Michele Bravo Playing With Fire Chapter 17

Michele Bravo multi-tasked when she wrote her fiction. She watched a movie or TV show at the same time. It couldn’t be something she’d never seen before, it had to be something she knew by heart, so that she could watch it (sized appropriately in the top right corner of her laptop screen) out of the corner of her eye while writing, only devoting her full attention to it when it came to one of her favorite parts.

She had written the Dighton & Forrest “Rushmore” adventure while simultaneously watching a DVD of James Mason’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.



Now that her writing was complete, she’d relax for a few minutes watching "first-run" TV, if she could find anything worth watching, before surrendering herself to the arms of Morpheus.

To that end, she turned off her laptop and turned on the large-screen TV. The home was complete with satellite television, such that she could see channels not only from Australia and New Zealand, but also from Japan and the United States.

Turning on a US satellite channel, she watched in disbelief as an advertisement for the remake of the classic early 1970s TV series *Hawaii 5-0 flashed on the screen. Michele had been too young to see it on its first airing, but her parents had acquired the DVDs and she’d seen them – as well as other intelligent shows such as Mannix, Mission: Impossible and It Takes a Thief. She therefore recognized rip-offs when she saw them, and it looked like this Hawaii 5-0 was just such a rip-off, they’d taken the name and probably the theme song, and nothing else. In the place of the stylish Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett, it looked like he’d be replaced by a wise-cracking, smirking know it all, and the earnest Danno would be replaced by another wise-cracking, smirking know it all who would chase after the ladies at the drop of a lei.

Lei… lay…. Interesting play on words, Michele thought suddenly. Could she work that into one of her erotica stories? She always kept a notebook and pen at her bedside to write down such thoughts, and she quickly noted down this idea.

Then she returned her attention to the TV.

The station was now showing an ad for the new lawyer drama, also a remake, called The Defenders. Michele had read of the old show from the early 1960s, starring father and son lawyers -- crusty E.G. Marshall and young idealist Robert Reed, but never seen it. Nevertheless she looked with disgust at the advert, as it seemed clear that crusty James Belushi was going to fill the "straight laced lawyer" role, whereas Jerry O’Connell would be playing the "wild and crazy" lawyer role, as was the case in practically every "buddy" TV series produced in the 1990s. Why weren’t these two women actresses cast in this, she wondered? Why always two white men?

Michele felt on the bed and picked up her Kindle, which she shook impotently at the television screen. That was the problem with reading books on a Kindle – you couldn’t throw it at the TV screen in a moment of petulant rage, you’d break either the TV or the Kindle. It was only a softcover book that could withstand such treatment.

Michele flicked rapidly through the rest of the 100s of channels without finding anything she felt like staying up to watch. After going through them again just to make sure, she turned off the TV and turned in for the night.

Tomorrow would be a busy day.