An Exciting Saturday Evening

Had lunch today at a great little French restaurant called Nova on Dagu Lu near Shimen Lu. The weather was superb, sunny and fairly warm, and my friend and I sat outside. Afterwards, I walked down the street to one of the better pirated DVD spots to browse the selection.

There are almost no movies I'm interested in seeing, so I hit the TV series section. I've never bought a pirated series, but became intrigued after my friend lent me her 5 seasons of Bones and my temporary roommate lent me his 3 seasons of Arrested Development.

The first season of 30 Rock was available and I snatched that up. The only one I've seen was pretty funny. In the next section was . . . . THE ENTIRE 5 SEASONS OF LA FEMME NIKITA. For those of you unfamiliar with this dramatic disaster, it started on USA network about 15 years ago. I had no idea that it ran for so long. Apparently it was more popular than I gave it credit for. I thought I was the only person drunk enough on Sunday night to enjoy it.

So now I am the proud owner of many, many disks comprising all 5 seasons. I'm on the second disk and I find it just as captivating as I did years ago. The poor acting is only surpassed by the poor writing. The writers' strike would have had little effect on this series. Yet here I am two hours and 30 minutes later on a Saturday night watching this nonsense. Chances are excellent that I will be doing this for the next __ nights until I get done with the set.

As a general rule, I don't enjoy television. There is just no explanation for this.