Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams...

There's a light in my room that I rarely turn off. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and it looks like the room's on fire -- but it's just this light. A splash of orange reflecting off a white patch of wall. When the waking world is blurry, it shimmers.

I'm enjoying the second (final?) series of Gervais's EXTRAS. I find that THE OFFICE UK and EXTRAS share a similar air of self-contempt and melancholy. (THE AMERICAN OFFICE retains the air of melancholy.) However, Gervais seems particularly brutal on himself in EXTRAS. It's the source of the comedy -- the level of humiliation his character must endure. But it's sometimes more sad than funny.

[Like my life!]

An excerpt from the Onion A.V. Ricky Gervais interview that, I think, perfectly explains the appeal a lot of modern comedy:

In a safe Western world where we're not being shot at and we're not starving, the worst thing that happens to us most days is someone's rude to us, or we accidentally insult someone. Social faux pas is the worst thing that happens to most people, most days, so we've got to concentrate on that, really. You don't need a high incident. The minutiae of human behavior is really the most interesting thing you can explore. You don't need people being taken out by snipers for something to be interesting, 'cause it's not what most of us relate to.

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An excerpt from a really old Twilight Zone episode:

BARTENDER talks to a DRUNK SANTA (Art Carney),

"You've had six drinks and a sandwich, now that's $3.80 you owe me."

Man, if I could just get my time machine working, I could zap myself into the past and buy a nice brownstone for $300.