Monthly Archives: August 2012
The next two episodes of TV Tuesday concern two shows that are easily in my Fave Five and sure contenders for Top Three. As I mentioned in the first post, there are two that really vie for the top slot, and one that would probably win. This episode is about that show.
This episode is about House, M.D.
As I’ve mentioned before, I watch television for stories that engage me, but more than that I watch television for the characters. This is one place where television shows — especially long-running shows — are superior to movies. A well-drawn character on a television series has a longer “life span” than any movie character can. To approach the life time of a TV character’s life, even for just a single season, requires something like the Harry Potter movies (eight movies amounting to almost 20 hours).
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15 Comments | tags: Dr. Greg House, Dr. James Wilson, Dr. Joseph Bell, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, House M.D., Lisa Edelstein, Sherlock Holmes, television | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
TV Tuesday now takes a slight detour from the public airwaves and shows of our past to consider what’s been happening in the cable TV world. Some of the shows mentioned here deserve their own article, but in this post I’m going to fly over the landscape as quickly as I can manage (those who know me are laughing their ass off about now). If I don’t (at least try), this will be even longer than my usual lengthy longitude.
The problem is that the landscape has gotten huge! Even taking just the “premium” cable channels, such as HBO and Showtime, I find a large selection of shows to mention. In fact, HBO and Showtime each offer so many shows, either one alone offers much territory to explore. With that in mind, the flight won’t be stopping at any one destination very long. We have a very tight schedule today!
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6 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, cable shows, Game of Thrones, HBO, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, news, Nurse Jackie, television, The Big C, The Newsroom (TV series), Veep, Weeds | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
Before TV Tuesday can proceed to the television I love, I need to clear the airwaves regarding an entire genre of television I cannot stand.
I suspect I’m about to offend some people while causing others to cheer. To those who cheer, you are clearly members of a discerning, intelligent television audience. To those who are offended, your presence in the gene pool is no longer required, please hit the showers.
As you may have gathered, yep, it’s another opinionated rant. This one is about what I consider the worst thing to hit television since Manimal or The Ropers. In fact, it’s worse, far worse, than those two combined, plus Cop Rock and Mr. T. and Tina.
It’s about the form of video excrescence known as “Reality TV.” And that really does need to be in quotes, because there isn’t one thing “real” about it. Quite to the contrary, a more accurate term is “Unreality TV.”
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6 Comments | tags: reality shows, television, trash, voyeurism | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
Welcome to TV Tuesday here at Logos CC. Today begins a series of posts concerning that daily invader to most of our lives: television. For good or ill, television has become a fact in the fabric of our families. And there certainly is both much good and ill to be found on the video airwaves. That is an ongoing topic on this blog, but this series is about the shows I love (and some that I don’t).
I suppose TV Thursday might have been a more logical choice, though it doesn’t have quite the same ring. I say that because Thursday nights was the NBC Must See TV night that brought us such classics as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Friends, Night Court, Mad About You, Seinfeld and Wings.
(How many old friends did you find in that list?)
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34 Comments | tags: Cheers, House M.D., JAG, Mad About You, MASH, Must See TV, NCIS, Night Court, Star Trek, television, The West Wing | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
I was wondering what, if anything, to post today. I woke up with a headache (okay, a hangover), and I find it hard to focus on writing when my head hurts. And today begins what is seeming more and more likely to be my last three weeks in a 33-year career. So I’m feeling a bit down, which also makes writing difficult.
I have been writing a lot lately. Some of that is catching up after nearly a year of writing very little here. I started strong a year ago July, kept it up for two months and then fell off the metaphorical horse. There was a personal and a work-related aspect to that. The latter involved beginning new tasks at work, so there were new systems to learn, and that took a lot of energy. The former is private; suffice to say it involved one of those life disappointments that takes some time to absorb and integrate.
The longer I didn’t write, the easier it was to not write. (Exercise is the same way for me.) I tried several times to get back into it, but never really got up a head of steam.
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13 Comments | tags: Cowboys & Aliens, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, RSVP | posted in Brain Bubble
I wrote recently that I have fairly poor eating habits despite much effort on the part of my parents who do have better sense with regard to food.
Part of the problem may have been a counter-lesson involving food-as-reward. We were fairly poor growing up, so getting a pizza (which was a fairly new thing back then) or ice cream was our reward for good grades in school.
I always got pretty good grades in school (although not really for the food reward; I just really liked learning). But food did become associated with good times, not that there’s nothing wrong with that. I seem to have dodged the bullet of using food as comfort, but I have discovered I eat more when bored or frustrated.
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20 Comments | tags: bagels, brown sugar, cheese, Demolition Man, food, hot dogs, pasta, pizza, rat burgers, Tex-Mex | posted in Life
I was on a supply run to the grocery store this morning and was stuck behind a Toyota Camry for most of the way. My trip takes place on two-lane roads that are hilly and curved enough to prohibit passing, so I was trapped. It was a mellow Sunday morning, and there’s no use (ever) letting other drivers get to you. I’m not one to play the tailgating game, but the four vehicles stuck behind me were stacked up tightly.
In fact, once I realized it was a Camry, I started laughing. For a long time now, I’ve had a perception that when you’re stuck behind a particularly bad driver — one that stands out from the usual bad drivers — there is a good chance the car is a Camry. I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one with that perception; I’ve heard others make the same rant.
But it is a fact that there are a huge number of them on the road, and they age well, so odds are high on any car in front of you being a Camry.
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4 Comments | tags: bad drivers, drivers, horrible drivers, LA Story, slow pokes, speed limit, Steve Martin, Toyota Camry | posted in Life, Rant
The other entry for Skydiving Saturday is another USENET post I made to rec.skydiving in August 1999.
And there’s a nice connection to posting these in August as I did with the three last year describing the first and second Tandem jumps and the first AFF jump. The girl friend and I made those two Tandem jumps in August of 1997, so August is the month it all began.
While we started AFF school that September, and finished the following March, the day of jumping described below (one of our most fun times as the drop zone) took place on a very hot day in August of 1999. A lot of things started to go downhill after that, so in a number of ways this represents one of the high points in our lives. It was definitely one of those days to press in your memory book.
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4 Comments | tags: boogie, CASA, rec.skydiving, skydiving, USENET | posted in Life
It’s Skydiving Saturday at Logos con carne! I’m working on the upcoming TV Tuesday, so this weekend I’m going to coast a bit with some easy posts and archive excavations.
It’s also a good time to enjoy the end of lazy summer before we go back to school. After all, Logos CC is also about philosophy and computers and science (oh, my).
There are many meaty topics on the grill for later, but for now it’s free fall time!
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2 Comments | tags: AFF, AFF jump, rec.skydiving, skydiving, USENET | posted in Life
Let us speak now of a form of life so low and loathsome that, in comparison, the worst person you ever spent time with is a saint, a paragon of human virtue and charm. I mean the biggest waste of human flesh this world has ever seen.
I’m speaking of a form of life so useless, so revolting, that a universe in which just one of these disgusting creatures lives, albeit even on a distant planet beyond the reach of any spaceship, is worse than living in a house filled with giant, raving, rabid human-hating scorpions.
I’m speaking of a kind of human so offensive in the face of all that is good and right they should be forced to live their miserable lives wearing cactus-lined underwear while Prometheus’s Eagle takes a break from his usual duties to come to eat their livers and hearts. (Except they have no hearts.)
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16 Comments | tags: die die die spammers, die horribly spammers, die painfully spammers, die spammers, vanish from the earth spammers | posted in Rant
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