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Showering In Jail: A Kiefer Sutherland Reminiscence
Posted by Seth at 7:10 AM on August 9, 2008
So we hit the open warehouse, and let's just say, if we had $5 million kicking around, we'd have found the ideal windowless converted foundry from which to run our punk rock mini-empire/host all-night after-Junction ragers with a few hundred of our closest neighbourhood drunks. Yes, Kiefer is leaving us, friends. But that doesn't mean we can't still check in with him from time to time, albeit in the altogether less intimate arena of nationally televised talk show appearances. On Late Show last night, Kiefer recalled our collective nightmare—his incarceration for a parole-violating DUI—from inside the Glendale City Jail. Explaining that his celebrity status (translation: perky little arse) earned him unwanted attention, the simple act of communal showering became a perilous manoeuvre worthy of Jack Bauer himself, requiring slippery neck-snappings and shivs-to-the-eye if he planned on getting out with his bitch-virginity intact.
So we 
There are few things in this world that can thwart 24's Jack Bauer — few things, that is, besides a WGA strike and an untimely stint in the 
When Bertolt Brecht said, "Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it," well, he was just being an egomaniacal auteur. But it's quite possible that he was right — if you're willing to classify network television as art, that is. Consider the case of two recent seemingly unthinkable societal shifts — Barack Obama's presidential nomination and the recent decision to legalize gay marriage in California starting today. Both were the plots of popular television shows before they actually happened. Could the paranoid social conservatives be right? Does what people see on TV actually change their opinions? Do Kiefer Sutherland's powers of persuasion extend beyond Defamer? Consider the evidence after the jump.
Like a desperate terrorist handcuffed to a suitcase nuke and eyeing a nearby hacksaw, shooting on the new season of 24 found itself barbarically cleaved in two by the writers strike. Since Season 7 won't now premiere until January 2009, producers have announced the filming of a 24 TV movie to tide audiences over 
Every TV nut (well, isn't that all of us here?) has, at one point or another, spent a little time fantasizing about certain fictional characters on their favorite shows. These fantasies tend to be either soft-focus daydreams (say, dreaming up elaborate schemes in which they "bump" into you at a party) or something a bit more hard-core (picturing them while giving your significant other the old in-out). On that note, the clever list-makers over at EW decided to compile a 
· 24 co-creator/primetime-torture advocate Joel Surnow is leaving the series to follow his muse, having previously ceded day-to-day control of the show to fellow executive producer Howard Gordon. Surnow explains his decision to officially pass on Jack Bauer's interrogation-speeding belt-sander to his colleagues: "I've done seven years, almost eight years at the same place with the same great group of people. During the strike I started thinking about different things I'd like to do independently, and decided it was time to see if there were other opportunities I wanted to pursue." [
That deafening cheer you heard last night, so loud it blew the Ye Rustic Inn's front door right off its hinges and into an adjacent stripmall's parking lot, had nothing to do with Brett Favre's crushing defeat, but rather a triumph of the highest order involving one of Silver Lake's favorite sons. For Kiefer Sutherland, you see, had emerged from the Glendale City Jail a free man at precisely 12:05 a.m., having served the entirety of his 48-day sentence, where he passed the long hours "cleaning sheets, pillowcases and blankets on laundry duty." John Balian, a jail spokesman always forthcoming with kindly soundbites and incremental Kiefer updates, offered that the 24 star was wearing "a shirt and jeans," and "looked like he was glad to be out." Why was the beloved Christmas tree assassin forced to serve out his entire sentence, where lesser shock-starlets have been released early for far more serious, traffic-flow-flouting crimes? The 
Our rough calculations bring us to Day 17 of Kiefer Sutherland's 48-day stint in the Glendale pokey - perhaps the writers strike can lend us their ring girl - and while we've already established that this would be 
When he's not trying to restrain Jack Bauer from gathering America-saving intelligence by going after a terrorist's genitals with a belt sander, CTU's Bill Buchanan likes to keep his life balanced by teaching yoga class. [
