John Walker's Electronic House

David Letterman did something decent last night. Just a bit late. He finally apologised for having cut Bill Hicks from his show in 1993, on Hicks’ twelfth appearance. Hicks was furious, and died a year later having never forgiven Letterman. Letterman expressed regret at the time, but never acknowledged that cutting the segment was an act of revolting cowardice, and demonstrative that he had lost any purpose he might have once had.

Fifteen years late, last night Letterman had Mary Hicks, Bill’s mother, on the show, and apologised to her personally. There’s then an over-rehearsed interview with her, but importantly this is an eight minute segment with a complete unknown, and the mother of a man most of the key demographics might never have heard of. And once the rehearsed anecdotes are over, Mary gives him some shit for what he did. Which is fairly fantastic. And then Letterman shows the original tape uncut.

I like that Letterman acted on this. He’s been haunted by it for a long time, and has said as much in the past. He’s done the right thing, and seemingly done it in a way that’s not scoring points, or linked in to something with which he might want to associate himself. It seems to be a genuine act of contrition.

The videos of the segments are below, but CBS in their infinite stupidity will have these removed from YouTube very soon. I’ll try and update them with working versions, and hopefully Worldwide Pants will have the sense to put the clips online in full very soon. Stick with it through the fuckwittery of the audience as they nervously laugh at the beginning – it’s revolting, but it’s not Letterman’s doing.

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While in the States, Kim and I went to the Adventure Aquarium in New Jersey. I love aquariums, because things are either colourful, or sharks. These are both good.

But the very best thing in the whole building, even better than the beautiful giant turtle, or the gorgeous colours of the jellyfish, was the sign on the desk at the entrance.

I bent in half laughing, with the staff staring at me in confusion, and Kim staring at me with resigned familiarity. I can’t wait for them to get it working! All those physicists will look pretty silly when they have to go to the New Jersey aquarium.

Rest of the pics here.

Edit: Ooh, 1000th blog post.

No spoilers, promise. Just watched the first episode of the final 10, and it’s important to note, for the record, that Kim and Nick have come up with what must surely be the correct theory that explains the entire show.

Just making the note here now to prove that they’re geniuses later. And to make sure, here’s a cryptic statement – I don’t believe you could possibly take anything from it, but don’t click below if you’re dedicated:

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The main problem with my life is that I don’t know anyone with whom to share this most exciting news ever.

Cursed life.

So there’s a final part to the US election results that needs to be added. It’s the wretched, miserable part, but it cannot be ignored. It’s the spiteful pill dropped in the water. California’s Proposition 8.

It made what should have been a jubilant Wednesday into a bitter tasting victory. Obama, a man many hold up as representing hope (and indeed is already delivering on it, with plans to end the human rights abuse of Guantanamo Bay, and reversing Bush’s plans for devastating oil drilling and his prevention of stem cell research), never said anything against Prop 8 in the time he campaigned, rather prevaricating and embarrassingly avoiding an issue he knew would lose him votes.

Somehow the people of the defiantly Democrat California voted in favour of this most hate-driven bill.

It just doesn’t make any sense. I can attempt to understand the reasons why people say they are against homosexuality (although that sounds as mad as being against weather). I get that this is born of the fear of otherness. I get that people are infected by religion that tells them to hate certain people. I get that people are terrified of their own sexuality, and want to destroy the subject. I cannot sympathise with any of these people, but I recognise that they think these things. But I just cannot comprehend how anyone can take issue with two people getting married.

It’s such an aimless hate. Generally people will pick on promiscuity when they want to pronounce what’s wrong with gay people (while seeming oddly quiet on the same subject applied to heterosexuals). Faced with a couple who want to commit to one another for life, who are in love and want their partnership to be recognised, how does this hate not at least dampen? And how – just how – does gay marriage translate in people’s minds to be in some way “harming” marriage itself?

This is what’s so utterly moronic about the whole thing. They are not only campaigning to prevent same-sex marriage, but with such an astonishing volume of bilious hate have passed a bill that could legally divorce all those who were previously married, because they claim that it was in some way endangering marriage itself.

And it’s such a stupid, stupid lie. One marriage doesn’t change another! If I should ever get married, it will likely be to a Christian, and we will declare our love before God and the church, and our faith will be the reason behind that marriage. I cannot understand how any marriage, from two drunken strangers getting married in a drive-thru in Vegas, to a loving gay or straight couple publicly declaring their commitment in the next town, can in any way do harm to my (currently imaginary) relationship. Because it obviously can’t. It’s sheer, bleeding-eyed madness to suggest otherwise.

So a couple in love who want to spend their lives together, in a recognised commitment, whether before God or themselves, who are the same sex – how on Earth could that change anything? You know how it can change it? I reinforces it. It recognises the sanctity of marriage, and celebrates it. It nurtures the concept of marriage.

I felt hope when Obama won. Not because I believe he can change the world – in fact I fear he will be remembered as one of the most vilified and loathed presidents, as the actions of the Republicans bear their fruit throughout his term/s and a stupid majority level him with the blame – but because people made the choice that I believe was most right. America proved everyone wrong when it was said they weren’t ready to elect a black man. That gave me more hope in people. It was a hope so quickly undone when Prop 8 was officially declared as passed. Where I’d felt pride before, it was replaced by disgust. That Prop 8 was ever proposed generates a great deal of horror. The idea that a minority of people were so spiteful as to try and dissolve marriages of loving couples because of their own, private prejudices, was depressing and painful. That a majority – that more people were in favour of this than against it – look, I’m an optimist. I get teased for my faith in humanity by my friends. It took one hell of a blow on Wednesday. Just what? What? Is this where we are as a people?

People voted against love. That’s fucked up. We’re in a terrible, terrible place.

As I started writing this, I saw Olbermann has commented on the subject, and captures the hurt this hate has created. He too seems just bewildered, hurt and disgusted by this most awful of results.

A friend of a friend also makes some wise and passionate remarks about it here and here.

My life has become a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Two nights ago, sat up a bit late after writing a complicated email, it was 3.30am and I was long, long overdue for bed. I heard a noise to my right, and assumed Dexter was in the room. However, looking back up at me was not the naughty face of a cat, but a cheeky little rodent nose poking out from between two piles of videogame boxes stacked on the floor beside me. A little mouse, shaking his tiny fist at being spotted by the giant human.

“Well,” I said, “what are we going to do with you?” The mouse didn’t reply, because it’s a mouse, and as such cannot talk, nor even comprehend the concept of a verbal language. However, through the mutual communication shared through our mammalian roots, I was able to tell the mouse’s instinctual reply was, “Hide behind the mess all over your floor, and poo.”

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Worst Week – CBS

Apparently based on a UK show called The Worst Week Of My Life, this is a nice single camera sitcom with a good cast, nice script, but it’s completely unwatchable. It’s Everything-That-Can-Go-Wrong-Will-Go-Wrong comedy, and it doesn’t matter how well that’s put together, it remains unbearable. The pain of inevitability is too much to bear. So while it’s fun for the first half of the first episode, as our anti-hero somehow ends up naked, in another woman’s apartment, while he’s meant to be at his girlfriend’s parents house to announce her pregnancy and their engagement, that’s as much as I could take. When he’d pissed on the basting goose, leading to the father being knocked out, and then rested at a funeral home, causing him to tell the family that he’s dead… I switched off.

The Big Bang Theory – CBS

Being old-fashioned in the world of sitcoms is a rare treat now. TBBT’s multi-camera, live studio audience, front-facing sets are something from the early 90s. It’s comfortable and fun. And thankfully, funny. While a show about two super-geniuses really needs some smarter people on the writing staff (saying “string theory” is often as close as they get to demonstrating their proficiency in physics), and the premise – their living opposite a blonde waitress with no smarts at all, and the comedy japes that ensue – sounds bloody awful, somehow it isn’t. It makes me laugh out loud, and that’s what counts.

How I Met Your Mother – NBC

Season 4 makes no significant changes to the fantastic formula, and it remains just as great. The confusing combination of multi-camera and single-camera sitcom formats, with an audience tacked on later, is still odd. But the cast is bigger and better than all that. And the format for time-muddling flashback/forward stories is still a winner. Episode 2’s search for the perfect burger does this splendidly – nothing to worry about here.

Gary Unmarried – CBS

A new sitcom from CBS, which is a bit sloppy, but kind of sweet. Man is divorced, has two kids, meets divorced woman with one kid, ex-wife still around, people say snappy dialogue. Possibly the stand-out feature was the realistic writing with the son, but there’s not a great deal more to it than that.

Ugly Betty – ABC

Season 3 starts with a bit of a reset on the cliffhanger of season 2, with Betty dumping both men in her life. But a lot else has changed, with Daniel fired from Mode, now working on a dreadful men’s mag, while Wilhelmina Slater is now in charge. Lindsay Lohan makes her fabled appearance, as is fine. But best is the decision to push the fairytale madness a step further. Daniel’s office is now a baby room for Wilhelmina’s surrogate baby, that looks like it was decorated by Tim Burton. The Mode offices are now so cold that everyone shivers, the sets all icy blue, to satisfy Wilhelmina’s whim. And everything good in Betty’s life is destroyed within the first episode, setting things up a new rock bottom to test her zesty steel. Not enough elaborately insane conspiratorial machinations appearing yet – nothing to compete with season 1’s glorious bandaged figure in the mysterious hospital ward (despite slightly bailing on the reveal, as much fun as the result was). Meanwhile, every scene with Amanda and Marc is, as ever, non-stop delightful.

Knight Rider – NBC

It’s hard to imagine how this could be any worse. A blank screen that punches you in the face every fifteen seconds would be preferable. I loved the awfulness of the original, and indeed the matching terribleness of the recent pilot for this new run. But the first episode proper was such ghastly gibberish as to defy belief. Worth watching an episode just to appreciate how terrible TV can be.

I love September, and all the new TV shows starting. What a happy fun time. I shall do a rundown of what’s great, and what’s terrible, soon enough. But first, I think it’s important to share a picture from this week’s premier of Survivor, where CBS accidentally showed a Marcus Lehman’s winky on national television.

There are billions of versions of this pic about – apparently it’s the fourth most searched for thing on Google today, which is hilarious. But this is my very own snap. Mum and dad, you must be so proud.

The guy’s name is Lehman, so perhaps this is some sort of clever social satire about the evil banks being exposed? I imagine that’s definitely it.

It’s been ages since I posted a picture of Dexter. So why not.

Two more.

Oops.

More pics.