While most of you are likely past agruing about the Academy Awards with coworkers, I’m still aghast at this year’s Grammys.  February 10th saw the 55th Annual Grammy Awards and to borrow a title from Joy Division it was an atrocity exhibition.  I myself didn’t watch the program, not so much an act of defiance as the absence of cable in my apartment, but after seeing the list of winners and hearing about performances the morning after I’m glad that I didn’t bother.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one because I talked to at least a half dozen friends of mine who consider themselves “very into music” and not a one was able to stomach the entire ceremony.  Why?  Let’s start from the beginning…

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The host.

LL Cool J.  For the second year in a row.  Seriously, was he the only one to volunteer?  LL hasn’t released anything of any critical importance since 1990′s Mama Said Knock You Out!  He has released albums straight through the 2010s but he’s more known for his abs, Kangol hats and his dreadful acting than music.

I have nothing in particular against LL Cool J, but I would think that a musical artist of some contemporary relevance and stage presence would have been better suited to host the awards.  Be it LL Cool J’s delivery or the poorly written prompt, I’ve been told that the crowd made applauding sound like an absolute chore.

The categories.

What the hell is the difference between Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year?  I’ll admit, I was thoroughly confused until I visited Wikipedia because I use the terms “record” and “album” almost interchangeably, though I usually reserve “album” for LPs & EPs.  I wasn’t totally off point.  Apparently, the Grammy “record” is meant to be awarded to the composer, producer, mixer, etc… of a single song.  Ok, so how does that differ from Song of the Year?  Right, Song of the Year is awarded to the composer or songwriter only.  Album of the Year, in the case of the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, is meant to honor the collection of songs that make up Mumford & Sons’ pitiful Babel.  Stupid.  So [fill in the expletive] stupid.

Best New Artist is another category that I find particularly puzzling.  When I think of “new” artists, I think of debut records; maybe an artist that had a single out last year but they didn’t release a proper record until the current year.  I consulted Wikipedia once again and this is what “Best New Artist” in Grammy-speak means: “A new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist. Note that this is not necessarily the first album released by an artist.”  That makes total sense, particularly in the age of the Internet.  Is there an arbitrary definition of “public identity?”  More than 100,000 people have heard of you?  You signed to a major label?  One of your singles had over 72 hours of airplay on Bible Belt FM radio in a given year?  Fun. or fun. or FUCKING ANNOYING POP DICKLICKS have been around since 2008 and they released a shittier album than Some Nights, believe it or not, in 2009.  The fact that they recorded a song that bled out 1,000,000 ears last year (“We Are Young”) does not make them new.  It makes them three fucking annoying pop dicklicks (period!) who are more annoying presently than they were three years ago.  I’ll make it a point to note this for my year-end articles.  Top Albums of 2013 can be released anytime since 1960 as long as I discovered them and thought that they were great in the current year.

Aside:  That’s actually not a bad idea…  Top X Old Discoveries in a given year??

The 55th Annual Grammy Awards also saw the inception of a new award: Best Urban Contemporary Album.  Mr. Frank Ocean took that one home to a standing ovation…but for Chris Brown (what a twat…even though I would have loved to see them square off on national TV).  But, I can’t help but think that this award was created particularly for Frank Ocean and, if I were Frank Ocean, I would indeed be insulted.  He mysteriously wasn’t nominated for Best R&B Album or Best R&B Song.  Ocean doesn’t really rap.  There is no Best Hip Hop Album category.  So they just make up a category for him to run away with and create beef at the same time pitting him against Chris Brown?  The Recording Academy might has well have nominated him for Best Album Released by a Gay African American Metropolitan.  If the Academy really felt that Robert Glasper Experiment’s Black Radio was the Best R&B Album over Ocean’s Channel Zero, Ocean should have gone home with just one Grammy and a bandaged hand.

Dear Chris Brown,

Stop being a jerkoff.

Regards,

SHH

The performances.

Some of the performances were not nearly as bad as I thought they would be after watching them on youtube, including the Bob Marley tribute, but…

Taylor Swift’s Mad Hatter performance of “We Are Never Getting Back Together” was something in between Tom Petty’s video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and a sideshow of Cirque de Soleil layoffs.  The aesthetic had absolutely nothing to do with the content.  One (generic horny male) hoped less for a wardrobe malfunction than drunken stilt-walker or a fire-thrower who was off his game.

The tribute to Levon Helm was heart-warming.  Elton John, three thousand guitarists and Mavis Staples performed “The Weight” by The Band in remembrance.  Oh, and Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard sang a single verse. One of the best new artists, actually NEW, nominated thrice but Grammy-less was allowed to sing one verse while the crowd gawked at Elton John who was tasteful enough to wear a remaindered Liberachi tuxedo as opposed to a Donald Duck suit, Mavis Staples whose dress had to be stapled to her and Dumbford & Sons (I’ve called them way worse).  Oh well, take a load off, Brittany…Mavis was certainly the weight this year.  Either way I’m sure that the ramble-rousing Levon Helms would have very much appreciated the sentiment of artistic collaboration in his honor.

LL Cool J, host of the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, was the closing performance.  I don’t think that there’s any chance that I would have been impressed by LL, but he was backed by Public Enemy’s Chuck D. as a hype man, Rage’s Tom Morello on guitar, Blink 182′s Travis Barker on drums and DJ Z- Trip.  The mix proved to be about as interesting as expected.  LL stumbled through some sloppy rap, Chuck D. backed LL up in former Public Enemy bandmate Flavor Flav fashion, Tom Morello got funky on the guitar, Barker drummed really fast with tattoos and DJ Z- Trip (named after the DJ Shadow album??) sort of held it all together.  That is until the best/worst part of the performance where it runs over and the audio for sponsors Hilton Resorts and Delta Airlines bring the show to a close prematurely.  It worked for me.  The track to me sounded a little too Cypress Hill (perhaps subliminally citing Rage’s cover of “How I Could Just Kill a Man” with Morello on guitar) and I couldn’t help but think “Here is something you can’t understand…How I could just kill [an awards ceremony]!”

The nominees.

The nominees this year were snot.  I didn’t expect to see a number of the artists and tracks that I have personally highlighted over the past two years.  After all, I don’t listen to the radio any longer but for brief rides in other peoples’ cars and satellite radio in department stores.  Let us review the Record of the Year category in detail to prove my point.  If there is any confusion regarding “record,” please reference the definitions of this award above.  If not, please continue reading and I will pretend to host the Grammys myself.

Record of the Year.  And the nominees are…!!

Gotye – “Somebody That I Used to Know”

This song was so atrocious that I had a theory that its release and subsequent overplay on the radio was directly related to all of the terrible murders that happened over the past 18 months.  People who are already on the edge hear it and just snap.  I hear this song and I think of faces getting eaten off, babies getting thrown out of windows and actors dismembering kittens.

The Black Keys – “Lonely Boy”

It is a good track.  Not the year’s best, but a marked improvement over Gotye.

Kelly Clarkson – “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)”

Another song from 2011!  Kelly Clarkson is talented, but I just don’t care for her radio pop style.  “Stronger” reminds me of being trapped in shitty clubs a year and a half ago.

Fun. – “We Are Young”

Fun. is an awful band, period.  Their single “We Are Young” was made popular by the equally awful television show Glee.  I could not believe the number of “Top” lists that I saw Fun. on this past year.  When I first listened to their album I thought, “Maybe this is just one of those pop albums that grows on you after a few listens.”  It doesn’t.  I couldn’t finish the album the second time through without tasting bile in the back of my throat.

Aside:  Is it just me or does frontman Nate Ruess look like the love-child of Mark Wahlberg and French Stewart?

Frank Ocean – “Thinkin Bout You”

Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange was cited by many reputable publications as one of the best R&B albums in recent memory and although the praise may have been somewhat inflated, “Thinkin Bout You” is a great single.

Taylor Swift – “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

Pop Country may be one of the worst genres of music ever imagined and Taylor Swift has it down to a T.  She should have never ever been nominated for this song.

The winners.

And the winner is…Gotye!  “Somebody That I Used to Know!”  Case in point.

In the absence of worthy nominees several of the categories were awarded to undeserving parties.  I can count the number of winners that didn’t piss me off on one hand.  I don’t mind The Black Keys winning Best Rock Song for “Lonely Boy” (despite the time of release parameters mentioned above and the fact that there are better songs on El Camino) or Dan Auerbach for producing El Camino and Dr. John’s Locked Down.  One of the winners I was most behind was Once… for Best Musical Theater Album as I saw it live on Broadway with my girlfriend on her birthday and rather enjoyed it.

With these few exceptions aside the winners’ circle was horrendous.  Many artists that I highlighted this past year weren’t even recognized with nominations.  I am not surprised because the Grammys have become a politicized celebration of radio pop mediocrity, but come on!

Mumford & Sons, who look like a group of modern saloon fruit loops, took home Album of the Year for Babel.  Fun. won Song of the Year for “We Are Young” and was named Best New Artist.  Gotye picked up two more wins for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Alternative Music Album.

The Grammys are proof of the sad state of affairs that is pop/rock music.  I feel bad for those viewers that tuned in, regardless of taste, and were made to believe that those artists who won represent the best contemporary musicians. Contemporary music really isn’t this bad, I swear.

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Since you have already been privy to my Top Albums and Tracks of 2012, I will leave you with my suggestion for a new award category for next year’s Grammys: Most Heinous Shade of Lipstick…

And the winner is Nicki Minaj!

It’s a good goddam thing “Beez in the Trap” wasn’t nominated for Record of the Year…I would have lost it.

I don’t really watch a lot of television. That being said, the television shows that I do spend my time watching are always cartoons.  I don’t know what it is about cartoons that is worthy of my attention. Maybe it’s the exercise my imagination needs, maybe it’s that the list of possibilities is endless when reality is removed from the equation. Maybe I just need a little escapism.

For Christmas this year I got the DVD box set of one of the best television shows ever aired: Sealab 2021. In the fashion of Space Ghost Coast to Coast Adam Reed and Matt Thompson got together, stitched up a bunch of old footage from Hanna-Barbera’s short-lived environmental cartoon Sealab 2020, and dubbed it over with new dialogue.

They pitched it to Cartoon Network, where they worked at the time, and the network passed. They didn’t think it was funny. They both left CN eventually, right about the same time that Adult Swim came about. They remade the pilot episode, pitched it, and it got picked up. Twelve episodes later we have the single funniest 11 minutes of animated television that I have ever seen in my life: Stimutacs.

You really must watch the episode to understand.  Thankfully for you if you haven’t seen it, it’s available on YouTube (or at least it was last time I checked). Sparks gets the whole crew addicted to his “herbal supplement,” which has a variety of effects on the different crew members: Marco gets “the energy of a bear that has the energy of two bears,” Debbie gets super strength, Stormy becomes an avatar of Marduk (Son of Ea, Slayer of Tiamat, etc…), and Murphy gets… well, Murphy gets nothing.

Watch it. Now.

“Easy Money: Anatomy of a Drug Empire” is a series of five articles written by David Simon that ran in The Baltimore Sun from January 11, 1985 to January 15, 1985.  Simon is best known as the creator of the HBO series The Wire, but he started his professional career as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.  He joined The Sun out of college in 1982 and left in 1995, disillusioned by the corporate culture that invaded his newspaper.   While reading Simon’s first book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, I found that “Easy Money” was referenced more than once by Simon and so I made a casual attempt to find and read the articles.  That casual attempt soon stalled when Google and The Baltimore Sun archives failed to produce even a segment of the articles.  With little luck or advance and my interest further piquing, I broke down and contacted The Baltimore Sun; they snail-mailed me photocopies of the articles.  These articles became like a Bodhi tree for my Wire enlightenment.  That’ll be the end of my sorry attempt at poetry for the rest of the review.

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In the first three articles Simon fleshes out the major players in the Baltimore drug scene from the leader, Melvin Williams, down to his beastly lieutenant Nathan “Bodie” Barksdale.  In the fourth article Simon writes about what brought the organization down, and in the fifth Simon wrestles with the state of the city in a sort-of post-Williams Baltimore.  I will focus on the first four articles.

The first three articles elaborate upon the people in the Baltimore perpetuating the drug scene and making stupid amounts of money doing it.  The three most interesting characters that Simon covered were Melvin Wiliams, Lamont “Chin” Farmer, and Nathan “Bodie” Barksdale.

Melvin Williams was a community advocate, a strict vegan on a regimented exercise schedule and yet despite his hippie characteristics, he was a feared man.   He ran a million-dollar-a-day drug business while becoming a phantom proprietor of other businesses fueled by the drug trade.  Williams gained an absurd amount of wealth and means in a sector of the city, West Baltimore, that was flush with poverty.

Lamont “Chin” Farmer “represented a new generation of drug dealers in the city” and was thought of as a scholar in Baltimore’s drug scene.  Farmer took and did well in business courses at a local community college, subscribed to legal journals to “keep up-to-date on recent court decisions” and, in a wiretapped conservation, was heard dazing his older brother Elwood on “such heady concepts as free-market forces and maximized profits.”   Reminiscent of The Wire’s Stringer Bell?

And then there’s Nathan “Bodie” Barksdale, who today advocates his middle name is Avon, yet with his many court records, not once do you see the name Avon associated with Nathan.  A lieutenant in Williams’ organization, this ruthless gimp (lost one of his legs below the knee) had a medieval business sense.  Beyond being shot six times, murdering a person or two, ordering the kidnapping and attempted murder of a thought-to-be snitch, Nathan is notorious for the prolonged torture of three people, the details of which you can read in the article.  The prosecutor in the case brought against Nathan, Brian J. Murphy, said “it was an incredible scene.  Barksdale was sitting there like some sort of Mengele, asking his buddies to hand him the curling iron or the steak knife while he tortured them.”

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The fourth article of the series struck a very familiar chord; it feels like a loose outline for the police investigation of Avon Barksdale in the first season of The Wire.  In the article we get the details of the Baltimore Police Department’s investigation of Melvin Williams, how the Williams organization operated and what eventually caused their down fall.  A kitchen murder scene, beepers, skipping-the-five, cocaine connection, it’s all in the pudding of fourth article.  I thought the use of beepers in the first season of The Wire was smart and original, yet perfectly obsolete for the 2000’s, but this article made me rethink the utilization of beepers in the show.  In both settings and times, Melvin Williams’ and Avon Barksdale’s, real life and television respectively, beepers work, but for different reasons.  Skipping-the-five, need I say more?  I felt like Clay Davis I was saying “shit” so much, although without his killer pronunciation.  For any and all who love and appreciate The Wire you don’t necessarily have to read all the articles, but please read the fourth installment; trust me, you will be incredibly satisfied.

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One can sort of tell that this review was geared toward diehard fans of The Wire; “Easy Money” feels like an essential footnote in its bibliography.  Isolated from The Wire the articles are lucid, entertaining and informative in their own right.  David Simon has clean and clear writing style that avoids ambiguity which is a key weapon in any reporter’s arsenal.  Yet Simon didn’t overwrite the story; he allowed the intensity of the investigation and the complexity of the characters drive the articles and he conveniently stepped away from the expository 18-wheeler.  David Simon is an excellent writer beyond the television screen because he doesn’t over write.  I read Homicide and his writing style was the same as that in the “Easy Money” articles: smart and direct.

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Back to The Wire and “Easy Money’s” impact on the show; David Simon’s work as a reporter and his books, The Corner and Homicide, were key to his research for the show.  For those that feel like each season of The Wire is so well-plotted, “Easy Money” will shed some light on a few choices on the structure of the first season as well as providing a bit of insight into the motives of some of the show’s essential characters.  I highly recommend these articles, and all those Googling for them, I wish you more than luck.

Clubhouse Confidential, weeknights at5:30 pm on the MLB network, accomplishes something I thought was as unlikely to happen on a baseball show as another player hitting .400 is on the baseball field. It provides insightful, easily understandable analysis  and all the while remains entertaining without lowering itself to pitting two polarizing figures arguing a’ la everything on ESPN.

Brian Kenny compliments the show’s SABR slant because he is not some baseball outsider trying to be Billy Beane’s character in the Moneyball movie. The show is for “the thinking fan” he says every episode, but the statistical analysis is explained in a way that those who are less than well-versed in stats like WAR and BABIP can understand what Kenny is explaining. This is a show looking to grow with its fan-base, as they become better informed.

The show features guests daily, and these guests are people every baseball fan would love to sit by a hot stove with and talk the ins and outs of the game with: famed sportswriters like Peter Gammons and former baseball executives like John Hart. On the show Gammons delves into the games history and explains things like Albert Pujols place amongst the greatest first-basemen of all time. Hart has the unique knowledge of a man who constructed a team (the Cleveland Indians in the 90′s), and explains things like why teams are buying out more players arbitration years in order to keep payroll down. This is a show where you actually learn.

The show’s biggest problem is that is seems to have been put together with the enthusiasm of a child who believes he can fit too much into one afternoon. The segments can sometimes come across as underdone. A personal favorite is a segment called “the Shredder,” where a player’s future statistics are predicted using advanced metrics. In this segment Kenny explains the numbers behind the numbers and why they can help predict future success better than conventional stats.

Clubhouse Confidential isn’t only a show for the thinking fan; it is a show for every baseball fan. Maybe this is the year someone hits .400 after all. Well, probably not, but if it is, Clubhouse Confidential will be giving you the best coverage of the chase.

Then an hour, later the deal was all but dead.  NBA Commissioner David Stern moved to block the trade allegedly in an attempt to appease several disgruntled team owners; whom had only hours before approved a new collective bargaining agreement.  The group of owners were allegedly claiming that the trade compromised competitive balance of the league as a whole.  Stern didn’t publicly acknowledge this, instead maintaining that the deal was blocked for “basketball reasons.”  Whether or not Stern had the authority to do this is another issue entirely.   The new deal itself should have prevented any this from happening.  You see the New Orleans Hornets are actually owned by the NBA, which is in some ways to say it’s owned by the other 29 owners in the league.  Cleveland Cavaliers owner and seller of wall decals to divorced men Dan Gilbert was particularly vocal, as an email he wrote to David Stern called the trade a “travesty” and suggested that he and the other non-involved owners should put the trade to a vote.  Since they do not vote on other everyday operations for New Orleans like draft picks or free agents, that wouldn’t really be an option.  Also it’s important to remember that 29 teams voting to determine the actions of one would be considered collusion under, you guessed it, the brand new CBA.  The league bought the team since the old owner was a bit of a shady dude, and when he intended to sell, the league dropped $300 million to conduct the owner search themselves.   The NBA then appointed Dell Demps as the general manager, and he hired his own personnel to run the team like a normal franchise.  It seemed that would have included the ability to pursue trades and free agents as he saw beneficial to the team.  It was determined that Paul was a trade-able asset.  Paul did publically ask for a trade but the idea that he was lobbying to go to the Lakers is false.  He seemed to have made it very clear that if it was up to him he would have signed with New York all along.  While it was technically caving to player demands, New Orleans did what was best for New Orleans.

Paul, who is in the last year of his deal with New Orleans, has made it very clear he will not be returning to New Orleans after this season.  Even if they had the money it would take to sign a player of his caliber, Paul had grown impatient with his surroundings.  Seeing other mega-rosters being assembled elsewhere can do that to a guy, I suppose.  This left the New Orleans front office no choice but to see what they could get in return for such a rare talent.  When the trade lived, it had seemed the Hornets had done incredibly well for themselves considering they weren’t in the best situation to negotiate.  They picked up a good bunch of solid players, and a draft pick along with losing the money off Chris Paul’s contract.  They could have made a run and snaked a playoff berth.  Instead, Paul remains with New Orleans indefinitely.  If you could not manage to trade him in a deal that looked as good as the one that was on the table, it’s fair to say he isn’t available to be traded.  Paul is already said to be receiving legal counsel regarding his options of going forward with some kind of legal proceedings.  He’s got a hell of a case.  The league could have cost him about $40 million from working out an extension with Los Angeles.  Now the Hornets are faced with the very real possibility of losing Chris Paul without any compensation what so ever.  The effects of losing a superstar player in his prime like that can set a franchise back for years.

Meanwhile, the other teams involved are left scratching their heads.  Los Angeles’ vision of Paul-Kobe-Howard seems to be fading by the minute. Pau Gasol is likely to be present on the first day of Lakers training camp, though the same cannot be said for the disenchanted Lamar Odom.  The Lakers had seemed poised to reset the franchise with new younger stars alongside Kobe as superstar turned cagey veteran presence.  Kobe might have caught up to or even passed Jordan in total championships.  Now they could realistically become a lottery team in a few seasons.  Houston’s problem is very straight forward, where they were only trying to get better and got denied by the league.  All three teams have filed appeals with the commissioner’s office, though at this point I would have to think there’s not much that can be done here.  The best chance for the Hornets is that this thing gets overturned and the original deal is allowed to go through.  Regardless of whether it does or not, you can’t undo this damage.  The fans hated this.  The media hated this.  This is a league with such an opportunity to put the bad press behind them and announce that one of its biggest stars has been traded to its biggest market.  A small market negotiated compensation for a soon to be departed franchise player, and did remarkably well for itself in the process.  It should have been a day that fans had looked forward to since the league locked out this past summer.  Instead it will be remembered as the day the league decided we’re all better off with Chris Paul playing for the Hornets, and the day we all realized we knew better.

“We’ve got a bigger problem now.”

Zooey Deschanel.

The actress/faux-musician has completed her ascension into superstardom, which is punctuated by her new television show, “The New Girl.”  What has happened is now America LOVES their little hipster princess in clunky glasses.  Does she even fucking need glasses?  She starred in certain hipster-noire films such as the absolutely insufferable and heavy handed 500 Days of Summer, and weak-if-not-relatable Our Idiot Brother.  Anyways, as if being the poster girl for hipstermainstream television shows/films wasn’t enough, SHE’S ALSO IN A FUCKING BAND!  She & Him offers an accessible duet blend of indie rock while pouring a nice tall glass of water over the folk career of someone like M. Ward.  I think he needs to come out publicly and say he’s only doing this to get her into bed.  There is no other reason, is there?  Pitchfork offers nothing in the way of resistance  to this, like they did for Scarlett Johansson.  One of her redeeming qualities was her inaccessibility, being married to indie/emo dough boy Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.  This is no longer the case, filing for divorce as of yesterday.  YOU HEAR THAT LONELY NERD BOYS OF AMERICA? YOUR GODDESS ISN’T FUCKING THE GUY WHO SINGS “SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS” ANYMORE!  That sound you just heard was a million 18-25 year old idiots running to Salvation Army to find that extra perfect tweed blazer so she might notice.  (Nice elbow patches, brah)  All we can hope is that the hype surrounding the show will fade, and perhaps FOX will cancel it/it will be picked up by the CW, like all other terrible shows like this.  Perhaps I sound crazy, but don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Childrens Hospital is wildly entertaining, and the episodes are so short at five minutes, that one could easily rip through the first two seasons in an evening.  Created by former Daily Show correspondent, Rob Corddry, and produced by Stella triplet David Wain, Childrens Hospital surrounds the lives of a bunch of incompetent doctors and their escapades in, yeah, a Childrens Hospital.

The cast is incredible and the majority of them are sketch veterans: The State, Party Down, Human Giant, The League, Parks & Recreation.  This shows promise for more interesting guest appearances in future seasons.  Oh, and Henry Winkler in the second season…I had missed him since Barry Zuckercorn in Arrested Development.

The humor is out there, but not the intentional randomness of crappy late Aqua Teen seasons (I do love early Aqua Teen).  The monologues are actually funny, unlike Scrubs…fucking hate Scrubs.  It is also the first show that I have seen get away with a 9/11 joke and not be offensive at all.

Clowns, cripples and malpractice.  Many a night Childrens Hospital has brightened my mood with the healing power of laughter.

Childrens Hospital – Episode 1

Personally, anything with a laugh track is immediately excluded. Laugh tracks are usually more a symptom than a cause of a bad show, but either way I hate them. From Saved by the Bell to Seinfeld I’ve seen quite a few laugh track shows, but besides turning on TBS when I’m hung-over, I’m pretty sure I’m done with them.

I’m not averse to all TV dramas; I’ve seen enough Law and Order to salivate when I hear the Da Dum, but I am against any drama that actually makes me think. There goes The Wire, Mad Men, and any other show that gives the false sense of superiority I usually crave.

Try coming up with a definition of pornography that doesn’t encompass 95% of reality TV. And it’s not like I don’t watch reality TV, or porn for that matter, it’s just I watch it for the same reason I do those YouTube videos where people hurt themselves, mindless arousal.

Well what about teen dramas? They require no thinking and don’t have a laugh track, just a music track that is a perpetual Aww. I used to love them; sometime between puberty and losing my hair the idea of watching them became too pathetic to bear. Though that didn’t stop me from getting though the first season of One Tree Hill last year.

I loved The Simpsons, and thanks to local syndication, growing up I watched up to 4 episodes a day on week nights. Maybe I’ll go back someday and re-watch the episodes of Futurama I’ve only seen twice. Every time I watch South Park it reminds me of being in middle-school, so I have to stop. And I jumped off the Family Guy bandwagon when it came back to Fox, and I stopped smoking weed.

What I’m left with is 22 min laughers without a laugh track and with a sense of humor. Arrested Development and the British Office being my undisputed favorites. Unfortunately both ran for only a few more episodes than the average show on NBC. I used to love the American Office, until it jumped the shark harder than the term jump the shark. 30 Rock, or I should say, Tracy Morgan and that awkward white guy, just annoy me. It’s Always Sunny took misanthropic humor to heights Seinfeld never dreamed, then it became a caricature of itself. Curb Your Enthusiasm has always seemed like a bad episode of Seinfeld I’ve already seen. Parks and Rec is the only show I’m really looking forward to next season.

I love Netflix, and I love TV shows, but when I search them for something to watch I cannot help but be confounded. Have I really already watched every good show? Is TV really this bad? Am I too closed-minded? Better Than Ted seemed good, should I try that again? And then I give up and decide to watch the British Office from start to finish again: all 14 episodes, including the two specials.