The NBA Finals are over. Uh-oh.
I was diagnosed with Hepatitis A a couple of weeks ago. This required me to take at least a couple of weeks off from work and stay at home to rest. I say “at least” a couple, because I’m really under observation from week-to-week, so I could be out for a month for all I know.
I was semi-excited, at first, primarily because I was a little giddy about not missing a game of the Finals for the first time since my jobless years (or “The Golden Age”, as I fondly refer to it). But now that NBA season’s officially over…
…And the fun’s starting to wear out. I’ve already finished reading Alain De Botton’s surprisingly underwhelming Status Anxiety and the 2-feet high stack of Newsweek and The Economist magazines my brother gave me. I’ve downloaded and watched more than half of Saturday Night Live’s latest season. I would love to be able to write a short story, a screenplay concept, or anything seize the moment-ish, but I’m in a bit of a paradox right now. I’m well enough to watch TV and play Playstation games, but I’m incapable of being awake for stretches long enough to sustain any kind of intelligent thought.
This NBA post-mortem period, though, has given me the rare luxury to realize things that wouldn’t normally dawn on me while devoting my time to stuff that really don’t hold any considerable significance in the grand scheme of things; A.K.A “work”. Here are some of my Zen observations after two weeks of being marooned at home.
1.) Nothing’s on TV. Seriously. At least nothing that’s not about cooking or annoying people trying to get laid in weirdly scripted “reality” situations.
Let me take this opportunity to apologize to Basketball TV. I took you for granted when you were always there everyday, either showing a 3rd replay of a Memphis Grizzlies game or an episode of NBA Action from 1997. I get the message now – you’re all I’ve got; you’re all I’ve ever had. You…(Tom Cruise pause)…complete me. Please come back. I’ll do anything. I’ll sit through an entire NBA’s Greatest Game involving one of the Knicks’ playoff meltdowns during the early 90s if necessary. Just come back. Please Sky Cable, take them back. So what if Solar chose GMA over ABS-CBN for those stupid Pacquiao fights? You’re showing the Philippine Television premiere of Pasukob! That’s…supposed to be a big deal, right? Everybody wins.
Can’t we all just get along? If I watch another hour of CNN and pretend to care about what some Washington reject turned “pundit” thinks about what the internet thinks about what people think about Al Gore’s chances for another meaningless vice presidential gig, I’m going to lose it…
2.) …Which reminds me. I am now in love with Kristie Lu Stout. I want to marry her and have her read the newspaper to me every morning. Watching Kristie Lu Stout’s newscasts is like a guilt-free version of watching Veronica Mars. I’d rather ogle her and have people walking by thinking I’m just too concerned with North Korea’s food crisis than ogle Kristen Bell and have people thinking I’ve suddenly become a 15-year-old girl. Wait…you don’t know who I’m talking about? Well, scroll down and stare. What’s that? You were too busy reading CNN crawlers about the earthquake in China to even notice her? You working people just don’t get it.
3.) Because nothing’s on TV, I’ve finally dusted off this pirated DVD of 30 Rock’s first season that has been sitting in my room forever. It turns out I’ve been missing out on a lot because the show is absolutely wonderful. It’s hilarious, it’s cleverly written, and every episode has a breezy rhythm to it akin to a great pop song. But the thing that bumps 30 Rock’s standing from “merely amusing” into “potential classic”? Tina Fey’s cleavage.
(…resisting the powerful urge to make lame “30 Rack” joke…)
By the way, the show has a lot of quirky running jokes, like how Rachel Dratch keeps appearing from episode to episode as a different character. But my favorite one by far is how Tina Fey keeps playing a character that’s supposed to be unattractive and chronically repellent to men. Eat your heart out, Sasha Baron Cohen…now that’s revolutionary comedy!
4.) Juno is the most overrated movie of the decade (now that’s a dust-accumulating pirated DVD that I don’t mind not rediscovering in my room). I was ready to embrace the whole stripper-turns-out-to-be-a-genius story until I watched this faux-indie, pretentious Ghost World-wannabe dud. This was 2007’s Best Screenplay? Was the year really that bad? I’m now convinced that Sofia Coppola’s Best Original Screenplay award for Lost in Translation was just a rare lucid interval by the “Academy who knows nothing about Motion Picture Arts and Sciences”. I’d say more, but I might fall asleep like Grandpa Simpson any minute now.
5.) Little known fact about Hepatitis A: it turns you into a borderline narcoleptic. Almost every three hours you feel weak and your back feels heavy. A couple of days ago, I went out of the house for the first time in a century and drove to the nearest convenience store to buy some chips because I was tired of being Amish. When I got back, I felt like I did ten laps at the Quirino Grandstand. I’m now starting to think that I didn’t really catch Hepatitis A so much as I just turned 80.
6.) Mornings aren’t that bad. Because I get tired quickly, I now have inverted days – I go to sleep before 10, and wake up before 7. And I like it actually. First of all, mornings are far cooler than late nights, breakfast is at least 10 times better when it’s just been cooked a few seconds ago as opposed to an hour ago, and it’s hard to get depressed at 7 am, especially when you don’t have to fight traffic just to get to work you’re sure is just going to ruin your day (unlike 12 midnight, when you feel obliged to feel all existential while downloading porn that you know will take another three hours to finish). Plus, Maxxx shows reruns of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at 7:30 in the morning, so there’s really nothing to miss about late nights anymore.
7.) I know Loren Legarda’s a notorious flip-flopper and all, but maybe we should start considering her for the presidency. On Wednesday, she was grilled by Mel Tiangco and Mike Enriquez on whether or not ransom money was involved in the release of Ces Drillon and her camera crew. What followed was an extemporaneously righteous speech straight out of the Barack Obama playbook. Starting off with a smooth, “There was no ransom, at least none that I know of” hand-washing, she carried on with a graceful issue-shift, telling Mel and Mike that what’s important is that people’s lives are saved.
I don’t know about you, but I’d like my president to be able to lie to me with charming debate-team eloquence for a change.
8.) I'm not sure what to make of this, but I think I like that Marie Digby song Say it Again. Forget the gut-curdling lyrics, I think it's actually a nice tune. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I've only heard the song through Myx, which means I always see Marie Digby when I hear Marie Digby. Or maybe it's wrong for me to conclude that her prettiness is deluding me into thinking that the song's good, because that would be a lazy, snobbish, if not sexist (this coming from a guy who had to mention Tina Fey's cleavage) deconstruction of a phenomenon, which may simply be described as "liking a song because it's actually good."
Or maybe this is just my liver talking.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
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