039

I read "5Top: Fall TV shows that should go away now" on MSNBC.com. Now I'll review these shows, too, none of which I have seen.

Cavemen: I lied; I did watch most of the premiere episode of this show. Aaand that was enough. It's a better idea than The Corny-Ass Singing Bee/Don't Forget the Goddamn Lyrics and worse than Roseanne.

That was a great show, Becky switching and all.

Big Shots: The title alone is presumptuous and arrogant. And annoying. I remember seeing previews and the flat characters talking about things that aren't real/interesting problems, and I thought, "Ya know what? Fuck you."

There needs to be no character-driven stories like this crap and more in the vein of Half Nelson, a gritty film that pulls at human complexities and multiple emotions.

Life: I think it's interesting, in a good way, that Victor Balta, the MSNBC critic, listed this NBC drama as one of the five shows that need pulled from the airwaves. Cops who spend 12 years in prison also don't look that young or attractive. Cops aren't treated well in prison, either. They added a $50 million settlement to it, too? This sounds like it just missed the mark of a story that should focus on redemption.

The Big Bang Theory: Who wants to watch nerds struggle with relating to women?

Again, if you're going to do a show about a struggle, you have to make the audience question things and really care about the characters. If I can watch Ryan Gosling do drugs in the school bathroom and also think he's a brilliant teacher and a good man, that's a fucking story (I'm referring to Half Nelson again). And I hate drugs.

Kid Nation: I have already trashed this in an earlier entry. Unlike the reviewer, I never suffered through an episode, and I was right.

Thanks to my cousin Jenn for introducing me to Half Nelson a few months ago. Watch it instead. And hopefully David from Roseanne (Johnny Galecki) finds better work.

038

I bought Donald Platt's My Father Says Grace because I meant to buy a Robert Pinsky book but didn't like the cover art. Next to it was a book whose spine said "Arkansas," and one of my mentors is having his book released by the University of Arkansas Press in 2008.

My Father Says Grace was released in 2007. The cover photograph is a Picasso. I was already buying it. I knew the name of the poetry series' editor. I had to see what James was following. I didn't know anything about Donald Platt.

Donald Platt knows how to end a poem and how to open a book. He knows how to write in between, too: "You see // everything for the first time because / it has become the last time" ("Compass Rose"). I should have placed that in context, I suppose.

The images, the lasting visions, are stinging. And by saying it that way, you know that I mean that I love them. Overall, this book is "about" endings, loss, deaths great and small. But it's not dirty or depressing. The book is not a warning against death. In My Father Says Grace, frailty is earned. Never is the real focus on what his father lacks because of dementia but on the fullness of life and the sparkle that has to still be there as his mind fights itself awake. Or maybe I don't know how to read about death.

The poems swell and contract, as Bruce Beasley said in his review on the back of the book. You are reading music, and Platt talks about music many times. So he would know whether to compare the poems to sonatas or arias, another word I'm stealing, or whatever.

You watch the effects of time and health on parent-child relationships. In poems like "Name & Address," you fall in love with the sweet father, a man nearing the end of his life as his memory is leaving him, one who never surrenders, who is still the handsome man in the wallet-sized photograph his mother keeps by the phone and is the little dude you want to protect on the way to the grocery store. Platt shows trauma that's not suicide, AIDS, sexual violation, drugs. I've read a lot of those books now, and I fucking love them, too, but this was writing closer to my own life.

I tried to finish that sentence in a few words, but it's difficult right now for whatever reason. The best way to say it may just be the long way: When I write my family into my poems, none of those four things appears. I've discussed with my mentors and writer-friends, half-jokingly, that I worry about having anything to write because my childhood and life are just too goddamn normal and okay. Platt shows how to do it. And right now, in late October, that's the mood I want to read and write.

At times, Platt pauses the world; while splitting wood during the fall in part of"Compass Rose," a circling elegy for the poet's beloved mother-in-law; at 35,000 feet above the earth on the way to the Indianapolis airport in "Ground Transport," the closing poem. I've tried to write poems about the stillness of flying home, and I'm glad I have someone to copy for that.

There are plenty of moments of melancholy, memorials steeped in social and political outrage ("Amazing Grace Beauty Salon"), but Platt reminds us that we are not so simple as to bury ourselves completely in our sadness. Playfulness ("Cartwheels"), tenderness ("Two Poets Meet"), romance, resilience, and tribute, in carefully placed intervals, bring the poems alive.

I didn't think "quaint" or "precious." This book knows that life is what the living do, and everyone is fighting for it.

This book is a chorus, a burst, wrought from love and fighting and unrest and the thing inside the writer that says, "Push. Write it down." Whatever it is.

I devoured this fucking book.

037

I love Notre Dame. It's actually part of my family.

The Onion isn't, but this is really funny, and courtesy of my brother Mark:
Notre Dame Football Announces Improvements To Its Storied History.

036

From Fox Sports on MSN:
Kimmel laughs off ban from MNF.

Jimmy Kimmel and Joe Theismann are right! Monday Night Football sucks now.

035

Carrie Underwood covers "I'll Stand By You" by the Pretenders, and it's simple and pretty. I really like Carrie Underwood; she has a great voice and I think her first single is great for what it is. I don't know the rest of her work.

I do know that she's not singing songs about being a redneck woman. Because...seriously, what the fuck?!

In other music news: The description on 102.3 Radio Free KJLH's web site for "Mid-days with Kevin Nash" is dirty and awesome:
Ladies, take a break from work at 1:20pm for an "Afternoon Massage" or have Kevin Nash sing "Happy Birthday" to you in his sexy sultry voice.

It is Kevin Nash's goal to make every secretary in Los Angeles horny as hell during the workday.

034

The theme song from The Hills is usually stuck in my head at work, which means two things:
. It's on the radio.
. I know what's been happening on The Hills.

If anyone ever needed proof that the episodes are outlined/planned, look at Jason's engagement announcement. The actors couldn't think of anything to say, and everyone in the scene looked bored with the situation. It happened at a crowded apartment party...but not this apartment building, where that dickbag actually lived during the first season/at some point. That's unrelated, but it's a conversation starter.

But I'm partly wrong here, about the fake factor. I learned while talking about the show with one of my roommates, a film editor and another of the embarrassingly hooked viewers, that I actually underestimated the level of polishing.

Some scenes are obviously cut in strange ways, which I knew, but if you pay better attention to the angles and placement of the shots, you will notice a lot of over-the-shoulder and reaction shots. The dialogue is then changed or added later. It's dubbed. They're fucking with you, which would raise ethical questions had I not realized these series were fake the first time I watched Laguna Beach. It was the reason I didn't care about the show, knowing it was unattainable, but everyone at Bethany under 35 was hooked it seemed. And I've just cheapened my hard-earned degree.

So, I moved to Hollywood to absorb myself into fairly dumb but shiny, fake shows starring rich kids. Actually, I started watching The Hills as a way to introduce myself to more of L.A. during my summer internships a year ago, and it's at least a little worthwhile to someone looking to enter the entertainment industry to know what's popular. This applies to me.

So there's another excuse. But thankfully, I'll never watch Newport Harbor. Somehow that semi-polished turd simultaneously bores and disturbs me.

Despite the bullshit that should be obvious, The Hills is shot beautifully. I really could do without hearing so much crappy music, but the presentation quality is wonderful, even if the characters aren't. And if I find a new episode airing, I'm sure I'll watch it. MTV fucking tricked me, and there's no sense in hiding it.

033

These were listed under "A-list Searches" on MSN.com this past weekend, as "Hot Topics":

. Presidents Cup
. Free Wi-Fi
. Boxed wine
. National Book Festival
. 'Knight Rider'

Boxed wine? Fucking Knight Rider? Is this real? Are people really searching for this shit?

Boxed wine and something involving David Hasselhoff do look hilarious together, but if you're going to waste time, at least try to read something interesting. I live in the entertainment capital of the world, and no one here cares about any of that. And everyone should obviously do whatever LA thinks is cool.