.

One thing that was pretty funny was the “We’re the Dancers” skit with Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé. Gotta love Andy Samberg, Timberlake, and the chubby guy in leotards and high heels, being all faux-Beyoncérrific. (more…)

I’ve gotten a little re-hooked on E.R. in this, its last season. But I was prepared to feel disappointed by last night’s episode, which centered around Angela Bassett’s character and featured a return-from-the-dead (via flashback) appearance by Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards). The reason I was braced for disappointment was because TV Guide — of which I am currently in receipt of a free subscription — told me it would be a sucky episode and make bad use of the beloved, bald character, not to mention squander the Bassett chops.

And yet…I cried like a little flounder during this extremely well-done episode. (Yeah, I know flounders aren’t known for their crying, but I’ve got a bad cold and I don’t feel much like a land mammal.) Bassett was quite something, in an episode that jetted between her happy-mommy past and her stoic-fascist present (even though it is a bit unsettling to see Angela Bassett all smiley — warmth, for better or worse, isn’t really her trademark). Ultimately, the episode deeply hit upon the pain of allowing oneself to love, along with its corresponding redemption. And what more, I ask you, could TV Guide want from a show? It almost makes me want to question whether their compulsive attention to The Hills might not be excessive.

I’m enjoying the homages that E.R. is paying to past (and presently departing) cast member in its swan-song season. The show is a class act. Unlike the periodical that claims to be its arbiter.

Even though I watch the thing on a daily (and rather rabid) basis, I don’t make a habit of blogging about One Life to Live. But I have been enthralled by the writing on this soap since this guy named Ron Carlivati (last year’s Emmy winner) took over as Head Writer. But that’s no surprise to anyone who’s gone far enough back in these archives to see the occasional entry mentioning this show and/or my adorably inconsequential campaign to become a new writer there. (Yoo hoo…Carlivatiiiiii….)

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Bill Maher’s most stunning lines this week were a mix of the funny and the filiblustery (did you like that new word?). Here are the highlights, from “new rules”:

1. As his fist official act, Barack Obama must raise Joe the Plumber’s taxes. I’m not saying he should raise all middle-class taxes…just Joe. Congratulations, Plumber’s Helper, you’re in a tax bracket of one…complete with your very own tax form, the 1040-F.U.

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I could ponder how it’s possible that a 34-year-old comedy show is newly popular. But what’s more interesting to me is how some of the writing on that show has gotten soooooo much better.

Not ALL of the writing, mind you; at least 80% of the show is still subject to such a lack of The Funny as to make one chant an internal “What are they thinking?” like a mantra. But the opening segment . . . ah, the opening segment!

Like most of America (and portions of the rest of the world) I have been enthralled by the Sarah Palin mockeries. As has been previously reported here, Tina Fey is God. (more…)

Writitude is an occasional list of writing for which I am grateful.

3. Mad Men. Not exactly metaphysical/spiritual, except for the way it melts time and finds a deeper truth. It is said that those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it. This show not only reexamines the past — the post-Eisenhower, beginning-of-the-end years — with the clear lens of the present, it reexamines the present via a bracingly unembellished understanding of the past. If we can take the blinders off about how non-Leave it to Beaver our past was, then perhaps we can heal our present, with all its unchecked baggage.

2. Life on Mars. Another show that transports us back to a previous decade, with a contemporary perspective. But the twist here is that our hero — mysteriously thrown back to 1973 from his “real” home in 2008 — may actually be imagining the whole thing while he lies in a modern-day coma. Or perhaps 2008 was the illusion and he’s awakened to his reality in the time of wide collars. Or maybe it’s all an illusion and reality lies somewhere else altogether. Where else is network television pondering such things?

1. Eli Stone. At the risk of sounding grand, the world is a better place because this show is on the air. While nobody was paying attention, a series was green-lit — and renewed for a second season! — that unabashedly examines the Divine. But not the Falwellian version; rather, the kind that is inexplicable, and juicy, and life-changing, and joyous/daunting. And while the topic is raised zealously, it is laden more with thought-provoking irreverence than stultifying reverence. Who better to have been thunderstruck with visions than a corporate lawyer? And how better to portray our collective struggle to embrace Spirit while maneuvering the Earthbound than to watch a sheepish ersatz-messiah allow himself to be guided through — and perhaps beyond — the bureaucratic and patriarchal legal system.