My Brain Hurts

Yesterday, I sat down and watched HBO's highly anticipated Rome. Now, I can spew a few quotes from Julius Caesar (i.e. "Beware the ides of March", and the first few lines from Marc Anthony's big speech), but for the most part, I rarely had a clue what was going on in Shakespeare's plays. Despite that, I consider myself a *fairly* intelligent person, and I really, REALLY liked Gladiator, so I figured that TV would once again come to the rescue and dumb down the plot enough so that I could pretend that I was watching historical fiction (instead of a really cool action-movie type mini-series.)

It turns out that I'm not so much "fairly intelligent" - but more likely "quite stupid". Throughout the hour, I was leaning forward, trying really hard to like the show, but kept getting lost in the characters, sub-plots, historical versus fictional references.... etc. T had not read Caesar, so every once in awhile, I would tell him with a knowing nod - "THAT name was important - we should remember that character." When he asked why, I just pretended to be so completely engrossed with the show that I didn't hear him (I'll be honest, I don't think it worked, because he had that "you're-an-idiot" look on his face whenever I did this.)

Yes, I will keep watching this mini-series because I so desparately want to like it - as long as there's no pop quiz at the end, just like high school, I'm pretty sure I can fake my way through.

High Point: The opening credits were awesome and I have to admit I liked the gore as much as the romantic plot lines.
Low Point: I feel like a 6 year old trying to read War and Peace.