Archive for November, 2009
Wish List
Sunday, November 29th, 2009Do you have a wish list of old TV series or movies that are not available on DVD that you wish were? I know I do. I though I might post about them from time to time. So here is the first post and the series that I thought I would highlight is Star Cops.
I know some of my friends from the San Francisco Bay area have seen this series, but most other Americans will be unfamiliar with it, which is just a shame. This series was made in the late 1980s by BBC, and it was a very well done and intriguing show. Unfortunately, it only ran for one series of about 9 episodes. The premise of the show is that it is set in the near future where there are many national space stations orbiting the earth and a multinational moon base. And one of the things people have brought with them as they have moved into space is crime. So there is a multinational police force set up to handle this. In the first episode, a reluctant detective is sent up to as a possible candidate for the commander of the Starcops and is very disturbed when a spacewalk turns deadly apparently because of suit malfunction. Turns out there have been several suit malfunctions over the years, and the question is, is this normal, have the suits been sabotaged, or has the Russian company who makes them deliberately overlooked suit safety for some reason. The opening scene will give you the answer, but it will take a determined detective to come up with the truth.
I loved this series, for several reasons. This series was made during the Cold War and it has that era’s tensions between countries. No nationality was portrayed in a rosy light – each one had its own faults. And although the setting was futurist, the crimes were what could come with the advancement of men in science and space. Even though this series was made in the 80s, it still has a futuristic feel to it.
I made a recording of this show on VHS when it played on the local PBS station and I have since transferred it to DVD. In fact this is one of the few recordings that I bothered to transfer to DVD. If you want your own copy, you are going to have a hard time finding it. This series was apparently put out on DVD in the UK, but there was never a region one encoding made. So most of us in the US are out of luck. But even those in the UK will have a hard time finding it since it is, to my knowledge, no longer being sold. I would love it if they put this series out on DVD here so that I could replace my poor quality recording, but I am still glad that I have my recording so I can revisit this show every once in a while.
If you want to look into this series more, check it out at Amazon, on Wikipedia, and at this BBC site.
One more note, although I would love this series no matter what the theme song was, this is one of those shows that I find myself rewinding just to listen to the haunting theme song. It was written by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues and I wish I had a recording of it. I think I have just inspired myself. I am going to go to YouTube and search for it. It has to be out there.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Hello, all!
I hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving. We are currently in the prep phase of our meal and I have the easy part. I only have to make the mashed potatoes. I have already peeled and cut them and I am about to put them on to boil. Very soon the mashing will commence.
Wherever you are in your Thanksgiving, I hope all is going well.
Thanksgiving preparations are not the only thing that I have done today, although that has gone the smoothest. I have also tried to install a plugin that will help me twitt from this blog. So far, no go. But I will keep trying, but probably not until Sunday, since I will be working tomorrow and Saturday.
Anyway, go, enjoy your turkey or tofurkey or whatever else you are having today.
Fudge, Anyone?
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009As many of you know I make the world’s best peanut butter fudge (I didn’t win the Golden Spoon Award for Candy and Fudge by bribery.) So when I decided that I wanted to experiment with building a shopping cart, one of the first things that I thought I might sell was my fudge.
For those of you that have not had my fudge, it is sweet (it is fudge) but not as sweet as most fudge since I use a lot of peanut butter in it. It has a stronger peanut butter taste than most peanut butter fudge. Even people who do not like peanut butter have said that they like my fudge. If you are a fan of peanuts or peanut butter in candy, this is the fudge for you.
I am going to try to get my shopping cart up and running by the end of next week. I will be charging $10 a pound for my fudge to cover my costs and give me a little bit of profit. If anyone wants to buy some, you can buy as little as a quarter pound of fudge. Postage will be:
- $2.25 for a quarter pound
- $3.00 for a half pound
- $3.75 for three quarters of a pound
- $5.75 for a pound or more
If you are interested, let me know. Once I get my shopping cart up, I will send out orders within a business day or two of getting them. If you want your fudge by Christmas, I will need to get your order by Dec 10th. I do not know how long I will keep selling fudge. I will probably only do it until mid-December.
It’s a great day for America, Everybody
Friday, November 20th, 2009As most of you know, I prefer watching science fiction and I rarely if ever watch talk shows. However, about a month ago I was up late and I had exhausted the offerings on my DVR. I happened to catch the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. I fell in love with it almost immediately. I do not watch much comedy because I just don’t have the time to watch them, so this show was a refreshing change. Also, when it comes to comedy, I prefer stand-up to sitcoms. Since the opening monologues of talk shows are basically stand-up routines, I usually do like the opening of these types of talk shows. For those of you who have not seen the Craig Ferguson show, the first half of the show is usually just him doing his monologue and reading and responding to viewer emails. So I have gotten into the habit of recording this show and watching it the next day. I usually watch the first half of the show and stop viewing once the guest stars come on. So, if you like stand-up/improv comedy, I highly recommend that you give The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson a try. You might figure out why I gave this blog entry this title.
Among the employed
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Good news! I am among the employed again. Some of you might know that I was fired from my last job for missing a meeting. Well, as of yesterday, I became one of the oodles of people who have found employment at McDonalds. I decided when I went back on the job hunt that I just wanted a part time job that will let me pay my bills so that I can spend the rest of my time brushing up on my programming skills. I plan on eventually getting some freelance programming jobs on elance, guru, and ifreelance, etc. But in the meantime, I need some way to pay my portion of the bills. Getting this job has really taken a load off of my mind as well as also getting me health/dental/vision benefits which I really need.
Anyway, I hope this note also finds you among those able to pay their bills. Unfortunately, that is not a given these days.
TV Alert!
Thursday, November 12th, 2009I was just on the TV Guide site and I saw an advertisement for The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel. It is supposed to be on AMC on Sunday at 8/7 Central. I am assuming that this is a remake of the old British TV show, The Prisoner. In the ad, there was a giant white ball behind a man who I am assuming was Jim Caviezel standing on a rock, so I think that my guess is correct. I was never a big fan of The Prisoner, but to be fair, I only saw it occassionally and I never saw it from start to finish. Remakes are usually a bad idea, but I am willing to give it a chance. After all, the V remake has been pretty good so far.
Anyhow, I wanted to spread the word in case anyone is interested.
What I watch
Thursday, November 12th, 2009A friend of mine was complaining recently that there wasn’t much on that she liked. She asked me what I watched and I gave her a list. I thought I would share that list in case anyone wanted to chat about them and maybe give their own list. My list is roughly in the order of favorite to least favorite:
- Supernatural (of course)
- V
- FlashForward
- Castle
- Fringe
- Leverage
- Psych
- Burn Notice
- White Collar
- Stargate Universe
- Meduim
- Glee
- Smallville
- The Closer
- Monk (it’s going away!)
- Eastwick
- Heroes
- Law and Order: Criminal Intent
- Criminal Minds
- Bones
- Royal Pains
- The Forgotten
- NCIS
- NCIS: Los Angeles
- Top Design
- HGTV Design Star
- Project Runway
- Amazing Race
- CSI: NY
- CSI: Miami
- Numb3rs
- The Mentalist
- Lie to Me
Around about Bones, this list stops being must see and turns into shows that I’ll watch if they’re recorded. I also have a few shows that I consider filler that I watch but I don’t care if I miss: Good Eats, Say Yes to the Dress and House Hunters International. There are a few shows that I would watch, but I can only record two shows at a time on my DVR and these shows lost out: The Vampire Diaries, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and CSI. Jerod just reccommended Defying Gravity so I will probably check it out. Also, there are two shows that I would like to get, but since they are on premium channels (HBO I think), I can’t watch them: True Blood and Dexter.
So, that’s my list. What’s yours?
Changing Channels
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the Changing Channels episode of Supernatural, you might not want to read this post.
As many of you know, Supernatural is my favorite show that is currently on TV. And last week’s episode was a prime example of why I love this show. In this episode, Sam and Dean once again encounter the Trickster. Sam and Dean are in some town investigating a mysterious death. They soon realize that they are dealing with the Trickster. Sam and Dean’s reactions are different: Dean wants to kill the Trickster; Sam wants to talk to him and try to get his help. They soon get caught in TV land and end up learning that he’s the archangel Gabriel, not a trickster. That was an interesting twist. I did not see that coming. Did you? And Gabriel wants the end of the world to come so that the fighting between his brothers will end. Turns out that there is another reason why Sam and Dean are Lucifer and Michael’s vessels: Lucifer and Michael are brothers, too.
All and all, a very interesting episode. But the fun part of this episode was all the different shows that the Trickster put Sam and Dean into, and watching Sam and Dean figure out what they had to do to get out of TV land. I’m trying to remember all of the ’shows’ the Trickster put Sam and Dean in:
- the Supernatural sitcom including cheesy theme song and opening credits.
- Dr Sexy MD
- the Japanese game show ‘Nutcracker’
- CSI knock off
- Knight Rider knock off
I think that was all of them, but my favorite spoof was Sam’s herpes medicine commercial. I was howling.
Did you watch the show? What did you think?
Catching up
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009I have been catching up on my TV viewing in the past few days (I love my DVR), so I thought I would write a little bit about the two shows that I was catching up on. Neither Heroes nor Eastwick are my favorite shows, but I enjoy them enough to watch them. However, I sometimes let them slip like I did last week. Luckily for me, I was able to catch up.
Heroes to me is a very uneven show. They will jump around from storyline to storyline so much that it is hard to follow. And sometimes some characters will drop out and it will be awhile before I even realise it. As was the case with Mohinder. All of the sudden I got a glimpse of him (I can’t remember which episode it was in) and I realised that I hadn’t seen him in awhile. They just gave us a glimpse of him, however, so I am hoping they will follow up on it soon. I thought that Matt’s solution to his split personality was a logical one, but from the previews, it doesn’t look like we have seen the last of Sylar. I will keep watching this show, but it will never be a must see for me until they stop meandering.
Do you ever have the ‘where have I seen that actor before’ moment? This week I finally figured out where I saw Heroes’ invisible girl before: Veronica Mars season 2. (I also spotted the kid who played Ryan, the mind reader, from Smallville in an episode of Law and Order: SVU this week) It always drives me crazy until I figure it out. The one that really drove me crazy was when the Mac vs PC commercials came out – where one guy plays a Mac and one guy plays the PC. I knew I had seen the guy who played the Mac, but I couldn’t remember where until I realise that he was the uber-geek kid in the movie Galaxy Quest.
As for Eastwick, it is doing a better job of holding my interest. The storyline is easier to follow and I am really liking the characters. I was sorry to see that they killed off Matt Dallas. I have had a soft spot for him since Kyle XY. Of, well. I kind of figured he would be going away to clear the way for Daryl. And the kidnapping was something that I didn’t see coming. I like that.
Anyhow, even though they are not my favorite shows, I am still interested enough to keep watching.
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Hi Letha,
Interesting. So I noticed a couple of things. Sorry for only pointing out the nits. The calendar should start with Sunday – not Monday. We are not in Europe.
Also, figure out how to link in Twitter and FaceBook to your web page. While I use neither, many others (Doug D., Mike P. etc) do.
Mike: he was over yesterday (Sat.) We played a game of “Dominion” – very fun card based game of domination. I thought I had smoked him so I got the last Militia card to end the game. As it turned out he was buying Duchy cards while I was mostly buying Estates. Rats – he beat me by two points!
Mike is married to his high school/college sweet heart Gina. She has two teen age daughters, and a weird Muslim/Lebanese ex-husband who follows her around where ever she moves. The daughters put a lot of drama in Mike’s life, but he is a pretty good and level headed dad in the end. Isn’t it funny how life turns out?
Also are you on Skype? I’m paulamala – yes – lots of imagination in that user name….