More Firefly

For the bookmark file: pretty good run-down of a few themes in the Firefly series..

YouTube

Discovered YouTube a while back.. but didn't really give much thought to the idea that we could post and share our own little home videos..
Haven't had much time to clip any recent video together, but this is a little montage I put together early last year...

Bettis & the Sugar Bowl

Just watched (again, thanks to ESPN Classic and TIVO) the 92 Sugar Bowl.. Mirer, Brooks, Culver, and of course, Bettis.. love to see them "Gator Chomp" all over Florida (and a much younger-- and more goofily dressed-- Steve Spurrier)... just right to get me back in the mood for next football season.. oh, it's going to be a long summer...

TV Geek

When did we all become such pop culture nerds?
It all started when DVDs started rolling out season after season of all the great TV shows.. Star Trek, The Sopranos, the X-Files. Now it's Knight Rider, The A-Team, Millenium, and Battlestar Galactica (the original 1979 edition)...
I wasn't into buying those boxed sets, but I did think it was a pretty great thing that any time I wanted, I could run out to Best Buy and pick up a copy of Season 2 of the Dukes of Hazzard, whenever the impulse struck.
Then BitTorrent and TIVO entered my life.. and lately, it seems like my entire social and intellectual existence revolves around which TV series I'm thoroughly immersing myself in.. well, immersion is always a relative notion with me. It can sometimes be several days or more than a week between times when I can sit down and really watch something.

So what have I been watching lately?
Well, I downloaded the whole first season of Doctor Who a few months ago.. the new edition with Christopher Eccleston. It aired in England last summer.. I downloaded it this winter.. and now Sci-Fi Channel is re-airing the first season here in America. David Tenet takes over the role this spring... and they're off to a pretty good re-start.. although I do have to take issue with a few moments throughout the show where you can hear the editorial voice of the BBC speaking through the characters voices (making one or another off-handed quip about the American President... and when did the Doctor become such a big environmentalist?)

Also watching 24 and Battlestar Galactica week to week...
Battlestar had a few down weeks this past season, but otherwise, it remains, I think, the best show on television right now.

Went out and got the Firefly series on DVD a month or two ago and spent about three weeks working my way through that.. what a great show! How did I miss it when it was originally airing?

Now I'm on into the first Season of Arrested Development-- a brilliantly written comedy.. and another show that I'm discovering only after it's been killed...

And I downloaded the first season of The Shield the other night.. thanks to TIVO, I've been sucked into a couple of the recent episodes.. and since it's like the 6th or 7th season, I figure I ought to go back and get a little of the back story...

TIVO.. what a marvelous invention... and perfect for those late-night bouts of sleeplessness when I'm up with one of the boys.. or just for those scraps of 30 or 40 minutes in the in-between times when the kids aren't in high-need mode..

CSPAN Combine

Watching the NFL Combine on the NFL network this afternoon and something occured to me...
this is like C-Span..
More commentary, perhaps.. but basically , what I realized is that, like C-Span, watching the Combine has that same kind of empty, lonely feeling.. the feeling where you realize that you're watching this with only a handful of other people in the country watching with me...

"Ah, here comes the 'Off-Tackle Reaction' drill. This is a fun one."

Fascinating stuff.

H4A!

Did another stint on the HappyforApathy.com Podcast with my good friend, Manundso.
It's such a good time getting to hang out with those guys.. a nice break from the every-day grind... it was a low-key evening for me, so I don't feel like I really added that much this time around, but it was a great time anyway... and a good drink. Thanks, Manundso! See you next time.

Anderson Cooper, my hero

All I've got to say is: I'm looking at CNN.com and stumble across Anderson Cooper's so-called 'Blog'... emblazoned with his narrow, earnest ("I'm so J. Peterman") mug and these sage words across the masthead:

"Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal
itself." Anderson Cooper

He's so humble, that Anderson. He even quotes himself.

More Battlestar Commentary

Again... more from my ongoing email conversation about Battlestar Galactica with a buddy from grad school..

Finally watched the latest Battlestar on TIVO last night... "The Captain's Hand"...
And egads! Are we rushing Lee's character along at this point, or what??

I HATED that opening scene with Dualla.. with all it's "while you were away" exposition thrown in there..
I realized during that scene that my problem here is that I have NO idea what the trajectories of these characters are...
I feel like they did a pretty good job milking some of Starbucks development earlier in the season... but now it feels like we're just rushing the characters along. Starbuck is drinking herself to death infront of projector screens full of young pilots getting waxed (remember a few eps ago) while Lee sleeps with (quite literally) every woman he encounters (except the president and the terrorist leader) and jumps from CAG to Pegasus Commander in a matter of weeks...

That said, it felt like this episode kind of found itself somewhere about 2/3's of the way through... around the time when I was REALLY ready to give up (as I was thinking to myself "is there even one single competent officer ANYWHERE on Pegasus?")... as what's-his-name Pegasus idiot took himself down to the engine room and the battle ensued with the Cylons, it's like they were able to capture some of the original tension and pacing of the early episodes.

And just when I was ready to feel better about the show.. then Baltar announces himself for President...
And I realized that so much of what's been missing these last few episodes has been Baltar. He really has been terribly underused recently.
But to use him this way, was really more like abuse than anything. I didn't care for it... this all just feels really very ham-handed.
Did I come to expect too much from the first season and the first half of this second? What the hell is going on here?

All the same, this ep does give me a small glimmer of hope.
They are going to have to figure out how to write a subtle Pegasus character, though... and having Lee running the ship over there gives them some opportunity to do that, I suppose...

Preview makes it look like the next episode will be another character-sketch... this time on the Cylon side... could be interesting.. but I just feel like these previous character-excursion episodes they sent us on somehow caused them to lose the thread on the larger story... so I'm concerned about how or if they'll ever get back on track...

Sacrifice

A little Battlestar Galactica commentary after watching this week's episode:
Okay... after watching the latest BG over the weekend.. I'm honestly now starting to feel like I'm watching these episodes out of sequence.

What's the deal with Billy? you know, an episode or two ago, I remember wondering where he'd gotten off to.. even thought he might have been killed and I'd just not noticed it... and is it just me or did this little romance between Apollo and Dualla just spring up virtually out of nowhere? I do recall them setting it up a bit a few weeks ago, but even then I was wondering: What the hell happened to Billy? And my but isn't Apollo having a go of it lately-- that hooker on Cloud 9 he was keeping under wraps, a near tussle with Starbuck, and now Dualla.... geez-louise!

Makes it hard to believe Rosalyn when she's getting all weepy over Billy-- I mean, I'm talking to the TV: Geez, lady, you haven't seen the kid in like 2 months.. comes back on the scene, he's about 2 inches taller, got a new haircut, and he's clearly been working out at the gym... anyone care to wonder where he's been. Did his re-appearance not have "I'm back for one day's worth of shooting so they can kill my character and I can move on and work on my new pilot" written all over it??

Other questions: where's the good Doctor and Ms Tricia Helfer? Are they on vacation??
Has anyone seen the Chief since he and Helo were released?? (They were released, right? See, I can't even remember)..

All this adding to the ongoing drama of "What the hell happened to Pegasus?" I know, I know, they've made a couple of mentions of the ship, but who's at the helm of the freaking boat??

This ep was generally better than the last one, I thought, and loads better than 'Black Market'. More tension, a few good lines (Adama: "Cut the line."). But I'm starting to feel like Moore and the gang are either a) starting to feel a little too bullet-proof with their writing; or b) these were just filler episodes they figured they could shoot in any sequence and drop into the lineup when they needed some time to work on some larger story-arcs. I wonder.. from the preview, it looks like we're finally getting back to the Pegasus...

Let's hope so. After the last three or four episodes, this show is gradually starting to lose its grip...

Congratulations, Jerome!

Steelers win Super Bowl 40 tonight, 21-10.... and Jerome Bettis gets his first (and only) Ring.
Well done. Well deserved.
He announced, in the post-game, "the bus has made its last stop in Detroit!"

Happy Retirement, Jerome!

The best coach...

Tom Brady says Charlie Weis i the best coach he's ever been around:

On Sirius radio, Brady acknowledged this was a trying season, especially after losing offensive coordinator Charlie Weis to Notre Dame and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel to Cleveland.
“From the start of the year, the word coach (Bill) Belichick used was truth,” Brady said. “He was going to tell us the truth where we were at every single week as a team. We weren’t looking at the past. We had quite a bit of changes. We lost Charlie, who’s the best coach I’ve ever been around. We lost our defensive coordinator, who’s a head coach in the NFL. We lost some key players, had some tough injuries, and even through all that, were very competitive at the end of the year and had a shot to host the AFC Championship.”

Scar! and Serenity

Clip from an email I sent a friend regarding BattleStar and Firefly:

Just watched this week's BSG on TIVo--
Scar"-- and I've got to say.. I think it may be the most uneven episode I've seen (in a while at least)...
Since when did Cat become such a hot-shot? Maybe I haven't been paying proper attention...
Also seems like they introduced a lot of new pilot characters.. or at least the camera gave them special emphasis we haven't seen before..

This plus the overwhelming emphasis on Starbuck's drinking... and I've also lost track of who's CAG on which boat.... is Starbuck no longer attached to Pegasus..

Just weird.
I still loved the episode, but I just found myself scratching my head when it was over....

Also finished watching Firefly and Serenity this week.. and I'm totally IN LOVE!
Read a rumor somewhere along the line that the DVD sales of the show and movie are good enough that Joss may try to make the case for a return to TV for the show... that would, I think, be best... as good as the film was, I just think the pace of the writing and the style of the show lends itself best to the weekly TV format...

Random things you notice when you're kids are watching Toy Story non-stop for a week-- Joss Whedon got top writing credit for the first Toy Story screenplay.. not sure I realized he worked at Disney or Pixar... wild.

The view from my office

Just wish I weren't in my office quite so early in the morning..
but the view is pretty.. (not sure how well it comes through in these pictures..)

Blackberry'd

So they gave me a Blackberry at work this week..
I never figured I'd be one of those guys with the multiple devices clipped to his belt (well, I'm still not, for the record)... I mean, who really needs constant access to their email anyway?

But I must say, now that I've got this little thing in my hands, I'm totally geeking out.. I can't put the damn thing down.. it's ridiculous!

Embarrassing...

Well, that may be too strong a way to describe my feelings in the aftermath of ND's loss to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.
Do I feel like the Irish deserved to be there? No question.
At the same time, I do feel a bit that the Irish were being ranked as much for their potential as for their accomplishments.
And, as a friend pointed out, I think Ohio State could, at this moment, give Texas or USC a run for their money if a playoff were part of the deal.

So all in all, I don't feel too badly. Disappointed..
But in years past, as in the Fiesta loss to Oregon State, or the Gator (?) Bowl loss to NC State-- I felt a sense of the lost opportunity, as though another season like this might not come along for a long time to come..

But this year, it seems terribly easy to say "Yeah, well wait til next year."
Here come the Irish.

Yanks get Damon-ized...

News today that Johnny Damon has signed with the 'hated' Yankees...
and the Red Sox 'Nation' (which stretches as far as 495, last I heard) weeps with the 'defection.'
As though Damon were born a Red Sox...

God Bless Joe Paterno...

Gotta love this note from the Dayton Daily News coverage of ESPN's College Football Awards show:

The zinger of the night came from Penn State's Joe Paterno, the Home Depot coach of the year. After he gabbed on the air with Herbstreit, a former Buckeye and Centerville High School quarterback, Paterno cracked, "It sure is great to be interviewed by a guy from Ohio State who can speak English."

Sleepy SleepyDad!

Well, it may be bowl season-- odd that that means that there are actually NO college football games for weeks and week...

But this morning, I am, as my pseudonym implies, very very sleepy.
The younger of our two boys, 19 months old now, is still battling the last of this latest round of winter-time sniffles.. and last night seemed to be the worst of it-- he just could not get himself to sleep.

Add to that the stress of settling into a new job-- not to mention getting up at 4:30 this morning so I could be in the office by 5:30 (don't ask).. and it just was not a good night all the way around..

Coffee, coffee, coffee...

Sickboys

The boys have both come down sick this weekend-- stuffy, runny noses, little coughing, sneezing, and not a lot of sleeping... and I've started having to go into work at 5am.. why do these coincidences always happen to me like this?

Video iPod

Conan O'Brien's got a pretty funny little parody of a video iPod commercial... it's worth a look.... (courtesty of MacTV)