My Number One New Favorite Show

After the disappointing season finale of Big Love (okay, so maybe Joey killed Roman Grant, but other than that, it just fell flat), I was wondering what I would do with my Sunday nights. But then, along came HBO's new series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I didn't read the books (mostly because I never thought it looked interesting), but following the 2-hour season premier, I am hooked.

In Botswana, where a woman is still culturally insignificant without a man, Precious Ramotswe (American actress Jill Scott) has divorced her abusive husband following a beating so bad she lost a baby. Her father has recently passed away, leaving her a very wealthy woman--in terms of having a lot of cattle. So she sells off some of her cattle and opens her own detective agency.

A woman can't do it all on her own. She hires a quirky, high-strung, totally OCD secretary, Grace Makutsi (Anika Noni Rose, the other girl from Dreamgirls), whose business sense may keep them afloat, even when her weirdo outbursts threaten to scare the clients away. She is also befriended by BK (Desmond Dube) and the local mechanic who is carrying a brightly burning torch for her, JLB Matekoni (Lucian Msamati).

In the first episode, she takes on two cases, that of a woman who suspects her husband of cheating and of a man who thinks one of his employees has filed a false insurance claim against him. She solves both cases, but both of them have a little twist. She proves the woman's husband is cheating by letting him come home from a bar with her and taking photos of them, but the woman refuses to believe he cheats, instead calling Precious a slut who seduced her husband. The man who is scamming his employer is actually a habitual insurance defrauder, but he donates all his winnings to a school for orphans.

She also investigates a witchdoctor's bag JLB finds in a very important person's car, and, in trying to locate the witchdoctor, finds a missing child the nation has been looking for. I think this is a really important element of the program; it shows how Botswana is both becoming modernized and developed and hanging on to its tribal and superstitious traditions. Both worlds exist in the same space, which is leading to corruption, kidnapping and other unseemly practices.

I'm excited to see more of this show. I have a real interest in Africa, in terms of the cultures that exist there and how they're represented on television and in books and films. Who knows, maybe I'll even read the books!

Back in Bad!

Hey readers! Just an FYI...after more than a month, the Bad Movie Blog is back in action. It's not that I haven't seen any bad movies. I totally saw The Wackness, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Vampire's Kiss, and a whole bunch more, but I just didn't get around to writing about them. But, if you check it now, you'll see just how bad Twilight was, and how uncomfortable watching Rachel Getting Married will make you!

Big Gay Glass of Milk

I finally watched Gus Van Sant's Milk last night. It's actually a really smart, well-done film, as anyone who is familiar with Van Sant's work would expect. In case you've been living under a rock, it tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to a major office. Milk was a pretty interesting and engaging character (in the sense of a real human being having a character), but he had the great misfortune of living for 40 years mostly closeted and in fear of himself, and only having a few years to really blossom and be himself before being assassinated by Dan White.

The film's plot is pretty unremarkable...gay man turned activist galvanized the gay community in San Francisco in the 1970s, ran for office several times before being elected and served one year before being murdered, along with Mayor George Moscone, by fellow city supervisor Dan White (who served nearly no jail time, thanks to his now-infamous "Twinkie defense"). But, I think the fact that the plot is so unremarkable is the reason it works; it allows Milk to be a real human being. This is not to say that there were not remarkable events in Milk's life or that he didn't do remarkable things because neither would be true. It's just a very simply told story without any sort of sensationalism.

Van Sant was very careful, since many of the people portrayed are still alive, to use as many of those people who were there as historical resources, even casting some of the more peripheral characters (like Teamster Allan Baird) as themselves in the film, and including everyone they possibly could in the crowd scenes or as extras. I think this prevents the film from becoming an epic, overblown series of mythologies about Milk (see Ray if you don't get what I'm saying) and really grounds the film so you can identify with Harvey Milk. Unfortunately, now that I've seen the film, I can definitively say Mickey Rourke deserved the best actor award and Sean Penn shouldn't have beaten him. I had hoped I wouldn't.

What the film does for me, however, is what so much controversy about gay rights always does; it causes me to wonder why. Why is what other people do so important to so many people? How does someone else's sexuality or race or religion or whatever affect another person so deeply that they have to stop them from living their own lives? Who really cares?

Obviously, this is not to say that everyone should be able to do whatever they want. Murderers, rapists and pedophiles, for example, should probably not be allowed to wander around doing their thing. But how does one person's sexuality affect another person? What business is it of anyone else's if someone doesn't want to marry a person of the opposite sex and have a bunch of babies? Is your morality compromised by allowing other people to have their own moral code? Is your own soul somehow damned if you don't tell another person that your god damns them? It's not as though gay people run around recruiting like the Marines.

I just don't understand. There's no reason for people to be so interested in what other people do in their private lives if it doesn't affect you. And who other people choose to spend their time and their lives with doesn't affect you.

What the freakishly intelligent do with too much time on their hands.

Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.

Blockbuster's New Bad Idea

One of the things that I love about my Blockbuster Online account is that I can exchange the movies they've mailed me for movies in the store, and then they send the next movie in my queue...so I'm never without a movie. Except, in their infinite wisdom, Blockbuster has decided to change this policy so now, when I return a movie I got in the mail at a store, I have to return the movie I got at the store before they'll send me a new movie.

This is totally unfair and annoying, and, frankly, defeats the purpose of having the ability to make in-store exchanges. I don't want to wait around, watching the movies I already own when my roommate is too annoying for me to tolerate her presence any longer and I retreat to my room. I might as well just switch to Netflix.

Another problem I have with the whole Blockbuster Online vs. Netflix thing, is that, although both companies offer online rentals for immediate download, Blockbuster makes you PAY for them and it's not available for my Mac. Of course, Blockbuster offers newer titles than Netflix does, but I don't think that I should have to pay for them in addition to paying for my monthly rental fee.

So thanks a lot, Blockbuster. You've taken a great service that worked really well for me and wrecked it. Now it's going to take me even longer to get through the 160 titles on my list!

More Unsolicited Frustration

I just can't take it anymore. If my cell phone rings one more time with an unknown or unavailable number and it's not someone calling to offer me a job interview, I think I will scream, cry, break things and tear my own hair out. Or, if I get one more random email, or find one more unsolicited magazine or catalogue in my mailbox.

Thus far, in the two days since I last wrote about this, I have received:

• A phone call from Publishers House letting me know that using my credit card has entered me into a drawing for a million dollars, so if I could just tell them which brand of credit card I preferred they'll put me into the final drawing.
• Three catalogues filled with clothing appropriate only for women at least 20 years older than I am.
• A catalouge where nothing came with its actual price, but the number and amount of each installment payment it would take to actually purchase the item.
• Three additional phone calls, on my cell phone, offering to help match me with the best college so I can finally get the bachelor's degree I've always needed to change my life.
• A phone call from a barely intelligible speaker from a call center in India or Pakistan or wherever letting me know about a prize I had won and I would have to fill out a survey to receive so I should be on the lookout for an email he was sending with that survey so I would get my prize.
• An invitation to learn more about the graduate programs at Loyola University (this may actually have been a result of applying to UIC, but the timing makes it suspect).
• A free four-issue subscription to Us Weekly. This doesn't suck right now, but when I get a letter a week asking for payment for a year's worth of more issues, I'm going to be hellamad.
  

I can't deal anymore. I have my suspicions about which job board it was that sold my information, but, because I can't prove it, I can't name them here. I can tell you it wasn't Monster, Hot Jobs or Career Builder, but a smaller, more specialized one.

Switching gears to more positive news, I think the interview I had the other day went well, and I should be hearing soon about an in-office interview with the company. I well-known reputable company which is clearly in no way responsible for the trauma I am going through with this crazy phone harassment. Keep wishing me luck!

Job Hunting...ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

I've now been without a job for nearly four months, and have actually been job hunting for about six. And, frankly, looking for work is almost a full-time job in itself.

When you look at the job boards, like Monster or Hot Jobs, a lot of what you encounter is scams. Companies like Marketing FX, SMI or Work In Sports advertise themselves as marketing firms with big-name clients, but, when you research the companies, you find that they are actually looking for people to go door to door and bring people The Good News of the Chicago White Sox...like Jehovah's Witnesses, with bumper stickers.

So, before you send out your application, you really have to research the company, and check all the rip-off reports you can find to ensure the one you're looking at isn't on there. And yet, somehow, you can still miss something.

I have applied for a job recently which, instead of calling me for an interview, sold my email address and CELL PHONE NUMBER to companies. I have gotten phone calls from five different companies that want to help me learn how I can finally get a bachelor's degree. They are all under the impression that I asked them for this information. Of course, I earned my bachelor's degree 8 years ago, my master's degree 4 years ago, and expect to receive my PhD in approximately 4 years. So, I guess you could say I have the bachelor's degree covered.

I have also been offered, thanks to this phony job application, the opportunity to subscribe to several different magazines, to start my own business and to test a new mascara not yet available on the market. And these are all offers that have been made via phone. Via my cell phone, burning up my minutes for opportunities I neither want nor requested.

Shouldn't this be illegal? The worst of it is, I have sent out so many applications that I don't know which one might be responsible for making my life even more difficult. Actually, that's not the worst of it. The worst is that every time I see a number I don't recognize, or get a call from an unavailable number, for a moment, my heart soars up into my throat thinking that I'm getting a call to offer me an interview, which is followed by an inevitable crash and a vile knot in my stomach as I want to scream at the person on the other end of the phone to stop bothering me.

But, it's not all bad. Tomorrow, I have a phone interview, so anyone who reads this should send good thoughts or positive vibes or sacrifice a chicken or whatever it is you do to make good things happen!