Happy New Year

It's my first post of the New Year. I've not been posting, in large part because many of my shows were on hiatus for the holidays. Many I watch will continue to be so. I know we're still due three more Pushing Daisies, and Dirty, Sexy Moneys, but the last I heard the rumor was these would be burned off, presumably on single Saturdays. NBC won't be showing Chuck or Heroes this month, starting its policy of all reality (or Jay Leno) all the time. On the other hand, Monk, Psych and The Secret Life of the American Teenager (unfortunately) are back, with Greek, Lost, and I think Big Love not far off, plus the ABC premiere of Scrubs and eventually the new Cupid, which I know I'll check out, and Dollhouse eventually, so I'll probably be watching pretty much my normal amount of TV, and presumably my new students won't watch any of these shows so I'll still be out of step.

It's amazing how much I can read when TV is not demanding my time, and I am not wrecking my eyesight all day on the Internet. I read five and a half books on my trip: Youth in Revolt , which was good and Bonk, which was very funny, both of which I got for my sister, When Will there Be Good News?, nicely British and enjoyable but forgettable, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was very interesting and informative as novels go, gifts for my mom, half of A History of the World in 6 Glasses (got through all of beer and cola and most of wine), which I got for my dad, and wouldn't mind finishing at Borders someday, and Interred with Their Bones--bought at the San Francisco airport--sort of a mix of Possession, a book I love, and The DaVinci Code, a book I thoroughly hated. Of course there's going to be another book starring the same main character who serves as literary detective. If I wrote novels, that's what I'd focus on. I'm reading one more now--much more embarrasing, bought when exhausted at the Charlotte airport where I had a three hour layover: Trading Up by Candice Bushnell. Interred had a big allusion to Don Quixote, and the Charlotte airport bookstore had two copies with lovely Picasso covers, but I was just too tired to concentrate. As it happened Interred lasted until 10 minutes before landing, which is odd as Youth in Revolt did the same thing but was 100 pages longer, a bigger sized book, and I only had a 40 minute layover. Go figure.

Last night was a typically histrionic Gossip Girl. Chuck made me think of fun words like louche and dissolute as he smoked hash in the school lobby and was pleasured by two women at once at the once-again-his-Victrola burlesque club (the slow motion stage show was pretty gross, though). I'm not sure I'm liking Blair's whole self-sacrificing routine, but I'm glad she was there for him and these two really pep up the scene. For the first time I missed Nate, though, as he should have been part of the Chuck rescue along with Blair and Serena. Once again I didn't miss Vanessa. The Jenny/Erik story was mildly interesting but basically dumb. As usual, no one cares about Dan and Serena and even though I don't care about her, she can do so much better. Since I'm going to be writing about the retro sensibility of 90210, I think it's interesting that this show embraces 40s styles, timeless preppiness (though it was making fun of a Junior League type group last night), and the mean girl ethos of the 1990s, yet we've never seen anyone announce he was smoking hash TV (as opposed to pot) or have a teen character mired in Thai sex clubs--and we'll just forget that those girls are probably sex slaves. If I think too much about this I'll have to really hate Chuck Bass and I don't want to.

In any case, it's an actually fun show, unlike The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which is just plain ludicrous. For reasons I still don't understand--not sure if it was the network, or my misbehaving TiVo, but everything's fine now--after the first sequence, the sound completely disappeared. I always have the closed captioning on so I just kept watching but I can't imagine the dialogue or story could have been improved with sound and am not sure if it made it worse. It's still impossible to know when this show is trying to be funny and when it's being unintentionally hillarious, or when it's just insane, but I got to/had to watch two fifteen years olds and everyone in their age range (14-16 I think, plus however old Grace's autistic brother is) they know get fake IDs so they could either a. get married, b. witness the marriage, or c. have drinks at the nonexistent reception, even if they don't drink or their friends/girlfriends convinced them not to drink because "drinking stinks." And somehow the autistic brother got a girlfriend who didn't look autistic, but did seem crazy. Voice tone might have given me some indication. Anyhow, surprise, TiVo's description for next week says they find out the marriage isn't legal. Ya think? And why Ben and Amy ignored the huge red flag of her once happy parents fighting, or why Grace's mom, who was once married to Amy's dad and knew the kids were going to a wedding, or the bad girl's mom who had an affair with Amy's dad, didn't have the courtesy to tell Amy's dad, jerk that he is, I do not know. I'm not happy about this show continuing and I'm baffled and upset that it's up against Gossip Girl (though fortunately since it's on cable there are subsequent airings right after), much as I'm pissed they're putting House against Chuck, no doubt sealing the latter's demise.