A Dramatic Life

I'm a big fan of drama; my shelves are stuffed with films and books with it. Once I even dreamed of making a career of it. But I never get accustomed to the excess of drama in my day to day life. Everyone has drama in their lives. Mine just sometimes has more of a David Lynch aspect to it. Observe:

Last week I was reading a really good book by Eloisa James called – I dunno, one of the Duchess books. All of her books are really good and several of them are Duchess oriented. I particularly liked DUCHESS BY NIGHT if anyone's looking for a recommendation. And the one I read last week – OK, I'm looking it up, it's WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS. Also, I was wrong. While I thoroughly enjoyed DUCHESS BY NIGHT, I skipped ahead to the woman-in-man's-clothing reveal because it was inevitable and I wasn't up to the ring-around-the-shenanigans to get there. I did love A DUKE OF HER OWN (also known as Villiers' book). It absolutely paid off all the hype I've heard about it. Plus, Eloisa writes a kicking book, and she's a Shakespeare scholar, so major points there. Go pick it up.

Back to last week. I was reading WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS (it's fantastic) and I was totally involved with it to the point that I didn't want to stop reading just because I was leaving the office. Oh, didn't I mention that? Sorry. We were on the slow slide towards the end of the day that day so I'd begun reading while at work. Caught up? Good.

I should say here that I am notorious for being unable to put down a book. I power read – once I've begun, I usually don't want to stop until I've completed the story. If it's a really good book, I just want to consume it in one sitting. If it's bad, I just want out, but this doesn't mean I stop reading. I cannot seem to grasp the concept that the book will still be there in the morning, which explains my long history of staying up late reading, often by flashlight to offset parental interruptions and/or scolding.

Anyways. Last week. I knew that if I went home, I was unlikely to be given the space and peace to finish my book (see above: parental interruptions – some things never change). Cannily (I thought), I decided to stop at my local Starbucks, treat myself to a hot caramel apple cider (oh so yummy!) and settle into a chair to finish my novel. This I did, cell phone lying on the table before me set on vibrate, 40s torch songs blessedly playing over the store's speakers. I even had a patron vacate a leather chair just as I was picking up my drink. Pretty dang close to a good night.

So, naturally, I had to pay for that.

I came to the end of the novel and consequently up for air around 8:30 pm. Automatically, I checked my cell phone; there were four messages. The first was an hour old message from my mother (no surprise there) apparently stuck at the physical therapist office with no ride home. The second was from the Life Alert people (we have their system in our apartment in the event my mother should fall or have a medical issue while alone). The alarm in my living room had gone off and they were unable to reach her. I was very interested to hear this as, as far as I knew, my mother was still at the PT office. The third message was from the Waldwick Police Department, telling me that they'd been called by Life Alert because my mother's alarm went off and they, the Life Alert people, were unable to reach her or me as it turned out. At this point, I was beginning to wonder if my mom was really in danger, or if she thought somehow that pushing her emergency button would get her a ride home from PT. Really not out of the realm of possibility for her.

The fourth message was the imaging people at my doctor's office reminding me of my mammogram appointment the next day. Cause anticipating that was going to make things better.

In case you don't know, this is how the Life Alert is designed to work: If it goes off, first they check with my mom at the house. When they can't get her, they call my cell phone. Normally, this is where it stops and has stopped in the past when the alarm has gone off, because I've been able to say, I'll look into it, and there ends Life Alert's responsibility. If they can't get me on the cell, they call my office. If I don't respond to those two calls and no one is responding at the house, then the company contacts the police to go out and check.

An aggrieved call to my mother found her safe and well and at home, but very upset. With her relative well-being confirmed, I let loose my fury, selfishly consumed with the thought that I couldn't go off the radar for two and a half hours. And that was before I checked in with the police and found out that they'd gone into my apartment to search for my mother. Now I was desperately praying that they hadn't kicked the door in as not only have I forgotten the combination to the lock box I put on my doorknob for just these situations, I also neglected to register the combination with Life Alert. Yep, I was batting a thousand on the home care there.

Once home I found my mother visibly shaken, as in literally shaking, the scotch and ginger ale not making any dent in her reaction. Why? Because when my mom got home from PT, transport issue resolved, my landlord S greeted her at the door in hysterics. Apparently not one, not two, but THREE local police stations sent men to my house along with an ICU mobile unit from the hospital. S let them all into the apartment relieving my door-kicked-in fears, and they thoroughly searched it, and then they searched the backyard with flashlights, and then they searched the front driveway with flashlights and then – they all went home.

And why you may ask? Why did all these fine public servants arrive at my house? Why had the Life Alert gone off when not only was no one in the house, but the lanyard emergency button was with my mother, out of range, nearly two towns away?

Cats. The company told my mother the cats must have set it off. Riiiggghhhtt.

While it's not nearly the point, I'm compelled to defend my cats by saying that the device is in the living room, which is blocked by a child gate whenever no one is in the room to preserve my furniture from territory marking kitties. No, they can't jump the gate; two are too fat and the other is too scared. It wasn't the cats. The bloody box malfunctioned.

Speaking of my cats, it's about 20 minutes after I got home that I said to my mother "have you seen the cats?" I mean, the cops were all over the place, but did they close the door behind them? Thankfully, all three almost immediately came out of hiding, so it was a nonissue – but clearly I am a bad kitty mother because this concern barely fazed me.

All this – ALL THIS – because I went off the grid for a mere two and a half hours. And yes, yes, I lied to my mother and told her my phone had turned itself off (which it does) when I just hadn't been paying attention to it. I know, I know, I'm going to hell for that one, or at least it'll be one of what's sure to be many things to tick off at the judgment seat. Got it. Don't forget to add a fondness for vodka. Thanks.

But I learned one crucial thing from this experience. Figure out the lockbox code? Yeah, that's a priority right now, but not what I meant. Get a new alarm box? Boy. Howdy. But not that it either. Find the peace within to care for an ailing parent without regressing to the point that I need to hide away in a Starbucks to read a damn ass novel uninterrupted? Pshaw. Like that's gonna happen.

So what's the come-to-Jesus epiphany I've had from my latest you-just-can't-make-this-crap-up experience?

This, right here, this exact sort of thing, this is why I make my bed every morning.

Appointment Television - FNL and BSG

Tonight marks the premieres of two of the best shows on TV: Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica.

Friday Night Lights IS the best show on television. Yes, its second season fell off the wagon a bit, but that first glorious season is as near to perfect television as it gets. The continuing story of the Texas-based Dillon Panthers high school football team and the lives that revolve around it is so much more than just about football. Anchored by the mesmerizing and as yet cruelly unawarded performances by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Eric and Tammy Taylor (otherwise known as Coach and Mrs. Coach), it is an entrancing, enriching, funny, and at times achingly heartbreaking show about small town life and big time dreams.

FNLs third season debuts tonight at 9 pm on NBC (channel 4) after completing its full and exclusive run this week on DirecTV's channel 101. I wasn't fazed when it was announced that DirecTV would have exclusive fall rights to FNL in return for sharing production costs as I had DirecTV in my Weehawken apartment. I became slightly less sanguine about it when the trees sheltering my new apartment prohibited the installation of DirecTV, but it was this arrangement or no FNL at all, so I sucked it up and waited the delay out.

The news from the DirecTV front is that FNL is fully back in the awesome saddle. Do yourself a favor. Make your peace with the jumpy camera work, dive into the rare and phenomenally executed organic filming process (multiple cameras floating around the scene so the actors have to be fully "on" all the time. Such. Good. Work.), and discover the glory of Friday Night Lights.

Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.

A world away in content and yet neck in neck for quality is Battlestar Galactica. I adored the original version of this program that ran from 1978-1979 and for awhile (and to my mother's horror) insisted that any girl children my future might hold would be named Cassiopeia Athena. I remember Jane Seymour's short-lived role as Apollo's wife Serina before I ever knew who she was. When she was killed off, my mother commented that it was probably because she cost too much.

That lovingly time-capsuled show is highly outclassed by the reincarnated masterpiece that showrunner Ron Moore has created in today's BSG.

At its core are the career performances of Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell who are mind-blowingly fantastic as the admiral of the ragtag fleet and the president of the surviving colonists respectively. It's a master class of acting every week surrounded by a show that is never simply science fiction. The Star-Ledger's television critic Alan Sepinwall puts it thus:

"What I've always admired about "Galactica" is the way that it goes back to the roots of science-fiction. We've grown accustomed to the "Star Wars" model of sci-fi, where we want adventure stories with space battles, and robots and aliens, and time travel. "Galactica" has all of that - the outerspace dogfights, when they still do them, are as thrilling as you'll find, especially given the modest basic cable budget - but at its heart, it's using all the familiar sci-fi tropes to tell stories about people, who we are now and how we might react to a fantastic situation.

The series began as an allegory for 9/11, and over the years, it's been able to tell stories about Iraq, and religious fundamentalism, and abuse of power - all dressed up in sci-fi drag, to make the subjects more palatable, and to remove enough present-day context that it might make you question your own beliefs. It's one thing to be horrified by insurgent suicide bombers, but what if you're watching a show where the characters you root for have been placed in a situation (as they were a few seasons ago) where they're the insurgency?

And regardless of politics, what makes "Galactica" so gripping is its emphasis on character over hardware. The explosions and the killer robots are cool, but they don't stack up to seeing fully-drawn people - brought to life by a great writing staff led by producer Ron Moore and an astonishing cast led by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - grapple with these life-or-death, genocide-level decisions." (See Alan's complete review here.)

Sure there have been missteps along the way, episodes not as up to par as others and characters that I happily would have thrown out of the airlock. And while I was horrified when it was announced that the producers had made Starbuck a woman (in the classic version of the series, Dirk Benedict played Starbuck pre-A-team), I wound up really liking what they did with that dynamic even as I increasingly hated the character (Shut UP Starbuck!)

On a whole, this show cannot be beat and has only grown more apropos and eerily allegorical to the world around us with each passing week.

Over this past summer as the first half of season 4 rolled out, my moving madness prohibited me from working my way through the DVRs saved episodes. Plus I was fed up with Starbuck's whining and screaming (i cheered when she blew up in the fighter and then they had to bring her back. Pooh.) I always figured I'd get settled in the new place and have myself a BSG marathon, but that was before the above mentioned DirecTV installation disappointment when my saved episodes went the way of the dodo with an assist from the UPS guy. Thankfully, the SciFi Channel is running a marathon today of all season 4 part 1 episodes and my new DVR is memory cleansed and ready to go (frankly, it's the first time I've seen the DVR memory at under 50% since I moved in.)

Tonight's season 4 part 2 premiere at 10 pm on the SciFi Channel (check local listings) is the final one for this series as the saga winds its way through the final 10 episodes to a conclusion that will no doubt showcase some of the best drama and performances ever.

I Can't Wait.