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The show strays too often from the main character’s heroic struggles to delve on his psyche, which will never make him likable (see Hugh Laurie’s Chance), but there is the father-son aspect to it to which I can relate our recent stop on the way to the library to join a Groudon raid. You’ll remember the details, watching all our underleveled Pokémon fall to the giant legendary and eventually winning with the group’s help, catching him with the very last of ten sucky Premier Balls, but did you imagine the disappointment had I failed after you cheered me on?

Perhaps the routine of parenting turns up the subconscious, because 老婆 is saying all the dreaming’s leaving her less rested, too. Me, I brushed with celebrity, seated in the back next to an embarrassed Johnny Depp at a gala honoring Anne Hathaway, then played House’s brother like Frasier’s Niles on an action-packed paparazzi escapade, and last night made a big ruckus at a Ralphs counter over an improperly-delivered piece of cheesecake. (Which seems unlikely, after downing a cream cheese-filled crêpe at IHOP last weekend.) The act felt so forced that I woke up questioning whether or not I keep it up only to qualify myself with character. But today at Vie de France was an utter twat who insisted on having a conversation with some acquaintances standing at their table in a room full of seated patrons who had waited over thirty minutes for theirs. He kept his arm around his partner, who occupied the fourth chair for the party of three and listened as he broadcast his drivel. Bugged the hell outta me. So no, it’s who I am.

Struck me again while browsing the menu for the first disc of Larry David’s last (but not last) season that I didn’t like it very much.  The show’s development almost mirrors House’s, doesn’t it: Cheryl leaves him as abruptly as Kutner did, and the show wraps up (rather poignantly, I felt) with the Blacks; maybe it should’ve just ended there, too.  But no, Loretta’s written out like so much Seinfeld Susan—with cancer, no less—and while there’s some funny, e.g., “Denise Handicapped”, the rest of the arc is disappointing. So I’m a killjoy’s killjoy.

Was being chased by some thugs, so I got into a car with a sharp-dressed lady offering a ride. This was apparently an episode of Doctor Who I had only read about online, and the driver was a notorious character by the name of Mrs. Foster. The black car was so small (not too unusual, however, for England), I couldn’t fit into the passenger seat completely and hung out the side as she spun through traffic, literally drifting backwards while being pursued. We stopped at a small office where she took me inside to reveal her secret: there were many different “versions” of her, clones, all at different ages. One was an old woman scientist who had developed the technology, another was a mother carrying a child for an infertile couple. This was how they justified their mischief. Just then a car arrived bringing bad news, in the form of two men whom I tried to keep out by closing a folding curtain the kind that separate banquet halls in hotels. One spoke with a Gaelic accent I could barely understand and insisted on seeing Mrs. Foster. He towered over me by at least a foot but I resisted and asked if he was a policeman; the other said no, but they were on their way. In the lobby behind them sat the rest of their party, and among them was Dr. Gregory House, to whom I pleaded—what’s your take on the moral outcome here? It was the right strategy, because he began a flashback to a case with an unhappy ending for the parents.

Except, of course, I dreamed it: the gang was caught up in World Cup fever, and Thirteen, with a balloon in her hand hid away into a large labcoat with House himself. After the opening credits, this romantic shocker was amplified when Cuddy uncovered that Chase, too, was part of this tryst. 老婆 and I looked at each other with uncomfortable disbelief. The remainder of the episode was a montage of scenes of House returning to his debilitating ways, sporting a thicker do, horn-rimmed glasses, and delivering an impassioned speech about his recent lack of stimulation, close-ups of OTC medication, then regaining some therapeutic karma by helping a fellow patient back at the loony bin.

Have I mentioned already how I’ve been dreaming so much that I wake up like I’ve walked out of the Dark Knight? Well, a version of Dark Knight where the perspective switches between Batman’s and mine, all sorts of details are wrong and the story unravels in a direction somewhat if not completely unlike that of the original. This weekend I came up with no less than three episodes of House and an alternate ending to the Prisoner, apparently filmed later in the Seventies—must be my mind blurring those two decades again, from memories of reunion shows like this one—where No. Six is shot dead by the shopkeeper!

So Sunday afternoon I multi-tasked in the six-episode universally-panned miniseries from last year, and yes, I hated it. Bad enough they’d even hint that the “93” character was Patrick McGoohan’s (I get it, 9-3=6), but there were so many of them, who could keep track, much less care? Life in the twenty-first century is so far one long jail sentence imposed to keep us free from terrorism, and another Matrix is the best they could come up with? I’ve mellowed, though, and might actually agree to the suggestion that the series be remade every now and then, if only to shake things up, to remind us the world hasn’t changed, much, and if we’re to measure progress with a penny-farthing, it’s gotten worse.

Far cry from the hushed archives where I read the original stories (well, Arsène Lupin ones featuring Holmlock Shears), but the spectacle-like pacing kept me from fidgeting—much. If they’re remaking the Prisoner and putting the Beatles in Rock Band, why not sell Holmes and Watson as the Adam and Steve of buddy flicks? Can’t help but snicker how much their new relationship owes to House and Wilson’s, and Linda’s right, Hugh Laurie’d make a fabulous Moriarty. Unless he had to get naked, too.

Prick throws in that the president “still” won’t sit down with Fox News after the story about him being on Letterman. Of course not, you shithead of a corporate shill; your network has less in serious journalistic credibility than The Simpsons has funny anymore, and you proved it. I only stayed tune because they offered to keep the House going with some highlights from a premier party—which I should’ve skipped, as let down as I was by the show itself. They just had to get him outta there and back to the same old formula in a week’s time. Why not the whole season (of “Nut House”), with him having to perform his procedurals through layers of mental illness, and make his transformation a meaningful one?

A few weeks ago I had a dream (most likely induced by 老婆’s request that I stop there for her) I was in Marukai, went up a back way and found a new floor where they kept a library of Japanese books. The curator approached me with my order, a scroll on a tatami plate, which her assistant removed from its wrapping by haphazardly cutting into the trim. She asked me to read it to her, but none of the characters were familiar. I BS’d and tried to run for it, but the stairs down led to the same place, like in the “House that Jack Built” episode of the Avengers I watched not too long ago. When I actually did go to the store the next day, nothing. Not even カレーうどん. Maybe I should’ve tried the second level?

Will’s online girlfriend appeared in another dream, accompanied by a male companion she introduced as Evan while we strolled down a Little Tokyo street. He said he’d check with her, but more than likely the connection is from our office guest with that last name—what exactly does she do, anyway? Or it’s time for me to dig up the Kentucky Fried Movie for an audience with Mr. Kim.

Last night I found myself in a gang like Angel’s (having also revisited the series finale recently) on a mission to defeat our deadliest enemies: Alfre Woodard from Star Trek: First Contact took on a corse-like creature by confusing it with songs, the last of which was the Jackson 5’s “ABC”. Myself and Kutner from House were charged with a pair of killers. We snuck upon them and I throttled one, but the other managed to produce a knife and stab my partner. He survived… unlike in Season Five, which I fast-forwarded through this lazy Sunday afternoon.