Fashion, Television, and Beyond

I was just reading a fashion magazine (shocking) and admiring Ana Sui's new collection for Target, inspired by her love of the show "Gossip Girl."

I can't tell if I'm just hyper-sensitive to television show mentions because I don't have a TV, or if the popularity of certain TV shows really has pervaded every nook and cranny of pop culture. Some days it seems like I can't find a blog, magazine, subway car, or store window that doesn't reference a television show or character in some way.

Here is a list of popular shows that I have never seen. That's right! Not one minute of a single episode:

Gossip Girl
Entourage
The Sopranos
Lost
Heroes
ER
True Blood
CSI
Hannah Montana

And probably more.

Want to know what I do watch? Brace yourself to be hit with a wave of pity and bewilderment:

Star Trek: The Next Generation

I loved the show when it was on the air in the '90s, but never really saw every episode. So about a year ago I started Netflixing (is that an official verb yet?) episodes starting with season one, disc one. Dumpling got on board somewhere around season three. We're now at season six, disc four, and my always-planning-ahead self has already started considering what to rent next.

Most people I know seem to think that life cannot be lived to its fullest without watching "Lost," so I may give that one a try.

Recommendations?

Anyway we watched the last episode on disc three [Episode 12: Ship in a Bottle] last night, and it was the one where--SPOILER ALERT--Prof. James Moriarti (created to out-think Data in a holodeck Sherlock Holmes program) is self-aware and manages to gain control of the holodeck program in order to deceive and entrap Captain Picard, Data, and Barclay in a program of his own, with the ultimate goal of leaving the holodeck to explore the universe.

Of course that could never happen because he's only a simulation created by a program--his molecular structure would lose cohesion if he stepped off the holodeck.

So once Data figures out how the three of them were trapped, they devise a plan to trick Moriarti, and at the end he takes off in a shuttlecraft to explore the wild black yonder...or so he thinks. In reality, it was only a program within a program, and we see Barclay holding a futuristic-looking plastic yellow cube which we are to believe contains enough programmed experiences to entertain the professor for the rest of his simulated life.

And then if you're like me and you're buzzed and watching this at 2 in the morning, it's like, "Woah....what if our lives are being lived out inside a cube of computer bits, and this is all just a simulation?"

Yes, yes. Not the first time this idea has been entertained, but it was still very entertaining. In a way it reminded me of the documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know?", but don't even get me started! I've got a couple of hours to write and work out, and then it's time to sling some suds and make some paper! There isn't an "official" bartender at Dumpling's restaurant yet, so I'm posing as one during the grand opening. Turns out I feel equally content on either side of the bar!

Of course my dream is to work in Ten Forward someday...