Category Archives: TV

Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer

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Every year leading up to Christmas I still love to catch all the animated kid shows.  Behind the night before Christmas with the Christmas clock that breaks, Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer was my favorite.  I say was because seeing Rudolph through adult eyes leaves a pretty different impression.

I never realized how crappy Santa and Comet are through pretty much the entire show until the end.  I know that the other kid reindeer shun Rudolph, but the parent reindeer suck too.

And when you really look at it, Santa is a user because he doesn’t really accept Rudolph until he needs him to drive the sleigh because of the storm.  If there was never that storm, Rudolph might still be wandering around the tundra running from the snow monster.

Its kind of sad when great memories of things from your childhood gets messed up when you revisit it from an adults perspective.  I better not watch The Night Before Christmas and I find some kind of crapiness about that one as well.

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Lost May be the Best Show Ever

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So I’m a little late on this now, but I’ve been a little busy and haven’t been able to finish this post I started last Thursday.

Yes, I am one of the many addicted to Lost.  The show is truly unique, and is one of the few that I actually look forward to watching on a regular basis.  I’m not going to rehash the finale the other night, except to say that it was freaking awesome.  That set of writers has probably done one of the best jobs of cliffhangers for season finales ever.

What I did want to note is what I think is a great story telling plan they came up with for Lost that I think other shows would do well to follow.  At some point the producers/writers of the show made it known that there was a definitive scheduled end to the show.  They weren’t going to drag it out for as long as they could to squeeze dollars out of the show.  The writers had a specific idea of what the story arc should look like and they plotted it out with a definitive end.

Now this means that next season Lost will go away, and I will actually lose a show that I’m completely invested in.  It’ll suck when we all know its not going to be coming on anymore, but a part of me appreciates the anticipation of knowing that you’re almost to the conclusion, like when you’re reading a book and you realize you only have twenty-five pages left.

It’s also extremely comforting to know that we’re not going to get to the end of the season and someone is going to wake up and realize everything that just happened over the last season was a dream.  Well, we actually might with Lost, but it won’t be with the intent of extending the show another four seasons.  It will be with the intent to blow your mind once again, and given that goal, no one is going to wake up from a dream because that story line is old and played out and the Lost writers are too good for that.

As I said already, I think other shows where the primary focus is an ongoing story arc should consider a finite beginning and end.  Now I know that’s not going to happen, because it doesn’t allow for the greed of production companies, and honestly, I think it would probably be harder for writers to do that well.  They’d actually have to do more planning on the front end for an extended story, but I think it would likely lead to better quality throughout the run of a show.

You wouldn’t get to a point where the story lines get increasingly ridiculous (ER) and it would mitigate the problem of writers leaving the show or running out of steam because they basic outline is there for whoever picks up.  In some ways it would be like the show is a long miniseries or a movie told in many parts.  I think its an intriguing idea and I’d love to see it.

You won’t see me holding my breath anytime soon.

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Pushing Daisies is Awesome

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I’m not the biggest TV watcher.  I think I have about five or six shows that I watch right now, and having that many is annoying me.  That being said, I have to share and recommend to everyone that may come across this blog that they should watch the show Pushing Daisies.

Pushing Daisies is by far the most unique show I’ve seen in a really long time.  I’ll do my best to make a pretty complicated show simple to understand.  The main character, Ned, can bring things back to life by touching them.  If he touches them again they are dead for good, and if he doesn’t touch them again to kill them permanently within a minute, something else dies in that things place.  Ned owns and runs a pie shop with his grade school sweet heart, Charlotte (aka Chuck), who he brought back to life and they can never touch each other even though they’re in love.  Ned also got hooked up with a verrrrry interesting private detective who solves murders by getting Ned to bring the victim back to life for just under a minute to ask who killed them.  They rarely get the whole story, but get enough of a lead to make the solving of the crime entertaining.

There are actually a couple of other little side plots that make for some great entertainment, but those are the basics.  The show is totally quirky and really random, and I think that’s one of the things that I like about it the most.  Its a really refreshing concept in comparison to everything else that’s on TV right now.

I also really appreciate the general asthetic of the show.  The only thing that I can compare it to is Liminy Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events.  Since I think hardly anyone has seen that movie it probably won’t mean much to anyone, but that’s the best I can come up with.  Pretty much every set features bright colors and a highly stylized look.

Not sure there is a whole lot more that I can say besides give the show a try.  There are a few plot lines that run through the whole series, but each episode is a contained story, and they do a good job with narration to help provide enough backstory to help newcomers understand what’s going on.  If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it.

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College Football: USC vs. Oregon State

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This isn’t a review of this game since the 3rd quarter just started, but I had to throw out that USC is losing 21-0 right now.  Oregon St. is bad.  Oregon St. lost to Stanford, who is also bad, and they got crushed by Penn St.

The point that I’m trying to make is that if USC doesn’t drop in the polls after this weekend, I’ll be heading to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to pick up the wedding gift for the marriage between the media/analysts and the Trojans.  Even if USC comes back to win this game, they were down 21 points to a bad team.  You don’t deserve to be #1 in the country if you can’t handle bad teams with no problem.

If USC ends up losing this game, I, my friends, will do a happy dance a-la Bruce Willis at the end of The Last Boy Scout.  It gives me great pleasure when teams like USC get beat by teams they shouldn’t lose to, like Stanford last year.

I also thought I’d share that I’m sending a mental health professional to Pete Carroll’s house after this quote in ESPN’s article about USC’s super-duper hard schedule, when he was asked how he gets his team to take their PAC-10 schedule seriously.

“What would we address about that? We have a ridiculously difficult schedule going through the conference. We don’t address where they are ranked or anything.”

He just insulted every team in the Big 12 and the SEC and half the teams in the BIG 10.  Maybe he means its hard to deal with the schedule b/c its difficult for him to keep his team from getting bored to the point they consider changing sports.

Well, its 21-7 now and I fear a comeback is on its way.  I still think if they maintain their #1ranking a spotlight will be shown on the fact that USC is the media/analyst darling in college football right now.  If they win this game, they will have beaten a less than impressive Ohio St. team, a really bad Virginia team, and will have had to come back against a bad Oregon St. team.  Not exactly the resume for the best team in the country.  I guess if USC ends up crushing Oregon St. in the second half they’ll have an argument, but you’ll still have a tough time convincing me.

I’ll probably have some more thoughts tomorrow when I find out what the final score is.

UPDATE: Oregon St. wins 27-21.  And now we do the happy dance.  Now the question that has to be asked;  How much does USC fall after losing to an unranked team?

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Awesome Fedex Commercial

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In this day and age of TiVo and DVRs I don’t see commercials all that often.  On this rare occasion, I’m glad I saw this one.

The video quality isn’t the greatest, but its too good not to share.  So you can understand a little better what’s going on, the guy is holding a golf scorecard when he walks into the Fedex.

If I’m ever lucky enough to get a hole-in-one, I’d like to think I’d do something this funny.  I do know that whatever I do, as many people as I can tell about it are going to know.  I may just go walking around a mall or store telling strangers that I got a hole-in-one.

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