Will You Excuse Us For Just A Second?
Well, I hope you people are happy now. Following the conversations in yesterday's comments, I've gone and done something awful. I can't get into the specifics of what I've done as I need to preserve the power of my Fifth Amendment privilege when the RIAA Secret Police kick in my door, but suffice it to say that my primary defense is going to be that it's ALL YOUR FAULT, people. You just couldn't leave it alone could you? With all your helpful suggestions of programs to use and places to go... If I go down, I'm going to argue a new legal precedent, the first-ever case of law-breaking because of intense peer-to-peer pressure.

Just a warning to readers Yoli (Mexico) and Magical Shrimp (Canada), though: I may be crashing at your place(s) for a while until the heat dies down. Cool? Cool.

...

After last week's slow readership (I will never forgive Sitemeter for being so comprehensive and thus enabling obsessives like me), yesterday we set a record for one-day readership in the Bucket here. I don't want to give you people the idea that I take your attentions too seriously or personally, but I am grateful that I can now unstrap myself from my elaborate Rube Goldberg suicide machine. If I had been showing similar levels of depressed (numbers I mean, not emotionally, which can't be helped) readership as last week, I was seriously thinking of opening the cage to release the mouse who would run out to get the cheese that springs the trap which lights the match which breaks the string that holds the weight which drops on to the lever... well, let's just say the ending involves a bowling ball, a chimpanzee and a shotgun.

As my popularity skyrockets, however, the hardwired parts of my personality that are terrified of success switch into self-sabotage mode. It's the same set of circuits that made me say no the first time the woman who would become Mrs. Pops first asked me out (that's a true story, by the way).

Flush with adoration of regular readers and new, I will now drive many away by choosing to address something pop-culturally specific, alienating all those not intimately familiar with the subject matter. I don't want to, I have to. You understand.

I need to talk about HBO's Deadwood. Non-adherents please talk amongst yourself. There's cake if you're interested.

Those who watch and know, please gather close.

After watching last Sunday's episode finally last night, here's my question: What the fuck?

They did a big profile of the show in Entertainment Weekly a few weeks ago where someone (I forget who) compared writer and show-runner David Milch's word choices and sentence construction to Shakespeare. Apparently he was listening because every week the words get more impenetrable. In some sense it's fun to watch because it takes an absolutely heroic performance from each and every actor to get those words out in a way that seems organic, but just try to follow the storylines, I dare you.

Where I need the most help is the subplot with the new whorehouse with Joanie (Kim Dickens) and the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) and the New Guy. He wants to beat up some other whore, but she's not there yet, so Joanie talks to him and he likes Joanie, but the new girl shows up and he likes her instead but he wants to hurt her and everyone knows it because... uh... why? And the Borg Queen hates him for some reason that I can't fathom but still goes out of her way to do what he wants...

I need help. It's making my brain hurt. Somebody needs to explain it to me.

And are we supposed to not realize that the guy who plays the New Guy is the same actor who played the guy who shot Wild Bill in the first season? I know they did that all the time on NYPD Blue, but that was because that show was on for 12 years and they ran out of actors, necessitating recycling. This show has had a grand total of, what, 16 episodes, many of which featured Garret Dillahunt in a prominent supporting role.

Also, what's that same actor doing over on ER playing someone else's role? Is he following me? And what did he do with Cole Hauser, the guy who originated the role of Linda Cardellini's scumbag ex? We're supposed to buy a) that hot-hot Linda would let Greasy McBeardyface touch her and b) Greasy McBeardyface with his weird jumbly eyes and swarthy complexion is the same person as Cole Hauser, the picture of blonde Aryan perfection?

What the hell is going on? I mean seriously, this is all totally fucking with my head. If Cole Hauser shows up on Deadwood, I swear to God I will drop dead from an aneurysm.

I guess the answer is to stop investing so much of my time and energy into television, but what else am I going to do? Talk to my family?

Besides, The Office is on tonight. That show's a whole 'nother post, though.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:41 AM