Baseball. I'm just a little late if I want to do a baseball midseason report, but lately I've just been enjoying what others write and podcast about. Baseball hasn't dovetailed with any of the other things I care about, it's just been its usual awesome self. Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw, the fall of the Yankees and the rise of the Mariners. It's all been great fun to follow but I can't say I have any original thoughts on the subject. I just picked up the Effectively Wild podcast this season, and like many others I'm saddened by Grantland's poaching of Ben Lindbergh. But I'm sad for different reasons. My personal boycott of Grantland, set in motion by the Dr. V. tragedy, remains in effect. Ben will basically be wiped off the face of the Earth for me. Sam Miller is still great and I'm sure he'll do fine, but man, I was just introduced to Ben and now he's going away. That sucks.
Rock and roll? Well, rock is awesome. The new albums by The Dollyrots and Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers are out and very good. The new Against Me! is already one of my favorite albums of all time. At least two of my favorite bands- Idlewild and Veruca Salt- will be releasing comeback albums at some point over the next five months. It's an exciting time to be a 90's guy. I actually just saw Veruca Salt at Lincoln Hall this past Monday, and it probably ranks in my top five concerts ever attended. Green Day 2001, Jamboree '99, Pearl Jam 2006, Peacemakers 2007, Veruca Salt 2014. I think that's the list.
How about Magic? I liked Journey into Nyx and I love M15, but both more for the flavor and the art than the function. Won some sweet Garruk sleeves and a deckbox at the prerelease, though my failure to open a Nissa is problematic. I've been playing Orzhov Midrange, Mono-Blue Devotion, and Rakdos Aggro with various splashes in Standard and I like them all. I played Orzhov at Grand Prix Chicago and I still think it's the best deck in a vacuum, but I've been more successful killing people with Spike Jesters and Lightning Strikes. Might as well stick with that until I have a few Nissas. And then I will make people die with lands. Bwahaha.
My work in mental health- On myself and with others- continues to go well. I've crossed over into hypomania a few times since they took me off the extended release mood stabilizer and put me on the immediate release, but I'm not complaining. I haven't fallen off the rails into delusion, uncontrolled impulsivity, or substance abuse, which is always what I need to look out for. I've basically just been unreasonably excited about things lately, but it hasn't hurt anything yet. It's nice to feel something, even if I end up feeling more than I want to. My new therapist is very good. I've been gradually tasked with taking on a bigger role in my mental health organization, and facilitating discussion groups once or twice a month has been extremely rewarding. I have an unhealthy need for praise, and I get much praise from the people who like the way my groups go. I never want to do anything unless I can be great at it, and this is something I'll be great at one day. Right now I'll reluctantly settle for being good.
And this brings me to the reason I've resurfaced, because the last thing I care about has been running laps around my brain for weeks now: the imminent return of Terrible Television. I have been watching ABC's "Black Box" all summer long, and it is high on the list of worst TV shows I have ever seen in a lifetime of seeking out and perversely enjoying bad television. I used to watch "Totally Spies", for crying out loud. As someone who loves silly hospital dramas, complicated lead roles, and anything that educates the public on mental health, I had very high hopes for "Black Box". It was supposed to be a prestige series, a "House, M.D." of the brain. It was supposed to show bipolar in a revealing but sympathetic light- as opposed to Silver Linings Playbook, which merely used it as a narrative device to justify aggressive bitchiness. No matter the intentions, "Black Box" is instead deeply flawed on every level. None of the actors are remotely credible, the dialogue and plot evolution are so incoherent and ridiculous it's become a masterpiece of unintentional comedy, the characters fail to be consistent even in the paper-thin, one-dimensional frames they've been given, and worst of all, it gives idiots the impression they are learning about a mental condition from which I happen to suffer and about which I have gone to some lengths to educate myself. I subscribed to this comment thread some time ago to track this phenomenon, and every day I'm greeted with 4 or 5 comments, all of them basically carbon copies of one another praising the show's "intelligence".
I know there are plenty of morons in the world (You, me, and the other 7,247,609,500 idiots breathing air on this planet at the moment) and I know the easiest way to find loud stupidity is to go looking for it. I also know there's a difference between stupidity and ignorance, and part of being a good person is assuming the latter. And so it has fallen to me, your jaded, snarky, profane tour guide of the land of mind-rotting rubbish, to give this show the vivisection it so clearly deserves. One episode at a time, highlighting the best of the worst in wooden acting, dialogue that makes Engrish look profound, and a story that will only be satisfying if every character dies a horrible, painful death in the finale. Terrible Television has been off the Internet for over a year. Starting this weekend, it's back. And this time, it's personal.
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