Binge Watching II: HBO "True Detective"

Sooooo….one of the things is… with this new generation of screen entertainment….is beginning to manifest itself as a problem for me.  Binge Watching.  I expounded on this once briefly when I had the pleasure over about a month of watching “The Wire” from start to finish. % seasons worth.  Fortunately my wife was in her busy season and I really was looking for ways to kill time at night that did not involve drinking and this seemed like a healthy way to go but now I am not so sure… or indeed, not sure at.  In short, there is no sureness.

Since that time I have avoided diving into new series.  My somewhat addictive personality does not do well with temptations like this.  As a youngster and up through the first 6 months or so of having my first child I had a problem with video games.  Even in high school when I was in the thralls of romance with my eventual wife, I would sneak off to the arcade (yes, we had to go places to play video games) and pump quarters into Space Invaders.  I was unstoppable and by the end could play for 20 minutes to an ½ hour on one quarter.  This continued into college and thereafter, through Atari and into the first Nintendo System and finally ended when my wife was in the midst of some trauma with our new son and I said, “HOLD IT! I AM ABOUT TO SAVE THE PRINCESS!”  The Nintendo game was retired to my parents house and other than brief flirtations with Madden Football and Tony Hawk Pro Skater (which I justified as something I could do with my children) I really, rarely lost hours (or days) of time but that is because, like an alcoholic, I knew I had a problem.

The same thing occurred to me when watching The Wire, so being prudent (52 year old) person who has some minor level of self knowledge I decided not to go down the road with another series unless I could watch with my wife, which would severely limit my intake and ti9me consumption.  But…as I type this I am flying home from a delightful trip to Europe with my entire family and I discovered that the tricky people at American Airlines and their nefarious allies British Airways (The creepily named “ONE WORLD ALLIANCE” has endeavored to put TV reruns on these overseas flights and they got some HBO content, in the form of the “True Detective” series which just started this year (or at the end of last year).

My TV watching friends with HBO (fortunately we have Show Time which although they have some great series occasionally generally tends toward seedier stuff I am embarrassed to watch like “Shameless and “Californication”) told me “you have got to watch “True Detectives” and these are people who “know” me.  They have also been encouraging me towards “Game of Thrones” but it seems too trendy for me.  Anyway… I have fallen back into the abyss.

When flying to Europe it is of paramount importance to sleep on the way over.  This softens the jet lag and leaves you in a slightly better condition for arrival and the endless walking that every trip to Europe seems to make mandatory.  Instead I watched the end of a movie I walked out (Wolf Of Wall Street) and then a horrible, stupid movie called “Ride Along” with the dreaded “Ice Cube” and then discovered the HBO feed and “True Detective.

I have always like Woody Harrelson, even in “Cheers” but his list of films which amuse and entertain for include “White Men Can’t Jump” and of course “Zombieland”.  Matthew Mcconaughey is a little more problematic (he has always been too pretty) but recently has been wowing me in his last few films (even before “Dallas Buyers Club” and allows me to say the words that my friends say, that I never say… “I was wrong”.

These two guys are detectives in Louisiana.  Mcconnaughy has a dark past and Woody appears to be a good cop trying to make a go with a nice family and a sweet wife but as they work on a troubling case involving the ritualistic murder of a young lady… their lives and psyches start to deteriorate.  Whomever wrote it (and I don’t know because I am still on the plane and have no internet access, really built some characters and as the saga moves on through the seven episodes it becomes hypnotizing.  I was able to watch 3 on the way over and the last 4 on the way home and each episode totally failed to disappoint in any way as we dug more into the guys histories and back stories as they recount the investigation to two other detectives who are talking to them for reasons that remain unclear till we move towards the end.

Riveting.

Well scripted.

Well acted.

The season ended somewhat ambiguously and although i cannot understand how they might continue it, I hope they do.  This is worth your time and although I worry for my continued mental health… the Binge Watching continues.

Confessions Of An Addict And Thief

Sooooo.... I steal iced tea. Somewhere over ten years and more like twenty years ago... I became addicted to iced tea. Not fancy green tea. Not fruity tea and certainly not the now ubiquitous...sweet tea. Just regular old Lipton or lacking that Luzianne or any solid orange pekoe and black tea mix. American tea...from China. Starbucks even broadened me a little bit to go pure black with their Tazo tea and although I went black... I still go back and forth. It is a nice change of pace.

I don’t know when I started to steal tea. For years I brewed my own in the office but then the delis and places in the lobby of my building started to offer it so I bought it... and I bought it... often buying two or three 32oz glasses a day to feed my habit. As three went to four and finally I was drinking tea all day long. I drink over a gallon of the stuff every day. I was spending 4-5 dollars a day on tea.

It started to piss me off. I was able to cut a deal with one vendor for free refills and that was fine but then I moved law firms (again) and the tea vendor did not move with me. i went back to brewing my own but there are so many hassles with refrigeration and having the proper ice (clear ice only). My ice obsession (fetish) is also troubling. I believe cloudy ice tastes funny and melts faster. I have absolutlely no facts to back this up. I am reasonably certain that I am wrong but I remain certain that I DON’T like it.

For the last two or three years I have struck a faustian bargain with the St. Louis Bread Company People. It is not a bargain which they have taken an active part negotiating. Fortunately i am comfortable with that. And lets be clear for my out of town readers, it is THE ST. LOUIS BREAD COMPANY! I know Panera bought them. I know they use the same logo. I know they are owned by some large conglomerate...but it was ours, ours OURS! But I digress.

I steal from the Bread Co. because I like their tea, and they make it easy for me, and I give them a reasonable amount of business. For a while I had a habit of meeting clients out in various Bread Companys refering to them as “my Des Peres Office” or “my Chesterfield Office”. I really do like the Bread Company... they do an awesome job with quality control, cleanliness and really friendly, competent people. They also toast a mean bagel. At first I started to buy a new iced tea every day and then I would consider it a bottomless cup. Now I have moved on to buying one iced tea a week and then refilling throughout the week. Soon I am afraid I will be using the same cup week after week as the plastic clouds and deteriorates.

I guess this is a cry for help. My tea habit appears to be out of control. I am breaking the law by stealing from the Bread Co. to support my habit and sooner or later I can see local police leading me off in cuffs after having compiled a YouTube video of me stealing iced tea over 20,000 times... over and over and over. This could severely derail my clear path to that Supreme Court nomination that everyone is considering me for.