yendi

Today is Elayna's first day of Fifth Grade! Yay! Our little girl keeps growing up!

Today was supposed to be hella busy with course enrollment, as the technical issue we'd been waiting on had supposedly been fixed. It hasn't. So I'm hella busy with other stuff, all of which is important, but none of which is as important as course enrollment. Grr.

One thing I forgot to mention about Sky High is how damned fun the soundtrack is. The soundtrack consists of nothing but '80s covers by contemporary bands, including a nice Bowling for Soup cover of "I Melt With You," a good take on "And She Was" by Keaton Simons, and a truly superb cover of "Save it For Later" by Flashlight Brown. Highly recommended (although, as one reviewer notes, it would have been nice to see Michael Giacchino's score get some recognition).

shadesong and I finally saw the US Women's Gymnastics Championships last night, or at least the one hour NBC allowed people to see (tape-delayed in Atlanta, since preseason football bumped it on Saturday). Quite nice. Liukin and Memmel were both phenomenal. But Alicia Sacramone's floor exercise was just a thing of beauty -- she may not have the all-around talents that the others have, but given my bias for the floor exercise anyway, her performance was easily the highlight.

Also caught Family Guy and American Dad on reruns. Anyone know if the intelligence chart from FG (showing creationists below the mentally retarded) is available anywhere as an icon?

Finally, the usual weekly administrivia reminder: I'm barely reading LJ, and with all the work stuff, not likely to be caught up until September. Likewise, I probably won't be adding new folks back until then, when I actually get breathing room to look at journals again.

Finally watched this week's episode. Three weeks in, I'm thoroughly enjoying this show, although I can't imagine it'll ever get a huge audience. The guest appearance by Sam Rockwell was just priceless.

Now if only I could get the theme music out of my head.

So, on Friday, we got a package in the mail from the good folks at movie-source.com, from whom I'd won a copy of Shout About Movies Volume 1. We promptly played two of the three games on the DVD, and loved it.

The game engine is actually better than that of Scene It -- the questions are all DVD-based, all of them reward speed, and there are some surprisingly sophisticated questions (including a good ordering of events one and a matching one that has some well-done clues). The movies were mostly mainstream, but ranged within that from horror to comedies to classics, and we had a blast. It's probably better for a large group of partiers, but for any movie buffs, it's fun. We're saving the third game for our trip to Boston. :-)

What's really impressive is that the engine actually keeps score! Considering eight rounds of play, with 1, 2, and 3 point questions, that's hella impressive (and the dialogue changes based on the score).

Oh, and for the BJ90210 fans, Gabrielle Carteris is the female narrator.

The one drawback is that there's only three games. I understand that, given the sophistication of the engine, they can't fit more games on a disc, but at $25 a pop, that's too much. Since the DVD cost itself is the cheapest element, they'd really be doing well to put two or even three discs in a set at that price. Scene It may get old, but it takes more than three games before it becomes completely worthless. Still since we got this for free, I can't really complain about the value. :-) But if you're thinking of spending your own money, look for it used (or see if there's a friend who wants to buy it used from you afterwards).

Thank you so much for keeping us informed about the weather by blocking the entire left corner of the screen during two straight (and damned good) episodes of The Inside with a radar view that told us that, yes, it was raining.

Thank you as well for muting the sound and running scrollers across the screen no fewer than six times between the two episodes, letting us know that the weather, indeed, sucked.

Oh, and especially, thanks for interrupting the shows eight times (six during the second episode) with Ken Cook the Interrupting Asshole*, causing us to miss about ten full minutes of the second episode (although, amazingly enough, only about ten seconds of commercials).

Really, as an affiliate, you show as much respect for your programming as you national network does. Bravo!




*Q: What's an interrupting assh-

A: Hi! I'm Ken Cook from the Fox 5 Weather Center!

Grr. They're releasing an unrated version of Dodgeball. Nine months after the initial release of the movie. Have I mentioned how much I loathe double dips?

Stayed home yesterday, as I was at the "use it or lose it" level of vacation, and was going to lose those eight hours as of July 1 no matter what. Spent the day cleaning up in the kitchen and bedroom, working on job app stuff, and dozing with a cat on my chest. We also went shopping, discovering that Publix no longer stocks my lovely "Deli-style Rye" flavor of Triscuits. Bastards.

Creepiest thing I noted while reading through the stacks of magazines: Stuff Magazine (shut up! I get it for free!) has a pictorial/interview with Danica McCellar. Like the interviewer, I've got a hard time looking at the pics and not saying, "but it's Winnie Cooper!" Other than watching Static Shock, I don't think I've seen a project of hers in years.

Really sad offshoot of that last point -- checking out the IMDB for other TWY castmembers, it looks like the only thing that Jason Hervey has done in recent memory (other than his stint on JLU as Dove) is exec produce I Want to Be a Hilton. *shudder* I believe that puts him below Todd Bridges on the "former TV child star" Walk of Shame.

Plans for the holiday weekend: Get crap done around the house. Woohoo! Maybe, if I get bored, I'll kill Diablo.

Lane Smith died. :-(

So, I'd have loved to watch my Tivod copy of yesterday's Jeopardy, but ten minutes in, our NBC affiliate ("WXIA: Now staffed entirely by inbred baboons") decided to pre-empt it with coverage of the Jackson trial. So, in lieu of one of the few things on broadcast TV that actually stimulates the brain, they attempted to pawn off on me something aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator. Pigfuckers.

Fortunately, http://boards.sonypictures.com/boards/showthread.php?s=ec9aec1c0a129278e10fbadd22a8bffa&threadid=86778 will have the summary of the show (it already spoils who won, but I'd like more info).

But our NBC affiliate, like most of them, it seems, is still staffed by bottom-feeding pigfuckers.

So, not great, but I seem to have liked it a lot more than other folks. glenn5 was underwhelmed, and laurel, over at TVpicks, got to see the first three episodes, and was also not overly impressed.

It might have been my lowered expectations, as well as the knowledge that Minear came in to a show that was a lame Mod Squad rip-off and had to retinker it to make it watchable, but I had fun. Granted, Baldwin and Finneran, the reasons I was watching the show, had way too little time, and the lead male (the potential love interest, not Peter Coyote) has annoyingly turned his "sensitive male" dial to 11, but there's still enough fun stuff there, as well as a few nifty twists, to keep me around. It's no Keen Eddie, but every summer cop show can't be that good. If nothing else, I'm intrigued enough by Peter Coyote as a cross between The Cigarette Smoking Man and, well, Peter Coyote. Some major plot issues (such as, say, how did Coyote get to the next station?), as well as a few character ones (if Coyote really likes fucking with his people's heads that much, why doesn't he just stick a dildo in their ears and get it over with?), but I'm on board for the next few weeks, at least.

Don't forget:

This Friday, Fur on the Asphalt: The Greg the Bunny Reunion Show hits IFC. Yeah, my Tivo's already set.

Kristen at E reports on some annoying tinkering at Veronica Mars. Not pleased. Especially since there's still no sign of UPN putting it in a better timeslot.