Accidental Science

Last week on House, we learned that if you're in pain, and you experience new, stronger pain, the pre-existing pain gets pushed aside so your brain can concentrate on the new, more urgent pain.

This morning, I learned that if you have a truly hideous case of the flu, you can make your body forget about it for a few hours by falling down the stairs to your basement office so hard that the right side of your body, from jaw to kneecap, turns into a giant scrape-cum-bruise.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Superhero TV thoughts

On this week's Smallville: "Hi, Metropolis University? This is Georgetown. We'd like our colors and mascot back, thanks."

On tonight's Teen Titans: Who'd have thunk they could get such emotional impact and resonance from an episode whose plot was largelt lifted from Army of Darkness? This show's best moments continue to astonish me.

On tonight's Justice League Unlimited: I love Mister Miracle. I've never quite been able to quantify why exactly he's probably my favorite Jack Kirby character...but after tonight's episode I suspect it's the boundless, joyful sense of hope and imagination and freedom the character embodies. Now, if only Mattel would get to work on a figure...

PSA: Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is a masterful work of film -- one of those movies so perfect it's impossible to imagine it being done any other way, one that resonates and stays with you long after you've left the theatre. I give it my highest recommendation.

That said, if you're like me, you spent a fair amount of the movie trying to figure out where you'd seen some of the actors in it. This happens a lot with Clint Eastwood's films, since he tends to use lots of working actors. Anyway, Danger, the young boxer, is the guy who played Steven on Undeclared. The actor who played the priest was the IRA terrorist being temporarily held in Oz who tried to blow up the prison with Ryan O'Reilly's help.

Unfortunately, there are some self-righteous lackwits who are, apparently, too damn stupid to understand that art thrives on ambiguity and the presentation of an act is not necessarily an endorsement of that act, and so have taken it upon themselves to destroy the film -- literally spoil it -- by spreading plot details best unknown before entering the theatre. If you haven't seen it, don't click this next link; if you have, though, Roger Ebert does an excellent job of detailing just why this is such a despicable and lousy thing to do.

Doctor 6?

Watching tonight's episode of House, I was struck by what a Patrick McGoohan vibe Hugh Laurie gave off in that horrid turtleneck.

That is all. Go read Polite Dissent for a review of the medicine in the episode.

One more thing: Fox now has two shows -- House and That 70s Show -- featuring characters named Eric Foreman who are beset by demanding and curmudgeonly father figures. I'm just sayin', is all, here.

The Cat and the Canary

Two thought on last night's episode of Justice League Unlimited, entitled "The Cat and the Canary":

1. Casting Dennis Farina as Wildcat was perfectly inspired. I just hope Mattel's Wildcat figure lives up to the depiction of the character we saw last night.

2. On Black Canary: I didn't know you could make a cartoon character do that. Not that I object, mind you...

A rational choice query

If one forgets that one has a bottle cap for a free 20-oz. Coke product, and buys a 20-oz. Diet Coke, and that bottle cap is also for a fre 20-oz. Coke product, has one lost money on the deal, come out ahead, or what?

Ossie Davis, RIP

The AP is reporting that Ossie Davis has died after the kind of life and career that makes you feel like a complete slacker in comparison. I think his last role was in the superb, and oddly affecting, Bubba Ho-Tep, which you should run out and see if you haven't already.

Weird Sesame Street moments

This Monsterpiece Theatre transcript is probably the closest thing we will ever see to a Sesame Street/Twin Peaks crossover. Me love Cookie Monster. Him very funny.

Behind the cowbell

All you ever needed to know about the cowbell on Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper."

At my funeral, "Don't Fear the Reaper" will be played, and mourners will be given miniature cowbells and asked to play along. So if you're planning to outlive me, don't say I didn't warn you when an usher hands you a cowbell and tells you to start playing.

Boldly Gone

Star Trek: Enterprise has been cancelled. I'm going to miss the weekly adventures of that guy from Quantum Leap, and the other guy who sorta looks like Dubya did in college, and the Vulcan chick, and the black guy who did things, and the Asian lady who did things, too. I won't miss that horrid, mawkish opening song, though. It would be nice if Paramount would strip it from the episodes and replace it with an instrumental theme, or a song by Pink Lady, or sweet and blessed silence, for syndication and DVDs.