Six Word Saturday (1/26/13)

Reading Some Books and Watching TV

I finished that book "Replay" by Ken Grimwood.  For the first few chapters of the book, the author used a moderate amount of profanity.  I wouldn't have minded it in the dialogue but he also used it in descriptive narrative and it was very distracting.  The guy in the story dies on October 18, 1988, and instead of Heaven he finds himself back in 1963 as his 18-year-old self.  When 10/18/88 rolls around again, he dies again, and starts back in 1963 again.  Having to live the same 25 years of his life all the time, he begins experimenting - one round he has orgies and takes drugs, another round he's amazingly rich (from betting on sports outcomes he knew from previous rounds), still another time he is a recluse living off the land.  One reviewer on Amazon had mentioned that it was a modern-day Ecclesiastes, because the guy finds out life can be pretty pointless no matter what your circumstances.  As I mentioned in my post last week, this book kind of helped me see that no matter what I do (or what I kick myself for NOT doing), things still happen.

So now I've been reading "Chromosome 6" by Robin Cook for the past few days.  I had read most of it about 16 years ago and it's one of those books that you never forget.  The main part of the story is a science center in Africa that houses bonobos (like chimpanzees but the closest thing genetically to humans) who each have a human chromosome deliberately to match to a specific human (in this case, rich people who don't want to wait for a human for transplant purposes).  It's all kind of controlled by the mafia as well, so there's a lot of threats and suspense and killing.  I had read most of it when I was living in Orlando back when I was going through a depression after my second divorce.  I was put on Prozac for three months and would read it during my commute to the psychiatrist, and I couldn't sleep at night because of the medicine.  When I did sleep, I had horrible nightmares about bonobos - specifically, what if the mafia had set up a bonobo for me in real life when I was born and she was in Africa somewhere waiting to get slaughtered if I needed a liver transplant?  (Sheesh, I get chills even typing that.)  But that's why I never finished the book back then.  I got it for Christmas last month from my sister-in-law so I'm going to read it all.

About TV ... I had started watching this new series with Matthew Perry called "Go On," about a sports radio announcer who is a recent widower, and he goes to group therapy for grief issues.  The first several episodes were very good - the therapy parts were interesting and the other characters in the therapy group had their own little quirks for the show.  He would talk to his wife in a figment of his imagination too.  Then last week, a woman starts going to the therapy group (and the story is that she used to go to the group a long time ago, and everyone else remembered and loved her).  Matthew's character hates her through almost the entire episode, and then SOMEHOW things started clicking with them and it shows them in bed together at a house of one of the therapy group members and the rest of the group is there!  The girl gets up and walks around naked (pixelated on TV) in front of them.  It made no sense that he would sleep with her when (a) he was still grieving about his wife and (b) he hated this girl!  I'm not a prude or anything but it just wasn't realistic to me at all and I'm disappointed because the group therapy was interesting up to that point and I felt like I was learning something.  But, no, they have to turn it into "Friends" and ruin the only show I've watched on TV since Frasier was on.  (Incidentally, the ONE episode I ever watched of "Friends" was when Rachel had her baby - and Matthew Perry's character and his girlfriend, the brunette one, spent Rachel's entire labor having sex in different parts of the hospital.)  Stupid.