YUM-O.

There's really no witty way to say this. I love food.

I'm getting an apartment next year with my three best friends.
We talk about all of the exciting things we'll get to do. Think of new ideas every day.
How we're going to decorate. What rooms we're each going to take, and what's going to be in them.

And. Of course. What are we going to eat for dinner.
The good thing about my love for food is its happy marriage my love for cooking.
I guess that makes me a productive food lover.
I cannot wait to be able to cook dinner several times a week.
Let's face it, the dorm kitchenette just isn't cutting it.

Now, loving food isn't a vice. Neither is cooking. Perhaps what I'm about to say doesn't fit the dictionary definition of a vice either, but here it is:

FOOD NETWORK.

Is it bad that Rachael Ray's raspy overly enthusiastic voice kind of soothes me? And every time I make pasta I hear her saying "Now you're going to put in...ehh...a couple tablespoons of EVOO..."?

Sometimes (huge secret reveal about to happen), I talk to myself like I have my own food network show. Like, I'll be making an omelette, and narrate things as if I have an audience. I even look over my shoulder to make sure no one hears me. Sometimes I garnish things. For myself. Even if it tastes bad. So there that is. Shhh...









I feel powerful when watching anything Giada.
I jump up and down when Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives comes on.
I gasp when I'm monotonously flipping through channels late at night and I run into Unwrapped.
I want to travel to every place featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate.
I am infatuated with the idea of being able to make dinner for a family in the future.

I thank/blame Food Network for that.

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!

I know. I know. With the loss of veteran cast members, Saturday Night Live has gone WAY down hill. In my opinion, the loss of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler was a huge blow to the show. The writing is not nearly as good, and frankly, it's not that funny. I'm not necessarily a die hard fan of the show, but I certainly watch it and quote it more than most.

I'm a huge Kristen Wiig fan. I dressed up as one of her characters, Gilly, for halloween ("Sorry!"). I'm not ashamed. Literally, every character she does is funny to me. Target Lady -- also, equally fabulous.

This is one of my absolute, all time favorites:



Andy Samberg. Amazing. Enough said.

Sometimes, I think the fact that the majority of the show is sub-par, makes the really good skits stick out.

Recently, Jane Lynch hosted. It was easily one of the funniest episodes I've seen in a while.
And this is one of the reasons why:



laugh away.

I'll stick by SNL for a while. No matter how crappy it gets.

The Fragile Art of WB Teen Dramas

I have always considered myself a writer. I aspire to someday do it for a living, which is why I take my taste in writers and writing very seriously.

When it comes to movies, Charlie Kaufman is as good as it gets.

When it comes to literature, I will always be a die-hard Charles Dickens fan.

And in the realm of theater, I will always adore Arthur Miller.

So now that I've built up some sort of intellectual credit, I'm going to reveal to all of you what I consider to be my all-time favorite television show:

Yes, Roswell, an in-depth character study about aliens that try to pass as normal high school students in the late 90's. Not only do Max, Michael, and Isabel have to deal with the day to day struggles of fitting in, pressures to drink, and the urge to have sex, but they have to deal with protecting their secret identity as extra-terrestrials

Basically, it's like the OC if they spent half the time running from the FBI.

I get a lot of crap for liking this show. People ask me what I see in it.

Is it well written?

Ehh, not exactly. Well, what about the acting. It must be good.

Well, Katherine Heigl's in it, so...

Why on Earth(haha) do I love this show so much? When I step back and watch it, it really lacks redeeming qualities. While you're watching it, there will be times when you just want to strangle the main character because of how whiny and annoying she is, because of how melodramatic she makes her life, or because she suddenly becomes a super-genius for one episode because... well, the writers said so. The other characters aren't much better, but when they're sharing a network with 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dawson's Creek, there's a certain quota for unnecessary drama that they need to fill to stay on the air.

Be that as it may, at some point, they all start to strangely feel like family. You lose sleep over wondering who killed Alex, if Sheriff Valenti will get his job back, or if Max and Liz will ever get back together. You find yourself getting toward the end of the series and wishing it wouldn't have to stop. You find yourself sitting through more crappy television and movies just because someone from the cast is in it.

Is that why I own all 3 seasons on DVD and watch them periodically? Is that why I watch the Christmas episode every year on the holidays? Is that why I still drop by this website once in a while? Is that why I read all the Twilight books when I realized it was, more or less, the exact same story?

Since then, I've moved on to "better" shows. I religiously watched 24 and Lost to the bittersweet end. I've less religiously watched House, Fringe, and Grey's Anatomy. I've cursed the networks for canceling shows like The Black Donellys, Arrested Development, and Deadwood. I'm addicted to Californication and True Blood, finally caught up on Breaking Bad, and just getting into Mad Men... but to shamelessly quote Sara Bareilles, "Something always brings me back to you. It never takes too long" Roswell, I wish I knew how to quit you.

There's something to that sentimental value it has. I was eleven when I watched this, my TV still on the WB from when I watched Pokemon after school. I would watch Max, Liz, Michael, Maria, Isabel, Kyle, Alex and Tess struggle through high school, subconsciously shaping my expectations for my own adolescence after their experiences. I wanted to have the kind of romance that Max and Liz had, or the kind of friends that Michael and Maria were. In that way, Roswell is a part of me, a part of who I am. We are inseparable entities and anyone who can't understand Roswell can't understand me.

I suppose that's why I love it. Oh... that and...

Her

Yeah, she's lovely...

Dexter Dissected

The other day, one of my professors casually mentioned before class began that he was looking for a new television series to watch, and asked if anyone had any suggestions. The students who replied were unanimous in their answer, telling him that he should see the Showtime series Dexter."Don't listen to the haters," one young lady advised, "buy the first season and cherish every moment of it."

Though I've watched a few episodes of the show when it was in its first season, I did so with the feeling that there was something not necessarily immoral, but skewed or innacurate about the way the show's serial-killer protagonist, Dexter Morgan was portrayed.

For those who have not seen any episodes of Dexter, or read any of the Jeff Lindsay novels that the series is based off of, the show can be described as centering on a serial killing police-officer (played by Michael C. Hall) with a code of conduct; he allows himself to kill only other murderers.

Before I go further on the subject, let me say that I understand that the general public is not forced to consume any kind of entertainment, (much less accept it) and as such I can respect people's right to enjoy things that don't appeal to me. Within certain limitations, I'm a believer in the oft-stated belief that "to each his own." For this reason, the only question I really feel entitled to raise concerning Showtime's critically acclaimed series is what that very acclaim says about the people giving it.

To get right to the point, what bothers me about Dexter is not the fact that a premium-priced cable television network decided to produce a show about a sympathetic, honor-bound serial killer; after all, such a network's only real responsibility is to provide programming that will get watched. What bothers me is that almost every opinion I've seen or heard offered on the subject of the show, through T.V., internet, and radio has been one of unreserved praise. In my opinion, the phenomenon of Dexter's success is symptomatic of a cultural addiction to retribution. The kind of logic that deems a man like Dexter "a necessary evil" is the same kind that fails to understand why something like a prison renovation should be necessary; after all, the point of prisons is to make bad people suffer, right?

Showtime offered people a show premised with the idea that a sociopath who relishes the killing of serial-killers might be just the thing to tie up our justice-system's loose ends, and people ate it up.

The problem I see with this premise stems from one of its implications; namely, the idea that the ends (dead serial killers) justify the means (a living serial killer). Even in a world in which a sociopath had the self-control or moral compass to kill only "bad guys," (an idea I
find absurd in the extreme) it is vital to recognize that the character of the people he murders is incidental to the homicidal aspect of his nature.

Dexter Morgan kills bad people not because because they are bad, but because they are human beings in the same sense that you, my reader, are a human being. If you watch this show some time in the near future, I would urge you to remember that.