Bow Ties are Cool.

I know I don't entirely get Doctor Who. There's a British quality to it that doesn't completely come across to Americans. But that's probably also one of the things I like about it.

I stumbled upon the Doctor while channel surfing one day and was intrigued. I'd been dimly aware of the series back in the '80s when a few people I knew were into it. But I was a Trekkie and an American comics fan - I didn't need anything else to make me geeky.

Now take a ride on the TARDIS with me and arrive in the year 2010. I had no idea the series had been revived, but I have an hour to kill, so I watch an episode. It happened to be "Fear Her," with David Tennant as the Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion, Rose.

If you're a Doctor Who fan, those names probably mean the world to you. To me, they were just a couple of Brits.

Still, I like SF, and I liked the dynamic between the Doctor and Rose. And I was startled to learn that the Doctor is called "the Doctor," not "Doctor Who." This last thing may have been what really fueled my obsession.

Slowly, I learned the whole back story of Doctor Who. Over the next few weeks, I learned about and followed the Doctor on BBC America, in the process meeting the new Doctor, Matt Smith, pictured above. I also got hold of all the "series" or seasons of the revived Doctor Who. And I fell in love. I was in love with Rose (just like the Doctor was, even though that's a bit of a taboo subject for serious fans, I understand), and I cried when he lost her. I also cried when the Ninth Doctor transformed into the Tenth, and the Tenth transformed into the Eleventh.

And I love the Doctor. I've also begun to watch episodes of Doctor Who Confidential, the "backstage" series that has been on BBC since the revival. In one of these, Russell T Davies, who was the prime mover behind the revival said the key thing, I think: We love the Doctor because he makes us better people. His personality doesn't always make us love him: Christopher Eccleston was a bit brooding and could be harsh; David Tennant came off a bit manic-depressive sometimes; Matt Smith is quite the absent-minded professor, more concerned about his gadgets than the lives he affects. But the Doctor always shows the people around him that they can do better, and even that they can be great.

One thing I love is how the Doctor is always fascinated with humans. He sees us as overflowing with potential. We mess up a lot. A lot. But we have an uncanny ability to fix our mistakes. A point that has been made more than once in this revived series is that an average human being is the most important thing in the universe. If that's the overall message of almost 50 years of Doctor Who, it's a good one.

What's Wrong with Baseball

To me, Johnny Damon is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with Major League baseball.

I'm a lifelong Detroit Tigers fan and I'm disgusted that they signed Damon for the 2010 season.

Damon may not be a cheater in the way Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds is, but to me, he is the symbol of the conditions in Major League baseball that led to the steroid controversy.

In a 15-year career, Damon has played for the Royals, Athletics, Red Sox, Yankees, and now the Tigers. This isn't a rant about players switching teams or free agency, this is about the way Damon did it.

In 2004, Damon was part of what could be the most dramatic World Series championship in history. As a member of the Red Sox, Damon was a key part of the League Championship Series victory over the team's arch-rival, the Yankees. You probably know the story: The Red Sox had not won the World Series since 1918, which was the year the Red Sox sold the contract of Babe Ruth to the Yankees. In the intervening years, the Yankees had won 26 World Series titles. The Red Sox were down three games to none in the best-of-seven Championship Series and mounted an historic comeback that will live in baseball lore as long as the "Curse of the Bambino" has.

The mythic proportions of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry are not lost on any baseball fan, and even modern players recognize it, and Damon is no exception to that. But when his contract was up in 2006 - one season after the miraculous defeat of the Yankees - Damon signed with the Red Sox's bitter rival.

When Willie Mays' career was winding down with the San Francisco Giants, he was offered a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He said he couldn't sign with the Giants' biggest rival after trying so hard to beat them all those years.

"It's just business," is the rational answer to my objections, but Major League baseball isn't a business to fans. It's a game, an inspiration, a tradition, a passion, and more.

So now Damon is on the Tigers. It really makes it hard to watch.

Hating the Whos

I've had a theory for a few years that Dr. Seuss intended How the Grinch Stole Christmas (published in 1957) to be an allegory of the Holocaust.

Now that I've written that out, it seems really stupid.

Anyway, the Grinch lives up on Mt. Crumpit looking down on Whoville and hating the Whos. A large part of the tragedy of World War II had to do with Germans hating the Jews.

Now here's where my theory completely falls apart (I know, it falls apart pretty near the beginning). The Whos love Christmas, and of course the Jews don't (traditionally speaking). Of course the Germans - generally speaking - would love Christmas, being a predominantly Christian country (Klaus is a common German first name, based on a shortening of Nicholas). So I guess what happened is Dr. Seuss turned the whole thing around to turn the book into an panegyric on Christianity. The Grinch hates the Whos like the Germans hated the Jews, if the Germans had held onto their Christian beliefs, they would have loved their fellow beings, just as the Grinch learns to love the Whos by accepting the magic of Christmas. Far-fetched as this is, there is a book called The Parables of Dr. Seuss that proposes many of his stories, including that of the Grinch, contain a Christian message.

Completing this entry makes me think it would be a bad idea to write - as I was planning to - on the connection between J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

Warm and Fuzzy Commercials

I used to work in advertising, so I guess I have some cred when it comes to commercials. TV is a huge part of the arts, and TV advertising sometimes takes on the status of poetry (let's not get carried away!). For me, a case in point is the series of commercials from Liberty Mutual Insurance on the theme of "responsibility."

I'm the last one to give insurance companies credit for anything remotely altruistic, and as advertising messages, these commercials ring hollow. But as short films, I love them.

Like me, you may have seen the commercials and not realized what they were advertising: They're all a series of extremely short vignettes where somebody does something nice for somebody else: opening a door, picking up something dropped, etc. Another character in the scene sees this and then we see that character doing something nice for somebody else, and so on. That's it. Logo, slogan, website, the end.

I guess the idea is that Liberty Mutual is more responsible than other insurance companies (OK, but the field isn't very hard to beat on that!). But the idea itself - that little things we do every day out of politeness or empathy can really make a difference in the world - is quite beautiful.

You can see the commercials on Liberty Mutual's YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/user/LibertyMutualAds

The campaign is part of Liberty Mutual's "Responsibility Project," which seems to have a lot of interesting ideas attached to it. There are also several short films on the theme of responsibility on this site: http://www.responsibilityproject.com/

Of course I'm not endorsing Liberty Mutual, or the insurance industry in general, but I like these commercials.

Pardon the Interruption

Why is this the best sports comment show on TV? I guess it's because Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are like the two smartest guys in town sitting down together over a couple of beers and openly discussing a subject that is of utmost importance to those of us in the mizzle: sports.

I have always liked how this show has topics listed on the side of the TV screen and Kornheiser and Wilbon just talk about it. I don't know how much of the show is scripted, but when these two are just talking, they sound like friends of mine for whom I'm always willing to buy the beer because they have the most interesting things to say.

Eyewitness Books

So I went to a library sale the other day and picked up 10 of these little gems. They were in the children's section, so I got them for 25 cents a piece!

These may not be authoritative texts one would use in a college course, but I love them! Maybe it's a tendency to A.D.D. that's showing through, but the picture-and-caption format of Eyewitness Books have always appealed to me - even before I started buying them for my own children.

Dorling-Kindersley, the British publishers of Eyewitness Books, used to have a series called Eyewitness Art that I have enjoyed immensely as well. These, like all Eyewitness Books, provide in-depth background in words and pictures, without neglecting the technical details and the stories (yes, you might even say the trivia, but that's not necessarily a bad thing) that bring the subject to life. Unfortunately, DK doesn't have a separate Eyewitness Art series any more, although there are many titles on art in their catalog.

I also love the Eyewitness Travel books, even if I'm not planning a trip to that destination.

24 Hours that Seem to Never End

I'm not sure how "middlebrow" 24 is any more. I think it was the critic's darling in the early days because it did something unique with the weekly drama television format. I think Kiefer Sutherland's biggest draw as an actor is that he's Donald's son, but he worked out well as an all-American version of James Bond.

The last couple of years of 24 have not lived up to the first few. And this season, I find myself getting sick of it. The most irritating part is the sub-plot with Katie Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica as a "CTU" agent with a fake identity. Granted, if you describe any part of the plots of any of the seasons of 24, it would probably sound preposterous, but this season's Sackhoff sub-plot takes the cake. Willing suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

TV as an art form is an incredibly iffy proposition. I remember reading an interview with David Lynch when he was working on Twin Peaks in which he said he was interested in TV because of the challenge of fitting the story into the 10-or-15-minute tableaux between commercials. The best dramatic TV series treat the entire season - or the entire series - as a novel on a grand scale (not a "novel for television" - that's a different animal). Something with a large cast of characters, all of whom have unique personalities, going through a complex set of circumstances, and reacting in a way we can understand. It's really the universal approach to storytelling, and 24 is losing it.

Fandom of the Popera

I've been a fan all my life. My fandom usually falls into the category of popular culture: Movies, comic books, TV, popular music (in all genres), etc.

I think this blog will end up being about a lot of things, but mostly, I expect, it will be about the things in the arts that I like. Or maybe really don't like.

Kind of an experiment. Let's see what happens.