Tomorrow evening David and I are going to see the Lovely Laura in All My Sons but tonight it's the TV and me. When I'm rehearsing a lot, I just don't watch that much and I generally don't tape stuff to watch later because when would later be? Not that I don't long for TiVo, but the thought of hours of required TV catch up is too dismaying to pursue.
So anyway, I intend to flip on the box the minute I walk through the door and follow pretty much this schedule:
6:30 The Simpsons (Fox)
7:00 The Simpsons (Fox)
7:30 Jeopardy! (ABC)
8:00 How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
8:30 The Class (CBS)
9:00 House (Fox)
10:00 Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC)
As you can see, I'm pretty much an equal opportunity sofa sloth. Thank goodness for remotes, otherwise, I'd have to get up to change the channel, like I did back in the old days when I walked several miles up hill both ways to get to school, etc, etc.
Our family TV died when I was in elementary school and Mom was unwilling to replace it because she thought that .... well, who knows what she thought. She's never been a big TV watcher and she didn't think that we needed a TV. So I saved up my allowance, charged Mom for household chores, checked phones for change, and (with a subsidy from Dad), bought my own TV. It's a little 12" black and white portable and I still have it. And it still works.
Along with her other weird ideas about TV, Mom thought that just because it has a screen smaller than a Time magazine cover was no reason not to sit all the way across the room from my new set. I preferred to sit on a bar stool with my feet propped on the shelves that the set was on, so that I was about oh, a foot and a half away from it. This solved the small screen and no remote problems all at one go. Of course, I wear glasses now, so she may have been right, but that's not the point.
(11:00 pm update - I mostly did as I intended, but I kept getting up - during commercials to do little chores like clean out the cat box, take out the trash, stuff like that. Fortunately, Pekoe, the fluffy, orange weight pinned me down for a good chunk of the evening, preventing me from completely tanking on my well laid plans.)
So anyway, I watched pretty much 4 1/2 hours of TV and enjoyed all of it. Because "Studio 60" runs opposite "CSI: Miami," I have stopped watching the latter which put me in the unfortunate position of not being there for David when he needed me. Of course, I used to only watch it until it made me laugh out loud, usually by about 4 minutes in. The easy, cheap laugh (and the most consistent one) is when David Caruso makes some Dramatic pronouncement and emphasizes the Drama of the moment by --- putting on his sunglasses. The best example of this was from an episode where a club burned down and he told some skeeve that if he (Caruso) found that the he (the Skeeve) had anything to do with the fire, he (Caruso) would hunt him (yeah, yeah, yeah) down. Beat. Sunglasses. Enter burned out darkened club. Comedy just don't get much better than that.
After hearing some of my comments about CSI: M, he decided to watch an episode. Last Tuesday morning, I got this e-mail from him:
From: David
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 9:32 AM
To: Leta
Subject: Plot points
So I'm eating breakfast, and something keeps bugging me: what, exactly,
was the connection between the guys stealing cars and the girl making
the crash videos? Somebody said something before a commercial break
about X being a coverup for Y, but that was never really resolved for
me. I feel unsatisfied. On the other hand, it was abundantly clear
that the card salvaged from the phone was used to the activate the
hydraulics. Didn't the dialogue go something like
HUNKY CSI 1: I've got it. They used a cellphone to trigger the
hydraulics.
HUNKY CSI 2: You say they used a cellphone to trigger the hydraulics?
HUNKY CSI 1: Yes. A cellphone. To set off the hydraulics. In this car
here.
I promise: I will never make fun of Dick Wolf's dialogue again.
And I have learned from David Caruso that when I want to intimidate
someone, I will squint my eyes, cock my head, and look away from him.
Very clever. Reverse psychology. Maybe your friend Sam Waterston
should take some notes.
He, of course, should be more careful about the off hand slaps at Mr. Waterston because Sam plays a lawyer on TV and could put a real hurting on him, but that's not the point either.
So I wrote back:
From: Leta
Sent: Tuesday, 07 November 2006 10:10
To: David
Subject: RE: Plot points
Oh, actually I missed "CSI" last night because I was watching the show
where everyone kind of mumbles really fast, "Studio 60." Matthew Perry
has not yet gotten with the Way of Sorkin and so still speaks reasonably
loudly and clearly, but Amanda Peete has been completed co-opted.
And did you think, as I often do, that Emily Procter is probably the
most beautiful robot we are ever likely to see?
David was not on board about Ms. Procter, but that's probably because he hasn't seen enough CSI: M. Also enjoyable about that show: Staffers much more attractive and glamourous than any County employees I've met (or, in fact, most humans); wardrobes that can only be purchased on County employee salaries if said employees are supplementing said salaries with a serious amount of graft; and offices and labs so fabulously appointed that seems rather a shame to use them for something as trivial as police work. I don't thik that NASA has equipment this expensive or high tech. I've worked in a County office and you could have outfitted that entire place for the cost of one of Khandi Alexander's outfits that she wears to kneel over (obligatory cleavage shot!) and examine disgusting dead bodies.
Of course, on "House" tonight, Hugh Laurie wore a perfectly white and very elegantly tailored tuxedo shirt throughout the episode, even when he was performing some kind of cardiac biopsy, so the humor isn't limited to Mr. Caruso. But Hugh Laurie could totally take David Caruso. Hugh would break Caruso's sunglasses.
And now to bed.
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