A+E

We need a name for the growing subculture of folks who—rather than watch a TV series when it's first broadcast—wait until they can rent the whole series. I'm proposing R-wholes (from "rents whole series"). And I admit I am one.

In an effort to learn all I can about this strange and wonderful country, I have consumed whole series of Six Feet Under, Arrested Development and The Sopranos. I can advise you never to watch a whole series of 24 over a single weekend unless you want to end up a shaking ball of nerve-shredded jelly. And I know that the main differences between the Baltimore-based cop-operas Homicide and The Wire is that nobody smokes in The Wire while only one person in the entire history of Homicide ever uses the Baltimorial all-purpose greeting "A'ight" (a bartender called Dwight in Episode 3, Series 3).

Hey—does this make me a finger-sniffing, super anal-retentive uber-nerd? I hope not. Because if there's one thing I've learned from watching American TV, it's this: Weirdo deviants get pecked to death with extreme prejudice. Like in Friends, when jealous Rachel persuades Ross' girlfriend to shave her head—apparently thus automatically rendering her vile, strange and hideously unattractive. (A woman with a shaved head, you say!? In New York!? Oh my GAD!)

My latest adventure in R-wholing is The Gilmore Girls—an impossibly pretty mom and her impossibly pretty daughter live together in an impossibly pretty small town where they've not heard of soccer, poverty or African-Americans (the only regular black character I've seen so far is an obnoxious cartoon Frenchman).

For sure, GG spits hip baby-boomer pop references like a groovy Gatling gun on full automatic, but essentially it's Absolutely Fabulous rewritten by Norman Rockwell and directed by Josef Goebbels. The main message (with the nerdy Kirk, the obsessive Paris, the fat clumsy cook, the demented fat neighbor, the lecherous fat dancing mistress and the fat bearded mayor all regularly mocked for their hideous strangeness) is that thin, white, beautiful, hip, conformist rich folks are normal. And everybody else is a vile subhuman, existing merely to be laughed at. Gilmore Girls is Vogue meets the sci-fi flick Quatermass and the Pit (where a rampaging mob of alien hive-mind-controlled Londoners exterminate the genetically defective).

Okay, okay—I'm overreacting. But you try watching three entire huggy-feely, nicey-nicey estrogen-soaked supergirly series back-to-back without feeling televisually castrated. My penis is shrivelling, my testicles look like raisins. If Netflix don't send me a fix of 24 soon, I fear I'm gonna grow bitch tits.

But it's no use. My wife has already ordered the next series of Gilmore Girls. Just call me Susan.

On March 6, after 15 years on the air in Las Vegas, Ken Johnson said good-bye. His Big Johnson Show was the morning programming on Spike 1140-AM since January 2005, and before that, he and partner Jim Tofte spent years at various stations.

How did it happen?

It was an economic decision. It wasn't made locally. The people in the building are still friends with me. I still have my security key to get into the building. They said I could do a farewell show. It's never done, but it was done because we really feel like family.

When is the farewell show going to be?

It isn't going to be. That would just have been too much maudlin radio for me.

Do you know what the future holds for you?

No idea right now, but I still have a website going [www.bigjohnsonshow.com], and the faithful have been visiting and e-mailing me. It's been great.

At last year's E3, Sony promised us a PlayStation 3 by spring. Either Sony has its seasons confused, or they really envied how well the Xbox 360's winter launch went because last week they announced that the PS3 will be released simultaneously in Japan, Europe and the U.S. in November. They have yet to tell us just how much of our holiday shopping money we'll need to save up for the console.

Keane (R) (4 stars)


$26.98

Schizophrenia is difficult to portray on screen. Typically, a filmmaker will fall back on testimonials from psychiatrists and the same visual-effects wizardry that transformed Mr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. Writer-director Lodge Kerrigan, who tackled the subject once before, in Clean, Shaven (1994), resorts to neither device. Keane allows the audience to come up with its own conclusions and diagnoses. Little-known Brit actor Damian Lewis gives a haunting performance as the father of a girl whose absence from the screen may or may not be the result of a kidnapping. It's only when William takes up with the mother of another young girl that our concern for his general well-being changes into genuine fear for her safety. Lewis' performance was equal to that of any of the five gentlemen nominated for an Oscar this year.