Scholarly groping

My night began with an ABC reality show called The Scholar, transitioned into an upstairs neighbor getting groped in the street, and climaxed with a full frontal shot of that same neighbor over a glass of scotch in her apartment. I'll deal with each below.

First, The Scholar. This ABC show pits several high school students against each other in a competition for a full scholarship to college. Surely a talented to be group, the lowest GPA is a 3.91 (although this guy's 4.0 GPA via homeschooling is questionable). The host, boasting a JD from Stanford and known as a "Jerry Springer With Brains,*" seems poised to reign in the fiery adolecents. The show, based largely on the neuroses and suffering of these poor teenagers, does have one great subtext: what happens when you house a mixed-sex group of teens in a hours for a month or two? Well, I know the answer to that one, and so does Davis, a long-haired chap essentially akin to that decent looking guy in your high school who hooked up with all the girls at church camp and chorus class but never landed a cheerleader. The climax of tonight's show came when he wasted a shot at $50,000 because of this Idaho potato, too busy pumping out hormone-induced pushups during the allotted study time to hit the books. The proof is in the pudding, Davis botched the author of this $7.99 novel on the quiz. She's cute Davis, but common...50gs worth of cute?

Clearly phased by the unfolding drama, my TV gluttony was interrupted by a loud "F@!$ You" outside the front of my apartment at about 8:45. I've lived here for two years, but this was the first act of violence that occurred in my front yard. Yes, a perp was cuffed in the adjacent back yard last summer while the cops searched for the gun he ditched in the bushes,** but this time the act really struck home: my front stoop, a 40 oz. sanctuary previously untouched by violence, has been violated. Some teenage toolbox grabbed the buttocks of my upstairs neighbor's wife on her way in the gate. Outraged, and still a little drunk from dinner, he tried to venture out and find the interloper. Luckily, he returned intact and invited me upstairs for a glass of scotch (b/c I'm classy in the Sir Sean Connery kind of way when I set down my 32 oz. styrofoam cup of Coors). In my un-knightly reality, he wanted help installing his air conditioner, although I'm not kidding about the classy part.

Depending on your viewpoint, once I headed upstairs I was past the high point of the night. But if you're like Davis, the best was yet to come. The guy upstairs is an upstart film maker, and after getting the AC on and the drinks poured, he wanted to show me a short he's working on. It seemed decent enough, shot in Paris and featuring his wife to save on operating costs, the piece featured a fine French pop tune and some noire shots of her smoking cigarettes. Impressed by his use of symbolism, I settled into my chair....and then his wife was on the screen naked in the shower. I'm not going to make any qualitative judgments about the wife, but I could have used a little warning on that one. The scene was brief enough to be tasteful and the awkward silence was kept to a minimum. The piece ended and the credits rolled. I sipped my Glenlivet,*** the ice now melted as a result of the recent heat wave. And then the B roll of the naked wife came on.

I finished the drink and said I had to leave. Like Sir Sean, I too know when to make a graceful exit.

*search for "Springer," it's at the bottom
** and, for the sake of disclosure, someone was set on fire in her car and had to be ID'd with dental records about 10 blocks and 2 avenues down the street a year ago.
*** if you needed that link, try this one