Day: February 5, 2002

An article from this Sunday’s New York Times about another guilty pleasure of mine, TLC’s original show Trading Spaces, which author Julie Salamon describes pretty accurately as “‘This Old House’ as game show and soap opera.” Hey, I don’t pretend to understand the show’s appeal, any more than I pretend to understand why some people like Iron Chef. I don’t seek Trading Spaces out, couldn’t tell you with any certainty when it’s on (although the article seems to suggest always), and I don’t even fit into any the main audience demographic groups, which are apparently “teenage girls, gay men, compulsive re-arrangers and people who like to watch ‘Friends.'”

But I do like the show. “‘Trading Spaces’,” writes Salamon, “is deliberately unpretentious, with a predictable routine and a regular cast of distinctive characters — including Ty and Amy, the sexy male and female carpenters whose tool belts tug suggestively on their low-slung jeans.” Maybe that’s the appeal. A cute girl who’s handy with a beltsander. Television could do worse.

“You Sexy Thing: The decision From Hell: Is Heather Graham sexier than Amanda Detmer? Browse our photo gallery and then cast your vote!” Hard to believe, but somebody actually wrote that down. God bless TV Guide. At least 24 is on tonight, and there’s an interview with co-creator Joel Surnow in today’s Salon. I’ve only recently found this out, but Sharon is right: programs like this alone justifiy television.

Then again, I’m the guy who’s favorite show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and who’s having tapes of it mailed to him from an acquaintance in California, so it’s probably best to take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Caitlin R. Kiernan writes:

The stories, the world, and me, we play this game of leap frog. The world changes me, the act of writing stories changes the stories that I write, and the stories I write seem capable of effecting at least very small changes upon the world.

And:

When I was in college, I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture on chimpanzees by Dr. Jane Goodall. She described a group of chimps that she’d watched reacting to an enormous waterfall. Clearly it disturbed them greatly. They seemed terrified. They would cower and peer out at it from between their fingers. But again and again, they would return to see that damned waterfall. And “I began to suspect,” said Dr. Goodall, “that I was watching the origins of religion.”

And:

It’s not an easy thing, being a Luddite and a geek.