Mad Men is coming!

"An hour of Mad Men is better than anything in the theaters on any given week" quipped Anthony Rue, former film historian, archivist and film festival coordinator, who is now the omnipresent owner of Volta in downtown Gainesville, Florida. Anthony keeps me fueled with excellent microlot coffees from around the world, and Volta has a massive chocolate selection that serves as my one stop gift shop for all my friends. Anthony has a discerning developed taste and he is a acerbic astute critic - for him to give Mad Men such glowing praise reassured me the show is more than just a guilty voyeuristic pleasure of mine.



I just watched the first and last episodes of the second season again today and I still drool at the dead on styling and acting. If you want to get a mouthwatering look at mid century modern design in motion, check out the sets of Mad Men. The part I love the best is that you get to invade period homes that actually look lived in as well as offices, hotels, and restaurants.


The series is a time machine trip back to the land before PC - not just personal computers, but political correctness. It takes place before everything had a warning label. Children played with dry cleaning bags on their heads. No one wears seat belts and there are no car seats for the kiddies. Pregnant women smoke and drink, really everyone smokes and drinks, except the priest, who needs to start. People are racist, red-hating, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic and stereotypical - just as I imagine they were in the middle of the twentieth century. It is amazing that anyone survived such a barbaric time - yet the main character Donald Draper marvels at the luxury and progress of it all and wonders:

"How can anyone not be happy with all this"?

Check out Mad Men tonight at 8PM on AMC.....I know AMC? Yes AMC. It might take awhile to catch up with the happenings since the writers do not backfill the storylines with a bunch of boring recaps. The DVDs of the first two seasons can be had for chump change on the internet, or if you are savvy, you can find the show episodes offered online for your pirate pleasure. For me, this new season is going to pass the time nicely until Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer, Hurley and the rest of the gang come and take me back to the island where I belong.