THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 4:46A.M. AND 5:46A.M.

Last night for no particular reason other than massive marketing hype and sheer boredom, I decided to watch the first half of the HOT-DAMN FOUR-HOUR TWO-NIGHT SEASON PREMIERE OF 24, a show I haven't watched or cared about since halfway through season 1 when they brought in Lou Diamond Phillips as a long-lost ex-partner of Kiefer Sutherland probably just so they could make some Young Guns jokes. Well, okay, it definitely had something to do with the fact that earlier in the day Anonymous A and I had a very weird lunch at a bar which involved the two of us sitting in the otherwise empty, overly heated beer garden with a huge-ass TV blaring the football game (which of course was on FOX) and every 45 seconds they would either show a commercial for 24 or one of the game's commentators would remind me that the HOT-DAMN FOUR-HOUR TWO-NIGHT SEASON PREMIERE was gonna be on that night.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, Kiefer Sutherland has become an expert at having a bad day. Not as bad as some people, but still he always seems to find a way to have a day lousy enough that it makes for an interesting enough entire season of TV. I mean, this year he had to start out looking a hell of a lot like his dad except his hair wasn't so grey. And apparently he's spent a couple years in a Chinese prison and the day he gets out he gets handed over to a terrorist in exchange for some other terrorist guy who's been bombing everyone and their cousin...or so everybody thinks. Hot damn, it wouldn't be 24 without a shocker plot twist every seven minutes, and right away they throw in a couple. And we even get new supporting characters like that guy from Star Trek: Deep Space Crap and that asshole from Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar. And then there's that woman who used to be on Mr. Show doing things like selling jelly donuts to Bob Odenkirk and she hasn't really learned how to do any other facial expressions since then. Man, what a cast! And I really like how the CTU office pretty much just watches FOX NEWS all day. It's good to see a fictional government so enamored of its own propaganda, because of course nothing like that would ever happen in real life or anything!

So yeah, it was absolutely ridiculous and pretty poorly written and everybody but Kiefer did nothing but chew scenery and even he did for quite awhile too but for some stupid reason I still kinda liked it, and now I don't know whether to watch tonight's scond installment of the HOT-DAMN FOUR-HOUR TWO-NIGHT SEASON PREMIERE OF 24 or the Golden Globes!!! What the hell do I do???

And don't say read a book. Nobody does that crap anymore, you can't fool me.