The Dog Days of Winter

(Note: The column below contains spoilers on Seasons 5 and 6 of 24. All spoilers are written in white type and can be viewed by highlighting the white spaces in the text. You can practice here: you got it!)

It's come to this: the most exciting news I've heard all days is that a chimp born in Shreveport, Louisiana seems to have been the product of a virgin birth.

Other than that, it appears that we've reached the dreaded dog days of winter. You know what I'm talking about here. The biggest thing going on in a given week is Jorge Sosa. The time to hope for Dan Haren, Joe Blanton or Dontrelle Willis has come and gone. Baseball is dead.

And it's not just baseball. Football's still there for you, but if you're anything like me, by this point you're grasping at straws when it comes to caring about who wins. I mean, I want to see Peyton Manning beat the Patriots, if only because I've seen Tom Brady win already, and variety is the spice of sport.

I'd also like to see the Bears win because my girlfriend is from Chicago, and because my friend Jawn left an indelible impression on me on Opening Day 2005 -- back when every other word about the team was "New Mets," there was Jawn rocking a knit Bears hat and yelling out "New Bears!"

But at the end of the day what's it really matter to me? If the Saints win I can feel good for the city of New Orleans. If the Pats win I can feel good for my sister's boyfriend. I just want a good game, there's no emotional involvement.

As for the New Knicks, I guess there's a little emotional involvement, but it's entirely different from how I feel about the Mets. If the Mets enter a season with a lousy group of players, I find a way to convince myself that the team can vie for a playoff spot, that hey, maybe they're not so shitty after all. For more on that, please refer to the years 2002, 2003 and 2004.

For these Knicks though, look, I like watching them sometimes. They're better than they were last year. They could yet prove a playoff team for hell's sake. But sooner or later they'll lose, and when it's over I won't really care. By then I'll have baseball, and life will make sense.

Until then though, what do I have? Here's my mid-winter survival guide. It features a lot of television. A lot.

Monday: 24.

TV's most explosive hour is back, and wow, it's back with a bang. It's off to a better start than last season, even if nothing so far has packed the emotional punch or shock value of David Palmer's assassination in the early moments of Season 5.

That moment aside, I felt that at times during the beginning of Season 5 it felt like the show was feeling its way a little bit, unsure of where to go next, or of what story it wanted to tell.

There's been no such dilly-dallying this time around. Hell, we're four episodes in and already a nuke has been detonated on an American city. Curtis is dead, or so it seems, and while he was always the good soldier, we never really got much back story on him. His death was surprising but not devastating; we're not talking about Edgar here.

In any event, the point is that Jack is back, and the show still rocks. It remains to be seen whether they can keep up the thrills throughout the course of the entire season, but they're off to a hell of a start.

Besides, this season features Scott William Winters as an FBI agent -- Scott William Winters! You don't know the name probably, but I'll bet you know the face. Think of the best speech in Good Will Hunting; it happens in a bar.

Tuesday: Wedding Crashers.

Chances are it'll be on that night. Cinemax or HBO or whatever network it is that owns the rights really can't get enough. Neither can me or Sip. Before Sip skipped town, text messages letting the other know that the Crashers were on television were tossed around pretty frequently.

Honestly, this movie just makes me happy. It's funny, and I'd give anything to lead that kind of lifestyle; not crashing weddings necessarily, but living in the Cleary household, that'd be pretty sweet.

Wednesday: Friday Night Lights.

I've only been tuning in to this gem the past couple weeks, but based on those two episodes, we're talking about an incredible piece of television right here, and believe me I was skeptical. I'm not a huge football fan. I was wary of watching a show about teenagers.

Forget it all. Friday Night Lights, or Wednesday Night Awesome, is the truth. The show is well written and features an excellent ensemble cast. The triumph of the show is how it demonstrates both how football is so important (to the players themselves, to the people of the town) and how it's also completely insignificant at the same time (the QB has a father in Iraq and has to care for his senile grandmother on his own, one player is paralyzed from the waist down).

Highly recommended, and it's never too late to start. Now I just hope for my sake tonight's episode doesn't suck.

Thursday: The Office.

First things first, it hasn't been as good this season as it was last year. It's still pretty effing good, and with the end of the season looming, you can be sure that the Jim and Pam plotline, the show's heart and the source of many laughs a year ago, will become more prevalent.

In episodes where their dynamic is prominent, the show is most successful; the Christmas episode for example. Seeing more of them in the coming weeks and months should be a boon to the show (which is still funny more often than not to begin with).

Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Enjoy yourself.

Whether it's pounding forties on a stoop, chilling the fuck out with some Magnetic Fields in the background, or all kinds of mischief in between, the weekend is your time to enjoy yourself. So that's on you.

If you need some help though, I gotta say, I caught some of 1 vs. 100 last Friday, wow, talk about a good concept. New Bob Saget!

- A.F.O.M.G.

(Note: the article above contains images courtesy of mlb.com, laerer.vucaarhus.dk and hollywoodhotline.typepad.com)