Sunday / Monday night lights

Wowee wow wow, as Borat would say, it's like the execs at Fox are reading this blog! This is why I'd like to use this space to thank Rupert Murdoch for casting Paul McCrane as Jack's brother on 24. Rupes must know from a previous entry that I love the formerly red Afro'ed PMC from his work on ER, and he thusly cast him as Jack's evil twin. Never mind that they resemble each other in the way that I resemble Dennis Rodman. I trust that PMC will add some much-needed snark to an otherwise humorless show, full of nuclear expolosions in LA (who needed that place, anyway?) and Jack crying!?!

Moving over to the ol' Home Box Office, I've been enjoying this second and final season of Rome muchly. The first two episodes have blown all of the last season out of the water in terms of quality and entertainment value. With Caesar murdered, everyone is going batshit crazy. A kind of proto-Mafia is warring in the city (one captain is killed by being put in a bag full of SNAKES and then drowned.) Mark Antony is trying to keep the young, effete, but highly intelligent Octavian from his inheritance as Caesar's adopted son, and Cleopatra is swooping in majestically with lots of eyeliner on to make Mark Antony's f*ckbuddy, Atia, go insane with jealousy. Best line from Atia to Cleo? "Die screaming, you pig-spawned trollop." I'm waiting for the opportunity to use that turn of phrase myself.

Rome is no Deadwood, but it's appealing in many ways, one of which being that I can actually understand all the political machinations taking place. Thank God for HBO teaching me about such varied historical periods as ancient Rome and the Old West, because I certainly napped through every high school history class I ever took. And when learning about the troubled years before the formation of the Triumvirate involves seeing Mark Antony's c*ck repeatedly, count me in. Because he's hot, in an aging British guy sort of way.