The other day I cleaned the dickens out of my bathroom. The very dickens, I tell you! It wasn’t especially untidy, as I do generally run a tight ship. But it was legitimately in need of a good scouring, top to bottom, and I was suddenly struck with a passion for doing it. However, this passion occurred at 3 a.m., just as I was preparing to go to bed. (Yes, though my bachelor lifestyle is a swingin’ one, 3 a.m. is late even for me. TiVo had presented me with an especially tantalizing selection of “Law & Order” episodes.)

So I was about to clean the bathroom then and there, but I thought, If I am to stave off the onset of obsessive-compulsiveness, I need to NOT clean the bathroom at 3 a.m., for that way lies madness. If the bathroom truly needs cleaning, and if I truly want to clean it, it still will and I still will after I wake up in the morning.

Next morning, sure enough, the bathroom was still dirty and I still had a hankerin’ to clean it. After about 10 minutes of scrubbing and scouring, my back hurt like the aforementioned dickens and I had to lie down and read a magazine for a while. If I’m going to become obsessive-compulsive, I’m going to have to get in better shape.

You know who I like? The Fox network. They’ve got moxie over there. Maybe it’s because they know most people don’t take them seriously, and maybe they don’t take themselves too seriously. Whatever the reason, they’ve made excellent programming choices lately, and I like their style.

First, there’s “24,” one of the best shows currently on the air. When it debuted in 2001, its ratings were tepid. Many more panicky networks would have canceled it, especially considering how expensive it is to produce. Not Fox. Fox kept with it, hoping the audience would grow, and knowing that the viewers it did have were devoted. Now, in its third year, it does solidly in the ratings and is a trendy, “water-cooler discussion” show — EVEN THOUGH most offices no longer have water-coolers.

Then look at “Arrested Development,” a new show that’s part of the Sunday lineup and that is, along with “The Simpsons” and “Malcolm in the Middle,” why Fox has the funniest night on television. “AD” is hysterical, full of dry, caustic wit and wonderfully funny characters. It had endless praise heaped upon it by TV critics, most of whom also predicted that it was so smart, people wouldn’t watch it. And they were right. Its ratings are about a third of what “The Simpsons” gets, and about half of what “Malcolm in the Middle” (its immediate lead-in) gets.

But guess what? Despite the poor ratings, Fox has signed it up for a full season. Why? Because they know it’s a good show, and they want to find ways to attract viewers to it before giving up and canceling it.

Then there’s “The O.C.” What a delightfully stupid show this is! I adore it. Approximately half of it is honest-to-goodness good television (mostly when Adam Brody is on the screen as smart-mouthed Seth Cohen), and the other half is just dumb teen-angst fun. All together, it’s an hour of giddy entertainment.

After its early run on Tuesdays in the late summer, where it met with ratings success, Fox’s plan was to take it away for a month while baseball finished up, then bring it back on Thursdays. Fans were upset: They knew anything airing on Thursdays would fail against the juggernaut of NBC’s shows and the very popular “CSI” on CBS. “The O.C.” would get bad ratings, and Fox would cancel it. We could see it coming a mile away.

So Fox listened to its viewers, switched it to Wednesdays, and now it’s doing just fine.

The latest example of Fox’s smart attitude is with “Joe Millionaire 2,” a bad idea for a sequel that has done pitifully in the ratings. Fox’s reaction? To admit they were wrong, and that “Joe Millionaire 2″ sucks.

“Our instincts told us from the very beginning that ‘Joe Millionaire’ was a one-time stunt, and I think we got greedy,” said Fox entertainment chairman Sandy Grushow in an Associated Press story earlier this week. “We tried to sneak it by the American public a second time and we got called on it.”

How cool is that? Any other network would have made excuses. “It just hasn’t found its audience.” “It was competing against a strong baseball playoff season.” “Its lead-in was bad.” “It’s President Bush’s fault.” Fox owns up to the mistake, and I admire that.

Granted, Fox has done some awful things, too, including dumping “Futurama” in a terrible time slot, preempting it with football half the time, never promoting it … and then wondering why it had poor ratings. There’s the shameful shuffling around of “Family Guy,” too, with the same end result. But lately, I like how they’re handling themselves. You get the impression they’re interested in the quality of their shows, not just in ratings, which is a rare attitude indeed.

One of my most irksome pet peeves is when I’m looking for a place to park and discover someone is using his car to straddle the line and thus occupy two spaces. In fact, it bugs me even when I’m not looking for a space, just on principle. What’s with these guys? (It’s always guys.) Is their car so much more precious than the rest of ours that they can’t park next to anyone and run the risk of getting scratched or dinged? Well guess what, hombre. You take your car out in public, you take the chance that something will happen to it. That’s the danger of living in a world that contains other people. If you don’t want to assume that risk, then leave the car in the garage — or better yet, find something more worthwhile to obsess over than the condition of your car. You know, like maybe ANYTHING. What’s next? Are you going to start straddling the line on the freeway, taking up two lanes and thus maintaining a distance from the other cars of at least 10 feet on either side?

If the problem is that your car is too wide to fit in one space, then you must have accidentally purchased a Humvee, or some other absurd vehicle meant for military maneuvers or action films. Take it back to the point of purchase and ask for a refund — unless you think you actually NEED a car that big, in which case visit a therapist and see if there’s anything he can recommend to help you with your feelings of inferiority.

If you don’t want anyone parking near you, then park at the far corner of the lot, where no one wants to park anyway. Take up all the space you want over there. Then get over yourself, punch yourself in the face, and go home and wish someone liked you.

An amusing anecdote:

James Arrington, whom you may know from his “Farley Family” one-man shows, is head of the theater department at Utah Valley State College and occasionally directs there.

When I used to review UVSC productions — something that occurred infrequently, as Arrington was not especially good about sending notification that the plays even existed until a few days before they opened — I sometimes had occasion to write negative reviews. The last one I reviewed was “Almost Perfect,” a dreadful new piece of work which Arrington directed, though I did note that his direction was not necessarily among the show’s problems.

Anyway, when the current semester began, Arrington met with all the theater faculty, as would be the custom for a new semester, and included among his remarks, “The good news is Eric Snider is no longer at the Herald, so we don’t have to worry about bad reviews anymore!” This he followed with one of his trademark hearty laughs.

Much to his chagrin, the first production of the semester, “You Can’t Take It with You” (which he did not direct) managed to get bad reviews — even from the UVSC paper — without my help. He is reported to have groused, “I thought the bad reviews would stop when Eric Snider left!”

Dear James Arrington: The bad reviews will stop when your shows stop sucking! Love, Eric. P.S. Your shows suck.

Immediately after 9-11 happened, The Daily Herald (where I worked at the time) was bombarded with poetry written by locals who apparently believed that, in times of national emergency, The Daily Herald became a literary journal. We had a long-standing policy of not publishing poetry (most papers do), so the opinions page editor just gave them to me. He figured I’d want to collect them, since I have a fondness for bad art. Periodically, I will post some of them here on the blog.

It is not the sentiments expressed in these poems that I find amusing, of course. It’s the poor way in which they are expressed. If you want to pour out your soul in poetry in your journal, that’s fine. But to send it to a newspaper, hoping it will be published, suggests that you actually think it has some artistic merit. Which none of these do, or at least not much.

This first one is actually one of the better ones. Enjoy.

Life Goes On
by L. Carvel Wilson

The flag still flies, school is in,
Planes will fly, we’ll begin again,
Cement, steel sealed in hallowed blood,
Shed by cowards ever present flood.
Hidden men with yellow hearts,
Have no idea what they start,
Today our nation quietly mourns,
Tomorrow like a Phoenix reborn.
We pause, remembrance bitter sweet,
Of time now past and innocence fleet,
Tears still fall and families bleed,
As the World sees freedom’s need.
Sadness wars with rage and grief,
As we turn to God for his relief,
United we stand as life goes on,
We’ll fight until, at last, we’ve won.

My favorite new TV show this season is “Cold Case.” In general, I like cop shows, and I love solving crimes, both on TV and in my personal life.

In this show, a female lady detective woman in Philadelphia, Lily Rush, investigates old crimes that were never solved (“cold cases,” as they say in the biz). The detective work itself is pretty standard, as TV crime dramas go; the fact that the cases are old doesn’t, in and of itself, make it any more compelling.

What makes it work is the style in which it is all presented. As each case is investigated, and suspects and witnesses are interviewed, we see flashbacks to the time period in question. Accompanying this on the soundtrack are whatever songs were popular that year, which is surprisingly helpful (along with hair and fashion choices, of course) in establishing the mood.

In addition — and this is my favorite detail — through cinematographic trickery, the flashbacks are made to look like they were shot in the year in question. Scenes from 1973 in a recent episode looked bleak and washed-out, as if the film stock had deteriorated for 30 years. Last week’s episode, with a murder from 1981, had scenes shot on grainy, cheap video. Wonderful details like that make the show that much better, as they exhibit a bit of imagination.

There’s also Kathryn Morris, who plays Lily Rush. I don’t remember seeing her before, though I see now that she played Tom Cruise’s dead wife in “Minority Report.” In “Cold Case,” she’s fantastic. Lily is adorably cute and perky, but also sharp-tongued and quick. She’s Meg Ryan, but with a backbone. I love watching her. She’s the kind of woman you could fall in love with, but who you know better than to mess with, and that’s one of the things you love about her.

Finally, there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing crimes solved after so many years in limbo. Usually there are family members who finally get some closure, and it appeals to our sense of justice to see bad guys punished. In real life, sometimes there never is closure, and sometimes evil-doers actually get away with murder. But in this show, we can pretend we live in a perfect world, where every crime must be answered for, better late than never.

My newest pet peeve is guys who refer to their friends as their “boys,” as in, “Me and my boys were hangin’ out at the Dairy Queen.” It’s the sort of phraseology used often by tools, and I don’t like tools. “My boys” is a term that can properly be used only in reference to one’s male children. In any other case, they are not “yours.” You don’t own them, you have no claim on them. What makes them YOUR boys? How do you know YOU’RE not one of THEIR boys? And they are usually not “boys,” either, being over the age of 18 and therefore men. Any adult who refers to himself as a “boy” (or, worse, “boi”) ought to be shunned by society. If we are to be friends, you will have to accept that I allow for no exceptions to these rules.

While browsing an online dictionary of Mexican slang (don’t ask), I stumbled across this word: “zorrero.” It can be used as an adjective to mean “sly or cunning,” as in “¡Que zorrero!,” i.e., “What a sly or cunning thing to have done!” But its more literal translation, as a noun, is “a thief who robs your house and then craps on the floor.”

¡What a wonderful word! I thought, “Why is there no word for this in English?” And then I thought, “More to the point, why don’t English-speaking burglars ever crap on the floor? Why is it only burglars in Mexico who do this?” I mean, it must happen, or there wouldn’t have been a need to create a word for it. (Are Mexican burglars incontinent? That could be the case. I mean, I know what happens to me after I eat Mexican food. I can only imagine if that were ALL I ate. In fact, some weekends, that IS all I eat. And I know what happens. I’ve proved my own point.)

As I discussed the matter over lunch with my friend Smacky, we concluded that in America, burglars wouldn’t risk leaving behind any DNA. In Mexico, however, law enforcement is a bit, how you say, lax. They’re not up on DNA science there; the only way they can even use fingerprints to learn a culprit’s identity is if the criminal actually leaves a finger at the scene. So why not “go” if you have to?

Then we imagined a Mexican cop drama, “Mexico City P.D. Azul,” with a hardened detective arriving at the scene, taking a sniff, and saying, “This looks like the work of El Zorrero. ¡Bring him in for questioning!” And El Zorrero, who zorrero-izes his crime scenes so often that he has come to personify the act, is cocky and defiant back at the precinct. The cops are grilling him, and he’s just sitting there saying, “¡You got nothing on me!” I don’t know how they eventually convict him. Maybe a sting operation, or maybe they slip an indigestible transmitter into his food and wait for it to show up at a crime scene 16-24 hours later. However they do it, I’m sure it is clever. ¡Que zorrero!

How much do I love “24″? I love it like a heroin addict loves his heroin! Which apparently is quite a lot, as I’ve learned from watching Jack Bauer struggle with his new addiction the past couple episodes.

I must say I’m slightly disappointed with the season so far, as it has been two hours already and Jack has not killed even one person. By this time last year, he had already killed about five people, and even sawed the head off one of them. He killed a dog at one point, too.

I’m also disappointed that in the three years that have passed since the last season ended, Jack’s daughter Kim has failed to be devoured by a shark, or murdered by pirates, or to die in any other whimsical fashion. Instead, she is not only alive, but working at CTU. What she does there, I can’t imagine. Checks her e-mail and Googles her friends, probably.

But even if “24″ has been slow out of the starting gate, they’ve definitely set up some good possibilities. Jack’s heroin addiction is nice, and so is the president’s inter-racial romance with his doctor (what the H?). Kim’s relationship with Jack’s CTU partner, Chase, is dumb, and so is any attempt to bring family drama into what should be a show about shooting bad guys and blowing up the world. But overall, the show’s still got the mojo. If Jack starts killing people next episode, I’ll be a happy camper.

A movie theater in Portland is quoting me in their ads for a movie I didn’t like. But it’s OK! first, some background.

The age-old question for people promoting bad movies: How do you find critics’ quotes that don’t sound negative?

There are quite a few critics known as “quote whores” who will say basically whatever you want them to just because they like being quoted. Perhaps they think greater name recognition will mean greater career advancement. Or maybe they actually like every movie they see, like my friend Rob, who I think just enjoys the fact that he’s watching recorded images projected against a screen in the dark, regardless of the quality of those images. (I kid Rob. Rob knows I love him, even more than he loves every single movie he sees.)

But sometimes the quote whores aren’t available. If a film is too new, or too small, then maybe the quote whores haven’t seen it. That’s usually when I get quoted.

My first big one was for “My First Mister” (2001), a very pleasant Albert Brooks film. I saw it at Sundance and posted a review. When it was released in theaters later that year, my review was one of only a few in existence, since only a handful of critics actually review everything they see at Sundance. So the marketers had almost no choice but to quote me — which they did, in a full-page ad that ran in the Sunday New York Times.

Fortunately, I actually liked “My First Mister” and therefore didn’t mind being quoted. (I do think it’s amusing how, if you went by movie ads, you’d think film critics ended every sentence with an exclamation point.) That wasn’t the case with “The Singles Ward” (2002), a Mormon comedy that was heavy on the Mormon, light on the comedy. Those guys, local Utah boys, ran ads with quotes from me and two other Utah critics, all pulled from negative reviews and cobbled together using ellipses (…). They claimed it was meant as a joke, but it was a joke only they got. You can read about the whole thing here.

The next really bad Mormon film to come along was “The Work and the Story” (2003), a mockumentary about Mormon filmmaking. I said it was terrible, but had one scene that was “nearly genius.” In the ads, they quoted me as saying, “nearly genius!”

When I raised a fuss about this, I got an e-mail from some kid trying to tell me that filmmakers do this all the time, taking words out of context to make it look like a critic said the opposite of what he actually said. I countered with this argument: No, they don’t. Yes, filmmakers pull positive words from negative reviews — but NOT to suggest the critic liked a movie he didn’t like. They’ll pull a “So-and-so gives a good performance” from “So-and-so gives a good performance in an otherwise bad movie” — but that’s honest praise for So-and-so, and so it’s fair to use it. I’m talking about giving a false impression of the critic’s opinion of the movie OVERALL, and that simply isn’t done by professionals. And on the rare occasions it does happen, the critics usually complain and the offending ad gets dropped.

Here’s how to do it right: Portland’s Cinema 21, an arthouse up there in the Pacific Northwest, is showing “Girls Will be Girls,” a campy comedy that I gave a D+. As with “My First Mister,” this was a Sundance film for which not many reviews have been written. Cinema 21 wanted to use quotes in its promotional materials, so what to do?

They did it exactly right. They quoted me as saying, “The cartoon-colorful sets are a visual treat, and match the film’s attitude.” That’s what I actually said (OK, I said “match WELL the film’s attitude”), and it’s not taken dreadfully out of context.

There, “Singles Ward” and “Work and the Story” guys. That’s how you use negative reviews to your advantage. You find something positive the critic actually said. If he didn’t say anything positive at all, not one word, then maybe next time you shouldn’t make such a crappy film. Have you considered that?