Let’s stop beating around the bush. When it comes to the “premier” cable channels, when it comes to *quality*, I think we can all agree on a pretty cemented hierarchy.

Anybody who knows me (or knows TV – zing!) knows that on the top of this tube totem I’m about to construct is going to be HBO. HBO is so good it’s silly. It’s like the paella of premier TV stations: with chopped up Sopranos; dashes of Six Feet Under; slices and hints of The Wire and Tell Me You Love Me; and just when you think you couldn’t fit any more onto your plate, robust and juicy chunks of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, In Treatment… The list goes on.

Showtime, then, would have to be #2. Dexter, Weeds (which everybody seems to love), This American Life, P & T, (and I still haven’t seen Nurse Jackie, or The United States of Tara, or The Tudors)….

Then, all the way down toward the bottom of the list are the channels you sometimes forget the names of. Your Cinemax–which I’m pretty sure is half-porn and original series-less. And Starz, which maybe I never gave enough credit.

Class is in session at the University of Life. Here’s a truth bomb: Nobody nowadays watches “movie channels” for the movies. Boom. Roasted.

It’s just the way it is. Red Box rentals cost a buck a piece; Netflix has in stock basically everything ever transferred to disc; and, most importantly, with any of these cheap and quick alternatives, You get to decide what’s on TV tonight. So the movie channel model has more or less become obselete. Which means that to be taken seriously in the market these days, channels like these have to prove that they can create quality original content, content that’s so good people will spring an extra 10 or 20 spot a month to see it–”premier content.”

What works with this model is, well, a ton of stuff. One thing: channels like HBO and Showtime aren’t bound by FCC regulations, so they can curse and cover their characters in blood and take off their clothes and no one bats an eye. Awesome. But what’s really the seller is the fact that they’re not bound by sponsors. They’re bound by you.

Shows on these channels don’t compete in the same way that shows on Fox or NBC do with other networks. These shows not only have cultivated an air of exclusivity about them, gathering a viewing base that’s willing to commit for 30min or an hour at a time without getting fidgety, but they’re able to do this because they’re able to tell their stories differently, construct differently the very base of their drama. Most shows, they have to prove to you in about 2minutes before the title sequence starts that this week’s episode is worth watching, or else you might change to something else or get up during commercial and forget to come back. So they have to be flashy and loud. These “high cable” channels, though, don’t have to do that. You’re on their time. And that means their plotlines can be more sprawling, less hot-and-cold and punchy. They don’t have to worry about commercial breaks and cliffhangers. They’re allowed to think less about holding your attention and more about keeping your interest. Which is an entirely different thing.

Like everything else, there are exceptions. And right now, the major network exception seems to be AMC. With only 2 original series to its name so far–Mad Men and Breaking Bad–they’re off to an amazing and focused start. And you almost have to wonder if this is so because they simply trust and respect the intelligence of their audience. Mad Men is in a league all its own where it is, but just look where its creator, Matthew Weiner, came from: HBO, late-series Sopranos work. When Mad Men goes to commercial, it doesn’t get frantic and hysterical; it kicks up its feet and lights another cigarette. It’s as if its transitions are only pauses before the start of another scene, even often fading out to them instead of quick-cutting behind noisy, screeching strings (coughLostcough). It goes to commercial break trusting that when it comes back, you’ll be waiting. And then it carries on. What a concept.

What makes Party Down special isn’t so much a sense of anti-sensationalism or freedom; it’s that it’s plain funny, and pretty deceptively smart. It reminds me a bit of a show like Arrested Development, a show that everyone will agree got screwed by its network. Constantly moved from its timeslot, advertised badly and mismarketed, Arrested never settled and found a home on Fox. It had to perform immediately for them and it couldn’t; it wasn’t that kind of show. A show like Arrested Development would have survived on an off-cable brand. Or, if nothing else, at least it would have died gracefully.

I know that in turning this meant-to-be highlight into a pretty-full-fledged essay I’m completely betraying my idea two weeks ago of “one topic, one post” entries, but when it’s flowing you have to follow it. Let me just say to wrap that I absolutely love movies. I love them. But there are very definite things about excellent TV that even excellent film just can’t match. And I think that, in large part, is thanks to these “exclusive” channels and their original content–a phenomenon that probably started as a means to keep up, a marketing gimmick, but somehow flourished in the sink to become a kind of dying medium’s penicillin.

As for Party Down, what’s to say? The videos are there and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything, anyway. It was created by Paul Rudd (Role Models), Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), John Enbom and Dan Etheridge, it’s hands-down one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in awhile, and up to about three weeks ago I didn’t even know it existed. It’s one of those great, blue moon Netflix finds.

The start of Season 2 of Party Down airs April 23rd @ 10:00PM on Starz. And Season 1 is available now–for free–on Netflix.

WRESTLEFEST I

Know what looks great on a brand new HDTV? You guessed it: professional wrestling. I know, I know, it’s professional wrestling. And honestly, the DVD a friend and I rented for our night of pizza, beer and nostalgia was old and had terrible production value and wasn’t even full widescreen. But…wrestling! Who woulda thought? Back in the day we loved this stuff. Like, seriously loved it. The catchphrases, the betrayals, everything. Even of all the things I love most today, the movies that nail me to the seat and leave me thinking about all these deep ideas and careful camera angles… barely do they ever have the hold on me that wrestling did back in the ’90s. Back then, when a wrestler you loved was talking, you listened. You didn’t dare leave to get a snack or a drink. If you had to pee, you held it. When The Rock was facing Goldberg in a pay-per-view, you gathered your friends together and ponied up 60bucks to watch it. There isn’t a two-hour film in the world I’d throw down $60 to watch today. Never.

Thinking wasn’t encouraged during Raw Is Raw or Monday Night Nitro, and you know what? That’s what made it good. None of it was real, you knew that, and these characters…you didn’t have to feel bad for them when they got pulverized in the ring or Chris Jericho made a nickname out of them (oh, Stinko Malenko!). We turned our backs on our favorites just as quickly as their allies did in the show. It was never personal, it was wrestling.

CHUCK (Mondays at 9pm on NBC)

It isn’t the smartest show in the world, the best written, the best acted or…really the best anything. But dammit, Chuck’s fun. When you get home late on a Monday or Tuesday after spending all day cooped up in an office writing about the subtle variations between the herbivorous green sea turtle and the omnivorous loggerhead, sometimes all you want is to watch good-looking, good-hearted, and often hapless people make jokes, download CIA computers into their heads, reference pop culture and kick ass. On a lazy Monday night, is that really too much to ask?

Side-favorite thing: Hulu. Ok, add this to the list of things that I’m way behind the boat on. But Hulu’s fantastic. Now if I can only get my computer and PS3 to sync…

“Behind the boat” double-side-favorite thing: 30 Rock. Season 1 and Season 2 were good, sometimes great and always funny. But season 3 had me rolling. I love so much about this season, and if I hadn’t just caught up to the latest season and started the when-is-it-supposed-to-get-good? Lost, it would be way more than just a sidenote.

COMMUNITY (Thursdays at 8pm on NBC)

Yeah, I like Chuck. But Community…Community I love. For my money, it’s tied with The Office (which I didn’t include b/c…well, isn’t it obvious?) for best comedy out right now. It’s a treasure.

Apparently from the same guys who produced Arrested Development (which I’m too lazy to fact-check right now), the show definitely isn’t as good as Arrested, but it plays its hand kinda the same way. All the characters here, like in Arrested, are charicatures, but the show knows that they are, it plays off of the fact that they are. This isn’t bad or lazy writing, it’s the best kind of writing, the kind that takes a genre or medium that seems to have little where else to go and explores that very fact. Community is the result of what happens when a show with incredibly talented people behind it don’t try to reinvent the wheel as much as they do just try to make it roll as smoothly as possible…while at the same time making reference to the fact that there’s a wheel at all.

If you’re not watching Community, start. It’s what I look forward to most in the week.

…wow…just realized how pathetic that sounds…

ALL THINGS EBERT

I know I’ve talked about Ebert before so I’ll just say that if the only Roger Ebert is you know is Roger Ebert the Film Critic, you’re truly missing out. One of my favorite things around, Ebert’s blog is consistently fascinating. He talks cinema often–and you can always visit his homepage for full reviews–but it’s the personal pieces that get me. Always an equal mix of personal essay, social (or sometimes self-)criticism, and reflection, reading his blog is like watching a quick-shot slideshow of someone’s thought process, someone who’s constantly taking in and examining new information and art while also taking time to look back, having balls enough to say, “You know what? I’m getting old. So this is my life…candidly.”

The guy can no longer speak; letters are his primary mode of communication now, not sounds. And so reading his letters are almost like reading his thoughts, an ongoing thread etched in elegant prose about what’s going on behind his desk and screen and fingers and eyes. Unable to speak, the great Roger Ebert has never had more to say.

COMICS

Don’t call them funny papers. Comics…they’re misunderstood. Maybe they always have been.

But, this isn’t a “this is why comics are quality” piece. You can find that in a million other places. This is a “I just got back into comics after years away from it and I’m glad I’m back cuz they’re awesome” piece. Which is better, I think.

Y: the Last Man – I followed this series as it was written a few years back, then, for whatever reason, stopped before getting the last trade. What was I thinking! Don’t ask me how but Brian K. Vaughn is able to pull off the most flagrantly conscious “hip” dialogue on the planet, the most consciously conscious around. Which isn’t to say his writing isn’t smart, it is. But the dialogue…in other hands would tank. No doubt about it. Try to talk like Yorick Brown in the real world and just wait for someone to go all 4th-grade throwback and call you a poseur.

Daredevil – I just read Kevin Smith’s “Gaurdian Devil” run and just bought Frank Miller’s “Born Again.” This is me jumping in headlong. After that…Bring on Bendis! It seems the darker the superhero the more I like them. I like a hero who’s just, almost–this close–about to go insane. He knows what he’s doing is crazy but he’s torn. He’s tormented by his power, obsessed with it, in a way. It’s like he knows that if stops fighting crime, not only his city will fall, but people will stop writing about him. And that can’t happen, because like Henry in Goodfellas, then our hero turn into an average nobody like us…he’d have to live the rest of his life like a schnook.

JOHN HUGHES

So I have this list of directors I keep on my computer. The idea is that I write down someone I’m interested in, either from a movie that grabbed me and made me want to check out the oeuvre (what a word) or someone I’ve heard a lot about and feel like I “should” see.  Quentin Tarantino is an example of the first kind. He’s one of the first directors I checked out. Ingmar Bergman’s an example of the second.

Anyway, the idea is that I list these directors and then work down the list, watching each’s entire filmography in chronological order before moving onto the second. This has been a long process, but it’s one I find so rewarding–so much, in fact, that I’ll often put off a movie I want to see because I’d rather catch it in context. There’s so much more to a movie, I’ve found, than the actual movie. There’s the person/people making it, and their story and obsessions, their inclinations toward a certain theme or aesthetic, evolution and experimentation. Sure, you can watch Annie Hall a million times, but it’ll never really hold the same weight, it’ll never be so surprising yet make so much sense until you’ve seen all the “early Allen” slapstick comedies Woody made before it. You can watch The Wrestler, but something about it changes when you know that the same guy who made The Fountain put it together. I’ll say it: sometimes filmmakers are even more interesting than their films.

So John Hughes is next, and maybe after him Jim Jarmusch, or Billy Wilder, or the rest of Stanley Kubrick (finally). Tonight I’ll watch Sixteen Candles and next will be the (I fear, over-)hyped The Breakfast Club. I haven’t seen either of these movies, and I call myself a cinephile. Psh…

This made sense to me. As funny as the first 2 seasons were, they were incredibly wacky. Not a bad wacky, but a kind of wacky that could easily go all crickets if the novelty was to wear or the writing got less clever. So, in a way, even though it might have meant no more episodes of Flight, no more Murray, no more Pretty Prince of Parties, bongo solos or racist fruit vendors, I had to feel this was the right decision. To go out on top. To only go on talking if you still have something worthwhile to say.

But, now it’s been confirmed that Flight is dead and it feels more bitter than it does sweet (well, not sweet, but you know what I mean). This statement was posted on their site yesterday:

Bret, Jemaine and James (co-creator/director) said “we’ve noticed the less we say about the future of the show, the more people want to talk about it, so in an effort to reverse this trend we are today announcing that we won’t be returning for a 3rd season. We’re very proud of the two seasons we made and we like the way the show ended. We’d like to thank everyone who helped make the show and also everyone who watched it. While the characters Bret and Jemaine will no longer be around, the real Bret and Jemaine will continue to exist.

So that’s that, I guess. Flight’s finished. And I don’t mind telling you I’m half-sad about it. Still, season 2 did have its iffy spots and I’m pretty sure this is for the best.

This is for the best…right?

No matter what, let us never forget the deep-seated social change the hipopopotamus and rhymnocerous brought upon in their short tenure. They truly did break it down to build it back up again…

I had to add my two-cents:

So part of me is confident. But then I see that a couple people are pissed because David Spade refers to Farley as “Tons of Fun” in the ad and…I don’t know – didn’t he call him that in the movie? Isn’t that exactly something his snide wise-ass character would have called him? Is this just a classic case of people overreacting for the sake of overreacting? The fact that I can’t wrap my head around it only makes me question my own indifference.

Is it possible my nostalgia for the movie is overshadowing my normal measuring markers for what’s morally okay? Could it really be that this commercial actually is ethically wrong?

After Season 2 of In Treatment, there was talk that Gabriel Byrne was finished and wouldn’t be signing on for another year. No disrespect to the guy, but this was one of those moves I just couldn’t understand. Was he leaving to finally become the cinema star that he almost was for years and years and years before HBO snagged him up? Maybe. But come on–the chances of landing a role with the amount of screen time as Paul’s, of finding material as rich or a part so meaty are infinitesimal. Let’s just be honest here. Not only would he be secure (at least for another year or two) in In Treatment, but he’d continue to be a part of something truly special, something milestone-y. Am I crazy? But, who knows, maybe he knew more than we did and was worried about the show’s direction. Or maybe I’m just not a risk-taker.

Either way, none of that matters now with word that HBO has renewed the show for a third season with Byrne signed on to star, Paris Barclay to continue lead-directing, and Dan Futterman (Capote) and his wife Anya Epstein to write. You can’t see me but behind my folding table and laptop and stereo pumping out some jazz piano, I’m dancing right now. (completely unrelated sidenote: remember HamsterDance?!?)

(related sidenote: This news is everywhere today but I saw it first on What’s Alan Watching? If you’re interested in TV analysis and discussion, this is definitely the place to be. The guy’s write-ups on Mad Men alone every week are enough to make you fall in love with the medium.)

Shows like In Treatment are why I love TV and movies. No exaggeration. They’re the things that bring me back and keep me on my toes, surprised and humbled and always thinking. And they’re the things that make HBO so completely beyond compare on the small screen. Although–and here’s my obligatory pessimistic aside–I will admit, I always get wary hearing that a show I love is coming back after it has a knockout season. Season 2 was absolutely incredible, and I mean incredible, but the way it ended and what it had to say about therapy and its characters – I mean, honestly, how many times can Paul say “screw therapy” then go back to Gina, then renounce her, then go back again before we start wondering if the back and forth is little more than dramatic filler?

Still, I can’t imagine the show–and intensely don’t want to–without Dianne Wiest in it. She’s integral, not just an amazing character and actress but goes toe-to-toe with Paul in a way that’s almost always–always–fascinating to watch. So I’m not going to worry until there’s something to worry about. I love this show too much to tarnish its rep.

At this point I know I’m probably all boring and broken record, but really, if HBO were a woman…whew.. This network gives me butterflies.

Season 3 is scheduled to start shooting next year for episodes to air late ‘10. (can I say ‘10? does it have to be 2010? what’s decorum here?)

The first season of In Treatment is available now and Season 2 is tentatively set to release in December. You can pre-order that masterwork here.

The first picture has been released showing the animation style of Ricky Gervais’ upcoming HBO comedy based on his radio show. Take a look below. (I love how Karl looks like an older, more aloof version of Charlie Brown. That round-headed chimp.)

Here’s what we know:

• The Ricky Gervais Show is the most downloaded podcast of all-time.
• This won’t be the first time Gervais and his partner Steven Merchant have worked with HBO (check out Extras if for some ungodly reason you haven’t already)
• The show will be “based” on the podcasts (as in using original TRGS recordings)
• And Karl Pilkerton will be the star (how you could have a “star” of an unscripted cartoon radio-based show, I have no idea)

Here’s what we don’t know:

• Really, everything else.

I honestly don’t know how this show is going to work, how it’ll make sense and seem worthwhile, but I trust Gervais. And I trust his excitement for the project. Here’s something he wrote about it on his slice-of-celebrity-life blog:

“It’s weird. I’m really excited about The Invention of Lying and Cemetery Junction and the tour and the Flanimals movie and everything else I’m doing, but when I watch a new animatic or talk about the press campaign for the HBO thing I actually get an adrenalin rush. I want it to be a success like I’ve never wanted anything else to be successful. It’s partly because I love working with HBO. It’s partly because it started out as a laugh – a labour of love. It’s partly because the animators have done an amazing job. And it’s partly because there’s nothing quite like it.”

And here’s something else he posted. If you’ve never seen or heard Karl, the famous idiot-savant-ish character he is, this will give you an idea of what he’s all about.

I’m so ridiculously on board for this. Expect it after Christmas.

They’re things like “Dearly Devoted Dexter” and “Darkly Dreaming Dexter.” All these really kind of lame, over-clever alliterations. Titles that don’t just announce an author’s presence behind them but pretty much scream it. They set up from the outset a light-hearted, almost cutesy style that the show has adopted as well, one that sooner or later almost always gets me on the fence wondering, really, how much do I even like this?

But I do. Like it, I mean. The first season’s a lot of fun and Season 2 was great, the whole sociopathic existential crisis of it, a kind of serial killer’s coming of age. Even Season 3, which I’ve read a lot of negative about, I thought was awesome: Dexter losing control, being the manipulated instead of the manipulator. Naysayers wrote that the show had lost sight of the fact that Dexter, no matter how likable he is, is a monster. Period. And that all of his repulsive qualities were transferred over to Prado, the “mad dog.” Turning Dex into a kind of hero when he finally “puts him down.”

And they were right. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is one where Dexter’s the ugliest. The one where Harry walks in on him chopping someone up. He’d taught Dexter everything he knew but it was the first time he’d actually seen him in action, behind goggles and a dripping electric saw. And in that second abstractions like “justice” and “codes” came crashing down, his own garage dressed from floor to ceiling in plastic tarps, his son covered in blood and smiles, as if Harry should be proud.

Even the way it was shot, not as shiny or controlled as usual. It was like the show was saying, “Remember, Dexter kills people. No, no, seriously – kills them.” Which is what, I think, the ideal was going in, to create an absurd contradiction, a person and a monster, despicable but relatable.

I loved the implications of that scene but in all fairness, the show never really went that way, committed that fully to the dichotomy. It’s always been sensationalized, playing off of the novelty of its idea to weave mystery yarns. It’s a plot show, not character. And I can deal with that. They might have let loose a bit in Season 3, but who cared? I was loving the power struggle, too wrapped up in Jimmy Smits and that incredible scene where Dexter realizes he’s been had, analyzing bovine blood. And he loses it–close-up on his angry eyes–and throws his chair out his office window. Ah….really great stuff.

But now it’s Season 4 and it’s been 2 episodes and I’m bored. The whole style thing I was talking about earlier, the heavy-handedness of the book titles–well, to me that style is the show’s own “Dark Passenger.” They could have a good thing going, a smart, solid character-y plot, but it’s only so long before a useless side-story is hatched or Dex’s narration kicks in again to reiterate the obvious or say something ironic.

[SCENE]
Detectives working a crime scene. Deb leans over, says something like: “Man, Dex, what a fuckin’ mess, huh? You’d have to be a real sick sonuva-mother-fuck to do something like this. I mean, not you. ‘You’ as in whoever did this. I know you’d never hurt a fly.”

Dexter smiles, his narration says clever something like: “Yeah, except criminal flies who slip through the cracks of the system.”

Or maybe something simpler like: “You’re right. I prefer humans.”
[SCENE OVER]

Seriously?

This is getting long so I’ll cut short by saying that I’m still pretty excited about Season 4, but just kind of worried about it. I’m ready for the show to be a little less soap opera and just a little more cerebral, just enough to surprise me. I mean, Angel and Maria now? That’s more desperate than surprising. And Sunday’s missing body routine, with Quinn pocketing cash from a crime scene and rockstar serial-killer-hunter Lundy stopping Dexter every 2 seconds to chat? I just didn’t care.

Let’s face it, we watch things like Dexter for their melodrama, not subtlety. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But shows only work as long as their characters keep growing; there needs to be some kind of medium. So I even though I can’t wait to spend more time with Trinity (his dog-walking scene was arguably the best of last episode), Dexter can’t rely on its villains for change. I need to see a new side of Dex, and soon, to prove to me this season is legit. Because there comes a point when shocking isn’t shocking anymore, when tension gets tedious.

Just ask True Blood.

New Dexter tonight, and every Sunday, @ 9PM on Showtime

They’re even making animated webisodes to start this month about Dexter’s early years. Talk about lame.

What got me thinking was something my friend Spencer said to me back when we first saw the promos months ago. “I’ve read so many of these detective novels,” Schwartzman’s character said in the commercial, “that I know what to do.” With such vindication and certainty. And Spencer joked that that would be me one day.

The idea cracked us up because it hit so close to home. Not the detective stuff, but the idea behind it all, the desperation that’s always there when you’re jobless or girlfriendless or purposeless–where you feel it every second, you can feel it in the back of your mouth, that urgent desire for your life to mean something.

And it’s true; boredom changes you. Like the theme song for the show says, “Bored to death, but mad and lonely.” When your girlfriend’s still there, before she’s left you because all the white wine, you never do a lot of stepping back and reevaluating. I mean, you do, but you don’t dwell on it the same way. You don’t care. But after she’s left, things aren’t in place anymore. It’s just you. And you realize you need something.

Maybe the reason I related as much as I did tonight, the reason I’m saying all this, is the amazing amounts of nothing I did all day. I mean, I’m talking vast, sweeping, incredible amounts of nothing. Humbling amounts of nothing. I’m talking watch Firefly, listen to This American Life, go on Facebook, go on Twitter, organize my Netflix, eat lunch, eat dinner, open the fridge 20 times nothing.

I’m talking read a chapter in a book nothing. Check my beyond-repair, in-last-place fantasy team nothing.

I’m talking backup my external and flash drives nothing–get them up to date. You know, just in case.

So it’s interesting to watch a show like this when you’re so ridiculously close to the material, looking everywhere, behind the ketchup, in the pantry, in pixels, for something to occupy your time and make you alive again. And in that way, this is kind of an amazing state to be in, one of complete and utter non-responsibility. Anti-distraction. Almost like being a bystander in your own life, and what that means, what it translates into.

Ok, here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about moving to New York. Here’s my situation:

• I graduated last May w/ a BA in English
• I intern at a publishing co. 3 half-days a week
• I play softball 2 nights a week on a team of mostly 30-somethings
• I’m doing odd-jobs like car washes and paper shredding to hold me over until I can find real work
• and I’m 22, jobless, girlfriendless, and I live with my parents in a city initially meant for retirees

And that’s what I’m talking about. There comes a time when you start resenting whatever it is you do that you were doing right before things got stale. You start to resent school and writing and computers and anything cerebral. You start to crave the opposite: sweat, construction work, swimming. It’s the same idea as people moving after breakups or deaths. It’s dying your hair or changing your style before the first day of high school. A forced and temporary evolution. And it lasts exactly until you’re too busy or distracted to care anymore.

So, it wasn’t just the fact that Kristen Wiig and “Brother Mouzone” from The Wire guest starred in this week’s episode that I dug it. It’s not even that in the past few months I’ve watched or am watching so many TV series that it’s hard to remember them all (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Bullshit!, Dexter, First Person, Unscripted, Firefly, Hung, True Blood, Entourage, This American Life, Chuck – am I forgetting any?). It’s more that when I think of New York, even though I know it’s childish, I like to think about the romanticized version that you’ve seen in a million movies. The version where stories happen.

It’s the idea that moving there, of living somewhere else, of doing something I’ve never done before, scares the hell out of me. And that’s exactly what makes it fascinating.

After watching these 2 episodes of Bored to Death I honestly can’t say whether I think the show will be great or not, but I think its intentions are spot-on. Like I said, boredom changes you. You could be a quiet neurotic novelist like Johnathan who “doesn’t do well with anger, just goes straight into depression,” but before you know it you’re in a trench coat with slicked back hair, passing up white wine for straight whiskey, then choking and coughing it down in a bar before heading out for a “tail job.”

Point is, we’ve all read so many of these novels, and none of us, ever, knows what to do. And we never really change. All we can do is put ourselves out there and hope that someone answers our ad. Then try not to slip climbing down from the bar stool.

Catch Bored to Death this Sunday @ 9:30 on HBO, after the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm

And now, 1o seconds with Senator Clay Davis of The Wire:

It’s an interesting nostalgia looking at your life through TV. Scenes become these ballpark feelings, the way you remember yourself in the summer, no summer in particular, just summers that aren’t here anymore; characters become moods; camera grain the fog of memory. But when you get into high school shows, really, the pickin’s are pretty slim. Beside your crappy 90201s or whatever, Saved by the Bells, the only other serious high school series I can think of is My So-Called Life. I was too young for that too–my school wasn’t all ripped jeans and flannel, either–but there’s an honesty to both of these shows that’s flat-out universal. These great dynamics, these “taking on the world” mentalities and over-conscious melodramas.

I keep thinking of Brian Krakow riding his bike outside in My So-Called Life, trailing Claire Danes down the street and trying to stop her from going to a party that night, trying to save her. “You’re smarter than this!” he tells her, stopping hard in front of her. He’s quiet and content, not the type to feel he has to break his own rules to grow up. But she’s not, at least not anymore. And he knows that no matter how nice he is to her, she’s never going to be with him, especially if she takes this next step and goes to this party, becomes one of “those” kids.

High school was the worst but that’s where you spent most of your time, constantly around people, forced to deal and eventually make memories. And that’s gotta be why these shows are so compelling, because they’re so close and also so far away. They nail it, but you don’t really remember why. They conjure up the convoluted, the act of becoming something else, of becoming. And even if you were one of those kids–like me–who tried to defy the culture and cliches, be the anti-stereotype, looking back, you realize that you were one anyway. There wasn’t a soul in that place that didn’t truly know that they were “smarter than this.”

A 24-year-old contestant on the show, Simonova tells a story through a series of portraits she paints on sand canvases with her fingers. And the pieces are just incredible. But what’s maybe most fascinating is how they’re created while we watch, brought to life then destroyed with every turn of Simonova’s hand, something new and equally stunning forming from what’s left of the scene before it. These aren’t finished products hanging on a wall, but interactive ones, changing and growing as we watch, organic and living.

I gotta give credit to RowThree.com for posting these videos. Incredible stuff. Really. And the keen observer might notice a certain METALLICA tune transposed through violins scoring part of the show. Because when people think emotional performance art, isn’t METALLICA always the first that comes to mind? Sand and metal – more like peas and carrots, am I right?

Anyway, on that note, enjoy the shoreline.