Not Enough Time

Lost vs BSG: Week One

It only seems fitting with these two obviously being the best shows on television right now to take a look at both shows each week in a head to head showdown.

Lost made its long-awaited return on Wednesday night with a doubleheader of goodness from the mysterious island. Now, Lost was at an advantage since it was two hours, right? And it also had an edge because it was the season premiere as opposed to the second episode of the season like BSG. Here's the crazy thing about Lost... it was crazy! Time jumps, bizarre goings-on, and more sci-fi than you can shake a stick at. For years now, there has been a very vocal group of Lost fans who've bitched about the sci-fi and how it took away from the show.

Welp, if you didn't like the sci-fi elements of Lost before, I hope you skipped Wednesday night's show because THE...SHIT...WAS...ON! Nobody knows when the hell they are... nobody knows why some people are in certain places/times... nobody knows... well, much of anything at the moment. While it's confusing for now, I'm fully confident that the powers that be will get shit cleared up in no time flat... well, as clear as Lost gets anyways.

And BSG? Well, big frakkin' spoiler alert but...

THE ADMIRAL AND THE PREZ ARE GETTIN' FREAKY!

Plus, the Chief's baby isn't the Chief's baby which means someone else actually slept with his vicious hag of a wife. Ty is having a baby with a Cylon.

AND NEXT WEEK LOOKS EVEN NUTTIER!

But... as awesome as BSG was this week...

I'm goin' with the time jumpin' island.

Lost - 1
BSG - 0

Tune in next week to see if Lost can keep the streak going!

Cats Vs Dogs: The Musical

Feeling sick - sleep

Sent from my iPhone

A Day Without Words

Feel The Burn

So, with my arms and shoulders feeling like they may barely be able to move at my command in the morning, I guess it's safe to say that I belong to a gym again. Tonight was the "orientation/free sample personal training session" which basically exists so they can try to hard sell you on the Personal Training upsell after they kick your ass for 15 minutes.

Lessee... I did a bench press set using an actual free weight bench press - something I probably haven't done since High School and I didn't enjoy it much then either. Then he made me do "dips" - trying to hoist my body weight up and down while using the bench to push off of. Fun stuff.

But the embarrassment was still to come!

Did some other kind of chest press weight thing which went okay. And then it happened. A conversation ensued.

"Six pushups between sets."

"Uh oh."

"Do the best you can."

"Okay."

Sadly, the best I could involved me trying to push up off the ground and failing miserably. After the ass-kicking at the bench press, I had no strength left in my shoulders. I just couldn't do it. So after a couple horrific moments laying facefirst on the floor, flopping around like a fish trying to get off the ground... I had to figure out a new way to stand.

Since I'm typing this from home, you can be sure I figured out how to stand up again thankfully.

The rest? Not so bad. But that one moment will be sufficient humiliation for this week.

Why can't all gyms be like this...?

Olivia Newton John - Physical
Uploaded by virago80

ITube, YouTube, WeAllTube

No desire to write tonight or more specifically - no idea what to write about.

On this big football day, here's one of my favorite scenes from a football movie.

The Adventure Of Links

Links you all should be checkin' out is a good way to wrap up Saturday...

* Awesome Battlestar Galactica article with some really amazing stuff that gave me a mixture of the giggles and the chills to read.

* Chuck vs Shogun gets a Main Event nod - and the crowd goes mild.

* Rampage vs Jardine's a Main Event too? Really? Is the UFC running out of Main Events that people actually want to pay to see? Have they already burned out the viewing public? What's got two thumbs and is kinda bored with the MMA world at large? THIS GUY right here!

* Latest batch of Manny news.

* Apple hits the 15,000 app mark on the App Store as well as a half billion downloads. Now, the question is - just how many of those involve fart noises?

* Some thoughts on what Apple should do with Mr. Jobs on health leave. They missed the part where they activate the army of Jobs Clones that has slowly been developed over time.

* Circuit City is closing their doors. Other than feeling sorry for the 30,000 workers hitting the unemployment line and reminiscing fondly about when they reluctantly price-matched a "door buster" price on Guitar Hero 2 for me, this should wrap up what everyone should be feeling about the ol' CC.

* The death of Indie 103 is all over the LA blogs. A couple great reads on it can be found here and here.

Holy Frak (spoilers!)

Well, that was a mindfucker of 60 minutes of television.

I'm so glad we caught up with all the past seasons so we could watch the final episodes as they happen but I didn't expect the first of the final to go down like that.

Another crew member dead?

Earth in ruins?

THE CYLONS LIVED ON EARTH?!?!

Starbuck is... well, what?

And then, of course, the "final" Cylon is revealed.

I don't want to completely spoil anything so I'll hold off on details other than to say one final thing...

Lost has its work cut out for it to top this one next week.

A Musical Miracle!

As I was driving to work today, I was thinking how awesome it'd be if "Hearts On Fire" from Rocky IV would come on the iPod. It didn't.

BUT...

On the way home, IT DID! It's a Musical Miracle!

R.I.P. Ricardo Montalban

Man, like the Steve Jobs news today wasn't bad enough.

In yet another sign that I work with people much younger than me, very few people knew who Ricardo Monalban was.  Fantasy Island references accomplished absolutely nothing.  The Naked Gun seemed to spark a few memories but nothing significant.

He was such an awesome villain in The Naked Gun.

...

That's really the extent of my glowing tribute to Ricardo Montalban.  That's kinda sad.  I'm sure he was in other stuff where he was good, right?

Quickly reading AICN's obit, I see he was in the Spy Kids movies.  He also apparently had quite the history days back in the old studio days of Hollywood.  I'd like to say that I'll check those out someday but odds are I won't.

Hey, at least I'm honest.  I mean, I'm still the guy who wants to be a screenwriter and has never seen Casablanca and a ton of other cinema classics.

He also apparently played Khan in The Wrath Of Khan.  Harry says he gave the best performance in Star Trek movie history.

Yeah, probably will never see that either.

But dammit, he was great in The Naked Gun!  And who didn't love Fantasy Island?

How 'Bout Them Lakers?

No, seriously.  How about them?

It's been a weird NBA season for me.  I'm not sure what it is - maybe the extended caring for the MLB season since the Dodgers were in the postseason a little longer than usual - but for whatever reason, I just haven't really gotten into the NBA this year.  I've watched a couple of games but I don't have that same fire for it that I've had before.

I know that they're winning and winning often.  I also know that after a brief stint of lockdown defense, they've apparently settled for trying to outscore everyone which worked so well against the Celtics in the Finals last year.  I've seen quite a few nailbiter victories in recent weeks as well - against teams that didn't really seem like they should be nailbiters.

So, how about those Lakers?  Are they as good as their record looks or are they as bad as these close wins to overmatched teams indicates?

And why don't I care as much this season?  Why is it the heart of NBA season and I'm already counting the days 'til pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training (31, btw)?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Ongoing 2009 Match Of The Year Blog

Welp, scratch that one. The angle continues though so I'll hold out hope for the classic.

Rey/Miz wasn't bad either. Not a MOTYC but it was okay.

Ongoing 2009 Match Of The Year Blog

So, I watched ECW this morning on the DVR.

Hardy/Henry was okay but fairly dull. The women's match was surprisingly decent. It's nice to see some women in the ring that don't usually get the chance. Boogeyman did his schtick and I didn't care.

BUT... there was a saving grace.

Jack Swagger vs Fit Finlay opened the show and had one hell of a match. Finlay was perfect as the tough-as-nails brawling veteran trying to outlast the up-and-coming arrogant youngster. Swagger worked Finlay's arm about as well as I've seen on WWE TV in a long, long while. There were some nice near falls sprinkled throughout and even your standard Hornswoggle comedy spot worked because Swagger got over on him right after it. They gave enough hope spots to make you think Finlay might take it but Swagger pulled it off in the end with a nice counter turned into the gutwrench powerbomb.

It was a fun as hell television match that I enjoyed a lot.

But was it a Match of the Year candidate? I've gone back and forth on that all day as I really liked it...

But... I think if I set the bar that low right away, I might be adding a lot of matches to this list throughout the year. I'm going to keep it on the DVR for a few more days while I think some more about it but right now, I'm leaning against it.

I also watched TNA Impact from last week... but fell asleep so I'm hoping I didn't miss anything of value. Sounds like there was a couple of matches on the TNA PPV from last night worth watching so I may need to check those out at some point.

But for now... Punk vs Regal is about to start. I've got high hopes for this one so I need to give it my attention!

Yes, Mr. Senator?

Just Saw This

And my exact words were, "Oh, that's fucking cool..."

Yes, I'm quite the wordsmith at times - I'm aware.

Don't Change That Channel...

...because starting tomorrow night, TV is back, baby!

Okay, sure... a few things started trickling in this week.  We had the return of Gossip Girl and 90210.  Plus, there was the long-awaited premiere of Scrubs on NBC [and no, I haven't seen any of it yet as I've been too busy trying to clear old stuff off the DVR before tomorrow night.]

But the real burst of TV returns starts tomorrow night.  Get your DVRs to do some deep-knee bends because it's heading straight for a world-class workout.

Tomorrow night, my DVR faces the brutal challenge of trying to find a way to get the usual recording of Desperate Housewives while three powerhouses of television compete for the other slot in my viewing schedule.  The Golden Globes are on and while I'm usually pretty fond of checking them out, I'm going to have to take a pass this year.  Why?

Because Jack Bauer is back!  24 returns with a vengeance with two hours on Sunday night and two hours on Monday night [a different problem altogether!]  I'm super-stoked about this and can't wait to hear that countdown clock tomorrow night.

Oh, and the Battlestar Galactica Season 4 marathon wraps up on Universal HD tomorrow night which will have me fully caught up on BSG and ready and waiting for the second half of the season to premiere soon.  After staying up til 2 AM to catch the first half of the marathon last weekend, I'm expecting to have to do the same tomorrow - thank God I have Monday off.

And speaking of Monday...

Raw?  Check.
Gossip Girl?  Check.
How I Met Your Mother return?  Check.
Night 2 of the 24 premiere?  Check.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And to think, Heroes doesn't even come back until February!  Looks like iTunes may be getting more of my money or the NBC website will get a very loyal Tuesday viewer.

For a TV fan, it's an exciting couple of days.  And for those of you who aren't?

Go enjoy your "real lives," frackholes.

Ongoing 2009 Match Of The Year Blog

I've always been jealous of those pro wrestling writer/fans that seem to have total recall over every match they've seen in a year when it comes time to pick the Match of the Year. And last year, I saw a great idea where someone actually kept an ongoing post where they picked their top matches of the year in order as they saw them.

Thus, I shall attempt to do the same this year.

So, I watched the January 2nd Smackdown and saw nothing that was horribly offensive yet nothing that was really MOTY-worthy either. I started watching Raw from 1/5 a couple of days ago and set out to finish it this morning.

To me, to be considered for this list, it has to meet two requirements:
1] I have to feel immediately after the match is over like I would really want to watch the match again in the future. I have to feel the motivation to drag a blank DVD out and record the match for my future viewing.
2] I have to feel like I'll remember the match in a week.

I went into Raw with some high hopes as they had announced Punk vs Regal and Kofi/Rey vs Miz/Morrison. Punk/Regal turned into a screwjob for the angle's sake to set up a rematch next week - I'm cool with that. The tag match was a lot of fun with a great extended beatdown on Kofi's leg. Kofi played a great face in peril but the hot tag left a lot to be desired to me although I dug Rey's moonsault armdrag muchly. The finish was awesome even though it was botched a bit and had to have Morrison crawl across the ring to put himself in 619 position. But Rey Rey going for the springboard and getting hit with the move Morrison calls the "Chuck Norris?" Golden.

Unfortunately though, I think I'm likely to forget the match very quickly. And to be honest, I'm not sure I'd actually want to rewatch it at some point either. So, while a solid TV match that I enjoyed, it's not making the list.

The Main Event did absolutely nothing for me. The intrigue over what HBK would do tried to carry it but I just wasn't feeling it.

So, we're 0 for 2009 so far with viewings of ECW and TNA still on deck.

Writing For Writing's Sake

So, I foolishly gave in to the temptation to make a New Year's Resolution this year... sorta.  I mentioned on my Facebook page that I was pondering making one about writing every day for at least one hour per day. That mention kinda evolved into me actually doing it - then me modifying it to say that if I did something creative for one hour per day, I'd be happy.  That gave me a loophole in case I wanted to do some video editing or photography or what have you.  Last night, I got to work on the template for this page to fill my creative need.

It's a Resolution that is quite the double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it's a fantastic idea for an aspiring writer to set aside 1/24th of every day to their craft.  On the other, it really, really sucks because it's a bitch to try and find that hour.  Let's look at this from a realistic point of view...

We start with the 24 hours...

Let's take out 8 that hopefully is spent sleeping every day.  We're down to 16.

Now, we're going to consider this hypothetical day a work day since those days will be the hardest to live up to this lofty goal.  Assuming an eight hour shift with an hour for lunch... we're down to 7 potential hours to work with.

7 hours minus let's go with 90 minutes for getting ready for work, driving to work, and driving home from work - assuming I don't have to stop anywhere on the drive to and from work which is also quite the assumption to make.  We're down to 5.5 hours.

Knock out a half hour to an hour for dinner.  We'll split the difference.

4.75 hours remaining.

Damn.  You'd think I could find an hour out of nearly five hours a day.

This really didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped it would.  I need some of that fuzzy math to work with.

No, no - what I really need is a new laptop so that I can multitask and write while watching TV.  That oughta produce some stellar work.  Yeah!  That's the ticket!

I actually did get pretty excited earlier this week about a new screenplay idea that I think I could actually self-produce.  One of the guys at work thinks I should not only shoot it myself - but act in it myself as well to see if I can actually put together a full feature length film on my own.  As someone who is "in the industry," he believes that if I can do it, I can sell it - and myself - to the highest bidder.  We shot some ideas back and forth for a few minutes the other night and it was as creatively alive as I've felt since I was in the middle of writing my first screenplay.

There's something that really is quite magical about working in a creative environment and being able to share that with other people who know what you're  going through.  People who understand the difficulties involved in every aspect of the creative process.

The world seems to be filled with two types of people at times - people who think screenwriting sounds almost impossible to do and are quite in awe of people who are actually able to do it and then there's the others who think it's simple and even if they can't do it, they think it should be absolutely a cinch for someone else to do so.  So, when you run across those rare few who can understand just how difficult it is to get your mind on paper at times... well, those are people to treasure a bit.

This week, I've been reading all of these various writing exercises that they encourage writers to do when they're stuck.  It's really some ridiculous stuff that - while probably useful in some situations - seems like a waste of time for the most part.  Here's some samples...

Try this challenge: pull out something you're been writing (a poem, a journal entry, a novel) and put an orange in it. Make the orange part of the thing you're writing, but keep in mind that the orange might appear in a painting or a dream. Remember a particular orange you once encountered-- saw squashed in a gutter or sitting perfect and fragrant on someone's dining room table.

Seriously? Can someone tell me the point of that? I guess it explores your creativity but... well, it's a fucking orange. I don't want to write about a fucking orange. I don't want to read about a fucking orange either.

I took a playwriting class in college once. The most awkward part of it was when they wanted us to read our work out loud to the class. I was terrified. The author is always their biggest critic but... in a way, that's a lot easier than having to see/hear someone else's reaction to your work. Because you can lie to yourself. Don't listen to those people who tell you that you can't because you absolutely can. I can convince myself that I wrote the greatest screenplay since INSERT CLASSIC SCREENPLAY I HAVEN'T READ HERE but if someone else reads it and thinks it's trash, well... I think I'd have a hard time dealing with that. It's one of those things you try not to take personally but I don't know if you really can ever be successful at that. I've had a few people ask to read my screenplay (not many lately thankfully) but most of them got ignored for that very reason. There seems to be very few good things that can result from that and a whole lot of bad things. The only good outcome would be someone thinking it was even better than aforementioned CLASSIC SCREENPLAY and that I'm the best writer since Shakespeare's heyday. But bad outcomes? Mockery? Ridicule? Boredom? The worst would be someone having to lie about how great they thought it was and you being able to read the real truth on their face. It's one of those things I know I have to get past at some point but for someone who has been at times a ruthlessly harsh critic to others, let's just say I'm a little nervous that karma's a bigger bitch than I imagined.

If you haven't been able to tell yet, this is a bit of a free write so I'm all over the place. "Harry In Winter" off the Goblet Of Fire soundtrack just popped up on Shuffle. Just managed to piss me off all over again that Half-Blood Prince got a PG rating. That movie is going to obliterate that movie franchise for me. There were things I didn't like about GOF and OOTP - which is my favorite of the books - but I stuck with it and thought they did a decent job. But Half-Blood Prince sounds like it's heading for worse and worse disaster every time I read news about it.

Speaking of sequels... I'm not sure why but there seems to be a lot of talk about what will happen to the Star Wars empire (no pun intended) after George Lucas lets it go lately. First off, I think you'll have to pry control of it out of his cold, dead hands but even then... I don't know. Will my grandkids be waiting in line someday wondering what's going to happen to Luke in Episode 7? And if so, will they hate the Ewoks? You read so many Lucas/Star Wars comments lately talking about how horrible the Ewoks were but I just can't remember people complaining about them back when Jedi came out. I mean, I guess I was just a kid so I thought they were funny but... I just don't remember it. Is it a case of something not aging well?

I'm only at about the forty minute mark, I think... but I'm running out of steam.  And I'm getting sleepy.

Oh well.  I must have done something creative for twenty minutes earlier today, right?  I have no idea what it would be... but I'm betting I did.

This was a really dumb idea.  How the hell did I talk myself into this?  I hate New Year's Resolutions.

And the Dodgers lost out on a free agent to the Brewers?  What kind of weird fucking world are we living in?

But I digress...

Under Construction

Sorry for the mess, kids. I've been a bit undecided over the past couple days about what template I wanted to use... and then I had problems with the template... and now I'm still having problems with the template... and.... yeah.

So, bear with me a few days please until I get all this worked out.

Thanks!