So...full....

Had a TG holiday with Adrian, the Hopfinger family, the new baby, Bindu, and about 20 cases of beer and three turkeys. I have never ate and drank so much in three days in my life. It was absolutely perfect - the weather was pretty decent, there was more food than we could have possibly eaten, and we were almost completely secluded from the rest of the world - I was out of pager range and my cell phone was off for most of the time.
The baby is absolutely adorable - the only time I heard him cry was when they tried to put him to bed on Thansgiving, and he just didn't want to miss the excitement. He smiles and laughs a lot and is generally adorable. Overall it was a great time. And the food - oh my Lord, the food! Two deep-fried turkeys, one roasted turkey (only used for the gravy on TG night), 20 lbs of potatoes, corn casserole, yams, stuffing, wild rice, green beans, salad (like anyone was going to eat that), and lots of other good stuff. Plus a smorgasboard of deserts. Oh my it was good. And, we got to spend most of the day drinking beer and burning leaves. It was great.
So, now back to the regular world - we have to go shopping this coming weekend for presents. That'll be fun.
Sorry for the short one, but work is heavy. Gotta run...

TV Show musings

Had weird dreams for the last couple of days, but oddly I’ve been feeling overly creative lately. Of course, there’s nothing like a good day at the office to suck that out of me and get me ready to play video games or watch TV after getting home.

Speaking of TV, I was thinking about some shows I really liked that didn’t make it very far. My favorites so far that failed:

1) Andy Richter Controls the Universe – this show was a lot like Scrubs (in fact, I believe it came out at the same time), but Scrubs always has some “serious” part toward the end, whereas Andy was just bizarre the whole way through. Really funny, don’t think it made it past Season 1. Then Andy was in that god-awful Quintuplets which, sadly, lasted longer than ARCTU. Sad.

2) Push, Nevada. I never saw Twin Peaks so I can’t compare the two. I thought Push was bizarre but still accessible, and I believe that everyone’s biggest complaint with Twin Peaks was that it was just too weird. Unfortunately Push only lasted something like seven episodes. I think there was also a hokey component of you (the viewer) somehow winning a million dollars if you could solve the mystery or some crap like that. Seriously, who has time for that kind of shit? My guess is that the subsection of the population that would go for that sort of gimmick are the same types who just wouldn’t get it.

3) Freaks and Geeks. Perhaps this is a little bit bandwagon, but I really did like this show – sort of “Wonder Years” in the 80s. Of course everyone knows all about what a gem this one was so I won’t get into it.

4) Kingpin. I confess; I’m totally bored by “The Sopranos”. I have the first two Seasons on DVD and I forced myself to watch them both, figuring that everybody and their brother can’t be wrong about how totally bad-ass the show is. Whatever. I was completely underwhelmed. I watched the first season with my old roommate, which prompted him to buy the second season, which left me slightly less impressed than the first. After that I called it quits. Anyway, I thought that “Kingpin” was much cooler, but I’m guessing that everyone else thought it was a ripoff of “The Sopranos”. Or maybe there was just too much backlash from Hispanic organizations (I suppose I could see that one both ways). Or maybe it just wasn’t popular enough to fit in the three hours of non-reality prime-time TV that NBC had slotted for the week. At any rate, it only made it about 6 episodes.

5) Firefly. Yes, another bandwagon, but I really liked that show. Admittedly it would have probably started to suck after a couple of years, just like Buffy and Angel, but I thought it was a cool idea and very well written (as I have about nearly everything Joss has done). Admittedly I haven’t seen the movie, but that’s because we live in Manhattan and seeing a movie is an expensive and necessarily rare event for us, and the wife wasn’t too keen on wasting one on Firefly (sigh).

6) How I Met Your Mother. Actually this one’s still on, but Clau and I are convinced it won’t last more than one full season, if that. I think it’s really cute and I dig the show a lot. Not great, but worth a giggle and unexpectedly endearing. I still haven’t yet watched one and thought “well, that’s 30 minutes I’ll never get back”.

Since I’m on a TV list roll, here’s another one. Shows that should plan (or should have planned) to be 2-3 Seasons and then be done (i.e. shows that really, really jumped the shark)

1) Alias. Goddam that first season was cool. Rimbaldi, Sydney’s mother might be alive, etc etc. The fact that Jennifer Garner was so cute as to be hot didn’t hurt either. After a long wait (or, in my case, a few days for the next season to arrive on Netflix), the second season kicked in rocking. The Rimbaldi thing still had some good mileage left in it, lots of stuff going on with Syd, her parents, Will / Vaughn, etc. Then it ends with that whole coma thing? WTF? Then things just started to suck. Now all the good people are gone from the show and they’re trying to write JG’s pregnancy into the show. Wouldn’t it have been great if she could have retired at the end of season 2? Or if we just could have had an awesome finish with the Rimbaldi thing as the focus of Season 3, and finished the show? But hey, everybody’s making money, and we the audience keep watching it, hoping to recapture that sense of wonder and awe that we felt during that first season. And could we please have a little less gratuitous use of the slow-mo? It gets old after a few years.

2) Lost. Coincidentally by the same fellow. Again, breathtaking first season. Awesome characters, multiple twists-and-turns, the final opening of the hatch. Wow, wow, and wow. Of course my new theory (yes, this is my idea, but I’m sure there’s about a million other people who had the same idea) is that it’s all just some ginormous experiment, run by the government, or some thinktank, or even financed by Hurley (OK, that might be a stretch). The Darma logo on the shark was a great touch – my guess is that they put that on there to see if anyone would notice, then started spreading the word. But, you can already see the show approaching the point where you wish it would just end. Wouldn’t this be a great, great show if they had a pre-set time limit? Say, three seasons? Instead, they’re going to be stuck on that island for another 5 years and it’s gonna turn out to be a Martian colony or some bullshit like that.

3) Smallville. The first season (and maybe second, it’s all a little fuzzy now) was awesome. The development of this teenage boy, who we all know is going to grow up to be Superman, and everything that leads him to his destiny. Just like the comics, except with Starbucks and cell phones. What a great idea. Especially all the early interaction with Clark and Lex. I believe the moment of the shark-jump may have been when they introduced Lois Lane to the show. Now, as my wife likes to point out, it’s “Dawson’s Creek with superpowers”. Sadly I’m inclined to agree – I keep telling her “I just want to watch until he can fly”, which is probably what everyone else is thinking and therefore Clark won’t realize he can fly until the very last episode. I gotta give them props for actually have Clark and Lana do it, though, and also doing it in such a tasteful way. Other than that the show sucks now.

I’m sure there’s a lot more but that’s the ones currently on that I’m into.

OK, I’ve been writing this on and off for the last few hours. Time to finally publish.

Ho-hum

Training was cool, got lots to do now.
Last weekend we went out drinking. Clau and I went a bit over our entertainment budget for the weekend but we enjoyed ourselves. Besides, what's the point of making money if you don't spend it once in a while?
More updates later - too busy now.

--Nate