I’ve been worrying quite a bit about TV recently. There’s not that much to watch? Or maybe I’m not doing my part. But the things I read in my inbox about the TV! They make me want to, like, read books. For instance, on May 12, E! will bring us “E! Investigates: Rich Kids Who Kill,” an hour-long shindig about “FROM PARK AVENUE TO PRISON”! Consider yourself reassured that there is nothing exploitative about this.

But weirdly, there are two whole cases dramatized in the show. The first is of Daphne Abdela, which, hello mid-90s. (Abdela was 15 when she and her boyfriend killed someone in Central Park. But she was WHITE so it wasn’t wilding! Then she ended up back in the news last year when her MAZDA got rear-ended.) You know, so, not so rich now are we, Mazda driver?

But there’s more! “The one-hour episode looks at a tragic death in the small, mega-rich town of La Jolla, California. At the center of the crime were some local teenagers who got involved in a bar brawl that continued into the street. The fight left one young man dead from a ferocious punch to the head. E! Investigates untangles this complex case and demonstrates how no community, no matter how wealthy, is immune to random violence.” Gosh yes, bar brawl, that does sound really complex.

I mean, this is a RICH VEIN people. Just like Mexicans in Arizona, we hear, also a surprisingly high number of rich kids like to kill. Maybe TV just isn’t meeting me halfway.

So after Thursday’s barn-burner (Ep. 18492, “The Burning Barn”) how were the folks who program Alex Balk’s subconscious going to resolve the cliffhangers that got us all so worked up? Longtime viewers will not be surprised to learn that there were no simple solutions. In fact, they dispensed with the barn altogether, and returned to an old stand-by: the high school unpreparedness scenario.

Let me start by saying I’m a big fan of this plot device, and it has certainly yielded some of the show’s most interesting moments. (Remember the completely unexpected space alien musical theater moment from Ep. 16229, “Singing Space Aliens WTF?”) But let’s be honest: The guy has been out of high school coming on twenty years now. How long are we supposed to believe that this is the go-to signifier for anxiety? Shouldn’t there be more work-related nightmares in the mix? It just seems lazy.

Anyway, complaint registered, let’s move on: Balk is wandering the halls of his high school. (This is High School 4, the one with the wood panels that has a similar layout to High Schools 2 and 5, but also has an eerie similarity to High School 1-which, as you know, is not particularly that far off from the shape and size of the character’s actual high school.) He is late for something, and we see him desperately opening door upon door, only to find each classroom empty. The sweat is visible on his brow, and the whole scene is suffused with an overwhelming sense of dread.

Suddenly, he’s in a classroom, seated in the front row. I’ll have to go back through the tapes to be certain, but this seems like the same room in which he had sex with the attractive young poet who came to the class as a guest speaker in Ep. 17195, “Freeverse Cowgirl.” Unfortunately, it does not seem like any sexual fantasies will be played out this evening: This one is all about an uncompleted task and the fears of chastisement and failure which both accompany and prompt these episodes.

Or is it? Just as the teacher (mostly unrecognizable, although the brown blazer leads me to suspect someone in the department of English faculty, sophomore or junior year) approaches his desk, Balk is at an outdoor concert at… could that be Great Woods in Mansfield, MA? We do know that Balk saw Bryan Ferry there at some point in the mid-to-late eighties, so its very possible that this amphitheater owes its form to a vague memory of that venue. (Your history lesson for this installment of “Alex Balk’s Dream” comes, as always, from Wikipedia.) The band is unidentifiable, as Balk is way in the back, but they are playing some kind of inoffensive indie pop, and the lead singer sounds slightly whiny. Balk is with a bunch of friends, some of whom we remember from previous high school episodes, some of whom are actual people he went to high school with. There seems to be a celebration going on, but Balk hangs back, as if it does not involve him. Could this be a recurrence of the “everyone else is going away to college” theme?

There’s no way of knowing, because we are interrupted by a brief interlude that does not involve Balk at all. Leper Larry, the shadowy, decaying figure from so many previous “ABD”s, reappears. Once again he is making a sound that is halfway between a chuckle and a wail as his yellowed teeth fall onto the ground and spin like tops.

Now we are at a train station. The platform is packed and Balk is looking around for someone. A train-I make it as an Amtrak Acela, but that fucking train station set is always so goddamn grainy that you’d think it was a deliberate attempt on the producers’ parts to obfuscate-pulls in, but the door remains closed. Suddenly there’s the sound of bells, which seem to ring unceasingly until-yes, you guessed it-it turns out to be the alarm clock. The episode ends with Balk jumping up and looking around. He does hit snooze, but we don’t get the little bit of extra this time; we’re stuck with nine minutes of nothing.

This was a pretty disappointing episode, all told. There was no further character development, and none of the earlier mysteries seem any closer to yielding even one clue as to what this guy is always so worked up about. And the concert scene? I haven’t watched a less informative strand of teenage nostalgia since the “getting drunk at the golf course at midnight” meme (too many episodes to mention) of 2004–2005. I am starting to get a little tired of this show, to be frank. I don’t know if they need some new blood on the staff or if they’ve just run out of things to dream about altogether, but more and more it seems like this is a concept that has run its course. Perhaps it’s time to pull the plug, for everyone involved. Even Leper Larry no longer inspires the inchoate fear of previous appearances. If improvements aren’t made rather rapidly-would it kill them to give JUST ONE THING away?-I might just start watching something with more promise, like “Alex Balk: Passed Out Live,” which at least offers the virtue of being both regular and brief.

A manhole explosion on 40th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues has reportedly knocked out power in the immediate area and attracted firefighters, one of whom told gawking tourists “It’s not Disneyland, people. Get the hell out of the way,” as he tried to make his way to the scene of the blast. Here is a picture of one smoking manhole just before “a fireball 12 feet tall erupted” out of it; there are also reports of at least one other manhole cover in Midtown suffering from some sort of disturbance. No injuries to report yet, but yipes!

9. Girls Don’t Poop
8. Gaga Has A Weiner
7. Snookie Is My Homegirl [sic]
6. Quit Staring At My Tweets
5. Call Me, Ke$ha [Phone Number Redacted]
4. Cuttin’ Up Hookers
3. Fuck Justin Beiber [sic]
2. Fukken
1. Jesus Is A Cunt

Probably the most horrifying revelation of Halliburton’s involvement with the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil rig (they did some of the deep water work, apparently!) is just how hideous their PowerPoint template is. Would you really buy a private army/gun/oil rig from that presentation?

Today’s college students are eschewing face-to-face conversation for the seemingly safer interactions provided by Facebook and texting, where they are less likely to endure the discomfort of not having someone respond to their personal overtures. Even worse, many are pretending to be engaged with their electronic devices rather than risk a real-life “rejection.” Tufts senior Charlotte Steinway sets the scene.

One friend, a junior who’s on the shy side, told me she relies heavily on her electronic escape hatch. “I’ll walk by someone, I’ll have my iPod in, even if it’s not on, and they’ll think I didn’t say hi because I was distracted. So it gives me an excuse.’’

Another classmate admits she’s turned to “fauxting,’’ fake texting when she realizes that someone she knows is about to actively ignore her. Given an option, there isn’t a college student out there who will choose to invite rejection. “Everyone wants everyone else to say hi but doesn’t want to be the person saying hi,’’ as my housemate put it. We use cellphones to mediate they way others perceive us; if we’re texting or calling a friend, we appear sought after, occupied, in demand.

But the tragic, isolating thing is that we reach for our devices because we don’t want to seem lonely — which is causing us to avoid our peers and actually be lonely.

Whether “fauxting” genuinely represents a new trend or is just the latest development in a long line of tactics aimed at avoiding embarrassment such as “pretending to be looking at something else” or “awkwardly walking in the other direction,” it’s easy enough to see how the burning shame of being ignored is somehow more tolerable when one can simultaneously be playing BrickBreaker. Everything is easier for kids today.

The joys of air travel are about to get even more exciting: “Lawmakers in Georgia have approved a bill that would allow gun owners to carry their licensed firearms at parts of Atlanta Hartsfield, despite the airport’s vigorous opposition. The legislation, which is waiting for Gov. Sonny Perdue’s signature, would permit carrying of firearms in areas that are not controlled by the federal government, such as terminals and parking lots.” Freedom: It’s on the march!

A massive stygiomedusa gigantea jellyfish was recently videotaped for the first time swimming around the base of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. These three-feet-by-twenty-feet creatures are amazing to look at, but if they don’t eat one hundred thousand barrels of oil a day, none of this is very important, is it?

Surprisingly regularly, I am asked to explain “Which Molly Is Which?” This is true because there was a huge uptick in girls being named “Molly,” which began in the late 60s and peaked in the late 80s. (Thanks, Ms. Ringwald; the name has shown staying power through the present day). So here, for once and for all I will tell you about the Three People Named Molly You Most Regularly Meet on The Internet.

Molly Lambert, AKA Molly Lambert
This Molly has a Tumblr but does not Twitter and is one of the proprietors of charming smart website This Recording, a publication about culture that is very conceptual in nature. She is based in L.A.

Molly Young, AKA Magic Molly
This Molly, who has a Tumblr and a Twitter, was just profiled in Paper. This Molly is in New York, and has a piece in the new issue of n+1.

Molly McAleer, AKA Molls
This Molly has a Tumblr and a Twitter. This Molly worked for Defamer for some time, departing in October, 2008. This Molly is also based in L.A., and this Molly wrote the amazing/horrifying Bedbugs Of Los Angeles story for us.

Other People Named Molly
Oddly we don’t really know the Molly Holzschlag behind Molly.com! She writes about CSS a lot and does some consulting. We’re sure she’s nice too. Neither do we know the seemingly charming Molly Wright Steenson, who is at Princeton. Both of these Molly’s have been online for forever.

What would happen if these people named Molly all got together and started a Molly Association? I do not know but it frightens me.

Earlier today, Apple announced that it had sold a million iPads in the month since the original model’s release. But skepticism abounds! Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired punctures a hole in Apple’s press-release balloon by noting that “This 28-day figure doesn’t seem quite as impressive if you correlate the 3G iPad to the iPhone, and the WiFi-only iPad to the WiFi-only iPod Touch, because the iPhone and iPod Touch reached the combined one million mark about as fast as the iPads did. In addition, Apple said it shipped 500,000 units of the WiFi-only iPad within the first week, so sales have slowed since then, relatively speaking, even with Friday’s introduction of the 3G model.” And Awl pal Lizzie Skurnick is still curious about its utility to publishing, not to mention its bathroom-bound portability. [Pic via]