Tag Archives: boston legal

Curiouser and Curiouser

As is my custom on Tuesdays, when I’m home, I’m watching television. I had planned to write, but my smarts took the night off, so you’re stuck with a question — or is this an observation? — instead. (Okay, my smarts are fine, but I didn’t feel like ‘writing on demand.’ Sometimes it feels like a job, so I’d rather assume the position until inspiration kicks me hard in the ass.)
Tonight’s menu has included one of my guiltiest pleasures, Boston Legal. During the course of the program, there are a couple escorts included in background banter as William Shatner and Freddy Prinze Jr. chat in a bar.
I watch TV with the closed captioning on, for a few reasons. One of them being that I’m hearing impaired. Yes, you heard it here. I wear hearing aids. Always have. Itty-bitty in-the-ear ones, but they’re there. Such is life. Genetics, they fuck you every time, my friends. The loss is not overly severe, but enough that it cramps my style.
Anyhow, I also have worked in closed captioning, so I’m not deaf by any stretch. Back in the day when I did caption, we always would refer to unnamed persons by their profession first, if known, and if not, then by their gender. These identifications would be used in off-screen IDs for speech when a person wasn’t seen, and in character-specific SFX occurences.
So, there was this sound FX caption — done when action occurs off-screen that is distinguished by sound and is plot-pertinent — of [women giggling]. It was the escorts giggling. Their professions were known: They were escorts.
My question to you is, why wasn’t the caption reading [escorts giggling]? I mean, it was a crowded bar. There were other women. These women, the escorts, it was their giggling that was pertinent to the plot, not that blond ditz hanging off the bar with a Mai-Tai in hand.
Now, fair enough, my captioning house was one of the finest on the continent. My above-average grasp of grammar and such is evidence of that, no? Snicker. Right. Captioning styles vary from house to house, but when you have many, many women in one area and only two of them are pertinent, the tradition is to distinguish them. “Escorts” was the only way to do so, particularly when they had just been introduced to the viewers as “They’re not girls, they’re escorts,” by the always sharp-tongued Denny Crane (Shatner).
I find it interesting that the captioning house in question (the rather uninterestingly named “Closed Captioning Services, Inc.”) has opted to sanitize things for the viewers, when the producers of the program sought specifically not to do so.
But that’s the world we live in. A battle of ethics on every corner, a moral war written on every page. Only who is it we’re protecting from what, and why? Why not call a spade a spade when it is, evidently, a spade indeed?
The scriptwriters call it a spade. After all, the “escorts” are referred to later as “hookers.” A spade is a spade is a spade, it seems.
Is the reality of sex being so readily for sale so offensive that to see the suggestive words themselves written outside of dialogue is somehow even moreso?
Ah, who the fuck knows. We’re going to hell in a handbasket people, and the neocons are doing the navigating. Take a Right up here, folks. There ain’t no turning back now.

The Delicate Art of… Face-Sitting?

David E. Kelly starts off with these brilliant shows that eventually get weird and schticky, but so far, Boston Legal is keeping consistently watchable and even loveable.
In a recent episode, William Shatner’s effervescent Alzheimer’s victim-warrior lawyer, Denny Crane, states that when his mind rots to the state of a two-year-old child’s, his bride-to-be has been instructed to euthanize him by way of face-sitting.
Yes, he wants to be killed by snatch.
I’ve written before that the whole face-sitting thing, I can go there, that’s part of the job, I guess, but it does little for me, really. I don’t dislike it, it’s just not a reason to cancel going to the movies, y’know?
That said, I would absolutely feel compelled to give a guy what he asks for from time to time, particularly knowing how wildly fetishistic this love of face can be for guys. If you’re a chick and you don’t get it, try to be a guy for a second:
You’re obsessed with pussy and tits. You have been for a really, really long time. Ass, it’s nice, too. Especially bouncy ass. Very nice, you think. You’ll take two, and don’t call in you in the morning.
Now, you’re a guy who’s in his favourite position – on his back – and not only has this woman come to you, but you don’t even need to sit up to see her. Nope. You’re reclining, life is good, and oh, my God – she’s sitting on you. That nice bouncy round ass is on top of your chest, her twat – that Mecca, that daily fantasy, that height of all things good in your life – is resting on your lowly lips. And, dear god, when she bounces this way or that, presto (or, the gods have smiled, and she’s leaning over and using the headboard for support, and there they are, front and centre – dangling, even). Looming overhead like giants in the Amazon, her breasts. Oh. Oh, ho, ho. Yes. That, there, don’t move – never, ever move – stay right THERE.
Welcome to Male Psychology 101.
Of course, they won’t tell you this. They’ll just say, “I like it. It feels good. You look good up there.” Articulate much, guys?
But maybe it’s hard to quantify. There’s this old Canadian rock song from the late ‘80s by The Northern Pikes, and the song lyrics go, “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way.”
And it’s kinda how I feel about sex. You may have noticed, I’m an enthusiast. Been known to dabble a tad from time to time in the carnal arts.
But sex looks wack sometimes, man. Face-sitting’s just one of many somewhat amusing scenarios we find ourselves in. Blowjobs, they look kinda silly. Toe-sucking, yes, weird. (Feels great though. Really.) Bondage, well… S&M? Oh, my. It’s a regular freakshow, isn’t it?
Or is it? I mean, every now and then the writer me steps outside and becomes the comedian observer me. He’s doing what to me, where? With what? A kitchen utensil? Shit, that’s weird, I’d think.
But I probably enjoyed myself.
And that’s part of the thing about sex. You sometimes just need to suspend your judgment. Yes, weird things go down. Yes, you have preconceived notions. Yes, you’re a little mystified at how that could possibly be a good thing. But do it anyway.
It’s like sushi. Who knew?