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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Meet the sweet nothings of "Laguna Beach"! Learn why women are from Venus, but Veronica is from Mars! Plus: Watch empty non sequiturs barked at the candidates in HBO's "Diary of a Political Tourist"!
Oct 11, 2004 | I've been sick all week, fair chickens. Contrary to those comforting memories of curling up on the couch with a blanket and an icy ginger ale to watch "The Price Is Right" and "Match Game '76" on sick days home from school when I was little, I'm finding that television and illness don't really go all that well together. The scratchy drone of Dick Cheney's voice was too much to take during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, like being lulled into a restless sleep by the buzz of chainsaws. Karomo's frustration with his roommates' lack of empathy on "The Real World" filled my eyes with big, salty tears, the kind that herald in a new ocean of snotty tissues at my feet. The mania and chaos of "E.R.'s" crowded corridors made me dizzy and uncomfortable, the smooth yet jerky movement of the animated lions on "Father of the Pride," when combined with John Goodman's booming voice, made me downright queasy, and the dour looks and somber snare-drum rolls of "The West Wing" made my heart race and my palms sweat.
Eventually, I began to feel that I must be experiencing TV through the eyes of those strange people who claim not to like it -- you know, people with gratifying high-level jobs and richly rewarding family lives, or maybe just people who feel that they have better things to do than find out why Luke is acting so weird around Lorelai this week. Like some normal human being with limited time for frivolous pursuits, I found myself fast-forwarding through both the Reward Challenge and the Immunity Challenge on "Survivor." I found myself skipping the part where the kids on "The Real World" go to work for Philadelphia's arena football team and meet part-owner Bon Jovi in person. I found myself hoping that the hot criminal on "Lost" would confess her crime to the hot doctor immediately so that the mystery wouldn't drag on, and then, when it did drag on, I found myself wishing for those big things in the jungle to charge out and crush the survivors on the beach in one big efficient, bloody stampede.
Armed with the newfound enlightenment that only the ailing truly know, how did I choose to spend those leisurely hours in bed when I wasn't sleeping? Writing a little witty prose, pondering the vast mysteries of the universe, or perhaps reading some highly regarded new novel?
No. The only way I could take my mind off the aching in my throat, the swirling in my stomach, the noise in my head, the chills and the pounding headaches, was by reading the Restoration Hardware catalog -- very, very slowly.
French Floral Damask Bedding: Ironically, a pattern this exuberant, this rampantly leafy, this unabashedly abloom, can only be created with the utmost control and precision in weaving.
Breathtaking, isn't it? The passion in that sentence -- unnecessary passion! Rampantly leafy, unabashedly abloom passion! Or what about this one:
Contrary to widespread, curmudgeonly grumblings, old-world craftmanship has not gone the way of the dodo.
Can't you just hear them all -- the curmudgeons -- grumbling loudly about how things just aren't made the way they used to be?
Of course, I'm not so vain as to think that I'm the first to take comfort in a close reading of the catalogs. No, no. Time was you couldn't swing a Kashan rug without hitting someone doing an interpretive reading of J. Crew or Pottery Barn or J. Peterman. But the combination of my hellish haze of sickness and these strangely compelling words has thrust me into some concrete but peaceful universe, filled to the brim with imposing maple armoires and whimsical Bombay sconces, and I plan to emerge from this special place just long enough to give you the scoop on some key new shows that those of you who aren't very busy, or ill, might want to check out.
