excerpt from the ken burns documentary The War

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. mercial

we are on our third tivo remote. the first one just wore out. bella broke the second one. and the current one began flaking out after two weeks of use. as it is, if the new remote sits idle for more than five minutes you have to take the batteries out and put them back in before any of the buttons will work. this is slightly aided by the fact that the battery compartment door went missing in the first week thus granting easier and quicker access to this routine.

miffed at how soon the replacement had been compromised and in a fit of 'why won't this damn thing stop fast forwarding' furor, i chastised the children telling them i wasn't buying another remote and if this one broke we were done and would live without tv. three days later bella in a wordless rage because the remote wasn't working ricocheted it off the corner of a coffee table. all the rubbery push buttons mysteriously disappeared somewhere inside the plastic case leaving hollow holes where they had been.

with football season around the corner and wanting to stay true to my word, two nights after the fall of the remote i disassembled the device on my desk and painstakingly put it back together. when done, i popped the batteries in and tried it. it worked. it worked better than before because bella's outburst seemed to have fixed the battery issue as well. small gifts.

for the next few days the rest of the family secretly used the remote when bella wasn't around, wanting her to think the days of television were in fact over. but alex got caught when bella came in from outside to use the restroom. later that same day bella approached me:

BELLA
can i watch my show since i didn't really break the remote and it is working?

TROY
well bella, you did in fact break the remote and it is only working because your father is a great, great man.

BELLA
so ... does that mean i can watch now?

TROY
do you think you should be able to watch now?

BELLA
well, i haven't watched for three days and that's kind of a long time.

TROY
well, since when we thought you did break the remote you wouldn't be watching for infinity days, three days isn't so much.

BELLA (sadly)
yeah ... i guess so.

TROY
and for the sake of easier math let's say infinity days equals 1,000 days of which you are three days in. now what do you think is fair?

BELLA (contemplatively with finger on chin)
uhhm ... three weeks.

TROY
done.

since i was expecting her to say four days, i was pleased with her self-imposed twenty-one. and, if you're ever at our house and want to watch tv, the remote is stashed in marty's underwear drawer. we originally hid it in my desk but bella woke me up one morning with it in her hand asking if her days were over yet so we had to relocate it while she slept.

and, in fairness i must add in regard to how our kids treat electronics i got some insight from alex after he and i sat down to watch a show. when i turned the tv on, a horrible screeching sound came out of the speakers. without a moment of thought alex got up from the couch, walked to the tv and struck it hard on the side with his little fist. in a snit i asked him what he thought he was doing. walking back to the couch he simply said, "that's what mom does" and sat down next to me. to his and his mother's credit, the shrill screeching did stop.

in regard to my wistful helmet-free bike memory yesterday, i'm in a bit of a snit over this. i predict that within twenty years all children will wear helmets while simply walking around out of doors. why? because some kid in minnesota will have tripped on an uneven seam of sidewalk thus illuminating the obvious perils of cement-based ambulation. and our children will then share their wistful recollections of a youth rife with chasing lightning bugs and playing hop-scotch sans headgear.

on the positive side, head sheaths of the future will be much more stylish and unobtrusive.

and speaking of head-related peril, i recently had one of my most surreal conversations ever. me and this guy, breckenridge pete, were talking about the sopranos and he was telling me about his three points of contention with the show. if you haven't watched the whole series and plan to ... stop reading because spoilers follow ... he primarily cited three plot-lines he was dissatisfied with:

1. the lack of closure on adrianna's disappearance.
2. the lack of closure on the pending rico case against tony.
3. and like many others, the lack of closure with the ending itself.

i defended the last point by saying there isn't a follower of the show that won't remember HOW the sopranos ended. he quietly nodded in agreement and then went on to add:

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
and, i didn't like the phil leotardo hit either.

TROY
why not? too wacky with the car and the head and the puking youngsters.

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
no, not that. it's just that a human head is stronger than you think.

TROY
WHAT! are you telling me that an SUV wouldn't have rolled over a guy's head like that.

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
not if it was just rolling out of gear like that. no way.

TROY
really?

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
really. it would never happen. the human skull is actually quite rigid.

TROY
you say this with some level of conviction. do i want to know how you've come to believe this?

BRECKENRIDGE PETE
i'm guessin' not.

and i'm guessin' breckenridge pete might buck some current day notions were his kids were still members of the trikes and skates contingent.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. a pack of lies

WAKE UP DADDY! I WANT TO WATCH MY SPACE VIDEO. WAKE UP! WILL YOU WATCH IT WITH ME? WILL YOU? WILL YOU DADDY?

this is how i was brought out of my saturday night sleep, all four hours of it. usually i'd just push the child away but this day was special. friday marty had shown me a movie alex had checked out from the library; a 1998 training video about internet searching. he picked it because of the cover art. on the bottom of the cassette case was a computer monitor showing an archaic browser and above that was a broad expanse of open stars and space, hence, space video.

alex. i don't think that video is about space. it's about something else. something very dull and boring.

IT NOT BORING! I WANT TO WATCH MY SPACE VIDEO DADDY! I WANT TO WATCH IT NOW!

six minutes later i'm snuggled under a blanket with alex listening to a woman in a red leather jacket (which she was wearing indoors might i add) talk to a computer animated girl named cyber-jane. before the rise of the internet, the leather-jacket girl was surely manning a suburban mall cosmetics counter. as for cyber-jane, i'm afraid all her previous work was in animated porn.

about eleven minutes into the video, bella groggily entered the tv room and fell into an open spot on the futon by my feet. she took one look at the television and groaned, WHAT IS THIS? IT'S TERRIBLE. i telepathically said to her 'YEAH! NO SHIT! AT LEAST YOU WERE SPARED THE FIRST ELEVEN MINUTES.' when she didn't acknowledge my mental message, i verbally and politically said, 'not everyone likes all the shows you pick bella'.

spending my sunday morning on this cramped futon watching an instructional video on a pre-google internet made me think of the day before. driving the kids home from a country sleep-over with my parents i got stuck behind a car in the passing lane. after several minutes of telepathic messages to the car's driver, also unanswered, i noticed their vanity license plate read BALLRM. the realization of how screwed i was at that moment just about matched how i felt right now (alex has never stopped watching a show he has started). if i could have only had a transcript of our mind's glassy-eyed thoughts while we took in this experience. i think bella was architecting her retribution towards alex for squandering his morning show on such an obvious loser. i myself was woeful in how pathetic and unexciting these two women made the industry i am part of seem. and alex, well poor alex, he was just wondering where the hell all the stars and space got to.

EARL
how come you never told me you won a beauty contest?

JOY
every day i walk out of my front door i win a beauty contest.

excerpt from season one of my name is earl

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. three shows

alex likes barney. we tivo the show routinely but, for reasons i don't understand, he always insists on watching a solitary barney tape that somehow came into our possession. he's had to have seen the thirty-minute episode over fifty times. he refers to this show as 'white barney'. it's dubbed as such because the physical cassette is white in color, instead of the usual black. while this innocuous reference poses no problem in our home, it occasionally creates discomfort when out and about in our diverse community.

if before any of this took place, had someone presented this exact scenario to me soliciting my opinion, i would have thought little of it, proclaiming the child's rant to be simple and harmless. however, in the few instances we've been out and he's decided he wanted to watch the show, like now, and freaks out when he can't, things gets murky. because reality has me pushing a stroller through a crowded urban street with a fitful child wailing WHITE BARNEY, WHITE BARNEY, I WANT WHITE BARNEY NOW! at the top of his lungs. needless to say, i find the questioning gazes of onlookers to be a tad challenging. i don't know what they think. i don't know what i would think. but i don't think they think he's asking to watch a recorded episode of barney that just happens to be on a white VHS tape and if they aren't thinking that are they thinking this kid might as well be yelling ARYAN JOE, ARYAN JOE, I WANT ARYAN JOE NOW! because in the end, i think that might be what i was thinking had i witnessed the scene.

as for why this situation has never escalated beyond uncertain glances, i can't say for certain, but the fact that alex looks like the product of an international adoption surely can't hurt the cause.

what bella said after returning from a play-date at a friends house. based on bella's description of what happened, i believe the non-kid show in question was ER, even though bella repeatedly referred to it as PM.

our bathroom door doesn't lock. come to think of it, our bathroom door doesn't even latch. it stands wide open much of the time, occupied or not. casting a glance that way while walking down the hall often results with spying bella sitting on the john chin resting on her bracing arm and her legs dangling from the seat.

you may think that given the state of our door hardware, people would respect that when the door is swung closed, the room is occupied. we're not quite there yet. five minutes before the writing of this thought i was attending to my late afternoon constitution when the door pushed open enough for bella's head to pop through. "oh!" she exclaimed. "sorry dad, i just need one of these." her arm reached to the back of the door and pulled a bath towel off a hook and she and it disappeared. she called a "thank you dad" out as she quickly ran down the hall.

i'm not a math guy but this equation is one which i'm all over. that is, if bella is hurriedly after a full size bath towel, something pretty bad just went down. there was a time i'd try to figure out if it was one of my valuables or another's but parental experience has shown me that it is always my stuff. the kids have yet to be employed and therefore haven't acquired anything of merit or value. the last thing marty voluntarily purchased out of need or desire was back in 98 and that item fell when bella was just three. so what is left is a house chock full of dad-stuff. and it's not like i prefer delicate and costly electronics or anything. and certainly not stuff that couldn't withstand being doused with a bowl full of milk that got upended during a scuffle between bella and alex for the remote while yelling "my show, no my show, no my show, NO, MY SHOW".

many more of those sorts of battles and that argument will become a moot point because marty and i are in agreement that we're not replacing any more broken household items until the children leave for college. if you could see some of the antics that go on in our miniscule tv room, you'd know the tele is already living on some serious borrowed time.

click to watch
more than one person has commented to me that they imagine this is how i am at work. it is clear to me that those people either ...

1. work with me currently
2. worked with me in the past
3. have or had a hidden camera set up in my office.

john locke from the first season of Lost

were you aware we just celebrated the ten year anniversary of the the OJ verdict? i didn't until i caught this great episode of frontline which was loaded with all sorts of current observations about this historic affair. one of the more poignant comments came from a ucla law professor, Peter Arenella, in regard to the performance of the defense team:

tragically, the american public doesn't seem to understand the role of the criminal defense counsel. even my first year students ask me frequently how can you as a criminal defense attorney ... represent a guilty person in good conscious. the point of an adversarial system is for the defense to force the prosecution to persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt and a defense counsel's ethical role is to make the prosecution satisfy that burden of proof by challenging the credibility and persuasiveness of the prosecution's evidence.

i could definitely be lumped into the american public referenced here and have long been intrigued by this legal circumstance. i've always possessed a pollyanna notion that skilled defense teams were meant for the innocent and it was not morally clear to me how someone could fight to free a person they knew to be guilty (this obviously assumes a defendant admits the truth and/or crime to his attorneys or they otherwise come to know the truth), almost as if the trial should happen and if the dude's found innocent AND the defense team KNOWS the person is guilty, that some member of the defense team should step forward and assert that even though we won the case, we know our client is guilty of the charge.

an admission, to anyone in the legal circle feels like it should be enough, in my utopian vision at least. and i get that the landscape would change should this method be the norm. all i'm saying is it seems utterly bizarre to me that people go free when we have legal professionals walking around who know the defendant committed the crime for which they are accused, wherever that may apply.

a few more interesting points made in the show.

upon the verdict's reading in 95, you know, when the white population collectively sagged and the black population collectively rejoiced, the whites had a sense that the celebration was over what appeared to be an obviously guilty man, who was black, getting away with the murder of two people, who were white. upon re-interviewing many of the previous celebrants today, they admit to feeling he did in fact commit the crime, and they were not rejoicing that OJ dodged a murder charge but instead that a black man beat the system, a system that has long ravaged factions of their communities. beyond the irony that OJ was a man so accepted and revered by whites, the fact that it was orenthal james simpson seems to be irrelevant. but it is this vitally important distinction (that a great many of the blacks celebrating the verdict that day felt he either did it or was in some way responsible for it being done), i feel, was not made abundantly clear by the press back in 95.

i also heard multiple people say that the great flaw in the case was that certain parties of the lapd attempted, or very much appeared to have attempted, to frame an already guilty man and had they let events unfold naturally the case would have been much more winnable for the prosecution.

the only thing the pundits can agree on; the vivisection of this event does not have a final chapter. oh, and also that we really need to get cracking on the truth box.

nypd blue
1993 - 2005

Katie Sipowicz
He could use God's help now.

Det. Andy Sipowicz
Short term he oughtta settle for getting his head out of his ass.

re-live some blue banter here

these were the first words said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

my high school was doing a production of the little mermaid. i was the mermaid but was replaced when i became too difficult to work with.

and, here is the second thing said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

ivana from the apprentice was there but i couldn't remember her name so i kept calling her maggie.

and, this was my first thought yesterday morning ...

i would pay some serious jack to have marty and ivana in the same room getting haughty with one another.

you just don't know how a day that begins with such beautiful randomness is going to turn out. life excites me.

marty and i have been enjoying the terribly underrated freaks and geeks series together. i can't tell you how interesting it is to be watching this with someone who was neither a freak, a geek or, as with her spouse, somehow both.

although i will say i feel like a celebrity. she's so full of questions, questions i know the answers to. and she asks them excitedly, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, smiling widely as she works to get them out.

were there really girls who would/could push guys around? did guys really freak out about having to shower in gym? do people really dance in front of and converse with their mirror?

the answers:

1. my mom made me put the dollar bill she gave me for lunch in that funny little pocket above the regular right pocket on levis. three people knew this. myself, my mother and a girl named audrey who simply held her hand out every day she saw me before lunch.
2. at my high school, we only had to shower during swim week. me and a terribly overweight kid were the only ones with doctors notes excusing us from the program for three straight years. you see, not only did i not know how to swim, i didn't get a chest hair until i was 19, started shaving a year after that (and then only once a week until i was 25). you do the math. i was about twelve leg hairs away from being diagnosed with alopecia and advertising my pubeless groin to all of my rowdy and hirsute colleagues was simply not in the plan.
3. dammit

but don't get me wrong, i'm also learning stuff. like that the average person could feather their hair if they so desired?

although, for me, it raises another question; who wouldn't desire to feather their hair?

on the apprentice, if jen beats kelly, you can pick my television up on the sidewalk in front of my home ten minutes after the show concludes.

walt and i watched one of those home shows on the tele last weekend. they were discussing the new age of luxury homes. the encouraging news; we're seeing a departure from the behemoth stone-faced mansions of yesteryear for more intimate, better crafted domiciles. more intimate meaning a 12,000 square foot hovel, complete with the requisite half-court basketball and golf facility in the basement.

i wasn't sweating what we didn't have until one feature was discussed. it seems that what you and i knew as a study while growing up is now known as a knowledge nook. and it seems quite important that these cerebral crannies be 'acoustically open so kids are able to chat with mom and dad if need be'.

a flood of explanation washed over marty and i. in our defense, how were we to know we'd fail as parents without an acoustically open knowledge nook?

to say i have a few things on my plate this month would be like saying my high school chum big dog was just kinda mean to people he dealt with at drive-through windows.

if you don't know big dog you'll just have to take my word for it when i tell you he has, without question, consumed more human dna through fast food products than any other person ever has or ever will. while the thought of this may horrify you, it should not. what should wake you in the night though is the comfort-level he had in knowing he was consuming just about anything the 16 year-old working that night could eject, pull or scrape from his body and then conceal within big dog's order. forever stamped in my brain is a vision of big dog in the driver's seat of a car working on a too-large bite of burger while shrugging his shoulders at me.

but, back to me. in october, i'm trying to build two complete web sites AS WELL AS preparing for the everyman unveiling. now this is not to say i won't post, it's just to say what i do post my be less coherent than usual. and for the dozen or so people who don't think my writing is understandable to begin with, sadly, you're just extra-screwed this month.

but before giving up on me completely, let me share an odd detail about myself. did you ever see the episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where dr fever and venus had to drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol for a state trooper? the police official was attempting to demonstrate the ill effects liquor had on the human mind and more importantly, human response time. in the show, the more johnny fever drank, the quicker he'd become, leaving the trooper quite dour. this is how i am with sleep. the less i get the better i perform which leaves my wife quite dour because she is very much not like this. although i guess my deal is the opposite of the johnny fever example because the more he had the better he got so it's kind of backwards because for me it's the less i get the better i become, but you get the meaning.

ok. i just reread this post and i may be wrong about this whole improving while fatigued thing.

but, as i always tell my children, lucidity is overrated.

i watched the season premier of nypd blue the other night. it seems they plan to go out swinging in this, their farewell season. one of the plot lines followed a guy who received a botched circumcision at birth and was subsequently converted to a woman at infancy only to get it reversed in adulthood. i told you those things were bad, and that's circumcisions, not sex changes.

in another thread they introduced some new talent to the show, another female detective. i gotta tell ya, this 15th precinct somehow manages to attract the most beautiful policewomen of all time. i mean sure, when i think new york city female cop, i think smoking hot women, don't we all. three things all of blue's girls have in common:

all of them weigh less than a buck twenty
all of them could pose for playboy
and, none of them would ever go out with me

and, this is all it takes to be a lady detective on nypd blue; staggering beauty and a willingness to reject yours truly.

sorry i've been away so much. the olympics are on, like don't ya know, and i have tivo which means the olympics are actually watchable.

for instance, with tivo:

1. i can watch a 3 hour football game in 50 minutes.
2. i can watch a 30 minute episode of friends in 18 minutes.
3. thin when tan girl and i can watch an hour long episode of america's funniest home videos in 8 minutes.
4. and lastly, i can watch a six hour block of olympic coverage in 1 hour and 30 minutes.

if you're not up with the new technology and not really tracking my vibe, think of it this way, the networks are satan and tivo is the "kick satan in the nards" box.

viewing disclaimer: if you are watching tivo'd programming at e-love's house, cut all times in half.

after watching the first episode i was excited.

after watching the second episode i was suspicious.

after watching the third episode i was certain.

and, after watching the fourth episode they admitted it.

the show i'm talking about is last comic standing. the trespass the show made is that the whole damn 'reality-based' competition is 100% rigged.

the show's premise has comics compete against one another to win a spot into some house in hollywood. once they are in the house i don't know what happens but with whatever happens, whoever is the last comic standing wins some tv contract or something of the like. to start out there are about a trillion of them and they are whittled down to 40 and then 20 and then 10.

in the last round of judging (to get the crop down to 10) nbc delivered 3 big names (drew carey, brett butler, anthony clark) and some super annoying woman to decide who the funniest of them were and consequently who moves forward in the competition. so the comics do their thing and then the judges do their thing and then the winners are announced. this is where it gets all sticky because the winners were, problematically, not who the celebrity panel voted on.

drew carey, brett butler and some of the comics freak out wondering what the hell happened. ultimately a producer comes down and explains that in addition to the celebrity panel there are nbc producers and executives also voting. put aside the fact that the producers and executives most likely don't know as much about comedy as the professional comics. also put aside the fact that the producers and executives votes seemed to totally nullify the professional comics votes. put aside the fact that the pros were there for nothing other than their name recognition. and putting all those things aside leaves you with a really screwed up handjob.

fact is, the network most likely knew who they wanted in the house right after the initial crop were selected. i mean this one comic received a standing ovation by the 1100 people in the forum, including the judges, yet was told to go home because he just didn't seem to have what it took. but the not-funny, yet oddly attractive sicilian woman sure did and was asked to move forward.

and i think that it was this dicked comic, dan nauterman, who put it best when he said ...

i don't want to have anything more to do with this f*cking show.

ok, so he may have said stupid show but not only would he have been completely justified to say the harsher version, he should have said the harsher version, twice, and with hand gestures and groin-grabs included.

how can someone ruin a competition involving a whole heap of comedians saying funny stuff. i mean how can you possibly mess that up?

so just a few months ago i copped to having a bit of a thing for gina the veternarian on seseme street.

and, now steve buscemi is 'bedding her down' sopranos style. no way he appreciates her the way i would appreciate her. no stinkin' way.

bella spent last weekend at the betty ford clinic, the grandparents house for any newcomers. with only one kid in our care this meant marty and i were free to light it up, get it on, tear it apart. if you're wondering what such an unbridled weekend looks like for such an unbridled guy, let me give you a glimpse into my full-throttle life:

friday night after work i ...
watched the italian job
and then walked up to the local cine to take in monster

saturday i ...
watched episodes 1-6 of curb your enthusiasm
helped to host a marty dinner party
watched episodes 1-3 of the west wing

and sunday i ...
watched episodes 4-8 of the west wing
read 20 pages of my 600 page book

i know, i know. crazy. and had i not had to participate in the previously scheduled dinner party i certainly would have gotten the star wars trilogy in, had i not watched it the weekend before which means i could have and would have watched the godfather trilogy.

without the dinner party i may also have read 30 pages of my book instead of 20.

and did you know that they are finally releasing freaks and geeks on dvd? as if it's not bad enough they had to cancel the show in the first place, they have to torture us with this embarrassingly latent release.