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Distancing myself from my inherited Semitism, looking at the film from a more gentile perspective, it falls flat. Plot devices are very loosely connected, often only tied together by the same drippingly sweet music you find in all Hollywood family movies. The boy-in-transition Benjamin Fiedler is sweet and awkward, stumbling through the tribulations of seventh grade. While screwing up hopelessly each situation he comes across, be it asking the pretty girl to his bar mitzvah or experimenting with his parents’ liquor, his quirky grandfather helps him avoid any real damage. As he gains confidence, he learns the true meaning of a bar mitzvah, and stands up against his father’s material perversion of the sacred ritual.

As a movie, this film is subpar. As a dopey-but-charming family film, it’s adequate. As a Jewish comedy, however, one that pokes a Semite in all the right places, it’s superb. While the basic rite-of-passage story may be a little formulaic, its meandering plot winds its way around all the facets of modern Jewish culture. From the overbearing grandmother to the distant rabbi, the cracking-voice chanting to the attempts at acts of Manhood, the movie feels like one big Jewish in-joke. Goyim be warned; you’d best have been to at least a few Jewish family dinners before attempting to watch this flick.

Distancing myself from my inherited Semitism, looking at the film from a more gentile perspective, it falls flat. Plot devices are very loosely connected, often only tied together by the same drippingly sweet music you find in all Hollywood family movies. The boy-in-transition Benjamin Fiedler is sweet and awkward, stumbling through the tribulations of seventh grade. While screwing up hopelessly each situation he comes across, be it asking the pretty girl to his bar mitzvah or experimenting with his parents’ liquor, his quirky grandfather helps him avoid any real damage. As he gains confidence, he learns the true meaning of a bar mitzvah, and stands up against his father’s material perversion of the sacred ritual.

As a movie, this film is subpar. As a dopey-but-charming family film, it’s adequate. As a Jewish comedy, however, one that pokes a Semite in all the right places, it’s superb. While the basic rite-of-passage story may be a little formulaic, its meandering plot winds its way around all the facets of modern Jewish culture. From the overbearing grandmother to the distant rabbi, the cracking-voice chanting to the attempts at acts of Manhood, the movie feels like one big Jewish in-joke. Goyim be warned; you’d best have been to at least a few Jewish family dinners before attempting to watch this flick.

The players: FOX and ABC, two national broadcast corporations, each present a strong, highly-rated team of pokemon, ready to battle all the other trainers and catch ‘em all!

Hah hah. Hah. Hah. Seriously, though, there are some good things happening Sunday night. Fox shows four back-to-back sitcoms, anchored by The Simpsons and Family Guy. Attention deficit, crass, and stupid, they’re the perfect way to cap off a weekend. ABC, shooting for a reputation as the tasteful, intelligent station, sucks audiences in with three relatively innovative, well-produced dramas, all significantly different thematically, but incredibly addictive.

The battle begins:

You turn on FOX, finding bright yellow people running amok in an idyllic midwestern cartoon town. Over the next half-hour, there are a few good laughs, but more chuckles at sly cultural references or at the meandering plot. While The Simpsons had a few years as one of the funniest shows on TV, its golden age is gone, and it seems to just be riding its season out. However, in the same way most of us went out and saw the new Star Wars trilogy, seeing familiar characters in a lovable franchise is enough to make the show enjoyable.

In a weird way, The Simpsons is actually one of the most wholesome comedies out there. It keeps out of sex, drug, and violent humor more than most other shows, and often ends in a pretty heartwarming fashion.

Bored by a commerical, you flip over to ABC. Lost is playing, a series which treats a relatively silly premise remarkably well. A plane crashes on a remote pacific island, leaving forty-odd survivors on the beach. At first expecting to be found by rescue planes, they soon realize they are alone, and that on the island, nothing is what it seems. Cheesy? Indubitably. However, the show’s pacing and plot causes a rapid suspension of disbelief, and creates one of the most addictive series out there.

Each episode focuses on one or two people out of a fairly large ensemble cast, without losing perspective on the whole groups’ situation. For the first episodes, we get flashbacks to the situations that led up to their flight on that particular plane, which explain their reactions to the crash and their behavior afterwards. The characters are all very well-cast and -acted; while mostly written into somewhat stereotyped roles, they manage to each elicit sympathy in their own way.

If this sounds a little questionable, do a science experiment. Acquire the very first episode of the series, and watch it all the way through. Then try not to watch the next five back-to-back. Of all the shows on television Sunday night, Lost perhaps demands the most serial viewing.

"Now with less of a chance of sexual side effects." Don’t you hate those commercials? Click. Back to FOX, on which The War at Home is just beginning, a beginning which, in my estimation, has no measurable effect on anyone anywhere. A nuclear family of quirky individuals inhabits a house. Someone does something stupid and lies about it. Increasingly absurd attempts are made to correct the problem and hide the lie, all of which only magnifies the situation. Eventually everything is resolved, usually in an amusingly serendipitous manner that manages to avoid any lasting consequences.

Come 9:00, the competition heats up. Family Guy, crass and absurd, proves a formidable gladiator on this electron-gun stage. Essentially a skeleton plot linking together a series of rascist, mysonginist, or simply tasteless gags, it provides the sort of attention-deficit humor America so loves. Consider yourself warned: if you’re not comfortable with pointed stereotypes of you or people you know, avoid this show. It jumps from one group to the next, egalitarian in its ignorant, base depravity. However, if you’re okay with that, it’s hilarious.

Note that at 9:30, FOX currently shows American Dad, essentially a Family Guy spinoff series with the same basic feel and structure.

ABC has made the wise decision to try to scoop up all those viewers who reject Family Guy’s unique take on quality television (the "We’ll be more offensive than anybody" strategy, as far as I can tell). Their secret weapon is Desperate Housewives, a disguised soap opera that addicts its audience through running, simultaneously, four twisting tales of four deeply troubled women. All of the classic soap opera elements are there: forgotten characters popping up at opportune times to disrupt an idyllic resolution, characters prone to exaggerated emotional meltdowns and elaborate scheming. However, a big production budget, quality acting (with a few exceptional performances, such as that of Marcia Cross), and likeable, quirky characters all contribute to its salvation.

Whether Family Guy or Desperate Housewives, the 9:00 time slot presents some pretty fresh writing, and an almost-guaranteed good time. Chances are, you’ll fancy one show quite a bit more than the other; as far as I can tell, there’s not much common ground for viewer crossover.

10:00 is exclusively the domain of ABC, as FOX switches over to local news at that time. This leaves viewers aching for a third hour of television with only the second-season series Grey’s Anatomy, a drama about a hospital chock-full, as far as we can tell, of attractive, witty surgical interns. The series draws on a relatively unknown cast, all doing a pretty good job of avoiding stereotypes and presenting complex characters. Susan Ho deserves special recognition for managing to portray an Asian female neither fighting to be her own woman in a culture of oppression and mysogyny, nor playing the oft-seen ‘dragon lady,’ dangerous but seductive creature of the Orient. It’s a great breakthrough step for Asian-Americans in the media, who are perhaps typecast more than any other ethnicity.

The pacing in the series is good, jumping between the humor of each characters’ particular neurosis and life situation, and genuinely sad, unjust acts of fate. Meredith Grey, the show’s loose focus, voices a small lead-in and lead-out in each episode, tying together all of the storylines into one theme or (often-cliched) universal truth. It’s a little cheesy, sure, but gives the stories the appearance of being tighter than perhaps they really are. Grey’s Anatomy overall comes across as well-written, healthily funny, and a little touching.

I enjoy Sunday night television immensely. Regardless of your tastes, there’s something on to please, and FOX and ABC offer quality programming that should keep you happily sendentary for hours on end.

Sad. Such a flat word, so dry. No resonance, no grasp of the immensity of my pain. Thank god for SAD WITH POWER CHORDS! My heart isn’t broken, my heart is a Black Pit of Despair, and it’s eating me from the inside out. Life isn’t kind of melancholy, it’s hopeless and futile, gray and apocalyptic. There’s barely anything to keep me going.

Thank god for Avril Levigne. Thank god for Dashboard Confessional. Thank god for Army of Freshmen. They’re with me in this. They understand, as these Actual Lyrics from an Actual Emo Band attest:

I serenade her cell phone but I never hit send.
I’d ask for some advice, but I don’t have any friends.
I am the one on IM with the 37 names.
Tonight its Captain Elvis. Lately he’s been on his game.

It’s like they’re psychic. They don’t sing about perfect love, or thug life, or hell’s black warriors; they’re too real for that. They realize that rejection resonates with the masses in a way unmatched by any other emotion; indeed, failure is a truly universal message.

The problem, of course, is that at this point Emo music (for lack of a better term) sucks. Filled with uninspired beats, formulaic chord progressions, and whiny singing, it pains the ears, rather than the soul, of any musical listener. Furthermore, the strains of a teenager’s weeping guitar unrepairably damage the street cred of anyone blasting it from their car window.

Even these formidable obstacles, however, will not stem the Emo tide. A few brave artists will bring the message of frustration to the music of the masses, and pave the way to an angsty revolution. The first of these artists is of course my friend MC J Tragic, the king of thugmo:

So now, I be sobbin’
Tears fallin’ hard
‘cuz I’m all out-of-shape
Got a belly of lard
no understandin’ from my Ma,
No help from my Fatha,
My tears be creatin’ record levels of wata’
Another biblical flood, this time Noah be sinkin’
From the tears caused by all my introspective thinkin’
An ocean of sadness once tha cryin’ start
A bleak watery wasteland JUST LIKE MY HEART!

Revolutionary, no doubt: for every Big Poppa out there, there are thousands of Lil’ Saggypants trying, unsuccessfully, to make it in the world. They don’t need rappers to talk about living the good life-how do you think that makes them feel? No, they want someone to tell them how much more lame life could be.

Thugmo is just the beginning, though. Our favorite European DJ’s will bring us Techmo, the ultimate fusion of repetitive synthesizers and aimless wallowing. You’ll dance so hard you’ll cry! Flying through distant galaxies to the utopia of rhythm and love? More like scanning the Myspace profiles of distant strangers, trying to figure out how much you care whether the next one’s a rapist like the last three.

Or maybe we’ll see Emo seep into the metal scene, shifting its focus from the horsemen of the apocalypse to the looming final in math class.

RRRRRAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!
The bleeding flesh is dripping down my chest
and by flesh I mean bologna from a sandwich
RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!
I’ll rip my eyes out before I take this test
Or maybe not as that’d hurt like a bitch

Or something. Bottom line: I want to swim in the amplified misery of Emetalo, thinking about head-banging but not having the energy to do it. I want to bump the latest single from J-Tragic, and be happy there’s someone sadder than me. I want to go to a Techmo rave, and sit in the corner with two burned-out glowsticks. I want to embrace the Emo revolution half-heartedly, then go home and feel awkward.

The bristly line
shadow boundary
casts off
one

By winds, gravity
time plucked from
the gnarled
umbilical

Golden brown
a fat black bird, jagged-winged
flies lazily
over crimson ground

Another
a savage gust having ripped
through mother

And another

rough-hewn planes
flitter down
dry soft-crackling rain

The luckiest
find a scraping touch
on the journey down

A second maybe
friction and chance
a bond seems

Overlap distorts silhouette
the odd conglomerate
of two
pauses

A short moment
in crimson light
then rest

Daniel Handler, author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events series under the pseudonym Lemony Snickett, has a penchant for black humor, for gut-wrenching "Why did I laugh at that?" moments, and for language perfectly suited to his audience but accessible to all. Free from the content-related constraints of children’s books, he takes his gift for the amusingly disturbing to the world of adolescent angst.

The Basic Eight follows one Flannery Culp through her senior year at Rower high, an academically intensive public school in San Francisco (Sound familiar? More on this later). She and her band of friends, vessels of constant apathy, sarcasm, and mocking eloquence, step with an ironic gait through the motions of their last year of compulsory education. Senior year is not without its difficulties, however. From the start, Flannery must cope with calculus class, a cagey heartthrob, weight anxiety, and an unsavory, downright creepy biology teacher.

Natasha, Flannery’s best friend, is the protagonist’s biggest confidant. Cool, composed, and a little dangerous, she’s determined to fix Flannery’s problems. Coaxing her friend to take action or just stepping in and doing it herself, Natasha catalyzes a spiraling chain of events with no good end.

Even with a slightly corrupting friend, a responsible, academically-motivated teenager like Flannery should have enough self-control to stop her from doing something really stupid, right? Just as we’re wondering this, our friend alcohol comes into play, along with its more potent companion absinthe. Irresistible to the group and its love of tongue-in-cheek sophistication, the green liqueur plays a part in the increasingly sticky situations in which Flannery finds herself.

The specifics of the plot are not particularly important to the enjoyment of the book. The power of the novel comes from the familiar, accessible voice of Flannery as the narrator. Most of the time she’s a bemused, detached observer, witty and together, but occasionally an angsty, confused 18 year-old comes out, irrationally obsessed over the most mundane things. The writing works because we’ve all been there, wise and practical advisors to others despite our blindness to our own faults.

The book is disturbing, sure, but it’s also hilarious at times. Handler has a great sense of authenticity when writing about teenage life, and San Francisco life in general. Whether it’s his take on the Haight, "a neighborhood full of hippie preteens and bookstores dedicated to the legalization of marijuana," or college, "a place where I can read literature in musty but well-lit libraries and play frisbee with people of different ethnicities," each description hits home, provoking a chuckle as I compare my occasionally idealized world to his sardonic look back on adolescence.

The Basic Eight, I believe, offers a quick, fun read for about anyone out there. However, there’s a certain subset of American youth who will derive more pleasure than usual from Handler’s book. These youth are students at San Francisco’s Lowell High, or those familiar with the school and schools of its type. Rower High is based on this school, with a location, faculty, and culture completely identical, though with a few phonetic reorganizations of teacher names. Our gut squirms up a little tighter than others’ as we laugh at Flannery cutting Calculus to sit in the library, because we’ve done the same. We may not (to my knowledge) have the same problems with sexual harassment, absinthe, or murder that the Basic Eight encounter, but aside from that, Flannery Culp narrates a good portion of our daily lives. It’s funny, and a little disturbing too-a great inside joke that occasionally hits a little too close to home.

As Israel recoils from "Black September," a terrorist massacre of 11 of its athletes at the 1972 Olympic games, the prime minister Golda Mier calls on a young man, soon-to-be-father Avner (Eric Bana) to avenge the deaths of the victims. Avner meets three other operatives, each with a lethal specialty, and they set off for Europe.

This team of assassins instantly drew me in. Each member is distinctly individual and human, rather than the stereotyped ensemble casts one often finds in action films. Their banter reminds one of what they really are-not secret agents, but men ripped from their lives to serve their country. Though their conversations have an expected undercurrent of ambivalence, fear, and occasional fatalism, the boys inside them also emerge from time to time, faces brightening at the prospect of a meticulously executed plan or unnecessarily complex gadget.

Though the ensemble work is good, Avner is the star player, the focus of the increasing madness and terror in which the group finds itself. As assassinations push closer to failure, and a quirky information dealer alludes that there might be more going on politically than meets the eye, Avner begins to crack, the pointless violence and likely tragic end of the situation dawning on him. Avner is such a likeable guy, a bit like Tom Hanks in a young Adrian Brody’s body, that we start to crack with him, poignant, touching scenes with his wife and child only widening the fissures.

"Creeping" appropriately describes this film’s tension. The pacing seems a little languid, but doesn’t drag. Apprehension mounts exponentially, starting slow and accelerating after troubling questions about the team’s situation arise. Spielberg cuts his action sequences masterfully: music, camera pans, and quick back-and-forth come together in a frenzy more intense than that achieved with big explosions and gunfire.

In any film treating the Israeli-Palestinean conflict, one expects political commentary. However, preaching is refreshingly absent-Spielberg presents articulate advocates for both sides, all passionate, pained, and human. A Palestinian resistance fighter yearns for a place his people call home; Israel’s prime minister knows that there is a time at which every country needs to make a stand. As far as Avner’s Palestinian targets go, though he is briefed on their records of atrocities, when we actually see them, they appear to be doing no more than living out their lives. One helps his daughter with her piano; another buys a loaf of bread from a smiling baker. We’re left to wonder, as the plot languidly builds to its overpowering climax, exactly how justified Avner’s mission is.

Munich gave me new faith in the film medium. Spielberg loves film grain, and makes us love it too. Whether softening the sunny lines of a rural French estate, or bringing out the colors in a damp, moonlit cobblestone road, film, like everything else in the movie, refuses to be defined. This isn’t television, jumping from one color value to another, smoothing over contrast. Spielberg is comfortable with ambiguity, and the high-saturation film he uses makes the picture feel rich and whole. Munich is a movie, and proud of it-its artful composition, strong talent, and historical gravity make it well worth seeing on a big screen.

We wonder at the massive red tide sweeping over our country. Can’t the unwashed masses see that we know what’s best for them? My theory is simply that, living in the middle of the country with nothing but wheat fields for entertainment, Midwesterners don’t want any more boredom in their lives (Liberals can radiate stagnation at mortal levels for people of the mid-country). They’re going with the most exciting political force out there, the Christian right. The country is under siege! We need to defend freedom! And Jesus! Conservatism is way Xtreme, when you think about it.

Conservatives have the whole ‘political struggle’ thing down pat. They pick something people like, and decide that the liberals are attacking it. If you’re in the boring part of the country (anywhere but this author’s pants, and possibly both coastlines), this noble crusade is a much more appealing cause to back. Are you going to fight for other people having the option to do something as mundane as marry, or are you going to defend freedom?You do like freedom, don’t you? Duck!

Life’s just more interesting when you think there’s a war on. In return for excitement way above that provided by daytime TV, the right gets to count on big heartland support for all their causes, no matter how loony. I think this strategy could work for the left, too. As long as we figure out some way to occupy the middle of the country, we’ll have all the votes we want. We don’t have to give up our values; we just need to spice things up. You’d think one of those whiny commie professors would be able to put X and treme together, but apparently they’ve lost touch with America. This nation is an open sore of angsty youth begging for stimulation, and the Democratic party needs to become the lemony salt for their festering wound. In a good way. We’ll need some innovative new programs. America, the Beautiful: out. Vince McMahon’s XSA (Xtreme States of America): way in. Let’s check out how some of the rules will change.

Duels. Screw our culture of litigation, where we’ll sue just because we can, and walk out of a conflict with an arbitrary amount of another person’s money, often paid by an insurance company. After all, as a wise man once said, "Replace not your sword nor pistol with the court of law; it’s a bitch of a time getting it in the holster."Democratic value advanced: equality. No matter the color of your skin or y-ality of your chromosomes, anyone can step onto the hallowed nondiscriminatory ground of the Federal Court of Bloodball, overseen by the honorable Justice Payne.

Sex icons. The dems need to look for some smokin’ leaders. Johnny Depp for president. Automatically grabs the housewife vote, the Disney vote, and the all-important pirate vote (fortunately, ninjas don’t vote). Chuck Norris as VP. There’s 58% of the AARP, plus his roundhouse kick can make any filibuster filibusted. Democratic value advanced: honest campaigns. These men will be elected because of their fame and good looks, and will do so unapologetically and completely in the open. They can be candid in speeches and interviews because their political views are in no way relevant to their election.

Congress meets American Idol meets shock therapy. Every elected representative wears a shock collar. If over 50% of their constituents finds them dull, ignoble, or otherwise unworthy of their office, they get a little zap. No behavior improvement, and CSPAN gets a little more exciting as the Speaker recognizes the spasming lump from Illinois. Democratic value advanced: legislative accountability. Washington is only a few million text messages away from frying.

Discrimination. Everyone loves to keep groups of people from doing things. While it’s widely accepted at this point that discrimination on the basis of gender, race, height, disability, sexual preference, religion, and the like is intolerable, there are still fun avenues of stereotyping and systematic oppression we’ve yet to explore. We simply need to find groups universally reviled, like people who talk on cell phones in the movies. The old discrimination didn’t work because it ostracized groups of people for wholly harmless traits. With the new discrimation, we’ll know the people society is keeping down. Whether NAMBLA members, road ragers, or people whose email addresses end with a long string of numbers, once identified, they would be subject to lower hiring rates, dirty looks from concerned mothers, and with any luck, riding at the back of the bus.

Empty promises. Everybody loves them. Whether it’s continuing low taxes or the prospect of an afterlife, we just want to believe. Set your deadlines far enough away, and with the increasing number of television plotlines taking up people’s memory these days, no one will remember what exactly it was you guaranteed they’d have. "Of course I promised you genocide! No, it was my opponent who guaranteed universal health care. Well, which of us came through?"

Simply make your goals immeasurable and vague, and you’re golden. "I promise to increase the pizza supply 10% during my presidency." News flash: The people that really, really care about pizza tend not to be the people that really, really care about accurate statistics.

So is Liberalism dead in America? Well, yes, but only as dead as a TV flat-liner, that is, fully recoverable with some good music, a close-up, and a few chest compressions. Just point your nearest haughty, droning, politically correct democratic leader my way, and I’ll straighten them out. Twenty years from now, generic inclusive Supreme Being willing, the XSA will blossom into a beautiful rose of equality, toleration, and wholesome entertainment.

Sunset weather gets a bad rap-everyone’s down on the grey skies, the buffeting ocean winds, the sunless mornings. I, however, revel in this foggy blanket with which the west side is blessed. Heat is very, very overrated.

Sometime between my morning shower and my departure for school, I usually put on pockets. Being a man, I like to have tools on hand for every occasion: the closer, the better. Being able to don heavy denim, full of handy compartments for the storing of Stuff, is all I could ever want. My keys, phone, wallet, pens (blue, black, and red), pencils, palm pilot, and other essentials right there in my pants and coat, I’m ready to take on the world.

Walking out into the dark grey morning, I feel sorry for those suckers in Hawaii, or, for that matter, Marin. Waking up to sixty-five degree sunrises, they’re cruelly deprived of heavy coat, and sometimes even pants themselves. To go through one’s day in lightweight nylon, with nary a receptacle for one’s tools, would be hell indeed. I can picture it now; I’d come face to face with a nuclear laser plasma bomb, ten seconds on the timer, and would have to take off an armstrap and reach into my bag in order to get at my defusal kit. I suspect a lack of pockets is to blame for Pearl Harbor-somebody got advance word of the attack, but, because he didn’t have his ham radio in his pocket, was unable to get the word out in time.

Pedaling my bicycle through the thick fog, I feel no fear. The cool air stops me from sweating as I head off to school, and my corrugated-steel-grade jeans protect the essence of my manhood from wind, cold, and small flying objects. How do you ride a bike in Texas? You’d have to have both hands ready to snatch dust, flies, and the occasional bb out of the air before they got up the leg of your shorts. You’d clearly crash and die.

Cold saves you from dangers to more than just your lower crotchal area (as the scientists say), however. Able to comfortably ride in bike gloves, hiking boots, and on particularly good days a ski jacket, I am invulnerable to water, broken glass, electrified floors, and mild ice ages. Try going up against one of those in the Caribbean.

Some say ‘bad weather,’ the term many use for the Sunset’s unique climate, is depressing and emotionally draining. Feh! For academically inclined, sleep-deprived intellectuals like myself, a grey day is a ticket to productivity. Never do I worry about the joyful outdoor wonders I am passing up by doing schoolwork; indoors is clearly the most pleasant place in the immediate vicinity. The dismal scene outside my window is beautifully free of distractions. No rambunctious children bounce balls outside this home (Malignant melanomas imminent, of course, because of sun overexposure). No wild college kids tear up my beach over spring break. In my black starving-poet turtleneck, eyes glued to a computer monitor, the melancholy downpour a beautiful countermelody to my spastic typing, I’m happy.