Quick recap: I used to work at and complain about a large, soulless corporation where a lot of people worked their butts off and a lot more just carried coffee cups from meeting to meeting while wearing Bluetooth doodads in their ears. That corporation, which I lovingly call EduMart, laid me off last fall after 8+ years of working weekends and rarely taking my vacation days. I saw this coming as my boss, Captain Wacky, was about to be laid off as well and I was the only employee reporting to her. She managed to talk the CEO into a sweet consulting deal, meaning that he was happy to pay her to just leave. She could be a little bit, ahem, abrasive at times. In spite of the fact that everyone knew layoffs were coming and I knew I was a plum target, I was shocked, hurt, wounded, and really really really angry about it when it happened. I was in the middle of developing a project that I was the only person working on and the client loved me, but that didn’t matter. It did mean, however, that when I told the VP of HR while he was gleefully firing me that it was a bad time to let me go, he asked me to stay for a few more weeks. Just what a damaged ego needs – to have to go back to the shit hole that fired you.
It was in this fine state of affairs that I took my two dogs to the park the Saturday after I was shitcanned. We go to the park a lot, but on this day, I was not feeling carefree and gay. As we headed for home, I drove past a very, very pregnant boxer. She was also very, very starving. Every bone in her body stuck out. She was trotting down the middle of the street, clearly with a destination in mind. I stopped my car and with the help of some lawn guys, managed to get her into the front seat so I could see if her collar had tags on it. Didn’t. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I took her home. Actually, I took her to the vet and asked them to check her over and if I could board her until I could figure out the situation. They couldn’t board her because her temperature was low, indicating that the puppies were coming soon. She couldn’t be left alone and unattended for hours in case something went wrong during the birth. Sigh. I took her home, took pictures, made flyers, and posted them everywhere. I put ads in the paper and on PetFinders.com.
Anyhoo, this is supposed to be brief, so she had 9 puppies, a ridiculous number of puppies for anyone to have. I helped her rear them, wean them, clean up their poop, and I tried to find them good, loving, forever homes (there’s a story there for later). I didn’t want to keep any of the puppies because I already had two bad dogs. So I kept one of the puppies since I seem to be incapable of making wise choices. She was the last one, the one that no one else took, Molly. She and her brother Moose were the largest of the litter. Now I have three bad dogs.
Molly is almost 11 months old now and she weighs something over 80 pounds. Her dad was probably a Mastiff. She is still growing. We sometimes call her Dogzilla. That’s her on the masthead.
Now for my cultural mission: to prevent another Campus Ladies fiasco. I used Campus Ladies as my example of shows that are cancelled because they’re too good, while According to Jim slouches on toward Bethlehem. I could have used the poster child for cancelled but brilliant, Arrested Development, but that’s obvious. What about Andy Barker, P.I.? I’m not even over the cancellation of Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and now they give us a few weeks of Andy Barker and then rudely snatch him away again. So today’s mission is to draw attention to Burn Notice. It might look like just another P.I. show, but it’s not. For one thing, Bruce Campbell is the main character’s sleazy, boozy, stubbled, man whoring sidekick. There’s been a definite dearth of Bruce Campbell in my life for a couple of decades. Sharon Gless is the main character’s mother – she’s whiney and prickly and needy, just like real moms! She appears rarely, not so much that she grates on you, enough to make her a nice counterpoint. The main character is your classic anti-hero. He does good by doing bad sometimes, which gives the whole thing a sort of updated, Miami-esque, brightly colored film noir sort of flavor.
I haven’t decided yet if the basic premise is silly. The main character is a covert operative who freelanced for the CIA, NSA, etc. For reasons he is trying to uncover, he was given a “burn notice,” meaning that he was blacklisted. Since he wasn’t an employee he has no rights and spends a lot of time trying to untangle his own mystery. That’s just a subplot, though. Each episode is built around one of the Robin Hood tales wherein he uses spy stuff to help regular people.
Also, let me make one thing crystal clear about my own Culture War: I do not consider crappy reality TV to be anything but positively intoxicating. Welcome to the Parker? Parker, welcome to my living room!
