TV rules. At the moment I am loving The Weekly Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The OC. Utterly supreme. Oprah is also delivering big time. She has completely lost her footing on the planet Earth and it's great. She's doing shows about 'Entertaining' and being a good hostess and choosing the right 'party favors' to give to your guests to thank them for accepting your specially designed invitations and for sitting at your elegantly themed and scented-candle-laden table setting, wearing outfits that respect the dress code you specified on your invite to allay any confusion and complimenting one another on the 'hostess gifts' they brought you to thank you for inviting them. You see, the holidays don't have to be a chore. Look how easy it all can be! She's seriously peddling porn for the delectation of us simple aspirationals. And even though it's all a bunch of bullshit, it's all good. Today, she was speaking to her 'pioneering new friend Salma Hayek' [a title she kept repeating] and then Beyonce dropped her gorgeousness all over the joint. Bam! I am really looking forward to Monday's episode which is a look 'Inside the Lives of the Rich', and I am hoping desperately that the Hilton sisters will make their appearance then. Sweet. Y'all noddin. I see y'all noddin. I also enjoyed Nip/Tuck this week. I got quite drawn in to it. I will now give you an example of the extent to which my critical faculties were disarmed by it. You see, at the end of the show when the two surgeons were feeding that paedophile guy to a local crocodile, and they cannily masked the human flesh with pork, I didn't go, like, 'yawn'. My exact response was [and I am ashamed of this] to say "Oh wow. He really did listen to his son at the breakfast table. He's a good father after all", which is the response they had set me up for at the beginning of the show when the surgeon's son was haranguing him for never listening, before turning to talk to his little sister about crocodiles, whereupon the pork information was delivered to anyone who cared to listen. And daddy cared. Awwww. They totally nailed me. I should have been laughing at the show's trashiness and attempts at being 'grisly' and 'controversial', but I was more concerned with keeping the partnership together as it threatened to break apart. I kept urging the players to think about it. I would say "geez guys, it's so simple. All you need to do is make a deal with each other ensuring that part of your workload must be pro bono reconstructive stuff, and then you'll be able to keep the practice together without any lingering dissatisfaction", and then became all happy when they took my advice. I am such a sucker.

I have an idea for a show of my own, actually. I reckon a show that just gathered together all the funny and ridiculous news presentations of the week would rate its arse off. Jon Stewart and David Letterman both have popular little clip segments in their shows reserved for news stupidity, but I reckon there's enough material out there for a whole show, every week, or maybe even every day. And I'm not talking about a bloopers show. I'm talking about a highlights show, featuring some of the hilarious crap that passes off as accomplished news. It would of course heavily feature Fox and Today Tonight and 60 Minutes and A Current Affair and stuff, but not exclusively. It would be our policy to go wherever the absurd and dumbass might be found. Just last night on The 7:30 Report there was a report on the near air collision over Melbourne, and even though the story went on to make cogent and fairminded points about new air safety regulations which allow light aircraft to have unrestricted access to airspace also used by commercial jets, it actually began with ten seconds of slow-motion airport/control tower/airplanes footage accompanied by a doomy distorted monstrous engine hum soundscape, with no words breaking the mood until the plane landed, whereupon the reporter's voice-over began; "It's a pilot's worst nightmare..." Pew. Lame to the max. But entertaining and enlightening too, if lampooned. The funniest thing I heard today came not from a news parody, but it was funny because it mirrored a news parody. A 'serious' report on NBC Today [about the dangers of using non-bank ATMs because of the potential for crime-rings to insert devices in them that strip your details from your card and store it so that they can print 'bogus' cards and steal from your account] began with a montage of different ATMs being used and close-ups of the cash being dispensed, and then the voice-over stated, "An ATM is an ATM... Or is it?" Serious cacks . And then later, after talking about the 'nationwide' problem, he gets a byte from a guy who no longer trusts ATMs and will from now on only get his money straight from the bank, before finishing up with "But countless others, especially in the holiday shopping season, won't... All potential victims". These are only random examples, but there are serious possibilities here. If we had a team of employees monitoring all the stations and gathering material [I'd be up for it] then we could assemble some serious gems. Then we'd just need the right host and some comedy writers and the pisstaking and 'consciousness raising' could begin. It could be a really good show, and could be made on the cheap to boot. I am a genius. Alright alright, so it's just a Media Watch rehash, but I reckon it could rule. I would watch it. That's probably not a ringing endorsement of its potential worth, but whatever, it really really could be seriously good. Expanding on an already successful premise. Making a 'fusion' of two already existing and I think award-winning shows [Media Watch content, Jon Stewart slant]. It's got all the elements. It's sooo TV, baby. I'll get my people to call your people.