윤

(A)DSL seems to be back up—either that, or it’s because everyone else is asleep—so I’m making up for being disconnected over much of the weekend. Woke up, anyway, from a dream about an episode of House from presumably an earlier season, where the teaser showed him in spacesuit, chatting via split-screen to a sick young patient friend… I don’t recall him ever being recruited by NASA, and I’ll surely give up on the series if the writers turn him into Homer Simpson like that, but for the sake of argument: she suffered from a seizure or syncope, prompting the titles, then we see House back on Earth, in a glorious mood. To Foreman’s dismay, he leads Chase and Cameron to join him seated in front of the open windows to appreciate the beauty of the day. I suppose it could happen, when he’s out of the nut house.

There’s no remembering all the others I’ve had lately, except for Kim quitting (which is bound to happen eventually, so probably doesn’t qualify as a premonition), one where I was playing George Huang’s role in SVU and trying to explain a perp’s motives to Stabler in as fluent psychobabble as possible, given that stammering was unbecoming of a professional, much less scripted television; and another which left me with the actual impression that a sitcom about the Silver Surfer working at a restaurant would be a good idea.

So we were all wrong about that overnight detox (including, it seems, the resident head of oncology and diagnostic genius); if House’s writers treat his psychiatric care like they did his time in rehab, then I’ll re-classify it again, from sci-fi to comedy. Though that shot of Kutner was downright creepy, like Dave Bowman appearing in 2010. Human eyesight being continuous and all, even during hallucinations, I’ve always wondered why directors cut back and forth for the effect.

My dysplastic hip is acting up, despite the hyaluronan injections last fall, but instead of shopping for a cane with flames on it, I decided to run yesterday. I want to live! (Let this serve as damages testimony if there’s ever the need to value the use of my body in this capacity for a future personal injury suit.) Didn’t hurt in the least, even into my fourth mile. Strangely it only does when I’m in sedentary サラリーマン mode, like the pelagic shark that’d asphyxiate if not in constant motion.

Even Batman made it look more real (was that from The Cult, I can’t remember): 5+ years as an addict and he’s over it in fifteen minutes, less commercials, then gets the chick. And the Chase-Cameron storyline has it looking like married life is harder. Besides, I liked having Amber around as an anthropomorphic—in science fiction, the kind that’s at least upfront about being out there, she’d be a hologram or whatever they were in Battlestar Galactica—representation of the brilliant mind’s emotional conflicts and deductive processes. What now, they explain her away as a figment of sexual frustration?

…was voiced by Lisa Edelstein from House! I noticed while watching the “World’s Finest” three-parter last night. Very nice animation in that one. I switched to the commentary about five minutes in and heard them giving the credit to a Japanese company called TMS, which, as it turns out, is a 60+year-old studio that’s also done ルパン三世 and アキラ!

When you think about it, Kuma—Kutner made the most sense, as one-dimensional they kept his character; lets House struggle with the unknowable mystery of another. The only person I personally knew who committed suicide was among my headbanger clique in high school (or was it stoner, I can’t quite remember the prevailing term, as much as the black T-shirt, tight jeans and Indian boots). I remember clearly the large Teutonic assistant principal making a veiled announcement of her passing over the PA in a broken voice. The Vietnamese girl who saw her parents murdered in front of her, she broke down often, but survived. Perspective reminds us that over 200 real people lost their lives in yesterday’s earthquake, and with every one of them also went a microcosm of experience and interpretation not even God’ll be able to sort out.

(My apologies to my 弟婦. It’s a great name. I love the Blue Hearts song.) USA says “Characters Welcome” when referring to their lineup, and if I were ever to do like Andy Millman and write a sitcom of my own, I might consider basing one on her for an episode. She’d be let go by the end of it, too, because it’d be implausible to keep her on: meeting with the department for the first time her hair was unwashed, her enthusiasm for a job in this economic climate she expressed by telling us how bored she was waiting on her eBay transactions, and I wasn’t alone in noticing an unusual propensity for the terms “man” and “dude”. Her “hell, no” response to an inquiry was almost an “aw hell no” moment in itself.

By her second day Jeannie and I were having a count-off between all the mans and dudes; I won Wednesday 17-10. You’d think it wasn’t possible both to start and end a sentence with “man”, but she managed. With, of course, a “dude” in there. And not just when those were the only words.

And yet her verbal idiosyncrasy was the only one of hers she didn’t get around to discussing. The loud burps, which I let Jeannie add to her score when I had an insurmountable lead, she decided it was easier to acclimate her neighbors to by commenting upon first, and then not so much with a request for pardon but rather as a conversation starter. I was told that once informed of her termination less than a week later—she walked into the boss’s office asking, you guessed it, “What’s up, dude”—she hinted at a Title VII claim by blaming her disability, which, she shared at a lunch, was some sort of metal poisoning. House writers might make it a case out of her thinning hair, gastrointestinal complaints and even her impatience with work, her co-workers, potential clients… much less the English language, but whatever sympathy they could create for her situation, helped along by such an asshole of a doctor, certainly doesn’t earn her a spot in the front line of any company. Except maybe ShamWow. What a shitty ending. Man.

House has felt lacking this season, maybe because of the haste with which they’ve been dispensing with character developments—his breakup with Wilson lasted only a few weeks, and he shows as much remorse for his dead ex as George did for Susan; the romance with Cuddy, Cameron taking over, all wrapped up in under one—and an unmemorable episode sought to entertain during the usual life-or-death storyline with only a demonstration of his petulance when the plumbing went out at home. Anyway, turned out he caused the damage himself, and in a moment as close as I’d like to enter his world (wish for it, and I’m sure to be diagnosed with lupus), I racked up a $250 bill myself today for a house call of my own. Run the shower and the novelty head, installed as my first act of home ownership, leaks calcium onto the shiny new tub faucet …just like it did the old one.

I guess it’s like getting old itself: I don’t remember when exactly it happened, but it’s been some time now since I began feeling I’ve outgrown them. Then came telecommuting and the House charity shirts. And however disappointed I may be that those schizophrenic Republicans are allowed to stymie economic recovery (much less live), how can I resist this blast from with the past, although I would’ve preferred one of those Wu-Tang name ones with
Mark&
Jerry&
Bob 1&
Bob 2&
Alan.
on it instead.

Update: Or better yet,
Golden Arm&
Silver Spear&
Iron Robe&
Brass Head.

…That’s my theory, anyway. I put it together after watching 바람의 파이터 (which come on, wasn’t as nationalistic as they claim) about 在日韓国人の大山倍達, né 최영의, and guessed that the boys at Capcom must’ve had 「空手ばか一代」 on the mind when designing their country’s representative—who was E. Honda; just watch his victory celebration. Although maybe the look came later. Their new movie appears to be further proof that mankind is incapable of learning from its mistakes and moving forward, at least on a scale visible to us with lifespans measured only in decades. So last night I had a dream I was also a bad-ass martial artist taking on all-comers. Me and House teamed up to solve super-crimes. Oh, and Alvin deserves special recognition for getting us the Season 4 DVD’s.

老婆’s long burned through all her Chinese-subtitled downloads (however something like Coccidioidomycosis was translated, surely that med student in Shenzen can score a job with fan work like this on her resume), but I left the three seasons we got on sale at Target until the holiday hiatus. I must say, it felt good to have new ‘thon material, my last having been what, Mortal Kombat: Conquest? Last night I wrapped up the “Tritter” arc, which concluded rather disappointingly with our hero saved by poor inventory management, of all things, and saved from the character reformation sure to mean an end to the series.

Wait, lupus = Lupin…? Of course as an avid Conan Doyle reader in my day—when man, was it ever hard plumbing annotations without wikis; reminds me, add The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to my Wishlist—I live to spot inconsistencies such as Taub & Cutner knowing Joseph Bell but not Irene Adler, but please don’t chart the good doctor’s course so predictably. Maybe it can turn out that Foreman’s the one with the Mycroft-like superior brother, instead of mining the House DNA trail?