Masterpieces come in all shapes and sizes (Roger that)

The Academy of Motion Pictures is going to honor Roger Corman with a lifetime achievement award. This is, to me, a very welcome if surprising decision. Welcome, because I grew up loving Corman's work on the late show (back when that term signfied not a Letterman gabfest but rather the screening of a "lesser" movie or two prior to the channel signing off for the evening). Surprising, because Corman specialized in these "lesser" low budget / b-movies, with plenty of gore and cheesy special effects. Not usually the pretentious Academy's cup of tea, unless they're convinced it's "ironic" or "artistically reverential" a la Tarantino.  That attitude reminds me of a Simpson's throwaway gag in their Viva Ned Flanders Vegas episode where the Mirage Hotel events sign blares the headliner act "A TRIBUTE TO THE MOODY BLUES" and in much smaller print below it: "opening act: the moody blues". 

Corman's heyday ran from the late 1950's through the end of the 60's, a catalog constituting a style both singular and powerfully imaginative, squeezing every ounce out of their shoestring budgets.

Much of Corman's work blazed the trail for the groundbreaking 1970's movies by such young filmmakers as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. The influence is apparent in the camera movement, music and visual stylings of such classics as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now. Not coincidentally, Scorsese and Coppola were Corman proteges (as were James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, and legions of other notable auteurs).

Speaking of influences, Quentin Tarantino should pony up a percentage of the box office take to Roger for every flick he's put out.

Corman also discovered and nurtured such then-unknown actors as Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Robert De Niro, to name just a few. Nicholson was a Corman mainstay in the 60's.

My favorite Corman flicks? A Bucket of Blood, The Premature Burial, The Wild Angels, The Trip, and Bloody Mama.

Good to see Roger's getting a bit of respect from the Hollywood suits. I look at him in the same light as I do the Ramones and Velvet Underground: their discographies do not in and of themselves reflect their importance; rather, it was their inspiration to and influence on scores of other young musicians of note who went on to hall of fame careers. I'm paraphrasing, but somebody once wrote that the Velvet Underground probably only had a few thousand fans during their time together; however, every last one of them formed a band. That's Corman in a nutshell to me.

Congrats, Roger.

Sesame Street? Give me the City Dump

Sesame Street turns 40 today, eh? So Google tells me, anyway. Is there no end to notable 40th anniversaries this year? Obviously, 1969 was a year of consequence, more than just the summer of Bryan Adams' first wet dream. I was 7 when Sesame Street rolled onto the scene and a bit too old to really get into it (by that point, I was more into superhero cartoons and just starting to grow out of my J.P. Patches phase). But who am I kidding? I never grew out of my love for the world of J.P. Patches, as god awful as it may have been. Awfully good, that is.

For those of you who didn't grow up in the Seattle/Puget Sound area in the 60's or 70's, you're not likely to be familiar with J.P Patches. Let me enlighten you.

J.P. was a tramp/clown played by Chris Wedes who presided as "Mayor of the City Dump," a world that was vaguely Sesame Street-like, in its own low-rent way. The show took place almost exclusively at the same, single-set location (appropriately made to look like the grimy corner of a city dump). J.P. held court there, showing us cartoons and interacting with the wacky gaggle of heroes ("The Swami of Pastrami"), villains ("Boris S. Wart!"), lovers (J.P.'s "girlfriend" Gertrude the Clown), and friends ("Ketchikan the Animal Man") who rounded out this alternate universe of magic and filth.

Except for J.P., virtually all of the characters on the show - whether they be male, female, human or otherwise - were played by Bob Newman wrapped in sundry cheesy, cheap costumes and bad vocal gymnastics. So of course, J.P. could only interact with one at a time since Mr. Newman didn't have a twin or clone and was thus bound by the laws of physics (and trapped in a time and with a budget that did not allow for even the most primitive of special effects).

Wedes and Newman, both now in their eighties, made an appearance last year to witness the unveiling of twin bronze statues of their alter egos on the 50th anniversary of the show's debut (that's them at the ceremony on the left). Of course, these two are still regulars at county fairs, supermarket grand openings and pretty much any other public gathering you can imagine, almost always in full costume (though Newman confines himself to playing just Gertrude these days). The end of the show on television merely meant that they were freed up to take the act on the road up and down the highways and byways of the Great Northwest.

When I was a kid, J.P. was on for an hour and a half on weekday mornings before school and again for an hour in the afternoon. And he popped up for still more on Saturdays. Jeez, that's a lot of show! His morning time slot led up to the national Captain Kangaroo program, but I never got into the Captain all that much. Too polished for my taste, I'm guessing. J.P. was raw, the production values non-existent, with "acting" that would make Keanu Reeves proud. I mentioned that it was a lot of show? Well, it took a City Dump's worth of bullshit to fill up all that air time and the dynamic duo of Wedes and Newman could shovel it steaming and thick while still making you want for more.

Despite - or perhaps because of - all the cheese and really, really, really bad costumes, the world J.P. Patches and crew created seemed very real to me as a young boy. And actual honest-to-goodness people stopped by "The City Dump" nearly every episode to reinforce the suspension of disbelief: local scout troops, CBS Seattle affiliate news and weather personalities, local politicians, national celebrities that happened to be in town, etc. All were welcomed to the Dump by His Honor, that ultimate clown prince of bums. (With apologies to Chaplin, his Little Tramp wouldn't even rate a meal from J.P.'s trashcan, fuckin' silent English twit.)

So, it's not their anniversary or anything, but when I think of Sesame Street, my mind turns to J.P. Patches.

For those interested in more, and aren't satisfied by Wikipedia's entry, visit the J.P. Patches home page.

For those who are baffled by this post, well - ya hadda be there, I guess.

Mad about Hugo

I'm still mad for Mad Men four episodes into the third season.

I think it's getting better, actually.


There's no attempt to make any of the characters either sympathetic or into bad guys, though some tend to lean in one direction or the other.  But no one's one dimensional. There are certainly no saints, everyone has flaws.  And the ambiance is, as ever, pretty much perfection.  This show on ad men is light on interruptions by actual advertisements, which is also nice.  Sometimes, like last week, they actually work those real-life interruptions into the spirit of the Mad Men universe by prefacing them with historical trivia regarding the particular brand's first appearance on the boob tube.


But I rarely spent a lot of time here fussing over TV I actually like.

Besides, I have a bone to pick with Oliver Stone, back here in the 21st Century (much as I hate to make the trip back to the present from the cozy world of 1963).

Oliver, I love your movies (well, some of them: Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, pieces of The Doors, JFK for some laughs, I heard World Trade Center was good, not much of Any Given Sunday, the script for Scarface).

But whatcha doing mythologizing Hugo 'Boss' Chavez?

I actually think your new documentary South of the Border might actually do a lot of good in helping to heal our relationship with the people and leadership of perhaps a few countries in Central and South America by giving them a voice and a bit of dignity that we as a nation always seem to be in offical short supply of for their ilk.

But the ends (almost never) justify the means.

I know clown boy W. and his evil Lord Cheney loved to heap shit on him and that crowd.  I also realize that the US has a shameful recent (and not-so-recent) history of propping up tin-horn dictators with ease down south of the border while demonizing anyone who even ever so faintly smells of socialism.  But Chavez seems like so much of a punk in every interview I've caught with him. 

I can't really say I'm surprised or that I expected better from Oliver.  He is, after all, just being Oliver.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, we need folks like Oliver to counterbalance the yahoos on the right.  Anyway, to those yahoos, I'm pretty indistinguishable from Ollie (or Chavez for that matter).

I'll reserve judgment on the flick until I see it.  After all, it's not only about Chavez, though he figures the most prominently, I hear.  And maybe he's an okay sort. He really does seem to despise Bush after all, so he has that going for him.  Of course, his personality reminds me a lot of Bush, too.  A 'true believer' with the permanent smirk plastered on the kisser.

Ollie did apparently cover a lot of other ground in the movie throughout Central and South America, talking to a half dozen or so leaders in addition to Hugo.

My concern isn't with the film so much (how could it if I haven't seen it?), it's with Stone's performance at the Venice film festival and particularly his glad handing/backslapping with Hugo on the red carpet.  Sort of tosses out any pretense of impartiality.

But then, the word 'unbiased' is not really in Oliver's vocabulary anyway, is it?

Enough with Oliver and Hugo, on to Doctor G, Manson and Hoarders.
No, that's not a new music act (though that would be an excellent band name), that's my channel surfing A.D.D this evening.

Doctor G is in her usual first-run slot (alas, a rerun tonight), Manson scores a History Channel prime time slot , though it's nearly a month past the 40th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders (maybe it's 40 years since he was first indicted or some other such mile marker). And finally, a Labor Day A&E Hoarders marathon is underway (though I missed most of the day's festivities).

No new Y incisions to make with Doc G and I'm thoroughly sick of that punk Manson at this point, so I'm mainly rocking with Hoarders this evening.   I was going to get some work done.  But then I came to my senses.

The Jack Lord is my Shepherd and I shall not want, but Jack Webb is my God (sorry, Clapton)

There are some benefits to being sick as a dog (no, Michael, I mean 'like a dog' - get outta here with that car battery and waterboard and back down to the Novacare Complex where you belong, they'll be no electrods to the gonads here today).

Where were we? Benefits, yes. Week day television is a big one.

In particular, Hawaii Five-O and Dragnet.

Oh sure, I have them on DVD and can always pop them in. And yeah, I can go to hulu or any number of places on the web and catch them there. But that somehow feels a little less 'genuine' than catching it 'by chance' as I channel surf.

So, on to H50 and Dragnet and, more specifically, Steve McGarrett and Joe Friday.

Men of honor, of integrity. Of staccato, monotoned procedural coptalk perfected. Of RIGHT and WRONG and BLACK and WHITE and LEGAL and ILLEGAL. No shades of gray need apply here.

Each with a very particular, very sharp stick jammed all the way up his ass to where if you look really closely you can see the tip jutting from the back of his throat when he talks. When the sticks were inserted at a very young age they must have severed the nerves around their funny bones, rendering them impervious to humor or irony.

They constitute members of a rare breed, a dying breed, alive only perhaps on channel 69 at 3pm on a Wednesday. They lived, ate and breathed black and white, even when filmed in living color, with iron clad rules as stiff as the pole up their backside.

Steve-o and Joe would just as soon drop the hammer on their best friend or family as they would their worst enemy if their com padre crossed the letter of the law. Hell, McGarrett let his sister's infant child die rather than refuse to testify against a quack doctor for a charge that carried a maximum of a thousand lousy bucks fine or one year in jail. He cried over it (in I think his only show of emotion in the series), but he did it nonetheless.

Lt. McGarrett and Sgt. Friday were both at their most entertaining when confronted with their polar opposite, an antagonist bursting to full with emotion, color, and anarchy.

Dragnet's Blue Boy is a prime example.

As is the Hawaii Five-O's Wo Fat.







And I got to 'enjoy' them both this week.


While it may be true that The Jack Lord is my Shepherd ...



... Jack Webb is my God (just ask him)


Sure, he was only a Sargent. And yes, he and his partner got booted around to a new department every week, probably 'cause none of the department Captains could handle someone of his unyielding principles square-jawed honesty more than a few times a month. He was Serpico before Serpico and without the filthy, commie hippie trappings - a decent haircut, jacket, white shirt and tie was good enough for his father so it damn well is good enough for him. And his hard work has paid off with a new Dragnet stamp!

"It was Tuesday, it was Warm in Los Angeles, we were working the day shift out of Homicide. The Captain's name is [Insert this week's Captain here], my Partner's Bill Gannon, my name's Friday. It's summertime and with the season, the crowds are out at the parks, beaches and streets. Most of the time it's peaceful and people get along, sometimes when they don't, someone crosses the line. That's when I go to work. I carry a badge. Dum de dum dum."

When I hear that, I get a chill. Justice is served on ice. Monotone only, no voice inflection need apply.

You'll notice I have "My Partner's Bill Gannon" and not "Frank Smith" in the excerpt above. That means, I'm a 60s Dragnet man, though I like the 50s variety too.

But the 50s was too easy, too conservative, too much like Friday himself.

The 60s brought hippies and psychedelics and hard rock and Black Panthers and riots and war protesters. They brought Blue Boy.

McGarrett had "'Book'em Danno". Friday countered with "That's weed, Bill". Followed by quick shots of he and Gannon nodding furiously. Okay, that wasn't exactly his catch phrase, but when he did say it, well - you knew he was onto something.

Let the sparks fly!

I ride by night and I travel in fear - that in this darkness I will disappear

It's a 1960s Weekend, 2000s Style

Mad Men season 3 kicks off tomorrow. And it's the Woodstock festival's 40th anniversary this weekend. In a lot of ways they represent two contrasting cultures that, at least for some, bookend the 1960s. And I'm reading Factory Made, which chronicles its gooey center.

A cynic like me views Altamont as the real end, the wicked closer to Woodstock's long reliever. Here, you have it all - great music intermixed with hippies and Hells Angels, and finally death. The Hells Angels shared a hairy, unkempt appearance and love of rock music with their free love counterparts but not much else. Their world view generally ran to the right of Barry Goldwater (generally to the right of Joseph Goebbels).

Even more cynical folks generally point to Charlie Manson as the sinister, inevitable result of naive idealism blended with psychedelics, cult/commune societal isolation and a jailhouse con man suffering delusions of grandeur. And Charlie, like the Angels, tended (and tends) to view things from an oxymoronic commingling of anarchy, self-righteousness, grifter instincts, xenophobia, fascism and madness.

But all that's being true to the calendar, not to the sentiment and general feel of the era called "The 60s".

Mad Men predates that, at least so far, and it's really 1973 that bid it farewell for good.

It was 1973 that saw the end of our active involvement in the Vietnam war (it took us another two years to get the fuck out) and the rising storm of the

Watergate scandal as a nationwide obsession, giving birth to "The Me Decade" of the 70s: coke, disco, Pulling Your Own Strings, I'm OK, You're Fucked (yeah, it was published in '69 but not big until early 70s angst required its assistance), etc.

But what will bookmark the "00s" - this first decade of the new millennium?

The decade without a name.

Surely, it started with the bursting of the .com bubble.

Then Gore v. Bush, 9/11, Iraq, the Patriot Act, Waterboarding, Katrina.

Lately, the crash of the financial industry and subsequent New Depression

And now the age of Obama, the first black US president (other than that 24 guy and Morgan Freeman). Also apparently the first Kenyan born, Socialist, Muslim chief executive, to hear tell from the great unwashed (perhaps the great unsmart is more apt, were that a word).

But that's all business and politics and doesn't say much about the culture of our new century.

We're certainly a culture that is tethered to our technology, addicted to life on the online social networks as we leave the "00"s. The web is ubiquitous, broadband connections the norm and, unlike in 2000, the net is now very much a participatory vehicle for the masses. iPods, texting, tweeting, iPhones, social commerce, and so forth. Not sure there is any sort of musical or cinematic focus to this decade - maybe I'm too old and out of it to tell.

I don't know why I'm obsessing over this kind of "We didn't start the fire" mumbo jumbo. I mean, I love Billy Joel's 70s and early 80s stuff but can't stand that particular song and don't want to emulate its theme here.

Meanwhile, the Eighties Still Happened and are Happening Still

While dug down in this nostalgic minutia, I didn't even realize that Stallone had released yet another Rambo movie last year, but here it is on Showtime tonight.

Now, to be clear, I couldn't stand the 2nd and 3rd installments of this jingoistic franchise, certainly not as straight action flickatude.

But they are filled with unintentional laughs.

Sort of like 'Red Dawn', though not nearly as good in cheesy badness as that one ('Wolverines!!').

And First Blood, the original, was even mildly entertaining as a straight B-movie, based on a decent book, itself a parable of the treatment of returning Vietnam vets. Sly, though, was definitely miscast (John Rambo was average, even slight, in appearance in the novel where Stallone pumped himself up to characture level).

Rambo as renegade senior citizen might be good for a hoot. 'Rambo: First Nap'? 'Rambo: First Dentures'? 'Rambo: Incontinence'? This one's just called plain 'Rambo', no doubt trying to capture the old glory in the same way 'Rocky Balboa' kinda did a couple years ago.

I'll record and watch it 'Mystery Science Theater' style during the coming week.

Guilty Feet have got no Rhythm

George Michael had a brush with the law again. You remember George, right? Everyone's favorite 80's popster and the turn of the century's frequent men's room attendant & valet? He claims that he was 'stone cold sober' and the cops finally let him go after holding him overnight on suspicion of 'driving under the influence of drink or drugs' (does he get to choose which one?).

I wonder how wrecked one can be and still land within George's definition of 'stone cold sober'? Focus in one eye? Can count to 1 forward and backward? Are aware enough to look for a tree or men's room to duck behind when the urge to jack off in public comes over you?

Inquiring minds ... well, really don't want to know.

Madmen Drummers Bummers and Indians in the Summer

One week away from another season with the boys and girls at Sterling Cooper.

Rolling into 1963, just a little less than a year from the Kennedy assassination. Not far then to the Beatles arrival, Dylan gone electric and the beginnings of the birth of "The 60s." One last season to bathe in the glow of fading innocence and bid adieu to its numbing viciousness as a black and white world turns to color (on a number of different levels).

For me, an excuse to lust after Betty Draper on Sunday evenings. All pastels and skirts and smokes, suits and booze at the office and beatniks on the fringes. Not yet for the avocado kitchen appliances and living room shag carpets.

I was going on three months of age at the dawn of 1963, so first-hand memories are a hazy shade of nothing. But then again I can say the same for most of the 60s and 70s. I seem to have clear memories from that period only of the Brady Bunch, Land of the Lost, the Watergate Trial and the day my Dad died (just couple days before Elvis kicked, 32 years ago this Tuesday).

Speaking of Dad, he wasn't exactly a 'Mad Man' (though going by the show, he drank like one). He sold plumbing supplies when he worked. Not quite Don Draper. More Don Birnam. And Mom wasn't Betty Draper. She was closer to Norma Desmond. They attempted every once in a while to Be The Drapers. But the Drapers out, not the Drapers in. We were at the core a Salvation Army family living in a JC Penney neighborhood and didn't do a lot of entertaining (at least not of the Draper variety).

Still, with Mad Men there is something oddly familiar. About the setting, the clothes, the mannerisms. Not exactly comforting, but ... contemporary. The present day by comparison seems dated.

So, Betty on Sunday and Nancy Botwin on Monday. In my own private Idaho ('get outta that state you're in!' - thanks, Fred, but I think I'll stick around).

'The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes! ... Sarah in the Sky Wolf Hunting!'

The Guru did some more channeling of the Neocon Nico of the North Wednesday, this time putting the beat into her bewildering tweets.

"From sealife near lush wet rainforests to energy housed under frozen tundra atop permafrost,God most creatively displays His diversity in AK."

Yeah - you say it!

"Great day w/bear management wildlife biologists; much to see in wild territory incl amazing creatures w/mama bears' gutteral raw instinct ..."

Hey, cats! Dig T.J. Kirk's rhythms, jazzing up our Queen Half Baked Alaska's techno-patter, jazzercising through a landscape of stupefyingly incoherent non sequiturs.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Ddddrummm. Yeah!

An overwhelming compulsion drove me back through time to groove on Shatner's greatest hits and those of his Vulcan Hipster friend, Lenny Nimoy. Nimoy was Burroughs to Shatner's Ginsberg. Or maybe Kerouac to his Cassidy.

But they dominated a medium wholly apart from the fringes of the literary world: they were musical giants of a type we'll likely never see again.

'Spaced Out' is in many ways the greatest album ever made.

Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Strummer and Jones, Iggy and Bowie, Leiber and Stoller, Rogers and Hammerstein, Edina and Patsy, The Captain and Tennille, Regis and Kathy Lee, Milli and Vanilli. All unquestionably great musical partnerships, but Nimoy and Shatner tower above them and stand alone.

'Mr Tambourine Man? Mister .. Mister ... Mister Tambourine Man?' Indeed, Bill. Keep looking, you'll find him. And Lenny, what about you? What's that you say? If you had a hammer, you'd hammer every morning, you'd hammer every evening? It's hammer time, Leonard. Live long and prosper.

The Office of Ruminant Procurement (I'm trying - real hard Ringo - to be the Shepherd)

'When the governed act like sheep, they beget a government of wolves' - Edward R. Murrow. This quote kicks off the recent book, "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Richard Ben-Veniste (interesting read that is part biography/part dictum on Government Hubris).

And the wolves are only being instinctive when they perpetuate such a ruminant-centric environment, rewarding the 'well behaved' and demeaning those that question authority. Promotion and attrition follow their 'natural' course and before you know it taking a census cures your insomnia (employee surveys are their corollary in corporate nations).

Are your organizations blanketed in wool?

Is Shari Lewis meandering around your cube looking for her Lamb Chop? (Speaking of which, is it just me or did others also have an innate loathing of Shari Lewis and that filthy sock puppet mint-jelly receptacle of hers as a kid? And now her daughter is attempting to perpetrate that insipid creature on another generation of unsuspecting children. Jumpin' Jeziz, No!)

But I digress (again).

Sheep make great coats and diplomas but aren't known for their creativity, intelligence, humor or common sense (that's why it's horse sense, though God knows those filthy beasts are no smarter, except for maybe Mr. Ed and on the odd occasion, Silver).

Of course, participatory government is harder and actually requires, well - governing. It's easy to herd sheep but takes a bit more intelligence to effectively shepherd people.

But enough of this incoherent chatter and back to the herd ...

Giant steps are what you take - Walking on the moon

I'm watching a "repeat" - the 40th anniversary re-broadcast of the moon mission on the History Channel. Nixon just got through talking to Neil and Buzz from the White house and his insincerity and general sliminess shines through as much today as it did in 1969.

From his disheveled appearance, Nixon must have rushed into the Oval Office just before placing the phone call - probably after doing a quick line with Kissinger in the blue room (I'm guessing, judging from the jittery speech pattern and dilated pupils).

He seems in especially high spirits chatting it up with the moonwalkers. Some might attribute the jovial mood to the occasion of our first walk on an alien world and beating the dirty commies to it but given the hour it's more likely that he had just finished his evening "constitutional" (which in his case usually meant a third world musical snuff film double feature with a shot of smack and a tub of buttered popcorn).

That always put him in a giddy frame of mind. Of course, that's just what I heard.

Tricky Dick is truly timeless, kind of like Jack the Ripper.

I was just shy of 7 years old when the moon walk was originally broadcast live but I don't remember it. I'm sure we were glued to the tube like everyone. I remember catching some of the later missions but not particularly that first one. Perhaps I knew even then that it was all staged on some backlot in Van Nuys.

Nothing Nixon was involved with, even indirectly, could possibly be genuine.

The moonshot was indeed real until he placed that congratulatory call and festered himself into what to that point had been a singular moment in history and after which became cheapened and suspect. In that Nixonian instant, the astronauts were teleported from the lunar surface to some sleazy sound stage in Porn Valley guarded by Liddy, Hunt, Colson and the rest of his plumbers and fixit boys. Phonying up the moon mission was merely a prelude to the CREEP activities to come. This was the minor leagues.

But maybe I'm being too hard on the guy. He did give me Watergate, after all, and I *do* remember watching and growing to love those hearings.

They interrupted the normal afterschool shows and I had no alternative options on the days when the weather made playing outdoors unpalatable (this was Seattle and it was pre-cable, children).

Those hearings instilled in me the political beliefs and principles that have stayed with me to this day. So I gotta say 'thanks' to Milhous for that. Were it not for him, I might have grown up to be a Republican.

Now, on to the weekly misadventures of Nancy Botwin (sweet Mary Louise) ... Alanis Morissette (who appeared memorably as God in Kevin Smith's Dogma) continues a guest run tonight as Nancy's baby doc. Weeds jumped the shark prior to first airing but I love it all the same.

Modern love gets you to the church on time

Interesting overview of eHarmony web architecture on slideshare, not so much for the architecture itself as for the fact that as I look over the slides I can visualize their Hadoop cluster churning away (mapping and reducing those 20 cazillion dimensions of compatibility as my lies are compared to the lies of a cross section of candidate buzz gal pals). Ain't modern love wonderful.

Twitter-de and Twitter-dumb
Well, I'm fully twittered up now but still can't seem to muster up the energy to start sharing the minutia of my day-to-day existence these days. (It's enough that I have to suffer through it but must I force others to do so as well?) I'll give you what my nightly digest would doubtless consist of this evening:

• 8:55pm: watching 'Factory Girl' on the movie channel - great swinging 60s vibe and the luminescent Sienna Miller
  
• 9:55pm: getting ready to watch 'Weeds' on Showtime - I've had a major crush on Mary-Louise Parker that began in the 90s, was heightened with her turn as the West Wing's Amy Gardner and continues unabated with Weed's Nancy Botwin
• 10:30pm: can't get into 'Nurse Jackie' for some reason - love Edie Falco and the scripts seem pretty good but I find myself drifting
• 11pm: daily show
• 11:30pm: starting the book "the media relations department of Hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday"
• 1am: sleep

Pretty darn fascinating ...