Everyone in the house had fallen asleep. The place was positively ghostly. A long weekend at the beach gave way to an eerie, dog-day stretch of August and I found myself like I usually am in otherwise sleepy times like this: glued to the TV, eyes invisible-toothpicked wide open, TV on and ready for action.

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling: hoping for a little Pimp My Ride. Some Miami Ink, perhaps. A pause for the cause to see some upcoming previews on FX, and then it happened.

The remote broke. The TV locked up. I couldn't turn anything on or off. No other channels — crap — I couldn't even adjust the volume.

We were right at the hour break, and the show that came on next was the FX drama Over There. You know the one: It's the TV show about Iraq (that's not the news). Someone is telling me something, I thought. And oh, look: It's on for the next two hours. Jesus.

I don't know what — if anything — you've heard about TV vet Steven Bochco's dramatic exploration of the current war in Iraq. Personally, I've been waiting for an outrage about it that, for whatever reasons, has never seemed to come. (I guess the principle reason is: Why protest a TV show about a war when there's an actual war to protest? Which, you know, makes sense.)

For Over There, I will say this: The writing is dead-on. The acting, the settings, all above standard. But I cannot mince words: This show and everyone involved with it is officially a fucking ghoul. The very fact of its existence — that somebody's making an us-against-them drama out of a war that is happening in real time — portrays a callousness that I think is something new under the sun. Sure, Hogan's Heroes might have ruffled feathers. M*A*S*H might have come close to the bone for Korean War vets (or, for that matter, the Vietnam vets it was often masking for). But those shows were comedies, after the fact. Over There treats the evening news like an episode of Six Feet Under: It is glib, sardonic and ultimately hollow in its look-at-me cleverness. Here's an episode: Soldiers bicker and die while trying not to have to shoot kids; when they're off duty, they fuck the pain away in the parking lot. Meanwhile, the spouses back home freak out, leave the children unattended and have to live in shitass Army base faux-burbs to boot. Everybody cries, everybody lies.

The difference is, though, that people who are directly involved with the war — families, people just returning from Iraq, reservists not yet called up, freaked out in the middle of the night — might have to see this shit.

Last winter, I worked for three days for a porn site. While there, my job was to scroll through DVDs of every color in the porn rainbow and do screen caps — and sometimes, hilariously, plot summaries. It seems like kind of a lark, doesn't it? Yeah, I thought so, too. But after three straight days of this, something happened to me. I'd leave the building, feeling like I'd just swallowed a Big Gulp of straight steroids. I felt dead inside, but like I could explode into tremendous violence at any moment. I stood on the subway, feeling like a fucking criminal for all that I had seen. Wondering how I'd ever be able to see beauty again, and if I'd still have the mechanisms in place to appreciate it if I did.

Over There gave me that same feeling in only a fraction of the time.

Over There airs Wednesdays on FX at 10 p.m., with additional rebroadcasts throughout the week.

Sept. 8-22, 2005

Hurricane Relief Concerts
Sat., Sept. 10, time TBA, MTV, VH1 and CMT
Spread over three channels, a most likely insane lineup of every person of conscience (and some probably not!) in the pop world. Definites: Usher, Green Day, Ludacris, Alicia Keyes. Hopefuls: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Germs and The Interpreters.

BET Telethon for Hurricane Relief
Fri., Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m.
Same deal as above, but with: Stevie Wonder, Omarion, Common, David Banner, Jay-Z, Juvenile, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Master P, and most likely more.

TV Party is betting that there will be more benefits and telethons as the days move on. Please watch your listings and, if you can, contribute.