Cheers for TV

Kurt Vonnegut and Nicholson Baker embraced good television. Vonnegut said he’d rather have written “Cheers” than any of his books. In Baker’s novel “The Anthologist” (2009), the poet-narrator comments, tongue only partially in cheek, that “any random episode of ‘Friends’ is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than 99 percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published.”

from Dwight Garner’s review of David Milch’s book in the NYT. Also enjoyed this part:

Entertainingly, Milch spends money the way you think you might like to spend money, if you had it: He impulsively pays people’s hospital bills, college tuitions and funeral expenses; he’s an absurd tipper; if he likes a pair of Prada loafers he’ll get wardrobe to find out the shoe size of everyone in his crew and buy them a pair, too. He’ll spring for a hundred Egg McMuffins, because they’re delicious, and hand them out.

OK well one of those things costs thousands of dollars and one costs exactly $279.