Meanwhile, Back At The Reason I Do This...

FIRST OF ALL, there is nothing that makes a single man with no kids feel older than when your goddaugther turns eighteen. There, I've assiduously ordered my life so that I can effectively live in my appointed Apatownian manchild bubble, and she's gotta go off to University and go turn eighteen. Oh Well.

I will have to explain to her how every moment from here on in, her time in the most desired demographic ticks away.

So then -- where were we? Ah yes. Not the energy or the time to get too far into any of it, but in a roundup of late-summer content:

Wilco (The Album) continues to delight and inspire me as I work, and bop around town in my car. It's pretty great.

I'm really enjoying an advance copy I'm reading of a a book by a Globe& Mail reporter on a subject that speaks right at the heart of Canadian myth...

Nurse Jackie ended a bit disappointingly for me, mainly because we didn't really learn very much more abou Jackie than we knew at the beginning of the season. Still, I've decided I will follow Edie Falco anywhere. And it's nice to see her looking kinda hot, like on OZ.

I've worked my way through the special features on the first season of thirtysomething, and there is much, much, much wisdom and writerly information there. They manage to do full interviews with most of the writers, including Joseph Dougherty, Paul Haggis, Liberty Godshall, and Richard Kramer. Disappointing that there's no Winnie Holzman, but whatareyougonnado? There's pretty good insight into the showrunning process of Herskovitz and Zwick, too. I've dipped into a couple of the eps, and find the acting a bit mannered, but I'm still thrilled to be able to revisit this show that I watched when I was twenty. And now I'm older than all the characters. Fuck.

In the cinema, both The Hurt Locker and In The Loop are two movies that just won't let go of me. Well worth seeing.

I've also gotten through screeners of two HBO shows. The first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm is desperately funny in that signature Larry David way. Really top of form. And Episode 3, the start of the "Seinfeld reunion" arc, promises a lot to come...I think it's going to be a good one.

Bored to Death is something else entirely. It's like a Wes Anderson movie in half hour segments. Ted Danson continues to turn in another winning post Damages performance. He's playing basically the same character, only in a comic incarnation. Zach Galifianakis and Jason Schwartzman have a delicious Odd Couple vibe, and you really feel New York all over the thing.

And what can one say about Mad Men? Better and better and better.