A while ago, Maggie advised me of the upcoming A&E made-for-TV movie Wedding Wars, starring John Stamos.  It promises to be the gayest event of the holiday season.

The film stars John Stamos and Eric "McSteamy" Dane as brothers, gay and straight respectively.  Stamos' character Shel (, presumably) is a fabulous party planner who is set to plan the wedding of his campaign manager brother Ben.  When Shel finds out that Ben is behind the governor's speech against gay marriage (Ben is betrothed to the governor's daughter, Maggie), he decides to go on strike for equal rights.  Somehow, one lonely gay's plight becomes a national cause.

Gay mayhem ensues — presumably leaving high school theater productions unrehearsed, hair salons unmanned and the cast of Disney on Ice reduced to Goofy and two dwarfs.

I'm curious to see how Stamos plays gay — if he'll throw in some swishy mannerisms just to sell it a little bit or if he'll just maintain his current level of butch.  Not that he's some sort of lumberjack now — he has a Ryan Seacrest level of well-coiffed masculinity — but we'll see how it goes. 

Also, I'd like Shel to have some sort of actual love interest and have a real screen kiss.  That wish is both political and self-serving.

As I watch it, I expect the following: 

1.  Stamos in snugly-fitting t-shirts.

2.  The nagging feeling that Dane and Stamos should be holding hands the whole time.

3.  At some point there will be a "shocking" outing of a character — thereby showing that we're all the same after all.  Or something. 

So let's all watch and then report back tomorrow.  It's probably going to be awful, but it'll probably be a well intentioned liberal love-fest and that's good enough for me. 

Heroes isn't on again until next year, so you won't be missing anything.  Showtime's at 9 on A&E.

Last night Maggie and I saw Aziz Ansari, a great stand-up comic who has made some funny videos with his sketch group Human Giant, featuring former Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy Rob Huebel. My favorite is Shutterbugs

We learned last night that MTV ordered 8 episodes of a Human Giant sketch comedy show, which will air early next year. But my favorite thing about Aziz's act last night was that he got up on stage with an air of defeat. He told us he'd been watching The Wire and he knew  there was no way anything he had to say would be better than that show. And while I enjoyed his set, he was right. The Wire is great!

Maggie and I are near the end of the 1st season on DVD, unintentionally breaking the newly minted Two Seasons Rule. After the orgy of Buffy this summer we decided to preserve our sanity by only starting shows that had fewer than three seasons to catch up on. Battlestar Galactica and Lost  just made the cut. Netflix only showed two seasons of The Wire when we first put it in the queue so we thought we were safe. Then it turns out they've just finished airing (premium cabling?) the fourth season of the show! Where have we been? Luckily it's HBO so the seasons aren't that long, but from now on we're going to do more intensive research, like looking it up on IMDb. Although that's dangerous for a show where people are always "getting got" since IMDb's always giving shit like that away with their (2002-2004)s.

People often throw around that "Best Drama on Television" thing when they talk about The Wire. I can never make those decisions. I tend to change my mind depending on how good the last episode was. After last week's convoluted and weak episode of Battlestar Galactica, The Wire has it beat. And 30 Rock is beating out The Office right now because The Office wasn't on last week and because "Past Pete is here to kill Future Pete!"

Best or not, The Wire is really good. Like all procedural dramas, there is a lot of emphasis on rules. If everyone just followed the rules, everything would run smoothly. But the problem is that smooth doesn't mean right. The majority of police and drug dealers in the show would be happiest if the drugs were sold in an orderly manner. And at the beginning of the show there is a certain kind of stability to the system. But two things happen to seriously destabilize it. First is Detective McNulty's seemingly casual conversation with a judge about Avon Barksdale, a powerful drug dealer that hardly any of the police have even heard of, who most likely had a witness killed. Second is freelance thug Omar's decision to rob Avon. Avon can't let it go, and neither can the judge. Their power must be respected. The machinations the two sides go through to return to the previous détente are frustrated by the nagging nobility of detective McNulty who actually wants to solve crimes and make the world a better place.

It's a sprawling epic with more characters than I can keep track of and more than a few cops who look just like other cops, and gangsters who look just like other gangsters, so I've spent some time in the dark. But I like that. And even when I'm confused I still know more about what's going on than any of the characters do. For most of the first season, the cops don't even know what Avon looks like. And the drug dealers are only vaguely aware of the case being built against them. It's a messy, complicated situation and if you're not watching, you should be.

Update: Maybe we should have editorial meetings. Sorry for my slightly redundant posting.

Kyle and I have recently taken up the DVDs of The Wire, which is just as good as everyone says it is. We're a couple episodes shy of finishing the first season, and as it's a show with four completed seasons out in the world, we're constantly at risk of having the whole thing Brusteined.

The background story: Robert Brustein is a big-time guy in the world of theatre. A couple years ago he was introducing a screening of the film Jacob's Ladder, attended by Kyle and his roommates at the time. In his introductory remarks, Brustein totally gave away everything that happens in the movie, ruining it. Thus, the verb "to Brustein" was born.

You can be Brusteined at any time. Once, many, many years ago, I was giving my brother and his friend a ride home from the mall. A movie with a famous twist ending had just come out, and I hadn't seen it yet. Neither had my brother. My brother's friend started talking about it, and I told him to shut his stupid trap. The next words out of his mouth? "It was Kevin Spacey."  

Last night, we attended a comedy show featuring Aziz Ansari (who is hilarious; if you haven't seen this, stop everything and watch immediately). Aziz was talking about how great The Wire is, a sentiment with which I could not agree more. And then this happend.

Heckler: They kill [character name].
Aziz: WHY DID YOU JUST SAY THAT?

And indeed, why would someone do this? Why would Robert Brustein ruin Jacob's Ladder? Why did that little snot say Kevin Spacey's name?

I can understand accidentally letting spill some nugget of info, in your enthusiasm for discussing a great piece of entertainment. But who gets off on taking all the suspense out of everything, just for a moment of feeling smart and superior? What kind of person Brusteins with a smug smile on their face (because, as I'm sure you've noticed, these assholes are always smiling)? Do they want to be slapped across the face?

Please, Brusteining psychos, let us enjoy our early episodes of The Wire in peace.

Also, do watch The Wire. I have learned so much about drug dealing.

Last night, we rocked the latkes a week early.

• First of all, please vote for TiFaux on the Weblog Awards.  Love you. 
• American Idol finalist Elliot Yamin, who came in third last season, got his grill all straightened out.  If you recall, Elliot was the elfin, diabetic, partially deaf finalist who I had an oddball crush on the whole season.  That said, his teeth were out of control.  But no more!  The porcelain veneers, which would have cost $50,000, were done for free because, after all, he is a C-list celebrity.
• Tori Spelling had a yard sale (presumably for the sake of her Oxygen reality show) where you could buy her coasters, her gravy boats and items from her first doomed wedding, such as "Tori and Charlie" napkins and homemade CDs of wedding music.
• The Amazing Race ended last night.  (I wouldn't know.  I don't have the constiution to watch that show — gives me ulcers)  In any case, the winners are described as models, friends and former drug addicts — just like your friends at TiFaux!
• Top Design — Project Runway for interior designers — will premiere Jan. 31, following the season finale of Top Chef.  Todd Oldham will host the affair.
• Gay glam rockers The Scissor Sisters are going to be on Passions.  Exciting, I know.