I'm So Rone-ry
On the weekend Kim Jong Il announced that North Korea had tested a nuclear bomb in an underground explosion. Is it just me, or is it like the new television season predicted it? In the 1950s kids were scared of an atom bomb attack, and were taught to hide under their chairs in school, like somehow hiding under a small wooden desk would protect them from a full-on holocaust. The threat was on, and it was mirrored in TV shows and movies. In the 1980s, when I was a kid, the Cold War was still raging, and the movie The Day After scared the bejesus out of any kid who watched it. (I was always worried that my family didn't have a bomb shelter.) The much BETTER movie, When the Wind Blows, which featured music by David Bowie, came out a few years later, and it was still a frightening and sad film, but it was after I'd stopped being scared of any nuclear threat.

Now, rather than art imitating life, it seems things are moving the other way around. Jericho is about a town in Kansas that believes it's the only place still standing after nuclear bombs have gone off around the world. We've learned what radiation poisoning can do to us, how inadequate old fallout shelters are, and that crows will plop onto the road in hordes if they've been flying in the area of the explosion.

On Heroes, Hiro zips forward 5 weeks to witness a nuclear explosion that completely levels Manhattan, one that was predicted by Isaac. Since he immediately time-travelled back to the present, there were little details about why or how such a bomb could have gone off.

Kim Jong Il has admitted he's a massive film buff... maybe he's been watching too much American TV as well? What's next? Will Chris Rock begin talking about watching The Day After: Julius: "I can't believe they'd just blow up 90 million dollars and 47 cent worth of materials like that!" Will we find out the rest of the world really WAS zapped by some bomb on Lost? Will Aaron Sorkin begin writing bomb jokes on Studio 60? Time will tell...