Heavy PET-ting And A Lot Of Philately

      Yesterday turned into quite the hectic little day, with emails flying in faster than I could process them. Those of you still waiting for emails: please forgive me: I'm getting to you. But I wanted to make a few observations here about the TV fare last night:

      
•       Rex Murphy's case for Pierre Trudeau on The Greatest Canadian was even better than I thought it would be. If you missed it last night, check it out tonight on CBC Newsworld at 8pm, 11 pm, 2 am or 5am, or on Sunday at 5pm (all times EST). Unfortunately, the CBC hasn't put up video links to the programmes, nor have they put up transcripts of the arguments as they were made in the individual episodes. Murphy's was-- by far-- the strongest case made so far, his language thistle-sharp, his observations and synopses rigorously shrewd (and salient), his case as a whole the cleverest and the most touching of the lot, the last, in part, because Murphy's argument found a gravitas that all of the others lacked. No doubt about it, Murphy won the advocacy contest hands-down, Rex the Muhammad Ali in a ring of George Churvalos (with Mary Walsh and Bret "the Hitman" Hart Sonny Listons in Lewiston). He might as well have been dancing around at the end shouting I am the.... Well, never mind, this blog won't go there. Murphy's was a stirring presentation, the masterstroke of the series.   (And, for those interested, you can find Youssef Karsh's famous portrait of Trudeau that RK mentioned earlier right here.)
        
•       A commercial break led me to fumble through a few other channels. I was swiftly reminded why I should not do this on a Monday night, as I stumbled upon the increasingly-desperate (and putrid) Fear Factor, a show whose primary function seems to be to get busty young women to ingest the grossest things imaginable in order to satiate the perverse desires of disturbed losers to see such women throughly debase themselves for a bit of cash-- and so those losers can sit at home and indulge in adolescent sniggering that amounts to "If she'll put that in her mouth...." (Read that sentence ten times fast.) The show's little more than macabre porn, a gruesome, grotesque exercise in gagging, swallowing, and accidental facialing, with a bit of T&A to bracket the experience. And yet, this convulsion-causing crap is considered acceptable family television. It leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Appropriately, one supposes.
        
•       Inter-commercial surfing (I'm a man: it's in my nature) also led me to a rerun episode of Celebrity Poker, in which Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls, looking uncharacteristically hot and on the verge of bouncing out of her top, demonstrated that she's probably possessed of certain qualities that would dispose her well towards philately. Or something that sounds remarkably like philately. Or, perhaps, both. My chivalrous side tried--valiantly, I might add-- not to make the association with Fear Factor, but it was, alas, inevitable. I may have to force myself to watch a few episodes of Gilmore Girls, if only I could stomach the pretentious, nattering, faux-femme-Mametism of the show's dialogue.   No, it's not worth it. Nothing is.
  
         Ms. Graham won the game, by the way.   I wonder how that happened. It's not as if she had any tells.... But the other players, the men especially, seemed preternaturally distracted and given to serious lapses of judgment. But, good little philatelist that she was, she appropriately stuck it to them. Insert your own pun here about the predictability of the mail.

Oh, I really should stay away from the television set on Mondays. I shudder to think what this entry would be like if I hadn't dozed off and instead wound up sitting uncomfortably through an episode of Queer as Folk. Who am I kidding? I'd never make it through a full-episode. Monday night television, it's a profoundly disturbing thing, but at least I can remain blissfully ignorant about Rex Murphy's capacities as a philatelist. (As the old joke goes, at least here in Canada, "49 cents, same as in town.") With that, I'll shut up. Lickety-- (er...) -- spit.