Great TV Show: United States of Tara

I started watching a TV show called the United States of Tara.

It's about Tara, a 35 year old mother and wife with DID (or multiple personality disorder). It's a very funny, but with very serious issues. Tara has three main alters: Alice, the perfect housewife; Buck, the Vietnam vet who loves guns and pussy; and T, the 16 year old party girl.

Tara is married to Max, who is probably the best husband in the world. They have two teenage kids: Kate and Marshall. Kate is a little lost and trying to find her way, and a little rough around the edges. Marshall is little mister perfect, who wears ties and suspenders and is looking for love from a bicurious pastor's son. Her sister, Charmaine, is a single woman who just wants to be normal, and had lot of love and resentment for Tara.

It's a really funny show. It's available on netflix, both instant watch and dvd. There's a lot of swearing, but it's really funny. And sad.

LOST! contains spoilers.

So, a major chapter in my life closes tomorrow. For the past 6 years, I've followed LOST. Or rather, for the past 3 years, I've followed LOST obsessively, and the three before that I watched it occasionally (last summer I rewatched the first three seasons to make sure I didn't miss any!).

I love the show mostly because it makes me actually think about what I'm watching and what I have watched. Most shows just tell you what's going on. LOST makes me analyze. Take, for example, the character of Libby. We know that she was in a mental institution after her husband, David, died. We also know that a character named Dave, who is dead, visits Hurley, who can talk to dead people, and who talked to him a lot while Hurley was in the same mental institution as Libby at the same time. Ergo, Dave is Libby's dead husband. Do they ever make that connection in the show? No.

My theory is reinforced when early in the series, Dave shows up on the island and tries to get Hurley to kill himself. Coincidentally, the Smoke Monster can take the form of dead people and is trying to kill the candidates, but cannot directly kill them. Hurley is a candidate. Pretty sure Dave on the island is the smoke monster.

Also, Desmond's boat is called the Elizabeth, given to him by David. So many connections! I love this show!

A lot of my energy goes in to thinking about this show, if you can't tell.

What am I going to do after tomorrow? Well, I'll probably spend a lot of time in the next week or two on LOST forums. After that? I'll have to find a new show to obsess over.

Two Kenyan Guys

So, I was watching some TV with my din-din, and I saw this show called "Two Kenyan Guys" on NatGeo. It's about two Kenyan men: A Masai warrior named Lamarti and a Samburu warrior called Boniface. They are traveling around the US to learn more about our modern culture so they can learn to live in the modern world while still preserving their own traditions.

It's so funny! I can't get over it! I am watching an episode about their trip to Texas. They helped the cowboys push their cows around, and then went to learn to play football and cheerlead, ate some barbecue (where they talked with an African American man, which was interesting), and helped a wildlife rescuer. That was my favorite part. They helped him take a couple of raccoons out from under a house. Boniface went under the house with the worker. Lamarti described the noise from under the house, and it was hilarious! Also, they wanted goat meat and went to a farmer. The goats have this odd genetic condition where when they get scared, their muscle stiffen up and they fall over. It was sad to see, but really funny at the same time too.

In any case, funny show. A little weird because they dress like warriors all the time, even in their chaps and cowboy boots. Very tokenized in that sense but still a very good show. I think it's a fair balance of showing their culture but not in a patronizing "look at those goofballs in Africa" kind of way. It's almost the opposite way, actually. Or maybe that's just my pre-existing prejudice against Texas.

They did make me realize that cowboy culture in the US is really really aggressive. They are the cowboys of Kenya, and they don't need horses or cattle prods to get their cows to where they need to go. Their cows don't run away from them, but like them because they protect them. They sing to their cows so they know their voice and know they can trust those people. Cowboys in Texas trap their cows in cages, enrage them and then rope them and pull them to the ground for sport. Hmm....

<.< >.>

Cruel? I think so, but I'm sure there are those that disagree.

In any case, I like the show a lot, and I think you would too!