the single point of contact with a bigger world

Pushing Daisies (comprehensive fan site)
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (HBO site)
Various Artists, The Complete 10-Inch Series from Code Blue (compiled 2003, Rhapsody)
Breaking Bad (AMC)

I never got into Lost, and I don't say that in some superior, nrrd-pwer declaration of my individuality by subtraction - I watched a couple seasons here and there - but it didn't really do it for me. I don't have sci-fi patience, I guess, to want to reach the singularity at the end. I am really more of a 24 kind of guy. Let me jump in and then ditch a show after an hour like it was a stolen car. Breaking Bad is good TV, though they do existential dread on a day-to-day basis better than they did with last night's Tarantino-does-Beckett psychodrama but they had to do something with the Titanic of everyone's TV hopes and dreams finally pulling into port last night.

I was, however, smitten by a DVD of Pushing Daisies, an I-see-dead-people-show of almost English saccharine levels. It was as if Sufjan Stevens rewrote Dead Like Me after seeing The Royal Tennebaums, or the kind of show you might write if you'd just spent a minute in an elevator with a sobbing Zooey Deschanel. In other words, I have no standards. I'd rather watch hours of Criminal Minds than any movie. I feel goofy even talking about TV, like I'm lending it a power I don't want it to have. I liked the one episode of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency I watched this weekend too.

What I really dug this weekend besides the sweetness of my daughter's swimming pool birthday party, was this piece by Rick Cox.

♫ Rick Cox, "These Things Stop Breathing" (Rhapsody)

It seeps in on withered wisps of tinny melody, like a description of the golden age of radio by someone whose life was saved by it, for whom radio serials were the single point of contact with a bigger world and on the backs of his prepared guitars or whatever come the Weight of Realization, thick clouds of rumbling tone heavy as summer. This compilation from/of Code Blue's catalog of early California minimalism is a treasure trove of mystery and wonder, like that show is for you, so I get it, and you, a little.