Slow Boat to China

If Monday's season finale to 24 didn't get your juices flowing, go out to the garage, open the hood, hook the cables up to the battery, and clamp those babies on your earlobes, because I think you need a jump! SPOILERS FOLLOW

For starters, we have Jack, in fine form, slipping onto the nerve-gassy sub, which, as you know if you watched last week, is laden with all sorts of ordinance now aimed at major urban targets. Then we have him coaching the sole survivor of the Bierko attack, a wet-behind-the-ears petty officer, in the fine art of terrorist-throat-slitting; then, when the poor slob actually has to do it, the whole thing degenerates into a gruesome neck-knifing, a nauseating wet butcher's block sound punctuating the desperate clumsy jabbing. Somebody give the sound-man an emmy, he just caused me to lose my lunch!

The submarine: it is the space that made Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot a masterpiece of cinematic claustrophobia, and caused famed nebbish Jared Fogel's dramatic weight loss, paving the way for his evil rise to power as dorkus superiorus. (Jared begat many a nerd immitator, it is true: Napoleon Dynamite, that little prick on the insipid Red Green Show, William Hung, but Jared is the original ) Now the interior of a submarine is once again put to good dramatic use as the location of the final three-way showdown between Bierko, Bauer, and Robocop.

I'll spare you the details, if you haven't seen the episode yet, but suffice it
to say that Jack pulls a variation of an oldie from the Season Two Closer out of
the bag to dispatch one of his nemeses. And all this in the first few minutes of the show!

Also, I seriously hope that Greg Itzin gets an Emmy for his performance this season. Weak and vacillating, and yet malevolent and mean-spirited all at once! His Logan was a truly repugnant character. I actually shuddered with discomfort and loathing during that scene that the First Lady had to pretend to seduce president Chuck to buy Bauer some time. Incidentally, Jean Smart was also fantastic as Martha Logan all season long. Give her a matching Emmy to go with her on-screen partner's!

In my book, Season Five was arguably the best season since Season Two.

Move weekend


On Friday, Joe came up from Toronto for a quick visit before heading up to Algonquin Park on a canoe trip.

On Saturday, we finished boxing everything up.

On Sunday, we picked up the rental truck and moved everything from the apartment to the new house.

Now it is Monday, and we find ourselves sore, dazed, and up to our elbows in "stuff" that needs to be organized and put away... Isn't it amazing how many possessions we seem to accumulate over time without consciously setting out to do so? I always considered myself a minimalist --I'm not one to pick up the latest gadget or status symbol just because everyone else has it; I have been steadfast in avoiding acquiring a cellphone, for example. And yet, the mask has now been pulled away, and I see myself, for the first time, as I truly am. I am a packrat, squirreling useless things away in the eternal hope that one day, I will find a use for them.

The reality is that ya gotta let go sometime, so now the long-deferred "day of the garbage bag" has arrived, and I must go forth and be ruthless with it.

Later