WWTD? (What Would Trent Do?)

After doing one of those "Memory of Me" meme's on Facebook, one of my old pals reminded me of how we used to obsess a bit over the show Daria, even to the point of bringing in a tape of it to watch at our theatre after a work shift (or kicking out the group as she put it).

It made me remember how so very much I wanted to be like the character Trent on that show. And how I used to always sort of go by the mantra of "What Would Trent Do?" Andi, my friend, assured me that "except for the monotone and tattoos" I was very much like Trent, though I tend to disagree.

And I'm thinking, maybe I should once again aspire to Trent-ism. Unflappable, smooth, but still coy and quick on the uptake (most of the time, Trent had his moments where he seemed like he wasn't quite awake), but most of all, he always seemed oddly insightful, and I always dug that aspect. If I can get my Trent groove back, that'd be pretty cool. I'll have to work on that.

Though I don't think I should start a band called Mystik Spiral.

Also, BIG UPS and thanks to Ben (you can find him at www.bigbenkennedy.com) for coming through on my new banner, I think it's awesome.

Haiku with the Hai and the ku and the putting it all together...

Cliff/Claire Huxtable
Least busy power couple?
They were always home






I think this bears more than just a haiku treatment. Seriously, she was a lawyer. He was an obstetrician. And they were presumably good ones because they put at least two kids through college, and tried to put a third (again, at the least) through. Not to mention their very nice town home in what I thought might the Upper East Side, but upon further research turns out to be Brooklyn. A nice place nonethless. But they were aaallways home, weren't they? Not to mention I think I remember maybe TWICE in the entire run of The Cosby Show that Cliff was called away to do an emergency delivery. Like babies are born on his schedule or something. And it was mentioned quite often that Claire's law firm was quite prestigious.

They were seriously the least busy power couple in entertainment history. It made for good television that opened a lot of doors, but sometimes the general conceit that they ask us to suspend our disbelief for is ca-ray-zee.

I have a confession.

I don't watch 24. Or Heroes. Or Lost.

Sue me. Never got in to them. Well, that's not quite true, I was kind of in to 24 the first season and part of the second.

I sort of get the appeal of Heroes and Lost, but I'm just not really interested in investing THAT much time in to a show. If I miss a show, I want to be able to figure out what I missed with little difficulty. This is the same reason my interest in The X-Files waned with each passing year.

It's great that shows are getting back to story telling (knowing my predilection towards hating reality TV), but these are more like really long mini-series broken in to multiple seasons. I know that makes little sense, but try and think about it before you just poo-poo the crappy (hehe) analogy. Can't we have more "old-fashioned" hour dramas? Like ER before all the good actors left and it became a shell of itself (which was what, 15 years ago?). Heck, even CSI doesn't indulge too much in the ongoing story lines. They'll have a recurring thing during a season, but you can miss an episode and the next episode that deals with it pretty much covers you with ease (for instance, this seasons Miniature Killer. I missed the episode where they found a suspect and he shot himself. I was lost for about two seconds when they came back to it).

Not that I want anybody to stop watching these shows. Please, for the love of Pete and Pete, don't. I'm simply throwing it out there why I can't get in to them. Because I've been asked.

I have another confession: I'd like to find every Nielsen family who watches American Idol, The Apprentice, etc and take a crow bar to the television set. You're part of the problem. If you people would stop thinking this is quality entertainment instead of pandering to the least common denominator (I'm waiting for when a reality TV star grabs the camera and screams "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??) maybe quality shows would stop getting the ax.