This wagon is schizophrenia proof

Recent photos of Camp Delta at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where ‘enemy combatants’ are housed, taken by Roger L. Wollenberg for UPI include 3 shots of the prison library. An earlier article, not in English, by Besan Sheikh for Al-Hayat claimed the most popular books with the detainees are Harry Potter, Don Quixote and Obama’s Dreams From My Father, in that order. That was in September of ‘09. It would be amazing to get to chat with the chief librarian of Gitmo to get an update on the library situation there. First question, how popular is Twilight and are most readers on Team Edward or Team Jacob.

The glorified late-night soap opera, Mad Men, is set to return to the airwaves this coming weekend. I’ll admit, I watch, but I do draw the line at attending viewing parties. Cheating spouses and bored housewives aren’t exactly heady topics but it’s hard not to be a fan of the show with it’s costume and set design par excellence.

The storyline is pretty much mush, barring the scene where a John Deere tractor runs over MacKendrick’s foot in the office of the ad agency — you know it’s coming but it still rates at least an 8.7 on the unintentional comedy scale. (Side note: Mowers are death traps, check out these statistics* and funny(?) blurbs) With such highbrow story-telling I fully expect one of the principle characters ending up in a coma by mid-season; with crafty mise en scène product placement of a bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale next to their head.

The eminent return of the show reminded me of an entertaining, albeit short, review of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road in American Book Review under a section titled ‘Top 40 Bad Books’, with this quote coming from Sean Bernard, a creative writing professor at the University of La Verne. The quote could be applied directly to Mad Men:

Revolutionary Road (or Mad Men - ed.) tells me:

1)1950s suburban America had limited outlets for the creatively inclined.
2) Conformity was then rampant.
3) People who lie to themselves are unhappy.
4) People who feel superior to their surroundings are frustrated.

By this, I am as illuminated as I am by a college essay decrying drunk driving.

I’ll add one more point that I learnt from watching Mad Men, your grandparents at some point in their lives, were closet alcoholics. Ultimately the show is fun to watch but it’s not exactly the revolutionary television a lot of fans make it out to be.

*242,000 American hospital visits between 2004 to 2006.