You're not supposed to call Dick Wolf's Chicago Fire art. You can't call it modern, postmodern, or metamodern. You may be allowed to call it quasarmodern, because quasars are not black holes, but are powered by them. And, be advised, quasarmodern art must stink since it's so far away and touches so few humans.

There was this one scene last night in Chicago Fire where a dog caused a man to rock auger his leg right off. When the ambulance came and the man was put inside, and the ambulance was flying down the road, guess who was chasing it? Guess who was chasing the ambulance? The dog! The dog was chasing the ambulance, and it made my wife cry, and I didn't cry, but I thought, "Yes, I love dogs too," and I had some genuine pre-tears lining up in my sinuses. Then the ambulance pulled over, and the paramedic let the dog ride in the back with the legless man. I know "ambo" means ambulance because I watch Chicago Fire, because I remove belief (and even taste) to make room for knowledge.

Chicago Fire saves my marriage every Wednesday at 8 pm. Let me explain: that dude cutting his leg off with the rock auger is my marriage, and every minute leading up to Wednesday at 8 pm is that family dog causing the accident. That ambulance is quasarmodern speeding to save us, and the sky is just sky, just the basement of space. The birds are not props but unpaid actors. And the ants on the sidewalk are too miniscule to matter, despite a strong union. In fact, they're so miniscule they refuse to even acknowledge quasarmodern as a category for "real" art.

In Atlanta, I used to watch a local channel about firemen. It was firemen stuff all day long. It wasn't art, or a reality show, or even a black hole; it was just firemen doing firemen stuff like coiling hoses and racing up and down ladders. Repetition is relaxing as long as it's not your mom doing the repeating. In Raleigh, I used to repeatedly watch the NASA channel, which was just space. Just a camera on space doing space stuff like standing perfectly still. In Chicago, fire behaves one way; in space, it behaves another. Dick Wolf is concerned only with the former. People like my wife and Dick Wolf say "former" for the first thing and "latter" for the second, but nobody knows what to say if there's a third choice, or God forbid, a fourth! For example, some people say space smells like dirty pajamas (the former), other people say cherries, a heaping portion of cherries (the latter). Ai says it smells like welding fumes (choice 3?). Dick Wolf says it smells like floating (choice 4?!).