Tip of the day

My tip of the day: never make an approving comment about a television character´s breasts whilst within kicking distance of your girlfriend.

This valuable lesson was learnt, painfully, during an episode of True Blood which has replaced the latest in a series of shows that we have consumed with the feverish mania of a heroin addict plunging a rusty needle into their groin after a month long cold turkey. We started when, having arrived in Switzerland for the first time, we owned nothing in the way of an entertainment system beyond the drinks cabinet. So we bought all six series of the Soprano´s and devoured the lot in less than three weeks, watching them on my old laptop, which had the power of an asthmatic snail.

Soprano´s was undoubtedly the greatest thing ever seen on television, with the only exception being when Chelsea were robbed of the Champions League Trophy by terrible refereeing and Didier Drogba screamed ´it´s a fucking disgrace´ into the live Sky microphone.

When we got to the final episode, it was like I´d lost a first born. The final episode created quite a stir, in that it finished with a cut to black that left some people with a feeling of ambiguity. These are the sort of people that require the plot lines of Friends explained to them with a flow chart and an hour long power point presentation. In fact, it couldn´t have been clearer that the main character had been killed if they wiped the brain matter from the lense of the camera while the entire cast sang ´he´s fucking dead you retards´ to the tune of ´coming round the mountain´ over the decapitated corpse. In any case, I think a lack of clarity can be a great thing for narratives. To make your own mind up over the substance of a story can add to the power of it. I often view such works if I get the place to myself. It´s often not clear for instance, if the guy ever got around to fixing the sink or delivering the pizza. Intriguing.