as in, Jesus Effing Christ? A little ham-handed.

And just once I'd like to see God, when He chooses to speak to us, (as imagined by novelists, TV writers and the like) do so through some channel other than the lame, the halt, the retarded or the insane. Why does He never, ever choose a lawyer, or physicist, a politician? Wouldn't it be hilarious if he actually chose the Pope?

"Hey, Padre, enough with the gay-bashing already. They're My children and I love them, and all y'all haters need to just back off and say "whoops, guess I got that wrong". Spread the Word or else."

Now THAT would be a series.

that would be "Queer as Folk" or some other awful, sanctimonious piece of crap we've already seen.

Let's give this JFC a chance before we bash it for being a cliche, eh? Deadwood earned Milch a big benefit of the doubt, for me.

Surprise: no Havrilesky bashing this time.

However, this does sound just as cliched as Sandra M says. We've already had K-PAX, series like Kyle XY</> about a retarded superpowered teen, and series obliquely about an apocalypse like Heroes and Jericho.

Whether or not John from Cincinnati is approved by Pat Robertson or not, the description makes it sound like someone else cheering on the Apocalypse. Which is just what the right wing wants; if there is no future, why not trash the planet and let all those people in New Orleans drown, and why not start saber-rattling with the Soviets again while we have nothing left to lose?

Maybe there isn't any of that in this series. Havrilesky undoubtedly got a tape with the pilot, and it may be that the series itself may change in actual production. But it sure sounds unappealing. (Confession: I didn't like Touched by an Angel or Highway to Heaven either. Whether people are playing around with a Disneyfied God or the cruel deity of Jerry Falwell, it's egotistical of the producers and it usually goes badly.)

Regardless of what the show is about, I'm reluctant to start down this path with Milch again if he's just gonna drop the show for another idea he pitches to HBO in a few years and leave us all in the lurch with a sense of an incomplete story. If we believe HBO, that's what he did with "Deadwood." (If we don't believe HBO, then HBO dropped Milch's "Deadwood" when they thought they could get a better rated or cheaper product, and that's hardly more reassuring).

Since we're not hearing ANY news on the promised two HBO movies that would wrap up "Deadwood," and since both the cast and setting of "Deadwood" are big and likely difficult to reassemble, it's beginning to look a lot like that project is never gonna happen. It might have been a hollow promise to begin with, meant to appease and subvert any bad publicity of "Save Deadwood" campaigns by abandoned fans.

I'll make HBO and Milch a promise to watch "John from Cincinnati" when they actually start to fulfill their previous promises to viewers: show us some real movement on the "Deadwood" front-- make it very clear these two "Deadwood" movies are actually going to happen-- and I'll try the show. Because of our crummy experiences with how "Deadwood" was handled, HBO may find that they have a similar problem with fans who previously would have loved to check out Milch's new works but who don't trust either Milch or HBO very much at the moment.

OK, fuck "John from Cincinnati", "The Sopranos", "Deadwood" and the like.

Bring back "Rome" for a third season.

If you want a TV show where the writers imagine that God speaks through a politician, you can watch Fox News or the Family Channel.

... how original.

Though I will give the series a try. It just seems so terribly dull and predictable that it's some bright-eyed baby-faced (blonde?) "Middle America" Caucasian dude playing the role of prophet. But perhaps the other creator (the more humble, television-show-writing one) has something up his sleeve about that too. Perhaps there will be other ways in which his vision of the transcendent is subversive. One can only hope. As abstractions, the characters sound like people who would irritate the hell out of me. But who knows how they'll seem in the flesh.

And of course, I'm also apt to judge harshly because I am among the legion of angry Deadwood fans for whom this show seems like a very poor consolation prize indeed. Time will tell.

I'm just phyched that Imperial Beach gets mentioned on TV. That is where I found (or he found me) my best ever pet cat "El Greco". He was so dirty I couldn't tell what color he was. The guys who owned the house I bought (two blocks off the beach) were bikers and a major scource of the drugs in that community. When they left the neighborhood they left their cat behind.

El Greco hung around the house for weeks before I realized he didn't belong to someone else. He had a shaved head and a double stitch closure of a wound he'd somehow obtained. He was a mess and I wasn't ready to make friends with him. His contribution to my life there were the gopher parts he left for me on the back door step.

I got transfered (Navy) to Long Island, N.Y. and my girlfriend talked me into taking him along. I packed all my stuff with the cat into my '65 fastback Mustang and made the move to Port Washington.

During the trip we became friends and he learned to purrrrr. He cleaned up his act and his body and what a pretty cat he was under all that grit and grime. Light gray with a little white chin. A little like me.

He made cross country trips with me 4 times and was pretty psychic in the way cats are. He always knew when I was a few days from home when I was on business trips out of N.Y.

His last days were spent in Mid-Coast Maine where he stayed indoors most of the time. He died from feline leukemia. Big loss.

He would be a terrific character on "JFC". He could be played by Christopher Walkin.