New Year’s Pop Culture Resolution Suggestions for 2012

This is a list of entertainment (mostly, if not all, TV) I love that I know not enough people have experienced that if you’re looking for something to check out in 2012, you should give it a shot.

1. Mad Men – Four seasons in and every single season has won the Emmy for best drama.  But since it is a cable drama on AMC, I know that there are plenty of people who have not seen this show.  Do yourself a favor and watch.  All of the show is available on Netflix Instant Watch.

2. Breaking Bad – The other best drama on AMC.  Mad Men is a compelling ensemble show while Breaking Bad is spectacular deconstruction of a single character for the most part.  Such a great show.

3. Community – The show is on hiatus on NBC right now.  This is my most favoritest show.  It makes me laugh so consistently hard and it also balances the funny with some genuine sincereity that is incredibly rare for a sitcom.  I know its rapid fire jokes and style of comedy might not be for everybody, but it’s got a great cast and a it’s a wonderfully versatile show.  I love it so much.

4. The Wire – If you haven’t seen this show, you owe it to yourself.  It feels significant.  It’s compelling.  It’s ridiculously layered, but easy to follow.  It’s gripping and heartbreaking and the best show HBO has ever produced.

5. Party Down – A terrifically funny show about a catering business in Los Angeles that employs failed and/or struggling actors.  Only about 20 episodes of this show were made but they are all fantastic.

6. Firefly – If you don’t think Westerns and Sci-Fi can mix well, think again.  Such a shame this show never got a fair shake on Fox.  Speaking of which…

7. Arrested Development – Arguably the funniest show of the last decade.  And with a return of the series planned for 2013 and a potential movie also in the rumor pipeline, what better year than 2012 to dive into this series?

8. Friday Night Lights – This was an outstanding series.  I know for a fact that not nearly enough people watched this show.  You don’t even need to be a big fan of football to really enjoy this show.  It’s more about the characters and the stories they’re involved in than the game of football.  I’m going to miss the story of Coach and Mrs. Coach and their family and friends in Dillon, TX.

~Moose

New Year’s Pop Culture Resolutions for 2012

This is a list of things that were produced before 2012 that I intend to try and consume during this new calendar year.

1. The Hunger Games trilogy – There is a movie coming out in March.  I will have read the first book by then.  In fact, I have already purchased all three book on my Kindle, it is just a matter of finishing up a couple of other books before I dive into this series.

2. Doctor Who – Among others, my friends the Pinaults have sung this shows praises to me fr quite some time now.  I watched the first episode with Christopher Eccleston a few months ago.  I will watch more in 2012.

3. Deadwood – This HBO series is complete and already queued up for me on Netflix.  It’s just a matter of making it priority.

4. Boardwalk Empire – I want to see at least the first season, which will be coming out soon on Netflix.

5. Homeland – A Showtime series that I heard very positive reviews about and since I don’t get Showtime, I will have to wait for the DVDs, probably sometime in late 2012 as Showtime is notorious for delaying the release of their DVDs for about a year, usually right before the next season’s premiere.

6. Dead Like Me – This is another completed series that has been on my Netflix queue for a very long time.  And it’s available on Watch Instantly.

7. Freaks and Geeks – A show that didn’t even make it out of its first season, but so many people involved with this show went on to be stars to some degree.  Probably one of the most glaring blind spots in terms of shows I’ve missed out on.

8. Twin Peaks (Season 2) – As a X-Phile, I feel like I owe it to myself to see the rest of this show, because of how many times the shows are compared to one another.  But I’m just so anti-Lynch that I have a hard time investing myself in this show.  I need to just bite the bullet and get it over with.  And then I can decided whether or not I want to devote any more of my time to anything Lynchian or just be done with him altogether.

9. Justified – A show on FX that has gotten a lot of positive press for its first two seasons, its third season is premiering sometime this month.  I think my plan will be to start recording the new episodes on DVR and save them until I get caught up on the DVDs.

10. A Song of Ice and Fire – The series of books for the Game of Thrones TV series on HBO.  I loved the first season of the show and I started reading the first book.  Now that the second season is coming up this spring, I want to at least get through the second book before I see the upcoming season.

~Moose

Where Has My Summer Gone?

I can’t believe how quickly this year is moving by.  Summer is nearly over, Fall is just around the corner, or has arrived if you live in Maine and are experiencing the nightly temps in the upper 30s like we have for the past 3 days here.

It has been far too long since I wrote in here.  I would like to post more, but I can’t believe how hard I find it after getting out of the habit of it.  Part of it is due to sheer neglect on my part, but part of it I think has to do with the fact that posting short messages on Facebook and Twitter are more convenient and require far less time and commitment.  But here are a few highlights of my summer.

One of the most discouraging things happened to me this past July.  My apartment got zapped by lightning.  It came in through the DirectTv satellite apparently and fried my DirectTV box, my Playstation 3 and damaged my TV.  The DirectTV box was replaced.  I just recently got the PS3 back and it is fully repaired.  But the damaged TV is something I am going to have to live with for a while until I can either afford to fix it or replace it.  The HDMI slots are completely useless on it, the picture has some purple and green lines slowly moving up the screen continually, and the audio is noticeably worse.  But it still functions and is serviceable.

A few days before this happened, I got my first smartphone: the HTC Droid Incredible 2!  And it really is quite incredible.  The battery it came with was decidedly unincredible, and I recently upgraded that to the longer life battery.  But I am very fond of my smartphone.  I send and receive e-mails, twitter and facebook updates.  I can manage my fantasy teams on the go.  I just discovered that I can watch NFL’s Red Zone on it every Sunday.  There are some really great apps for the phone, particularly Gas Buddy, Bank of America, and MovieTicket.com, and the ringtone maker.  No more purchasing ringtones from the Verizon store.  I can have any part of any song I have set as the ringtone for any of my contacts.  And I’ve made some that I really like, a guitar solo from “Ball & Biscuit” by The White Stripes being one of them.  It really is amazing to have so much available right at your fingertips wherever you are.

Of course, I saw my fair share of movies this summer.  The Hangover II was a slight disappointment, though still pretty funny.  The Pirates franchise needs to end.  I avoided Transformers 3 and didn’t regret it at all.  I don’t know that there was a single movie I flat out loved, but I did enjoy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (the books sort of ruined the movies for me on a certain level, but this was a great conclusion), Horrible Bosses, Bridesmaids were the most enjoyable.  X-Men: First Class was excellent because of the casting and did such a good job of returning that franchise to form.  Thor and Captain America both surprised me and were a lot better than I expected and perhaps better than they had any right to be, especially Thor.  I enjoyed the childhood nostalgia of Super 8, but my expectations were higher for that movie, and I thought the monster at the end was a letdown.

However, I have to say that thinking over all of the movies of the summer, one of the things that stands out in my mind is the performance of Elle Fanning.  That young girl can flat out act.  I think she is a legitimate star in the making and will surpass her sister Dakota sooner rather than later.  In fact, I’m very intrigued by the future potential of Fanning, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Abigail Breslin.  I hope there are great female roles for all three when they grow up.  And I hope they all make it and don’t become another child star cautionary tale.

Also in the realm of entertainment, I devoured the majority of the series Curb Your Enthusiasm.  What a funny show.  Larry David is a great curmudgeon.  And a lot of the payoffs for the shows are great.  And nothing is off limits because it is an HBO series.  I saw Season 1 probably about a year ago and thought it was pretty good, but not great.  I decided to get back to it and found Season 2 to be far funnier than I remembered Season 1 being.  And I was hooked.  Seasons 2 & 3 were probably the best of the series, though I’m currently in Season 7(the Seinfeld season) and that is pretty good too.  Prettyyyyyyyyyyy, pretttttttty, preeeeetty, pretty good.

At the beginning of this month, I had a really good friend of mine, Jeremy, move away to take a job opportunity in San Diego.  I’ve known Jeremy for about 5 1/2 years now.  We became pretty fast friends after he joined the small group Bible study I also attended.  He’s a really strong Christian and we found out that we had quite a lot of similar outlooks on the Bible, the Church, and Christian life.  We also found out we have very similar personalities, particularly in the passive-aggressive way of dealing with conflict.  We even got to be roommates for a year, sharing an apartment together before he got married to his lovely wife, Hannah a little over 2 years ago.  I was pretty upset at first about them leaving and everything, because I genuinely consider him a Christian brother, and because I’m very possessive and selfish when it comes to my friends.  Needless to say, I look forward to them coming home to visit eventually, and I really look forward to dropping little tidbits here and there to try and bribe, guilt, shame, prod, and coax them into eventually moving back here.

Having said all of this though, I have burried the lede.  That is because the biggest adventure of my summer involved me stepping waaaaaaaaaay beyond my comfort zone.  I babysat a child for pretty much the first time ever.  My friends Ben and Sarah were in a bind and needed someone to watch the 2 year old boy, Toby.  Now, Toby is one of the most adorable little kids ever.  Seriously, look at this picture and try not to say “Aww!”  Back with me now?  So, for whatever reason, this kid loves me, which makes me feel so cool about myself.  In fact, one time this summer I stopped in at their house briefly on my way to small group, and he started crying because I was there for only a few minutes and was already leaving (this is the stuff that causes things like the Grinch’s heart to swell three times beyond it’s capacity).  He also doesn’t completely have his “K” down yet (cut him some slack, the kid just turned 2 last week), so everytime he says something to me, I get something that sounds a little closer to “Ten” than “Ken,” which is awesome.

So I volunteer my services on Thursday to babysit Toby for that Friday night.  And so for the next 24-ish hours I’m a little terrified, nervous, anxious, etc.  I’ve never really done anything like this before.  For the vast majority of my life, I’ve never been responsible for anyone but myself.  And I’ve managed to make it 30 years in this world without having to change a diaper to this point, which I look at a bit like Joe DiMaggio’s streak.  And my friends are entrusting their child to my care for a few hours.  It’s a little sobering to say the least.  I prepare myself and partly to keep myself from getting too nervous by saying to myself, “The goal is to make sure he still has 10 fingers and 10 toes when I’m done with him.”

Of course, the actualy experience was far easier than I had built it up in my mind, which I repeatedly reminded myself of beforehand too.  Toby was ridiculously easy on me.  Really, he treated me with kid gloves.  He was watching Toy Story 3 when I got there a bit before 6.  Sarah gave me a quick tutorial on changing diapers.  He was finishing dinner when I got there.  And it only ended up being about an hour and a half of supervision on my part, because his bedtime came at 7:30.  This was the part I was not prepared for.  No kid ever really wants to go to bed.  So while I took him upstairs @ a little after 7:30, it took me over half an hour longer to build up the nerve to ignore his delay tactics of stories and toys and actually put him in his crib, turn out the lights and walk out the room.  And of course, during that time he did indeed poop, which ended my DiMaggio-like streak.

When I left the room was the longest few minutes of my life, as he cried, “No, Ten.  Why?”  To him, it was as if I had violated the established parameters of our established relationship by putting him to bed; like I had betrayed his trust or something.  At least this is how it sounded to me.  In reality, of course, I had done no such thing.  He was simply testing me to see if I would go up there and get him; to see if he would get his way.  After 10 minutes, he had stopped and was asleep.  But those 10 minutes felt like an hour.

So those were some of the highlights of my summer.  I will try to post more often on here in the future.  I really would like to get into the habit again of writing and expressing my thoughts in an ordered way in a format like this.

~Moose

I Once Was LOST, But Now I’m…?

I have reached a dilemma in my T.V. viewing once again.  There is a hole in my heart the size of a certain hour-long serial drama that just ended after six captivating seasons of great characters, cultural references and internet theorizing.  The phenomenon that was Lost came to an end back in May.  And while there is still some time before the new T.V. seasons kick off in the fall, I find myself wondering what am I left to do?  How do I fill the void? 

Lost was the alpha dog of my viewing schedule.  It was appointment television.  I made a point to not miss it every week it was on.  It engrossed my mind like no other show since The X-Files.  With The X-Files, I was OK with it going off the air as it had probably hung on for two seasons too long and needed to end.  But Lost planned their end in advance and went out before their storylines grew stale and they started to get ripe.  They went out at just the right time. 

I am not here to debate the merits of the finale or the series as a whole, both of which I thought about positively and fondly.  My question is, “What to do now?”  For the first time in a while, there is not “alpha dog” on my T.V. slate.  And not only has Lost gone, but so has 24.  My options are as follows:

Dexter – A show I love about a sociopath serial killer who kills criminals while working for the Miami-Dade County police forensics unit.  It’s a great drama with some dark, dark comedy elements.  The only drawback for me is that it airs on Showtime, a channel I don’t get, and it only runs for roughly 12 episodes per season.  So I have to wait to watch the show when it comes out on Netflix.

Californication – Another Showtime show I love, starring David Duchovny, but alas, something I have to wait for on Netflix.

The Office – Still one of the best and consistently funny shows out there that tickles my funny bone.  Even if the stories week to week are a bit more uneven than they used to be, I still look forward to what odd things the supporting characters get to bring to the table every week.  What is Kevin’s new slow-witted response to something going to be?  What is Creed’s non sequitor going to be this week?  What inappropriate thing will Meredith do/say this week?  How will Toby’s soul be crushed this week?  Now I hear news that Steve Carrell will be leaving the show after this season, and as much as it pains me to say it, I think the show should do the right thing and end itself rather than attempting to go on without Michael Scott.  Seven seasons is a very good run.

Chuck – This is my favorite “guilty pleasure” T.V. show and it’s not even really a guilty pleasure.  It’s a spy comedy in an hour-long drama format that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  I mean, the lead character is a computer nerd working at a Best Buy-esque store in its tech support who accidently gets a government supercomputer downloaded into his head.  The show is funny and nerdy and handles each of the main characters really well, meaning they don’t deviate wildly from who they are and what their purpose is as a character.  And the characters and storyline evolve naturally.  And it’s got one of my personal favorites in Adam Baldwin who plays a great straight man to the comedy.  It also helps that the show boasts the hottest woman on television in Yvonne Strahovski, a knockout, blonde Aussie who is painfully beautiful.  Unfortunately, this show doesn’t do so great in the ratings and is always in danger of being cancelled by NBC.  But it’s definitely a show that has done well for itself and I enjoy it.

Friday Night Lights – This is the best family drama on television.  They handle the most difficult family issues and teen issues with a grace and ease that few other shows in the history of television can boast.  It’s a shame that it never got enough of a following on NBC to really make it without some help, as the past few seasons have aired exclusively on DirectTV first before re-airing later on NBC.  The greatness of this show is found in arguably the best parental unit ever assembled in Coach and Mrs. Taylor.  They are in the rarified air of the Huxtables and some of the other great parents of T.V. history.  If you’ve never seen the show, it’s easy to assume I’m using hyperbole here, but I try not to deal in hyperbole, and if you watch a few episodes of the show, you’ll see I’m speaking the truth here. Sadly, next season will be this show’s last.

Mad Men – Arguably, it’s the best drama on T.V.  The drawback is that it is on AMC and is another show that only contains about 12 episodes per season.  Mad Men is not a show for everyone, as sometimes it seems like there’s not a lot happening; but every once in a while there are really dramatic jumps and crazy events.  And with the show being set in the 60s, we the viewer know the events that are coming that will impact the world that these characters inhabit, from the death of Marilyn Monroe to the death of JFK, to the start of Vietnam.  And Don Draper is one of the best, complex characters out there, brought to life by the amazing Jon Hamm.  I can’t wait for the 4^th season to start up at the end of July.

South Park – The show about four foul-mouthed kids from a little Colorado town is an old reliable.  The show has chugged on for 14 seasons now and while it is showing some signs of decay, Trey Parker and Matt Stone still do social commentary better than anyone else out there.  They skewer anyone and everyone.  And they’ve really created a community of characters that can be just as compelling as the core four kids.  But it’s only half an hour long and 14 episodes per season with a long hiatus between seasons and in the middle of seasons. 

Fringe – Fringe is the drama that shows the most promise.  The question is how badly does it want it?  Is it ready to step up, grab the conch and declare itself as must-see T.V.?  The sci-fi show from the mind of J.J. Abrams is the closest thing I can get to new episodes of The X-Files, so I appreciate the show on that level.  And the show has developed a very unique and intriguing mythology for itself, while still managing to make some pretty stellar stand-alone episodes.  The show has had some real moments of inspired greatness in its first two seasons, I’m very much interested in where the storyline goes in season 3, and it feels like season 3 is it’s chance to really come into its own and establish itself.  The only drawback is that it’s on Fox, a network notorious for cancelling shows before their time (see: Firefly, Arrested Development, Dollhouse, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles).

Community – Every year I seem to give 2 or 3 new shows a chance to see if I’ll find a new show I love.  This past year I tried out V, FlashForward, and Community.  Community is the only one that stuck.  I was laughing at the first few episodes.  By the middle of the season, I was declaring to everyone I knew on Facebook that they needed to be watching it, and a few weeks after that, it had supplanted The Office as my favorite comedy on television, no small feat.  The key to a show like this is the ensemble cast, and they knocked it out of the park in the casting department.  They even managed to make Chevy Chase funny again, something that hasn’t been true since the early 80s.  They do episodes that are homage to movie genres.  They have running jokes that build off of earlier jokes and pay off later in the season, a la Arrested Development.  And they gave us one of the best episodes of television of the past 5 years in their paintball episode.  Also, Alison Brie is the new hotness!  Literally, the only drawback to this show is that I only get 30 minutes of it every week.  And it’s tough to have a 30 minute comedy be the anchor of your television schedule.  But I really do genuinely think it’s one of the best things on television, and my favorite by far right now.

~Moose