As much as the discovery has pained me, I must be honest about it. I have found reason to fault the brilliance of Ang Lee [bless his Ride With The Devil-directing soul]. The other night, I watched Hulk and it was shit boring. It provoked no thoughts whatsoever. Perplexing. Now, here's another perplexing though more thought-provoking thing. Answer me this: we know that Quentin has cruel parents, but why does he have a career? In other news, I have been watching Marking Time, the ABC drama that was screened on Sunday and Monday nights. It was good. I thought Sunday's episode was far stronger than the final one. I particularly enjoyed the liberal use of Lateline episodes in situating the times. It allowed for a lot of the federation-tampa-911 crap Howard was talking to be repeated. Yay Lateline. Another good show is Pasadena, which screens on channel Ten late at night on Mondays, I think. It's about some powerful Amercian dynastic family living in, you guessed it Pasadena, with many dark secrets to make and unravel. It's like Titans with cred [though Titans rocked without it]. Balthazar Getty is featured in it, and it's weird to see him. When you look at him, he doesn't look like a singular individual person. He looks like an amalgam of two other people, namely, Charlie Sheen and Corey Feldman. Was that always the case? Anyway, it's weird to see a person and not actually see them. Oh, and channel Seven has begun to repeat Dark Angel, which I hope will continue screening all the way to the second season finale, which I missed by a day when I went to south-east Asia last year. Damn stupid privilege of travel! Made me miss all my shows! By the way, has anybody else noticed that Oprah talks a whole lot of empty crap and nothing but? And then she repeats the crap over and over, like she's hit upon something significant. Or she repeats the last few words spoken by the person she's talking to, over and over, which is an encoded command for the audience to nod and applaud the great and simple brilliance being uncovered. And I'm not saying that the superficiality of the material she is working with is causing her to speak empty crap necessarily. I love superficiality. But I hate it when people don't spin/get it right. And Oprah never spins/gets it right. She just talks crap. It's not working. The only response she has caused in me for the past while is "Um... no!" And the inflection on the "no!" is rising at the end. You know, like one of those valley girl "no!"s. Think Clueless. Or maybe it's more like a Ricki ho "No you di?ent!" kind of a response. Either or. [Oh, and the question mark in the word 'di?ent' is intentional. I think it's linguistic code for 'glottal stop', which is what I am trying to represent, anyway.] I think I have a distinct need for something substantial and riveting. I'm gonna read Lolita. I've heard good things. I hope it's good. I need an injection of good stuff. Come on Nabokov. Give me something. Actually, it doesn't really matter if it's good stuff or not. What's important is to have read him, so that when the subject of Nabokov is brought up I'll feel conversant enough in him to understand what other people are saying, and in this way be able to judge whether or not they are talking crap. That's a reason to read. It's also a reason to watch TV. You see, I'm not actually wasting my time, people. I am immersing myself in stuff so that I may be better equipped to, you know, navigate the world. It's empowering. Positive. Worthwhile. It's not unhealthy at all. Or lacking in cred. I rock without it anyway.