GennyG and Me.

Because Nick secretly hates me, he gave me David Foster Wallace's tome Infinite Jest for Christmas and advised to “stick with it, as the early passages are a little challenging”. No shit, Sherlock. I've been reading for a solid week and I'm on page 34, reduced to an intellectual cripple. The other day I found myself covered in drool at one point as I read and reread, and then reread again page 26, the toughest 40 minutes so far. Right now it's a toss up who's more dense - DFW or SDW.


Because intellect is a zero-sum-game in my case, the result of all this cerebral calisthenics is a marked reduction in the complexity of the viewing I'm willing to tackle right now. TV seems about the right speed, allowing partial recovery from the brain-throb DFW induces with each grueling page of Infinite Jest.

Which brings me to the TV series I've sunk my teeth into – My Own Worst Enemy. I should start by pointing out a fan-site review from....

http://www.viewpoints.com/My-Own-Worst-Enemy-reviews

Glance down to the third one, which reads ....

“Very intreging show!”

“I Am....” Likes to be entertained

“I did not get to see all of these episods but the few I did get to watch I liked. I am so mad they took it off the air. They did not even give it a chance. The story was very clever. They need to think about putting it back on the air.”

GennyG
Lincoln CA

Now, beyond the hilarity of the karmic GennyG/JennyG connection, after a few paragraphs of DFW, I too “am likes to be entertained by a few intreging episods of My Own Worst Enemy”. In fact, it's kinda neato.

MOWE is about a deadly superspy who works for an organization known as Janus. Edward Albright (played by Christian Slater) is part of a special program that essentially divided him into two people. One is Henry Spivey, a mild-mannered efficiency expert with all of the trappings of a comfortable suburban life and the other is Edward, a highly skilled spy/assassin. The company uses a switch to toggle between the split personalities, and because it was likely made in China, the computer chip malfunctions and Henry starts waking up in the middle of mission firefights deep inside Russia. Edward, on the other hand, wakes up and bones Henry's babe wife. The concept wears a little thin at times and one wonders why a spy organization would go to all this trouble, but if you forgive the threadbare logic and can suspend disbelief long enough, the 9 "episods" that NBC (I think I spelled that right) allowed before they pulled the plug are fun in a “at least I'm not reading David Foster Wallace” kind of way.

The whole thing looks like a Jason Bourne-lite effort and if like me, you are “likes to be entertained”, it might serve as a good little time waster while you're between the pages.

Sporgey