Happy New Year And All That.

How stupid can television get? Well until they come up with "All George Bush Jr., all the time!" here's my nominee:

The SO and I spent New Year's at her Mum's place this year--or technically last year I guess. We recovered on January first '06 by lounging on the sofa watching an eloquent classic: Bruce Lee's "Fists of Fury"--in which Lee, in 1930-something trashes a temple-school and in the process beats the crap out of a white dude with disco hair--worth seeing in itself.

There's nothing wrong with FOF, it's a classic of the genre (said genre being dubbed movies with terrific action which might as well have stayed in Chinese). FOF spawned at least two sequels, the third actually stars one "Bruce Li" in the title role. But also drawing on the show is "Fists of Legend", starring Jet Li. FOL follows FOF almost slavishly: Japanese occupation, Chinese student returns to his old temple school, takes on succession of bad guys in order to create good video game premise.

We were watching FOL on the "Spike" television network, who clearly value their shows in testosterone points rather than Neilsen points. Now I quite like Spike--it's one of the first places I ever saw Ed the Sock--a show with surprising soul in between happily overloaded bikini tops.

But oh boy did they blow it. In the middle of Jet Li's big battle with the biggest bad guy . . . you won't believe this . . . they cut to a ₤µ€λin' commercial!

They're so lucky I don't have cable at home--I would deliberately not watch them for weeks and weeks.