It's All About...A Little Me & A Lot of TV

Hi friends. Still Reading? I feel like writing about every night lately, but then exhaustion hits, and I end up making a cup of tea, finishing up e-mail business, crawling under the covers, and zonking out. I haven't knit or crocheted in a week, and this is not the time of year for me to NOT be finishing Christmas presents. Oy. Thing is, life got crazy again. Partially, I let it. Partially, I had no control of the insanity.

The insanity defined? Went to a theater board meeting, walked out as president. Some stuff at work that I hope to be able to write about in the next week or two. Got asked to become a member of the board of the Chamber of Commerce (but had to say no, because of big upheaval at theater which will take too much time this year). My mother-in-law fell and broke her elbow and as of this writing has some mysterious crippling pain that makes it nearly impossible for her to move, yet they can't find a drug to stop the pain. My heart is breaking for her. My mom's husband had a small stroke yesterday morning and was in the hospital overnight, but he came home earlier tonight and other than mixing up a few words here and there, he's doing well. (I told him that I wished it would have taken away only his propensity to watch Fox News 24/7. He laughed.) My niece has bronchial pneumonia. I am running a silent auction to raise $ for American Cancer Society that was supposed to start Monday but will now begin tomorrow because I am so behind on stuff. Ugh.

So, since we spoke last, what's up? I started running on the treadmill in the mornings instead of outside after work. This has been lovely on two counts -- I'm not so wound up from walking at 5PM that I can't sleep at 11PM; also, the treadmill is so easy on my legs that I can run without any shin pain whatsoever. (A friend at work assured me today that as this weight continues to come off, the shin pain will go away too...or at least it did for him.) I am still loving it. My old iPod is skipping songs and doing weird stuff so, though I still use it in my car, I bought a new Nano. I have that thing on full blast when I'm running on the treadmill and it is AWESOME. (Someday I really do need to get decent speakers for this computer...)

Um. TV. Since pretty much everyone who reads this knows me personally, you might know that I have a geeky, addictive personality. And I generally love stuff that is big on the pop culture map. For example, I came late to watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but bought or rented every DVD until I'd seen the whole series. Same with Gilmore Girls. Same with Battlestar Galactica. TiVo (and the related digital video recording device I own) was invented for people like me, I think. You can set your machine to tape every episode of a series, no matter when it airs. When you're ready, you can watch seven or eight of them in a row in one sitting on a weekend. Or late at night when you can't sleep and have had way too much coffee. Or when you're trying to forget that you really ought to be doing laundry and vacuuming. And mine has the added benefit that I can burn the shows to DVD.

So what am I recording these days? I'm feeling chatty tonight. I give you my own TV guide:

Chuck. Chuck is my number one. I want Chuck to be my friend. I want to date Chuck. I want to eat a turkey sandwich and play Halo with Chuck. (This is saying a lot, because I do not like Halo or related shoot-em-up video games in the least, nor do I have the least amount of skill in playing them.) OK. Maybe we could just play Guitar Hero III. Anyway. I really enjoy this show. The premise is that the government created a supercomputer whose data got encrypted into an e-mail and all the data got transposed into Chuck's head when he read the e-mail. Now he has a hottie CIA agent posing as his girlfriend to protect him, and a psychopath NSA agent protecting him too. Chuck lives with his sister, her boyfriend (who they call Captain Awesome, which is dumb but it makes me laugh every time because it really is the perfect name for the guy), hangs out with his best friend Morgan, and works at a Best Buy clone called BuyMore as a computer tech in the "Nerd Herd." While the situations are over the top, the relationships are very, very real. OK. And I suppose I like it because I have always been attracted to dorky smart guys with unruly hair. [Chuck is on NBC at 8 on Mondays. Watch it. I dare you. You will love Chuck. You. Must. Love. Chuck.]

Heroes. This probably comes as no surprise. While I didn't really get into "Lost," I do -- by nature of some innate personality flaw -- tend to watch the one big show in the country. Heroes is it, but I haven't liked this season much so far. Last year was really incredible, but I have watched every show since September and barely cared who did what or why. They introduced a bunch of new characters and did very little development of them and now I could care less if they live or die. The exception? Veronica Mars herself, the lovely Kristin Bell, who plays Elle. Elle is a selfish, naive little bitch of a villainess, except that she wasn't really evil last night, so I don't know where that leaves her when we start "Volume 3" after the new year. I hope they give Peter (who I loved last year, and loved in Gilmore Girls too, though he was never right for Rory) more things to do next month, because he was pretty much boring as boring could be for the last few months. I was so excited to see the evil guy from Alias play the evil Kensei/Adam in Heroes...until he was boring and I didn't care about him. I was thrilled that he is buried alive in Japan somewhere after last night's episode just because it was the most interesting thing he'd done so far.

Bionic Woman. Oh. I loved the first episode. It was everything I'd hoped for. It was slick, it updated a show that I'd watched as a kid, it made everything new and technologically wild, the storyline was intriguing, the special effects rocked, the cinematography was slick. I love the lead actress, I love Gabriel Ferrer (who is Rosemary Clooney's son, btw), and I love the geeky computer tech who has a mini crush on the lead. The 2nd episode was okay. As was the 3rd. And the 4th. I really perked up when they brought in the love interest CIA guy. And then the next episode was okay. Which would all be okay, except that I was really hoping this show would Rock. My. Socks. And it's just okay. I still watch every week. I keep hoping I'm going to care. Please, Bionic Woman, make me care just a little.

Journeyman and Life. Meh. They're fun. Lead actors are quirky and caring and easy to like. Storylines have plenty of pop culture reference to keep me happy. Journeyman is a modern "Quantum Leap" (minus Al), and Life is a cop show that needs to stop with the underlying "where-the-conspiracy-theory" subplot. But fun to watch if you're feeling like killing a few hours.

Pushing Daisies: Perhaps it's just my state of mind, but I want to date this show's lead too. (But not if I've died once first, because then I couldn't touch him...you have to really see the show to get this part.) Anyway. The story is weird and fairytale-ish: Boy has the power to bring dead things back to life with his touch. But if he touches them again, they are dead forever. And if he doesn't touch them again within a minute (to make them dead again), someone else dies. Therein lies the plot. Boy falls in love when he is little. Boy's mom dies. Boy brings mom back to life, and his little love's father dies. He never tells her. Many years later, when boy becomes the PieMan, he sees his old true love has been killed and runs to the morgue and touches her and brings her back to life. (The morgue guy dies.) They are in love, but they cannot touch. OK. I could go on an on about this plot, as it is complicated, but it is very fun to watch, very comedic. The visuals are rich and comic to watch. And it's narrated by Jim Dale, who narrated all the Harry Potter books on audio and whose voice I adore. Even better, Kristen Chenoweth (who is most famously from the musical Wicked) is in the show and they even had her sing a few weeks back. Delightful. Highly recommend this show.

Bones: I love this show. It has my murder mysteries (which I listen to on audio all the time), and in fact, is even based on a series that I've been reading for years. It has forensics, which I have been creepily interested in since high school. It has David Boreanaz, who was in Buffy and Angel and reminds me of my brother, Drew. It has geeky people working in a lab who are all okay with being geeky. It is mind candy and I love, love, love it.

House: Oh, it's a trend, but I adore Hugh Laurie too. Not House necessarily, but the actor? Mm Hmm. I am also House in my mind. Most people would not ever have a clue how negative and cynical and bitchy I can be on a regular basis, but if they could see into my mind? I am a mini House. People Lie. This is the basis of the show. And I agree, wholeheartedly. I have loved this season with his picking a new team. I didn't like his old team. I especially liked the episode with DAVE FRICKING MATTHEWS, who was INSANELY GREAT as a savant piano player. And of course that's the episode I accidentally deleted before burning. So I bought it on iTunes. Heh. Now I can watch Hugh AND Dave Fricking Matthews on my Nano. I know you're jealous.

I am having too much fun typing and before I embarrass myself with telling you how I watch CSI and Forensic Files late at night when I wake up afraid that I have crashed the network server at work, I am going to make some peppermint tea and climb in bed. And watch Chuck again. I love Chuck.
Next Time: Why Karaoke Should Be A Mandatory Weekend Activity