TV pimps and hoes
I must say that I thoroughly enjoy a few TV shows, despite despising the medium as a whole. Two of those shows - “Heroes” and “House” - had their season premiere recently, and I couldn’t have had two more distinctly different emotional responses to them. Let’s start with Heroes, shall we?
Heroes left off last season with a bang, or more to the point, an exploding man, in the form of Peter Petrelli, who at last check exploded himself and his flying brother Nathan somewhere in the atmosphere. Evil brain-carving Sylar may or may not have dragged his nearly dead body into a sewer, Hiro teleported himself into the 17th century, cop Matt Parkman lay dying from four bullets to the chest, and no body armor whatsoever, DL also lay dying, and the cheerleader who everyone was SO INTERESTED in saving still had her blond head attached (and what a pretty head it is!).
Scene set, a whole summer passes, with promises of more action and less teasing, and what do we get? No Peter, till the end, in the lamest of lame plot twists - amnesia? - Nathan is a grieving mountain man, Parkman is divorced and taking care of little Mapquest Molly, Claire is, well, pretty, and we meet more mutants in the form of a cute killer latina, a goofy guy who has the Midas touch, and yet ANOTHER flying boy, who happens to like our pretty Claire.
The action plodded along, just as it did for long stretches last season, with little flashes of breast and leg, right up till the end, when the only real money shot we got took place in the preview for the entire season, which basically served as the spoiler the show should have written into the first episode. All this really says is that the pimpin’ the writers and producers partook in last season will continue into this one, with new bait for us viewers dumb enough to hang on every second of every ep.
Well, not me! I watched the first ep from last season on first run, realized from it that the story arc would be long, and ungratifying, and immediately stopped watching until they released the DVD set, which I bought and watched in a red-eye style marathon over a day and a half. It’s a lot easier to take the crap they put you through when you know the next ep will clear some of it up, or the ep after that.
But these damn Heroes producers are milking me dry, dammit!
I promise I’ll stop watching until August again, and I’ll push others to do the same. You promised us answers, but instead we get clips of Peter whining (always whining!) about his identity, Sylar trapped on what looked like a fuzzy beach with some random hottie, and this new Boogie Man/Freddie Krueger out there scaring the shit out of Mapquest Molly in her dreams. Clear this shit up, fools, or feel my wrath!
Okay, now I can move on, to something immensely more fulfilling: The first ep of House. At season 3’s end, House had managed to alienate his entire staff: Foreman quit, for fear of becoming an evil bastard like House, Chase finally got fired, and Cameron just flat out quit. So when we meet Dr. Greg House, he’s bouncing ideas off a janitor, who actually gives some good feedback, through the use of a clever House mataphor, thus earning the name Dr. Buffman, when House leads the poor schlub into a consult with a real live patient.
This eventually ends badly, leading to Dr. Wilson “allegedly” holding House’s favorite guitar hostage, till he agrees to hire a new team. Dr. Cuddy is in fine face (the lighting team gets props for doing a better job of downplaying her giant honker, while up-playing her other prominent “assets”) and the twists which the series is known for still packed a punch. Besides a bad latex mask job on the patient (she looked petrified bout round the face area), the episode had humor (see: Dr. Wilson “torturing” the guitar), surprises (the building collapsed, for real, on the woman, and it wasn’t a hallucination), cleavage (see: Dr. Cuddy), solid teasers to the future (House’s potential replacements for the old team) and smartly-written dialogue. No episode of House ever leaves you feeling duped, robbed or unfulfilled. You watch House, you get sadness, jokes, and it makes sense (well, as much as some of the far-fetched medical issues these doctors deal with can actually occur, without the patient already being dead, once the ailment is discovered).
So, my recommendation is: TiVo Heroes for like a month, THEN watch them all, or wait till season’s end and watch them, and don’t miss House - ever.
There’s bullshit and there’s male cow feces
Check this story out:
Cash earnings for University of Cincinnati President Nancy Zimpher will increase to about $524,000 a year.
University trustees on Tuesday approved an 8 percent salary increase in Zimpher’s base salary to $410,577 and a 30 percent, one-time bonus over her current base that will total $114,047.
That increase comes on top of the $380,164 rate that trustees approved when they extended her contract through 2012 in March.
Zimpher did not accept the March raise, saying then that the school’s financial future was uncertain. The university slashed $27 million from its budget this year.
But Zimpher, who currently earns $343,000 a year, said Tuesday that she would take this latest raise.
“I think what we are proving is that we can turn challenges into opportunities, and you can’t do that alone,” she said.
Now, Zimpher turned down the raise in March, citing how much financial ruin the school was in (to the tune of 1.2 BILLION in DEBT!), but found reason to accept a MUCH LARGER raise now? What “challenge” did the school overcome in a few months that could trim 1.2 BILLION in debt, making it okay for Zimpher to accept the “opportunity” to take a raise beyond what she would have gotten in the first place?
I sniff crap here, and it smells like dear Nancy simply wanted to graciously decline the first raise (looks good in the papers, you know), for the benefit of “the university,” while knowing it to be bad manners (or something?) to turn it down again.
Nancy, next time, just take the freakin’ raise and stop blowing smoke up our cracks, when we all know you want the money! That way, you may seem selfish, but at least you’d be honest!
“I ain’t dead yet, well now I am!”
This space is henceforth dedicated to the men and women who most people probably thought were dead long ago, but who only died recently. The inaugural winner of this dubious distinction is none other than our resident mime - Marcel Marceau. Who, you ask? Marcel Marceau, the “legendary mime” who, as his bio on imdb.com reports “saved many children in WWII” after surviving the Nazi occupation of France. He died on Sept. 22, and who among you even knew he was still alive before then? LIAR! So, to those of you who don’t know, go check him out.
A week without meat
After being “encouraged” by a nekked Alicia Silverstone, I figured I might try to forego the whole meat thing. I’m currently on day three without meat, and I gotta tell you, I almost bit a dog the other day. Meat is everywhere, and for someone like me, who has only been meatless for three days, the smell alone makes me wanna pick up a crossbow and go pop a cap in a deer flank pronto. Eating at a restaurant that serves good meat, and ordering a meal without it is like drinking something flavored with Splenda, as opposed to sugar. It’s sweet, but it just doesn’t taste right. I mean, meat is good. Baked, fried, sauteed with onions, merinated overnight, barbecued … mmm, mmm, MMM! But I shall maintain. Until I break down and become like one of those people from “Alive” eating the booty meat of their dead comrades.
