My TV Happy Place

About a year ago I discovered my favorite TV show of all time.  Great British Railway Journeys on BBC2.  Michael Portillo, who was a former Conservative MP and Cabinet Minister (and also on whom I have a teeny bit of a professorial crush) follows the guidebook that George Bradshaw put together in the 1860's to help Victorians navigate the new railway system.  Every season he travels several main lines, and in each show he'll visit two or three stops along the way, exploring how much of Bradshaw's England is still recognizable.

This is my favorite show because it combines so many of my Happy Places:
- England

- Trains

- Exploring

- Exploring England by Train

The first time I stumbled upon it on TV I almost lost it.  If only he made a little stop at the AMT Espresso Bar before hopping on each train; then it would be really complete.

If you're in the UK, by all means, watch this show when it's on.  If you're not @TelevisionBritish uploads most of them to YouTube.  Even if you're not into England or trains, the show would be worth watching if for no other reason than to see what pastel color combinations of shirt and jacket that Michael Portillo can carry off.  

Below is one where he goes to Scarborough.  But for nostalgia's sake, before that, here's a picture of me in Scaroborough in 2001.  I was very hung over as I'd been out drinking very late the night before with my friend Natasha.  I remember this very clearly because when I'm drunk I turn into an Angry Feminist. We were walking back to the station and stopped at a kebab shop for grease.  A guy was in the queue ahead of us, and his girlfriend/wife was holding flowers.  I went up to her, poked her shoulder, and promptly announced, "whatever he did to you, don't you let him buy you off with flowers.  You deserve more than that!"  The guy got really mad, and Tasha skedaddled me out of there.  While she was trying to hail me a cab, I decided to lay down on the ground by the station because it looked so appealing (I was very drunk).  I dozed off, and must have looked homeless because when I woke up, to the cab she had so helpfully called for me, there was about two pounds in change next to me.  I was so pleased with myself.  I held the change up, and said, "Look Tasha!  Two pounds!"  The cab driver almost didn't take me because he was afraid I was going to puke in his car.  The next day I woke up, had a Burger King breakfast at King's Cross, and went to Scarborough.

Good times.

Thinking outside the Church Paradigm

So I was going to blog about other stuff tonight (like my purple hair extensions, my weekend at BlogHer, or the fact that I managed to cook a recipe that actually looked like the picture in the magazine tonight) but then we watched Curiosity on the Discovery channel, and I had to write out some thoughts.

For an hour (minus commercials) Stephen Hawking, who is unarguably one of the greatest scientific minds in history, argued why God doesn't have to exist for our universe to have been created.  He was able to use quantum physics to explain how sometimes particles just appear for no reason and with no cause.  So that put an end to the idea that there had to be a cause to create the universe.  Then he explained how time stops in black holes, and since the universe was essentially a black hole at the time of the big bang, there was no time.  So since there was no time before the universe, there must not be a God to create the universe because there was no time for God to do the creating.

So.  Couple of things.

First, I get so annoyed with people thinking that God has to look a certain way.  He's God, people (I'm using the masculine just because it's quick and easy.  I don't think God has a gender).  God isn't really something that our human brains, no matter how awesome they are, can grasp.

It's like saying, "I have black cats who sometimes pee on the carpet.  Therefore, Mozart was a bad composer."  Your first response is, quite rightly, "huh?"  How does one prove the other?

There was no time before the Big Bang, therefore God doesn't exist?  How?  I don't get it?

Maybe the traditional paradigm of a benevolent God watching over us, guiding our every action, can be proven wrong; but nobody has believed in Thor for a while either, but it doesn't mean that there's no God.  Just because one society's interpretation of God evolves, and beliefs fall by the wayside when and if they are disproved - that doesn't mean that there's no God.

Here are two big things I believe in, that I don't believe are disproved by the fact that there was no time before the Big Bang:

1)  The Butterfly Effect.  When I do good in the world, somehow, that makes a difference beyond my sphere.  It might somehow cause someone else in Africa to do good, too.  Similarly, when I sit on my ass watching four episodes of The Daily Show at once, it has an effect beyond my small world.

2)  Energy can neither be created or destroyed.  You can't kill energy.  The energy in all of us will continue to exist, albeit probably in other forms, after we die.

These two thoughts, to me, show that we are all bound to each other in ways we don't understand, for eternity.  My actions influence you.  The energy that comprises you will go on forever.  And has been going on since the beginning of time.  We all started out from the same speck of matter at the time of the Big Bang, and we are inextricably linked now.  I am you, and you are me.

Maybe there's a whole different paradigm of God that needs to be discovered.  Since we all came from the same particles of mass and energy, maybe that spark that ignited the Big Bang lives on in each of us.  Maybe we are all, collectively, God.  Maybe it's our collective consciousness that shapes the world.  Maybe that's what Jesus meant when He said, "Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21).

Ok, so the brilliant Dr. Hawking can prove that there was not a linear time (as we know it) before the Big Bang at which point God could have created the Universe.  And He probably isn't sitting up in the clouds watching us, checking to see if we're being good or bad, with a list, like Santa Clause.

But that has never been my view of God.  Well, ok, maybe for about two years when I was going through a teenage rebellion phase - not having been raised in a church, I rebelled by becoming a fundamentalist for about a year.

My understanding of God has always been more fluid, a relationship to the cosmos that is both more complicated and more simple than anything I learned about in my Methodist church.  Something deeply personal and immediate, within me right now, that also links me with every particle of dust in the universe.  My  understanding of God is about being part of something bigger than me; not for the salvation of my soul, but to be connected to humanity, to every living thing that has ever lived and ever will live.

Dr. Hawking wasn't able to disprove that belief.  In fact, if anything, he solidified it more than ever.  I wish he could have expanded his view of God outside the proverbial box, but I suppose it's what he grew up with, and people hang on to that stuff for a long time - even as he spent time trying to disprove it, he was demonstrating that there was something that needed to be disproved - a dark matter paradox, indeed.

Fun with Lyrics

Saturday Night Live is a highlight of my TV week anyway, but when Justin Timberlake hosts it, it becomes a highlight of my TV year (thank God the Rapture didn't happen on Saturday, so we didn't miss this!).  So yesterday we watched SNL, and laughed our asses off to the Digital Short, featuring The Golden Rule, which we all know as, "it's not gay, when it's in a threeway."  It postulates, of course, that whatever two guys do together doesn't count if there's a girl with them.  Good to know.



Later on in the evening I was singing the song to myself, only I mis-sang, and the words came out, "it's not gay, if it's on a freeway."  The implication then would be that anything two guys do together while stuck in rush hour traffic on the five north in, say, Whittier, wouldn't count.  But as soon as you exit off on to surface streets, it becomes gay.  Two things I just can't pass up with this line of thought:  First, it's an additional justification for having a carpool: not only do you get to drive faster, but you also can indulge in random gay treats; and second, just make sure you check the timing on your GPS because as soon as you exit, the gay activities have to cease.

All night long we were having fun putting our own lyrical spin on the song.  It's not gay if it's in a doorway, for example.  Or a causeway, but I'm not really sure what a causeway is. Driveway also rhymes, which brings new meaning to National Public Radio's famous Driveway Moments... 

You could substitute "runway", but that would be logistically difficult since most of the time spent on the runway involves wearing your seatbelt, making any gay activity strategically difficult.  Also, it brings airports to mind.  Let's have fun with word association: airport in the context of a gay song = a homophobic conservative senator in Minneapolis tapping his shoe in the men's room.  I'd rather not go there in my mind, so scratch that and strike it from the record.

Jonathan just reminded me not to forget to use Runway as Catwalk, which makes a lot more sense.  You see a lot of freaky stuff on high fashion runways, and I can imagine that it would take a lot to phase anyone on a fashion runway.  That being said, models always look so serious, intimidating, and devoid of personality, so I'm not so sure that you'd even want to engage in much gay activity on a runway.  But maybe that's just me.

Any day of the week rhymes, so if you're feeling a need to justify random gay activities you can remember the old axiom: "it's not gay, if it's monday (substitute your day of the week here)."

And finally, MMA, which fits on several levels.  Two sweaty half naked muscled guys rolling around on a mat looks pretty gay in the first place, so it's a good reminder that "it's not gay, if it's MMA." 

We have the best dinner table conversation, my hubby and I.

Sociology behind MTV reality shows

I have two new favorite TV shows.  First off is Celebrity Apprentice, which I started watching last year, and am already addicted to this year, after only two episodes.  Though I was seriously upset after this past episode.  Dionne Warwick is a nutjob, and should have gone home, in my humble opinion.  I'm predicting a John Rich win, just because I think he's smart, and playing sly already. And with the level of crazy on the women's team, I think all the men can coast for a little while.

My other favorite show is Bully Beatdown on MTV, which I randomly came across, and couldn't switch away.  People who are being bullied send in tapes of their bully treatment, and then they ask the bullies if they would be willing to fight a professional MMA fighter for the chance to win $10,000.  The caveat?  If they lose, the money goes to the kid they bullied.  I've only watched a handful of shows so far, but I like it for several reasons.

First, the bullies look like serious tools.  It makes bullying look like the most dumbass thing a person could do.

Second, the MMA fighters are always there fighting for the little guys, so it portrays these tough MMA guys as being really supportive of the bullied kids.

Third, the bully always talks a big game, and always winds up losing, thus looking like even more of a tool.

Fourth, I find it a fascinating study into the human psyche.  You know how in the days of the Romans there were gladiator fights and duels where they'd pair a human against a bear and stuff like that?  And then how later, punishments were always designed to humiliate people, which was such a big thing because the societal unit was so much stronger when people didn't travel, and you lived your entire life in one town and were known by the town, relied on the town for protection, etc.

From the simplest punishment of putting people into stocks so that their fellow townsmen would see their crime and throw rotten tomatoes at them, to the final act of torture bestowed upon those headed for hangings - to be carried publicly through the streets tied to a cart, in full view of everyone, so that the entire town could beat you, or throw things at you, etc., punishments always had this level of humiliation in their design.  And we look at that now and tend to think how inhumane those kinds of things were, and how we're so advanced now because we do civilized things like private electric chair executions, or whatever they do now.

But when they announce the Bully and he comes into the ring, the crowd goes absolutely nuts.  They boo, and make fists, and scream and yell and go crazy.  They're rabid.  Which makes me think that there's something deeply ingrained in the human psyche that we feel this need to inflict group humiliation on people who have hurt us, or others.  Even though we live very independent lives now, and don't reside in small villages where we depend on each other for our very lives, the idea of being part of a group, and wanting to banish the bad people out of that group, is a basic instinct.

I think I'm going a little deeper into the show than they probably intend for people to go, but it's still fascinating to watch.  Oh, and the Bully usually winds up looking like such a dumbass that he winds up apologizing to the kid he bullied, which is kind of heartwarming.

Funny Stupid Commercials: Education Connection Edition

I've started watching Millionaire Matchmaker pretty regularly lately.  I stopped buying US Weekly, so this has become my indulgence.  I have a kind of warm-fuzzy memory of it.  I watched it in the hospital on the day after I lost Baby T, during the 90 minutes or so when J went home to get me new clothes and feed the cats.  During that time I took a shower, and changed the channel from the Ax-Men marathon that J and I had been watching all morning on the history channel (or, as he likes to call it, the Redneck Channel - all those shows about swamp people, ice road truckers, and ax-men...where's the history???).  I wanted something completely mindless, and on came this loud, annoying matchmaker chick on Bravo, setting up people on dates in between yelling at them and telling them that they were crap.  It made me laugh when I really needed to.

While watching my new favorite show tonight, I saw what has to be, without a doubt, the stupidest commercial for an online college website I have ever, ever, ever seen.  J and I were staring at the TV, openmouthed, barely able to make a sound until the very end when we just started snorting.

So, instead of Funny Local News, this week I'm going to give you Funny Stupid Commercials.  I feel so bad for that actress.  She probably was late for rent, and this was the first job her agent could get for her.  Poor thing.  She's probably been waiting tables in some west hollywood place for three years, and she finally gets a break, and this is what it is.  Well, it is what it is.