Category: TV

Photo by Doug Kerr, used under Creative Commons license

“Not since Hall and Oates has there been such a team.”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I thought about doing a whole long sappy blog post about how thankful I am for this and that, but figured the whole fact that I can write a blog post while the place smells like turkey pretty much denotes how good my life is. So I’ll just point out the highlights of our weekend so far:

First of all, it’s always a good weekend when your colleague starts it off with a gift of some 1er Cru burgundy:

We took it easy Friday night, sneaking a spot at Richmond Station’s bar for some excellent food. Nellie had oysters and flank steak; I had beet salad and crispy duck. A bottle of Norm Hardie Cab Franc went perfectly with it all. We then just watched The Sessions (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at home, which was excellent. Lots of ex-Deadwood representation too.

Saturday morning we got up early and gathered all we needed from St. Lawrence Market for Thanksgiving dinner, traded in some old speakers for a pair of outdoor Sonance speakers that look like fake rocks, picked up some interesting beer, then walked to Volo where we enjoyed some pumpkin beer and ploughman’s lunch and quite possibly the last hot, sunny patio day of the year.

After that we picked up our Thanksgiving turkey (who we named Carl, in honor of The Walking Dead re-starting tonight) at Cumbrae’s, then watched The Place Beyond The Pines (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which I’m still having a bit of trouble sorting out and a hockey game (mostly me).

Sunday was a day-long exercise in relaxing and cooking, then eating, Carl.

We also slammed through half the first season of Orange Is The New Black, which is pretty good. We’ll likely finish it today, along with the rest of Carl.

It was a perfect, relaxing weekend — just what I needed with the week I have coming up.

.:.

Photo by Doug Kerr, used under Creative Commons license

Image by GOTSfile, used under creative commons license

“You think I’m not serious just because I carry a rabbit?”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Here’s how we’ve spent our last 72 hours (work notwithstanding):

  • Yummy beers at Bar Hop
  • The Game of Thrones exhibit at the Design Exchange, which was small, but free, and not at all bad. Just got me even more excited for March 31st.
  • Meat at Triple A
  • Dinner at Richmond Station, our first time back since Nellie’s birthday. We didn’t have a reservation, but they managed to find us a table upstairs…a cool space, since you can see the kitchen preparing the dishes. Just like the first time the food was good, and the service/servers were excellent. It’s quickly becoming one of my very favourite places in the neighbourhood.
  • Watched Seven Psychopaths (imdb | rotten tomatoes), made by the director of In Bruges. Very entertaining. Christopher Walken, man. Just…yeah.
  • Safe House (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was pretty meh, but at least it gave us an early preview of Cape Town.

.:.

Image by GOTSfile, used under creative commons license

"If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?"

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I like The Newsroom.

There, I said it.

I know most critics seem to dislike it, even if Dan Rather and the general public do not. I know it’s preachy and dumbed-down (though that may be a self-referential snipe). I know Aaron Sorkin’s worn a loose misogynist label ever since his interview with Sarah Nicole Prickett, and I know he radiates full-on malice (see what I did there?) against the internet, and specifically blogs.

But the show had me pretty much from this scene…which, by the way, is how the series opens. So yeah.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I like it, I suppose. I loved The West Wing (the first few seasons, anyway) and The Social Network. I liked Moneyball just fine. Sports Night is one of my all-time favourite series, and The Newsroom is a fuzzy photocopy of the character list: Will McAvoy is an amalgam of Dan and Casey; Mac is Dana; Charlie is Isaac; Leona is Luther; Maggie is Natalie; Jim is Jeremy. And I’m so sorry for that last sentence; really, only people very familiar with both shows will understand what just happened.

But let’s be clear: the show mostly appeals to the preachy liberal in me, even as Sorkin writes his disdain for preachy liberals — see title of blog post. I want to believe that someone in the American news media recognizes the morass into which their industry has sunk and wants to climb out of it, that someone really would step up and — as Sorkin writes it — speak truth to stupid. But it doesn’t really look like that’s happening.

Back to The Daily Show for me, then.

.:.

Photo (of a newsroom, not The Newsroom, obviously) by Alan Cleaver, used under Creative Commons license

"Dammit! I can't find my driving moccasins anywhere!" "Jar!!"

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TV used to be something I loved. Then, sports notwithstanding, I all but stopped watching it. Then HBO and The Sopranos and The Shield and The Wire and Six Feet Under happened and I kind of fell in love with it again. Now I think I’m back on the down-swing. I didn’t think I watched many shows anymore, but when I looked at the full lineup it seemed as if I must like a shit-ton of TV…until I categorized them.

Shows that I still watch pretty regularly, but if they went off the air tomorrow it wouldn’t really bother me: The Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show, Modern Family
TDS is still the best news/satire on TV, but it’s got to be wearing on Jon Stewart to keep beating his head against this wall. At this point I think it’s wearing on me. Modern Family makes me laugh, but more often than that it makes me miss Arrested Development. And really, at this point the only funny things on The Big Bang Theory are Melissa Rauch, Mayim Bialik and Kaley Cuoco.

Shows that are basically just playing out the string now but I still feel compelled to watch: 30 Rock, The Office
Jack and Liz are no longer funny enough to offset my hatred for Tracy and Jenna. And The Office is liked a corpse, shocked momentarily by the EMT paddles of Mindy Kaling, Creed Bratton or James Spader.

Shows that I’m still watching, but which are on a very short leash: Californication, The Killing, True Blood, The Walking Dead
Californication has always won because of the dialogue and the sweet relationship Hank has with his daughter, but now the other shit is just out of hand. The Killing was yanking my chain halfway through the first season, fer chrissakes. True Blood used to be at least mildly interesting with the politics and the interesting Russell-inspired mayhem, but now it’s just Twilight for old(er) ladies. And The Walking Dead had me in the first season, but lost me in the second season right around the time it put me into that coma.

Shows that I wish would just freaking come back from the off-season already: Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Sons Of Anarchy, Treme
Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones and Mad Men are pretty much the best things on TV right now. Nurse Jackie, Sons Of Anarchy and Treme aren’t quite in the same weight class, but they’re still better than most of the dreck that happens when I stray outside south of channel 1300 (TMN) on my guide.

New shows that I just started watching, and have pretty much written off already: Alcatraz, House Of Lies
I wanted to like the both of you, really I did. But House Of Lies, you’re so smug and intent on showing us this quirky world of consulting which, let’s face it, is nothing like that you portray…and I hear quite enough of that doublespeak from consultants at my day job, thank you. And Alcatraz, you’re just formulaic.

Shows that I just started watching, and love: Homeland, New Girl
Let’s be clear, I’ll watch anything with Damien Lewis or Zooey Deschanel. But so far (we’ve only watched the first 8 episodes of Homeland, and the first half-season of New Girl) both shows have been really good. The question for both will be whether they have any staying power.

Shows that I just started watching, and love, but are already off the air: Party Down
Dammit!!!

Shows that I’m expecting to like, but haven’t started watching just yet: Justified, Luck
I don’t even know what Justified is about, but it’s a recommendation from a pretty trusted source. Luck is directed by Michael Mann, written by David Milch and stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. I don’t care if they break into song each episode, it’s getting a least a season with me just based on that pedigree.

"I'm an okay mechanic with a GED. The only thing I do well is outlaw."

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Because we don’t get a channel that carries Sons Of Anarchy (imdb) as it airs we’re forced to wait until the season is over and watch it all at once. Like we did this past weekend: we began watching season 4 Sunday afternoon and finished episode 14 late last night.

I know a lot of people haven’t watched it yet and I don’t want to ruin anything, so I’ll just say two things:

  1. Despite the fact that he’s in a supporting role on the show, Ryan Hurst (aka Opie) continues to be the best thing on the show;
  2. So many former cast members of The Shield have shown up that I kind of expected Michael Chiklis to walk into frame at any minute. And, in a way, I guess he kind of did. God, I miss that show.

"Oh, hey, nerdiest old dude I know, you wanna come cook crystal?"

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Something else we’ve been watching a lot of (in addition to all those movies) is Breaking Bad. We’d watched the first season some time ago, but then took a long break before blazing through seasons 2, 3 and 4 in the last couple of months. It really is, with the possible exception of Mad Men, the best show on TV right now. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul deserve the hell out of their Emmys. Don’t make the same mistake I did by ignoring it for years. Go. Watch.

Huntsman

Dan Dickinson4 Comments

Saturday: dinner at Capocaccia with friends from university. Then Primitivo, softball-sized burrata, brown butter agnalotti, Amarone. Then back to the lair. Then Merlot, Zinfandel. Then something…um, French? Then impromptu cleaning. Then a note that said Sale al Truffulo. Then Lagavulin and (je pense) Dalwhinnie. Then a cab.

Sunday: ouch. Then McDonald’s. Then season 2 of Breaking Bad.

Not elegant. But effective.

It's like spaghetti, except it's more square than round

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What a goddamn enjoyable day. No one stellar thing to trump all others, just a collection of goodness. Examples:

  • Eating rosemary/olive bread and cloth-bound cheddar and pineapple for breakfast, which sounds disgusting but was awesome.
  • Getting some work done. (Okay, so this isn’t particularly fun, but it feels good to get it out of the way and not have to go to the office.)
  • Listening to the new Elbow album, which is excellent, and the new PJ Harvey, which I hated at first but now cannot shake from my head.
  • Lunch at La Bettola di Terroni which, despite being right around the corner from us, we’d never tried. It was fantastic. I had the braised beef agnolotti in a sage brown butter sauce; Nellie had the chitarra pasta in a lemon cream sauce with sausage & truffles. We also helped the couple sitting next to us, in town from North Carolina, to find a place to spend the day (the Distillery District) and eat dinner (Origin).
  • Gathering supplies at a less-crowded-than-normal St. Lawrence Market, as well as two bottles of Flat Rock (Riesling, Pinot Noir) for this weekend’s meals.
  • Espresso. For which I have apparently developed a taste (need?).
  • Submitting 2010 taxes avec healthy return.
  • Running 4.5km and feeling pretty good doing it.
  • Eating a fairly tasty meal from Golden Thai (after we found out the even-closer Thai place, Ivory Thailand, had been replaced by a French bistro some 3 hours earlier) along with the afore-mentioned Riesling.
  • Watching many episodes of Sons of Anarchy (imdb).
  • Admiring the supermoon.
  • Booking a kick-ass campsite for this fall’s excursion.

Large single-book-bound collection of stamps, anyone?

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

A few weeks ago my wife was watching an episode of Community and one of the characters said something that kind of made me feel old, but mostly made me realize that technology has created a gap in my vocabulary. Here’s the line:

Jeff: How old is he again?
Annie: 30-something I guess. He has a land-line and uses the word album.

So, in addition to the fact that we still have a land line — though we probably wouldn’t if our building’s intercom didn’t require one — I noticed they categorized the use of the word ‘album’ as something 30-somethings say because they haven’t adapted to the iPod generation yet and still think of music as LPs. Which I found odd. Maybe some people do that, but that’s not why I say it.

Yes, I say album.

Assuming that the writers assumed It’s not that I grew up using records. My dad did, and my brother had a few, but I started with tapes, then went to CDs, then ditched CDs for MP3s. Probably earlier than most people, actually. But I did always refer to collections of music by the media in which they were distributed…a new Van Halen tape or a new Soundgarden CD.

Yes, I listened to Van Halen.

Anyway, I stopped equating collections of music to the distribution medium once I stopped buying CDs six years ago. Without a physical medium to refer to when a band released a new collection of music, I couldn’t think of a better alternative than to call them albums. What else was I supposed to call them?

And it’s not as if the concept of releasing/purchasing music in batches went away…music is still released to physical and online stores in named collections, awards are still given for ‘best album’, and so on.

So, I’ll continue to refer to new musical releases as albums, until the day when record labels (yeah, uh…why do we still call them that?) let bands release songs one at a time as they feel like it, and the whole silly setup starts to make sense, and the anachronism dies. Like photo albums.

And yes, I used to have photo albums.