The Big D

Local TV reception being what it is, we don't get any channels at all without paying a monthly fee for cable or satellite. Since I don't do this, my TV is just a glorified VCR, and I only get around to watching things if I hear from dozens of rhapsodizing friends that some show is a must-see, and then usually only several years after it has left the airwaves. Even then I have to be avoiding work to motivate me to rent or watch anything.

Just that sort of procrastination is how I ended up spending almost the entire weekend watching every episode I could get my hands on of 'Six Feet Under.' if you haven't seen it, each episode begins with someone dying. Some of the deaths are poignant, some gruesomely funny, some horrendous, some poetic justice, some tragically unfair. Some are mundane, some freakishly outlandish. All are beautifully set up and staged in a minute or two, small gems of storytelling.

As a result of this front row seat on so may deaths all at once, several times a day now I feel as though I'm a player in my own little end-game vignette, and the ax is about to fall in some surprising way before we cut to a station break.

I just hope I don't end up rotting unnoticed for weeks until the neighbors complain about the smell, like the 'invisible woman' of a recent episode. In my case, my dog Mrs. Beasley would probably figure out how to use my credit cards to order food online and have it delivered, and they would only come snooping around when she failed to pay the monthly bills for long enough to elicit a visit from a collection agency. At that point she would owe for 214 cases of 'Wet 'n' Beefy' dog food, 75 pounds of pig ears, 107 pounds of soup bones, 5 sides of beef, 537 BarB-Q'd chickens, and several dozen assorted variety packs of beef jerky, not to mention the massage therapist three times a week who thought the house smelled funny, but didn't want to say anything.