Friday TV notes

Spent last night catching up on Tivo:

Arrested Development: God, this was funny. Between the pokes at typical TV stunts like the "live" episodes, the 3-D gimmick, and the "someone's going to die" promise, and the constant pokes at their own imminent cancelation (complete with acknowledgment of the various "unsympathetic" criticisms and the nods to HBO and Showtime), this was damned near perfect.

Scrubs: The season premiere was cute. The second episode, however, was just painfully funny. I forgot how hard this show could make me laugh, especially when Faison and Braff get the focus. Alas, since NBC, being a network programmed by pig-felching mongooses (or possibly pig-felching mongeese), decided not to make this a part of their Thursday lineup, so once House comes back, we'll have to wait until rerun summer or DVD to see the remainder of the season.

My Name is Earl: So, now that this one's not against House, we watched it. And it was cute. But was this a weak episode, or is everyone raving over an overrated comedy here? Seriously, there were a few solid laughs (mostly involving the nearly-absent Jaime Pressly), but this certainly didn't blow me away.

Four Kings: Forgot to Tivo it. oops.

Lost: We caught the Ana-Lucia flashback ep. We still have the Kate one on the Tivo, which will catch us up thanks to a nicely done rerun season. Alas, the return of Veronica Mars will soon have us behind once again.

I'm not catching every CSI rerun on Spike (Tivo space and time are both factors), but I did catch "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom" this morning. Aside from being a damned good episode, it was weird seeing a post-Firefly Summer Glau in a tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it part. Her IMDB profile claims that her next role will be on a made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel (i.e., crappy) movie called Mammoth, where she plays "Jack Abernathy."

Friday Lyrics Quiz

Had a nice run of sixteen songs in iTunes with nothing I felt like skipping, and no repeat artists, game/anime soundtrack stuff, instrumentals or spoken word stuff. So I figured that was a good opportunity for a lyrics quiz. :-)

Usual rules apply. You need to name song and artist. Guess at one song, and only one. If you use Google, A9, or another search engine for this one, you suck like a giant sucking thing. I'll update and credit as people get answers right. The only things the songs have in common is that they're all good and they're all in my iTunes library. At least three of them have been top-ten singles, others are deep album tracks, and others are by folks only a few of you have heard of. Exactly two of these are from musicals (and the musicals are, in a way, related), although two other songs originate on movie soundtracks. Overall, I'd rate this one easy to medium-hard in terms of difficulty (which is why I'm limiting folks to guessing just one). For those who are wondering, #17 was the Tori cover of "Wrapped Around your Finger," which is good, but would create too much confusion in a lyrics quiz.

1. "Go back to urban ’nam."

2. "Just take a point called Z in the complex plane."

3. "Metal under tension, beggin' you to touch and go."

4. "You know you laughed; I heard you laugh. You laughed; you laughed and laughed." They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-ha, by Napoleon XIV, guessed by ckd

5. "I'm not a part of a redneck agenda." American Idiot, by Green Day, guessed by lunaris_

6. "I'm getting well. Don't try to save me; I'm saving myself. You go to hell."

7. "Oh, I don't mind when my crotchless panties creep right up on me." Truck-driving Song, by Weird Al, guessed by kittyjammies

8. "Dissent's not treason, but they talk like it's the same."

9. "Now I'm broke, and it's no joke, it's hard as hell to fight it."

10. "I want to live on the Upper East Side and never go down the street."

11. "We're not all Pentecostal, but everybody's got an asshole."

12. "Doing donuts on the neighbors lawn"

13. "Well baby I surrender to the strawberry ice cream."

14. "When she hugged me and kissed me, made me ting-a-ling-a-ling."

15. "She didn't believe in transcendence." Sunny Came Home, by Shawn Colvin, guessed by oshiny

16. "And when greed and felony sail the sea, you can bet your boots there'll be treachery."

Dammit

I post a music-quiz post, the three minutes later, I read this.

Crap.

music quiz addendum

I should have known better than to post that quiz. Tons of comments, combined with too much work here to keep up. I'm not trying to keep up with correct answers or crediting folks anymore -- the comments pretty much speak for themselves. But the four songs that remain unguessed as of this second include one of the songs from a movie musical, the one rap song, a song from a band that was considered punk for at least a chunk of its career, and a song by a quirky artist who defies description (but whose work has gotten lots of mention on LJ over the last few months, thanks to a cover song).

Actually, montykins nailed the rap song even as I wrote this. So there are three songs left, folks. Those would be 1, 2, and 11.

One news article. Two scary events.

Two scary things can be gleaned from this article:

1. Patrick Swayze wants to be a rapper.

2. Disney is making The Fox and the Hound 2, leaving Song of the South 2: Electric Boogaloo as the only potential remaining Disney animated sequel.

Herm Edwards

So, Newsday reports that Herm's officially gone, and we'll be getting a fourth-round draft pick for him.

Which is fine and dandy, but I'd like to know why not one article has mentioned the possibility of tampering charges being filed against the Chiefs. It's pretty clear that there was at least some level of communication between their organization and Herm, and there's no question that affected the negotiations.

Tivogasm!

Tivo Series 3!

Quote of the day

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” -- General George Patton.

Why is it the quote of the day?

Because it came up twice already.

This morning, over breakfast, I read a few selections from our latest comics shipment, including the latest PVP. In that issue, a war has broken out between LARPers, Civil War reenactors, and Trekkies, and Cole gives a rousing speech that begins with that quote, and eventually morphs into a mutant version of the St. Crispin's Day speech.

Then, on the bus ride home, I finished matociquala's most recent novel, Worldwired (more on that next week). Book three of that novel (which is really the epilogue -- I don't want to imply that I read a third of a novel on the way home) has that same quote as an epigraph.

So yeah. Quote of the day. Because I keep running into it.

Aaaagh!

"We've crossed that Rubicon," he said.

No, no, no! "Rubicon" is not one of many objects (like a bridge, a word that would have worked perfectly in this sentence). "Rubicon" is a specific river. You cross the Rubicon, not that Rubicon. Crossing it is what committed Caesar to the fight against Rome.

I'm also fuzzy on whether the phrase was used correctly, anyway. "Crossing the Rubicon" does not mean having stepped over the line. It means having committed oneself fully to a course of action (or, alternatively, committing to the use of force within your own country, but I don't think that meaning's on the table here). It sounds more like this guy means that he and his colleagues feel the leadership has gone too far (and thus stepped over the line), but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here.