Without a doubt, the best show on television right now is Breaking Bad. You know a show is truly peerless when you can’t compare it to anything else you’ve seen before.

It stars Malcolm in the Middle alumnus Bryan Cranston (as Walter White) and Aaron Paul, who I’ve never seen on my screen before. White is a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher struggling to pay his medical bills. Paul, whose character is called Jesse Pinkman, is an ex-student of White’s turned unambitious layabout. The two form an unlikely partnership that sees them start a crystal meth lab, each looking to serve his own financial needs.

Throw in a pregnant and suspicious wife, a snarky, MS-afflicted teenage son, a mouthy buffoon of a brother-in-law (who also happens to be a narcotics detective) and a resentful, passive aggressive sister, and you have a plot so laden with subtext and subplot and tangential deliciousness your brain will find it impossible to disengage for even a nanosecond.

The real mark of a great show is its ability to make you plead with the TV.
Oh no you di’in’t!
What the- ?!
Oh frick! Someone help him!

Each episode leaves you picking your stunned jaw off the ground and if Season 1 was the tantalizing antipasto, Season 2 is the full-blown primo to be gorged on uninhibitedly without worrying about carbs and calories and bathing suits you’ll never fit into in time for the summer. Although that last bit probably just applies to me.

It takes a while to get me to commit completely to a TV show. To make it a must-watch–right-away. The last one that blew my mind like this was The Wire. And before that, there was Frasier. Everything else always waits till the weekend or till I have absolutely nothing else going on. But I stay up waiting for Breaking Bad to be fully…er…acquired. Till the wee hours of the morning if necessary. It’s that good. (Plus I’m an insomniac so the staying up part is kind of a given). I’ve just watched Episode 7 of Season 2. Which wowed me even more than Episode 6 of Season 2. Which wowed me more than Episode 5 …

If you aren’t watching Breaking Bad, you’re really not using your TV the way Nature intended.

I rarely, if ever, get to review a film or album that I love unequivocally. Often I review things I thoroughly despise. In these instances the first draft of my review almost never makes it to print because, despite protestations to the contrary, a review is really one of two things: a cheaply-disguised promo or a chance for you to endorse prevailing opinion. No room for sardonic disdain or (whisper it) subjectivity. Boo.

Thing is, I think entertainment comes with a kind of responsibility. An obligation to marry style to substance.   Or at least pretend to try. Yet many of the music reviews I have done in the past have been of songs so completely vacuous and pointless I ‘ve had to stop reviewing altogether because it was making me hate music. New music, anyway. See, for example, some of the lyrics to Beyonce’s 2006 hit, Check On It.

You can look at it
As long as you don’t grab it
If you don’t go braggin’
I might let you have it
You think that I’m teasin’
But I ain’t got no reason
I’m sure that I can please you
But first I gotta read you

Ooo boy you looking like you like what you see
Won’t you come over and check up on it
(I’ma let you work up on it)
Ladies let him check up on it
(Watch it while he check up on it)
Dip it, pop it, work it, stop it
Check on me tonight

The it in question is her backside. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? You have to wonder if this is the kind of emancipation the Suffragettes were dreaming of as they lay prostrate, chained to grimy lampposts in the dead of winter…

You know what I miss? Shows like Sesame Street and Square One. How much kickass fun was that, growing up? There should be a show like Square One for 30-somethings. I mean, who doesn’t remember classics like The Mathematics of Love? A song that completely transformed my understanding of Roman numerals and molded my expectations of love in a single swathe of lyrical brilliance. You have to check out the video (if you’re not in China), it’s the best kind of regressing. No Grammy or Emmy or whatever for the spectacularly innovative and funny creators of Square One. We’re all too busy paying homage to Beyonce’s glutes.

Mathematics of Love

I night…the stars were glowing.
II hearts…were overflowing,
III words (I love you) hit like a bolt from above.
IV arms… were hugging tightly…
V times…I kissed you lightly…
So goes the mathematics of love!!
I, II, III forever I’ll keep on counting the ways
M nights, I’ll hold you,
It’s the mathematics of love!

My favorite celebrity has to be Tony Shalhoub. His portrayal of his TV character – Adrian Monk – is at once the funniest and most heartbreakingly poignant thing I have seen on the telly. But that is not why he makes it to the top of the Favorite Tree. It’s because other than the fact that I know he is a brilliant actor, I know nothing else about him. Perfect.

I don’t know what he likes to drink, what his kids’ names are, who his wife is, which political party he supports, what he thinks of meat-eaters, the positions he prefers when he’s having sex, what brand of underwear he endorses, what he eats for breakfast, how messed up he thinks the environment is, what he does first thing in the morning or even last thing at night. Nothing. I know nothing about this man other than the fact that he is a fantastic actor. And that’s all I need.

Contrast that with …

***Warning, this is 3 minutes and 14 seconds of your life that you will never get back. Ever. ***

…this.

But in truth, this blog, that video… we are all a little bit up ourselves.

Look at me! This is how I’m feeling! This is what I think! I’m baring everything, to everyone, all the time!

Ugh.

I guess it’s the degree to which we surrender to it which separates the wheat from the w*nkers.

I learnt a new word today.

There’s something about Billie Holiday that I can’t quite wrap my words around. A kind of…magnetism that’s hard to describe. The bright, sunshiny name incongruous with the dark and desolate way she lived, and died. It’s one thing to watch someone fall apart. They give you a TV show and call you a ‘star’ for it these days. But to hear it, like you do in BH’s shattered voice when she sings, is that much more emotive.

I love this picture. It makes me feel introspective, and a little sad. I always wanted a huge poster of this photograph for my bedroom wall. But my lifestyle is too transient for anything as enduring as a framed print. And my Landlord wouldn’t let me put it up anyway.

But look at her. Lost. Absorbed. Anguished. No one sings about life that way anymore – like they’ve been bruised and battered by it. Like they aren’t sure it’s worth fighting back anymore. I like my musicians bloodied and a little bit broken. Can’t relate to the shiny happy ones.

A Billie Holiday quote:

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

The Human Stain, the 2003 film I can only reference because of my ridiculous oestrogen-frenzy of a crush on Wentworth Miller in the same year, featured a line spoken by Anna Deavere Smith to her conflicted ‘son’:

“Coleman, you think like a prisoner. You’re white as snow. And you think like a slave”.

See, Billie, it’s in your head sometimes. First it drains you, then it fills you. Fills you to bursting so you have to wonder: If it lives inside me, how will I ever get away? We all know what that’s like.

Thank you for “Lady Sings the Blues”. I love that song. It’s perfect to cry along to on a Friday night. With a glass of wine in one hand and fistful of Kleenex in the other.

I like my jazz…jazzy. Three years in Shanghai and I haven’t been able to find a place that serves it like that. I’ve found belligerent jazz, pretentious jazz, uptight jazz, overcooked jazz and jazz by numbers. Last night at Brown Sugar was more of the same. Big notes punctuated with flamboyant percussion – and a complete lack of soul. Sing it like you’ve lived it, dammit.

A couple of months ago, I was writing music reviews for That’s Shanghai. I was reviewing Mariah Carey’s new album: E=MC2. Before writing mine, I read a few other reviews of the album. In one, there was a comparison between Carey’s harpy-esque screeching and Lizz Wright’s smoky contralto.

I’d never heard of Lizz Wright, up until then, so off to YouTube I went. This was the very first video I watched.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so mesmerized, soothed and seduced by a single performance. Ever. Lizz Wright, I heart you.