Mad Men Rant - Volume 1: Draper's Anatomy

Welcome to the first installment of the Mad Men Rant...brought to you in stunning High Definition by the fine folks at Maidenform. This feels right! This is Leila's charming, witty, handsome (and humble) husband, Nathan, and I'll be your guest columnist for periodic musings on Leila's favorite show. I know that Leila's faithful blog reader(s?) signed up for her, not me...but that's tough. Given that Leila's blog output has crawled to about one post a month, it is obvious that she is starving for some content. Plus, she's not allowed anywhere near the laptop after a Sunday evening session with Jon Hamm -- drool tends to muck up the keyboard, you know?

On to Mad Men.

I'm pissed. The first few seasons were so great because of the wonderful dialogue, in depth character development, and - especially - Don Draper doing his thing in the conference room and the bedroom. I swear the man had me craving some Lucky Strikes and a slide projector. In Season 3, the writers have turned a wonderful dialogue-driven show into nothing but a glorified soap opera that relies on cheap surprises and cheesy hook-ups for "excitement." Child, please. Peggy and Duck? Barf. That State Government douchebag that Betty digs? Groan. If I wanted this garbage, I'd watch Gossip Girl or The Hills or some of the other tripe that's on TV these days. I have almost given up on the show. I literally stopped watching about 15 minutes into the show two episodes ago and went to bed. I would have been done for good if Leila didn't convince me to give it another go. "That guy Betty's in love with is gone," I heard. Well, last Sunday night I watched the rest of the episode I walked out on and caught the new episode. Garbage, soap opera bulls***. I averaged about one eye roll per scene. It would have been more, but I didn't want to upset Leila while she was watching her "stories."

I think entertainment awards are irrelevant. Most movies that win Oscars suck. The musicians that win Grammys are usually no-talent ass-clowns. The Emmys are no different, but they get things right a little more often than others (gotta put a plug in here for the best show in the history of television...The Wire). The Emmys got it right early on with Mad Men, but I don't care what the award folks say now...Mad Men just isn't good anymore. Sure, the costumes and sets are still spot on, but the writers are pissing me off. From now on, before the writers submit any new ideas, they need to RUN IT BY ME. Here are four simple steps to make Mad Men worth watching again:

1) More time in the office. Seriously, 90% of the time should be spent at Sterling Cooper. I'm not interested in living in the 'burbs in real life...I'm sure as hell not interested in seeing it on TV.

2) Once we bring the action back to Sterling Cooper, how about a little...uh...you know...ADVERTISING talk. More Don Draper ad pitches. More Peggy Olson in the office. More Ken Freakin' Cosgrove. More Roger Sterling. More, more, more, more.

3) Less Betty. January Jones is hot, but Betty's a bore. Less Peggy outside of the office. Less douchebag Henry. Less Connie Hilton (he's the infuriatingly irrational male version of Betty). Finally, take Duck's air time and cut it in half. Then take that half and flush it down the toilet.

4) To whoever wrote Joan out of a regular role: screw you. Seriously, I hope you get H1N1 or something. I don't want you to die, I just want you to suffer. Bring her back. For reals.

It's that easy. I'm going to give it a shot tonight, but I'm not getting my hopes up. PLEASE no more cheesy soap opera drama. I'm half expecting a character to get amnesia or to "die" only to find out it was a dream. Stop the laziness, writers! Get back to the snappy office dialogue. NO MORE DRAPER'S ANATOMY!


Rant over.

September

September was a busy month. Not only did I have a fun little birthday, I spent 4 days in NYC for some work, and a lot of play. I stayed with Margot and Ziggy at their FAB new apartment on Wall Street, and shared a bathroom with their toilet trained cats, Keggy and Klaus. You heard me. They use the toilet...or rather, are being trained to use the toilet. It was adventure, but they are so so cute and so so funny. (Margot, Ziggy, and the Kitties.)

When I came home to Atlanta, it was raining. I didn't think much of it, even though it had been raining for the past few weeks pretty much non-stop. Turns out, a normal rainstorm had turned evil and freakish and literally would not pass over the City. It stayed in one spot and rained and rained and rained...more than it's rained at one time in Atlanta in over 100 years.

The city flooded, and so many people lost their homes. The Chattahoochee flooded, all the little creeks nearby flooded. It was a big, soggy, mess.

We were lucky to only get a few inches in our basement, and we're thankful it wasn't worse, but it was still a big pain in the butt. Observe:

Before (regular finished basement carpet):

And where we are now:

Oh, and you aren't mistaken. That IS a Cowboy themed room in our basement. Unfortunately, we don't think it's going to make it through the renovation. I know, it's so so sad.

Our housewarming party is coming up on Saturday!