Deadwood

We've been on a Deadwood binge, Deadwood being the other ultra-violent, profanity-fueled HBO series, the one that makes The Sopranos look like B-roll from That's So Raven.

Deadwood is the story of how civilization came to a mining camp in the Black Hills of what's now South Dakota during the lower continental's last great bout of gold rush fever in the late 1870's. I'm always surprised, delighted and filled with questions when history struggles with reconstruction: you mean Eldridge Cleaver didn't invent the word "cocksucker" in 1964 to subvert his uncomfortably homoerotic reaction to certain design features of the Oakland PD's uniforms? And how about the fact that everyone spent about 90% of their waking life shit-faced because there wasn't any clean water to drink and laudanum was over the counter?

If there's any historical accuracy to the show at all, one thing's certain: those right wing types decrying the recent decline of American morals are nuts. Things were abysmal back then. Wild and crazy doesn't come anywhere close to describing it. I always figured it would be much more fun being alive during the opening stages of empire building than hanging around for the end game. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe all of human existence is just suffering and pain and boredom. The great advantage of the end times? Now we have HBO so it's just suffering and pain!

(no subject)

This may be the funniest thing I've read in a decade:

http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-11-16/news/infiltrator_print.html

In other news, I went for a longish bike ride and took the dogs to the beach, but mostly I spent the day updating the store website (Dear Google Users, Santa luvs hot sauce! But not just any hot sauce! Santa only loves hot sauce from Slow Burn!) thereby putting myself in temptation's way because friends, when I'm hunched in front of a computer for too long, I start doing the Bad Thing. I start looking x-boyfriends up on the Internet! X-girlfriends too. Then I start to feel massively sorry for myself: they're all doing so well! Shouldn't losing me have inflicted more permanent damage?

Let's see... George P, the scion of the Texas tug boat millionaire, is now a doctor, married to someone named Susan, apparantly a museum director. They reside in an architecturally significant home in River Oaks which they occasionally loan out for museum benefits. They have two lovely children too but the names didn't register. Steve R -- he of the famous exit line: "What won't I regret when I'm fifty?" -- is also a doctor in Nashville, Tennessee. (Did I have a salubrious affect on the people I dated in my twenties or what? My girlfriend, Ann D., is a PhD and a doctor!) I suspect Steve's bald as an egg now but alas! his reams of professional affiliations did not come with pix.

In the interests of discretion, I won't mention the details I unearthed about people I dated more recently than 1976.

I felt quite invisible reading about them. I think of them. I'm quite sure they never think of me.