'Sunday's best, Sunday's finest. When your money's in the minus.' - Declan MacManus, 1979

I must admit I'm pretty pumped for the new Curb Your Enthusiasm kicking off tonight. Sunday evening is most definitely the cable "must see TV" night (has been for a while now for a lot of folks).

My past love affairs with the Sopranos and Six Feet Under cemented the night for me personally. Add in the Simpsons (at least through the 90s), Family Guy today, and Sixty Minutes since time began. That all makes for a tough act to follow.

For others, it's also the night of True Blood and Entourage. I didn't get into either show, though I admire both. For Blood, maybe it's a genre thing. Other than Lost Boys, I've never been much into vampire lore, though it's obviously in vogue what with the HBO show and the Twilight flick. For Entourage, I like the cast and the premise, but just couldn't get up for it. Dunno why.

For me now, Curb and Mad Men represent two of my top four currently running TV series (30 Rock and Weeds round out this holy quartet). I also dig Dexter, another Sunday night staple, and am looking forward to new stuff there coming soon.  As an aside, I'm going to give the new Bored to Death a spin. It's on HBO right after Curb and I'm lazy - also it looks like it might be pretty funny.

But Larry David, with his Seinfeld "reunion" the central conceit looming in the season ahead, and the continuing trials and tribulations of the gang at Sterling Cooper, as they flaunt their dashing brand of sixties cool, will keep my Sunday evenings percolating for the next little while for sure.

I only wish I could say as much for the remainder of the week.  Speaking of which, I'll likely be slowing down my production of swill here as I take a plunge back into the deep end of the asylum swimming pool at work tomorrow. It's usually mad this time of year for our kind  (retail-centric e-commerce providers).  Lots of features to get ready in time for the holiday season ahead. 

I'd been mostly wading in the kiddie pool this summer, deliberately trying to keep to the shallows and careful to take my Clozapine. Well, that time has past, school's back in session and my pills have been flushed down the drain. In other words, hand me a snorkel and flippers and make way for a big fuckin' splash into the deep, dark world of corporate IT insanity!

Seriously, I still plan to put the brakes on any blatantly excessive workaholic behavior, but some things are easier said than done.

Charlie Don't Surf

I'm watching this lame Manson docudrama that's been playing quite a bit on the History Channel. I can't help but compare it to the vastly superior 1976 TV-Movie Helter Skelter, based on prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book of the same name. (Speaking of Bugliosi - man, talk about defining one's career around a single specific event.  This guy continues to milk that cow as though the heifer wasn't dead, dry and rotting. He grabs onto any anniversary or parole hearing or what-have-you to spout the same eerily encyclopedic recall that he unloaded into his original book and has continued to spout on the talk show circuit ever since. I have no ill will toward the guy: he did society a good service by locking these swine away.  But find something new in your life, Vince!)

The 70's Skelter movie was brilliant on many levels and for my money the first and last word on this twisted story.  We don't need to keep regurgitating the thing.  Yet here I am watching this low rent History Channel "reenactment".  I guess anything that mixes psychedelics, cultism, insanity, hippies and mass murder is bound to be a ratings grabber in 2009, much as it was in 1969 and 1976 - probably more so, with the nostalgia factor at play.  But no more of this crap for me, time to lift up anchor and surf on to another beach (Ooh, Dr. G is on!).

Steve Railsback did Manson better than Charlie himself in the '76 treatment.  He looked and acted more "Mansoneque" than the real deal ever could, try as he might.  So having some other joker on the History Channel attempt to inhabit this lune doesn't do anything for me.  It's like Ned Flanders doing Stanley in the Springfield production of Streetcar.  Ned's fine, but he's not quite Brando. Grab the Skelter movie DVD and watch Railsback if you want to see evil personified.  Or turn on Fox News and catch Glenn Beck. Your choice. But do yourself a favor and skip History Channel's Manson.

Let's flip on Dr. G - but first, of course, some commercials ...

Speaking of commercials, let me give props to one advertisement out there in La La Land: the most creative casting award goes to the Tony Stewart Burger King spot with Carrot Top and Erik Estrada!  I especially dig the Estrada shades - gotta get me some of them.  E.S.T.R.A.D.A.  Yeah.

But it's back down the green-gray cadaver corridor, in through the double doors to the fab lab with today's stiffs on the slab. Doctor Garavaglia is in and she's got a couple of real live ones today - just kidding, they're dead, natch, and in fact so were their back stories.  The methods by which the dearly departed on Dr. G's table slipped off this mortal coil are key to the show - if they're pedestrian, the doc can only do so much to spice things up.  The catch is that you don't actually know the sorry truth about their demise until the end of the segment (when you can then reflect on the half hour of your life you'll never get back).


I surfed back and forth between this and UDub's stunner over #3 USC, finally settling in on the latter. Alright, Huskies!!

Well, well, well.  Looking back, this is a pretty meandering and all together pointless post.  As they often are, alas.

All Apologies.  I click off the tube and crank up Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York on the stereo, another night in the books.