nip/tuck spinoffs

I caught up on part two of Nip/Tuck's fifth season. The relationships still evolve like those in a soap opera - every time I think they've exhausted every ridiculous possibility, I'm invariably surprised again. Some of the episodes from this portion have been pretty impressive, though, recalling the design of the show's golden years that engendered its palpable empathy.



Still, Nip/Tuck wouldn't be Nip/Tuck without some obligatory sensationalism, and the hit-or-miss inclusion of "contemporary issues" sparked further investigation. Here are two that reminded me of stuff worth sharing.

Number one: Objectum sexuality. People who love objects instead of other people.



This is Erika Eiffel, a woman who "married" the Eiffel Tower. Dietz told me a few weeks ago about a documentary he'd seen featuring a world-class archer who was in love with her bow, but broke up with her bow (Lance) and married the Eiffel Tower. I found these chunks of it on youtube, albeit peppered with peanut-gallery annotations.





Number two: Cryonics. Not an entirely new idea, but it seemed like Nip/Tuck did a pretty good job portraying its specious econoscientific status.



The dubiety in the episode reminded me of an broadcast of This American Life I heard a couple of months ago. If you have 45 minutes to kill, it's absolutely worth a listen. The episode is about half-assed apologies, but the central story focuses on a guy named Bob Nelson of the Cryonics Society of California and his involvement with cryonics around the 1970s. The story devolves into a bizarre, heartbreaking, disturbing mess.

http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=354

Skip the boring first portion, but after the cryonics story, keep listening to the last section for a nice relief. It's about a famous poem (and homages to it), "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams, that's rooted semi-apology. And it makes me hungry for plums.



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