What to watch

Watch this: "Top of the Lake."

Really, really great. Premiered last night on the Sundance Channel. Best thing I've seen on TV since the last thing I saw on TV that was great. Made with the BBC, of course, because American TV, HBO excluded, is incapable of making anything good.

Elisabeth Moss is a detective who returns to her small New Zealand hometown. There, a pregnant girl, 12, appears -- then disappears. Holly Hunter is a completely insane/fascinating/compelling lady-cult leader without a plan who, when asked by the girl what happened to her (Hunter), replies: "A calamity." I'm pretty sure the chick who played the crazy sister in "Sweetie" is the one who plays a middle-aged woman who isn't afraid to pay whomever's willing to bang her. The cast is rounded out by the bad guy from Baz Luhrmann's "Australia," and a bunch of guys who looked like they escaped from "Animal Kingdom."

Where is the girl? Who got her? Is she alive? I have no idea. It's "Twin Peaks" meets "The Deep End" meets "The Cremaster Cycle."

I'm a fan of "Girls," but you realize how petty and small and brief that show is when you watch a program like this. Take, for example, JazzHate, the HBO show's weak attempt to make fun of whatever it is Jezebel and XOJane think they're doing. Then you see something like the cluster of women inhabiting storage containers in a place called Paradise on "Top of the Lake," and you understand that women may have something more to offer the world than self-hate and misandry. Something bigger and better than realness portrayed by a splinter in your ass. Something more profound than writing about how your crotch smells. Something wiser than believing the commenters who tell you that you're a good writer because you embarrassed yourself in public. Thank you, Jane Campion, for being a woman who is creating, yet again, something that doesn't suck.

In any case, check it out.

No advice

I think "Miss Advised" is one of the saddest shows on TV. I was auditioned for it, and I guess I used to be one of those sex writer/relationship advice types of people, sort of, so I have a strange, special interest in it.

Since I got married late last year, I think I feel especially bad for these women. I would hate to have had a crew of cameras following me through my blundering dating. The thing you see most clearly is how miserable they are. Maybe so miserable that The One wouldn't make a difference, but sometimes I think, watching the show, that a program produced by Ashley Tisdale is a brutal meditation on how terrible aloneness really is.

They try too hard, they talk too much, they want to be funny and are not. They're lost but claim they're not, they obsess about men but can't land one, they don't know what to do but are willing to go public to show the depths of how sad they really are.

Dog

Who's the man on the left? Find out here.

How to hustle a warlord

If you have a chance, definitely watch HBO's new documentary, "Reporter." It follows New York Times op/ed columnist Nicholas Kristof's journey to Congo and back and various points in between. It seems strange to call Kristof a columnist, as when I hear "columnist" I think of like, Handy Hints from Heloise, or some broad blathering about relationships, and, you know, Kristof is breaking bread with Congo warlords.

It's not a perfect piece. It's a little all over the place, and the mealy-mouthed voice over could definitely be done without, but what makes it interesting is seeing Kristof in action, because, when you think about it, you see a lot of the consequences of what journalists do, but you don't see a lot of journalists in the field, doing what they do. Kristof is kind of an odd bird. He's sort of what I think of as a traditional newspaper reporter. They have no facial expressions. They seem sort of detached from everything, even as they move through it. And, you know, Kristof is not, ah, easy on the eyes. Oh, but, dang, he's just a marvelous reporter, and watching him "carelessly" wing off into the DRC and track down a warlord and traipse through the jungle is, well, I haven't done that. Have you?

The most interesting part is when Kristof sits down with General Laurent Nkunda, a warlord, and one bad ass motherfucker, no one I would want to mess with, or, like, meet while speed dating. And it's very intriguing to see Kristof and Nkunda do the interview dance. Kristof is very, very good, and he gets what he needs from Nkunda, surrounded by guards with guns bigger than the likes of anything I've ever seen, somewhere out in the jungle deeper than you've ever been. Afterward, Nkunda asks them to stay for dinner. Really, they can't, Kristof explains, because the trip home is four hours, and the sun is getting low in the sky, and if they travel at night, they run the risk of being killed. But how do you say no to a warlord? So, they stay. Nkunda provides them with armed soldiers for the ride home, and sends word that no one is to harm them on their return trip, presumably so the man who the warlord has perceived to be his messenger can spread the leader's word to the world.

Now, I've never sat down for dinner with a warlord, but it did remind me of the dance I've done with some of the people in the Valley, particularly the men, the directors. The stereotype of "those guys" has a hairy chest with a phat gold chain tangled in it, but, in fact, directors who cajole people into doing what they otherwise would not do are without a doubt charming. And so is Nkunda. As the interviewer, you can't hustle this subject. A hustler can't hustle a hustler. Yet, you do the dance, and, oftentimes, along the way, the subject falls in love, with something -- the sound of his own words, his story told his way trailing out of his mouth, the way that even though you are an outsider you are here and now giving him your undivided attention. So, in the end, maybe you both fall a little bit in love, mostly, in all likelihood with yourself, or some idea of who you think you are when you play this verbal game of chess, and both sides walk away thinking they've won, and the game keeps on playing.

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."--The Journalist and the Murderer