From The Ashes ...

Not So Dumb

Last year, I picked up a manual to try and teach myself Adobe GoLive (for website design and publishing). About a quarter of the way through it I became totally lost and put it in the pile of books I couldn't or wouldn't finish. In the interim, I've learned a thing or two about Cascading Style Sheets and HTML and websites designed with frames and I just started skimming a garbage picked manual on Dynamic HTML. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find that upon re-visiting the GoLive manual this weekend, I totally understood most of the instuctions and was even able to distinguish what was too advanced but unimportant to my current needs. I doubt I'll be moving my site off Blogspot (at least for now) but there will probably be some changes around here as I experiment with writing HTML code. If you hate what I've done just wait a day or two, it'll probably change or change back.

I felt myself slipping into a depression all weekend. It didn't feel really severe and I could tell it was totally related to not having a job. It appears that my sense of self is tightly interwoven with being gainfully employed. Fortunately, ABC Sunday night provided a welcome distraction. Starting with Extreme Makeover. This week the family was living in a broken down (broken windows, holes in the ceiling, broken faucets) hovel in central LA. There was a mother and father and four kids. In addition the father (who worked as a counselor to inner city kids) lost his mother to a stray bullet from a gang fight, leaving her five kids as orphans. So they took in those kids as well. Nine kids. And if that's not enough to tug at you one of the kids is autistic. (I know, it almost seems made up.) If you believe the way they package the show (And I don't. For example, Queer Eye still tries to make it seem as if their makeover happens in one day when in reality it happens in four) it takes them a week to tear down a wreck and rebuild a three story brand new home. Granted, they have what appears to be hundreds of volunteer workers made up of professional builders so it's possible, and honestly it's not that important as to the result, a struggling and impovershed inner-city family comes back to a brand new home. They cry, and so do I. Mission accomplished.

Moving on, I watched the first episode of Desperate Houswives. I was looking forward to some high camp. You know how "the gays" love camp. The show opened promisingly enough with one of the housewives blowing her own brains out. Marcia Cross is an absolute hoot as the Stepford-ish Martha Stewart character. Nobody does crazy better than her. And I loved when the housewife (played by Eva Longoria, a Young And The Breastless alum) getting fucked by the lawnboy (Jesse from Passions) leaves her husband at a party to go home and cut the lawn herself, so she can continue being fucked by the lawnboy. I can relate. Having the show narrated by the dead housewife is a contrivance that will have to be dropped, and I'm undecided how I feel about Terry Hatcher and her storyline, her and the kid she has feel like they wandered in from a totally different, poorly written sitcom. Burning down the neighbors' house, was a pretty funny first episode touch. And what the hell did Nicolette Sheridan have done to herself? I mean, besides the overly blown-up collagen lips. Why does everyone in Hollywood not see what a total cliche that's become? Nicolette, do yourself a favor and learn two words: lens filter. And avoid extreme close-ups. All in all, I'm not hooked yet, and I think they can go further "out there" if they want to. In any case, it was the perfect compliment to my "comfort dinner" of meatlof and Mac and Cheese.

I finished my rare night of network TV viewing with the season premier of Boston Legal. It's a spinoff of another law show set in Boston (The Practice) that I watched sporadically during it's first season. At first, I dismissed it as a knockoff of Ally McBeal, but I guess that's selling it short. James Spader is wildly entertaining as an amoral lawyer who wants to win at all costs. And William Shatner, well.... Shatner is a star. He's got a bag of tricks and you can practically see him deciding on screen which one to pull out but fortunately it's a huge bag and his choices are always highly entertaining. You can't not watch and enjoy. His Denny Crane character will be a classic. And I hate to admit it, and I have no idea if it was the performer, the direction or a bit of both, but the surprise cameo by none other than The Rev. Al Sharpton was absolutely letter perfect. An inspired bit of writing and casting.