While laughter may, indeed, be the best medicine, I’m hoping kitschy musical theater is a close second, as I’m off to see Thoroughly Modern Millie this evening and am feeling more than a bit under the weather. Rollicking headache, vaguely sore throat, alternately completely stuffed and continuously runny nose, and (occasionally) Eustachian pain in my left ear. While I’m tempted to further wallow in self-pity, I’m sure posting even this much has more than invited the schadenfreude of the many friends and family members chiding over the past few months: “you can’t possibly keep this pace up, you’ll run yourself into the ground.”

Just made my annual read-through of Life’s Little Instruction Book, and got as much out of it this time through as I do every single year.

I’ll be wearing a zippered cardigan today, in memory of the great Mr. Fred Rogers, who yesterday passed away at the age of 74.

With just a few days left in LA, I plugged my television back in to catch the final episode of Joe Millionaire. And as jaded and cynical as I may be, I must admit I’m a sucker for happy endings.

So, congratulations Joe. Here’s hoping my last bit of time in Los Angeles is as fairy tale magical as yours was in France.

Los Angeles is a driving city. Here, everything, everything, is at least twenty minutes from anything else. Except during rush hour, when everything is, at very least, an hour’s drive.

Of course, as a subway-riding New Yorker, I’ve actually rather enjoyed the countless car hours. If nothing else, they’re prime listening time, and throughout LA’s highways, byways, surface streets and back alleyways, I’ve been burning the grooves off the trusty CDs I brought with me.

By now, however, after nearly two months of heavy listening, those CDs are beginning to bore me to tears. Which is why, earlier today, I swung by the exceedingly impressive Amoeba Music (on Sunset) and picked up a couple of new CDs.

Feeling the need to bolster my alt-country holdings, I bought:

• Son Volt – Trace
• Uncle Tupleo – 89/93: An Anthology
• Whiskeytown – Stranger’s Almanac
• Wilco – Being There

All of which thoroughly impressed me on first listening and further bolstered my growing appreciation for the genre. A few weeks of this and I might could almost be a Southerner.

For the past several years, I have been, like many other effete snotty sorts affecting high-brow quasi-intellectual postures, a TV-non-watcher.

Which isn’t to say that I’ve strictly not watched TV. I have. But only those shows so clearly a head and shoulders above standard programming fare that I could continue to disdain the television industry as a whole. (Specifically, my watching was largely constrained to the West Wing, several of the HBO series, and old episodes of the Simpsons – ideally from the 1992-1997 seasons.)

Since arriving in Los Angeles, however, I have found myself watching ungodly amounts of TV. Arguably, that isn’t entirely my own fault; Yoav Fisher, one of my Cyan colleagues and my housemate in Los Angeles in the temporary corporate housing we’ve been sharing, is a heavy watcher. As a result, the TV in our apartment often plays for hours a day. Yet Yoav, a dyed-in-the-wool multitasker, utilizes this extensive TV time by simultaneously reading scripts and fielding phone calls. I admire his ability to do so, but I must admit that is a talent I do not share – if I’m in the living room trying to read and the TV goes on, my attention is immediately diverted to the tube.

As a result, in the past five weeks, I’ve absorbed everything from Elimidate, Boy Meets World and The Cosby Show to The Real World, Joe Millionaire, and Ricki Lake. And through it all, I have felt my brain cells dying off, perhaps committing some sort of ritual seppuku to escape the sheer agony of such crappy, mindless programming. With each passing day, I have felt my IQ (arguably limited as it already is) whittled away by the glowing box.

So I am particularly pleased to say that salvation is finally in sight. Yoav ships off to San Francisco this Saturday morning – as soon as he’s out the door, I’ll be unplugging the box. I can only hope that a steady diet of quality literature can reverse any damage sustained thus far.

Today, the Wall St. Journal ran a Leisure & Arts editorial discussing pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly’s $100 million gift to Poetry Magazine. The article not only cites the same essay on poetry I discussed two days back, but comes largely to the same conclusion that I did: that the creation of poetry is in less need of help than the appreciation of poetry, and that money and effort should be directed accordingly.

I’m so many steps ahead, it’s almost eerie.

The myriad flaws of consumer culture notwithstanding, I cannot help but be impressed whenever I see a really good commercial. Therefore, I extend my congratulations to Volkswagen for their new Beetle Convertible spot (click “see the commercial”), which has been screening before films in New York theaters for the past month or so.

The commercial is particularly impressive for the “indie” cool it affects, perfectly suited both to the car’s 20-something target demographic, and to the spot’s pre-film screening approach. What gives the commercial indie cred? At least four factors:

1. Quasi-retro styling. Check out the lead actor’s clothing, the very Thomas Crown Affair (original version – not Brosnan remake) use of split screen, the slightly de-saturated color timing, and, of course, the music (see no. 2).

2. The music. As in prior commercials, VW has built the whole thing around a reasonably obscure but remarkably catchy musical blast from the past. (Consider previous commercials featuring such songs as Styx’ “Mr. Roboto”, Mingus’ “II BS”, Trio’s “Da Da Da” or Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon”, the last of which single-handedly launched the current Nick Drake revival.) This spot features the much-overlooked Electric Light Orchestra, with the perfectly chosen and bizarrely addictive “Mr. Blue Sky” (though in what sounds like a more recent recording than the song’s original release).

3. The lead. The poor guy is so blatantly a Jake Gyllenhaal rip-off (see Moonlight Mile) that it’s almost painful. Lest you doubt VW’s leveraging Gyllenhaal’s indie cred in particular rather than that of shaggy-haired actors in general, check the spot’s title: “Bubble Boy”, a sideways homage to a really poor film in which Gyllenhaal recently starred.

4. The concept. Standard affluent twenty-something experience: A few years out of school and things are going as well as you possibly could have hoped – you’ve got the job, you’re climbing the corporate ladder. And yet your life is mindlessly repetitive unbearable drivel. If a Porsche can pull you out of a mid-life crisis, what can pull you out of a quarter-life crisis?

Taken together, those four factors make the commercial remarkably hip. So I say, excellent work VW. If only the car was half as cool as the commercial.