I’m happy to note that the comedy is seeing new life this season. Aside from the high-buzz fall comedies, FX’s funny new shows and the return of Arrested Development and The Office, Fox has taken an early start out of the gate with the hilarious Prison Break.

Okay, Prison Break is supposed to be a drama, a tightly plotted, thrilling drama. See, Michael Schofield’s brother, Lincoln, is on death row for murdering the Vice-President’s brother. However, he believes his brother’s claims of innocence and Lincoln’s execution date is only a month away, leading Michael to concoct a daring and cunning plan.

See, it just so happens that Michael’s architecture firm was hired to retrofit the prison where Lincoln is set to bide his final days, so Michael knows the prison better than anyone who secures it. Armed with this knowledge, he commits a bank robbery and gets himself sent to the same prison as his brother, hoping to break him out from within.

I know, I know. I wanted Prison Break to work. I wanted it to present a convincing case for its overly complex premise. I wanted one of this season’s Lost clones to be as good as Lost, and this show had the most promise because it was the only one not about aliens.

But it isn’t. Unfortunately, the silly premise turns out to be even sillier when it’s fleshed out. Michael identifies the infirmary as a key location to his plans so he gets his medical records to identify him as diabetic, thus requiring frequent visits to the infirmary to receive insulin injections. However, he doesn’t have diabetes and has to take insulin suppressors to keep those injections from killing him — a drug for which he has to find a prison source.

See where I’m going with this? The whole show consists of plots that can only be described with run-on sentences. In order to sneak in the blueprints for the prison, Michael has his upper torso tattooed in a complicated pattern that camouflages the blueprints. The tattoos also include notes telling him like the specific bolt he needs to steal from the bleachers so that he can carve it into an key that will fit the prison’s locks. (Funny that the blueprints had the details of the bleachers in the yard, too.) Michael knows when he’s carved that bolt down correctly because… oh, I really shouldn’t spoil that one, as it is the biggest laugh of the show.

But wait, Michael’s scheme may sound pretty complicated but that’s only a part of what Prison Break is about. Outside of prison, Secret Service agents have mysterious and curt meetings. They suspiciously act in the interest of keeping Lincoln on track to be killed by the state. By the end of the second episode, they even make a phone call to a woman who we only see from behind. “Do what you have to do to make this go away!” she snaps at them, so you know there’s a deeply serious conspiracy trying to match up with Michael’s scheme.

Michael’s prison is filled with the prison personality cliches. There’s the gruff prison warden who has trouble expressing affection for his wife (and therefore compensates by building a model Taj Mahal out of barbeque skewers… a model that could use an archetect’s expert eye, as it just happens to turn out). There’s the mysterious and quiet prisoner who clings to a pet like a security blanket. The leader of the white supremacist gang who suggests offering sexual favors for his protection.

Generally you can tell which prisoners will turn out to be sympathetic by noting which ones look good in a tight t-shirt. They also have that same look in their eyes — you know, the one that’s supposed to suggest deep and complex emotions underneat their stern visages.

The dialog is similarly cliched where all the characters speak like the same person trying too hard to sound clever. There are some riotously funny gems in Prison Break’s script, all delivered with total, deadpan seriousness.

Amid all this there’s even wacky misunderstandings, like when, amidst a prison riot, the leader of the white supremacist gang turns his head just in time to see his cell mate/punk fall into Michael, just after another inmate has delivered mortal stab wounds to the cell mate. Prison Break’s initial pitch sounded like it would be a continuity-focused drama like Lost or 24… or Fathom Surface, Threshold or Invasion. They really could have pulled themselves away from the pack by pointing out that they would be incorporating elements of Threes Company, too.

The show gets a re-airing on Thursday and I highly recommend that you check it out with pen and paper at hand so that you can jot down ideas for the drinking game (first rule, drink everytime Michael looks to his tattoos as a reference). Get liquored up for this show because it’s an hour best enjoyed yelling catty comments at the screen. Seriously, I haven’t laughed so much for so long at the TV in a long time. Prison Break will air on Mondays, closing a night that begins with Arrested Development and Kitchen Confidential. I’ve got my hopes raised even higher for Kitchen Confidential now because if that show turns out to be good, Fox Mondays could turn out to be the funniest two hours on the fall schedule.

Okay, here’s another TV snob confession. After the first season, I always struggled to enjoy Seinfeld. Sure, it was pretty funny but I hated those characters and a lot of the humor seemed to require that I find the main characters’ core nastiness as cute. (Side note… when is It’s Like… You Know getting a DVD release? I liked that show.) Starved seems to invite comparisons to Seinfeld, as watching these four selfish and vain urbanites gather at a diner to discuss their dysfunctional lives echoes Seinfeld’s diner scenes. These four are also a neurotic bunch, though Starved’s quartet share a specific set of neuroses — eating disorders — in contrast to the general urban insanity of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer.

The four friends of Starved, however, are a clearly unlikable bunch. The protagonist Sam tries to discourage himself from binging on the food he fixates on (Little Nemo Chocolate Cakes) by dusting them in cleaning power before throwing them away but has undermined this tactic so often he is now adept at eating around the cleaner. Adam is a police officer who intimidates food service workers into giving him free food, only to use his baton as a purging aid after binging on the stolen food. Dan is a compulsive overeater who struggles to find sufficient motivation to try to conquer his problem. Billie is mostly recovered, but still compulsively weighs her food.

What makes Starved (and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but that is another post) work for me is that these characters aren’t made cute by their personal issues. These characters are pitiful for the awful things they do in their quixotic quests to feel validated. The laughs in Starved are bittersweet as it mocks our petty obsessions like body image, brand identification and out tendency towards procrastination and laziness.

As well as Starved pokes fun at self-indulgent neuroses, the overall series comes off as a tad directionless. These characters don’t have a strong individual feel, aside from the different eating disorders from which they suffer. The most recent episode dealt with an apparent sexual tension between Sam and Billie, a tension that wasn’t significantly conveyed until then. Subplots are moving slowly from episode to episode, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a clear vision behind these dangling threads, they just keep moving forward without leaving a sense of how the characters are journeying. Perhaps this will all be explained when the show ends its run in a few weeks, but I have a bad feeling that I’ll have to be happy just to laugh at the show.

As much as I put my TV snob credentials at risk by admitting this, I never loved The Office as much as the critics. I very much enjoyed it, but I often had to coax myself into turning it on when its Sunday night timeslot came around. It was a very good show that I found wearying to watch – I spent much more time squirming than laughing, though the show was, overall, worth watching.

My reaction to The Comeback is similar. It’s a good show and occasionally funny, like the office. However, it’s also very painful to watch, focusing on characters with serious personal problems.

The Comeback focuses on Valerie Cherish, the breakout star of a sitcom, “I’m It!,” that stopped taping a decade ago. Valerie is now desperate enough to relive those glory days to agreeing to have her life filmed as she pursues a career comeback. She starts her new sitcom, “Room and Board” feeling like the star but Valerie quickly finds herself upstaged by her sexy, young co-star, Juna. Juna seems completely oblivious to Valerie’s marginalization, blinded by the spotlight that has suddenly found her, trying to be friendly with a woman who she is unwittingly tearing down. As a fourtysomething actress, Valerie is a victim of the ageism and sexism of Hollywood, though it seems like she has been oblivious to this bias until experiencing it. Most likely, the dynamic between her and her “I’m It!” co-stars reflected what we see between Valerie and Juna. Turnabout is the bitter life lesson Valerie is experiencing.

In Valerie, Lisa Kudrow creates an character much like David Brent, the buffoonish boss of The Office. Like Brent, Cherish jumps through hoops of denial and rationalization to believe things are going well, eventually having to fight a breakdown when she can’t jump through those hoops anymore. She’s equally pitiful and sympathetic.

The dysfunctional machine that goes behind the creation of a sitcom is also savaged by The Comeback. “Room and Board” is an awful sitcom with extremely trite punchlines, but the network and the show producers seem to think the show’s sexy stars will be enough for the show to go far. (I’m left wondering if there are bitter Coupling fans at work.) Valerie is a terrible, unfunny actress but one who has had her share of magazine covers – yet she is constantly pushed aside in promotional efforts. The set for “Room and Board” looks like a workplace that offers as much motivation as Wernam-Hogg Paper Merchants. Very few of the people responsible for “Room and Board”
seem to be finding any creative fulfillment from working in the series, they’re just looking for the easiest path to their next paycheck. Sadly, the uninspiring fiction of The Comeback seems to be mirrored by Bravo’s reality show Situation: Comedy.

It’s a good show, with tight performances and solid plotting, but it’s all rather dreary and depressing. Watching via Video-on-Demand, I can work up the mood for another episode only every three weeks (which puts it ahead of Weeds, which I haven’t been able to get through at all)… which probably would have been the case with The Office if it were available on VOD at the time.

I haven’t done a good job balancing topics recently. I don’t think I’ll fix that soon with the new fall season coming, either.

Anyway, I’ve done a bit of experimenting lately in the kitchen due to things I’ve found through the food blogosphere. A few notes:

I’ve always scoffed at raw food until I read that the goal is to avoid degrading the nutrients. I’ve looked at some recipes and some sound interesting and some sound like too much effort for the result. However, the Peaches and Cream Pie recipe that Heidi posted certainly sounded intriguing with it’s pecan meal crust and cashew "cream".

Well, it was a fairly easy recipe to make, though the end result was mixed. I was worried that both the crust and the filling called for a whole tablespoon of cinnamon. It worked for the crust — which was quite nice. Unfortunately, the filling was so cinnamon-tasting that I regretted spending extra Frogs Hollow peaches, since their flavor was completely lost.

Heidi’s recent Vegan Chocolate Mousse also looked quite nice (and that’s some great food porn). It turned out this was very easy to make and it turned out to be my favorite kind of recipe — a dessert that tasted twice as caloric as it really is. The tofu granted some rich creamy texture without all that fat that usually goes into a mousse.

Perhaps I’ll combine the two recipes next time and put the mousse in a pecan meal crust, making a healthier French Silk Pie.

Along those lines, I love recipes made with stiffened egg whites and seeing this Lemon-Ricotta Pancake recipe piqued my interest, partly because I never made pancakes from stiffened egg whites. It’s an easy and quick breakfast that feels very elegant, though I recommend serving with lemon curd instead of maple syrup. (The compote  suggested by the article also sounds good.)

Lastly, it sounded a little too easy to make home-made marscapone cheese, especially since it could be made with lemon juice. Surprisingly, it was as easy as it sounded. The ingredients were much cheaper than buying packaged marcsapone, so I think if I invite friends over for Tiramitsu in the future, I’ll shave down the costs by making the marscapone at home.

Okay, I’ve been wanting to mock the City of Heroes boards by giving it the Rampage treatment, but in the end it’s easier to taking the fun approach.

To start: A City of Villains beta tester dares to break the NDA:

Alright, let’s get started. Ask me questions about the Beta!

Here’s some info to start:
Dominators have a power set called "Induce Illness", and it includes a power that makes enemies spew on the ground, creating an area of effect like Ice Slick! Ew! The set also allows you to give someone flies. It doesn’t have an effect, just the graphic of flies buzzing around.

The Masterminds have a powerset based around monkeys. The monkeys spawn in groups of 25 and their primary attack is "hurl feces". (Of course, at level 1, you can only spawn a single monkey. His name is Rufus, and he is sweet. He hugs you if you hit F11. Awww!)

Ask me anything!

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I’m gonna be so pissed when I can’t actually make a monkey-controlling mastermind.

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It IS serious. Deadly serious. Let me tell you about the Mastermind special ability: Shove. Basically, if you find yourself in over your head, you can target an ally and shove them in front of the enemy. You immediately get a bonus to DEF, and Inf if your ally dies.

It’s awesome! At this time, when the ally dies, it says, "YOINK!" over their head, like when a Scrapper gets a CRITICAL. Supposedly they’re putting in a sound that goes with it, but it’s just "WAH-waaaah" right now.

As for Hurl Self, I think someone was putting you on. There is a special villain power that lets you stun heroes for a whole minute, but you have to keep typing and not hit them for it to work. It’s called, "Monologue", and there’s nothing worse than starting one and having an over-eager teammate smack the hero before you’re done.

That ally gets a Shove.

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That’s awesome! I’m so rolling a Mastermind. And ensuring that I’m on a team of at least two other Masterminds, so that Three Stooges madcap shoving hilarity will commence.

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Isn’t that called a soliloquy, not a monologue?

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Nonsense. It is most definitely called monologue. It’s written right there on the power button!

Plus, a soliloquy is when some damn fool talks to himself, revealing his intentions to no one, or possibly the audience.

Monologues require a listener present, and are the ultimate in mocking a hero’s pathetic attempts to stop you. I mean, really, what’s more dismissive than telling a hero your entire plan, so confident are you of victory?

I think your villainous predilictions will go unfulfilled without some serious study into our ways, oh fledgling breeze of the west!

More importantly, how does an Archetype get a soda?

Blaster - The blaster would stay at least 20 feet away and try to toss quarters into the slot and on the button of the soda they want, then run in fear of the sound it makes while dispensing.

Tanker - The tanker would buy his soda, then stand there menacingly staring at the machine while everyone else buys one.

Scrapper - The scrapper would try to kick the machine open in hopes of getting free soda.

Defender - The defender is the one buying soda for everyone else.

And uh, I can’t think of any for the controller, sorry guys ;-;

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controllers are the ones who’ve mastered the "quarter in a condom" trick to paying for a soda without ACTUALLY paying for the soda…

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Controllers stare longingly at the soda, unable to get soda by themselves.

Until level 32, at which point they get their own soda machine and unlimited soda.

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A Fire Tanker would rush around herding up all the soda machines in the area into one small space and then press all the buttons as fast as he could making sure that everyone on the team got a lot of soda and drank it REALLY fast so they got a HUGE sugar and caffine rush all at once.

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None of this will matter after they nerf soda in I6.

Oh, yeah, and "Bogus Guides I’d Love to Read":

Why naming your huge green tank "The Hulk" is a great idea.

A detailed guide to "taunt" for controllers

Creative spellings to bypass the obscenity filter

Insulting people to hide your mistakes

Rare and Super Rare Loot List

Why EVERY team needs an Empath
Why EVERY team needs a Tank

Playing CoH at work, the addicts guide

Playing CoH at home, excuses to avoid the wife and kids

The PLers guide to complaining about content

Stop PLing by training monsters to Portal Corp

Get your way by making a scantily clad female hero

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MYTHS OF COH
Myth 1- Kill stealing is bad
False. Most players are more than willing to split all their experience. Some even find it funny. Kill stealing is a actually an improved method of ‘Power-Leveling’ because you have no downtime. The Developers want you to kill steal, that’s the reason they made the “follow” command. It encourages sharing.

Myth 2- Level 50 Heroes don’t want to give you influence
False. All high lvl toons are rich and want to give away their cash. Don’t make the mistake of asking once and then walking away if you didn’t receive any. They are busy giving it to someone else. Ask, then immediately hit offer trade. Repeat this sequence until you get your 1 million influence.

Myth 3- Teleportation is the worst travel power
False. Take TP Friend at lvl 6 and go to the Hollows. Carefully make your way to the edge of the Gorge directly above a group of baddies. Invite random players and teleport them over the edge. I dare you to name another superpower that can 1 shot a hero.

On a side note- do not quit the team after you have dropped the hero to their death. Two reasons: 1) you will miss all of their witty remarks concerning your little ‘joke’ 2) if they use an awaken before they quit the team immediately, do it again!

Myth 4- AFK means Away from Keyboard
False. AFK means ‘Available for Killing’. Don’t believe me. Find an AFK hero, argo the closest enemy group and return to that hero. Wait….then use your best available travel power. Trust me- that hero was available and was killed.

Show Off! - How to impress everyone in Atlas Park!

Chapter 1 - Rain of Fire
Chapter 2 - Pets (including: Dark Extraction & Wolf Whistle)
Chapter 3 - Group Fly
Chapter 4- Heal Auras - In Atlas, Numbers Matter!
Subchapter - Absorb Pain Deaths - Astound your Friends
Chapter 5- Khelidans - Shake shake shake..shake your screen
Chapter 6 - Bubbles for All!
Chapter 7 - Got Nova!?..Prove it!
Chapter 8 - Auras - The brighter the better!

Eh, I don’t have anything to say so I’ll just stop holding back some snark…

This is not inspired by a specific instance because it happens again and again, but I always laugh when someone takes part in the usual ‘Are superhero comics sexist’ discussions and names Hulk, The Thing and Colossus as examples of scantily-clad male superheroes.

At that point, I’m left wondering if the person has lost track of the discussion or if he (it’s usually a he) thinks those characters are costumed the way they are to emphasize their sexual attractiveness… ’cause I really can’t see Hulk on a Harlequin cover or The Thing as a Chippendale dancer. Maybe it’s just me and I need to get over myself and learn to find orange rocks attractive.

Now Colossus… that costume should have that Jenny-Agutter-in-Logan’s-Run dynamic when he’s not steel. Somehow, however, I rarely see him drawn in a way that emphasises all that exposed flesh.

I do think that argument goes far to work against the person who brings it up. It speaks volumes if those three have to be included in examles of barely-dressed superhero males while it’s so easy to provide examples of underdressed and oversexualized super-heroines.

City of Heroes enthusiasts should check out the recent Q & A with Manticore, the games Story Director.

Manticore leaves some teasers over the game’s continuity:

I think it is safe to say you haven’t heard the last from the 5th Column. Keeping a villain as powerful as the Reichsman down seems unlikely. Look for him to make an appearance next year.

I can confirm that Hero 1 is alive. He will be back, but probably not the way you are imagining. If nothing else, he needs to retrieve his sword from Ms. Liberty. Before departing for the Rikti world Hero 1 entrusted Miss Liberty with Excalibur for safe keeping. When she retired, Miss Liberty passed the blade on to her daughter. Although she cannot wield the sword, Ms. Liberty carries it at her side waiting for the day when Hero 1 returns.

I’m looking forward to whatever comes out of these dangling plot threads, especially Reichsman — who comes from the game’s equivalent of earth-X. That leaves me hoping that there are plans for other characters briefly mentioned in the game’s backstory, like the Lord of Frosts.

Hero 1 is one of the more notable unsolved plots in the game, as we are reminded when we pursue our cape. Manticore didn’t mention other dangling plot elements mentioned in the submitted questions, like the lack of closure for villain groups like the Tsoo and the Family.

Another interesting teaser:

I think the players really want to see the signature characters in action. Fighting alongside or against these characters is much more interesting than simply receiving direction from them. There are enough powerful new heroes in Paragon City these days to allow our signature characters to start getting back in the action.

We plan to include missions for all the signature characters in both City of Heroes and City of Villains. We have content planned for City of Villains in which players will be able to fight against the Freedom Phalanx and the Vindicators; we also plan to bring the signature Arachnos characters into City of Heroes as enemies. Eventually our players will be able to interact with all our signature characters either as enemies or allies.

I was hoping that the icons of City of Villains — Ghost Widow, Captain Mako, Sirroco and Lord Recluse — would eventually show up in City of Heroes since we’re promised the chance to battle heroes like Minx in CoV. The Praetorians make for nifty archvillains, but it will be such a thrill to be able to interact with the universe’s legends, including to be able to fight its bad guys. (Tho wouldn’t it be cool to team up with them too? I want my hero to fight along side the Carnival of Light and my villain to fight next to Mother Mayhem.)

(Which reminds me, I still have the Tyrant mission saved on the Test Server, so that I can team up with Statesman.)

The Futon Critic says that Cynthia Watros will be joining the cast of Lost this season. If you could see me now, you’d see me bouncing in my chair.

Watros’ last truly notable role was playing the crazy, scheming Annie Dutton on Guiding Light. Her time of brilliance was brief, as her contract had almost run out by the time the show got good writers, but once the show rediscovered it’s voice, Watros was the reason to tune in.

Then she showed up on Titus, a funny show but Watros was much, much funnier in her old soap opera role. I’m hoping the producers of Lost realize what a talent they have picked up.

Also notable: Lifetime has gotten my attention for the first time in ages by casting Rebecca Gayheart (who I adored on Dead Like Me) in a pilot, Scarlett, focusing on a New Orleans-based horror writer. I like the lead actress, I like the setting… fingers crossed that the end result is good.

I like trying to turn good blog entries into memes. My one attempt to make a meme didn’t go anywhere but I like Johanna’s recent reaction to the "Paul is bored" frenzy enough to try again.

Johanna points out what makes her excited about comics and I think that would be a great thing to share around the blogosphere.

Here’s what I find exciting in comics:

• Thanks to DMP, Strangers in Paradise is no longer my only source for romance cliches thrown at a same-sex couple. Even better, there’s enough queer representation out there I can be picky and find stuff I like.
• The enthusiasm I saw from Tokyopop for their OEL manga line, as well as the excitement coming from some of the creators. I’m reminded of the excitement that Marvel’s Epic line generated. (Some day I’ll post the Dazzler concept I never finished in time.)
• Gen13 is coming back with a writer who gets what makes Adam Warren cool.
• The Borders at Union Square recently expanded their Graphic Novel section, giving both manga and American comics more shelf space.
• Bookstore successes have given Marvel incentive to throw some support to new concepts not tethered to established franchises.
• Shojo Beat. If this anthology magazine — skewing slightly older than the successful Shounen Jump — succeeds maybe we’ll see seinen manga get a big push next.
• My friend Sean published the first issue of his autobiographical minicomic. I need to make time to find myself a copy. That is so very exciting to me.
• My region’s comic shops include Comic Relief, Comix Experience and The Isotope Lounge — all excellent stores that seem to be well. I hope other retailers will learn from these three shops as they are exemplary retailers.
• Electric Girl volume 3! Electric Girl volume 3! …oh, and Owly, too!
• Vertigo’s new series look really great.

That took a little bit of time to think up, but I didn’t search for these. They all came off the top of my head and I’ve got reasons to be excited about comics.

I should find stupid statements like this hillarious (especially since I first heard it on Stephanie Miller’s podcast), but nowadays I just can’t shake the feeling that he’s being heard by too many people that don’t know better.

You go back to the various laws that took away the difficulty of getting a divorce, and the people leading the charge were homosexuals, way back in the ’70s. So we have no-fault divorce. Who are leading the charge for abortions? So often, you’ll find people who are lesbians leading the fight for the destruction of human life. Now they want to destroy marriage.

Wow, lesbians are "leading the fight for the destruction of human life"… and I guess I’ve been reading a lot of revisionist histories that omit no-fault divorce as one of those important gay victories.

Sheesh, I’m reminded of a Details article from years ago where a reporter when undercover in a far right wing Christian community and ended up sitting through a screening of Gay Rights: Special Rights, a pro-discrimination film that got distributed in the same venues as the ones claiming that the Clintons were mass-murdering drug kingpins. The writer has seen the film before with an audience that found it hillarious when the film claimed that gay men enjoyed "mudrolling" (three guesses) but when viewed by a group that avoided contact with gays the claim was met with gasps and dropped jaws.

So, as stupid a statement as that may be, I have the worst feeling that it’s been heard by too many people who don’t know better.

Sigh.

Okay, since I started this, Robertson made news for saying another stupid thing. I guess he says stupid things all the time, which leaves me wondering why any nfluential people still bother talking to him. His approval should be a huge drawback to anyone who’s job is dependant on public approval.