My Latest Obsession

"Breaking Bad," hands down the best drama I've seen in years. Bryan Cranston (the dad from "Malcolm in the Middle") plays a high school chemistry teacher living in the suburbs of Albuquerque with his wife and teenage son. Early in the first episode, Walter White is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Knowing he only has two years, at best, and realizing that his wife and son (and unborn child) will be left with nothing, he uses his chemistry skills to team up with a former drug-selling student to cook meth.

Unlike marijuana, meth is a drug that few people argue should be legalized. We know meth is horrible and addictive; the people who manufacture and distribute this drug should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Yet "Breaking Bad" is so well done that we root for drug dealers; we don't want Walt to get caught, and we want him and his partner Jesse to be successful.

After three seasons (the fourth isn't on Netflix yet), the characters continue to develop as Walter and Jesse become further embroiled in the violence that follows the drug trade.

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Today's the anniversary of my accident. Like that day seventeen years ago, today is cold, gray, and rainy. I promise, no more jaywalking. On an unrelated note, I cracked 70,000 words today!

Confessions of a Former TV Addict

Some time around age nine, television supplanted books as my main diversion. I was finished with "The Babysitters' Club," "Sweet Valley High" and "The Secret Garden." In their place was "Thundercats," "Gummi Bears," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." During summers, I watched "Another World" and "Days of Our Lives" (only the latter soap opera is still on; it's amazing how little has changed).

We didn't have cable, so my options were limited to the five or six over-air channels, but I memorized the programming on each of those stations. I even knew what was playing in Dayton, which was usually staticky, but came in handy when a Reds game was preempting my shows (this was long before I was a hardcore baseball fan).

Through junior high and high school, I wasn't a social creature; rather than my classmates, I hung out with Brenda, Dylan, and the gang from Beverly Hills: 90210 on Wednesday nights. I could easily watch four hours a night, doing my homework during commercials.

Luckily, I weaned myself off of heavy television-viewing during college; now, I mostly watch it streaming, over Netflix (we're currently on the second season of 30 Rock), just a half-hour a day, or Sundays at my grandma's, where we watch the Reds, some cable news, and HGTV.

Sometimes I think about all those lost hours. I could have read a couple hundred novels--or perhaps written two.

The Best Show You Didn't Watch

One of my favorite shows, canceled too soon, was Everwood. Great acting, compelling characters, and intriguing situations added up to a show that only a handful of people watched and loved. It tackled abortion, drugs, relationships -- typical teen fare -- in a way that admitted how complicated that teen fare really was and is. Things aren't so clearly right and wrong.

There were these two doctors: Treat Williams played Dr. Brown, and Tom Amandes played Dr. Abbott. They were great foils and great friends. Dr. Brown moved from NYC to Everwood, a small town in Colorado (filmed in Utah, I think), after his wife died.  

In somewhere around the second or third season, I think, Dr. Abbott gave a speech about marriage  (not a stand-in-front-of-crowd-and-speak speech, just one like a friend would give to another friend, or a father to a son). People get married, he said, in order to bear witness to each other's life. (I've been scouring the internet looking for the exact quote, but haven't been able to find it; but the "bear witness" part was it in a nutshell).

Anyway, what I'm getting at [warning, two heavy IPAs in my system] is that, regardless of our desire to marry and couple off legally, we all want witnesses to our lives. Proof that we existed. Evidence that our efforts weren't for naught.  I want that witness, but I haven't decided if husband and marriage is the answer. We shall see. But I wonder if my generation (and, ugh, later ones) think of facebook, twitter, etc, the same way that Dr. Abbott thought about marrriage - something that's proof of your existence; proof that you were there, that you contributed, that you were part of something, that people cared.

I don't mind my stutter step, stutter step. As long as I'm not alone in it, I'm ok. It's ok.