This blog has been around for a long time, and I have writ­ten a lot. How much is a lot? Well, a rough es­ti­mate tells me that, with­out count­ing things trans­lat­ed to span­ish, I have writ­ten 2568143 char­ac­ter­s, or 343105 word­s, in 45477 lines.

Just to give you some con­tex­t, that is slight­ly longer than Stephen King's The Stand

And just for fun, here it is, in over 600 large for­mat pages which I hope noone both­ers down­load­ing ;-)

First, a bit of ad­vice: If you have not seen Don't trust the bitch in apart­ment 23 go ahead and do it, it's very fun­ny.

The hero of the sto­ry is a bright young wom­an (played by an ac­tress that looks like Zooey De­schanel's smart, evil cous­in) who has dis­cov­ered a un­sat­is­fied need in the re­al es­tate mar­ket: room­mates who will take your de­posit, make your life hel­l, con­vince you to leave, yet com­mit no crimes vile enough to war­rant po­lice's at­ten­tion.

Hav­ing found that need, she, like any true hu­man, ful­fills it in hero­ic fash­ion, thus tak­ing what's right­ful­ly hers by virtue of her in­ge­nu­ity and willpow­er.

Her lat­est room­mate is at­tract­ed to her mag­net­ic per­son­al­i­ty and strong élan, and dis­plays some in­ter­est­ing wit of her own when she re­acts to our hero's scheme by steal­ing and sell­ing all her be­long­ings, which leads to fun­ny hi­jinks.

Since this is a utopic com­e­dy, state's in­ter­fer­ence in the af­fairs of our heros is in­ex­is­tan­t, al­low­ing them to ex­er­cise sov­er­eign rights over their own bod­ies, like when they give al­co­hol to a thir­teen yeaar old, or deal in drugs, which as we all know, are vic­tim­less crimes, played for laughs (and re­al­ly, the chi­nese pills bit is fun­ny).

I have on­ly seen the pi­lot, but I look for­ward to the pro­tag­o­nist­s' start­ing a steel com­pa­ny, or maybe a rail­road cor­po­ra­tion, or maybe join­ing John Galt.

I give this show 4 Rands out of five.

Em­pece­mos con un par de citas:

No es­tá cien­tí­fi­ca­mente de­mostra­do que el al­ma no se trans­mi­ta en un trasplante de órganos.

—Mar­iló Mon­tero

Sabías que ca­da si­ete min­u­tos, en este país, nace un ne­gro sin al­ma?

—BB King

Mar­iló Mon­tero es una per­sona que tra­ba­ja en tele­visión, y di­jo esa pelo­tudez. Po­dría hac­er un post ex­pli­can­do ed­u­cada­mente que el al­ma no se alo­ja en las córneas, ni en el bazo, pero va­mos di­rec­to a lo im­por­tan­te: el al­ma no ex­iste.

El al­ma, to­dos los que creen que ten­emos te lo van a de­cir, es in­ma­te­ri­al. Las cosas in­ma­te­ri­ales no ex­is­ten. El al­ma es útil co­mo metá­fora, es útil co­mo ata­jo para de­scribir un con­jun­to de cosas rela­cionadas con la per­son­al­i­dad y la con­cien­ci­a, pero el al­ma en sí no es una cosa.

Y no, las no-­cosas no viv­en en el in­testi­no, así que no, no se trans­miten.

¿Si no, cuan­do te ex­tir­pan las amíg­dalas, te volvés un poco más de­salmado?

¿Cuan­do cagás, mandás tu al­ma a Be­raza­tegui?

¿Cuan­do te cortás el pelo, te acortás el es­píritu?

¿Si me trans­plan­tan al­go de Mar­iló Mon­tero, me vuel­vo id­io­ta?

Creo que lo de la seño­ra Mon­tero es sim­ple­mente un in­ten­to de mod­ern­izar al­gu­na su­per­sti­ción me­dieval, y sien­do el­la es­paño­la, es posi­ble supon­er que es al­go católi­co. Supon­go que el salto de una re­ligión a un chori­zo lleno de al­ma de va­ca es breve.

Anoche ví John Carter. Re­cuer­do vaga­mente haber leí­do el li­bro en que es­tá basado, "Princess of Mars" cuan­do tenía un­os 8 años y era so­cio de la Bib­liote­ca Mar­i­ano Moreno, su­je­to a una di­eta es­tric­ta de Hardy Boys, Bom­ba el chico de la sel­va, y Bur­rough­s.

Me sor­prende mu­cho que haya si­do el fra­ca­so económi­co que fue. Es di­ver­tida, es­tá bi­en hecha, es un poco an­tigua en el sen­ti­do de que cuen­ta una his­to­ria de man­era di­rec­ta, sin vueltas. Hay que dar­le un pre­mio es­pe­cial al di­rec­tor porque ¡Las es­ce­nas de ac­ción se en­tien­den! Siem­pre sabés quién es­tá ha­cien­do qué cosa, y la relación es­pa­cial de la gente en las es­ce­nas tiene sen­ti­do.

Claro, la his­to­ria pasa rápi­do, hay mon­tones de per­son­ajes se­cun­dar­ios que no se de­sar­rol­lan porque no al­can­za el tiem­po, y es una pe­na que prob­a­ble­mente nun­ca veamos la se­gun­da parte.

Of­ten movies or TV se­ries come in pairs. These days I watched two se­ries that are ob­vi­ous­ly re­lat­ed, Sher­lock and El­e­men­tary and there is even a movie se­ries by guy Ritchie (which I ac­tu­al­ly like!) but let's talk TV.

I am not go­ing to be orig­i­nal in say­ing Sher­lock is the su­pe­ri­or show. But why is it?

Well, I think it most­ly comes to one be­ing done by peo­ple who have read the book­s, and the oth­er by peo­ple who heard about them.

For ex­am­ple, that evil word "Ele­men­tary". It's not in the book­s. It's in the movies, though. So, if you fo­cus on sec­ond-­hand sources, it makes sense to use it, but if you care about the orig­i­nal ma­te­ri­als it makes sense to care­ful­ly avoid it.

There's al­so the prob­lem of El­e­men­tary's Holmes look­ing like a hobo. Holmes was fas­tid­i­ous­ly neat. He was a slob about his lodg­ings, but he al­ways kept him­self clean and well dressed.

Or let's con­sid­er ad­dic­tion. Yes, in the books Holmes shoots co­caine and does mor­phine, Thing is, those things were not even il­le­gal at the time. Co­caine was a cough medicine. So, trans­pos­ing that in­to nico­tine ad­dic­tion makes sense, spe­cial­ly since Holmes was al­so a very heavy smok­er even for vic­to­ri­an stan­dard­s. Turn­ing it in­to a drug habit that forces Holmes in­to re­hab (re­hab!) does­n't. Al­so, "this is a three patch prob­lem"? Have to chu­cle at that, dude.

The Wat­sons al­so are quite dif­fer­en­t. I quite like Lucy Li­u's dead­pan de­liv­ery of ev­ery­thing, but Wat­son is not sup­posed to be a dam­aged per­son that nur­tures. He's a thrill seek­er, a badass char­ac­ter that is on­ly mild-­man­nered when com­pared to his com­pa­ny. Again, Sher­lock walks clos­er to the books there, while El­e­men­tary tries to shoe­horn some weird per­son­al-­growth side­plot.

Yes, Wat­son is the one that brings out the hu­man side of Holmes, but he does that not by be­ing all soft and cud­dly, he does it by be­ing a hard head­ed bas­tard who stands up to him. He's a true friend, and friends don't take shit from friend­s, at least not with­out giv­ing shit back. In Sher­lock he does that, and clear­ly Holmes re­spects him. In El­e­men­tary, Wat­son is tol­er­at­ed, and treat­ed like a pet.

Winks. Both se­ries try to make ref­er­ence, more or less oblique, to the source ma­te­ri­al. Again, it feels like El­e­men­tary is work­ing from sec­ond hand ref­er­ences. If I could find you the "Holmes in­ten­tion­al­ly avoids learn­ing things of no im­me­di­ate rel­e­vance" bits in both, the El­e­men­tary one was a groan­ing ex­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing phys­i­cal demon­stra­tion of how wa­ter dis­places oil. In Sher­lock? Well, it's an ar­gu­men­t. In­creduli­ty on one side, quirk­i­ness on the oth­er, fun­ny di­a­log.

Be­cause that's what El­e­men­tary is­n't. it's just not fun. And a Holmes that's not fun, is a bro­ken Holmes.