Matt the Great

The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week was my own hot self! New York City Opera opened the NASDAQ this past week; CNBC broadcast it, and people everywhere are still talking about it.

The NASDAQ is the least exciting market to open since when you press the button, nothing really happens. When the NASDAQ--the entirely electronic exchange--opens, people in their underwear click 'submit' on their home computers. It's nowhere near as exciting as the NYSE, where all the suits start running around and being financial and stuff.

The staff at NASDAQ doesn't feel that way, though. They go through the motions of making us feel like it's important, serving us brand-name coffee with 2 (!) waiters, sending us a bajillion pictures and a DVD of the event, showing us a video about the NASDAQ and opening the NASDAQ, and broadcasting the whole thing on that bigass tower at 43rd and Broadway.

The best part is the last couple minutes before you hit the fake button. There are all kinds of narration and video going on--all that nonstop-information atmosphere that creates panic which is what makes all the cable news networks evil, I believe. And then as you get close to the big moment (9:30:00am), they start with this crescendo-ing thumping techno music, and you feel like you're a Who Wants to be a Millionaire? contestant. It made me so apprehensive that I leaned in to my sexy co-worker and asked if the room was going to explode. Despite whatever major event we were scared of happening, we had to keep our fake perma-smiles on and our clapping up so that everybody out there thought, gosh, these kids are really into opening electronic stock exchanges. Then NYCO pushed the button; the thumping stopped; we gathered our coats and left.

I haven't really seen a lot of TV in the last week or so, or, more accurately, I haven't seen any TV in the last week or so. Tonight, though, I saw some TV. I saw last week's Family Guy, about 20 minutes of The Real World, and then the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week, Julianne Moore. She has that new movie out that looks intense, and I'm sure my mom will see it and tell me it was good, but I won't see it, and Jon Stewart had her on to plug it.

The interview kind of blew; it was Jon Stewart talking and she giggling. Like everyone else, I like watching Jon Stewart talk, but I really like the image I have of Julianne Moore being really smart, so I was hoping she'd just talk about smart stuff like the Senate or Rational Zeros of Polynomials or whatever. She didn't. She did look ravishing, though. Her hair was really red and her skin was really white.

That's it. Slow period in TV watching.