Could today please be less “ugh”? Raining on/off (or, rather, torrentially/drizzily) and windchill biting winds – uh, Mother Nature, you do know it’s May, right? She must really want something nice on Mother’s Day.
I thought that yesterday’s Asian Heritage festival at Union Sq. was nice yesterday. Decent weather, despite the nasty morning. Kept collecting stuff – when will I ever learn not to keep amassing stuff?
“Alias” yesterday – well, Secret Agent Sydney is trying to figure it out with her half-sister; her half-sister perhaps loves her own evil dad after all (geez, could you please just don’t go all unconditionally loving on the Evil Sloane?); and the love of Sydney’s life, Vaughn – well, he’s slowly but surely going to lose his mind (you would too if you toiled so hard to fight the bad evil; the love of your life returns from the dead two years later; and your wife is a backstabbing traitor; and your ex-girlfriend’s father is trying way too hard to be empathetic with you because he too has a backstabbing wife. Hmmm…). The season finale is in… THREE weeks? Oh well. Just have to contain myself.
“The Practice” – The Return of Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) – he had five minutes. Umm. Okay. Plus some typical David E. Kelley moments (in the Ally McBealesque style – I’m not trying to be praising here either). William Shatner made me wince way too often. James Spader – hmm. Deep inside his wacko of a character is a… wacko trying to come out anyway, no matter how much every woman who crosses his path says she’ll reform him. Uh huh.
Slate.com’s “Explainer” explains whether Supreme Court justices get protection and to what extent (especially in light of what recently happened to Justice Souter while he was jogging).
Plus, there’s the Slate Guide to Gurus – a silly game to help one decide who’s the best guru for one – and a nice funny spin on how worth it they all are (Re: Dr. Phil – ” You can’t keep your eyes off: His mustache.” So true. So funny. tee-hee). Scary part: that I actually thought that the Slate descriptions made it seem pretty obvious that I’m the sort who’d go for Bill Moyers (he’s a guru? Oh well) and Oprah Winfrey (well, who’d resist that whole empowerment thing?). Well, the others were too easy for satirical targets, but the Moyers description is so dead on accurate for a piece of satire; my remarks in brackets:
“You’re an earnest lefty [I am?]
“Your guru is: Bill Moyers
“You trust him because of: His thoughtful chin-grabbing. [hehe, yeah, he does that]
“His style: Smug piety.
“What he says: Is ” ‘we the people’ a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality—one nation, indivisible—or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others”? [yeah, he’d talk like that]
“What he means: Republicans are evil.
[while I have yet to hear the words “Republicans are evil” out of Moyers’ mouth (I’ve been skipping a bunch of “Now” anyway), the subtext is certainly there (I mean, come on, the man used to be in the LBJ administration).]
“You can’t keep your eyes off: His rimless glasses. [those are better looking frames than what he had for the filmed interviews that he did with Joseph Campbell, I can tell you that]
“Ideal devotee is: Watching PBS. [umm, yeah; where else would you catch Moyers?]
“If he wasn’t doing this he’d be: A celebrity psychotherapist.
“Your sneaking suspicion: He hates dogs. [hehehe…]
“Cost: Nothing. It’s public television, remember? [ooh, gut check; zing at PBS]
“You could get the same advice from: Salon, The Nation, Harper’s …” [yeah, but it’s not like I’d read those; too darn lazy and no forking the money for them anyway… (and no, I’m not that left)]
Just my thoughts on that latest Slate thing.
This week’s “Doonesbury” is apparently about the class reunion at Trudeau’s fictitious Walden University, where the class is divided among the George W. Bush supporters and the anti-Bush side. Funny idea. Personally, with my class reunion coming, I’m half-scared that that can happen to my reunion (on the other hand, coming from a left-leaning university means that the right wing types are the minority, so the whole class divided thing won’t be nearly so daunting, unless we’re talking about a pro-war/pro-Bush vocal minority – but that’s a thought for another day).
Have a good week…