Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Parks and Recreation, Curb Your Enthusiasm & the Emmys

TV

Aside from watching New England sports (Red Sox, Patriots), I’ve finally caught up on the HBO show Hung and watched the season finale, which, I must say, didn’t thrill me, season finales rarely do. The show, overall, has proven interesting enough that I’ve bothered to keep up with it.

I’ve been thoroughly bored by the Jay Leno Show which premiered this week – otherwise known as “Hey-Let’s-Put-the-Writers-Out-of-Work-and-Hog-Up-Five-Hours-of-Primetime-a-Week-with-Lame-Crap-That’s-Really-Cheap-to-Make.” The set looks like NBC invested exactly $247 in it. The two blue chairs where the interviews are conducted appear to be placed on what looks like a dance floor. The whole show seems awkward and weird to me because when I see Leno, I think that I should be getting to bed because I’ve been trained to think that it must be past 11:30 when I see his face. Maybe he was funnier later at night. Maybe that’s it. Or not.

Despite the Leno mess, I am planning on tuning in tonight to NBC’s slate of Thursday night humor, particularly to see if one of my favorite comedians, Amy Poehler, can make Parks and Recreation work this season.

By the time Sunday rolls around I think my TV is going to explode. Notwithstanding the fact that The Spouse and I will be hosting a belated Rosh Hashanah dinner here for family in which we’ll engage in the age old ritual of putting the Patriots game on TV lest my eldest son’s head explode because he cannot watch it, my poor DVR is going to be conflicted that evening.

Of course, Mad Men is on at 10, as is Army Wives, both of which I write about here in this space on Mondays. Plus there’s Entourage – which I usually watch On Demand but on which I’m a bit behind. But Curb Your Enthusiasm is back with new episodes after a very, very long absence.



However the Emmys are also on at the same time. My pop culture column at Mommy Track’d for next week is on the awards show, so I’ve got to watch live. (If there are still relatives here when the Emmys start, maybe I’ll try to goad them into wagering.) Such the dilemma . . .

DVDs

Still watching The West Wing, season one. Just saw the episode where Toby pulled strings to arrange a military funeral for a homeless vet who got Toby’s coat from the Good Will. Also saw the episode where the president revealed to Leo that he had MS. I thought that happened later, not within the first eight episodes.

Books

Am still in the early part of On the Road, although my progress through it may be detoured because I have to read two other books for some articles I’ve got coming up.

I also just joined a local women’s book club – it’s been eons since I’ve been in a book club – and have got to read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa by next month.

So, what’s on YOUR Pop Culture slate this week?

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Presidential Address, Julie & Julia, Beatles Get Cover Treatment & HBO's 'Hung'

This, in case anyone was wondering, is a non-Gosselin edition of Suburban Mom's Pop Culture. There's only so much of Jon & Kate that I can handle in one week, thank you very much . . .

TV

Who out there is planning to watch the presidential address to a joint session of Congress tonight? I'll be there, in front of the TV -- likely tuned to NBC's Brian Williams, love Brian -- with an open mind and ready to listen. On Thursday, I'll be ready to analyze. One thing I can't stand, though, about these addresses, is the repeated jumping out of one's seating and clapping all the time. Drives me nuts.

From the commander in chief addressing Congress to a male prostitute. There's just no good segue here . . . I've been ODing on HBO's new comedy Hung, about the down-on-his-luck high school teacher/basketball coach/divorced father of two teens Ray Drecker who turns to high-priced prostitution -- calls himself a "happiness consultant" -- to pay his bills and get the funds to fix his home which was partially ruined by fire. (He didn't have the cash to pay his home owner's insurance premiums and let the policy lapse, so now he's living in a tent next to the house.)

After I've seen the season finale (airs Sunday night), I'll devote a separate blog item to the show. It's mighty quirky, in a Weeds sort of way. I love the dynamic between the main character and his pimp Tanya, a confidence-craving poet who has worked at a temp job in a law firm for more years than she'd care to admit.

Books/Magazines

I finished Julie Powell's book Julie & Julia on Monday, upon which half of the movie of the same name is based. I was entertained throughout, though the sections on Powell cooking organ meat curdled my stomach. (When I told my 11-year-old son about the chapter on cooking brains -- given, we were at the dinner table at the time -- he curtly thanked me for killing his appetite.) A great number of the events which occurred in Powell's life during the year in which she was cooking her way through Julia Child's first book and blogging about it were omitted from the film, so reading this helped fill in the blanks. Once I completed Julie & Julia, I moved on to finally cracked open Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I'm just at the very beginning though. Never read Kerouac. Have no idea what to expect.

After sitting unloved on my desk for a while, Wired Magazine's latest issue has been beckoning me. Meanwhile, I enjoyed basking in the Beatles Mania in this week's Entertainment Weekly and harassing my kids by singing tidbits of Beatles songs at random moments.

Movies/DVDs

This week I watched the first DVD in the first season for The West Wing. God did watching that show that bring me right back to the 1990s, before people were using BlackBerries or doing things like Twittering and Facebooking. It's almost charming to hear people mention faxes, which aren't used like they were when this show began. I fondly remembered Leo, Sam, Josh and C.J., and realized I'd forgotten how sanctimonious Jed Bartlett could be. The discs for the remainder of the award-winning freshman season are on my Netflix queue. Can't wait. (And no, I haven't watched Milk yet, which I've had for some time from Netflix, sitting next to the TV.)

The Spouse and I did, however, watch Flash of Genius over the weekend starring Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham. Aside from production/film issues (the camera would sometimes move awkwardly, almost jarringly, and some of the clothing did NOT appear period, maybe I've been spoiled by the anal retentive Mad Men folks) I found the tale of inventor/college professor Robert Kearns getting screwed by the Ford Motor Company after they stole his invention, bittersweet. The drama peaked when Kearns wouldn't drop his lawsuit against Ford, even with his family, his job and his sanity at stake. If this had been made 40-50 years ago, I can imagine someone like Jimmy Stewart in the lead role, of the little guy getting taken by the big, expensive-suited power brokers.



Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.