He even put it in a juicer to see if that would work

I am not one for television, but I do pass operating units from time to time. Yesterday, I happened upon the cold open of According to Jim.

It was as though I was watching a black hole from which nothing, not even comedy, could escape. The show's laugh track only emphasized its unfunny shittiness, much in the same way the echo of hard footsteps construes the noiselessness of a lonely chamber. I was nevertheless drawn in by its sickening density; time seemed to slow to a menacing crawl.

As I watched --with equal parts dread and a malarial sense of nausea-- I cringed until I felt I was shrinking. To use a simple analogy: watching Jim Belushi try to wring laughs from the terrible script was like watching a lonely desert traveler, delirious and dying of thirst, try to squeeze water out of an old tree branch, or from some errant dead leaves to save his life; but instead, he chokes on his on own shriveled tongue; and rotting, the slow but firm fingers of time crumble his body like a dry cigar, until he is but the skeletal and sand-burned remains of a faded has-been-younger-brother-of-an-SNL-alum.

That is how I felt as I watched Jim Belushi struggle to open a juice box on TV last night. When the opening credits rolled, I took a deep breath and tore myself from the pull of the dark whirlpool, and floated gently and freely into the safe and empty void beyond TV.