Television hates you

Tonight, NBC will begin airing ‘The Rerun Show,” a sitcom that re-stages scenes from other sitcoms 20 years ago with an all-new cast. First up: skits from “The Jeffersons” and “The Facts of Life,” regurgitated with a “new and outrageous slant” (or so says the show’s Web page).

It’s official: We’ve run out of ideas.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try on clothes for a funeral.

French Word of the Day

mot a mot (moh ah moh): word for word; literally.

Alpha-Release Fiction of the Day


Kevin needed the attention; that's why he had the gun.

It wasn't real, of course. It was a hard rubber model, a fake. It was designed to fool people even at close distances. Police films and television shows used them all the time. Sure, they may sound real, especially when the cop places the gun on the table and it makes a metallic sound, but that's fake, too. Clever people called foley artists exist to implant sound to fool the audience. Television lies, and it has a literal arsenal with which to lie.

So, he had the gun tucked in his waistband with his shirt pulled over his stomach, disguising the hip-hop, desperate holster of a wannabe thug. Yet, he was a fake thug using a fake gun. That was one of the rules. In fact, it was the first one.

Rule two: Never hurt anyone.

Rule three: Hit only one bank a day. Period.

Rule four: Speak clearly.

Rule five: Never take any money, no matter how many times you are offered.