(warning: medical TMI within, specifically dental TMI, so if this is a phobia...go away.)

So yeah, back to the blog. I haven't wanted to as of late. When I'm worried about something, I put off doing the nebulous "things I should." I'm still going to work of course, and have been surprisingly productive. But at home...there's always some fun to retreat to. Freelance work? Sure, honey, I'll watch our Netflix movies with you. Update the curling website? ehh...maybe I should try to get to the third board of this ridiculous MAME game. Write some trivia questions? Sheeeeit. I couldn't even be bothered to do right by Mark and the Bruce and update their links. And this is supposed to be fun.



Like many kids in the 80s, I had braces. And boy, did I need them. My teeth Were. A. Mess. Big buck-teeth, gapped incisors, and canines that hadn't dropped down with the rest of my teeth. So I spent two-plus years with the metal mouth, and they looked okay. But a few years ago, I was diagnosed with the dirty little side-effect of orthodontia: root resorption. Who knows why: maybe it was because of the metal bands I had around each tooth (most of my peers had the more common cement brackets, with bands only on the molars). Maybe it was all done too quickly. Maybe I was lax in care during the braces/retainer period.



In any case, I've had loose front teeth for about four years. For the most part this didn't make a huge difference. I just favored the other side or the back of my mouth, and haven't bitten into a whole apple in the 21st century. Last year, though, two of them got really bad. Fortunately, around that time Kirsti's company switched to a new dental policy that had more generous coverage regarding implantology. So...this Saturday morning I'm going to have six teeth extracted and four implants added. I'm not too worried about the pulling--I had teeth pulled when I got the braces, and frankly, the guy could shoot a threatening look at a couple of these teeth and they'd pop right out, they're that loose. But the implants have me worried. They are pieces of titanium to be screwed into my skull, after all. The first occasional anxiety dream happened the other week. And that never happpens. Fortunately I was not in high school and/or in my underwear.



The implants need 3-4 months to knit with the bone, at which point they'll be capped with crowns and a permanent bridge. So I'll get to wear a flipper the rest of the year. Comedy gold, I tell you. I know it's not cancer or anything serious, but I'm still pissed about the whole situation. Can't help feeling I'm too young for something like this. It doesn't help my apprehension about the whole ordeal that all the online information about implantology features pictures of senior citizens. But with the eighties braces-wave, I know I'm not alone.



Ah, well...maybe I'll grow my hair out, wear that scuzzy Flyers jersey, and be Bobby Clarke for Halloween.



(I was unsuccessful in finding a good Bobby Clarke photo; you know which one. There's already a betting line on which one of you bastards will deliver the goods.)

Car Update

Still haven't purchased a new car. This means we had to abandon our regular State Fair pilgrimages, and is a factor in missing a family gathering I'd like to go to, but otherwise doesn't affect our lives much. We're using a car-buying plan/info package we found online, wherein the buyer faxes 15-20 dealers and has them compete for business. Updates will follow as circumstances warrant, and if this works I'll plug the hell out of the site, but so far it looks pretty sound. The actual faxing will happen in the last half of this month, with the goal to have something in September.



In other loose ends, I'm waiting for the city to send me a copy of the police report so I can send it right back to the city to contest the parking ticket written after the theft. I've received the insurance money, and have sent a letter to the Secretary of State to revoke the old plates. We also got our credit reports. We last got them a year ago when we refinanced the condo, and I'm not too sure how Experian dropped me 30 points despite having less overall debt and having all of my bad marks fall off. The hell?

LaPlaca picks



Here's how I'll reclaim my title in the Alison LaPlaca TV Dead Pool. Also check out Tim's reasoning for his picks. James Dinan is also likely to give a rundown.



1. Everybody Loves Raymond - I have this pattern of picking the about-to-be canceled veteran-sitcoms one year too early. Two years ago I picked Friends, then the cast got moneywhipped into sticking around. Last year Friends finally went away, but I prematurely picked ELR. This year it seems certain.



2. NYPD Blue - will ABC burn me here and keep this for another year? We'll see.



3. Studio 7 - WB pulled the plug on this show, actually a summer series, just last week. But the final episode is scheduled to air tomorrow, which just barely makes it eligible under the LaPlaca rules.



4. Commando Nanny - stupid title, Mark Burnett's luck has to run out sooner or later, and Gerald McRaney's surgery is mucking up the premiere date. On the other hand, it's between two reliable sitcoms for the Frog.



5. Blue Collar TV - Reba's success notwithstanding, I'm not seeing much future in the WB's red-state programming. Maybe if this show was paired with Reba...but it's in the sacrificial Thursday slot opposite Survivor. Not much faith here.



6. Life As We Know It - My So-Called Life for guys? I don't know that guys were exactly clamoring for such a beast. I suppose Freaks and Geeks came close, and while that ended up the Best TV Series Ever, it didn't translate into a second season. LAWKI even has a F&G pedigree in Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs, but it's also in a Thursday death slot. Plus it's got Kelly Osbourne, which is just a bad idea. Then again last year's doomed-to-fail quirky teen show was Joan of Arcadia, and that stuck around.



7. Medical Investigation - One medical examination/forensic show too many. I expect L&O: Trial by Jury to pop up in its slot.



8. Complete Savages - Okay, I just want Mel to take a fall. The fact that this has changed titles three times already says something. And it seems to me that FOX already got the jump on the passel o' kids sitcom with the already-renewed Quintuplets.



9. Center of the Universe - I like John Goodman just fine, but he's a second banana. Great on Roseanne. Great in Monsters, Inc. Great in the Coens' films. as the main guy...er...Normal, Ohio. Its fate probably rests with its followup, CSI: New York.



10. Father of the Pride - I didn't watch yesterday's premiere, but many people are already calling Fraught on this one. Aaron Barnhart at TV Barn says the show gets better, but as Tim points out, NBC hasn't been too friendly to primetime animation. Plus, it seems to me that tasteless humor on TV works best when it's the product of one or two fevered brains. It can't be done by committee. Who's responsible for Beavis & Butthead? Mike Judge. South Park? Trey & Matt. Family Guy? Seth McFarlane. Father of the Pride-- umm...Siggy & Roy? MGM Mirage? Dreamworks? See, no one knows. Then again, it just might catch on.





Thought hard about picking: The Office. but it may not see the light of day.

Kicking myself for not picking: Method & Red. Word is the producers, not the network, rejected an order for additional eps, and Method Man himself reportedly wants out. Damn, yo!

lunchtime blogging

Happy birthday, Mom!



I was all set to enjoy some Yankees dissing today in light of their 22-0 pounding and apparent collapse, but the usual suspects were silent: Cooch is on vacation, and the greenfieldgerbil server is down, knocking Mark, Bogg, and The Bruce out of commission. On the other hand, all three of them surely know better than to gloat too much.



I'll run down my 2004-05 LaPlaca picks tonight or tomorrow. In honor of them, here's a list of random things. I enjoyed The Jury while it was on. Admittedly, what I enjoyed most about it was watching for Homicide and Oz cast appearances, and no doubt that novelty would wear off quickly. What I was really waiting for was Belzer to show up giving testimony as Munch.



Ten actors who appeared in The Jury as well as on Homicide: Life on the Street, with their HLOTS characters:

1. Andre Braugher (Det. Frank Pembleton, seasons 1-6)

2. Ami Brabson (Mary Pembleton, recurring)

3. Peter Gerety (Det. Peter Gharty, seasons 6-7)

4. Toni Lewis (Det. Terri Stivers, seasons 6-7)

5. Jon Polito (Det. Steve Crosetti, seasons 1-2)

6. Zjelko Ivanek (Assistant State's Attorney Ed Danvers)

7. Bruno Kirby (the bad guy in "The Gas Man," one of the worst episodes of the series. And it didn't even involve Jon Seda!)

8. Barry Levinson (played himself in the episode "The Documentary")

9. Jon Seda (Det. Paul Falsone, Seasons 6-7)

10. Joe Morton (reporter Sam Thorne in two season 3 episodes)





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Big news in Chicago is the William Kennedy Smith lawsuit. Interesting commentary about it and a Sun-Times columnist here and here. For the record, I think Steinberg was generally right, if crass, on 8/27, but horrifically offbase on 8/30. I'm just waiting for some conservative pundit to use the case and "kennedy privilege"/"two Americas"/whatever to besmirch Democrats in some manner. Whomever does so would be incredibly shortsighted: the person who successfully defended WKS in the '90s? Roy Black, who's now defending Rush Limbaugh against his hillbilly-heroin charges.

I went to Gen Con this weekend; much geekery and new purchases. JC was a way fun traveling companion, and kind enough to let me drive her car back home once her BF joined her in Indy. (originally she'd be riding down with me, but, well...yeah). Highlights: qualifying for the finals of a Diplomacy tournament, which was an 8.5-hour butt-&-brainburner; and competing in the Nordic Dice Toss, in which you chuck a 2 cubic foot 6-sider down a 10-foot wide strip, hope it stays inbounds, and score distance x dieroll. I'm not into writing a travelogue right now and doubt I will be, but you can go by here and catch her itinerary, now with added TMI. Yay!



I'm not much of a celebrity hound, but this was the second recent weekend where I'd wished I'd have brought my Dawn of the Dead game to get signed. George Romero was at Flashback Weekend, and Ken Foree was at Gen Con. Gonna have to start toting the thing wherever I go.

I bought a lava lamp this week. I've always had a low-level yen for one but for some reason never picked one up. Odd, considering the things I'll snap up without hesitation. So a woman at work was moving, selling her son's lamp for a sawbuck, and I took it off her hands. I plugged it in at my desk--¡el mistako gigante! The next 20 minutes were a big starefest. So into the bag it went until I got home last night.



My favorite lava lamp moment is when it's been on for 5-10 minutes from a cold start. A plume of hot wax from the bottom finds its way through the cooler stuff and shoots to the top, making a weird stringy mess that hangs there for a few minutes before breaking off, falling back down, melting, and then forming the round blobs one would expect to see. It's just a nifty, fleeting thing.



No, I am not high. Shut up. Jeez.

Well, you'd think my keyboard was purloined along with the car. That drama is almost over. I'm signing the title over to the insurance and contesting a parking ticket written during the 36 hours between theft and recovery. I'm getting just over two grand, which is way over the trade-in value. A CPD detective left me a message to contact him to close out my file, but A) he apparently has no record of our previous conversation which should have closed everything out, and B) No one answers the number he gave me.



So this weekend we got through some Netflix movies and got out to see Zatoichi, which was excellent. At home we saw The Trouble With Harry - Hitchcock's only attempt at a straight comedy, and considering his other movies are full of humor, I was expecting this to be darker than it was. Shirley MacLaine sure was cute back then, as evidenced by this and The Apartment. We also watched The Stranger -- not Camus, and thankfully not Billy Joel, but Orson Welles's only commmercial success as a director. Quite good despite a draggy second act and a drip of a heroine in Loretta Young.



I'm watching bits of the Olympics when I can. Not having cable, my viewing is limited to NBC and Telemundo. The flagship network coverage is of course a crapfest, full of personal struggles over adversity and the same non-quirky sports we see all the time. And I'm especially pissed that Costas & Couric couldn't be troubled to shut their goddamn yaps for three minutes while Björk was performing in the opening ceremonies. So I flip over to Andres Cantor & company a lot, and now find myself fully on the Iraqi soccer bandwagon. Seem to me that Americans of most political stripes can find something to rally behind in their success.