2009 Television Review

I had fairly large plans for my belated Christmas week in Lake Tahoe: go skiing, recalibrate my life's direction for the new year, don't drink too much & do my stretches.

Of course I did none of these, all I did was record an earth-shattering debut hip-hop album & watch television. Today I'm taking the No. 5 California Zephyr train West back toward Berkeley, & I leave the blogosphere with several thoughts while I'm on this famously beautiful slow late train.

First thought: Televisions that can rewind & fast forward are completely revolutionary. I thought it was really slick programming. There's also a computer hooked up to my parents' weirdly large tv, so I was able to pause the Daily Show, go onto Netflix an watch an episode of 30 Rock, then go back to Comedy Central, & fast forward thru all the ads. Also, why are there so many commercials for body products? These may seem like mundane observations, but I haven't had a tv since before high school, when my parents had one of those box-shaped thingies that only had like thirty channels.

Second thought: 30 Rock is super high quality comedy, & it's especially good if you watch about twenty-six episodes in a row in one sitting.

Third thought: Don't worry about the Daily Show: they've been joking about how Jan. 20th is the End of Comedy, but one of the writers made some comment about how, with Democrats controlling all three branches of government, they may have to do two shows a day.

Fourth thought: Rep. Barney Frank was on the Rachel Maddow show, & he's hilarious. I had no idea. Also, everyone's been singing Maddow's praises, & it's true that she's charming & witty, but she & a couple of her regulars all talk in the same inflections that Keith Olbermann does - - is MSNBC in some sort of lost fifty-eighth state with its own accent & emphàsises, a televisional subculture of mainstream liberal righteousness? Do they have strawberry zeppelins there? In conclusion, I don't see her as as much of a refreshing break from mainstream talking heady punditry as I've heard her heralded.

Fifth thought: If they had television on the zephyr train, we wouldn't have to stare out the window at the Sierra Nevadas & listen to podcasts...

Sixth thought: I was ugly in Middle School, I found a whole drawer full of embarrassing photos:


On second viewing, it looks like someone's found the ugliest imaginable image of my brother & I & photoshopt it on one of Mr Quill's Siberian photographs. This one, for instance, is like less than two years later, when I got cool again: