My favorite show right now

OK, It’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but nobody needs to read about that one.  25 million people watched the premier.  The other TV show I won’t miss right now is The Story of Film, An Odyssey, airing on turner Classic movies, Monday nights.  It is a complete course in movies.  You should get college credit for watching this program.

The 15-episode series played on BBC two years ago.  Directed and narrated by Mark Cousins, the project began as a book in 2004 and became documentary slowly thereafter.  He pretty much devoted five years of his life to the work and it shows.  I love this show because it doesn’t dwell in the abstract.  Cousins does talk about mood and nuance, but he shows actual clips of actual developments.  When he gets to Hitchcock for instance, he doesn’t just say he’s great.  He gives you five solid reasons and backs them up with clips illustrating his point.

The other reason to watch is exposure to stuff you very well may never have seen before.  This is not a Hollywood-centric film.  Like any odyssey worthy of the name, he covers great distances.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is pretty damn cool, too.

Deodorant rant

I ran out of deodorant last week.  I did not get the chance to restock because I live on an island and the island was, this weekend, very much like Stephen King’s dome.  I did make it to the mainland for a little while, but the experience created so much drama that I entirely forgot to pick me up some new Old Spice.  Which is kind of ironic, as the stress of leaving the island caused Nixonian levels of perspiration.

Anyway, I work out in the middle of the day, so I grabbed my wife’s travel deodorant.  I shouldn’t have.  It’s a baby blue stick.  It’s not the same colors as a Budweiser can or a battleship.  That’s how the marketing people warn you.  Marketing people are always there to help but I didn’t listen.

I didn’t listen because in my high stress job as a writer I need decent deodorant at all time.  I never know when I’ll be forced to say something witty or tell someone to use ‘whom’ not ‘who’.  Like EMTs, back-up quarterbacks or hostage negotiators – you never know when you’re going to be needed; you just need to be ready.  The constant state of readiness causes its own stress.  Which leads to the need for deodorant.  Which, presently, smells like all the Care Bears belched. 

Now I think I smell girly.  Which causes even more stress.  Which produces even more light and flowery scent.  If you rode a unicorn through a field of wildflowers, you might have I idea what my office smells like.  I hope to God nobody comes in here and ask ‘effect’ or ‘affect’.  We’ll end up on the ground like Dorothy and friends in the poppy fields.

Love this