Hack 'Em Up

Speaking of the party, someone, I think it was Will, mentioned how hacky the latest 30 Rock episode had been. I watched it, and maybe I'm slightly biased towards humor centered around Deutscher Übersetzungsfehler, but I thought it was great. OK, Tracy Morgan's singing voice in "Midnight Train to Georgia" was awfully difficult to take at points, but maybe someone simply owed Gladys Knight a gimme cameo. Come on, a "do-do" joke followed up by a self high-five? That's gold, son.

I knocked out the first season of Dexter this week, using teh streaming Netflix. At first some of the cliché supporting characters really turned me off (either the acting or the dialogue, I'm not sure which), but by the end the tension and plot twists had me hooked. Now that I think about it, it was a lot like Dead Like Me and Weeds in that they all have this sort of cheesy veneer, but underneath is a darkness that allows sympathy for even the most absurd archetypes.
I'll definitely watch the second season; hopefully, the chilly final episode means a little less hamfisting for a while.

Another of my recent watched-it-thens was a collection of 2008 Comedy Sundance Shorts. Some were better than others, but they were all worth checking out. Except the second one.

A summary:

• "A Relationship in Four Days" - A bath of new york hipster love. Makes your teeth hurt. I didn't not enjoy it.


• "By Modern Measure" - Didn't really get this one, or like it at all really.


• "Farewell Packets of Ten" - Ohhh cigarettes. Three minutes with two old yellow-lipped irish ladies chain-smoking and talking about smoking that goes from lovingly nostalgic to sadly grotesque.


• "FCU: Fact Checkers Unit" - Probably the outright chuckliest. Is that a word? It is now. But such a young, admittedly unproven word probably doesn't do this one justice. Hilarious, more specifically, Bill Murray singing along with chopsticks hilarious.


• "Motion Studies: Inertia" - Funny and pretty simple.


• "Sick Sex" - Also funny.


• "The Funeral" - My second favorite. Fucking "Crossroads!" I do love me a good inappropriate hip hop cover.

We also saw Sicko the other day, fairly depressing but not all that shocking. Doom doom doom goes the big ass drum...

Batman Begins has been on FX all week, and I watched it for the second time in bits and pieces mixed in between the great tennis going on at the Austrialian Open. Chokeavich, you can't handle the Fed. Get a grip, as it were. And commentators: if I have to hear the same stupid anecdote about Vitchavitch and his ace brother in a future Davis Cup team I'm going to vomit. We got it. Cute the first time. Enough. Anyway - Begins has me all worked up for Dark Knight. Really too bad about Heath, but at least it looks in the preview like he did a good job as the Joker. In any case, we'll always have "I Love You Baby." They really should have had him rehash that in Brokeback.