A Morality Tale

The following story is true; some of the later details are sketchy because they were passed on to me third-hand, but the broad strokes are all accurate.

Last November a dog-walking acquaintance named Ron suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack at the premature age of 57. A single gay man, he had no partner but a lot of friends; his only close relative was an estranged brother, Avi, living in Israel. Avi flew over quickly and abruptly assumed all of Ron's affairs, but to the extent of defying all of Ron's wishes. He ignored the will that Ron had typed in his computer but never certified, which left his condo to a friend. The estate, consequently, legally defaulted to him. He then tried to have Ron's dog destroyed, but a neighbor rescued her in time. Finally Avi insisted, against Ron's inclinations, that Ron be buried in an exclusive cemetery so orthodox that only other Jews were permitted to touch the casket.

The day after the burial Ron's neighbors feted his life in a memorial buffet held in his condo building's rec room. After several people spoke in Ron's honor, Avi rose, and the crowd expected him to acknowledge their contribution to the event. Instead, Avi unscrolled a prepared statement, and proceeded to condemn all the people in the room, man and woman, gay and straight, for being part of the sinful city of Los Angeles, and helping cause Ron's demise. This was the last straw for many, and after a shouting match, Avi retreated to Ron's condo, where he remained in communicado. His only comment was to paint Ron's door black and sprinkle it with glitter, in a sanctimonious and contemptuous comment on his life.

Several days later Avi returned to Israel, but after having stolen the inheritance felt displeased that California law would still tie up the estate with its cumbersome probate system. So Avi decided to appropriate Ron's identity. With a switch of passport photos, and the liberal use of Ron's credit cards, Avi went on a spending spree, culminating in the purchase of a car in Canada, which he drove back into California. Unfortunately for him, the fraud was discovered, and he was arrested.

While he was held in custody for a few days the local authorities changed the lock on Ron's condo. When Avi was released from custody he bee-lined back to the condo but couldn't get in the unit. Angrily he confronted the manager of the building, demanding entrance. Once he became bellicose, the police were notified. When they appeared and tried to restrain him, the agitated Avi stood up, clutched at his chest, then fell down dead.

Really.

I don't know what conclusion to draw from this story, which reads more like a dark parable or a "Twilight Zone" scenario. Theists would speak of divine justice (I'm reminded of Julia Sweeney's play entitled "And God Said 'Ha!'"); secular humanists will marvel at its just desserts. Religious zealots and holier-than-thous might not want to comment at all. What most resonates with me is that everyone who heard this tale, including me, responded with delight. But that satisfaction is muted by my contemplation of what could motivate a private person to act as he did--a life cloaked in righteous indignation so hypocritical that its end results in universal glee.

The Big Show

Helicopters are circling constantly, police barriers are up, traffic is snarled, the news media are swarming. A low-speed car-chase? No, it's my neighborhood's annual Super Bowl event, otherwise called the Oscars. Were I a lookie-loo I might stroll down Hollywood Boulevard to see the fixin's at the Kodak Theater or the tourists amassing for their once-in-a-lifetime thrills. But nah, after OD'ing on free movie passes and supplemental screenings and pre-Oscar programs I am pretty blase about what is essentially a high-end vanity enterprise. Nor do I care about the outfits, unless they are amusingly animalistic in the Bjork mode. I am a bit intrigued by what's inside those gift baskets (and a bit envious as well--that's a nice way to get a free lasik procedure and a 60-inch hi-def screen. But come on, can't these nominees afford all that shit with what they make in an hour?)

I've attended Oscar parties (usually fun) and watched by my lonesome. This year I'll be joining a neighbor's extended family, which will cut down on traffic concerns (I am about eight feet from this year's Oscar venue). Last year's event, which actually saw a near-relative win an Academy Award, was besmirched because in my capacity of condo director I had to tend to a dead body in one of our units. So bye-bye to my only shot at a real Oscar Party (Vanity Fair's, shit). No such excitement this year, for me or for those pundits still weighing the comparative chances of the two Oscar favorites, "The Aviator" and "Million Dollar Baby."

Not to crow too loudly, but I must own to a fairly acute sense of Oscar sentiment, and usually can choose winners with high accuracy. I even won a party Oscar pool once, although I was helped by cribbing the L.A. Times' choices in the documentary and animation categories. (Hey, not cheating! Anybody could've read the Times!) Some trends have been obvious for years--films about the Holocaust always win; performances involving handicaps are at a big advantage; repeaters in categories tend to lose their followings (doesn't Meryl Streep give the best performance every year, yawn?) Anyway, for the record, and because I'm here and it's there, my final thoughts regarding this year's event:

Scorsese vs. Eastwood is everywhere. Scorsese has never won with all his nominations and is much better than Susan Lucci in what he does. Eastwood has won as director (for "Unforgiven," hardly a great film), and lost last year for "Mystic River" (a better film than "Million Dollar Baby") though last year the "Lord of the Rings" epic had to get its due. How will Hollywood parcel out its rewards? "The Aviator" will probably slide in, as will Scorsese. A possible split decision if "Million Dollar Baby" has enough momentum and wins for Best Picture.

All three "Million Dollar Baby" actors have legitimate shots for the statue. My money, were I rash enough to place it, would be on Morgan Freeman for best supporting actor. Hillary Swank actually deserves to win, but she already got a nod for another tomboy role in "Boys Don't Cry." She's simply not beloved enough to pull a daily double, so I think the election will fall to Annette Bening for her pull-out-all-the-stops grandstanding in "Being Julia." We hadn't seen Bening do an English accent yet, so that should help. And it was cool seeing her pop into Tony's dream sequence in "The Sopranos".

Eastwood, the stoical veteran who actually emotes in this film, might squeeze in an upset as Best Actor, this performance being his "True Grit." Certainly he is as iconic as John Wayne. The ballots would have to fall just right, though, including a split-black vote between the deserving Don Cheadle and Jamie Foxx, but I don't really think the Academy will be race-conscious. Cheadle was fine but Foxx's impersonation of Ray Charles was amazing. One historical caveat is that recently biopic leads have disappointed in the voting. I thought Denzel Washington was a lock for "Malcolm X", and likewise, Robert Downey for "Chaplin." (Counter-exception is Ben Kingsley's "Gandhi"). And to prove my inconsistency, I'm picking Cate Blanchette to win for her Kate Hepburn is "Aviator," which was the best performance in that somewhat overblown epic. Laura Linney, she of the dimply winsome smile, could sneak in as a sop to the overlooked "Kinsey," as could Virginia Madsen for "Sideways," though since this is her first nomination she hasn't accumulated a lot of Oscar sympathy. And where is Julianne Moore this year? She was next in line after Nicole Kidman, but couldn't get a role in a decent film.

Best screenplays will likely go to the Writer's Guild winners, "Sideways" (shoo-in) and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"-- and how about an honorary Oscar to Charlie Kauffman just for being so fucking creative?

When all is said and done (a bare cliche, but not inapt applied to the endless Oscarfest), we will realize, as we do every year, that it's not much more than a Chinese dinner of congratulatory nods, that will fade from memory quickly with no nourishment value. Who can name more than one or two winners from last year? And in a week, the only ones who will care about the winners will be their agents.

Hot Stove II

The best news that has wafted northward from the early weeks of baseball's Spring Training comes not from Florida or Arizona but much further south--Venezuela, in fact. That's where the surprisingly efficacious Venezuelan police rescued the mother of Detroit reliever Ugueth Urbina, who was kidnaped six months ago. I would not even try to fathom the hearts of darkness of someone who'd kidnap a celebrity's mother (though the Moms of Brooke Shield and Gary Coleman would not elicit much sympathy). The savagery of the outlaw sociopathy in the cocaine regions of South America is uncomfortable to contemplate, as is the presumed incompetence and corruption of the local police and militias. But somehow they all came through for the baseball hero. Unbelievable, and huzzah.

Next comes the pre-emptive audacity of Barry Bonds. Now that he has been ineradicably stained with Steroid suspicion, his home run record is forever tainted. So he lashes out at the media with a "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" diatribe. Too late, Barry. Although one can still argue that you're one of the two or three greatest hitters of all-time, we will never know whether your last couple of, frankly, amazingly productive seasons would have happened had not your body been so hospitable to steroidal enhancements. Some time in September, or early 2006, as you approach Hank Aaron's 754 home run record, the controversy will erupt that will make the 1961 Roger Maris asterisk affair seem like, well, an asterisk. Number 755 will engender a whole lot of resentment and hardly any celebration. That's already a done deal. Too bad for baseball. The only person to possibly benefit from this is Jason Giambi, whose brief infamy will be totally overshadowed by the Bonds debacle.

The most foolish non-controversy has come from the public relations division of the Boston Red Sox, who briefly decided not to allow their hometown champions to receive their World Series rings during Opening Day ceremonies because it would "show up" the visiting Yankees, whom they embarrassed last Fall. I have no idea what kind of logic went into this idea, but it surely defies the entire point of fan inclusion. Now I am a Yankee backer of longstanding, and largely antipathetic to the Red Sox "idiots," and find their constant razzing of Arod to be roundly obnoxious, but they certainly earned the right to parade their post-season bling-bling in the face of any opponent. If they were opening the season agains Tampa Bay or Cleveland there would be no question about ceremonial proceedings. And if the Yankees had won the series, they certainly would have feted boisterously in front of the Sox in Yankee Stadium on April 3. Why would the Red Sox act so deferentially to the Yankees?

Boston's post-season surge was, however painful to me, also remarkable and heroic. The Yankee's collapse was devastating but also historically embarrassing and they deserve to have it flung in their collective faces. After a surge of protest from Red Sox fans (whom, except for my niece, I largely despise, as they've been trained to utter "Yankees suck!" with the same mindless knee-jerk intensity of a "Sieg heil!"), the Boston brass rescinded the idea and will allow the presentation to continue. I find it implausible that anyone wanted to spare the feelngs of spoiled Yankee millionaires who are so detested by the Boston fans. They waited 86 years to rub it in the face of their opposition, so let them have the glorious moment. And, hopefully, the humiliation will motivate the Yankees to perform more efficiently this season, just as their flopping in 1997 energized their spectacular three-season championship run from 1998 to 2000.

Come to think of it, that may be why the Red Sox brass were afraid to gloat.

The Creeping Hour

It began innocently enough, about a year or so ago, when I started noticing that local afternoon news broadcasts were not starting on time, but rather a minute or two before the hour. At first I questioned my own time pieces, though all the chronometers scattered through my abode could not be equally askew. I asked a friend who worked at one of the local new shows about the phenomenon and he agreed with me it was likely a ploy to capture or retain viewers who might otherwise gravitate to another station, perhaps during a commerical break. This barely made sense, since the news material is always the same, and it's brand loyalty--or successful lead-in programming--that dictates viewership for local newscasts. Furthermore, local news comes in consecutive hourly shifts, with new sets of anchors appearing at 4:47 and 5:56. As competing outlets continued to push back the clock, all hourly broadcasts are commencing now by the 55-minute mark, and threaten to start as early as yesterday by the time this trend subsides.

This development is fairly innocuous, but lately it's been the networks who've begun to ignore the hourly demarcations by which we've been trained from birth to order our lives and our TV scheduling. They employ the opposite strategy of running popular programs a minute or two beyond the hour, eating up the first minute or two of some popular show on another network, hopefully discouraging the viewer from switching. So successful programs like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" now run to 9:02 and 10:02 respectively, trying to keep their audience glued to "Alias" and "Boston Legal" rather than catch an NBC show like "West Wing" "already in progress." Even factoring in that the last minute of each show is usually a preview and the first minute usually a recap, this strategy does seem to be effective.

Time-shifting for audience retention during Sweeps has been a common practice in recent years, most apparent in the airing of "extended" sitcom episodes like NBC's 40-minute "Friends" and "Will and Grace," initiated partly to maintain audiences and partly not to have to expose them to hammocked crap like "Good Morning, Miami!" At least more minutes of good comedies provide a few extra laughs for the evening; it's not the same with ABC's lame TGIF family "comedies," which are also being stretched out to keep you and me from the competition.

But beyond the battle for Nielsen points is the more subtle war being waged, and that's against TIVO and the VCRs and DVRs with which we've armed ourselves to battle Network tyranny. Those who rely on TIVO's automatic sequencing--especially when moving from one station to another at the top of an hour-- are chafing when they find that they are missing the last reveal on "Lost" or "Housewives." This undermines the value of TIVO, which sits just fine with the TV industry, because TIVO, with its commercial-skipping capabilities, threatens the advertising stream upon which networks survive.

I've been burned a few times when absentee-taping Wednesday night's quality programming and missing portions of either "Lost" or "West Wing." Like a good lab rat I've learned to adjust, and either program consecutive shows on the same network, or run around to my other recording devices and set-up multiple tapings to cover all possibilities. If I need to tape only one show, I automatically start two minutes early and end two minutes late. This strategy should cover me for a year or two until the TV honchos develop another nefarious scheme. Meanwhile I've noticed the on-screen listings from my digital cable company have begun to reflect the off-hour conclusions of some programs, perhaps so it can adjust its own DVR system to the irregularities (and wean viewers from their generic TIVOs).

The losers in this ongoing war do not really include me, because I insist on some personal control of my devices, and can react accordingly. But what of the 80% of the population whose brains short-circuit when confronted with the VCR timers, not to mention those hopeless compulsives out there who'd like to think that 10 P.M. will always mean 10 P.M. in an otherwise chaotic landscape? The public be damned. Note to the four major nets: HBO programs always begin on time!

Presidents Day Washout

The great meteorological advantage of living in Southern California is usually most apparent this time of year, when most other temperate cities in the Hemisphere are reduced to tundra, while we luxuriate under deep blue skies, crystalline air and warm temperatures. Not this year, though. Given to the randomness of the jet stream and other factors still undetected by our scientists, atmospheric conditions have altered dramatically and we are having the rainiest season in a century. We've actually had 15 more inches of rain this year than Seattle. I just returned from a dog walk during a brief hiatus in the five-day storm which the weatherman on the Weather Channel rather inappropriately called "beautiful." Tell that to the highway worker who fell to his death in a giant sinkhole that formed on a Valley street called Tujunga.

I'm not given to complain about the L.A. weather; I consider it bad karma, since we usually are so blessed with California sunshine. I will note, however, that torrential rains of the sort we've been having (i.e., monsoons) are especially inconvenient in a town not built for them. Hillslides, mudslides, traffic accidents, and rampaging waters in the otherwise somnabulent Los Angeles River, all have filled up the newscasts so completely that the standard racy features and restaurant violation exposes usually dominating Sweeps-month slates are barely making any appearances. So we won't hear as much about teenage sex-slaves (until the Michael Jackson trial) and a few more people will suffer e-coli poisoning in a Korean restaurant. The rain has upstaged Joel Grover, which is hard to do, but for which I'm kinda grateful.

The inclement weather has also ruined most people's President Day weekend, tra la. I was not adversely affected, although I did have to postpone travel plans from last week because of the threat of flooded freeways. This day I'd devoted to personal maintenance and other mundane tasks quite suited to rain, including an annual physical, where, among other things, I learned that nobody does urine samples any more, at least not for blood sugar and diabetes. And to think I held it in all the way to the doctor's office! Sorry, TMI.

Perhaps I needed this off-day to gather strength after a weekend battling with all the institutions apparently targeting my welfare. The cable company billed me exorbitantly and inappropriately after installing DSL; the McAfee company, whose virus protection updates are uploading constantly into my hard drive, is sending me quixotic error messages but cannot be reached by phone. And, of course, there is the Postal Service, who continues its campaign against my sanity and has withheld the fourth piece of important financial mail in a month, a checkbook from one of my investment houses. I officially notified the higher ups, and war has been declared--but cannot be fought today, because all Federal offices are closed. This may also be fortunate, since whoever has stolen my checks cannot get to cash them in any banks this afternoon. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay.

So I am left with the task of confronting my personal income taxes, into which I can finally launch because UPS was able to deliver the Turbo Tax software that so confused our postal division. But concentrating on all these figures is not so easy since my downstairs neighbor decided this was a great day to begin gutting his house for a complete makeover. Damned if I'm outside, damned if I'm inside. Still, I'm not complaining. And I do enjoy the patter of rain at night, though I'd like it better if I knew it was going to vanish by morning.

Rita Van Winkle

I've been somewhat captivated by a recent news item concerning a young woman who, after being seriously injured in an auto accident in 1985, has recently awakened from a coma, twenty years, ater, faculties fully restored. It's something of a wish-fulfillment scenario, as it was back in Washington Irving's days, to leap forward into the future after a Long Sleep, even if it costs you a large chunk of your life. It's instant science fiction, the closest we can get to time travel.

In the early 1980s one of my incipient pilot ideas was "2002," a standard issue sitcom set in that remote future time. I made a list of scientific breakthroughs that would be considered normal in the second year of the 21st century. I was surprisingly prescient, though most of my ideas were along the order of hand-held computers and human cloning. Now it engages me to wonder how I would have reacted had I been in this girl's unfortunate shoes and awakened last week to this world. For instance, what features in today's Los Angeles Times would have most piqued my interest or wonder, from the vantage point of the mid-'80s?

1. Ooh, all the front-page photos are in color.
2. "Conservatives Put off by Bush Talk of Tax Hike." Well, looks like the V.P. finally made it big.
3. All those ads for funny little cordless phones that take photos. Is America in 2005 totally obsessed with personal phones? And what in hell's an "Ipod"?
4. What is this 9/11 everyone is referring to? Isn't 911 the emergency phone number? Was there some emergency, and why the forward slash?
5. "Hi-Definition TVs?" Doesn't sound like such a great breakthrough. I'd expect 3-D TV by now.
6. Cialis--a pill for "erectile dysfunction"? Does that mean what I think it means? Cool.
7. Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar? You mean the body builder who was in that movie "The Terminator?" Well, our current prez is an actor, so why not?
8. Christian Activist Ralph Reed to run for Georgia Lieutenant Governor. I've heard of this guy Reed--actually I thought he'd be a bigger name by now.
9. "Cosby Avoids Fondling Charge." You mean the star of "The Cosby Show?" I love that show. Why would anyone want to pick on him? Next thing they'll do is attack Michael Jackson....Oh...
10. Is the most popular word in 2005 "genetic?" What do they mean by genetic profiling? Genomes? Genetic mapping? DNA evidence? Do they bring microscopes to court now?

That's all from the first section. Perusing the other sections would be even more mysterious. The business pages would show the NYSE up outrageously from 1985 levels, with mysterious companies named Google and Yahoo and Verizon thriving and AT&T dying on the vine. And what do they mean by NASDAQ? Sports news tells of the apparent death of the NHL, and just who is it defending its World Series title? (although 1985 was pre-Bill Buckner, so the Red Sox saga would seem far less melodramatic). As for the comics page, it's nice to see "Peanuts" going strong. How nice that Charles Schulz has survived.

I hesitate to project what the paper will be recording in 2025, because I am naturally pessimistic and don't like the direction the country and world are headed. But ask me if I'd like to sleep for twenty years and miss some of the likely developments, including an almost certain Big Earthquake, probable nuclear terrorism, and at least one major pandemic in addition to AIDS, and I'll be pretty ambivalent, even if it means waking up as a septuagenarian.

Postal Going

So when was the last time someone turned you and said, "You know, my mail delivery has been really dependable lately!" or "We can sure count on the U.S. Postal Service!"? Used to be these comments were unnecessary; reliable mail service was one of the great givens of quotidian life. If there was ever a misdelivery it was attributed to a rare and forgiveable human error, or it was the recipient who somehow misplaced the errant bill or dropped it accidentally through the crevice between the elevator and the landing. But what large massive system ever was celebrated by a motto declaring that no accident or meteorological impediment would ever deter the carrier from his/her appointed rounds?

Well, all that has gone pretty much to shit. The quality of service of the postal system seems to be deteriorating at an accelerating rate, as though the workers know they are in a lame duck institution and are there simply for the collection of an inflated pension and the job security only a powerful union can provide. In the past year I've experienced several incidents of important mail mysteriously disappearing through the system: a credit card payment vanishing into the ether; the disappearance of some periodicals, a tax software program, and more egregiously, a large check from a brokerage house. I assume that some of these items appeared in other people's boxes, just as I continue to receive, at the rate of one item a day, something that belongs to someone else.

My experience with magazines has been particularly galling. I stopped receiving "Newsweek," to which I'd been subscribing for nearly two decades, last August. I learned after investigation that our mail carrier, who could not find my Unit number on my magazine mailing label, didn't bother to check my name listed in the mail room, and instead returned the journal as "undeliverable." In order to do this the carrier had to fill out a form, and submit it. Now, even if the person were lazy, doesn't filling out the form require a lot more energy than checking my name on a chart in the mail room? When I went to the station to complain, I was asked for all sorts of identification so that they could send a retraction to "Newsweek" admitting that I indeed did exist. Of course I had to make calls to the magazine to update my address, etc. This is mildly annoying, but after registering a complaint with the post office, and receiving assurances that they would look into the poor service, the exact same thing happened with my "New Yorker" magazine, and it disappeared from my box. When I called to complain a second time, to the number given me specifically for that purpose, I reached a Spanish-speaking person who refused to converse in English. When I said I didn't speak Spanish, he hung up on me. Thanks, guy--Now I get to reevaluate my stances on immigration and bilingual education.

It wouldn't have mattered had I actually reached someone who would discuss the problem in our native tongue; I can trust no assurances of improved service, and we have no recourse for complaint. Nobody can sue the Post Office, and it's essentially a monopoly, at least in the handling of tangible correspondence. In the case of my condo building, we used to have an excellent, prompt deliverer, who sadly went into a coma after a botched operation. That was five years ago, however, union regulations have prevented the local Office from replacing him in our route with a permanent carrier. Hey, I liked the guy too, but come on! So we get an endless string of substitutes too incompetent to look up at the names on a resident listing board. And everybody loses.

A lot of personal griping here, and I'm sure many others have worse experiences, but the bottom line is that the deterioration of the postal delivery service as the Internet continues to absorb its functions seems almost conspiratorial. I have been a stubborn hold-out against on-line bill-paying, as I fear the potential for virus infections, mischievous hacking and identity theft increases every day. Yet I have reached the point when I am no longer confident that a plainly stamped and mailed item will reach its destination. I don't know if that trust will ever be reestablished. The Postal System is turning into a dinosaur before our eyes, and I can see, within a decade or two, its complete dissolution. But its army of workers don't give a damn; they'll just be making more once they've been retired. And I'll be reading "The New Yorker" from New Yorker.com, thank you.

No News Is Good News

What does "news" mean, anyway? I once read that the word was supposed to be an acronym of "north/east/west/south," which is fanciful; more likely it's derived from "new events" or something like that. In any case it's supposed to be an account of some occurrence that changes the landscape, even in the slightest way. The major news stories of a given year should not be totally predictable, unless, of course, they are already scheduled, like election campaigns and such.

But this year we have an event that is certain to dominate the news media from the tabloids to the front pages of our dailies, and that is the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial. Barring a terrorist attack in America or a political assassination, this trial is certain to use up more print and air time than any other event this year. As for my blog, this will be the only time I will mention it, because it's of interest to me only in what it says about the cult of celebrity in our society.

I suppose in his indelicate combination of celebrity and eccentricity Jackson could be of some interest to psychologists, paparazzi and pop music afficionadoes, but not to me. The very mention of his name produces a kind of temporary stupor in my brain. I'm reminded for some reason of Ralph Leibowitz, who used to play piano during my meals at summer camp when I was a kid. He had a few favorites, but specialized in "Moon River." "Moon River" is a nice song but after hearing it three times a day for two months during bad meals, I developed a knee-jerk aversion to it. So it has been with Michael Jackson and his personal shenanigans. "Thriller" was a creative album, and the moonwalk is amusing, but Jackson's sociopathy, however deeply disturbed it is, has been so endlessly discussed that the word "overexposure" barely suffices.

If yesterday's news is any indication, this is going to be difficult to endure. The trial is only in its jury-selection phase and already we are getting details of why "Juror 81" could not make it for the full trial, or "Juror 135" is 86 years old. TMI! Too much information! We have also been told of the potential witness list for the defense, which seems to contain the name of every celebrity alive, apparently for character support. No, I guess neither Jay Leno nor Elizabeth Taylor had ever seen Jackson tickle a ten-year-old (though maybe Corey Feldman has). And we are going to hear them say so, it appears, for several months, in a parade of "People" covers come-to-life. Goody.

Unlike other recent developments, like the Brad/Jen break-up and the Christo "Gates" art project, the Michael Jackson trial has absolutely no good angle. If he's guilty, a man's life is in ruins, and all association with him is as distasteful as having a connection with O.J. Simpson. If he's innocent, then it's an indictment of the venality and gross dishonesty of ungrateful families whom Jackson offered to help. In either case, we are going to hear disreputable details, true or not, ad nauseum. High ick factor, and you know what? I have better things to listen to, including buzz saws, leaf blowers, and William Hung's rendition of "Feelings."

I will speculate in advance that, given the "he said/he said" nature of the testimony, enough doubt will be shed that Jackson will be acquitted. I think a jury will have difficulty reconciling his mammoth fame and ingenuous character with the criminal activity of which he's accused--just as was the case with O.J. (For the record, I think Robert Blake will be convicted, since his star has declined so markedly since "Baretta" was put to sleep). But will I pay attention, or care the least iota? Of course not.

But perhaps I was hasty in observing no good side to this phenomenon. If indeed a celebrity trial is dominating the news, it will mean that otherwise the world is tranquil, as it was in the late 1990s when another sleaze-fest, the Clinton Impeachment affair, masked the fact that the nation was enjoying its most prosperous era ever. But that won't make Jackson's impeachment any more palatable to watch. I'm just glad the baseball season will be underway.

The Best Bad Show on TV

When the history of early 21st-century video achievement is written (and what a pointlessly silly volume that will be), the Reality phenomenon will dominate several chapters, with some attention focused on police procedurals and cable dramas (along with a post-mortem on the sitcom) But if there are any references to "Las Vegas," they will probably be in the footnotes. "Las Vegas" is an innocuous time-waster, a prototypical Aaron Spelling show without Aaron Spelling (now a doting grandfather living in a mansion the size of Mars and still trying to wheedle a career for his daughter).

But back to Vegas. Sorry, late Robert Urich, I meant "Las Vegas." This is a show with no sense of character development, whose weekly plot lines feature essentially the same elements-- obnoxious whales, lucky hicks on a lark, and abortive romances between costars. Yet knowing this, I watch every week, and actually enjoy it. (Okay, I tape it while I'm watching the exuberant "24," but I always review it). I'm not alone in finding such entertainment value; this was NBC's only popular success last season, and is cementing a Monday night block for the peacock crowd along with the uneven but somewhat absorbing "Medium" supernatural procedural that ensues. The question is, what is it that makes such a dumb product worth an hour out of my week (or 50 minutes off the VCR?)

The answer comes, simply enough, from my aged Mom, who says "I'll watch anything about Las Vegas." Once a devoted gambler, she is now too physically challenged to visit Sin City, or even Atlantic City, so this provides the closest vicarious experience. And in this regard, "Las Vegas" is pitched and produced masterfully. It has flashy graphics, quick and energetic cutting, colorful sets and the most attractive cast on TV. It is total superficial bliss, an escape from any sort of proportion or reality. It is, plainly, the video equivalent of a Vegas jaunt, without the security lines at McCarran Airport.

The cast has to consider itself one of the luckiest in the world. They are never challenged with difficult emotional material, though I believe they could handle it. And they are all benefitting from the visibility enhanced by expensive and flattering wardrobe. These are all pretty good actors--Josh Duhamel has a major future as a leading man, though his height may limit him a bit; Nikki Cox and Vanessa Marcil in interchangeable roles as casino hosts are underutilized except in the display department. James Caan has very deftly segued into a comic character actor with a dark edge (territory also inhabited by Alex Baldwin, with whom he generously shares some screen time). James Lesure's character has undergone the most revamping. Last season he was a street-smart Head Valet. Mysteriously, for the new season, he became a brilliant MIT-educated mathematician whose savvy solves intricate problems in Duhamel's security office. Some summer school. Whether this resulted from the actor's request, a network note regarding racial stereotyping, or a producer's sincere attempt to expand his role or reduce the sets, it at least represented an attempt to vary the formula. Another serial subplot regarding Duhamel's secret military mission and post-traumatic stress did not seem to blend well with the playful tone of the show, so it's been largely abandoned.

As much as I enjoy the atmospherics of the program, I must admit that in the flesh-and-blood Las Vegas I never see any attractive people working in the pits, and certainly no gorgeous female hosts who look like runners-up for Miss World. My idea of a real casino host is that clammy little guy who was on Mark Burnett's disappointing "The Casino" reality show--and whom I actually met at the Golden Nugget last summer. He was plastic and unctuous, of course, which was appropriate for the job.

The real star of "Las Vegas" is its art direction. Though nothing short of reality depiction can convey the mad cacophony of a casino, the set for the fictional Montecito offers a convincing rendition of the real thing, so elaborate that I'm tempted to drive down to the Sony lot to pay a visit. Even the CGI-created exterior of the hotel, placed strategically on the south side of the Strip, is persuasive. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I rate this production the best example of high style trumping substance that I've ever seen on television.

And in providing a substitute experience, a bogus gambling hit for the less adventurous and an hour-long vacation dream for the disenfranchised masses, the program may actually be serving a psychological and sociological benefit. I'm sure the advertisers don't mind it either.

Night-Blooming Jasmine

Every morning, after stretching and shaking off evening cobwebs, I can generally judge the state of the world by weighing my morning newspaper. Today's edition was very light, even given the inflated Thursday entertainment section. This indicates two things to me--nothing much is happening and nobody is advertising on Thursday. This is unsurprising, since we are in the second week of February, traditionally the most stagnant period of the year.

It's odd, though, to see every facet of the news in doldrum mode. The sports scene is in the trough between football season and the beginning of spring training; the financial markets are returning to steadiness after a January sell-off; the local news is following a snooze-inducing mayoral election pitting five Democrats distinguishable only by their ethnicity; and even the international theater is in quiet retrenchment, with Condy trying to mend fences with Europe and the Israeli/Palestinians proclaiming that they're not all that thrilled about the endless violence. Well, there is one dark cloud looming, which is North Korea's admission that they have a bomb (a bad one). Leave it to the folks who lunch on lhasa apsos.

Since most of humanity (not including the Southern Hemisphere, which doesn't count) is spending most of its time scraping ice off its collective windshields there's little energy for much else. Maybe this is why February has been so artificially festooned with second-tier holidays. We are a week past that most peculiar pagan relic Groundhog Day, and a few days shy of the overhyped and cruel Valentine's Day, whose religious subtext has long been abandoned for the greater societal purpose of making single people feel like shit. It's interesting that the former holiday provided the basis for an excellent humane comedy (Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day') while the latter has only spawned a horror flick (not to mention those Jazz-era evocations of the St. Valentine's Day massacre). Yesterday saw the observation of two quite disparate events, Chinese New Year (the Rooster, supposedly bad luck) and Ash Wednesday, or Coming Out Catholic Day for those poor celebrants who have to annually explain the smudge on their foreheads to dimwits at work. And on February 21 we get President's Day, another reconstructed holiday celebrated mostly with traffic jams and backed-up runways.

The TV networks usually jump in with gobs of February specials for Sweeps but this pattern has subsided, and most of what we are getting are the grand finales and super premieres of the most popular reality shows. PBS is airing a slew of documentaries about the African American experience, denoting Black History Month. Apparently this time of year is so barren of interest that we're willing to review and reconsider our historic National Shame.

At least one human (two to be fair) have figured out a way to perk up Feeble February. They are Christo (whose first name is probably not Monte, though I wish it were), and his partner Jeanne-Claude (whose last name is not Killy). They have chosen the bleakest stretch of the Northeastern winter to drape the serpentine paths of New York's Central Park with orange-cloaked gates. This was smart, since the flowing sheets would be somewhat redundant during the verdant period of Central Park's blossoming. Now they stand out against the barren backdrop of denuded trunks and icy pathways. Like most people, I find Christo's Dada-esque projects always delightful--a humorous but thoughtful admix of natural and manmade, of color and starkness. I was fortunate enough to visit his "Umbrellas" project of 1988 on the Grapevine, a stretch of highway north of Los Angeles. Giant, two-story yellow bumpershoots lined the usually sterile artery as locals who would never literally set foot in the area capered about taking snapshots and eating churros from makeshift kiosks. New Yorkers are in for the same kind of treat.

What Christo helpfully reminds us is that occasionally it's a fine idea to pocket away troubling thoughts and go outside and smell the roses. Although roses are not in season here in Los Angeles, we do have a flower called "night-blooming jasmine," which suffuses the February air with a delightful cinnamon-like scent, particularly late at night when I'm on my evening dog walk and could use some pleasant aromas. The blooming of the jasmines is the first of L.A.'s two horticultural highlights. The other is the emergence of the stunning lilac-colored jacaranda trees in June. I make certain not to allow either event to pass without an appreciation. With Korean nukes and the Michael Jackson trial both on the horizon, I need what tranquil distraction I can get. Thoreau would certainly approve.

In Bush's League

Though I've been constantly disrespectful to our President, whom I consider an accident of birth, I must admit that not all of his priorities are wrongheaded. Sure, he dementedly proposes to amend the constitution to legally restrict the rights of a certain minority, and his Social Security privatization scheme, while not appalling in theory, would certainly do nothing to sustain the program's solvency; it will in fact do the opposite. But when he maintains that our judicial system is bogged down in frivolous and/or extravagant lawsuits, I can only nod in agreement.

Americans are very insistent at avoiding responsibility for their own lives; they prefer to deflect difficult problems to their parents, God, and/or the legal system. Well, parents eventually die or become dependent themselves, and God either Doesn't Care or Isn't There. This leaves us with the courtrooms, now expected to deal with every aggrievement from cradle to grave (or beyond in both instances, from Roe v. Wade to Ted William's frozen head case). Now it is surely our right and occasionally our need to secure redress from injustice, and the Little Guy or Gal can often be trampled upon by Big Industry or the Medical Institution lacking this outlet. Many, even most lawsuits are valid for adjudication, even if the rewards demanded are outlandish. The Republicans have a point asserting that medical malpractice suits, in particular, are an underlying cause of higher medical costs. When every physician who ever comes into contact with a patient has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for malpractice insurance, this fact becomes clearer. Capping penalties, as is done in California, is one way to approach the problem, though it's one of those heavyhanded solutions, like three-strikes-you're-out and term limits, that needs modification.

My greater objection is to the frivolous lawsuits that clog the arteries of our legal system. Most of them are just nuisances, and while backing up the dockets, are trivial personal affairs. Then occasionally one pops up that is totally offensive to notions of American ideals. I am referrring to the "sexual harrassment" charge filed by a former writer's assistant at "Friends" (and I'm going to call this little clut a "secretary," just to put her down). Seems she was working at some late-night rewrite sessions when the creative staff started bandying about off-color jokes concerning the actors and characters on the show. These jokes were not aimed at the secretary. Had she been the target of such cracks, her dismay would be understandable; but she was merely in attendance, and simply took offense. Now she has a lawsuit pending in the California Supreme Court demanding redress. (Yeah, I'd like to redress her, in tars and feathers and a very scratchy thong).

This bitch has since left the show and the country, but the suit is still pending, and could have a devastating effect on the creative process in all scripted shows, if the judge or jury decides that her sensibilities are more important than the First Amendment. Having been a staffer on comedy shows I'm familiar with the process of joke-making and pitching. A writer's room is like a handball court with six players serving at once; jokes go flinging by in a frenzy, usually off-target, often bouncing off each other. To energize this group process, off-color, politically incorrect gags are carelessly thrown about, to loosen the mood. It is a kind of mental calisthenics, just like doing a crossword puzzle or writing a blog sharpens the mind for the psychic demands of the day. Sitcom creation is fundamentally a group-revision process, and very demanding. How could it proceed if the entire staff is afraid to lapse into occasional bad taste because it could ruffle the feathers of some venal assistant who could sue them for making dirty jokes? Is this a writer's room or the fucking Vatican?

I believe that this particular suit will not be upheld, though the producers of "Friends" are so wealthy (a fact that certainly encouraged the plaintiff) that a few dollars could make the problem go away. But a settlement here would set too damaging a precedent. In a perfect world there would be a penalty imposed for a lawsuit deemed frivolous, and I mean something more than the legal costs. For a suit that tries to undermine the Bill of Rights, I'd suggest a prison sentence for a losing plaintiff. Gee, maybe the secretary could bunk with Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart. I'm sure they would be perfectly polite.

Patriot Act

Stick a fork in it, stuff a cork in it, football season's over, tra la.

I react to the completion of the Super Bowl as I do to the day after Christmas and the week after New Year's, with relief and a sense of renewal. Sure, we have to face a barren February and sports sections reduced to long listings of meaningless basketball scores. Not even any hockey, and frankly, aside from the players who didn't go back to Europe, who misses it? But my hair-of-the-dog hangover blog has to record at least some thoughts that registered as I experienced Sunday's Great Event XXXIX.

The game was close but dull. The Patriots won through teamwork and patience. Donovan McNabb is like a slot machine--some great pay-offs but a lot of lost opportunities in between. His long TD pass was impressive, but that late fourth-quarter drive reminded me of one of those dreams when the air turns the consistency of molasses as you try hopelessly to rush through it to some critical event. I don't think the Philly papers will be kind to him.

Best musical moment was the pre-game rendition of "America the Beautiful" which, even without the p.c. ASL accompaniment, would still move me. Not just the melody, which is simple and timeless, but those lyrics. American ideals of inclusiveness were never so succinctly spelled out as in the last three lines "God shed his grace on thee/And crown thy good with brotherhood/from Sea to shining sea." That goes for you Red Staters in between the seas, who might prefer "Rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air."

Second best musical moment was Paul McCartney's "Hey Jude," though it struck me that most of the throng of kids in his ersatz mosh pit, if they'd ever heard that song before, probably thought the lyric was "Hey Dude."

The Fed Ex spot, parodying the "ten" critical features of Super Bowl commercials, was a cheesy effort to satirize other cheesy efforts, and I thought not very imaginative. It cheated by mentioning talking animals four times. That's like citing the four most annoying consumer gadgets as cell phones, cell phones in SUVs, cell phones with cameras and cell phones that ring with "It's a Small World." But after viewing a bunch of yakking critters later, including those antic monkeys kissing ass and jumping on whoopie cushions, the Fed Ex people seemed absolutely prescient. Apart from one big-breast entry, most of the themes went to autos or grisly deaths, sometimes in combo (like the guy freezing solid in his Mustang convertible, with the Fargoesque cop). I did get a kick out of the tomato sauce/cat murderer gag. The "History of TV" ad for Direct TV was well-executed but sure made me feel my years. And it was nice to see a very brief appearance by an old poker buddy still earning some acting residuals in an I-tunes commercial.

Was there ever a better visual aid than the yellow first down line? It seems so seamless that it appears a real demarcation on the field. This is easily the best innovation in TV sports coverage since the centerfield camera (although the use of that became too standardized). Will we ever learn whom to credit for the yellow line? Did he or she get a raise or a promotion? We'll probably never know until he or she croaks and we read about it in the obituary.

Joe Buck could well be what a friend of mine would call "the luckiest White man in America," getting to call both the World Series and the Super Bowl. The title could easily go to President Bush, and in fact Buck is the Dubya of the play-by-play universe, having had his route to the top greased by a pioneering father. The difference is, Buck is talented at what he does. (Hey, am I crazy, or was Joe Buck also the name of Jon Voight's character in "Midnight Cowboy"?) The rest of the announcing crew was adequate, although the loquacious Troy Aikman did trip over his words, or was going Yoda on us, when he said "that runner had nowhere to really else go."

I finally to the bathroom went, but not until the game finally over was.

Cordially Invited

Reading the comics page has been one of my decades-long morning rituals, fitting snuggly between checking the TV listings and completing the crossword puzzle. "Comics" or "Funnies" are both dubious terms now, as I rarely laugh at any of the strips, with an occasional exception for the sublime silliness of "Drabble" and "Brewster Rocket: Space Guy." Although the comics pages are thriving, with more entries than ever, my daily memory of what I peruse is quite ephemeral, registering in my brain as deeply as the most recent toilet flush.

Very occasionally there is some milestone in a long-running strip that at least distinguishes it for a moment from the blandness of endless syndication--for instance, "Doonsebury's" B.D. losing his leg in Iraq, Charlie Brown making his first black friend in Franklin, Walt's wife blinking out in "Gasoline Alley." This week we've been witness to the watershed event in "Cathy," the wedding of the eternally hopeful bachelorette without a nose to Irving, her longtime on-and-off again boyfriend, also nasally-deprived. This represents a challenge to the creator, Cathy Guisewite, to alter the thrust of her story lines, since they were originally centered on the single life of a girl, her shopping, her eating, and her mother. Well, if Rhoda could get married, so could Cathy. (But we know what happened to Rhoda!)

In the interest of fairness I'm obliged to the following disclosure: I have some oblique personal connection to this story. I've never met Guisewite, but I do know her husband, with whom I socialized in my early L.A. days, and who once called me to help him out of a car breakdown problem, promising to quid pro quo me with a dinner. He never spoke to me after that, and never treated me to even a stopover at the In & Out Burger, even though he went on to co-write some screenplays. He, therefore, registers as "jerk" on my personal history ledger. I also have a very good friend, who introduced us, and actually played the piano at their wedding reception. At that time the groom leaned over to my friend and announced proudly, "I'm marrying a franchise!" Yuck. I trust Cathy's Irving is not as venal.

But just as I'm ready to leeringly condemn Guisewite's personal choices I read that she is donating much of what her website makes on "Cathy" accessories to a local pet adoption agency in Van Nuys, which happens to be the site where I adopted my dog and to which I am eternally giving and grateful. She also volunteers there, as does her daughter. So now my sentiments swing the other way, returning me to neutral. You can do what you want to "Cathy," Cathy. It would be helpful, though, if you could make her funny. I guess now the arenas of pregnancy and parenthood are available. These offer promising comic possibilities--just do a better job, please, than "Baby Blues" and "The Family Circus."

One final observation. Although religion is a moot issue in this strip, I get the feeling that Irving is Jewish. I mean, how many people named Irving are not? It's an interesting point, better investigated in a later blog, why in this Christian country Jewish men have become idealized as the best husbands. From "Abie's Irish Rose" through "Bridget Loves Bernie," "Mad About You," Ben Stiller's "Fokker" movies and NBC's current "Committed, " the same endearing short-statured shlub has been crunching that glass under the canopy, for better or worse. Though it's somewhat flattering, this odd aggrandizement is a puzzling feature of our cultural consciousness.

Eschewing the Fat, or Fidget Goes Hawaiian

Thank goodness for human beings, and their penchant for moronic declarations, or else we wouldn't have all these potential nominees for the Idiocy of the Year award. I wasn't planning on establishing this honor, but it seems that with 6 billion Earthlings, maybe 5 billion of which are IQ-challenged, we can't help having monthly candidates for Top Honors. Last month it was the Angels brain trust (brain "rust" would be more apt) and their "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim" redubbing (which has actually been upheld in Court). This month it is the "scientists" who tested a score of couch potatoes and determined that if you fidget enough, you can lose weight. (The word "potatoes" here encourages me to name the award the Dan Quayle Idiocy Award. Whatever happened to Dan Quayle, anyway?)

So these experimenters compared two groups of overweight TV addicts, (one of which, I presume, was the remote-control group), attached wires to their fingertips and elbows or whatever, fed them Doritos and discovered that those who were twitchier did not put on as much flab. Well, all right, but how can we put this knowledge to use? It's not as though we can teach people to be fidgitier. I suppose we can suggest they get off their duffs, watch less TV and maybe, just maybe, get a little exercise. But that wouldn't win a grant.

As a society Americans are generally 1) too fat and 2) overly consumed by that fact. Quick-diet books are perennial best-sellers. The late Dr. Atkins is personally responsible for the revival of bacon and mayonnaise, though his crash diet, like everyone else's, is now getting the societal heave-ho. Hey, almost anything works short-term. I once went through a month in which every night I'd prepare a giant ice cream sundae with the works, and found myself losing weight. Maybe going to the gym also contributed to some weird metabolic shift, but soon the ice cream started to take its toll again.

As long as we continue to be a nation of plenty, and fast food remains the simple fare of choice, Americans are going to stay overweight. Evolution has not caught up with modern dietary excesses; our metabolisms are still geared to our hunter-gatherer profiles, and prefer to store much of the fat we ingest to insure against potential famines. Thus we continue to amass mass. Health warnings simply are not enough to undermine this trend.

I think what we need is an attitude shift, a notion that perhaps Big Can Be Beautiful. There are signs of this dotting our popular culture. "Hairspray" celebrates convexity. Ruben Stoddard wins "American Idol." Camryn Mannheim is not thrown out of casting offices. Now there's an upcoming comedy series on HBO starring Kirstie Alley called "Fat Actress," the promos for which she is shown gleefully gobbling down mounds of pasta. What would it take for "Rubenesque" to again be an acceptable synonym for beautiful? Perhaps it would take a fat president (as opposed to a fathead president).

Whatever happens, I do hope the expression "couch potato" stays in our lexicon. If these folks fidget enough--which could happen if they're fed an endless diet of reality makeover shows-- maybe they could reduce themselves to something like couch asparagus, but the term just doesn't cut it.

Supertime

While attending a dinner party about twenty years ago I appalled an acquaintance by stating that baseball meant more to me than religion. Well, he has long retreated to that Great Bullpen in the Sky, or, as I deem more likely, is reconstituted as disassociated organic molecules. Meanwhile I am Left Behind on Earth to observe how, at least, during this week, football means more to the Nation, even the Red State Nation, than does religion. The week prior to Super Bowl has been codified into a quasi Holy Week, with its own set of rituals (it's "Meet the Press" Day!) to engage the media and the public.

Super Bowl Sunday has unquestionably become an important cultural and economic event, with all the holiday trappings short of gifts and Hallmark cards. Traffic subsides (it's Sunday anyway); friends gather; Las Vegas swells with visitors; TV Guide publishes its annual Super Bowl recipes; the network broadcasting the game (usually Fox) floods the airwaves with promotions for its shows. Truly, if an alien wanted to take a snapshot of our society, this would be the day to do it.

Like everyone else, I have my share of personal Super Bowl memories. There was the curiosity of the first game, in 1967, when we wondered if the AFL upstarts from Kansas City would be physically able to contain the Packers from the kickoff on, as though they were a Pop Warner team grotesquely promoted as sacrificial opponents. Then there was the Jets miracle victory in 1969, an annus mirabulus for Shea Stadium denizens. And I'll always remember Whitney Houston's startling rendition, even prerecorded, of the National Anthem in 1991. But my favorite memory came in the early '80s, when I attended a Super Bowl party in West Los Angeles to watch the 49ers face the Bengals. At half-time several of us left for a stroll and found ourselves wandering onto the nearby Mormon chapel and high ground. The landscaping was Heaven-like, with no view of surrounding terrestrial buildings, and celestial choirs piping out of invisible speakers. Suddenly an elder appeared and, as is his wont, invited us on a tour of the building. We politely abstained, apologetically admitting that we stopped by only because it was half-time in this football game we were watching. "Yes," the elder nodded with a smile, "The Bengals are sure giving them a game!" And, for a sublime moment, I felt quite edified that a sporting event could unite such disparate characters.

In 1984, I believe, came a transforming moment, when Apple's "1984"-type ad not only jumpstarted its director Ridley Scott's career, but set a standard for high-end commercials that would gain huge exposure to the captive audience, or at least those with cooperative bladders. In the next fifteen years the show became more a marketing tool than anything else. Though the frenzy has died down a bit (even if the ad rates have not), the Super Bowl is still the only TV event in for which the commercials are studied and evaluated and best-yet, watched.

Last year I was so fixated on the commercials that, like millions of others, I held my water through most of the first half, fighting my tendency to mute or wink out during the commercials, and saved my departure for the half-time ceremonies. Bad move, for I ended up missing the great Wardrobe Malfunction that so set the moral hypocrites of our nation on edge and launched a thousand FCC fines. Actually, I returned to the game just in time to see a flasher streak across the screen for a brief moment, an event that seems to have been lost in history owing to Janet Jackson's starry nipple. Of course I got to watch the replays ad infinitum, and frankly, I thought the dance Justin Timberlake did with Jackson, culminating in that two-second partial disrobing, was pretty erotic. Even titillating.

But how dare the NFL, CBS, and anyone ever voting Democrat allow such a desecration of such a sacred sport as football by associating it, even obliquely, with women's breasts? Think of how offensive this must have been to the Bosom twins in the Bud Lite ads, not to mention all the females cheerleaders who've ever existed, whose appeal, of course, has been solely to the moral and intellectual advancement of the spectators.

Okay, I'm being just a bit ironic, but I think the Janet Jackson incident does give us some unhappy insight into the contradictions of our society. A follow-up incident later last year, when a pre-game promo featuring "Desperate Housewives" actor Nicolette Sheridan baring her boobs to Terrell Owens caused almost as big a brouhaha. Interestingly, the spot was supposed to feature John Madden, which would have made the hint of extracurricular play with the nymph rather funny. But when the gladiatorial Owens dropped his helmet and started making moves, jaws dropped. That suggested real animal sex, and probably more fun to watch than the game. This scenario proved too troubling to Red State Nation. Sport and sex are made to complement each other, I suppose, but not to mix. Hang the evildoer perpetrators! That's what happens in a parochial culture when conflicting hypocrisies collide. Very sad.

So the Game has moved from a curiosity to a marketing phenomenon to another battleground of the Culture Wars. And nobody seems to give a damn about the game itself, which actually has been very competitive in recent years, often going down to the last second. Who won last year? Okay, not too hard, the Patriots. But the year before that? Anyone? It was Tampa Bay. Who did they beat? Who cares? Oh look, Paul McCartney's doing the half-time show. How weird that he's really turning 64. Please pass the guacamole.

Huff & Stuff

For over a decade now the two major pay-cable behemoths HBO and Showtime have been waging a creative war with their original programming. This competition has been a boon to viewers, starving for interruption-free adult-themed drama and comedy. For the span of a decade, though, HBO, with "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "Oz," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Sex and the City" has been playing the AFC, outshining a limper NFC line-up of Showtime, whose dramatic array of "Queer as Folk," "The L Word," and "Dead like Me" has been more groundbreaking than spellbinding. (And a brief word about "Dead like Me"--huh? I still don't get the premise of dead people walking among the living, interacting when they see fit. Even for a supernatural dramedy, this wouldn't compute in the Ninth Dimension).

But the creative scales have been recalibrating in recent months. HBO's replacements for their powerhouse shows, the elusive Lynchesque "Carnivale" and the fuck-filled "Deadwood," are too dark and dreary for my Sunday nights. Showtime's dramas have improved vintage-like with age, and with its first-season drama "Huff," it's caught up qualitatively with HBO's programming. "Huff" ended its season with the requisite cliffhanger, but it was very well-orchestrated. All the major characters and plot lines neatly dovetailed, and we faded out after Huff, screaming "You fucked my mother" at his best friend, accidentally hurled said buddy down a flight of stairs in front of smug Mommy, angry wife, bewildered son and dying mother-in-law, as his schizophrenic brother drove away in a, well, figurative huff.

The first year of "Huff" had its defects, but that's normal in any series's growing pains, and it was nothing that kept it from being appointment TV. It hasn't reached the dramatic heights (and depth) of my favorite drama, "Six Feet Under," but that fault may lie in the purity of its execution. The central focus of the show, Hank Azaria's psychiatrist, is subdued, objective and emotionally repressed, as his professional demeanor demands. This character is conceived honestly and played well by Azaria, but also lacks the charisma of someone like Peter Krause's hyperconflicted funeral director on "Six Feet Under." Azaria is a true Hollywood professional, and I get the feeling that I'd like him personally, but he'll never be a marquis idol. That's probably good for the longevity of his career; however his presence will always require someone more stellar and animated against whom he can react.

The producers nicely accommodated him with Oliver Platt, in the Golden Globe role as a hyperkinetic drugged-out attorney, and Blythe Danner as his selfish, world-weary mother. Platt's character, Russell, while entertaining, is totally incredible, even for a Century City lawyer. His shenanigans make Arnie Becker look like the Pope on Nyquil. Blythe Danner's character, however, is fascinatingly complex--a Livia who is forever tempted by her better instincts and suppressing them. I don't quite accept the chemistry that draws her to Russell, but not all plot points have to work in a successful character show; relationships are irrational, and come and go, just as in life.

The show fares better with its incidental players. Russell's acerbic Filipino secretary Maggie lights up every scene with each line delivery. Lara Flynn Boyle's wacko stalker is an over-the-top conceit, but she plays this wildly crazy person with such sincere gusto that you understand why Huff refuses to discard her. Huff's secretary is an interesting mix of worldliness and religious zeal, and his wise-beyond-his-years son Bird, annoyingly perfect at first, won me over with his genuine warmth. That's a veneer that the writers will enjoy pummeling as he plows through his troublesome teens and discovers Rebellion.

One cavil I have with the program is Teddy, the nutso brother. He was initially used as a sounding board for Huff in several episode codas. This smacked of the old "King of Hearts" cliche of the insane man bearing the clearer insights of the Truth. When Teddy's role was expanded to reveal the gulf that separates him from his guilt-ridden mother, his story took on more focus, but I still find him uncomfortable (as perhaps I should). On the other hand, there's an underlying reality to his existence--many shrinks go into the field because they have intimate knowledge of mental illness, and are motivated to help others in similar plights.

I should also mention the mesmerizing title sequence, Daliesque in its visual images and whispered dialogue. It's a very creative rendition of the complex modern stimuli that render us all so confused and vulnerable, from Rorschach to the World Trade Center.

Plot lines will have to be more organic and inventive in upcoming seasons, especially for the two leads (Azaria and Paget Brewster as his emotionally constipated wife), but I will be watching. Still, I do wish both HBO and Showtime would vary their schedules and not put all their original programs in competing Sunday slots. For some complicated reasons I am unable to videotape my pay-cable stations, so I have to do an awful lot of personal time-shifting to catch up with all the best adult episodic TV. But if I OD, I can always do what a friend often suggests, and what Huff might say to an overstimulated patient--"Go read a book."