We Have A Situation!

You know you've been watching too much 24 when ...

1.) All the power goes out in LA, and the first things you think are a.) It's definitely an EMP bomb launched by terrorists and b.) somebody had better call CTU about this ...

- actually, I did kinda feel like a dumbass during yesterday's mass LA-area power outtage, because I of course see the electricity in my apt go out and assume that it was something unique to my apartment, so I call the office to complain about it, only to find out it wasn't just my apt, not just my building, but the whole durn greater LA area that was without power. Pretty surreal though, driving to work with no traffic lights and mass chaos seeming to be just within reach.

AT WORK:

All-Ellen, All-The-Time Week continues ...

Ellen on Monday was actually a pretty sweet show, guest-wise. Two of my favorite TV stars were on the show, Lauren Graham and Jeffrey Tambor, of Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development respectively. Both were pretty funny on the show, though even with some quality guests, those Ellen tapings can get reaaaally long and tiring ...

Today however was a return to the position of ticketbox head, something which, as has been well documented here, is not exactly my most favorite thing to do. And while it was mostly a pretty quiet day, there were of course the prerequisite selection of crazies and nutjobs, notably this one VERY angry guy, likely hopped up on pain killers or something, who for no particular reason was very unhappy about having to attend the Tonight Show with a broken leg. Don't ask.

Oh, and today was also notable for another call by the man I will now dub "Mr. Crazy," who every so often calls, breathes heavily, and, sounding as if he may keel over from a heart attack at any moment, asks strange questions about The Tonight Show, and desperately inquires when certain female guests along the lines of Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra are going to be on the show. Weeeeeiiiird ...

Still no update on an interview for the Studio Productions assignment ... deadline for applying to Primetime Programming is Friday. Once again, stay tuned ...

TV ROUNDUP:

- All hail the return of one of TV's cleverest, witiiest, funniest, and most intelligent family dramas - the almighty GILMORE GIRLS. All the haters and wannabe alpha males too insecure in their masculinity to embrace the charms of all things Gilmore need to wake up - because in a Fall TV season filled with half-assed dramas and paper-thin characters, the season premiere of Gilmore was a refresher course in good TV. Here are characters you can latch onto and love. Here are pop culture references that have bite and snap, not "oh look how cool we are" lameness (OC I'm looking at you ...). Here is drama mixed with humor that's actually laugh out loud funny. And most of all here's a show with real HEART that never ever gets too cheesy for its own good. Now let me explain something here. I like shows that are about BIG ideas. This show is. It's about living up to your family's expectations, about growing up, about living within different kinds of communities with all their quirks and cultural baggage. So you have those overarching themes that give meaning and context and depth to all the brilliantly written character interactions. The BIG ideas give the little ideas weight. It's why I don't like shows like Friends or Sex in the City. They think that the LITTLE THINGS are so important that we will care about the characters based on their hairstyle or their shoes or all their little foibles and quirks. And for many people, that's enough - everything else is just extra padding. But I hated all the shallow, self-involved, annoying characters on Friends - why should I care about them? Shows like Seinfeld and The Simpsons are brilliant because they look at characters on the micro level and poke fun at all the little faults and eccentricities of people and society in a stairical way. Shows like Friends ask me to take the characters at face value and love them just because they have little catchphrases or whatever that make them lovable to the masses. Well Gilmore Girls is about so much more than that, and that's why I like it. It's characters are lovably quirky, but in a natural, 3-D way - and it's whole WORLD is wonderfully quirky to fit the characters. We aren't asked to like them, but after a while you just do, because they are, simply, great characters. So yeah, great season premiere - come on, dudes, give some love to Gilmore. My grade: A

- Also watched SUPERNATURAL on the WB, which basically had some very nice f/x and visuals, but not much else. As you know I am a sucker for anything, um, supernatural-themed, so this show seemed right up my alley. But the lead characters, first of all, were completely bland and generic. Jenson Eckles or whatever his name is annoyed the hell out of me during his stint as Lana's boyfriend on Smallville last year and he wasn't much better here. This guy is just not that great of an actor and to me at least is totally unlikable. The backstory for these characters also seemed totally preposterous. On one hand, this show seems firmly rooted in the "Real" world. On the other hand, without any real in-depth explanation, we are expected to buy that the two brothers (might as well call them Abercrombie and Fitch) are "Hunters," who have somehow been trained to know everything about the paranormal, be expert martial artists, detectives, and warriors. Um, yeah, okay. This show can't seem to decide if it wants to be The X-Files or Buffy, which is understandable as I noticed its executive producers included McG of Charlie's Angels on one hand and David Nutter of Millenium on the other. Odd combo, indeed. Anyways, with generic leads, a plot ripped right out of those old Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, and a crazy, nonsensical premise, this show mostly kept my interest through some very slick horror movie-esque sequences and cool visuals. My grade: C

- I'll probably give Invasion and Kolchak a chance, but I wish the networks would take some time to come up with cool, interesting premises for scifi shows and not this endless parade of "They're Coming, and There's Nothing We Can Do To Stop Them (Or Is There?)" breed of high-concept shows which all appear to be mostly bland attempts to cash in on the success of Lost (despite Lost's successful premise having little to do with the above).

RANDOM STUFF - ONE MO' POLITICAL RANT OF DOOOOOOOOOM:

- In a turn of events that has really been entertaining me, some of my fellow pages have recently gotten into a war of words of sorts about the government's response to Katrina, sending arguments back and forth via email. And of all things, this started thanks to a jokey, photoshopped picture of Bush and Bush Sr. fishing in the flooded city of New Orleans. Let's get it straight - the response to Katrina was, as Bush today all but ADMITTED, piss-poor. Secondly, any apologists have no legitimate cause to point fingers at democrats for supposedly politicizing this tragedy. Let's face it folks, EVERYTHING is politicized in some way. And if John Kerry had done a better job of politicizing the debacle in Iraq, he might have won the election. And also, let's not forget that in recent years it's been the Republican party, more than anyone, who has exploited tragedy to further their own particular agendas (watch any W speech, or any Guliani speech for that matter from the last few years and count the amount of times they name-drop 9/11 ...). Now the other issue that has surfaced has been one of race and class. I think that these ARE factors in the lack of response. I don't pin the blame just on Bush, because we are all guilty of this type of thinking in a way. I mean look at the Columbine massacre. That really struck a chord with middle class America beacuse they looked on TV and saw kids just like their own in schools just like their own being shot at. And I know it struck a chord with me when I saw that footage and saw how eerily similar those kids seemed to be to people who I knew. The relative poverty of many of those affected by Katrina was, definitely, a big factor in lack of response. And it really is a shame, but it's made even more so by idiotic comments like those made by Barbara Bush in the wake of the tragedy. I think it also comes down to the fact that many people had this image of Bush as jsut a regular Joe. Well let's face it, folks. The Bush family is about as far away as you can get from middle class America. George W's story is anything but a rags to riches story - it's a story of a priveleged kid who got just about everything handed to him. So why the expectation that this guy has any kind of common touch. Look, lack of intelligence isn't exclusive to the lower classes - I mean look at some of Europe's royal families. Anyways, it really is a lowpoint right now for America, and I think people are going to look back and wonder how Americans got so swept up in so-called patriotism and the conservatism that followed in the wake of the Clinton sex scandal, 9/11, and the religious revival that we elected such a big frigging moron - twice.

Noe THERE'S something for you to think aboot.