30 Rock, How I Will Miss You

Since it was the debut of 30 Rock that first inspired this blog, it seems only right to post about its end. Before 30 Rock and Liz Lemon, I never knew there were other women out there like me, who loved Star Wars and ham, who often didn't know which part of the dress was "front" and who would much rather stay home and watch "Mad Men" than go to any weird parties where people talked to each other.   What a relief to discover I was not alone.

And then to find out that this show was not just a great piece of news for my self-esteem but also ridiculously inventive, brilliant and breathtakingly funny -- well, how fabulous was that?

I will admit with shame that I skipped a season or two somewhere during 30 Rock's run, when it seemed that the humor had become less clever and inventive and more cold and mean...and not funny. Which was kind of a deal breaker. Call me old fashioned but I like my humor funny.

So I've been quietly compiling this last season on my DVR, wondering if I should even jump back into the pool. But then the reviews for the finale started coming in and fueled by nostalgia, I got up at 5 a.m., put on my earphones and watched it in the bathroom where my sleeping son wouldn't sense me playing with what he has clearly decided is his iPhone. (This is how I watch TV now. It takes me six days to watch a whole Castle between brushing my teeth and flossing.)

All of this is my long, out of practice way of saying the 30 Rock finale was perfect in every way imaginable. There was a Brian Williams joke. Great Tracy Jordan jokes. Pitch perfect satirical tear-down of mommy message boards. Lutz finally got his revenge (Blimpies!), Kenneth proved his immortality and even Jenna was funny, as she finally experienced heartbreak with the removal of her dressing room mirror. But best of all, there was my dear Jack Donaghy's shipboard confession of platonic love -- a speech that managed to be poetic, beautiful, charming and still include the phrase "scale bone mountain." Everything I had loved about 30 Rock was perfectly encapsulated in that one short scene.

I will miss you, 30 Rock. But I promise you this -- I will use the word "hogcock" in a sentence (out loud and not just in my head) at least once this year. It's the least I can do for a show that gave me so much.

It's not just love, it's an illness

As someone deeply, truly and yes, perhaps inappropriately in love with my iTouch, I can relate to these "iPhone Terms of Agreement" by Nerd World's Matt Selman:

1) I agree that whenever I have my iPhone on my person, I will never be fully mentally present. If I am at work, I will be thinking about my iPhone. If I am with my wife, I will be thinking about my iPhone. If I am awake and near my iPhone, I will be thinking about my iPhone.

2) I agree that I will not check my email ten times a day on the computer. I will check my email 10,000 times a day on my iPhone.

3) I agree that I will let my kids take endless blurry photos of the dog with the iPhone camera. At work, I will painstakingly erase these photos instead of working.

4) I agree that I will immediately shut off the AT&T 3G network, as it is still slow as Hell and drains the batteries fast as Hell and doesn't really seem much faster.

5) I agree I will never use any of the apps I install – except “LOSE IT!” –which I will enter my daily food intake with the obsessiveness of a lifelong anorexic.

6) I agree I will not feel jealousy as I watch my friends with Blackberries write email and text in actual typing speed, instead of super-slow and careful typo-ridden iPhone speed.

7) I agree I will not install any game apps on my iPhone. Seriously, that would be the end of me. Seriously.

8 ) I agree I will not enter my “Lose It!” information while driving. Or at least, I will look around to make sure no cops are looking while I input "tangerine - medium - 50 calories."

9) I agree I will stop telling my wife, “No, really – this thing is better than Star Trek! Could Spock go jogging and then go online and see his exact route around the neighborhood with how fast he was going? Could he? Could Spock do that???”

10) I agree to stroke the thick, heavy, magic-seeming, temperature-cool glass surface of the touch screen with a sensuality I have never bestowed upon a human being.