I Watched the Season Premire of Mad Men Because Everyone and Their Brother Has Been Telling Me I Ought to Get Into This Show

I'd never seen a full episode of Mad Men before. I would catch a few seconds of it here and there when flipping through the channels, and from what I could gather, it's a show about business men in narrow-lapeled, dark flannel suits who drink hard liquor in the office. If there's a story to it beyond that, I have no idea.

There's been a lot of people who have been telling me that I need to follow this show. So I decided to watch the highly anticipated season premire.

It starts out pretty strong, if somewhat confusing. There's some dude boiling milk in a saucepan. Then there's this lady who is either--I can't really tell--in the next room or in a flashback. The lady is either seducing some guy or delivering his baby. She tells him that she is going to cut his d*** off and boil it in hog fat, which is weird in either situation.

There is a midwife who apparently has the just-delivered baby in some kind of pot. She shows the baby to the lady, who now appears to be dying. It isn't quite clear if the baby is alive or dead. Nor is it clear if this is supposed to be a dream sequence or what.

Back to the dude boiling milk in a saucepan. He is being absent-minded and lets the milk boil over. He looks down, and the camera lingers on the image of a saucepan boiling over with foamy milk, like it's a meaningful symbol or something. I don't even want to know.

The midwife gives the baby to some other lady and asks to see her husband. The lady's reaction implies that this is some kind of significant revelation. Or something. The midwife also tells the woman that the mother named the baby "Dick." Ha! Get it? Because the dying mother kept going on about cutting off the (apparent) father's...

Okay, I'm not sure I really get it either. And I never understand what this sequence has to do with the rest of the show.

Later, there are these two dudes on a plane. A stewardess starts hitting on them something fierce. One dude acts surprised that a stewardess would be so desperate as to shamelessly offer herself to a couple of random guys sitting on a plane; the other dude's like, "What? Are you kidding me? This happens all the time."

Then there is some kind of subplot about the Head of Accounting of some business place getting fired, and two other accountant guys get promoted as joint Heads of Accounting in his place. One of the replacement accountant heads is British, and he's all upset that he has to share his promotion with the other accountant. I think we're supposed to hate the British accountant because he's British and (therefore) jealous or something. I know I sure hate him.

That subplot will probably figure big into future episodes, but for now we're back with the two dudes from the plane. One of them ends up with the desperate stewardess in his hotel room, and she's just throwing herself at him as though she knows in the depths of her soul that if she does not have carnal knowledge of this dude she just met on a plane, she will have failed utterly as a woman.

Then we cut to these two dudes making out like they're on Brokeback Mountain and the grizzly bears will eat them if they don't steal Heath Ledger's and Jake Gyllenhall's Oscar nomination. I'm watching this, but what I'm really doing is remembering a simpler, more innocent time of my life, like a half-an-hour ago when I thought it was shocking that basic cable could broadcast a woman repeatedly threatening to cut off some dude's d*** and boil it in hog fat.

In between all this, there's a tertiary subplot about London Fog raincoats, and I learn some titillating information about London Fog. For example, London Fog is only, like, forty years old, but their marketing campaign has convinced every American that London Fog raincoats have existed ever since there was an England. And also, London doesn't actually ever get fog. They only got coal smoke back in Charles Dickens's time, and the legend of England being a foggy isle has branched from that. I have no idea how much of this information I'm learning has any basis in fact.

Back to the story: So the dude who was having an affair with a desperate stewardess goes back home like nothing happened, and it turns out that he has a ten-year-old daughter, and some lady who I guess is his wife. From what I have been gathering over the course of this episode, this guy seems to be the hero of the show, but I have no idea what his name is.

Our Hero is a little angry at his daughter because she broke one of his pieces of luggage. The daughter explains that she only broke her daddy's luggage because she didn't want him to go on trips. Our Hero explains to the daughter that no matter how many trips he takes, he will always come back home. He sound like every skeezy married guy I've ever met who says, "It doesn't matter how you get your appetite, so long as you come home for dinner." Heh-heh. Nudge, nudge. Except that this guy is saying it to his daughter.

The episode ends with the daughter finding the desperate stewardess's wings mixed in with the contents of Our Hero's suitcase. Our Hero then decides to pin the desperate stewardess's wings to his daughter's pajamas.

Roll credits!

I'm probably missing a lot of nuance that would go in to appreciating this show, but I just don't think I'm going to expend the effort to become a fan. All the same, thanks to everyone who told me I ought to give Mad Men a shot!

Divers Attacked by Jumbo Flying Squid

Flying quid? For real?





And apparently the maw isn't the only thing you have to beware of with these evil suckers. They even have teeth in their tentacles.

The squids have been spotted near the beaches of San Diego.

I Hate the Bizarre Media Circus Surrounding the Sad Creepy Man who Cut Up His Own Face

This has to stop. The man was sad, creepy and weird, and that he cut up his own face.

I liked the guy. He was a talented performer, a great dancer, and a consumate entertainer. I hope he's in a better place now.

But why did he do that to his own face?

Here is the BEFORE photo, what he USED to look like:


He was a good looking guy. A normal, average-looking dude with some sex appeal and a wicked-awesome afro that white guys like me can only envy.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the face in the above photo. MJ looks great. He could go his whole life looking like that and everyone would love him.

Instead, he chose to become this AFTER photo:


He was hideous. I cannot look at his mutilated face without wanting to vomit. It is utterly horrific, what he did to his face.

And he did it on purpose.

The man cut up his face.

I don't care what excuses anyone serves up to explain this away. "He never had a normal childhood." Waa. "He had 'Daddy issues.'" Boo hoo.

It does not change the horrific fact that he

Cut.

Up.

His.

Face.

Let's not kid ourselves. He is not an "icon." He is sad, creepy and weird.

The fact that Jesse Jackson Al Sharpton are boostering a man who so obviously wanted to disown his Black heritage is beyond parody. Everything about MJ's funeral is beyond parody. You couldn't make fun of it if you tried.

And, believe me, I've tried.

But Michael Jackson is dead now, and he should be left to lie in peace. Remember him, if you will, as he was before he lost control. Or else, remember him as a cautionary tale of what you do not want to become when fame threatens to eat your soul alive. But do not remember him as an icon. He certainly was not that.

If you absolutely need a fallen hero to worship, there are plenty of normal ones to go around.

Patriotic Post

People Born on June 4th in History

Angelina Jolie - American actress (1975)
Noah Wyle - actor, Dr. Carter on the show ER (1971)
Cecilia Bartoli - Italian Musician (1966)
Andrea Jaeger - tennis player, retired as a teenager (1965)
Freddie Fender - country singer (1937)
Mort Zuckerman - Canadian-born American magazine editor, publisher, and real-estate billionaire, US News and World Report, New York Daily News (1937)
Ruth Westheimer - “Dr. Ruth” (1928)
Priscilla Morrill - actress, played Edie Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1927)
Robert Earl Hughes - heaviest known human at 1,070 lb (1926)
Dennis Weaver - actor, Marshal Sam McCloud on the police drama, McCloud (1924)
Nina Vyroubova - Russian/French ballerina (1921)
Howard Metzenbaum - United States Ohio Senator between 1976–1995 (1917)
Christopher Cockerell - inventor of the Hovercraft (1910)
George III - King of England during the American Revolution (1738)
Francois Quesnay - French personal physician of Louis XIV (1694)

Happy birthday, Mom.

People Born on May 22 in History

Here's a list of people in history who were born on May 22:

Greg Jones - linebacker for the Washington Redskins ( 1974)
Aaron Graham - corner for the Arizona Cardinals (1973)
Alison Eastwood - daughter of actor Clint Eastwood (1972)
Naomi Campbell - actress, appeared in Cool as Ice (1970)
Morrissey - British songwriter; the more you ignore him, the closer he gets (1959)
Lisa Murkowski - Alaskan Politician (1957)
Theodore Kaczynski - the Unibomber (1942)
Bernard Shaw - CNN news correspondant (1940)
Harvey Milk - that gay guy Sean Penn played in that one movie (1930)
T. Boone Pickens - that guy in the "Pickens Plan" commercial (1928)
Arthur Conan Doyle - author, Sherlock Holmes (1859)
Albrecht Grafe - pioneer of eye surgery; founder of modern ophthalmology (1828)
Richard Wagner - German composer, the Ring cycle, Flying Dutchman, other songs you've probably heard on Disney's Fantasia (1813)

Happy Birthday, Pat and Mike!

INCREDIBLE OFFER!

"ROOM" FOR RENT! (Really just the corner of my garage.) "Fully" "furnished"; has couch that turns into bed (if you lie down on it).



Pleasant view of circuit breaker box (NOT allowed to touch). Easy access to lawn mower if you should happen to want to mow my lawn for me (HINT! HINT! HINT! **wink wink wink!!!** ;D <----(winking open-mouth smiley face is not-too-subtle hint that you really ought to volunteer to mow my lawn seeing as I'm letting you sleep on a couch in the corner of my garage!)) Rent starts at $1,450 for the first month and we'll see how it goes from there! BID WITH CONFIDENCE!