Pop-Culture Junkie

Just to show you how sadly DVR- and cable-dependant Alex and I have become, I must relate Sunday morning's crisis. Alex turned on the TV to watch a quick home improvement show before going out to work on plumbing for the building--perhaps this was to psych himself up? Anyway, the TV flashes this message eerily similar to Windows' infamous Blue Screen of Death, in both message and color: Some of the information on your DVR has become corrupted. Please delete all content.

Now, to understand the utter panic this instilled in both our hearts, and the insane shriek of rage I let out, you must first know: we have half a season of Stargate on this DVR. Six episodes of Battlestar Galactica that we have been hoarding for a Real Weekend. And the two last episodes of Heroes. Plus untold scads of DIY and History Channel shows. I suddenly became fully aware of how important cable TV is to my life, and I just wanted it all back, magically!

Luckily, a little of the old power off/on trick and what I presume was a magical combination of buttons that Alex punched, it was restored. But we're suddenly afraid to trust it. And wondering just how soon we can schedule that BSG day.

Speaking of Heroes, we did watch both episodes Monday night. I'm not saying that it's not still cheesy nor increasingly filled with disturbing time paradoxes (Hiro gave Charlie the phrasebook?). But the last two episodes have revealed that as slapdash and predictable as the pilot made this show seem, there was actual forethought given not only to the overall plot, but a mildly complex back-story, as well. I'm not saying it's not incredibly coincidental that everything important happened to all eight characters exactly six months ago, but whatever--it's television, not epic poetry. A point that was brought forth beautifully in one of the lines of the latest episode when the super-villain, a former clockmaker, who says of his power--understanding how other people's powers work--"I know what makes them [significant pause]... tick."

Sigh.

Simultaneously watching Gilmore Girls Season 4, however, produces a weird reaction between persisting in seeing Peter Petrelli as a moody, rebellious teenager, and Jess as a power-mooching hospice nurse. It's disturbing.

After the DVR crisis was averted, we came across MTV's "My Super Sweet 16," which for those of you fortunate enough not to know about, is a reality show about ridiculously wealthy kids and the elaborate shindigs (and tantrums) they throw for their sixteenth birthday. We couldn't decide whether to laugh or vomit when this young princeling of a rap company uttered, "I get everything I want... but I deserve it." He was thrown immediately into a depressed panic when he found out that no, in the state of New Jersey you can't enter your party with two tigers on leashes. That just ruined his whole grand entrance idea, let me tell you. He substituted an entrance on camel-back with twenty African dancers preceding him, but I'm sure it just wasn't the same.

I wonder how many years it will be before he hates his parents for giving him everything he wanted?