Entourage withdrawal

In the last couple of days, I've read quite a few news snippets (most recently this one) about people suffering emotional distress after watching Avatar. If I recall right, there was even one that committed suicide shortly after seeing it.

I can relate to all that as Avatar provides its audience with a dreamy alternate universe. Hmmm, ok, what fantasy movie doesn't, anyway? The Ugly Truth was a gem as far as making us believe that acting like a complete buffoon still gets you the girl. Those Twilight movies, for their part, show us how wit-challenged humourless forever-brooding (literally) pale stiffs (also literally) routinely make nubile teenage girls crazed with lust.

Then there is Entourage. It's a TV show by the way, so there may be an apples-to-oranges fallacy going on here. Anyhows, just look beyond that minor technicality and hear me say that at least Entourage makes it quite clear that one first needs to be a movie star to get the babes and the lifestyle.

The other night, I finished the last DVD disk (of three) of Season Five of that HBO TV show. I'm not 100% sure if I quoted the right season number but it's the one previous to the season currently being aired. Having watched all three disks (12 episodes) over just two nights, I'm today suffering serious Entourage withdrawal. The show is kind of the male-oriented counterpart of Sex and the City. It's characters live in a magical world of seemingly untenable personal dramas and challenges -- that always lead to happy resolutions, mostly involving the main characters getting into the company of naked or scantily-clad ladies.

And that can be quite emotionally distressing for a fourty-something bloke with a mortgage, who is employed by a bank, and is facing a have-to-do-this weekend of mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, and chauffering the kids to this and that sport event (it's Friday here in our part of the world by the way).

But I deal with it.