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, 8-9 PM:  It’s a shame I wasn’t able to get to this episode until now.  It’s also a shame that I never seem to have time to write for the Underpants anymore and it’s turning into just a 24 blog.  Nevertheless, my delay in getting to this episode is worse because this one was a sight to behold.

It started off innocently enough.  In a nice change of pace, Roommates Kat and Mary came over to watch 24 at my apartment, and at the beginning, Ricky Schroeder informed Jack that while his nuclear drone aerial routine was mostly a success, he didn’t stick the landing and it’s going to cost him in the overall.  Jack has already watched a nuclear bomb go off, so this actually represents significant improvement; the least Silver Spoon could do is give him a handshake.  That glass of heavy water is half FULL, Schroeder.  Besides, that’s all the way in San Francisco; the nearest Six Flags is 45 minutes away and perfectly safe.  Jack can’t be bothered. 

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One of the worst things about being a scientist (aside from the crippling loneliness) is that you will often struggle to explain any of your accomplishments to people outside of your field.  When scientists made a bar of copper invisible to microwaves it was very cool, but the only way they could convey that was by suggesting that one day in the near future, anyone would be able to buy their very own Cloak of Invisibililty.  (Bringing me one step closer to my life-long dream of actually becoming my D&D character.) 

Back in college, my hardest project, by far, was building a CD player.  By comparison, the second hardest project was building a robot car, and that was so frustrating we gave it the Tourette-like name of  “Cockfuck!”,  the bizarre profanity one of my lab partner’s kept yelling whenever the car would veer off course and collide at full speed with some stationary object, like his ankle.  For the record, the rest of us never questioned the origin of Cockfuck – the project was so frustrating that no previous combination of obscenities seemed sufficient.

And that was nothing compared to the shitcunt of a CD player I had to build.  At one point, my lab partner and I worked for thirty hours straight with nothing but a 3 a.m. trip to Denny’s for a break.  Never have I ordered a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity with such dejection.  Yet my girlfriend couldn’t understand what was so hard. 

“We’re building a CD player.”

“Is that dangerous with the laser and everything?”

“Well, no.  We’re not building that.  We already have a CD drive from a PC.  We have to turn it into an audio CD player.”

“You have to build the speakers?”

“…no.  Just the controls.  You know, play, stop, skip forward, skip backwards…that stuff.”

“What’s so hard about that?”  [Starts pushing buttons on her CD player randomly, as if I don’t understand the inherent ease of buttons.]

“For the record, we also have to do volume control.”

“Oooh.”  [Starts turning volume knob on her boombox back and forth.]  “Move over, Professor Hawking.”

I wasn’t about to explain how we were actually controlling the volume digitally.  It was a good deal more difficult than an analog control, but the explanation would have required me to admit that we were still using buttons, and she had already established that those were even easier than the knob.

I was reminded of this conundrum by a story yesterday on CNN.com.  More, after the jump.

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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, 7-8pm:  You know, it probably was the same way last year, and maybe I’m just too ready to see this show’s flaws.  But I swear, the intros to catch people up feel like they’re ten minutes long.  I wonder if Jack has noticed that nothing interesting ever happens to him in the first five/ten minutes of an hour.  I think that would be a very relaxing feeling.  Of course, he probably would have noticed things tend to go to shit at :50, and that’s really no way to live a life:

“Hey, what time is it?” 
“3:45…why?”
“No reason…” (looking up in the sky with a slightly worried expression.)

In any case, at the end of Jack’s five minute rest-period, he’s outside the Russian Consulate after being rescued by Ricky Schroeder and a tac-team.   Jack’s shoes look a little uncomfortable… maybe that’s because they’re on THE OTHER FOOT NOW!  (that joke would have worked a lot better if I was actually able to say it to Jack.  Then again, it still wouldn’t be that funny and he’d be able to physically retaliate, so I’m fine with the current setup.)

The field medic thinks Jack might have internal bleeding, due to “floating rib fragments”.  Looks to me like he has gas, but perhaps I get periodic floating rib fragments and no one told me that’s what it was.  Well, nothing that doesn’t involve the words, “shattered”, “ruptured” or “amputated” is going to keep Jack down, so he wants to get right back on the case.  Unfortunately, Ricky Schroeder has other ideas.  Ricky:  “CTU has the ball, Jack; right now this is out of your hands.”  I know we’re supposed to support our law enforcement, but this guy really is an insufferable prick.   He certainly wouldn’t be fun at the company get-together.  Besides, the statement, “CTU has the ball” is preposterous.  Jack should have replied, “Agent Doyle, you and I both know that the only balls CTU has ever had are the two that prevent my legs from touching.”

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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 PM:   I’ll delve into it more later, but Monday night some co-workers and I went out for dinner and drinks, entertaining some out of town guests.  The reason I mention it now is because I wasn’t able to watch 24 in the hilarious company of Roommates Kat and Mary.  Instead I watched it at home with Wonder Woman, and any chance that she was going to add funny comments died when she put on headphones so none of the stupidity could get in.  So essentially I was by myself, taking notes in between propositioning Wonder Woman via email.

From my notes, one might assume that I was drunk.  Like, Bucket O’ Vodka-drunk.  My notes ramble, swing wildly from one emotion to another, and are filled with pop culture reference that make no sense, but I’m sure seemed very clever to me at the time.  But after I looked at the episode recap online the next morning, I realized that my notes were accurate and that I was sober.  I can’t say the same for the eight-year old writing this season.

The first “Wait…am I drunk or did that just happen?” moment came at 6:03 – Rickey Schroeder: CTU agent.  First of all, I want to say that Silver Spoon looks like he put his face through the same windshield as Mark Hamil.  (What, too soon?)  Second of all, let’s take a second to think about this:  24 is a show starring a Lost Boy.  Last season we had a Goonie.  This season: Silver Spoon.  I hope Ralph Macchio is taking a new set of head shots – I want to see a terrorist crane-kicked to death.  As interesting as it is to see who the next CTU agent will be, as long as the show’s producers are running up the white flag, I wish they had gone the other route and thought of a way to saddle Jack with a cute toddler for a partner.    Hey, speaking of Jack…

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Just a FLOOD of posts today, (check it out – new Superhero Diaries post! This Adderall stuff is magic!) but after reading the article titled “Kenyans to transfer money using cell phones“, I had to ask: am I the only one who’d like to send some Kenyans the following text message?

“Pls hlp. I hv 2 mil dllrs.  Need 2 get $ out of USA.   I give u half 4 hlp.  Need ur acct # 4 trnsfr ASAP.  Kewl?” 

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, 5-6 PM:  As you may recall, last week Jack hooked up with President Scrotum-Neck to go question the Russian Consul, who Logan thinks can lead them to the Russian General (Bad Guy 7 of 12 I believe, though I’m too lazy to check) who could then lead them to the terrorists with the nuclear bombs.  Given the flimsy nature of this lead, I would think Jack’s sense of urgency might be a tad more palpable, but he just spent the last hour changing into a suit, which makes me wonder if he knows how to tie a tie.  Maybe Logan had to help him.  I wish I could have seen that.

All I know is that at the top of the hour, when they meet in front of the house to leave, both of them have cleaned up considerably.   Nuclear Terrorism, Shmuclear Terrorism – what good is saving the country if you can’t look good while you’re doing it?  I just hope they remember to pick up a nice bottle of wine on the way to the consulate. 

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The other night, Wonder Woman and I were sitting around in the apartment we now share (we’re smiling, we’re smiling, let’s see those teeth…big smiles…) watching the late-night Cosby Show reruns on TV Land.  Now, I love the Cosby Show, and if you’re the type of person who enjoys this blog then you probably love it too.  I’ve never met a single person who doesn’t get happy when there’s a Cosby Show episode on.  Normally, I’d make some sweeping generalization that everyone loves the Cosby Show, but I’m learning not to do that.  After all, up until the other night, I would have also assumed that no one would say the words Wonder Woman did:

“When I was a kid, I always identified so well with Sondra.”

Sondra.  Buzzkill Huxtable.  The one who never tried to crack a joke, unless those lectures she always used to give on 17th century philosophy were meant to be funny.  (Maybe I just didn’t get them because unlike Sondra, I didn’t go to Princeton, as she reminded everyone constantly.)  It would have been less abhorrent if Wonder Woman had started sprouting mushrooms out of her face.

Everyone knows someone like Sondra.  You went to college with them or you work with them.  The thing about them is they don’t even realize that they are those people.  Most of them, if asked, they would say they hate their own kind of people.  NBC never could have made an enjoyable series about Sondra’s college life.  Yet Wonder Woman “identifies.”  It makes me wonder if she even understood the show at all.  Like if your kid watched G.I. Joe and thought Cobra were the good guys.

Now I’m dating, nay, LIVING WITH Sondra.  What makes it worse is that there were so many other endearing characters WW could have picked from.  Even the dudes.  After the jump, I go down the list.

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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, 4-5 PM: Alright, I’m just going to say it: 24 sucks this year.  A year ago you would have never heard me say that, for two reasons. 

#1: It didn’t suck.

#2: Jack Bauer had become pseudo-real to me.  The show was so compelling that I found myself talking about him like he was a real person, even if he was a half-crazed avatar of destruction and vengeance.  (And the United States of America, just in case he ever needed a warrant. (yeah, right!!!))  Sure, the plots were outlandish and placed bizarre importance on Ontario Airport; yes, Jack managed to get around Los Angeles faster than Santa Claus.  But damned if I was going to say anything too bad about him; when he and Burke show up at your door, it’s too late to say you’re sorry.

Now, Jack Bauer is a sham.  (Full disclosure: I looked behind me before I typed that.  Just in case.)  Story-wise, you could say it’s a result of Jack’s Chinese prison and all of its affiliated tortures, but I’m not buying it unless that’s where Fox has started to outsource their writing staff.

All he does is run around, point guns at people and yell bad-ass things that only sound bad ass when you back them up.  Sure, he chewed some guy’s throat out, but what has he done lately?   He was shown up by Jack Bauer: Muslim Edition in episode 2, he quit, he cried, he failed to stop an act of nuclear terrorism, and when he couldn’t kill his brother his Dad had to come in and clean up his mess.  He wouldn’t even be where he was if his dad hadn’t unbelievably decided to leave him a cell phone with a magic number to dial.

I understand that for 24 really exciting things to happen, some outlandish things have to go down, but something about this season feels sloppy; it makes even less sense than it usually does.  Jack has now happened to come across two cell phones.  First he finds one in a 1980 Pontiac then his dad just leaves him one on a roof ledge.  This is video game caliber logic.   If Jack punches a brick wall, eats the flower that comes flying out of it and starts spitting fireballs, at most I might shrug.  

Example: Jack’s Dad kills his own son to prevent CTU finding out his role in losing the nukes.  He puts a gun to his grandson’s head…then he just lets Jack live?  On top of that, he gives Jack a lead to find the nukes???  Remember, these things happened two “hours” from each other; not only has Grandpa been too busy holding his grandson hostage to really reflect on his actions, but not enough time has passed for me to forget, which is usually the reason I overlook all this nonsense.

Yet here we are at the top of the hour, with Jack on the phone with ex-President Logan, who thinks he knows something.  Fine.  I’ll accept the premise that this is possible even though it doesn’t jive with anything we’ve seen before from this character, which mostly consisted of two parts bluff, one part bluster, and eight parts loose neck-jowls.  This is a man who needed two Secret Service agents to handle his wife.  But even if he does know something, it’s a piece of information that might help CTU find the man who might help CTU find the terrorists.  A couple more degrees of separation and Jack is gonna be torturing Kevin Bacon.

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