Do not be misled by the lack of T.V.-blogging around here. Yes, the West Wing and Firefly are off the air, I am caught up on the Gilmore Girls and have one season left of Buffy (which I am contemplating holding in reserve, like a Jane Austen novel waiting for a divorce). But I have been turned on to Veronica Mars.

Veronica Mars is a private eye whose father is a private eye; she does well in school (despite studying mostly on latenight stakeouts), has few friends since getting herself ostracized from the rich-kid-clique, is vengeful and vaguely merciless in her pursuit of truth, however harmful. Basically this is my kind of neurotic.

One friend described the show being Buffy Redux-- "A teenage blonde girl kicks ass". But VM is more Humphrey Bogart than Buffy Summers. There's no Sunnydale here; the action scenes are few, the villains are humans, and the boyfriend (or whoever Veronica has alit upon for the episode) is never a vampire. Add to that the film-noir voiceovers and foreshadowing, the red herrings and double crosses. Our hero is a good-hearted rogue, not a superhero.

[Also a nice touch is the sort of low-level shenanigans which even the good kids regularly particate in. High school drinking and sex are run-of-the-mill, not signs of a "bad kid". But the consequences of these things are not airbrushed away either. Basically, California teen melodrama meets film noir.]

Tyler Cowen links to an entrant in the old debate about how to shave (e.g., before one's shower or afterwards). Both sides, I think, get this wrong. Yes, the shower opens your pores and makes a shave easier and smoother, but yes the shower also salves a wounded face after shaving. They key is to shave in the shower. The major downside here is the difficulty of being able to see what you're doing. Some people swear by fog-free mirrors for this purpose. I shave mostly by touch and memory and therefore imperfectly, but it beats the alternatives.