Underpants On The Outside

I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s Day, 10 - 11 AM:  When the morning gets started we’re not even looking at Jack.  We’re watching as President Limp-Dick goes down to the White House bunker, or “coward hole”, whichever term you’d prefer.  I’m just saying that wherever Jack is, he’s probably sprinting towards the nuclear bomb blast because it’s the only thing that can give him a tan. 

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I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s day, 9 – 10 AM:  Jack’s nine o’clock hour starts with pseudo-Jack and Curtis bickering like high school girls.  (Example: Jack II at one point says “we” referring to all of them, and Curtis snaps “There is no we.  There’s us and you.”)  The whole scene reminds me of every single episode of “Change of Heart.”  Then I try and imagine what it would be like to fight terrorism with my girlfriend on one side and another girl I just took on a date on the other side, and I bet Jack is trying to remember what was so bad about Chinese prison.

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I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s Day, 8-9 AM:

8:00:  Jack hops into Jack 2.0’s car.  It’s like Double Dragon - they’re more than the sum of their parts.  Unless they get rid of this guy soon they’re going to have to change the name of the show to 12.

8:02: Bad Guy Two of Twelve calls the President to make a deal.  The President listens better to the terrorist than the man who saves the country in less time than it takes me to make a Powerpoint deck.

Jack wants to get in touch with CTU.  Jack Junior doesn’t.  Jack insists, and JJ caves.  Jack’s back in the saddle again.  Nothing like an explosion to get the blood flowing. 

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I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s Day, 7-8 AM:  When Jack escapes the sewer system, he’s finally got the top button of his shirt undone, and he already looks twice as limber for killing.  He’s favoring his stabbed shoulder a bit, but I’d bet that doesn’t even last into the nine o’clock hour.  All Jack needs is a cell phone to call Chloe with and it’ll be like he was never gone.

7:03:  Well, that was quick.  Jack breaks into a car and finds a state of the art cell phone sitting inside it.  Mighty convenient, there.  Especially since the car was something like an ’84 Caprice.  It takes less than a minute for Jack to call into CTU and say the words, “Bill, I don’t have a lot of time.  Put me through to the President.”  Buchanan overcomes the waves of déjà vu he must be experiencing and does exactly as Jack says.

7:05:  Jack orders the President of the United States around for the first of many times today.  Sure, even though you have to discount it a little since it’s just Wayne, we’re still pretty far along the 24 Hour Timeline.  At this rate Kim will be needlessly placed in danger before brunch. 

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I’m a big fan of 24. Sure, the story is good, but I’m mostly impressed by how much Jack Bauer manages to squeeze into a day. To illustrate, I’m going to compare each hour of Jack’s day to the corresponding hour in my own day.

Jack’s Day, 6-7 AM: Here we go! When we last saw Jack, Chinese agents had captured Jack and stuffed him onto a boat heading to China. Two years have passed since then, and in that time, Wayne Palmer has become President. Some of you might remember Wayne from last season, when he spent several hours as Jack’s squire, running around waving a gun that I think Jack had unloaded. Now he’s president. This is good. Jack’s job always calls for him to tell the President what to do, and having a President with a backbone would just be a speed bump between Jack and terrorist life-blood.

Apparently there have been terrorist attacks all over the country. Two of the president’s advisors are debating the wisdom of setting up internment camps for Muslims, and President Wayne looks like he’s going to cry. I don’t think he’s sad for the country; I think he just wants everyone to leave so he can flip a coin and figure this thing out. That’s the problem with being President, Wayne. There’s really only one person who has the authority to tell you what to do, and he’s being tortured in China. (BTW, given his general wet-noodleness, I refuse to call him President Palmer. I will call him President Wayne.)

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As some of you may know, this is the weekend where, once again, the nation will darken under the shadow of international terrorism.  And who will save us?  Who will come to our aid?  Who will accomplish (read: kill; torture) more in one hour than I do in an entire month?

That’s right…IT’S THE JACK BAUER POWER HOUR! 

This weekend, Fox is kicking off a four hour, two day premiere of 24.  That’s a whole lot of posts for me, unless of course they start the show at 2 am and I spend the first four hours sleeping.  Still, I could not be more excited.  And to celebrate, I’ve got an article up on Cracked about Jack Bauer beta-testing his new cell phone.

Those of you who were part of the editing process will recognize that maybe half of the article was written by me.  You’ll also see how improved the piece* is.  Big thanks to the editors over at Cracked.

Have a good weekend; see you Monday with two parts of “What a Difference a Day Makes”.

*I’ve never known what to call a piece of comedy writing.  ‘Article’ gets redundant, but they’re not exactly columns, and calling them ‘pieces’ sounds pretentious, like calling movies ‘films’. 

At the time, I never got around to making any new year’s resolutions.  When the clock struck twelve I had a belly full of clams and white wine, and I’ve sort of reached the point in my life where I look forward to midnight on new years because that means I can finally go to sleep.  (This year I made it all the way to 12:15 - go me.) 

The way I see it, new year’s resolutions are a lot like a liberal arts education; meaningless tidbits that no one else is actually interested in and only sound good as long as you never try to apply them to actual life.  For instance, I can resolve to be a kinder person all I want; it’s not going to make putting Wonder Woman in the “Dutch Oven” any less amusing. 

But while I may have not made any formal resolutions, my actions so far this year would suggest a series of subconscious decisions about how I’m going to live my life differently over the next twelve months.  If I were to examine my behavior over the last week, I could only conclude the following:

My eating habits, particularly those involving bacon, suggest that I’ve set my sights on weighing 220 by mid-March.  I’m wisely chosen to waste less of my precious time and money on the pointless pursuits of dishes and laundry, which dovetails nicely with my other resolution to incorporate wrinkled shirts and five o’clock shadow into my everyday work outfit.  It would appear that nostalgia drove my resolution to re-introduce the Xbox and Halo back into my life, following a year of neglect after I allowed myself to be sidetracked by a girlfriend and an attempt at a writing career.  Proper nouns are to be replaced by “dude” and “shit” whenever possible, and in the future I will endeavor to avoid the following vices: Exercise, 8 Hours of Sleep, Shampoo and Vitamin C in general.  (So far my ability to go “cold-turkey” has been nothing short of astonishing.  Obviously, I have to continue to take it “one day at a time”, but I’m looking forward to an exciting 2007.  After all, how many people can honestly say they’ve ever had scurvy?  C’mon – show of hands.)  I’ve also resolved to post on my blogs once every six months and spend no less than a quarter of my income on comic books.  

Okay, they’re not the most conventional resolutions, but it’s not like I was really going to go to the gym or stop drop-kicking puppies.  Maybe in ’08.

*I’m also going to make a concerted effort to read Tooth Fairy’s new blog “The Ocean View Chronicles”.   Turns out my dad’s a pretty good writer if you’re into that sort of thing.  Go check it out (particularly if you’re a single lady) before some new gadget captures his attention and he abandons the project entirely.  (If he’s still blogging in mid-April, keep your eye out for the inevitable post beginning with, “Forgot Z’s birthday again…”)

**I finally got around to writing a new Superhero Diary.  Sweet.