Hi, kids.

So I have had what one might call an epic...ahh, hell, let's call it six months. Because that's pretty much when my life started on the roller coaster.

( November 2011 )

In December, I went to London and did New Year's in Bath and saw Roz and in general had a pretty good time.

January ( And that's when my job started going tets-up. )

February-March: ( We move )

April: ( And then the employment situation hit the fan. )

May: ( Well. I'm getting married. )

And that takes us up to this weekend. I'm buying a bunch of clothes because new place is a little fancier than old place, I'm as chubsy as ever, and I got a new shorter haircut because while my long hair is lovely, it was looking raggedy and I want to get across that I'm Serious Business, but not TOO serious.

I'm hoping that all of this change symbolizes a new beginning for me where stuff is a little less frantic and I may, IDK, have time to be a friend to people again or talk about things? I mean, granted some of my reticence is just that I write for a living and you can get sick of writing if it is all you do. But I do think I've been pretty down more or less since October/November, and when I haven't been down, I've been trying to whip my life into some semblance of not shit.

Meanwhile, the BSG book has been out since September 25th in the US, and the Nip/Tuck book is due out in October. It is not an entirely flattering book and part of me is like, "start shit, Ryan Murphy. Start it! Get further publicity for Roz's books so she can come to my wedding, bro. And then my coworkers in my bougie DC office can be mildly fascinated when I relate the tame version!"

TL;DR: Had surgery. Went to London. Moved. Lost job, got new one in a three week period. Went to Disneyland. GOT ENGAGED!!! New book is out in October. New beginnings? We shall see.

And in the end... ( Big Love )

So I'm caught up with my shows, except for Archer. Here's the run-down:

( Big Love )

( Glee )

( Raising Hope )

( Community )

( Parks and Recreation )

( 30 Rock )

I watch a lot of network comedy.

I guess I also watch the Fox Sunday comedies. Man, I watch a lot of comedy/animation. Maybe if one-hour dramas and genre weren't in such a rut lately?
--

( Glee )

( Big Love )

Meanwhile...

Oh, good god. Just reading this article makes me retroactively kind of hate Arrested Development. It's THAT whiny and self-pitying.

1. Mitchell Hurwitz, Fox gave you THREE SEASONS to make Arrested Development work. Fox, the network that canceled Lone Star in 2 episodes and Firefly in 10. The only other "loved by nerds but overall poor ROI" show that Fox has given more chances is Fringe. You got as many chances as JJ "Lost" Abrams. CRY HARDER.

2. Not only that, but Running Wilde got slotted after GLEE, homeboy. There is no sweeter slot on the Fox schedule except for "after the Idol results show." Fox gave you as good a chance as they could to help you succeed. It is not their fault Running Wilde was a crappy premise with a mediocre string of opening episodes.

3. 30 Rock makes fun of all the things you make fun of, and sometimes more. Americans will indeed watch mean, smart comedy. At the same level as Mike and Molly? Sadly, no. But it's not the icy wasteland you suggest.

Hey, I hate American tastes as much as the next snob, but TV is a business and network TV needs certain numbers in the 18-49 demo to renew your show. If you don't like it, go take the budget that USA is offering you.

*face* Seriously, I know that it's easy to hate on networks (especially CBS), but keep in mind that the Mitchell Hurwitzes of the world aren't crying because they can't get rent money for their avant-garde theater piece. They're crying because Fox won't throw millions of dollars at them every week to produce a TV show that's pulling a 1.2 in the demo (ahem, Fringe).
--

Everything about last night's Glee sucked:

( holy fail, Batman )

Upshot, I would have been better off skipping the Super Bowl and watching the new Big Love (Really, HBO? A new Big Love on Super Bowl Sunday? Fail and you, bro) and watching the Glee on On-Demand.

Notes from a Thursday Night:

1. Community caused my brain to pull up an *intense* nightmare about the zombie apocalypse last night. Not. A. Fan. ( Well, except of the episode. )

2. 30 Rock cracked me up.
That was everything I ever wanted in a, "Jack and Liz accidentally get married" episode. Look, until about late season 2, there was definitely more of a chance for romance in the show, but "that ship has sailed." Jack and Liz's epic bromance is a lot funnier than trying to find Liz someone ELSE to talk to about her sex (and other) hangups. Instead, Matt Damon or Elizabeth Banks or whoever shows up every once in a while, and most of the time we see the bromance and it is good.

I dunno, I was pretty taken by a lot of the in-jokes and callbacks. Subas the janitor and Ann Curry have been married for five years? The return of Weinerslav? The entire opening of "Queen of Jordan" and its multiple shout-outs to Real Housewives of Atlanta? The bit where Jack can always count on Liz to bring up slavery? Liz's impression of Drew Barrymore doing Little Edie? "We know what art is! It's pictures of horses!" In general I felt the episode hummed along. The ending was somewhat abrupt, but we needed to re-establish the bromance without being sappy, so it was what it was.


3. Parks and Recreation is back! ( RON SWAAAAAANSON. )

4. BTW, if you haven't seen it, try watching bits from Onion SportsDome. This week's story about Belichick scarring Brady with acid is GENIUS. AND they manage to keep up their running gag about Joe Biden.

5. I really need to buy the latest Kanye West album. I listened to it on YouTube and I was like, "this is really pretty good." This is separate from my project to expand my musical horizons by buying albums in genres that I kind of know but not really like "outlaw country" and "old school hip-hop of the 90s." I just want the Kanye album.

6. At about 20,000 words on my cars memoir. I am pleased. Yay for the revival of creative writing skills.
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I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think that right now, Community is my favorite show.

( Community, eh? )

( Speaking of 30 Rock... )

oh, and I did have thoughts about Glee...

( Glee! )
--

I ain't dead, but I sure as hell tried to be last week.

So last Sunday night, after being sad because the Pats lost to the Browns, I was kept awake all night with an attack of "heartburn" that went on from 11:00 PM til god, 7:00 AM? At 5:45, I threw up dinner and said, "oh, fuck this" and went to urgent care. I got the GI cocktail, told that it was probably reflux but if it came back or got worse, go to the ER.

I dosed myself with a goodly amount of Prilosec and Mylanta, actually did 2.5 days of work Monday-Wednesday, but then it came back 4:30 Wednesday. By 7, I was white with pain and Jenna was like, "let's go to the ER?" Me, full of manly pride: "Give me 10 minutes to think about it." By 7:15, we were off to the ER. I cried in the car and in triage because I was going to die if they said it was gastritis because nothing should ever hurt like that pain.

Not gastritis.

Indeed, after an ultrasound, another failed attempt of the GI cocktail to calm me down, a blood test, and an IV stuck in my arm, the doctor was all, "you have gallstones like whoa." My surgeon, "we need to take out your gallbladder."

And so I was admitted to the hospital.

UNTIL SUNDAY.

People, never ever get gallstones. By all accounts, they actually hurt equal to or worse than childbirth when you have a gall bladder attack. It hurt worse than my back and my back hurt so much that a shot of demerol to the ass only killed about 90% of the pain. The only plus side was that being in the hospital, when I was like, "Painkiller, plz," they gave me shit that worked.

OK, also the reason I had to stay until Sunday is that they took out my gallbladder LATE Thursday, but my blood tests did not come back so good. Bilirubin, bilirubin, bilirubin. Turns out that my bile duct scarred up from passing the damn stones so I wasn't getting bile into the ol' guts. So that was my second surgery of the week. But they actually let me come home that day, though I have to go back and have the stent removed.

Meanwhile, my brain is working again because I am avoiding painkillers as much as I can (NB, I am using ibuprofen because all that foam mattress shit tore the fuck out of my low back and I need to reduce inflammation. I would fight a baby for a cortisone shot, but I doubt it's a good idea at this time) and of course some of the better spine release exercises are on your stomach, where I have four healing incisions.

I do have to give it up to my mutant healing factor and Western medicine for going from, "your diseased gall bladder is killing you!" to "fuck, I need to figure out a way to get to some physical therapy ASAP" in the course of a week. I will probably have just four tiny scars and further PT bills as the only reminder of the fact my gallbladder tried to kill me with pain worse than childbirth within a month. :)

Today I realized I am back to the weight and the size I was back in January 2007. And in 2007, I didn't have my friends, the busted-ass hip and back.

I don't know. I tried and I tried to be good and for all the good it did me, I could have done nothing at all and probably not had a back problem. That hurts more than anything else. By trying to do better, I made things worse for myself and now I just look in the mirror and cringe at my fat-beard. Then my fucking back reminds me I am broken forever and will have to do boring crap I don't want to do instead of IDK, finally breaking a 10 minute mile.

I was at a 10:20 mile before I hurt myself in September. I got down from a 15 minute mile to a 10:20 from like, May to September and that's all gone now and it sucks.

So you know I was all right with Grilled Cheesus, but the song choices sucked, so I started going through my iPod for better songs about religion and I hit my Johnny Cash section and then I found The Greatest Cover of All Time, which is of course Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's "Hurt."

Also, the video.

( Oh my god, I tear up. )

So yes, this is why a) a show full of cover songs doesn't make me sad, and b) why Ryan Murphy's poor song choices occasionally truly irritate me. If Johnny Cash can find that in one of Trent Reznor's endless industrial lullabies, he can do better than Cory Monteith's not-even-entertaining version of REM.