Pardon me while I geek out.

I totally have a girl crush on Jennifer Garner. I want to be her best friend. I want to drink lattes and talk girl talk. What am I saying? I'd be thrilled to babysit her kids.

I never thought much about Jennifer Garner, for a long time. I thought she was good in Juno, and in The Invention of Lying (which, incidentally, halfway through turns into a completely different movie than the one advertised, but is still totally worth renting). But I never really paid attention until a few weeks ago I started watching every episode of Alias, in chronological order, of course.

I generally believe that the best actors are the ones who bring something of themselves into the characters they play - so they're not putting on masks, but rather finding the parts of themselves that resonate with the roles at hand. Which is to say that after watching over 100 episodes of Alias, I feel good about saying that Jennifer Garner has got to be a total sweetheart. Yes, I fully understand that I don't actually know her even the teeniest bit, having never even been in a room with her much less met her (nothing creepy or delusional going on here, I swear). But just watch all five seasons - how can she not be awesome?

Also, as evidenced by the blooper reel for season five, she has the most awesomely bad laugh ever. I'm just sayin.

New Generation Science Fiction?

Okay, so I'm about six years late to the party. That doesn't mean I'm not opinionated about it.

I've been watching Lost on Netflix streaming - I'm almost through season two now - and while I agree that it's better than most of what's on television these days, I just don't get what the big damn deal is. It's basically just a science fiction series, except that I guess most TV and film sci-fi is the green-aliens-with-antennae type, not the subtle, almost like the world we know but not, type. Doesn't anyone read Ray Bradbury anymore?

What really bugs me, though, is that the characters on this show are completely naive idiots. Almost every one of them will believe anything anyone tells them, and in spite of the constant trouble and confusion and death caused purely by people keeping secrets they insist on keeping them, on grinding their own personal axes. I'm not saying that's necessarily unrealistic, but it seriously pisses me off. Over 40-some episodes I've grown to hate almost all of the people on this island. Dudes - get over yourselves.

I do, however, enjoy the Hawaiian scenery. And the fact that all these overpaid actors spend so much of their time drenched and sandy.

But now I've gotta go - I've got the season two finale to watch.

Goals

I have finally discovered when music videos are aired: 3am Central, which probably means 4am everywhere else. Thank you, VH1.

A few of the other gems I've uncovered in my exploration of the DISH Network:

- The NASA channel. DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A NASA CHANNEL? And am I too old to go to space camp?
- Latina women selling something that I first thought might be prosthetic breasts, but eventually concluded was a posture-enhancing device. (It would've helped if they had actually shown the product and not just a lot of closeups of breasts.)
- A priest getting very animated about the heresies of Arias. (Arms flying everywhere.)
- A documentary on Ronald Reagan.
- Jesus-music videos.
- The 2005 US Poker Championship.
- A James Woods movie.
- A Lawrence Olivier movie.
- A Robert Redford movie.
- A half-hour program on the internal cleansing craze sweeping America, titled "Is Colon Detox Hype?"

Watching television at 3am is one of the most depressing activities I can think of, right up there with getting paid $12 an hour to make photocopies for seven straight months.

One of my primary goals in life is (now) to have better things to do at 3am than watch television. Isn't it good to have goals?