Stuck in the Middle

I have a confession.

I’ve fallen in love with a new show.

Well, okay, it’s not a new show, but it’s new to me.  Actually it’s in its 6th season now, and I just found it a few weeks ago.  It’s Medium.  See, I like to watch Ghost  Whisperer.  That’s my other confession.  It’s a nice bubblegum kind of show, always with the happy ending, pretty Jennifer Love Hewitt.  I swear, I knew when she was just a tiny little thing she’d grow up to be a star.  Ghost Whisperer is to TV what romance novels are to reading. 

But CBS acquired Medium this summer after NBC dumped it, and they put it on after Ghost Whisperer and for some reason we decided to watch it when it started this season.  And we got hooked by the writing.  It incredibly well done.  Sure, set aside your disbelief or belief in the subject matter of psychic phenomena, and instead look at the way they do dialogue and backstory.  The way they show family life, siblings dealing with each other, parents trying to cope with children and being out of work and trying to pay bills, struggling with their kids’ teachers.  We’ve been catching up with the show for a few weeks now since it’s syndicated on some other channel, and we haven’t been disappointed yet.  Rarely happy endings, but satisfying ones.  Not too large, not too small, just right. 

The other show I’ve taken a shine to – for many of the same reasons as Medium – is The Good Wife.  Great writing, good acting, well done scripts.  Always entertaining.  Just a touch on the “she always wins her cases” but they build up the tension fairly well.  Add in a mother-in-law you want to strangle and hey, it’s a win-win. 

Those are my new favorites.  How about you?  Found anything new to love lately?

MOPAR

(Miscellaneous Oddball Posts Assembled Recklessly)

This is what it’s like watching a show with my husband.

The scene is a lawyer talking to a home healthcare worker who’s charge is an elderly lady.

Old lady says to lawyer: Your husband is doing a fine job.
Lawyer (whose husband is in jail) nods, smiles, and says: Thank you.
Nurse to lawyer: Don’t mind her, she only remembers the past.
My husband: Unlike the rest of us who only remember the future.  (complete with eyerolls)

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A while back we watched some show on Nostradamus.  One of the commentators was a Nostradamus expert of some sort.

He said something to the effect of: The quatrains of Nostradamus were designed to keep the idiots occupied.
My husband: And we can see that strategy’s been working really well, Mr. “Expert.”  (wink wink nudge nudge)

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142  That’s how many comments popped into my Google Reader.  See, there are a few blogs I read that aren’t on WordPress.  They’re on Blogger, or are their own URL, so I subscribe to the comments as well as the posts.  I’ve noticed that on one of the comments lists I follow, it sometimes takes up to 4 days for the comments to show up.  And last night while I was reading through a few that had come through, all of a sudden 142 comments showed up, some at least a month old.  Things that make you go, “WTF?”  Stupid Google Reader.

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Speaking of Reader, I’m in love with that little “Send to” button.  I can – at just a click on that tiny little arrow – send all my Reader wisdom and humor to someplace else.  It’s my way of spreading the wealth.  *cough*  (Knowledge is the ONLY wealth that should be spread, btw)  Now, instead of watching my favorite things fall off Reader after the 30 day mark, I can send them to the Blogger blogs I’ve set up to catch the gold. 

I can also send things to Twitter and Stumble, and lots of other places.  Check out your Reader settings to find out more. 

And I have determined that Google is like crack.  ‘Nuff said.

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Just another rant

I don’t know why, but my Beloved likes to watch UFO shows on TV.  I suspect it’s the mock factor that draws him.  Trust me, nobody can mock like my Love. 

So this weekend we watched yet another show on UFO’s and aliens – this one about the Roswell Incident.  Honestly, I’m really sick of the whole thing.  It seems like every year there’s another show on it – another “new facts” type of thing – only they all say the same thing over and over.  There aren’t any “new” facts, there are only the old facts, and I do not consider people’s “new memories” to be facts by any means.  Nor do I consider the “memories” of people 60 years after the fact, who were children at the time of the event, to be note-worthy.  Feelings and memories do NOT dictate reality, period.  I can’t stress this enough.  It really bugs me when people feel their feelings make something true or not.  There is truth, and untruth; and if something is untrue it is either a mistake or a lie – accidental or deliberate.

Sorry, I digress.  My point though, is this: It’s 1947, just after the end of the devastation of WWII.  It’s the start of the Cold War with Russia, and Roswell is just outside a highly classified military base where the top-secret manufacture of the A-bomb was completed.  Something unusual crashes in the desert and you think … aliens?  Not top-secret military experiment, nono, nothing like that, it must be aliens?  This makes sense to you somehow?  So much for that saying, “When you hear hoofbeats look for horses.”  Does no one else remember all the reports of UFO sightings that later turned out to be prototypes of the Stealth aircraft?

The whole alien and UFO thing just perplexes and amuses me.  I know the accusation against people like me is that we’re arrogant to think we’re the only intelligent life in the universe.  Maybe so, and know what?  I’m good with that.  I also counter that it’s far more arrogant to think there is other intelligent life out there and that it gives a crap about us.

/rant

PS – Coincidentally, I saw this in the news after I put up this post:  Footage in the Sky: The Truth Behind NASA’s UFO Videos

~~Ness~~

Oh what a catch!

Recently, Darc and I found a new TV show to love.  Well, I guess it’s not a new show in and of itself, but it’s new to us.  We stumbled on it while scanning the other day.  It’s called “Deadliest Catch” and I think it’s on the Discovery Channel.  It’s not every day that both of us fall in love with a show – the same show – so in our opinion it’s pretty impressive that this show has caught us in its pot.   

Darc asked me what I liked so much about it and I was hesitant to tell him.  “You’ll laugh at me,” I said.  He promised he wouldn’t so I told him, and I’ll tell you.

What I like about this show is that it shows men doing man things.  I mean real, honest-to-goodness men.  There aren’t any pretentions or affectations with these guys, they’re just there to get the job done and make their money and go home to their wives and families.  And they work their cajones off!  There aren’t any “fashion statements,” no worries about their looks, no scripts, no “showing off the new car” ‘tude – none of that.  Just real American men doing a real American job.  The muscles are earned the real way, not in a gym.  The tension in the show is real.  What I mean is, there’s no false waves created in some art department and photoshopped in.  The weather poses a real danger to their very lives, and they have to depend on one another – anyone could go overboard at any time so everyone has to always be prepared.  This is real life and I love that.  And it’s not for some kind of “prize” or anything like that, but just to earn a living.  Have you heard the expression, “Sometimes a man just has to cowboy up, and do what a man’s gotta do”?  That’s how those guys live, and I love that. 

And now we have 4 other seasons to try to catch up on.  Ready, set, tape!

~~Ness~~ 

The Best Medicine

I don’t know what time it was when I finally fell asleep the other morning.  Darc and I had stayed up all night – not deliberately – just talking, and one thing led to another … and then at some point we got on the subject of TV shows and sitcoms we used to watch back in the day.  Mostly I think we were a little puzzled that we didn’t always find funny the same things that other people seemed to find hysterical.  We talked about humor and how there are different kinds that appeal to different types, and I came to the opinion that sitcoms tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator with humor to appeal to the widest audience.  For instance, we both hated Married With Children.  It was a show that made both of us grind our teeth in frustration, and we didn’t even know each other during the years it was on.  During our chit-chat, we ran down lists of shows as they popped into our heads, comparing notes and thoughts on each.  I think both of us realized we spent a lot of time watching shows as kids that we didn’t really laugh at, but still wouldn’t let anyone change the channel, like … The Munsters. 

Oddly enough, one of my favorite funny shows as a kid never made it into the conversation.  Saturday nights were reserved for the Carol Burnett Show and it was always 90 minutes or an hour well spent.  I realize now that some of the humor was above my head at the time, but funny is still funny and when I see clips on YouTube I laugh harder than I did when I was a kid.  There was a time when comedians tried to make us laugh and not simply shock us with language and crudity.  I miss those days. 

Here’s a taste for those of you who may have missed that time altogether.  For those who were there, it’s a nice trip down memory lane.  Enjoy. 

~~Ness~~

Profile this!

So I caught up with the latest episode of Criminal Minds last night, and I have to say, it had one of the best scenes I’ve seen in a long time.  There’s a reason I love this show … and I’m not sure what it is but as soon as I figure it out I’ll let you know.    Seriously though, it probably has something to do with my wanting to have been a criminal profiler.  I also think the show is pretty well written and pretty well acted.  And now it has Joe Mantegna – Fat Tony from the Simpsons.  I swear, there are moments where I do believe he’s doing the Fat Tony character as a profiler. 

Anyway, the most recent episode, Omnivore, is about a serial killer who kills randomly, doesn’t have a preferred victim.  And smarty-pants me figured out who the bad guy was before even Darc did, aha!  Score 1 for me on that one!  Okay, okay, so that score is really more like me 10, Darc 219.  CBS, being the proprietary jerks that they are, won’t release full episodes of many of their shows, just minute and a half clips, maybe 4-6 per episode.  What the heck is the point of a teaser if you’re not even going to release a full version?  And wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t put in a clip of my favorite scene from this episode, but they did have the scene immediately before it.  Here, if you’d like to see it: Deal Breaker

I went out and searched until I found a transcript though, and I copied it here for your *viewing* pleasure.  What I loved so much about this scene is the verbal butt-kicking David gives Aaron, and I love the speech he gives about good guys and bad guys.  Mantegna (David) delivered it well.  Almost like Fat Tony would have, if Fat Tony were a good guy. 

I missed my chance to be a criminal profiler – not sure I ever really had one, but at least I can live vicariously though books and TV. 

 

David, to Aaron:  Hey.  What’s going on with you?

Aaron:  He called me tonight at my hotel and offered me the deal.

David:  What did you say?

Aaron:  I hung up on him.  And then he does this.

David:  So you think this is your fault?

Aaron:  It is.

David:  Well, here, use mine. (handing Aaron his own weapon)  You convinced me.  (Aaron refuses to take David’s weapon)  No, no, you hung up on him.  You practically killed them yourself.  Go ahead, get it over with.  Don’t worry about us.  We’ll get this guy without you.

Aaron:  Dave, I had 10 years to do something about it.

David:  Shaunessy made the deal.

Aaron:  The killing stopped.

David:  He closed the case and sent the B.A.U. away.  For 10 years, you worked on other cases.  Active cases.

Aaron:  But I kept coming back to this one.  I kept coming back to this profile.

David:  Hey.  I was retired.  Should I blame myself for every victim who got killed while I was on my book tour?  Look, if you want to end up like Shaunessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead.  But that voice in your head — it’s not your conscience, it’s your ego.  This isn’t about us, Aaron.  It’s about the bad guys.  That’s why we profile them.  It’s their fault.  We’re just guys doing a job.  And when we stop doing it, someone else will.  Trust me.  I know.

Aaron:  You can put that away.  (nodding toward the gun)

David:  You sure?

Aaron:  It’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?

David:  My wife always said I had a flair for the dramatic.

Aaron:  Which one?

David:  All of them.

Aaron:  Thanks.

David:  Anytime.

Anti-Heroes

Quite some time ago, while Darc and I were scanning through our TV shows on the DVR, there were a couple episodes of Heroes we hadn’t seen yet. 

“Wanna watch one of these?”

“Nah … I don’t feel like Heroes right now.” 

So we scanned further until we found something we did feel like watching.  I now have probably 8 episodes of Heroes backed up on the DVR, and I think it’s time to put the timer to rest, and delete the unwatched episodes.  I kept thinking I’d watch them at some point, get caught up in the series, I don’t know.  But I never felt like it.  Then I read this article, Tim Kring: ‘Heroes’ viewers are ‘saps’ and that pretty much killed it for me.  If even the creator of the show thinks I’m a sap (among other names he used) why waste my time on his crappy show?  Yeah, it was kind of fun in the 1st season.  Kind of like being asked out by the cutest boy in school.  Then you realize how much of an idiot he is and that the only thing he wants to talk about is how much the both of you love him.  Heroes pretty much felt like that.  “Aren’t I awesome?  I’m like nothing else you’ve seen on TV!”  Yawn.  How many times can one person die on Heroes?  Good grief, it just never freaking ends!  I couldn’t wrap my brain around Sylar being made into a domesticated stay at home daddy type, either.  Darc thought it made for good character development, and maybe he’s right, but please.  It felt like watching Manson sing lullabies.  *shudder*  No, thanks.  Really.  So, despite that Peter and Nathan are kind of easy on the eyes, and Mohinder is wonderfully easy on the ears, I’m done with Heroes. 

Delete, delete, delete.  End timer.