Today’s soundtrack: we'll be waiting in Kingston Town, right on
Today at 5:32pm: doing the crosswalk shuffle



At the photo studio, for eight-hour stretches I'm like Prince: Doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before. After I let the clients in and set up the gear there's not a whole hell of a lot to do, but I've still gotta stay there in case they burn the place down.

When I first took the gig, I figured it would be a good time to write.Wrong! The reason they don't hold photo shoots in libraries and morgues is because they're noisy. Makeup people are as voluble as radio DJs, and have the same tendency to overestimate the funniness of their jokes. During the average shoot I overhear everything from European gossip to detailed rundowns of what their boyfriends' problems are, and just about none of it is interesting.

So I diverted eBay funds into purchasing noise-canceling headphones. But while the 'phones are great at stripping out bass, they do nothing for treble, meaning I could still hear shrill models raving about Ibiza. You need to fill the headphones with something else, like music or movies.

Enter serial programming, which is the perfect way to make eight hours go by in a blink. Thanks to Netflix I have now seen Deadwood, Freaks & Geeks, the first three seasons of The Shield and every season of 24. The adventures of Jack Bauer are particularly enthralling.

The thing about 24 is--j'ever notice CTU has a mole every season? Don't they screen their employees? I think McDonald's has stricter hiring practices. At CTU you walk in off the street, fill out a job application, then they give you a desk and start telling you secrets.

The scuttlebutt has been that Jack Bauer will eventually be killed off the show, but if you ask me that would be too predictable. I think it would be better if Bauer simply quit after getting frustrated with his job, like the rest of us. Plus they could use the opportunity to get some big-name corporate sponsors for product placement.