Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2009

Odds and Ends

Reading a terrific book about Teach For America called Relentless Pursuit.  It follows 4 teachers through a year in an L.A. public high school in Watts.  If you read it in L.A., while sitting in your car, parked in a less-than-awesome neighborhood, you will lock your doors and be very scared someone from a gang is about to shoot you, but besides that it's an excellent book.  There's a good interview with the author here.

What else... can't wait for tonight's continuation of the suspended World Series game.  Really hoping the Rays can pull off a victory, because I'm not quite ready to be left with no baseball to watch until April.

My friend Bob has a book coming out in two weeks called Follow The Roar, about Tiger Woods.  Bob followed Tiger for every hole of the 2008 season, from a fan's perspective, until Tiger got injured.  I haven't read the book yet, but Bob's a funny writer and a good guy, so if you're a golf fan, you should check it out.  I'll post more about it once it comes out and I've had a chance to read it.  (He's got a blog here, with some funny stuff about golf.)

I'm predicting Obama 286, McCain 252 for next week.  Closer than the polls show right now, but I'm thinking the air of inevitability the polls seem to be giving to an Obama victory may keep some people home who would otherwise vote.

The Mentalist, despite Simon Baker's implausible ability to be right all the time, and despite being much more like a standard crime procedural than I expected it would turn out to be, is still really working for me as a viewer.  I don't watch CSI, I don't watch Law and Order, I don't know that I really watch any other crime procedurals except for Psych (and that's closer to a comedy than a "real" crime procedural), but something about The Mentalist has me hooked.

And something about Eli Stone has me very close to being unhooked.  Not to spoil last night's episode too badly, but I don't understand where the fun is if everything is driven by Eli's visions.  It takes all the interest away from the character if he doesn't have to make any decisions, if all the answers are there for him, either in the visions or in his father's journal.  I have trouble caring about what's going on if they make it all seem like it's destiny and being powered by a higher force.  If you know it's all being run by God, then you know everything's going to turn out okay in the end, and then all of the suspense is completely gone.  Not for a moment did I think Jordan was going to lose his license.  Not for a moment did I think Eli was going to lose his case.  And not for a moment did I really care if he did.

Finally, I have a strange request, for a project I'm working on.  Do you work out at a gym?  Do you have any funny stories about it?  Are there funny characters who you often see there?  Do you have any insights you're dying to share about gym culture, why people go to the gym, what is crazy about the gym or your gym specifically, and if you were watching a television show about a gym, what you think might be really funny about it.  If any of this inspires you to send me an e-mail, I'm all ears.

Weddings, Not Mine

I went to a really neat Indian wedding over the weekend, in suburban Detroit.  Had never been to an Indian wedding before.  Food was really good.  And it was really cool to see what a wedding ceremony looks like in a religion I don't know much about.  The wedding was huge -- 400 people, or something like that.  The emphasis on family -- at least on par with the emphasis on the individual -- was interesting.  Lots of talk about the two families coming together, not just the two people, and how they're now joining forces to make one new family.  And the toast that one of the groomsmen gave was by far the best wedding toast I've ever heard -- full of stories that really shed light on the couple and made me feel like I got to know them better and that I wanted to know them better, and really just an amazing toast (I don't know the couple well -- it's my fiancee's friend from Princeton, and I've met them a couple of times, but it's all through my fiancee, who knows the groom really well).  But the real reason I'm posting about the wedding is toilet humor.  There was a ceremony in the morning where the families greet each other, and the groom rides on a horse.  So they set out a stepstool for him to climb on the horse, everyone's taking pictures, watching the horse, he's about to climb on... and the horse starts going to the bathroom, right then.  And everyone takes a big step backwards as it all falls to the ground... poor horse!  It was without question the funniest thing I've ever seen happen at a wedding.  Maybe the horse was nervous about the ceremony.

Highlights From Last Night's Presidential Debate

OBAMA: Look, as I travel around the country, this is the issue that will break your heart over and over again. Just yesterday, I was in Toledo shaking some hands in a line. Two women, both of them probably in their mid- to late-50s, had just been laid off of their plant. Neither of them have health insurance.

Meanwhile, at home in Toledo, Ohio:

WOMAN #1: Mid- to late-50s??  What??  There's no way I'm voting for him now.

WOMAN #2: Oh, come on, maybe that wasn't us he's talking about.

WOMAN #1: You really think there's another pair of women, just laid off from their plant, without health insurance, who talked to Senator Obama on the line yesterday?

WOMAN #2: I guess you're right.  So... yeah... you're right... what a jerk!

WOMAN #1: You really think I look like I'm in my 50s?  It's the bags under my eyes, isn't it.

WOMAN #2: I don't know why you're so offended.  At least you're in your 40s.  I'm 33!  Maybe it's a good thing we got laid off from the plant.  The plant is clearly not helping us stay young.

WOMAN #1: ...Or maybe it's my hair.  I should dye it.

WOMAN #2: Uh, maybe it's our lack of health insurance, Carol.  Maybe if I could afford to go to a doctor I could get some cream or something to make these wrinkles go away.

WOMAN #1: That's not what doctors do.  That's what makeup does.

WOMAN #2: Well, how am I supposed to know what doctors do if I don't have health insurance!

WOMAN #1: Good point.

WOMAN #2: And, frankly, how can I possibly vote for a President who can't even tell the difference between a 33 year old and someone in her mid to late 50s?  Is this really the man we want making important decisions for our families?

WOMAN #1: You're right.  I want a president who isn't just older than me, but who knows he is.

WOMAN #2: I think the choice is clear.

WOMAN #1: Me too.

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MCCAIN: So choice and competition amongst schools is one of the key elements that's already been proven in places in like New Orleans and New York City and other places, where we have charter schools, where we take good teachers and we reward them and promote them.  And we find bad teachers another line of work.

Meanwhile, in an operating room in Tallahassee, Florida:

PATIENT (lying on the operating table): Doctor, you think I'm going to be okay?

DOCTOR: I've done almost a handful of these procedures, Janet.  I have confidence it's going to go well.  "No tumor left behind."

PATIENT: Oh.  Like "No child left behind" ?

DOCTOR: Yes, exactly.  Are you familiar with that program?  You know, I used to be a teacher.

PATIENT: Before you became a doctor?

DOCTOR: Yes.

PATIENT: What happened?  Why'd you switch careers?

DOCTOR: Well, I was part of this program.

PATIENT: What kind of program?

DOCTOR: This program where they find bad teachers another line of work.

PATIENT starts to get up from the operating table.  DOCTOR pushes her back down.

DOCTOR: Where are you going?

PATIENT: I'm not sure I'm so comfortable with you performing the surgery now.

DOCTOR: Oh, come on, you know the saying: those who can't, teach.

PATIENT: Uh... sure....

DOCTOR: Well, if that's true, then doesn't logic require that those who can't teach, can.

PATIENT: Can... what?

DOCTOR: Perform surgery.

PATIENT: I'm not sure it works that way.

DOCTOR: Sure it does.  My entire class at Bad Teacher New Line Of Work Academy is doing awesome things with their lives.  One guy works for Lehman Brothers, there's a woman who approves mortgages for the destitute, there's a guy who found the cure for diabetes, and the woman who won our class pageant is now vice president.

PATIENT: There is no cure for diabetes.

DOCTOR: Sure there is.  I taught science and that was one of the big units I did.  "The cure for diabetes: how it happened and why we don't have that disease anymore."

PATIENT: I think I might go find a new doctor.

DOCTOR: I think that might be a good idea.

Tonight's Presidential Debate

...will hopefully be more interesting than the VP debate, which I thought was disappointing since no one said anything completely bizarre or insane.  Debates are only fun when someone makes a big mistake.  And since the moderator didn't force anyone to answer the questions asked, and didn't follow-up on any points anyone made... no fun.

I was in upstate New York this past weekend visiting a friend's farm house, and on the country roads I drove through along the way I counted lawn signs for McCain and Obama.  McCain 18, Obama 5.  Not surprising, since rural upstate New York surely leans to the Republican side anyway.  I expected to see more lawn signs than I did, which is why I started counting.  If I had known I would only see 23, I wouldn't have bothered.

I also saw baby cows, which are massive compared to baby humans.  Most people probably know that, but I didn't.  One baby cow could eat like ten baby humans, I think.  If they were carnivores.  (Are cows carnivores?  I don't think they are, but I am a city person, so what do I know?)  Also saw a red fox (not Redd Foxx the actor), and some caterpillars, which I first thought were millipedes.  And flies, but they're not interesting.  Trees and lots of very pretty color-changing leaves.  Horses, from a distance.  Chocolate milk, purchased from the dairy where the cows that made it live.

The Mentalist

Is seriously amazing, riveting television.

I just watched episode 2, from Tuesday.  It's awesome.  I don't even like crime procedurals -- there isn't another crime procedural on TV that I watch -- but it's just so compelling.  I don't know what it is, but I think it's that Simon Baker is making this character so smart, so interesting, so watchable.  There's so much beneath the surface of this guy that I would watch him do anything, crime-solving or not.  Yes, the show is like Psych but without the humor, like all the reviews say.  But you could just as easily say it's like Psych but with gravitas, with drama, with heft.  Psych is great, I love Psych.  But if the two shows were competing on my Tivo, I'd watch The Mentalist first, every time.  It was my favorite pilot of the new season (and I've seen -- and if I haven't seen, I've definitely read -- pretty much all of them), and after two episodes, it's very very quickly becoming a must-watch show for me.

I also watched tonight's DirectTV season premiere of Friday Night Lights, which was a solid return to what worked in Season 1, without the insane and stupid plot lines of Season 2.  Only thing: the timeline is so screwed up as far as who was in what year of high school when, and it makes the whole thing lose some of its magic.  Is Tim Riggins a senior for the 3rd year in a row?  Tyra?  Lyla?  It doesn't make any sense.  But besides that, totally watchable television.

Gary Unmarried?  Not watchable.  Worst Week?  Weird, uncomfortable, painful, cringe-worthy, but I don't get why all of that would add up to something appealing.  How I Met Your Mother?  Not the strongest episode on Monday, but decent.  Big Bang Theory, Boston Legal, Raising The Bar, Lipstick Jungle, Dirty Sexy Money, and Private Practice?  All on the Tivo, and whether they ever get watched remains up in the air.  Vice Presidential Debate tomorrow?  Definitely must-see TV.  Rosh Hashana?  Good holiday.  Writing I'm doing?  Going surprisingly well, especially given that it's clear from this post that I'm watching way, way, way too much TV.  That won't continue, because Gary and Worst Week are losing their season passes, and anything else I'm not compelled to watch from this week's Tivo isn't getting that chance next week, because I can't have 6 episodes of Big Bang Theory staring me in the face whenever it is that I really will need to get something done.