TV IS GOOD FOR YOU

By the grace of my tenancy in a convenience-addled apartment complex, I have what cable bargain-hunters and American motel proprietors routinely refer to as free HBO. Thusly, I have access to a lot of extra television: worthless blockbuster comedies, scattershot mini-festivals (Kubrick and Hughes, recently), "The Wire" (which is superb no matter how white I may be for saying so), and so on. In the end, I could take or leave all of it, but I was just blindsided by this fairly gut-wrenching documentary. Not sure how one could catch it without HBO, but it's worth the effort to do so. For anyone anxious to set aside their own pesky albatrosses, depressions and drudgery, there's nothing better than a scorchingly intimate look into the lives of people whose entire universes have been irrevocably rocked by a serious head injury. For my part, I have resolved not to complain about anything for at least a year. Which is not to say that it's just some dark, pathetic journey that makes all your problems feel slight by comparison. The thing really digs into the medical and emotional complexity of these cases, shedding light on some pretty obscure and remarkable corners of humanity. (Meanwhile, if the network reruns "Big Daddy" one more time, I may have to file a claim for a brain injury of my own.)