Rescue Me – Another Crazy Season

Rescue Me – Another Crazy Season

Lately, I don’t get out much. My life does not exactly revolve around the television shows that I watch, but they at least occupy a portion of my daily thoughts. I like provocative, edgy writing and quirkiness, which explains my leaning towards cable drama offerings such as Monk, The Shield, and Rescue Me.

Rescue Me is possibly my favorite at this point, as it is capable of shocking me, provoking thought, and making me laugh out loud repeatedly throughout a single episode. Just the plot lines, which while ludicrous still come off as possible in this world of ours, make me shake my head as I think them over.

And the writers know that they seem crazy, making light of themselves in a scene from the show two weeks ago. I am not sure what the title of the show was, and am not going to spend a lot of time being exact about it, but the gist of it was; Tommy (Dennis Leary), is having a crisis (as always). He walks into a New York pub, orders the most expensive Whiskey behind the bar, a couple hundred dollars worth for a couple of tall glasses of the stuff.

When he doesn’t have any money to pay for it he tells the bartender that he’s FDNY, which apparently gets these guys free reign throughout New York. This is a theme throughout the show. I do not know if it is like this in New York still, but that is how it is portrayed.

The bartender at first doesn’t believe him, and Tommy breaks into a monologue where he first shows the crowd around him his scars from fire-fighting. Then he tells them what’s going on in his life, how his estranged wife is pregnant with a child that could be either his brother’s or his own child and how he just saw his dead son riding the downtown bus.

Dennis Leary pulls this off quite well, and with a straight face, bringing sympathy to a character that on paper is a selfish, abusive, self-serving bully. The mood and the buttons this show pushes are all over the place.

It's not always perfect, there a lot of red herring plots that seem to fizzle out, such as one character’s daughter being abducted by a girlfriend/benefactor. Watching this show, you get the idea that the writer’s are allowed free reign but also told to drop plots that producers feel are not going well, after they are aired.

As far as I can tell, there are two episodes left this season, and this is a show for season-ending plot turns. Recently, Tommy’s son was killed by a drunk driver, and his uncle killed the drunk driver in another episode. Now, two main characters might die.

Central to it all is the FDNY, and the reverence each and every one of these characters hold for the fire department, even those that aren't fire-fighters. These characters make the New York buddy set from "Seinfeld," seem like a group of missionaries, but still respect the job and look to the other’s in their "House,"(Firehouse) closer than anyone, especially their families.

The firemen come off as a group of Prima Donna’s at times, but sprinkled throughout the show are telling signs of why they look on it all the way they do. When a friend of Tommy’s from his days in probationary school gets hurt critically in a fire, Tommy spends a lot of time in the hospital room, helping his friends wife cope as his friend is continually whittled down, his legs and arms amputated, and then, when the wife is out of the room, Tommy tells his buddy to just let go.

It is touching at times, and done well enough that you forget that one scene before you were laughing at gay jokes or that a nun just got done sleeping with Tommy’s room mate. I recommend "Rescue Me," highly, and hope it keeps coming back as fresh as it has this season.

Blogging for the sake of Blogging

It’s been a short, unbelievable, summer. I can’t begin to explain…and am not going to, but in between 60 hour work weeks, 100 degree weather, a sober Jimmy Buffet concert, and constant exhaustion, I have been smiling. Now I’ve decided to Blog a little more, very often I’ve had something to say and did not not post it because I wanted to use this space for stories, well, no more. So I’ll keep prattle to a minimum, but beware…some blogging is on the Horizon.

Tour de Floyd Landis has another bad stage.

I am a bicycling fan, not hard-core, but I follow enough of it to know who wins the Tour De France, and how they did it. Not just Lance Armstrong, before him it was that french(?) guy, and before that with Greg Lemond, the Tour De France has(had) a purity to it that many other sports can only hope to approach. What is better than a bunch of guys dueling up and down the hills of France on bicycles?
Nothing.

Behold, Europe has it’s own bureacracies and International biking as well, and none of it has escaped the stench of steroids. Sooooo, a whole bunch of cyclists were kicked out of the race before it even began, including most of the ones I knew of, Hamilton, Ullrich…, but they had a good field and after those first awkward days, I began following it as I always have, online and on OLN. It was fun, and Floyd Landis pulled some heroics that had me looking forward and not back to the Armstrong years. Seriously, it didn’t hurt my interest level that he was American, but I believe I could have latched on to anyone that pulled the kind of comeback he did.

Now, he’s tested positive for high testosterone levels. I’m not a chemist, or informed about any of it, but my gut instinct is this guy didn’t cheat. Look at him! Okay, they have enhancing drugs that won’t bulk him up, but nothing of what I’ve seen about this guy tells me he’s done anything but have more guts than the rest of the field to win bicycling’s premier event.

Of course it has already been tarnished, irreparably, but no matter if I spend the next year hearing updates on ESPN about Floyd’s blood levels, I will let myself enjoy what he did. It was pure guts, and that’s what it should be about.

Zombies..Cheerleaders...Whatever....

Zombies, we have Zombies Going to College!!

Am I the only one in this country who got chills in his spine last weekend and throughout this week with the story about the college cheerleader who broke her neck and still showed her team spirit?

Okay, if you missed it, a cheerleader for SIU(Southern Illinois University) fell off the top of their little pyramid and landed on her head. I saw it live and first went "ouch!", I mean, she took a serious header. That shit had to hurt, I feel for the girl, truly, but the aftermath is what ends up being creepy.

So, they cart her off on a gurney, mobilized except for her arms, and just ash she is heading out the exit she raises her arms and goes along with a cheer.

Right there, I got chills. I thought at first, "Well, she must be alright," like the thumbs up from a football player or something. Then, the whole inappropriateness of it struck me, she wasn’t giving the thumbs up, she was cheering, as if her little cheerleader mind was programmed to do nothing else, like a broken toy.

I’m not meaning to condescend to the girl, I admire her toughness and terminal cheeriness. What disturbed me even more was the coverage in the national press. Articles appeared throughout the week, I saw them both online and in print, lauding the girl for her "school spirit", complete with quotes from the girl about how she just hoped that her team kept fighting. What?? This girl bruised her spine, lost control of parts of her body for some period of time and she’s worried about the goddamn basketball team?? What the Fuck!!

Hey, I’m a hardcore sports fan. I’ve tread the line between realizing it is a game and taking it waaaay too seriously, but I fall on my head and risk being paralyzed and the last thing on my mind is how the fucking team is doing.

I wonder what they do at those cheerleading camps.