Spike TV (The First Network for Men ™ - what a load of hoo-hah *that* is) has been running a CSI marathon to introduce the show to its viewers. Despite the fact that I’ve watched many of episodes of CSI (and CSI:Miami and Law and Order and Law and Order:SVU and Law and Order:CI), I seem to have missed many from the early years. They broadcast my favorite from last season, in which Grissom investigates a dominatrix. There’s an obvious attraction between the two of them, although Spike did the unthinkable and cut the ending scene in which it all, in a manner of speaking, came together. I noticed in the credits for the show that they listed a Dominatrix Consultant. Seems like anybody can get into consulting these days.

Last week on one of my many trips to the library I got the intersection where the library/police station sits, and was stunned to see a gigantic modular housing unit trying to turn the corner. The mobile home type monstrosity was at least 60 feet long and was trying to navigate a turn from one street to another where there are no shoulders to widen the road, and where there are numerous obstacles (stop signs, low-hanging wires, sign for the library, parked cars). A crowd had gathered. A police SUV roared up, lights flashing. This was the biggest show in town that afternoon. The driver grazed the stop sign and then stopped in order to have someone climb on the roof and hold up the electrical wires that were dangling too close. This guy actually stood on the roof and held up the wires while the driver maneuvered at about .5 mph. Nominees for the Darwin Awards lurk around every corner. The worst part is not the obvious lack of planning on the part of the delivery people, but the fact that this hideous piece of prefab trash is being delivered to one of the lots in town that had been cleared of an older home. I’m sure the neighbors who live in the Victorian houses that flank the lot are thrilled to have this construction trailer-like beast nestled between them.

When I started this journal a little over a year ago, I began with an entry about the house I grew up in that my sister was selling. A year later, it’s still on the market, now with the third real estate agent who has posted some new pictures here. This is a desirable location in Bucks County, within commuting distance of both Philadelphia and New York and views of countryside that are only slowly being devoured by development. If you look out the back windows (broken more than once by errant birds), you can see Bowman’s Tower, which my great grandfather helped to build during the Depression. The one detriment are the neighbors who live in the house my grandparents built. They have torn up the yard, torn down the house, fouled the stream that borders the fields behind, and been fined repeatedly by the health department. My sister has talked with multiple lawyers who assure her that there is nothing she can do. Despite the fact that these people (speculation abounds about the nature of the business they do at all hours of the day and night) have turned the house and lot into an abomination, and have been cited for numerous laws they’ve broken, and have caused my sister’s property values to plummet, there is nothing she can do. If this was a movie, she would know someone who could hack into their accounts, ruin their credit, have their electricity turned off, and force them into bankruptcy. In reality, she and her family moved to get away from them and are now saddled with trying to sell a house next to what has become an open sewer.

Movies: Cellular. A pretty silly movie that was entertaining in an I-can’t-believe-I’m-paying-attention-to-and-enjoying-this-kind-of-claptrap way. Roger Ebert gave this movie three and a half stars, which is about 50% too many stars. Kim Basinger is a high school science teacher who wears fishnet stockings and knows how to make a phone work after it’s been demolished with a sledge hammer, certainly an important skill. Chris Evans is the unlucky soul who’s on the receiving end of her random phone call. Before the end of the day he will steal two cars (one of them twice), shot a gun, get shot and get kissed by the science teacher. On balance, it all evens out.