2002-11-04 - 3:37 p.m.

My self-imposed house arrest over the weekend resulted in industrial amounts of TV watching. I hadn�t been advised to lay off the sauce or anything, but part of me sensed that getting poodle-faced with a still-healing neck scar wouldn�t have been the most politic of strategies. I hadn�t read in any fashion supplements that Garrotted Chic was the hot look for this winter, so I figured laying off couldn�t hurt. I�d been invited to meet friends in the pub, but I thought once I got there that the temptation would be too hard to resist; the barman would be pouring me a pint and Flaming Sambuca chaser, and there�d be no superhero (Wagon Man?) to come to my rescue (�Not so fast, booze jockey!�). So I played it safe.

Luckily there was lots of great TV, though when you�re forced to watch it, your standards drop to accommodate the imperative nature of the exercise. Saturday night included masterful gangster flick The King of New York, preceded by the scariest viewing of the weekend, two programmes about the US electoral system. One was a video documentary by Philip Seymour H*ffman, who infiltrated some fucked up political rallies by the hard Christian Right and showed them to be the evil bigoted fools we all knew they were (it also contained a weird interview with some guy who opposed Christianity on the grounds that it �manipulates us into caring about people��um�.right�) and the documentary �Journeys With Ge*rge�, which showed that Dubya on the campaign trail was just what we all knew him to be too � a shaved chimp in a suit up to his neck in bad money and murder. There were supposedly �cute� asides where he�d eat cheesy poofs with the press corps, but it just showed that evil fucks like snacks too. Completely chilling, and the gun-toting gang warfare of Abel Ferrera seemed like light relief afterwards.

Of course by Sunday night things were getting ridiculous, so I buckled and bought a bottle of wine, which I knocked back with startling alacrity before my assembled houseguests. Everyone feared the worst for a medication-tinged hangover, but this morning I woke up feeling like I had pure adrenalin in my veins and effortlessly cracked out possibly one of the most productive couple of hours I�ve ever spent. You know when you just get up feeling invincible? Granted, it�s only about once a decade, and my superhuman demeanour was slightly hampered by the fact I couldn�t shave properly and my neck looks like a badly plucked bantam, but when it�s happening, go with it, I say.