Al Gore on Link TV -- Watch This!

Sorry for the late notice! The idealistic little channel Link TV presents an amazing hour-and-a-half appearance by Al Gore (taped at the Beacon Theater in New York last month) several more times today, and if you're a inhabitant of this planet, this is a must-see. Airing again at 5pm Eastern today, and possibly again (keep checking the Link TV website). Al Gore Speaks on Global Warming and the Environment is fascinating, inspiring, and damning, all at the same time.

Link TV is available on DirecTV on channel 375, and also on Dish Network, and possibly on some cable systems. In the recent past they've gotten good press for their amazing selection of international news, and especially for their standing as a source of information direct from the Middle East. Even if you prefer to keep your head in the sand in terms of America's footprint outside her borders, Gore's message will get you thinking about our responsibility to the planet at large. The program is not only intelligent, but vastly entertaining. Gore's at his oratorical best, passionate and informed, and it will do you go to watch and ponder his words.

Write to Link TV to thank them for this program, and urge them to play it again and again until America wakes up. And although it isn't scheduled again this week, I also recommend catching McLibel: Two Worlds Collide, a terrific hour-and-alhalf doc about the two British activists who fought McDonald's in court on libel charges. Trust me, you'll never even be slightly tempted to eat a Quarter Pounder again; they most certainly don't deserve your hard-earned cash.

Visit Link TV's website for more information on the little channel that shows what nobody else will.

If you still think the eggheads are playing Chicken Little on the environment, take a look at this article from the most recent AlterNet, all about the Pentagon’s own Global Warming fears; that should shiver even Bush’s followers down to their conservative timbers.

 
She Made Us Love Her


Highly recommended for viewing tonight (in many markets) is PBS’ two-hour American Masters presentation Judy Garland: By Myself. Promising a unique semi-autobiographical approach utilizing notes and material Garland herself was planning to use in a book, plus lots of interview footage, Judy Garland… should be a fitting tribute to this great entertainer.

While it’s probably easy for some to relegate Judy to a place where only old movie lovers dare to venture, it might be enlightening for fans of contemporary music extravaganzas like American Idol to see what talent used to look and sound like. Janet Jackson may bare a breast, but Judy Garland bared her heart and soul, battered though they might have been. Hers was an infinitely better and sweeter gift than Jackson’s cynical flash of flesh; how little we expect of our idols these days.


Judy Garland: By Myself, an American Masters special, airs beginning tonight at 9pm on PBS stations around the country. Check local listings for specific airdates and times.

Visit the PBS Judy Garland: By Myself website for an explanatory essay by John Fricke, one of the producers of the documentary.

If you’re not quite up on your Judiology, check out The Judy Garland Database here.

And if you’re in the Grand Rapids, Minnesota, area sometime, drop by the Judy Garland Birthplace Museum.

Author Scott Schechter’s book Judy Garland: The Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Legend really appeals to the completist in me. It’s a painstaking, diary-format compendium of…well, Judy’s day-by-day accomplishments, however mundane. Certainly not for everyone, but the devil is in the details, and so is the greatness.

And lest you think that Judy’s still the patron saint of gay men, read this excellent article out of The Atlantic from several years ago, all about the decline, fall, and possible ultimate position of Judy in the gay male pantheon of influences.



If you’re not quite up to two hours of Garland, I also recommended Comedy Central at 10:30pm for another episode of Chapelle’s Show, starring the immensely charismatic and hilarious comic Dave Chapelle, who had a nice write-up in the New York Times last week. I think he’s adorable, and funny as hell.

 
Sex and the City Follow-up


Let's face it, I don’t like the show. Lately I’ve been watching it the same way I watch the movie Steel Magnolias…horrified and yet fascinated, I guess by the imagined minutia of the lives of fictional female characters. Now, as girls go, I’m hardly a terrific representative of the sex, certainly devoid of the much-gloried “shopping gene” at least. That alone must put me somewhere on the outer reaches of the girly continuum, a place where some of us watch shows like Sex with our heads cocked liked dogs trying to understand human speech. Huh? I know they’re prattling on about something….

Maybe these last few episodes are an unfair sample of this so-called comedy, but it smells more like a soap opera to me, not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, but it’s astounding how viewers will go to any lengths not to admit they’re hooked on a soap. Though not admitting that shows like Survivor are nothing more than outdoor action soap operas, or failing to call ultra-contrived set-ups like Average Joe competitive soaps, or hiding American Idol’s true appeal as a musical soap opera, TV now strives on a regular basis to create the emotional bonding of daytime soaps and translate it to the so-called reality genre. You don’t keep daytime shows running for decades without realizing that the soap opera form is a terrific model for developing -- and retaining -- viewer loyalty. The hoopla over the end of Sex and the City is proof of that.

And speaking of the ending, did I hear Carrie say to Big, as she was sniffling in the lobby after breaking up with Petrovsky, that she didn’t need rescuing, but then she pretty much begged for it, including throwing out the accidental slap as evidence of her mistreatment -- though protesting it was nothing -- knowing what Big's reaction would naturally be. Quel manipulation, and that’s precisely the kind of moment that makes those of us not under the show’s spell remember why we find it so annoying. And I guess Miranda gets cosmic payback for being eternally cynical by having to sublimate her pique at caring for her husband’s addled mother? Looks to me like she’s the only one with less than a fairy-tale existence, and she was probably the hardest-working of the quartet all through the series, at least in the episodes I’ve seen. Ech…I just can’t buy any of this show, though I can see why others would. Oh, and if you still disagree that this is a soap, catch the teary farewell special that’ll be encoring this week, too. Nobody ever shed this many tears when Lucy left the air, and that’s what you call a comedy, folks.


Whither Karen Sisco?

Now that ABC’s gone back on its word concerning Karen Sisco -- they summarily cancelled the well-reviewed series last month, just a couple of weeks after promising it would be re-launched in the spring -- you can at least catch the seven episodes already run on the alphabet net in Sisco’s late night runs on USA Network. To no fanfare whatsoever USA has been running KS all season long, first on Fridays and now moved to Tuesdays, and though it won’t make the show come back to life, you’ll certainly get a taste of why many viewers are disappointed with ABC’s turnaround. We’ll assume that USA will also get the remaining three unaired episodes at some point, which is better than never seeing them at all. So let’s see, shows like Karen Sisco and Line of Fire bite the dust, and we get Regis back for more Millionaire? Fair trade? Sure, in hell…. And if you haven't heard, Millionaire worked liked crazy in the ratings Sunday night, so there's indeed no accounting for taste, as if there were any doubts left.


What’s On Tonight


Go for 24 at 9pm on Fox, and I’m still waiting for something weird to happen with the baby that’s hanging around the office. Hopefully it’s serving as more than just a plot device to get Kim mad at Chase. Can’t there be something atomic in his diaper, or something…or is it a she? I forget.

At 10pm, since I’ve got a weird-loving streak a mile wide, I’ll be all over Discovery Health’s Conjoined Twins: Separate Risks special about the two Marias, a pair of Guatemalan sisters who underwent separation surgery. Is it just me, or do there seem to be lot of conjoined twins in the news lately? Or maybe they’re just all making it to the United State for operations, and thence to our media outlets. Please, don’t anyone posit that this intense interest on the part of news organizations is anything different than what used to bring people into the sideshow tents at county fairs to see similar human oddities. Everybody likes to look at amazing examples of humanity, from the very beautiful -- or else why do people worship pretty female celebrities -- to the incredibly not. As I’ve said before, at the very least it should make you thank the gods for your good fortune.



24 continues on Fox tonight at 9pm. Check out the website for all sorts of background info.


After you watch Conjoined Twins: Separate Risks at 10pm on Discovery Health, check out some of these related websites:

For photos and dated (though still fascinating) info on the Marias, check out this UCLA website.

Here’s a site with some good basic info on conjoined twins.

And these little boys underwent some surgery just last week….

This poor little girl had part of a conjoined twin….

Really good compendium of conjoined twin sites on the net, from About.com.

Great list of conjoined twins throughout history.

And saving the best for last, Ratt’s Freakshow (don’t get your panties in a wad about the title, it’s historically accurate), an amazing site with incredible pictures and a true love for the subject matter, which includes more than just conjoined persons. Highly recommended!

 
Just a Tiny Reality Check re: Tonight's Final Sex and the City


It's not the end of an era, like the promos keep on proclaiming, kids, it's the end of a TV series. No more, but no less. People have been falling in love with TV characters for fifty years now, and even the best of them -- and I'm not sure that SatC's gal pals qualify -- eventually come to an end. Maybe now love-seeking career gals and the gay men who love them will experience some of the angst that lots of us have felt many times before, like when the original Star Trek bit the dust, or Scully and Mulder investigated no more, or Monty Python became an ex-comedy troupe.

As for me, I'm hoping for a death tonight, not because it's the meanest thing to do to the quartet, but because it would be the kind of wake-up call that fans of the series may need more than the characters, even as they all seem to be moving towards a some big cosmic hugfest. Just the time for a monkey wrench to be thrown into the works, I'd say, like real life sometimes does.


Sex and the City's final episode airs tonight at 9pm on HBO, preceded by an hour farewell featuring celebrity fans like Kathy Griffin (ugh!), and a look back at the show.