I watched the show House, M.D., as it's officially called, since the beginning, amazed like everyone else to find that Hugh Laurie was (is) British. The show just ended its 8 year run and though the run-up to the ending was fun, I think you need to look at the events in reverse to get an idea of how much suspension of disbelief was required to follow along.
As the series ends, House and his friend Wilson, ride off on motorcycles to the strains of "It's Later Than You Think," which is appropriate because Wilson has terminal cancer and will be dead in 5 months, which fortunately enough is 5 months after the series ends. Not likely to be a spinoff named "Wilson" though. How does House get away from his busy doctor job to spend 5 months with his dying friend?
Well, House is officially dead. He texts Wilson during his supposed funeral and has him come to meet him. House is fake dead on purpose, sort of, maybe. When we last saw him he was in a burning building that did the dramatic collapse/fireball thing that TV shows and movies love. We saw him silhouetted in the front window moments before said fireball and they cart out a body that is ultimately identified as House's through some clever swapping (especially for a dead guy) of dental records. How did he get to that door?
He fell though the floor from the upper floor of the building. He had spent most of the episode lying on the floor having deep conversations with hallucinations of people from his past, who I can only assume were assembled for the purposes of final show-type stuff. The conversations were about whether or not he was going to try to get out of the burning building or allow himself to perish.
Okay, two questions at once now. Why was he in a burning building lying on the floor (he has a dead guy lying next to him, or at least the hallucinations say it's dead)? And why would he want to kill himself?
The second question is easier to answer. House has always been miserable, and now his best friend is dying from cancer and on top of that he will not be able to spend the last 5 months with his friend because he is supposed to go to jail. I know, that's a new question, but let me dispose of the burning building one first.
Actually even that is two questions. Why is he in that building and why is it burning? We presume he was in the building to shoot heroin with the dead guy (who presumably wasn't dead yet when they did the heroin) because he was miserable about the whole friend dying/jail thing. Why he didn't shoot the heroin in his apartment, where he has consumed many illegal drugs before, is a question neither asked nor answered. And why is it burning? Why, it's a mystery. Did House set the fire so he could shoot up and die? If so, that was very poor timing because the fire was just getting going when he came out of it. I don't know anything about heroin, but I'm presuming the buzz lasts for a little while, and I doubt he set the fire while he was lying on the floor because he was upstairs and the fire was downstairs to start with.
Everybody following? So as best we know he and his heroin buddy pick a random building that just happens to catch fire, even though it's an old building and therefore is unlikely to have burned down at any other point. So, back to the jail question.
House was supposed to go back to jail because he broke the MRI, by crashing thousands of gallons of water down on it. This is referred to as felony vandalism, which I guess would be true because if you commit vandalism after having already been in jail, it often treated as a felony. What, you may say? Yes, House has already been in jail and this vandalism violates his parole. Again, two questions. What was the act of vandalism that caused the water to crash down on the MRI and its contents and why had he been in jail?
The simple answer to the second is that he had, in a very well controlled act of rage, crashed his car through his former girlfriend's living room window. It should be noted that said former girlfriend was totally absent from the final season, including the funeral. Fair enough.
The act of vandalism? Flushing tickets down the toilet. On one hand, it's kind of hard to see water crashing through the ceiling of the MRI room as a result of flushing tickets (or anything, for that matter) down the toilet. I know I'm certainly going to be more careful from now on. On the other, House seemed fully aware that the flushed tickets would wreak havoc with the hospital's plumbing and he even seemed to know where the havoc would occur. Certainly, anyone who has watched the show knows that the support staff at this hospital is hapless, so House must have known this too, but several days seemed to transpire between the flushing and the collapse (hard to tell, though, because it was all flashbacks, because House is, well, supposedly dead)
This makes no sense to me, but again, we're suspending disbelief. What were these tickets? A colleague had given him hockey tickets to cheer him up about his best and only friend dying, even though hockey season is ending right around now and his friend wasn't dead yet. House did not take this gesture well, apparently, and somehow knew these tickets were just the thing to flush to make selected toilets back up at strategic moments. What's surprising is that the water backup would occur upstairs so it could collapse a ceiling, even though the hospital lawyer said it was a main outflow pipe that was clogged. My experience with water is that it wants to go down rather than up (note the preponderance of waterfalls versus waterrises). Oh well.
To sum up, House had to fake his own death, maybe on purpose and maybe by accident, because he flushed hockey tickets down the toilet.
Okay, and because his friend is dying. Props to the guy who gave him the tickets, though, otherwise they might have had to come up with a less preposterous ending. Somehow it wasn't until it was over that the the Rube Goldberg aspect of the plotting hit me. And I leave the show wondering how in the world did anyone come up with that idea.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Fair or Foul
Tonight I had the chance to go to a college fair with my daughter. I was very excited about this, I love fairs. All the games and rides, cotton candy, corn dogs, pie eating contests, awards for best chicken and largest pumpkin.
Boy, was I disappointed. This is not a fair by any stretch of imagination. It's just a big room with about 100 tables for a bunch of colleges. You walk in, fill out cards, chat with the admissions reps, and then move onto the next table. Not my idea of fun, but who knows what with the kids these days.
But accepting this so-called fair for what it is, here are my impressions.
This smoothest move I've seen is the kid with a page of stickers with all of his personal information on them. He's cruising through at probably triple the speed of anybody else because card-filling-out-speed is key..
A surprising number of the college reps are pregnant. I was also curious if the rep from Syracuse University was hired because he had orangey red hair.
The loneliest people seem to be from Texas Chrtistian University. I wonder how many kids from this area go to TCU. Busiest was NYU.
These things have very little redeeming social importance. It just allows the kids to have checked off in their admissions file: "Attended College Fair and expressed interest."
Boy, was I disappointed. This is not a fair by any stretch of imagination. It's just a big room with about 100 tables for a bunch of colleges. You walk in, fill out cards, chat with the admissions reps, and then move onto the next table. Not my idea of fun, but who knows what with the kids these days.
But accepting this so-called fair for what it is, here are my impressions.
This smoothest move I've seen is the kid with a page of stickers with all of his personal information on them. He's cruising through at probably triple the speed of anybody else because card-filling-out-speed is key..
A surprising number of the college reps are pregnant. I was also curious if the rep from Syracuse University was hired because he had orangey red hair.
The loneliest people seem to be from Texas Chrtistian University. I wonder how many kids from this area go to TCU. Busiest was NYU.
These things have very little redeeming social importance. It just allows the kids to have checked off in their admissions file: "Attended College Fair and expressed interest."
Monday, May 21, 2012
This is why it's bad to confuse me early in the morning
I opened the newspaper to the sports section, as I do every morning, and on the cover is the headline: "What's an 8 Letter Word for Mediocre?" This was far too confusing a thing to see first thing in the morning, because clearly the best 8 letter word for mediocre is "mediocre." I'm sure there are other 8 letter words that mean mediocre but it seems hard to believe than any would fit the bill as well.
Of course, what the headline writer (who is, by the way, almost never the same person who wrote the article itself- it's the editor's job) was trying to get at was the the P-H-I-L-L-I-E-S are mediocre. This is certainly true, at least so far, but the wording is just dumb. There is certainly no shortage of mediocre things that have 8 letters- Taco Bell, Lady Gaga, Delaware. My name has 8 letters, but that doesn't make me an 8 letter word for anything.
It's like in one class today, I asked a student what something was, as in "What's a ____?" The student responded, "Well it doesn't have a _____." To which I replied, "When is 'It doesn't have _____' ever answer the question, what is something? What is a pretzel? Well, it doesn't have curly hair and long, pointy teeth. Correct, but not particularly helpful.
Of course, the best example of this sort of non-sequitoriation is the spread called "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." As the late comedian Richard Jeni noted, that could apply to almost everything in the store.
Of course, what the headline writer (who is, by the way, almost never the same person who wrote the article itself- it's the editor's job) was trying to get at was the the P-H-I-L-L-I-E-S are mediocre. This is certainly true, at least so far, but the wording is just dumb. There is certainly no shortage of mediocre things that have 8 letters- Taco Bell, Lady Gaga, Delaware. My name has 8 letters, but that doesn't make me an 8 letter word for anything.
It's like in one class today, I asked a student what something was, as in "What's a ____?" The student responded, "Well it doesn't have a _____." To which I replied, "When is 'It doesn't have _____' ever answer the question, what is something? What is a pretzel? Well, it doesn't have curly hair and long, pointy teeth. Correct, but not particularly helpful.
Of course, the best example of this sort of non-sequitoriation is the spread called "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." As the late comedian Richard Jeni noted, that could apply to almost everything in the store.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
On the train well after midnight
Wow, has this been a weird day. I went to work, which somehow included watching an entire episode of The Donna Reed Show, and then left early to go to New York.
What's going on New York, you might say? Family business of a sort. First off, today was the dedication of the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center. Yep, a new theater perched on top of the Vivian Beaumont/Mitzi Newhouse Theaters. Named after my mother. My father has been on the board of directors of Lincoln Center Theater for a while and managed to help make something that had been something of a dream for the artistic director for 20 years finally happen. Absolutely gorgeous theater with a great rooftop feel from a deck outside. Lots of speeches by Lincoln Center types and performers.
It's a small theater (130 seats) designed to be a place to showcase new talent at affordable prices. I had been following its progress for months but had no idea what it gem it would turn out to be.
Then to the New York TImes building where my father was given an award by the City University Graduate School of Journalism for service to the city of New York. The award was introduced by Mayor Bloomberg and a few other people, and there were other awards as well, but first I got to hear my father described as "one of the unsung heroes of philanthropy in New York" and see a 10 minute film about his support for the school and other causes. Then saw my father, who'll be 84 in a couple of weeks walk up to the dais and give a 15 minute speech without notes about his support for freedom of the press and desire to help the transition to new technologies. Pretty heady stuff.
Then, because this is the way my life's been going, I walked down to Penn Station of see that my 10 PM train is, get this, an hour and 45 minutes late. In fact, it was so late that I took the train that was scheduled to leave over an hour later instead. In the meantime I was miserable because most of Penn Station isn't air conditioned, and the one cool part has no seats. This was a problem because I was wearing grown-up shoes for the first time in a while and my feet hurt. I had a suit on too but that didn't stop me from sitting on the floor. I was waiting for the moment when the answer to "Could this get any suckier?" was finally "no."
Finally got on the 11:15 train and made it home a little after 1. Glad I went. Glad it's over.
What's going on New York, you might say? Family business of a sort. First off, today was the dedication of the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center. Yep, a new theater perched on top of the Vivian Beaumont/Mitzi Newhouse Theaters. Named after my mother. My father has been on the board of directors of Lincoln Center Theater for a while and managed to help make something that had been something of a dream for the artistic director for 20 years finally happen. Absolutely gorgeous theater with a great rooftop feel from a deck outside. Lots of speeches by Lincoln Center types and performers.
It's a small theater (130 seats) designed to be a place to showcase new talent at affordable prices. I had been following its progress for months but had no idea what it gem it would turn out to be.
Then to the New York TImes building where my father was given an award by the City University Graduate School of Journalism for service to the city of New York. The award was introduced by Mayor Bloomberg and a few other people, and there were other awards as well, but first I got to hear my father described as "one of the unsung heroes of philanthropy in New York" and see a 10 minute film about his support for the school and other causes. Then saw my father, who'll be 84 in a couple of weeks walk up to the dais and give a 15 minute speech without notes about his support for freedom of the press and desire to help the transition to new technologies. Pretty heady stuff.
Then, because this is the way my life's been going, I walked down to Penn Station of see that my 10 PM train is, get this, an hour and 45 minutes late. In fact, it was so late that I took the train that was scheduled to leave over an hour later instead. In the meantime I was miserable because most of Penn Station isn't air conditioned, and the one cool part has no seats. This was a problem because I was wearing grown-up shoes for the first time in a while and my feet hurt. I had a suit on too but that didn't stop me from sitting on the floor. I was waiting for the moment when the answer to "Could this get any suckier?" was finally "no."
Finally got on the 11:15 train and made it home a little after 1. Glad I went. Glad it's over.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Awesome Opening and the tyranny of choice
We have a new supermarket opening near school. It replaces an old supermarket that was torn down over the summer, I think. The students are amused at how fast it sprung up when the library down the road has been closed for renovations for almost 2 years. That's a credit to (a) the profit motive- a supermarket can't make money when it ain't there, and (b) the fact that it's easier to build something from scratch than to renovate an existing structure. In broad strokes, for instance, when you build from scratch you don't have to worry about the old roof falling on your head if you remove the wrong wall or column. Just sayin'.
Right now, it seems to be sitting there empty, but the parking lot is all paved, the lines are painted, and they even have those little huts for the lazy people who only want to partway return their shopping cart all set up. My guess is that all they need is groceries and/or people to work there, but I haven't seen a Grand Opening (is there any other kind?) date set.
Riffing on that for a sec, why are they still called grand openings? It seems awfully archaic. People don't use the word "grand" very much any more. I guess the new word for grand is "awesome." So get ready for the Awesome Opening on June 1 or whenever.
I'm curious to see what this place looks like. I had a chance to visit the new Wegman's supermarket in King of Prussia this week. It looks almost exactly like the one in Great Valley, which is to say it's huge and impressive both in the variety and quality of merchandise. here's a video I took, covering maybe half of 1% of the store. It's not that funny, but it gives you an idea of what we as shoppers deal with today.
I sometimes refer to this overabundance as the tyranny of choice. More choices are not always better. We think it gives us more options, but when there are too many types of the same item to choose from it becomes impossible to make a fully informed decision and you tend to fall back on the familiar just for safety's sake. How am I supposed to know which kind of whole wheat bread is the best? There are like 20 kinds and I'm not trying all of them. So I just keep buying the same kind I have for the past 10 years. I think that's interesting and not at all the reaction that food marketers are shooting for.
Right now, it seems to be sitting there empty, but the parking lot is all paved, the lines are painted, and they even have those little huts for the lazy people who only want to partway return their shopping cart all set up. My guess is that all they need is groceries and/or people to work there, but I haven't seen a Grand Opening (is there any other kind?) date set.
Riffing on that for a sec, why are they still called grand openings? It seems awfully archaic. People don't use the word "grand" very much any more. I guess the new word for grand is "awesome." So get ready for the Awesome Opening on June 1 or whenever.
I'm curious to see what this place looks like. I had a chance to visit the new Wegman's supermarket in King of Prussia this week. It looks almost exactly like the one in Great Valley, which is to say it's huge and impressive both in the variety and quality of merchandise. here's a video I took, covering maybe half of 1% of the store. It's not that funny, but it gives you an idea of what we as shoppers deal with today.
I sometimes refer to this overabundance as the tyranny of choice. More choices are not always better. We think it gives us more options, but when there are too many types of the same item to choose from it becomes impossible to make a fully informed decision and you tend to fall back on the familiar just for safety's sake. How am I supposed to know which kind of whole wheat bread is the best? There are like 20 kinds and I'm not trying all of them. So I just keep buying the same kind I have for the past 10 years. I think that's interesting and not at all the reaction that food marketers are shooting for.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
More Costco
This morning I got up and decided to get to Costco as soon as it opened. This turned out to be a fortuitous choice, because I didn't really think about what getting everything on the shopping list entailed. I could hardly move the cart by the end; I guess 300 drinks will do that to you (I mean 300 sodas loaded into the cart, not that I consumed 300 drinks). And the lighter stuff, rolls and potato chips, was piled so high that I couldn't see where I was going and would go flying off to the side if I took a corner too fast.
Once I got to checkout they gave me another cart.
Once I got to checkout they gave me another cart.
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Happy Cinco de Fly-O
As Southwest Airlines calls it. I guess they're entitled because they're from the Southwest.
I try to make it my business not to take anything for granted, but I guess I really had taken being able to walk as such. It's not that I can't walk at all, I just can't walk without it hurting. This has been going on for almost 3 months and it's really wearing on me.
But life goes on. I'm sitting in Starbucks waiting for my kid to come out from taking the SAT. I'm not a big fan of the SAT and I don't appreciate having to wait and extra 20 minutes simply because it takes kids 20 minutes to write a sentence in cursive. Can't they just fingerprint everyone? I am grateful that she's taking the test here rather than at a high school where there's nothing to do except hang out in the parking lot. That was sort of fun when I was actually in high school, especially if there was food or smokes available. But it isn't fun any more.
Tomorrow, or maybe later today, I need to go to Costco to buy supplies for a schoolwide barbecue. I have a limited list to shop for, they know enough not to trust me with anything perishable or that needs to be kosher, but I've been deemed competent to buy plates, napkins and soda. This makes me proud. I mean, I know that I'm competent to do that sort of thing, but it's nice that others believe me so.
Costco is a funny place to shop. There's nothing organic about Costco. It's a warehouse kind of store but most of the stuff there would not be from an actual warehouse. In real warehouses if you want to buy something you have to buy a big box or a pallet of something. Warehouse stores were places where you could take things out of the boxes or off the pallet and buy them. At Costco, instead you buy special large sizes that are clearly packaged specifically for Costco and its brethren. It's simply not natural.
Costco is also someplace you pay to shop. This is a good deal for Costco. Most of their profit comes from people paying them to shop there. They try to make it worthwhile by selling things cheaper than elsewhere because they don't need to make lots on every single item. It also sets up a weird incentive, where it's better for them on some level if you don't shop there. The other problem, of course, is that because you buy huge sizes of things that you don't end up using everything you buy, which cancels the savings pretty quickly. How many of those 600 Tylenol PM or 5 pounds of baby carrots am I going to use before they expire or rot? It's a delicate balance. And why is there even a 600 pack of Tylenol PM? Who would need that? That's a lot of times trying to go to sleep with a headache.
I try to make it my business not to take anything for granted, but I guess I really had taken being able to walk as such. It's not that I can't walk at all, I just can't walk without it hurting. This has been going on for almost 3 months and it's really wearing on me.
But life goes on. I'm sitting in Starbucks waiting for my kid to come out from taking the SAT. I'm not a big fan of the SAT and I don't appreciate having to wait and extra 20 minutes simply because it takes kids 20 minutes to write a sentence in cursive. Can't they just fingerprint everyone? I am grateful that she's taking the test here rather than at a high school where there's nothing to do except hang out in the parking lot. That was sort of fun when I was actually in high school, especially if there was food or smokes available. But it isn't fun any more.
Tomorrow, or maybe later today, I need to go to Costco to buy supplies for a schoolwide barbecue. I have a limited list to shop for, they know enough not to trust me with anything perishable or that needs to be kosher, but I've been deemed competent to buy plates, napkins and soda. This makes me proud. I mean, I know that I'm competent to do that sort of thing, but it's nice that others believe me so.
Costco is a funny place to shop. There's nothing organic about Costco. It's a warehouse kind of store but most of the stuff there would not be from an actual warehouse. In real warehouses if you want to buy something you have to buy a big box or a pallet of something. Warehouse stores were places where you could take things out of the boxes or off the pallet and buy them. At Costco, instead you buy special large sizes that are clearly packaged specifically for Costco and its brethren. It's simply not natural.
Costco is also someplace you pay to shop. This is a good deal for Costco. Most of their profit comes from people paying them to shop there. They try to make it worthwhile by selling things cheaper than elsewhere because they don't need to make lots on every single item. It also sets up a weird incentive, where it's better for them on some level if you don't shop there. The other problem, of course, is that because you buy huge sizes of things that you don't end up using everything you buy, which cancels the savings pretty quickly. How many of those 600 Tylenol PM or 5 pounds of baby carrots am I going to use before they expire or rot? It's a delicate balance. And why is there even a 600 pack of Tylenol PM? Who would need that? That's a lot of times trying to go to sleep with a headache.
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