Last night I watched TNT’s third episode of Hawthorne, Jada Pinkett Smith’s (Exec Producer/Director) and John Masius’ (Exec Producer/Writer) new nursing “dramalet”. Yes, I made that word up. It’s the diminuitive form of drama. That isn’t meant to be demeaning in any way. I really quite like the show and almost blogged the first episode I saw. But while first impressions are lasting, it’s only fair to give a show a couple of episodes before forming concrete opinions (unless the show is Raising the Bar).

So what’s to like? First, it has color, the missing ingredient in primetime television… beautiful browns, high yellows, tans and cafe con cremas! Black, Hispanic, Italian, biracial–damn! Even the white folks look ethnic. And any drama that dares to paint my screen in the colors of my life I will give more than a fighting chance.

Next, the characters have heart. Chief Nursing Officer Christina Hawthorne (Jada Pinkett Smith) gos above and beyond the duties of a nurse. She’s a ridiculous risktaker. She takes medical risks and ethical risks, any of which would be a career ender for normal people. Bur her care for her patients shines through. The rest of her staff is just as caring, if somewhat less daring. There are no sourpusses and no hardasses looking to torture your loved ones when you’re not watching.

Finally, the best quality of the show is that it doesn’t try to be more than it is: a serialized medical drama. In other words, it doesn’t pretend to be the next ER. The technical aspects of medicine take a back seat to the story lines. And the story lines are tried and true: Hawthorne is a widowed mother at odds with her headstrong teenage daughter. Last night’s episode featured a good ole Munchausen by Proxy story arc, and the ever popular “sibling who can’t pull the plug on a brain-dead parent”. Touching. Seriously, it is. After 11 mostly good years of ER, here’s a show that embraces the core mission of any drama: entertainment. This program does not exist to educate. You won’t feel like you’re halfway toward earning your medical degree after watching Hawthorne. It won’t prepare you to discuss the ethics of black on black abuse in Africa, or the inequities of a failing health system… not yet.

That’s why I call it a dramalet. It’s cute and small enough to hide in the shadows of many current dramas. Watch it anyway. I’m not sure what the future of Hawthorne holds for its viewers, but for now it’s a lighthearted, colorful, and totally human drama worth watching.

For an op-ed opinion of the show, visit HollywoodChicago.com.

Many of you budding millionaires who use Google AdSense will want a preview of the ads available for (or already showing) on your blog. Authorizing third-party ads on your website is always a crap shoot. Being upset by a link is bad enough, but what worse atrocities lurk at the linked site?

If you’ve read all the AdSense legal fluff, you’re aware that clicking on your own ads is forbidden, verboten, nicht, a no-no of capital measure. Google’s AdSense Preview Tool addresses this problem. It’s a simple registry key that adds a contextual (right-click) menu in Internet Explorer that offers a few tools to preview available ads and advertiser sites. Well and good if you’re an Internet Exploiter fan; I’m not.

A quick search turned up this old post describing how to use the AdSense Preview Tool from within Firefox. The article is simple to follow and works with one caveat: the link for the IE Tab Add-on has changed. Other than that it seems to work fine, only throwing an occasional script error. Be aware that since the Preview Tool is a registry change, you’ll need to restart your computer (or perhaps logoff and log back on) after installing.

Good Ad Hunting!

International clamor over Iran’s presidential election has reached deafening proportions. The incendiary struggle is fueled in no small part by Twitter’s dominance as a global “one-to-many” communication tool. Confronted with a media blackout, CNN has relied extensively on tweets and re-tweets (RTs) in the #iranelection and #neda hashtag feed. Even friends of mine who have self-identified as apolitical are showing an interest and lending their supportive voices to the Iranian people. Hooray for Twitter. This historical moment shows technology in its best and brightest light.

But beyond the human struggle, technological triumphs, and media saturation, a nagging familiarity prodded a memory of 2000 and America’s own stolen presidency.

If your first thoughts of the ill-fated Gore v. Bush election are of pregnant, dimpled, Shirley Templed chads, then we have lost more than an election. We’ve lost a collective memory that would bolster the current outrage at Ahmadinejad’s perceived theft. The real crime in the US 2000 Presidential race involved the unconstitutional “purging” of suspected felons from Florida’s voter rolls. Through an unholy collusion of private industry (ChoicePoint) and government malfeasance (Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris), thousands of Florida citizens had their voting rights unscrupulously rescinded. As reported by investigative journalist Greg Pallast, this was Salon.com’s politics story of the year. But the rest of the country and mainstream media all but dismissed the grossly underreported injustice. By election night it was less than a fading light in the rear view mirror of US politics. The ensuing media orgy over dangling chads should have forever put to rest the notion of a pervasively liberal media. Even today recollections of that troubled race tend to focus on the Supreme Court’s decision to end the recounts rather than the thousands of predominantly black voters who had their 15th Amendment rights violated.

Nine years later an equally important presidential race around the world ends in controversy. Except for the level of violence, Iran’s election resembles our own shameful quagmire of 2000. But this time, the world seems more engaged. US citizens seem more engaged. The media seem more engaged. In all aspects of the conflict, the impeccably groomed mane of our moral white horse waves as gallantly as our flag.

Of course, Twitter wasn’t around in 2000. So I suppose I can’t blame the vast citizenry who rely on bleeps and burps from their cell phone to inform them when to speak out for not inferring similarities between the two elections. And is it really fair to blame Congress who recently voted to condemn Iran’s crackdown on demonstrators? After all, it wasn’t until September 11, 2001 that many legislators realized just how big a grudge former employees could hold.

But solidarity is nice. In the bobbing sea of green worldwide I see the presumed freedom of dissent flourish in a foreign land, albeit at a high price. I’m not indifferent to the plight of Iranian people. Neither am I sanguine about the peaceful removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Considering the paltry few responses available (strong words, sanctions, force), I find Obama’s restraint admirable and warranted. To the people of Iran I say, been there, done that, have the black President to prove it. Live in hope.

NBC has been my most watched non-cable network for years. That may soon change. E! Online reported earlier this week that NBC had canceled My Name Is Earl and Medium. This move only compounds the loss of Life and Knight Rider. OK, Knight Rider maybe wasn’t such a surprise but one’s lust for muscle car porn must be sated.
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I followed the rainbow to its end. It stopped at a 24 hour supermarket. What does that mean?

Yep. That’s the plot machine. Friend to the idea-less. It links to Script Frenzy, a site where members try to complete a 100 page script every April. I’m semi-committed and after NaNoWrimo, not ashamed of my ambivalence. The months that followed after I committed to Wrimo were some of the darkest in my life. If I were superstitious I might infer a connection. I’m not superstitious. But I still have to fit every ambition and stretch goal I have into my “real” life. So this is me, sliding cooly into Frenzy. Win or lose, it’s all good.

Having been thoroughly trounced by NaNoWriMo I still haven’t learned my lesson. I’m flirting with Script Frenzy this year. Yes, I know it’s already begun and the foreplay should be in the rear view mirror by now. But I’m taking a different, more casual path than I took with Wrimo. I have a couple of ideas and I’m developing them a bit before actually diving into that empty pool (or blank screen… pick your metaphor). Stay tuned.

You, dear reader obviously have a lot to learn about blogging. Like knowing the difference between a dormant blog and one that’s resting comfortably. The difference between a blog stifled by it’s own self-important meteoric rise, and one taking the time to contemplate weightier matters in life, such as Naomi Elizabeth.

As much performance artist as musician, Naomi hit my radar a couple of weeks ago. Again, I’m so slow; the embed is over a year old. But the allure is timeless, even through the campiness. Check out the rest of her YouTube and MySpace fare.