TVWhore.org TV is my drug of choice

• A digital thermometer
• Tall plastic containers in which I can soak chicken pieces in buttermilk (for Southern Fried Chicken, which I have never been able to make very well.)
• Large plastic containers in which to dredge chicken and pork in flour. Also for storage.
• An iron skillet
• A cooling rack
• An aluminum cookie sheet because I shouldn’t use non-stick when broiling
• Splatter guards
• Silicon spatula
• Pastry brush
• Separate cutting boards for vegetables and meats
• An oven thermometer
• A fry thermometer

The only indication my cooking has improved is the fact I no longer get sick eating my own cooking.

If I can get behind with my TiVo-watching, there’s little to say — if any at all — about my DVD viewing. I’m not the kind of person who just throws in a DVD on a weekend. I’m usually pre-occupied with some kind of work that ties me to the computer. As a result, I get more entertainment from my media player than I do from the DVD player.

That doesn’t stop me from buy the occasional DVD from time to time. It doesn’t mean I actually get to watch them.

So I figure I may as well make a list of DVDs I own but have yet to open. I’m including movies as well. At some point, perhaps I’ll crack them open and revisit what made me like that particular story in the first place.

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These days, I pretty much watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to see if Mike Doyle makes a guest appearance. I also like when Phillip P. Keene gets a scene in The Closer. Well, After Elton linked to a short interview with Keene, where he reveals he’s gay and has a partner of 15 years. Oh, he just got hotter for me.

All this presidential election coverage is making me miss The West Wing. Too bad it’s not in syndication any more. I do have the DVD sets from Seasons 1-4, though. Maybe a marathon is in order.

This site is really dead. I could give a whole bunch of reasons, but honestly, the 2007-2008 season has been rather boring. If anything, the writer’s strike was probably the only drama worth following this entire season. And TiVo makes it too easy to feed the apathy — why sit in front of the TV if I’m not in the mood to watch something in real time?

The only show to which I was truly addicted was Bleach, a Japanese anime shown on [adult swim], but it ran out of dubbed episodes many months back. I had to resort to finding fan subs from the Evil Sharing Networks to get my fix. (I finished the Soul Society Arc, but I figure I’ll wait to start a new storyline when [adult swim] catches up.)

So between a lackluster season and disruptive labor disputes, I’ve had no incentive to blog about TV. That’s not to say I’m shutting down this site. No, I think instead I’ll wait to see what happens next season. For now, I’m sitting the rest of this television cycle out.

What little I had to say about this season can be expressed in various bullet points.

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You know, I bought the domain TVWhore.org because I was writing about TV way too much on my personal blog. Now that I have this sliver of the Interweb, I neglect it.

It would be funny if I were watching so much TV that I don’t have time to update, but as I mentioned before, TiVo actually lets me do other things during the week, leaving my weekends free to be chained to the television set.

I have only so much blogging energy in me, and I’ve been expending it on a New Year’s resolution to turn my music site into an MP3 blog. I’ve been running this feature called “365 Days, 365 Files”, where I post a song from my CD collection everyday, and it’s been monopolizing my time.

I just want to say, yes, television is still my drug of choice — certainly far and above movies — and I’m getting my regular fix. Writing about it, though, is a separate challenge entirely.

When I saw the promo spots for the new mid-season series Raines, I didn’t feel a terrible urge to see it. But I happened upon tonight’s episode because of Andy Barker, P.I., which was recommended to me by a friend earlier in the day.

(I’m not one to fancy so-called "big-boned" men, but I would make an exception for Andy Richter.)

I kept it on NBC as I did some much-needed housecleaning — SXSW pretty much made me neglect such duties — as Raines came on. Something about the writing felt familiar, and the way the hallucinations interacted with the title character came off far better than I expected.

My eyes happened to glance at the TV screen when the writing credits flashed, and I realized why this show felt familiar — it was created by Graham Yost, the genius behind the much-praised but ultimately-doomed Boomtown. I have the first season of Boomtown on DVD, and I’m sure the second season will never see a DVD release.

I may give Raines a Season Pass, because the half of the show I did catch was awesomely written and performed. But like Boomtown, the concept behind this show takes a bit of effort to get into, kind of like getting past the high school football premise of Friday Night Lights.

I had to run an errand before I could see the end, but not to worry — when Yost’s name appeared on the screen, I dove for my TiVo remote and began recording.

All the brouhaha over Isaiah Washington’s use of a pejorative made me do something till now I had no interest in doing — watch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Medical dramas are not my thing. I am easily queasy, and medical dramas these days do not shy away from the gore. Besides, I watch way too many crime dramas to make room for their medical counterparts.

That, and Grey’s Anatomy just struck me as a show about a bunch of doctors hooking up with each other because, hell, that world is so insular, who else can you screw?

My interest in the show piqued when I realized T.R. Knight played a particularly elusive villain on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Knight played Neil Colby in the episode "F.P.S.", and Colby’s technical wizardry kept Det. Robert Goren (Vincent D’Onfrio) a run for his money. I don’t think Goren got this much push back from a suspect since Nicole Wallace.

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The Advocate ran a story a few months back about the character of Justin Suarez on Ugly Betty. The article quoted AfterElton editor Michael Jensen, taking ABC to task for not labeling the character as gay.

"By not saying one way or the other if Justin is gay," Jensen says, "they’re either communicating that there’s something wrong or shameful about being gay …. Americans need to acknowledge there are gay 11- and 12-year-olds in society."

Excuse me? There may certainly be gay 11- and 12-year-olds out there, but they are not everywhere. And I’m wondering if Jensen’s statement would be rendered more accurate by saying there are gay white 11- and 12-year-olds in society.

Perhaps Jensen doesn’t remember being 12 years old. That’s the no man’s land of child development, a period of time when you’re not a child but you’re not a teenager either. As worldly as young people are these days, I can’t buy into the notion that sex isn’t still an abstract idea at that age.

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Whoever makes TV ads for the Sea World Conservation Fund is a big fan of Sigur Rós.