I prefer to use my infinite imagination cause I ain't got no damn money

Watching: Unforgettable, a show in which character A tells character B what character B used to do for a living, or what character B was doing last week, or how character B feels about stuff. There is a lot of exposition in this, but then it is a first episode so I suppose it might just be a matter of getting this out of the way now rather than how the writers intend to conduct themselves in future. The main character has a photographic memory and this allows her to rewatch events as if they were a music video, with lots of slow motion, meaningful close-ups and warbling soundtrack, and apparantly it's based on a series of books called "The Rememberer", which I fear takes it all a step too far towards being something the Simpsons would do as a satire on bad television rather than an objectively good idea for a series being made in a year beginning with a 2. I've seen worse, I guess, but this is no recommendation at all as I actively seek out terrible television.
Raising Hope, which is what the production team - sans Jason Lee - made after My Name Is Earl finished. It's not as good as My Name Is Earl, but then it's not as terrible as Memphis Beat, either, which is what Jason Lee made after MNIE. Memphis Beat is a dreadful cop show, made all the worse for Lee massacring Elvis songs and the cast acting like he is not doing so because acting, that's why. Shoulda got someone in to dub that shit in post, but for some reason they did not and it's toe-curling. Raising Hope is alright, I guess, but a little unfocused, being at its best when it's a sprawling ensemble piece about a poverty-line community rather than when it's a pratfall-heavy sitcom about a dullard young man trying to be a single dad. It passes the time.
Speaking of bad cover versions, though, I have been watching my way through the CSIs from the first season onwards and gradually taking in the spin-offs as they turn up, CSI begetting CSI Miami and CSI Miami begatting CSI New York, and on the surface each is a logical progression from the originating series by giving the audience more of the same kind of thing but with a different cast and setting, justifying making a separate series rather than the commissioning networks just doubling the number of episodes they order from the production company, and yet there is a problem...
You see, I started watching CSI in all its forms only with the the last two tv seasons for reasons I can't recall but which likely center on my belief that if I'm going to continue slagging off the shows and their audience I should be armed with enough knowledge to at least make me an informed elitist, and while each spin-off has a distinct identity on the starting blocks - particularly CSI New York's monolithic and foreboding skyscrapers shot with blue filters and scored with a soundtrack that makes it seem like you're looking at the desolate wastelands of Mordor - eventually they all ran together to become an indistinguishable neon blur, with the current season of CSI New York serving up a slice of bad tv that even I balked at swallowing, with the New York punk scene represented by a long haired twentysomething blond doing an appalling cover of Blitzkrieg Bop whilst showing her punk credentials by citing the Ramones as being the first "real" punk band. I have four words to say to this kind of thing, CSI New York, and that's "fuck off" twice.
There's this bit where the cast were doing investigations in a tattoo parlor and the shots were not only framed around a woman's very large breasts, but the set designers had obviously asked that on the wall be mounted a 'chopper' - a motorbike with customised parts beloved of the biking communities who are often the lifeblood of tattoo parlors - and the people who made the set mounted a chopper bicycle, as beloved of 8 year old girls. Now, I'm not saying this was shoddy research, I'm just saying that if there is a subculture of tattooed 8 year old girls who stab people at Rolling Stones concerts, there's probably a better story to be told there than one involving a tv writer's view of 'punk' that clearly extends no further than the music, clothes and hair of Avril Lavigne. Man, but it is bad television, topped off with 911 references and a lighters in the air final scene that had me in fits. I don't know what to make of it - on the one hand it's appalling to the point it's funny, but on the other you get the impression if you told those involved that this was why you enjoyed it, they'd take the huff or give you a slap in the beak.

I can see the deadly hamburger has done its evil work

Watching:
Covert Affairs, a glossy take on Alias, which was already glossy. I cannot say if having a vagina helps to watch it, but I get the impression that this is where the makers are coming from with it. It's really dumb, though, and I've always got the impression that women can take really dumb shit at face value if it's happening in a Malibu fashion agency or or a really well-off suburb full of big-tittied blondes, yet faced with a story set in the world of international espionage they err towards wanting a bit more logic, therefore I have no idea who Covert Affairs is aimed at. It's managed two seasons so far, mind, so someone knows what they're doing. I like Peter gallagher usually, but in this he's wasted as I'm not sure what we're meant to make of his character. Or the Indian bloke's character. Or the deaf bloke's character.
Eh.
Adventure Time With Finn and Jake. I have no idea what to make of this - I like it, but it's baffling. Who is this aimed at? Are those references to 8-bit videogames or just stylistic choices by the music department? Do kids like this? I like this.
Twentysomething - Melbourne-based comedy about the bull-headed and obnoxious Jess and her sexless friendship with the dim but gentle Josh as they tackle a quarter life crisis brought about by their constant drinking and lack of ambition. You might think twentysomething is too young to be having these kinds of identity crises, but after being forced to add my nephew and niece on Facebook I did find them talking to their mates and posting stuff like "wasn't it great back when we were all in the same science class? Them were the days" which I find slightly more disturbing than the thought of them exchanging pictures with Miguel who is quote-unquote twelve years old and wants to meet up, so twentysomething is probably late for this kind of self-evaluation. It's the usual squirm-inducing type of comedy derived from embarrassment and misfortune that seems to have done well by Ricky Gervaise, so worth checking out if you like that kind of thing.
Modern Family - which is not very popular over here, but is doing fine over there. A bit more cloying and saccharine than the preceding seasons, but still quite funny.
The Playboy Club - a period-set drama about chicks dressed like bunnies because this for some reason arouses men in the nineteen fifties. I have no idea why.
It's trashy, certainly, and that will buy my attention to at least episode four, but not entirely convincing in its period trappings and not a patch on the likes of Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men.
Pan Am - another period-set trashy drama, this time about air stewardesses in the titular airline (now a train freight company) circa 1963, when stuff happened in Cuba and whatever. Or something, I'm not sure, my mind really wandered during this and there was this whole plotline about someone at a wedding or getting married in the near future and I was lost at some point. maybe it improves after an episode or two.

With a woman helping them, the Dynamic Duo could give us some trouble

I was surprised I wasn't the only person over twenty down to see the Batman Live show at the Odyssey, but there were actually loads of child-less couples at it, too, and I was even stuck directly behind a pair that were busy canoodling during the lulls and at least one woman a few rows down who got far too excited during the fights.
It was a great laugh, the biggest cheers of the evening being for the magic tricks incorporated into the act, the kiss between Batman and Catwoman, Alfred announcing he was a British army officer, and the kid who shouted "the name's crap, it should be Nightwing!" after Robin announces his superhero name, because you're not a real batnerd unless you pick a continuity fight with a 12 million dollar stage production.
And this:

made me sad. Sad and aroused.
Anyway, I may not have been the only dude there, but I daresay I was the only one who made a weekend of it and man, but Belfast sure is one spendy student-infested hole these days. Did Cafe Nero buy shares in the city or something? I think they should, seeing as how they occupy enough of it.

But enough of that - I hope your weekend has kept you well and I shall see you tomorrow when we all get back to the grindstone.

You're gonna look pretty funny tryin' to eat corn on the cob with no FUCKIN' TEETH

Charles Napier
April 12 1936 – October 5 2011
Beginning with the dreadful Deep Space, a sci-fi action movie I nonetheless enjoyed if only for the scene where he seduces his co-star by playing sexy bagpipes, but where he also wrestled with a rubber monster back when such things were not post-production CGI but full body costume for some unfortunate and nameless stunt actor, Charles Napier registered on my nerd radar.
He was the voice of an angry redneck general in the Bruce Timm Superman cartoon, played an angry redneck general in Star Trek: DS9, a retired redneck general in the truncated teen wangstathon Roswell - Napier was a regular in my kind of tv and movies and once I knew he was there I started retroactively spotting him everywhere - as a space-hippy in the original Star Trek, the redneck who threatens John Belushi with impromptu dentistry in The Blues Brothers, the desk jockey who sells out the title character in Rambo: First Blood Part 2, the judge in Tom Hanks courtroom drama Philadelphia... oh, and some Russ Meyer movies, too. If you like that sort of thing.
I always liked to see Napier onscreen, to hear that distinctive voice of his even behind animated characters, full of gravitas and a hint of menace - he was a presence as a well as a prolific character actor and I will miss having him around as part of the landscape.

revolution starts you call me and I'll be right down front showing you how it's done - until then you need to shut the fuck up when folks is talkin

Watching: Baa Baa Black Sheep, a WW2-set tv show about the exploits of a fighter squadron in the Pacific. I'm quite enjoying it, but wondering how I fell into watching it given I usually like stuff with spaceships or people in expensive clothes smoldering at each other in large offices. Seem to have a lot of war films under my belt this last few weeks, and my bath-time reading seems to be Run Silent, Run Deep, a manly novel about sailors on a sub over the course of the war as they deal with an infamous Japanese skipper, and yet my final issues of Darkhawk remain untouched in the meanwhile. I have basically gone weird is what I am saying.

Well this is gonna end in hillbilly rape...

Been checking out the new 52 from DC comics - or rather I've been checking out the tremendous amount of online bitching about it - and I have to say I find a lot of the criticisms confusing as they seem to have assumed that the books would be different even though they're made by the same creators, the same editors, the same ideas men, published by the same company, distributed in the same manner, aimed at the same audience, and so of course Grant Morrison is still writing great Superman comics, and of course Starfire is still a sex object because why bother developing female characters as anything else and hey of course DC's first black superheroine is a stripper and there is no correlation between these two things at all and it's probably the fans' fault somehow yet again since the books are still stuck on squick like fanfiction sex scenes and dudes getting their faces cut off and it was the fans' fault the books were failing when this same old nonsense was trotted out before and certainly not in any way the end result of an office where female employees are dragged to strip clubs for 'power lunches' with the very very manly alpha male men. GRRRR. Wall Street was a super movie, wasn't it? That's how real men roll.

I think the collective internet is more pissed that it got suckered into believing that there was going to be a paradigm shift in how DC did business even though there hadn't actually been any kind of management reshuffle to suggest this would ever be the case, but the sad fact is that these books are no worse than what DC was putting out before, they are just as bad and no more than that and if you liked what they were doing before you probably like what they're doing now, too. Some of it, anyway - they're still employing Grant Morrison and Gail Simone, after all.

This was never "make or break" for DC, it was just another summer event where DC shifted a lot of #1 issues and stuck to its audience of compulsive buyers and conventioneering yes-men who don't want change or they'd have stopped buying superhero comics ten years ago - this was always going to be more of the same and I don't know why my beloved and eternally cynical internet thought otherwise even for a moment. Personally, I liked that Batman where Joker got his face sliced off and Batman saved a little girl from nasty people. It was gritty and people knew their place: behind Batman or on the end of his knuckles. Things asploded, too. Always a bonus.

Watched some Family Guy, too. Man, what the fuck is it with that show?

You're acting like a little schoolgirl. And not in a hot way.