I grew up really really very sheltered. Being a dork came naturally enough for me, so my parents' commitment to removing popular culture from my everyday life only served to further draw attention to the kid that might as well have already had a club foot or something.

And then I went off to college...and among other things I had not encountered within my controlled and sheltered life, was cable television. What wonderful, mind-numbing-but-scintiallating entertainment I had been missing out on! As a child, weekdays had belonged to 60 Minutes, National Geographic, and Jeopardy, while weekends allowed for some lighter fare- Looney Toons, Spiderman, Batman, and X-Men; or, as I got older, morning news. And now, the possibilities!

In the beginning, I tried to keep things high brow; I was after all, trying to prove my medal as a psuedo-intellectual student that was more interested in Sartre than in The Real World...but after some light experimentation things quickly spiraled out of control and I found myself watching Laguna Beach and Disney Channel movies. Yeah, embarrassing; blame it on my upbringing. I missed out on a lot of mental "junk food" and I was greedily taking in whatever was easiest to ingest after spending hours fumbling through things that made my head hurt in a way that nothing else had before: numerous scientific abstracts about research done on married couples, divorced couples, single people, and statistical data on household demographics in City X, Y, or Z. Derrida, Joyce, Chomsky. I was in over my head...
With more of a workload than I had ever been used to, I was all-too glad to escape from it through that lovely little glass screen perched on my dresser.

I'm still a bit of a rookie when it comes to navigating through the array of options I have out there, but I have at least come across some good stuff I feel I should share.

American Dad, for one, is great. And in my opinion, it's far better than its more popular McFarlen creation, Family Guy. I watch some pretty lame stuff that I don't want to admit to here, but we'll say that one involves a team of gymnasts. Yeah...preeeetty lame...

So, let's stick with the animated stuff:

The Venture Brothers. Brilliant. It makes me want an arch-nemesis to call my own. One that dresses as something ridiculous (like the Monarch in Dr. Venture's case); maybe a dust mite? I would find that one an appropriate nemesis...I have some wicked allergies, after all.

American Dad. Irreverent, funny.

Archer. Ridiculous.

Max and Ruby. Haha. Well, it's the only one of Alyssa's shows that I don't zone out to, besides Sesame Street. Actually, pretty enjoyable, if not so slow paced.

Ok, so I've written nothing of substance yet again. I'm calling it a night. I'll try to post a Day-In-the-Life-Of post on Wednesday.