Oh My E R

Here's a nice article about the series' finale of ER, one of my favorite television shows of all time. Fifteen years it's been on! It's hard not to think of a television show like a band, with seasons like albums, & especially a show like ER which currently has nobody in the cast who was there when it first went on the air. (Same thing with Law & Order now, too.) I guess with Carter back this season for the end it's the television show that's most like The Fall, although the Noah Wyle as Mark Smith comparison fails or so many levels, starting with a full set of teeth & sliding down.

Also, like many bands, the earlier seasons of television shows ("their first albums") are a lot better than the later seasons. There are only a few television shows that ended anywhere near the strength of their beginning, although some (like Deep Space Nine) don't find their feet right away. But the same is true for bands.

Which is my way of saying I am as sad about ER going off the air as I might be about one of my favorite bands breaking up - but a band that didn't still have all the members it had when it released its best work, & a band that I still listen to from time-to-time - & always get the new record - but that I don't expect to be wowed in the same way I was when I first heard them.

I won't get to watch the episode tonight, though, as the wife's out of town & I have to wait for her return to see it. Luckily Smallville's on! You heard me! I watch superhero television shows too! What're you gonna do about it?

Whither Fortune Telling?

Before I started writing this blog post about this week's Self Help Radio, I was writing an email to someone who is supposed to be helping me on a project but who is totally slacking & so, I kinda drifted off into a slight daze wherein I was writing this person an email & it began, in my head, "Dear Person, I know you're as busy as a weasel just outside Denver..."

I'm not sure where that came from, so I googled "weasels" & "denver" & got a couple of hits, none of which explain my simile, but which are interesting all the same.

One: The Young Weasels, a New Wave band from twenty-five years ago. Here's an interesting sentence: "The group was an opening act for many of the touring punk bands that passed through Colorado like The Teardrop Explodes, Loverboy, and in their triumphant return to Denver in 1983 The Varve." Of course, I am a huge Varve fan, if "Varve" means a sexual act that encourages you to make a noise like "varve!" But what's intriguing to me is not that Loverboy - Lovermotherfuckingboy! - would ever be considered punk, but that they're actually, non-ironically, in the same sentence as The Teardrop Explodes. Whoever wrote this wasn't just working for the weekend - the kid was hot that night.

Two: Weasels Rocky Mountain. The Colorado version of a California motorcycle enthusiast group (there's a Texas chapter, I like them because of their tag line: "A Drinking Club With a Motorcycle Problem."

Where was I? Oh yeah, weasels. As far as I know, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the countless other sick bastards who practiced hepatomancy didn't cut open weasels, but if they had, it wouldn't have begun to explain why, in the middle of composing an email in one's head, one would suddenly come up with a simile like the one my brain invented as I began to write this blog post. Some might say, well, Gary, that's because hepatomancy is an art, not a science, & no one gets trained in entrails-reading any more. Good riddance I say! Well, well, well, Gary, you say, would you then destroy all the Magic 8 Balls too?

(Okay, when I start arguing with myself, it gets ugly. Just slip away. I'm sure I won't notice & if I do, I'll try to stall me. Go! Go!)

Spread Like Summer Butter

Hmm, I don't know what that means.

Here's two things though that would be sweet on bread (or salty, I guess, if I continue this increasingly uncomfortable metaphor): last week's Self Help Radio spun crazily out of control & you can listen to it without feeling the slightest bit dizzy. I encourage it.

Also, I finish March's Self Help Radio Extra if you have the gall or gumption to enjoy some nice songs mixed together without a peep from me.

I save all my peeping for the regular show.

You know what I mean.

Butter!