Everyone wants to be creative and successful these days. "I want to create something lasting," they say, as if writing another out-of-print book or throwing up another album on iTunes might beat back mortality's inexorable creep.

Of course, most of us aren't preoccupied with our legacy so much as disturbed by the pointlessness of most other options. Let's see, I can create something meaningful and expressive, or I can help some company that creates a disposable product trick the world into buying it.

What no one tells you, of course, is that the former inevitably turns into the latter. No sooner have you put the finishing touches on your masterpiece than a phalanx of professionally smooth humans gathers to discuss how to peddle your brand to the appropriate demographic. "Who is your demographic, do you think?" they'll ask you.

I don't know, you'll answer. Crazy people? Angry people? People who just want to create something lasting but end up pissing away their prime in extended Twitter exchanges and tedious teleconferencing calls?

Desperately seeking status

Continue Reading...

Sure, it starts out innocently enough. "Addy" (Addison, played by Kate Walsh) is dashing around the medical offices where she works, and she bumps into some snag: the practice's budget is in the red or someone forgot to make more coffee in the break room or someone's wife stopped by to call her a whore. Addy doesn't take kindly to such stressors – you'll recall that her character moved from Seattle Grace (on "Grey's") down to sunny L.A. for a change of scenery, and so Shonda Rhimes could build a whole new show around a manic, eye-rolling, sexually compulsive redhead who's also – you guessed it – the best gynecological surgeon anywhere in the known universe.

Continue Reading...

These are the questions, questions, questions that haunt us when Tuesday night's second episode of the final season of "Lost" begins – yes – with even more questions: How did Sayid come back to life? "What happened to me?" he asks, and then "Who are these people? What do they want?"

"It's the Others, dude," Hurley answers. "They caught us ... again."

Oh dear. It's the Others (again), and they caught us (again). And just in case the repetitive nature of this show is, ahem, lost on you, the entire episode seems to be made up of nothing but questions.

"Who are you? Why are you holding us here?"

"I just lied to him, didn't I?"

"So did they tell you why they burnt me with a hot poker?"

"Who do you care about, Kate?"

"So, what happened to your handcuffs?"

"Why are they after you? What did you do?"

Continue Reading...

Thankfully, even small children and needy house pets seem to have an intuitive grasp of the divine nature of the Super Bowl, during which adults reserve the right to distractedly mumble and gorge themselves all afternoon while staring at the TV.

Unfortunately, the game itself frequently sucks. But don't let that rob you of your one big chance to shut out the world and stare, slack-jawed, at a five-hour-long televisual sporting spectacle. Why, when the game gets dull, why not flip over to ...

The Puppy Bowl

Maybe the men in shiny white tights no longer seem like adequate visual eye candy to match your outsize libido, or maybe you're so old that what really makes your heartbeat race uncontrollably at this point is the sight of a 4-month old Chihuahua-pug mix, clumsily chasing a squeaky football toy across the goal line while a 3-month-old Lab-collie mix pounces on her own tail. Does this mean you're a sad shell of your former self, or does it simply mean that you're finally mature enough to acknowledge that nothing can make you lose sight of your own mortality quite as quickly as the sight of baby animals cavorting?

Continue Reading...

Oh yeah, and his back hurts like crazy when he's on his feet all day. In other words, you'd have to have ice water flowing through your veins not to enjoy this elaborate P.R. experiment in spite of yourself. It's pretty tough to resist the heartwarming tale of Larry O'Donnell, president of Waste Management, who gamely agrees to pretend to be a new hire named Randy Lawrence who's training in several different low-level positions within his company. Larry is eager, he says, to get a closer look at how the business functions and what the experience of working its lower-level positions might be like.

Continue Reading...

Once at an open mike night I attended at a bar on Haight Street in San Francisco, a guy in a tie-dyed T-shirt pounded his fingers onto an electric keyboard, then screeched into the microphone, "The first rule is that there are no rules!"

But do things really get any more interesting when there are no rules? That's the question that arose in the pained faces of the audience gathered in the bar that night, and it's the question that came up during Tuesday night's final season premiere of ABC's acclaimed series "Lost" (8 p.m. Tuesdays), a show that, despite its rabid fan base, sometimes feels like the televisual equivalent of a keyboard-pounding poet. Although the "Lost" writers will mostly be praised for inventively throwing out the rules of time and space in order to keep things interesting going into the show's home stretch, their maneuvers sometimes feel about as mysterious and thoughtful as yelling into a microphone.

Continue Reading...

For a taste of the madness, here's a snippet of Allen from last week's episode:

Continue Reading...

The "big idea" guys, high on more than the Internets, called big meetings so they could rhapsodize on creating virtual communities and breaking down traditional Western phallocentric patriarchies and enabling subcultures to reach out and robustly interface with like-minded hives.

My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often. Why? Because those of us musing about murderous robot showdowns (or scratching out angry cartoons under a pseudonym, for that matter) would all go back to grabbing ankle for The Man sooner than we thought.

Continue Reading...

Assuming that I must be missing something, I took a closer look at this phenomenon that answers to the name of "Snooki." Imagine my delight in discovering that every single word out of Snooki's mouth is rich with metaphor! Remember Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener, Chance, in the 1979 comedy "Being There," whose statements ("As long as the roots are not severed, all is well") were revealed to be cunning explorations of larger philosophical and socioeconomic themes? Snooki is just like that, but with bigger hair.

Continue Reading...

"I've been sitting at that table all night hoping to get you alone," the man says to Patty.

Patty assumes that they've met before and she's forgotten his name. ("Oh, of course! Julian. And remind me what you do?") Julian quickly hints that they haven't met, but his intentions still aren't clear. "Must be exhausting, wearing that mask," he says, "always having to play the role of Patty Hewes."

"It's not a mask, what you see is what you get," Patty says lightly.

Julian isn't convinced, but we still don't understand what he wants from her. What is he trying to pull, anyway? Why is he acting like he has her number?

Continue Reading...

Back in reality, creative professionals of every stripe are pegged with the word "aspiring" well past their prime. Told again and again that every step forward requires the kindness of strangers, they reach self-consciously through the Internets toward strangers (who are, themselves, perpetually "aspiring") whose best advice is that they must continue to reach out, without shame, to more strangers, and hope for more kindness. At the end of this yellow brick road, even success feels like it was cobbled together from a series of favors and failures. "How did you manage it?" kind strangers will ask you, but really, they're just about to ask for a favor themselves.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

But the same question might apply to "The Deep End" itself: The cast is hot, the dialogue is sharp and snappy, the story lines move briskly, and we're offered a few layers of soapy intrigue immediately, from Dylan (Matt Long), the young idealist who's falling for the pretty redheaded paralegal while trying not to get fired by his unethical shark of a boss (whom everyone refers to as "the prince of darkness"), to Beth (Leah Pipes), the gorgeous blond perfectionist whose disapproving, cutthroat father fuels her temptation to screw over other people just to get ahead.

Yes, this is "Ally McBeal" meets "Lipstick Jungle" meets "The Practice," a frothy, fast-paced mélange of every ABC soap that ever featured high-powered yuppies whose designer heels echoed importantly as they click-clacked over shiny corporate floors. With a premise this slick and promising, with faces this pretty, how could "The Deep End" possibly fail?

Continue Reading...

Now you can focus on what's really important in life.

Which is … Um.

Huh. I sort of want to go online and do a Google search on "important things in life." Maybe someone has tweeted about this lately…

It's my Jack in a box!

Thankfully, Jack Bauer has just discovered what's really important in life, and he's here to show us about it. The first time we see Bauer in the eighth season premiere of "24" (four-hour, two-night premiere airs 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, and 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, on Fox) he's smiling and chatting happily with his young granddaughter. Of course we're meant to be gratified by this kinder, gentler image of Bauer, finally having lost his edge, finally at peace with himself, finally open to making real, intimate connections with others, just like a real human being with blood in his veins.

Continue Reading...

No! The stubborn redheaded stepchild brattily stomped his feet and refused! The comedian and host arrogantly resolved to follow his own instincts about what is and isn't funny and entertaining instead of relying on invaluable comedic advice from the head of NBC Sports.

Doesn't Conan know that graying executives who spend half their time on the golf course retelling old Henny Youngman punchlines with their executive buddies know much more about comedy than he does? How could he be so foolish and naive?

Continue Reading...

In other words, Archer is just like James Bond, only he's self-centered, ineffectual, hopelessly arrogant and prone to firing his weapons in the middle of a crowded office. In turn, FX's animated comedy "Archer" (premieres 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 14) is just like a James Bond movie, only it's faster-paced, less realistic, more depraved, more mean-spirited, more violent, and it includes lots of potty humor, dirty jokes and cheap shots at Dane Cook.

But even that doesn't completely explain why I love it so much. Maybe it's just refreshing to see something truly repugnant and foolish that doesn't aspire to have even the remotest trace of a redeeming quality. (Some people claimed that HBO'S "The Life and Times of Tim" had that kind of deeply obnoxious charm, but some people were wrong, because that show wasn't nearly funny enough.)

Continue Reading...

So how could a self-congratulatory dim bulb like Sarah Palin resist joining the idiot party? With a face the cameras love, with a head uncluttered by facts, with a mouth that moves fast and makes comfortingly colloquial sounds, how could she fail to recognize her one true calling in life was to become a TV pundit?

Because, unlike the internets, which are positively filthy with overcaffeinated shut-ins who hardly see the light of day, it's the rare human being who can get all powdered and rouged up and sit under the hot lights and then smile slightly and spit out the same empty catchphrases, over and over again, without once second-guessing him or herself. Television rewards the sort of overconfidence and bluster and lack of self-consciousness that exists primarily among the braindead, the deluded and the sociopathic. The TV camera reads narcissism as genius; those who have original thoughts in their heads are advised to expunge such liabilities post-haste. The neurotic and the detail-oriented need not apply.

Continue Reading...

NBC just pulled the plug on Leno's new show, but they can't tell us where Leno -- or Conan O'Brien, or Jimmy Fallon -- will land. A fitting insult to add to the repeated injuries inflicted by NBC over the past year, starting with expecting Leno to create a primetime talk show that audiences will want to watch five hours a week, then undercutting his (really bad) show by alternately overhyping it and referring to it as a cost-cutting measure. Now, after months of bragging that Leno's ratings could sag and they'd still save money, after months of repeating their intention to stand behind Leno's crappy show, they pull the rug out from under him.

But Leno can't be the only one who's humiliated – no, that wouldn't be nearly messy enough. Let's throw in Conan O'Brien, so NBC can alienate a man they've already invested a huge amount of time and money in. Let's make Jimmy Fallon look like a sucker for potentially getting shafted with a 1 a.m. time slot, too. And let's keep the whole plan up in the air long enough that everyone can feel embarrassed and pissed off and insecure, then announce our new line-up with our usual tone-deaf grandiosity.

Continue Reading...

Are you bathed in a glowing light because it's time for you to lead your flock to the promised land, or because it's time to see an optometrist? Do you feel something violent and powerful moving inside you because God has chosen you as His prophet, or because you really shouldn't have had those fries and that chocolate shake after all?

Beware of God

Continue Reading...

Meanwhile NBC issued an announcement that they "remain committed" to keeping Conan, while the network has spent months pretending that Leno's failed experiment at 10, with ratings lower than almost everything else on TV at that hour, has been a real success.

You know those parents who put their kid on a leash and, while they're bragging about how well it works in a crowd, they yank the leash to make the kid come and instead the kid falls down and cries? You know how those parents try to explain how it really does work while they comfort their kid, then the kid runs away, reaches the end of the leash, falls down again? You know how witnessing the whole thing makes you back away slowly, smiling, but deep inside you feel a little bit depressed?

That's sort of how the world feels about NBC, Leno and Conan right now. NBC is the idiot parents. Conan is the poor kid. Leno? The leash.

Continue Reading...