Link To My Other Blog, Where All The Action Is

MEMO  

From the ‘Life Is Too Short’ Department 

Jim Murray wishes to advise you that he has grown weary of posting the same column on two different blog sites. Having done the math, he has determined that the site with the most hits wins, and that is not this site.

Please click through to and bookmark  http://mrmur.wordpress.com/ to have regular access to Jim’s lunatic ravings.

New columns are posted approximately every 10 days If this is too much work for you, we would hate to lose you, but that’s another memo from the ‘Shit Happens’ Department.

Thank You,
Jim Murray

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Volume 7

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See:
√√√ – Worth Seeing:
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan:
√ – Sucks.

I read a lot of books. Writers do that. And I have tried to read many different kinds of  books over the years. But as time wears on the “Life’s too short” principle kicks in and you start to refine your reading habits. My tastes over the past decade or so have run very strongly to the modern day thriller. I don’t really have a preference regarding what kind of thriller it is. I’m an equal opportunity consumer of the genre, which ranges from one off stories by one hit wonder writers, to big city cop stories to rural cop stories, to political dramas to war and espionage. Whatever looks interesting.

Now this is still a pretty big hunk of the thriller genre, if not pretty much all of it with the exception of sci-fi thrillers and historical thrillers which are really more like mysteries. I’m not crazy about mysteries, although I do admire the people who take the time and go through all the mental acrobatics to put them together.

When you get into a genre like thrillers one of the best things that you find is that a lot of thriller writers develop characters and their body of work becomes essentially the arc of the character’s story. Writers who I read regularly and are particularly adept at this are Stephen J Cannell, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Stuart Woods, Stephen Hunter, Giles Blunt and Lee Child. Writers who don’t do this very much, if at all, are guys like John Grisham and Frederick Forsythe, but they are still great storytellers and that’s the hard core fact.

Three Mini Reviews.

Although I have written a review column for more than 10 years, I don’t really like reviewing stuff in too much detail. First of all if you do that you can’t help but give some of the story away. And while that may be OK for the Lord of The Rings something massive like that, it kinda takes the fun out of reading the thriller without any predisposition. The second reason is that in this day and age, you attention span is only so long. So I keep it short and sweet. You get my impression, at least enough of it, hopefully to form your own impression of whether you think it’s worth the time you have to invest in reading the book, and you don’t get the story regurgitated and spoiled. So that’s pretty cool.

Forty Words For Sorrow,  The Delicate Storm, Blackfly Season, By The Time You Read This – Giles Blunt

These are the first 4 novels in the John Cardinal series by Giles Blunt, who originally hails from North Bay and lives here in Toronto by way of NYC. Mr Blunt is an outstanding Canadian writer and while his books border on mystery, I found them to be quite good thrillers in a quiet and elegant sort of way. The stories are set in the mythical Ontario city of Algonquin Bay, which is basically North Bay. John Cardinal is a police detective there and the stories follow the cases that he is working on. The day to day life of a small city police department is well depicted and the characters are all dyed in the wool Canadian. Mr Blunt also does a very good job of describing the relationship between local police, provincial police and the Mounties which I found very interesting.

His love Northern Ontario is pretty obvious and his descriptions of the area are almost poetic. But like all good thrillers, the story is the thing. And his stories are very well put together. These books are more character driven than action driven, but I found them quite refreshing and a lot less intellectual and navel gazing than most Canadian novels.

http://www.gilesblunt.com

Worth Dying For  — Lee Child √√√√

This in the 11^th or 12^th in a highly successful series by Lee Child, on of the best selling thriller writers in America. The hero is a retired MP named Jack Reacher who travels around the country getting into all kinds of trouble (read: righting all kinds of wrongs), armed only with a toothbrush and a debit card. These books are written with an incredible amount of precision pretty much from inside the military mind of Jack Reacher. Jack is an amazingly resourceful tactician and about as capable as any thriller character you’re likely to encounter. He can kill you seventeen different ways with a four in length of used dental floss. In a metaphorical sense, Jack Reacher is a hybrid symbol of Justice & Revenge. These stories ready very quickly and unfold with an astonishing precision and power. Lee Child is what’s known around these parts as an amazing talent.

http://www.leechild.com

Dead Zero  –  Stephen Hunter √√√√

This is the sixth or 7^th novel in a series by Stephen Hunter, featuring the Swaggers, father Earl, a super soldier and military tactician, son Bob Lee who is knows a Bob The Nailer, a marine sniper, and another family member who is introduced in this book and who will, I suppose carry on in the family tradition of saving the United States from ruination by the forces of evil. The books in this series don’t adhere to chronological sequence, but t5he sum total of them tell a great American story, unfolding over seventy years or so. Mr Hunter’s knowledge of military matters, world politics, American history and weaponry are formidable and his characters are completely unforgettable.

http://www.stephenhunter.net

If you are interested in any of these writers, feel free to visit their sites. Their books are pretty easy to come by at Chapters or Coles or wherever.

The Couch Potato Chronicles
Is The Intellectual Property of me.

onandup.ca

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Volume 6

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See
√√√ – Worth Seeing
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan
√ – Sucks

Hey everybody. I’m going to have a very busy summer workwise (finally), so I’m going to be writing shorter columns till the fall. I know a lot of you will be relieved by that because I can go on. But I’m quickly embracing the quality vs quantity algorhythm and who knows, maybe someday I’ll get this down to the normal length. Naa, that will never happen.

*************************

Summer Solstice

Today is officially the first day of summer. What that means to me is that the next three months will be gone before we know it. This has a lot to do with the winters we get up here, which tend to last forever, and by comparison the summers are relatively short. I don’t know about you, but I’m planning to make the most of it. In addition to the big weight loss, blood sugar level control challenge, which is actually proving to be not that hard to manage (so I must be doing something wrong) getting out of the Spudcycle every day for a good hard ride is really important. Fortunately since I work at home, and am in charge of the provisioning. I have a great two mile and change ride down to the Loblaws at Lakeshore and Leslie which also has a Price Chopper across the street for the items I don’t wish to get hosed on at Loblaws. So it’s a win win. Exercise. Good fruit and veg. And low prices on the other stuff.

At this writing, the summer is all of 11 hours old, but the weather has been gorgeous.

*************************

Netflix Will Be Worth The Money When…

The big complaint I hear about Netflix is that it’s OK but everybody wishes they had more up to date series stuff. Sure it’s fun to revisit LA Law or NYPD Blue or even The Rockford Files (naaa, that’s pushing it). But what does that really leave to talk to your friends about at work? Rehashing conversations you had back in the last century? Like most people who despise the amazing amount of money you can pay for cable or satellite, I’ve been thinking about Netflix. But I‘ve got some conditions.

Here is a list of shows I think should be on Netflix that would make it really worth the whopping big 8 clams a month they are asking for. (All series Rated √√√√)

 1. Game of Thrones. Arguably (but not by me), the best TV series ever produced. The first 10 episodes are a shining example of just how good, on every level, TV can be. One season in the can.

 2. Burn Notice: One of the best spy vs spy series in the modern era of TV. This show is full of clever stuff, characters who don’t take themselves too seriously be cause they are way capable. This series just started its 5^th season yesterday. But there are four whole seasons of rollicking good fun and adventure in the can.

3. Damages. A legal melodrama starring Glenn Close as an evil and nasty class action lawyer who will stop at nothing to eliminate competition. This show works hard on many levels and its totally riveting entertainment. Three seasons in the can with season 4 set to go on July 13.

4. Justified: Fantastic collaboration between crime novelist Elmore Leonard and Canadian writer producer Graham Yost. This is the purest distillation of Elmore Leonardness that has been put on film since Get Shorty. Tim Olyphant plays a reckless US Marshall Exiled to his home county in the middle of a huge coal mining feud. Chock full of great subplots, fascinating characters and lots of y’alls.

5. The Shadow Line: A 7-part British mini series about the heroin trade and police corruption in merry new England. This series moves slowly, is very complex and filled with top drawer performances right across the board. At the end of every episode you end up scratching your head, thinking, “Hey I thought I had this figured out.” But you didn’t and you don’t till the very end. One season in the can.

6. The Killing: A 13 episode AMC series based on a Swedish series of the same name, which was actually 20 episodes. It’s about too complex Seattle cops trying to figure out a very mysterious murder against a backdrop of local politics. Practically every character in the series has a deep dark secret. This is delicious and addictive.

7. Rubicon: Low key but highly intense mystery series from AMC again, about an intelligence analyst who spots a very strange pattern in the local newspapers. This show is perfect for people who like highly intellectual brain teasing with their drama. Rubicon was, sadly, cancelled because of low numbers. The 80/20 rule in action. 80% of the people out there were just too stupid to appreciate this show.

8. Injustice: A 5-part Brit mini series about a defense attorney (James Purefoy), defending an old college mate against a murder charge, and a slightly psychotic police detective who wants to nail James for the murder he’s investigating. This is a pretty straight-ahead series with lots of emphasis on the characters. It’s as well put together as anything the Brits do.

9.  The Good Wife: This was pretty much the best mainline network show of the last couple of seasons. Produced by Scott Free (Ridley & Tony Scott), this show manages to do everything right. Great story, characters that you love or hate, a big giant story arc with lots of interesting little subplots going on, that all point to the larger arc. This is really hard to do and without getting caught up in your underwear. 3 Seasons in the can.

10. True Blood. When Alan Ball finished his 6^th season of the incredibly popular Six Feet Under, which was one of the series that put HBO on the map, he was probably wondering just how the hell he could outdo himself next time around. Well no problemo. Thanks to the Southern Vampire Mysteries novel series by Charlene Harris, some brilliant casting including; Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, and some pretty amazing effects, he came up with another mega hit classic in the form or True Blood. For those of you who have never seen this series before, it’s really unlike any of the deluge of ‘vampire/werewolf/zombie’ stuff floating around out there. This series is top drawer, ultra violent and very sexy. Four seasons in the can.

I could go on, (Dexter, White Collar, Covert Affairs, The Mentalist, Numbers) but I’m kinda partial to top 10 lists. So there’s the challenge, Netflix. I love your idea. I have all the equipment to watch it on my big TV. All I’m waiting for, along with a number of other people, is some really hot content. See # 1-10.

The Couch Potato Chronicles is the
intellectual property of Onwords & Upwords Inc.
www.onandup.ca 

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Volume 5

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See
√√√ – Worth Seeing
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan
√ – Sucks

• Summer TV Doldrums? – I Don’t Think So.
• But It’s No Game Of Thrones
• Spuditorial — Remembrance Of Lemmings Past

***********************

Summer TV Doldrums? – I Don’t Think So.

The mainline network TV season kind of works like the school season. It cranks up in September and October and goes full tilt for a couple of months, then shuts down between American Thanksgiving and The SuperBowl then cranks back up again until May.

After that things kinda go to hell in a handbasket until September. Or at least they used to before the coming of the US Cable Networks like FX, AMC A&E, SyFy, USA, TNT, Showtime and of course HBO to name but a few.

These networks operate, it would appear, based on the assumption that TV viewers are still around in the late spring and summer months. A fact of life that the mainline networks have never really come to embrace. In fact there are more than enough people around to have made Substantial hits out of several of the great summer series like Damages, Leverage, Warehouse 13, Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Memphis Beat, The Glades, and of course the big Kahuna of summer series all, True Blood. Not to mention a whole raft of independent, BBC and ITV shows that launch at this time of year including Game of Thrones, Injustice, Thorne, The Shadow Line and Camelot.

Starting late June.

This spring, I have spotted a couple of new shows worth looking for. Franklin and Bash which is a kind of lighthearted legal dramady, is very well put together and ably anchored by Malcolm MacDowell and Teen Wolf, which is albeit, aimed at a younger audience but is produced and directed by A-list action director Russell Mulcahy, (Highlander). New shows that will be appearing shortly include: Falling Skies, a big budget sci-fi adventure series on TNT and probably Space here in Canada and Alphas, another sci-fi adventure series that looks very cool indeed.

Obviously nobody has the kind of money it takes to put on a big time network show and run it year round. So the networks are simply behaving in a very logical way. But as a marketing person, I really have to admire the ‘find a need and fill it’ mentality of the cable networks, who have created a whole other season of programming for people like me, who like to go out and play when it’s warm, but eventually come back inside with a few TV hours to kill before bedtime.

Coming in July.

I guess you could call it one of the few upsides of the billion channel universe. Unless of course you’re one of those people who live and die by the goings on on Survivor, The Apprentice, The Amazing Race or any of the cooking shows featuring that sadistic bastard Gordon Ramsay . These shows are fine, but here at Spud Central the rules are pretty clear. Reality is depressing enough, why add to it by spending time with reality TV, our weakness for So You Think You Can Dance, not withstanding.

But It’s No Game Of Thrones √√√√

In every generation of TV programs, since I was a kid there, has always been some show that was the gold standard, to which everything else was compared. My earliest recollection was Gunsmoke.  You’d be having a conversation with your buds and some other show’s name would come up and you’d say, “Yeah, its OK but it’s no Gunsmoke.” I can’t recall how many pinnacle shows got substituted in that sentence over the years, but they included among others: Hawaii Five-O, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, The Prisoner, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Wiseguy, Star Trek, The West Wing and The Sopranos.

But about two months ago, a new show was added to this illustrious list. It’s called Game Of Thrones and it represents the largest investment in a TV series maybe ever.

I was over at my son’s house for brunch and the old chestnut with the new name was bandied about more than a few times.  “Spartacus/Camelot/The Borgias? They’re OK, but they’re no Game of Thrones.”

Game of Thrones has pretty much taken the TV world by storm. It’s a big, lavish HBO fantasy series

The amazing Sean Bean as Ned Stark, my new fictional hero.

that’s basically one story told on several different interconnected fronts. It actually took me a couple of episodes to figure it all out, but what an entertaining ride it has been. The complexity of what’s going on here is one of the most delicious parts of the experience.

Game of Thrones is based on a series of fantasy novels by some dude named George RR Martin, called A Song of Fire & Ice. And its filled with amazing amounts of political skullduggery, back stabbing, sex, scary creatures, mysticism, violence, foul language and all the magnificence required to elevate this production to the highest level of what’s going on in TeeVee Land right now. In fact, it was renewed for a second season the day after it’s first episode aired. Now that’s something!

The story itself is a metaphor, it would seem, for the European continent. There are kingdoms scattered all around. The kingdoms are united in an uneasy truce that is threatened in an ever growing number of ways. I am really oversimplifying here, because the story itself is much more complex. There are questions of succession, shifting alliances and high levels of lust for power. And none of this is sugar coated in the least. This is powerful stuff that really walks the talk.

I’m trying not to tell you too much about the actual story, because sooner or later you will have to see this, as it is truly some of the most incredible TV you will have ever seen.

Game of Thrones is to TV what Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings was to mainstream cinema.  Big, complex, intelligent, extremely well written, acted and produced. And it will be quite a while before anything this powerful supplants it in the sentence, “(Show Name) is great but it’s definitely no Game Of Thrones.”

I'm certain the professor would see the humour here.

Spuditorial — Remembrance Of Lemmings Past

 Yesterday, while prowling around my local dollar store, I ran into a blast from the past in the person of Adrienne Tyson. Adrienne is a beautiful petit woman now, but when I last saw here she was in her mid-teens. She was the daughter of one of my closest friends at the time. A man named Brian Tyson, or the Professor, as he was known. Professor Lemmings Northward.

We talked for quite a while and I found out that, in addition to living a few blocks from me, Adrienne was a single mom and a totally dedicated one at that. She told me that she had seen me riding around on my bike quite a few times but for some reason she had never flagged me down. Her dad was not just a friend, he was also a client of mine both when I worked in the agencies and for a couple of years afterwards. Unfortunately, he died in his early forties from an incurable disease. But he was a good and true friend whom I was in contact with pretty much right up to the time he passed on.

I remember him telling me that he honestly felt that he had packed more actually living into his 43 years than most people who live to be twice that ever will. That was true for sure.

After he was gone I wrote a goodbye note to him, which I published in a very early issue of the Chronicles. I’ve kept this note for more than 20 years, and look at it from time to time, to remind me of someone who was special in my life. When started to think about leaving the ad agency world and go on my own, Brian was my biggest cheerleader.

Seeing Adrienne again after all these years, seeing the bright, powerful woman she had become, partly I’m sure from having a father who lived every day of his life to the fullest, caused me to dig around in my ancient archive (I am a digital pack rat), find that goodbye note and publish it once again.

 Memo

To: Professor Lemmings Northward

Subject: The Temporary Alteration Of Our Friendship

Dear Professor

It seems you are no longer with us. I know this was not an exit of your choosing, as you would undoubtedly have chosen something much more grandiose, in keeping with your true personality.

Your passing has left a crater the size of Alberta in my soul. One does not acquire many true friends in this life and I can count them all on the fingers of my hands. Especially those who always seemed larger than life to me. Your approach to living was a study in organized chaos. There was always a method to your madness and your madness was always the good kind. The kind that made people laugh when they were down or feel at ease when they were uptight or feel confident when they were skeptical.

Even though we knew each other for only a few short years, that doesn’t really matter when it comes to true friendships. Those years were great ones. Sitting around at the Harbour Castle while the kids splashed in the over-chlorinated pool, sipping iced tea and reading the New York Sunday times and pretty much solving all the world’s problems. Hanging out over at Stewart’s house trying to be wittier than the British. Mid-town lunches at the Pilot. (Maybe that’s why you called your company Pilot Marketing…I never asked but probably should have), where you seemed to know everyone. The day I found you sitting in Rupert Brendon’s office lecturing the president of my agency on the finer points of dealing with high strung creative people. And Rupert sitting there wide eyed, astonished by your chutzpah, and wondering “Who the hell is Professor Lemmings Northward?”

That’s never been an easy question to answer. Marketing genius. Visionary. Dedicated father. Big hearted friend. All of the aforementioned.

And now you’ve transcended to the next dimension. I’m pretty sure there is one now, because I know you wouldn’t have gone otherwise. So thanks for that.

The thing about good and true friends is that, physical unavailability not withstanding, they are always with you. No matter where they happen to be. I think about you all the time. And though the years have caused the memories to fade a bit, the essence of our friendship, like a tiny pearl in an aged oyster, remains intact. I’m sure we will be friends to the end, despite the inconvenience of your not actually being with us any longer.

Thanks for the good times Professor and the life lessons that you taught by example. You’re leaving a lot behind. Hopefully everyone is equipped to carry on. I am, but the hole in my soul will always be there, and somehow, in some weird way, I can never see that as a bad thing.

Sincerely, J Murray

The Couch Potato Chronicles Is A Wholly Owned
Intellectual Subsidiary of Onwords & Upwords Inc.

www.onandup.ca 

Articles Include:
• THE BIG KAHUNA AWARD 2011
• SPUDITORIAL: WHY HOLLYWOOD MOVIES SUCK
• NBA PLAYOFFS AKA SPUD HEAVEN

 

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See:
√√√ – Worth Seeing:
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan:
√ – Sucks.

THE BIG KAHUNA AWARD 2011

For those of you who are new to these goings on, the Big Kahuna award is something I give, in this column, not for real, to the best TV series of the 2010/2012 season. This year the final selection has a real international flavour, with a couple of series you may have never even heard of.

THE SPUD CENTRAL TOP 10

Outcasts…BBC/TV Wales Sci-Fi Series

The Big Bang Theory…North American Comedy

NCIS…US Network Series

The Good Wife…Us Network Series

Rubicon…AMC Series

Wallander…Masterpiece Mystery BBC/Swedish co-production

The Killing…AMC Series

Justified…FX Network Series

Blue Bloods…US Network Series

Terriers…FX Network Series

Now I always agonize over this a bit because everything on this list is √√√√ all the way. But at the end of the day, the winner is determined by answering the simple question, “What do I look forward to seeing every week?”

Juliana Margueles in a role the fits her like a glove.

So this year, The Big Kahuna Award goes to The Good Wife.

The Good Wife is the product of Scott Free Productions the highly successful production company owned and managed by Tony and Ridley Scott, who are both great directors ibn their own right. The show tells the story of a political family in Chicago and starts in the middle of a huge scandal. There are several very strong currents that flow through this series, which are the really the stories of the characters. What makes it Big Kahuna worthy however, is that it transcends genre stereotyping. There’s a lot of courtroom action, but it’s not a ‘lawyer’ show. There’s a lot of political intrigue, but it’s not a ‘political’ show. There’s a ton of high emotion, but it’s not a prime time soap. Instead it’s a new thing that uses bits of all three of the aforementioned genres to create its own indefinable character. Basically it’s a great story extremely well told, well acted, well written and well assembled. I’ve never been a big fan of Julianna Margueles, who is the star of the show. I always thought she was a little dour. But as The Good Wife, she’s got a part that suits her character to a T and you can’t help but love her. In fact, all the characters in this series are so well rendered that its really not hard to fall in love with them all.

The Good Wife has just wrapped up its second season. If you have not seen it, I strongly suggest watching it in order from the beginning of season one. Treats like this are coming along more and more often on TV these days, but in my book you can never have too many, and this year, The Good Wife, is the crème de la crème.

SPUDITORIAL: WHY HOLLYWOOD MOVIES SUCK

A couple of years ago I went with my wife to Kennedy Commons to see one of the Pirates of The Caribbean movies. I don’t remember which one and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that about halfway through the movie, I started to get very antsy and claustrophobic to the point where I actually had to get out of the theatre. At first I thought it was just me. I have a life long nervous condition and sometimes I just have to get up and move around. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this had very little to do with my medical condition and much more to do with the actual movie I was watching. It sucked.

Now when I say it sucked, I don’t mean that it was a poorly put together piece of crap, which a lot of movies admittedly are. This film was as well produced as they come, with great effects, first class movie stars, a top notch movie script and all the rest of the bells and whistles that make movies like this very profitable.

What I mean by this movie sucked is that, in spite of all the good stuff that was packed into it, the package itself was basically just a slightly different carbon copy of the one that came before it and the one before that. Let’s face it, the business of making big giant Hollywood blockbusters is way more business than it is show. Movie concepts are researched to death to make sure that movie audiences, most of whom don’t know shit from shinola about anything, will shell out their 10 bucks or whatever and help the studios and their investors recoup their investments at obscene levels of profit. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Hollywood movie stars don’t get to be movie stars based on their acting talent. They get to be stars based on their ability to put bums in seats. Screenwriters don’t get to be big Hollywood screenwriters because of their literary talent. They make big money because they know how to execute movies to the formula dictated to them by the studios who put up the money to make the movie.  Same goes for directors. Oh sure they are talented people, with lots of experience and skill. But what they are, most of all, are great paint by numbers painters.

All these people and all that talent is focused on one single goal. Making movies that suck. But these movies don’t really suck to the people for whom they are made. These are the people who believe all the hype, buy into the star system, like going to the movies and don’t really care about what the movie is about, as long as there is either a) a lot of cool special effects and chase sequences and/or b) the movie stars they have been hypnotized into falling in love with.

When you are young and stupid, pretty much everything you see at the moves has some sort of appeal. But that’s only because you don’t really know very much about anything. But as you get older and have more experience with movies, you start to see patterns emerge, patterns of derivativeness. Hollywood calls them sequels. More mature viewers call them ‘the same old same old’ and the totally jaded, like me, just write them off completely. When I think hard about it, I’ve only ever really seen about three original movies in my life and they were all made by Orson Welles and Frank Capra and even those were adapted from books.

Hollywood movies don’t suck because they’re bad. They suck because at some point in everybody’s life, assuming they aren’t brain dead idiots, people simply outgrow them.

I just finished watching the Masterpiece Theatre sponsored remake of Upstairs Downstairs and even though it could technically be classed as non-original, I enjoyed it more that any Hollywood movie I have seen in the past decade. Why did I enjoy it so much? Why didn’t it suck? Well it’s simple. This form of entertainment was designed for people like me, who have, as a result of having seen way too many formulized Hollywood movie constructs and discovering in the process that they are no longer in the target group, been forced to look elsewhere, like to books and TV.

TV has a lot of other advantages for people like me as well, the most important being that I get to watch it in the comfort of my own swivel rocker, wearing any kind of clothing I wish. Ancillary advantages are that I can watch whenever I feel like it. I can pause it to go the john, and there is nobody sitting behind me making insipid comments or crinkling cellophane.

I pay a good deal for having lots of TV channels and download capability. But what it means is that I can always be sure that pretty much everything I choose to watch won’t suck and if it does, the cost of rejecting it is nowhere near the cost of going out to a night at the movies, which I’m pretty sure, considering who I am, would suck too.

NBA PLAYOFFS AKA SPUD HEAVEN

Playoff season, in just about every sport on the planet, is a time when reputations are made or broken. It’s also a time when some people step up their games to a ridiculous level and leave you gasping at their awesomeness.

In this year’s NBA playoffs there has been no shortage of this sort of Herculean effort. Sometimes it’s the X factor that can carry a team to victory over seemingly hopeless odds. Sometimes it’s just a valiant effort in a losing cause. But win or lose, it’s always something to see and something you really don’t get to witness at any other time of the season.

If my elbow hurt like Rondo's, I certainly wouldn't be out there jousting with LeBron James.

This season, I picked the Miami Heat to make it to the championship round from the east and the Oklahoma Thunder from the west. The Heat, as just about everybody knows are primarily a triumverate of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James. There was a lot of  poo pooing from the little old ladies of broadcast sports when this happened, but not from Spud Central. I thought it was the best thing that could have happened to the NBA. The voluntary creation of a true supersquad that would take on all comers and bring the east at least back into balance with the NBA West that had been dominating the playoffs for the past decade.

The Heat got off to a shaky start and though they finished second in the east, the didn’t really look like they were living up to all their mostly self-generated hype. But then the playoffs rolled around and suddenly we all understood what all the hype has been about. They put away the 76ers and then moved on to their nemesis the Celtics. The Celtics, pretty much on their last big time kick at the can with their aging studs, put up a hell of a fight and their point guard Rajon Rondo became the first big hero of the playoffs. In the second last game Rondo dislocated his left elbow, had it reset and elastoplasted and came back out to finish the game, basically one-handed. This is the kind of effort I am talking about. The Heat finally put them away in 5 games but it felt like World War 3.

Out west, The Dallas Mavericks, led by Dirk Nowitsky, probably the second best all around player in the league, took the Portland Trail Blazer in 6 games then stunned the whole world by sweeping the LA Lakers who many had picked to win it all. Not me. I watched the Lakers underperforming and squeaking by the Hornets. You could feel there was something really wrong there. It was during this series that the second hero emerged in the person of Dallas guard Jason Terry. Terry basically shot the lights out on the Lakers who had absolutely no defense for him. Helped by Nowitsky, it was a real clinic. I stayed up late to watch every game, because nothing gives me more joy than watching the Lakers go down and go down they did.

So long Toronto, hello glory.

Meanwhile the Heat began their series with the #1 seeded Chicago Bulls, who are an excellent defensive team. But aside from their amazing point guard and league MVP Derrick Rose, have very little in the way of scoring power. It took the Heat a couple of games and one loss to get their bearings against the Bulls, but when they did, there was really no stopping them. The hero that emerged from this series was former Raptor Chris Bosh, who had always been considered the low man on the Wade, James, Bosh totem pole. But he stepped up big time on both ends of the court and proved to just about everybody that he had as much game as his two brothers.

Out west, Dallas was now taking on the upstart

James Hardin became a big time hoops star in this series, despite being on the losing end.

Oklahoma City Thunder. This team is pretty much the future of the NBA with league scoring leader Kevin Durant and two incredible guards in the persons of Russell Westbrook and James Hardin. Hardin is the next hero to emerge, this time in a losing cause, but he played with amazing poise and savvy for a 21 year old with only two years of pro experience. Westbrook and Durant played well, but James Hardin shone like a true superstar and all I could think was, they need to hold on to this dude. Unfortunately, the youth and inexperience of the Thunder was no match for the Mavericks, who have turned into an amazing juggernaut of veterans who sense that this is probably their last collective chance to take it all the way.

The Heat will probably close out the Bulls tonight, and set up a final against the Mavericks which is going to be a classic generational matchup. A young powerhouse against an older powerhouse. This is going to be incredible to watch. And the best part is the games will not be starting at my bedtime.

PS: That all happened as as of this posting date, the Championship series is tied one-one. And it’s going to be a big time battle all the way.

 

 

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Vol 4

Articles Include:
• THE BIG KAHUNA AWARD 2011
• SPUDITORIAL: WHY HOLLYWOOD MOVIES SUCK
• NBA PLAYOFFS AKA SPUD HEAVEN

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See:
√√√ – Worth Seeing:
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan:
√ – Sucks.

THE BIG KAHUNA AWARD 2011

For those of you who are new to these goings on, the Big Kahuna award is something I give, in this column, not for real, to the best TV series of the 2010/2012 season. This year the final selection has a real international flavour, with a couple of series you may have never even heard of.

THE SPUD CENTRAL TOP 10

Outcasts…BBC/TV Wales Sci-Fi Series

The Big Bang Theory…North American Comedy

NCIS…US Network Series

The Good Wife…Us Network Series

Rubicon…AMC Series

Wallander…Masterpiece Mystery BBC/Swedish co-production

The Killing…AMC Series

Justified…FX Network Series

Blue Bloods…US Network Series

Terriers…FX Network Series

Now I always agonize over this a bit because everything on this list is √√√√ all the way. But at the end of the day, the winner is determined by answering the simple question, “What do I look forward to seeing every week?”

Juliana Margueles in a role the fits her like a glove.

So this year, The Big Kahuna Award goes to The Good Wife.

The Good Wife is the product of Scott Free Productions the highly successful production company owned and managed by Tony and Ridley Scott, who are both great directors ibn their own right. The show tells the story of a political family in Chicago and starts in the middle of a huge scandal. There are several very strong currents that flow through this series, which are the really the stories of the characters. What makes it Big Kahuna worthy however, is that it transcends genre stereotyping. There’s a lot of courtroom action, but it’s not a ‘lawyer’ show. There’s a lot of political intrigue, but it’s not a ‘political’ show. There’s a ton of high emotion, but it’s not a prime time soap. Instead it’s a new thing that uses bits of all three of the aforementioned genres to create its own indefinable character. Basically it’s a great story extremely well told, well acted, well written and well assembled. I’ve never been a big fan of Julianna Margueles, who is the star of the show. I always thought she was a little dour. But as The Good Wife, she’s got a part that suits her character to a T and you can’t help but love her. In fact, all the characters in this series are so well rendered that its really not hard to fall in love with them all.

The Good Wife has just wrapped up its second season. If you have not seen it, I strongly suggest watching it in order from the beginning of season one. Treats like this are coming along more and more often on TV these days, but in my book you can never have too many, and this year, The Good Wife, is the crème de la crème.

SPUDITORIAL: WHY HOLLYWOOD MOVIES SUCK

A couple of years ago I went with my wife to Kennedy Commons to see one of the Pirates of The Caribbean movies. I don’t remember which one and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that about halfway through the movie, I started to get very antsy and claustrophobic to the point where I actually had to get out of the theatre. At first I thought it was just me. I have a life long nervous condition and sometimes I just have to get up and move around. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this had very little to do with my medical condition and much more to do with the actual movie I was watching. It sucked.

Now when I say it sucked, I don’t mean that it was a poorly put together piece of crap, which a lot of movies admittedly are. This film was as well produced as they come, with great effects, first class movie stars, a top notch movie script and all the rest of the bells and whistles that make movies like this very profitable.

What I mean by this movie sucked is that, in spite of all the good stuff that was packed into it, the package itself was basically just a slightly different carbon copy of the one that came before it and the one before that. Let’s face it, the business of making big giant Hollywood blockbusters is way more business than it is show. Movie concepts are researched to death to make sure that movie audiences, most of whom don’t know shit from shinola about anything, will shell out their 10 bucks or whatever and help the studios and their investors recoup their investments at obscene levels of profit. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Hollywood movie stars don’t get to be movie stars based on their acting talent. They get to be stars based on their ability to put bums in seats. Screenwriters don’t get to be big Hollywood screenwriters because of their literary talent. They make big money because they know how to execute movies to the formula dictated to them by the studios who put up the money to make the movie.  Same goes for directors. Oh sure they are talented people, with lots of experience and skill. But what they are, most of all, are great paint by numbers painters.

All these people and all that talent is focused on one single goal. Making movies that suck. But these movies don’t really suck to the people for whom they are made. These are the people who believe all the hype, buy into the star system, like going to the movies and don’t really care about what the movie is about, as long as there is either a) a lot of cool special effects and chase sequences and/or b) the movie stars they have been hypnotized into falling in love with.

When you are young and stupid, pretty much everything you see at the moves has some sort of appeal. But that’s only because you don’t really know very much about anything. But as you get older and have more experience with movies, you start to see patterns emerge, patterns of derivativeness. Hollywood calls them sequels. More mature viewers call them ‘the same old same old’ and the totally jaded, like me, just write them off completely. When I think hard about it, I’ve only ever really seen about three original movies in my life and they were all made by Orson Welles and Frank Capra and even those were adapted from books.

Hollywood movies don’t suck because they’re bad. They suck because at some point in everybody’s life, assuming they aren’t brain dead idiots, people simply outgrow them.

I just finished watching the Masterpiece Theatre sponsored remake of Upstairs Downstairs and even though it could technically be classed as non-original, I enjoyed it more that any Hollywood movie I have seen in the past decade. Why did I enjoy it so much? Why didn’t it suck? Well it’s simple. This form of entertainment was designed for people like me, who have, as a result of having seen way too many formulized Hollywood movie constructs and discovering in the process that they are no longer in the target group, been forced to look elsewhere, like to books and TV.

TV has a lot of other advantages for people like me as well, the most important being that I get to watch it in the comfort of my own swivel rocker, wearing any kind of clothing I wish. Ancillary advantages are that I can watch whenever I feel like it. I can pause it to go the john, and there is nobody sitting behind me making insipid comments or crinkling cellophane.

I pay a good deal for having lots of TV channels and download capability. But what it means is that I can always be sure that pretty much everything I choose to watch won’t suck and if it does, the cost of rejecting it is nowhere near the cost of going out to a night at the movies, which I’m pretty sure, considering who I am, would suck too.

NBA PLAYOFFS AKA SPUD HEAVEN

Playoff season, in just about every sport on the planet, is a time when reputations are made or broken. It’s also a time when some people step up their games to a ridiculous level and leave you gasping at their awesomeness.

In this year’s NBA playoffs there has been no shortage of this sort of Herculean effort. Sometimes it’s the X factor that can carry a team to victory over seemingly hopeless odds. Sometimes it’s just a valiant effort in a losing cause. But win or lose, it’s always something to see and something you really don’t get to witness at any other time of the season.

If my elbow hurt like Rondo's, I certainly wouldn't be out there jousting with LeBron James.

This season, I picked the Miami Heat to make it to the championship round from the east and the Oklahoma Thunder from the west. The Heat, as just about everybody knows are primarily a triumverate of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James. There was a lot of  poo pooing from the little old ladies of broadcast sports when this happened, but not from Spud Central. I thought it was the best thing that could have happened to the NBA. The voluntary creation of a true supersquad that would take on all comers and bring the east at least back into balance with the NBA West that had been dominating the playoffs for the past decade.

The Heat got off to a shaky start and though they finished second in the east, the didn’t really look like they were living up to all their mostly self-generated hype. But then the playoffs rolled around and suddenly we all understood what all the hype has been about. They put away the 76ers and then moved on to their nemesis the Celtics. The Celtics, pretty much on their last big time kick at the can with their aging studs, put up a hell of a fight and their point guard Rajon Rondo became the first big hero of the playoffs. In the second last game Rondo dislocated his left elbow, had it reset and elastoplasted and came back out to finish the game, basically one-handed. This is the kind of effort I am talking about. The Heat finally put them away in 5 games but it felt like World War 3.

Out west, The Dallas Mavericks, led by Dirk Nowitsky, probably the second best all around player in the league, took the Portland Trail Blazer in 6 games then stunned the whole world by sweeping the LA Lakers who many had picked to win it all. Not me. I watched the Lakers underperforming and squeaking by the Hornets. You could feel there was something really wrong there. It was during this series that the second hero emerged in the person of Dallas guard Jason Terry. Terry basically shot the lights out on the Lakers who had absolutely no defense for him. Helped by Nowitsky, it was a real clinic. I stayed up late to watch every game, because nothing gives me more joy than watching the Lakers go down and go down they did.

So long Toronto, hello glory.

Meanwhile the Heat began their series with the #1 seeded Chicago Bulls, who are an excellent defensive team. But aside from their amazing point guard and league MVP Derrick Rose, have very little in the way of scoring power. It took the Heat a couple of games and one loss to get their bearings against the Bulls, but when they did, there was really no stopping them. The hero that emerged from this series was former Raptor Chris Bosh, who had always been considered the low man on the Wade, James, Bosh totem pole. But he stepped up big time on both ends of the court and proved to just about everybody that he had as much game as his two brothers.

Out west, Dallas was now taking on the upstart

James Hardin became a big time hoops star in this series, despite being on the losing end.

Oklahoma City Thunder. This team is pretty much the future of the NBA with league scoring leader Kevin Durant and two incredible guards in the persons of Russell Westbrook and James Hardin. Hardin is the next hero to emerge, this time in a losing cause, but he played with amazing poise and savvy for a 21 year old with only two years of pro experience. Westbrook and Durant played well, but James Hardin shone like a true superstar and all I could think was, they need to hold on to this dude. Unfortunately, the youth and inexperience of the Thunder was no match for the Mavericks, who have turned into an amazing juggernaut of veterans who sense that this is probably their last collective chance to take it all the way.

The Heat will probably close out the Bulls tonight, and set up a final against the Mavericks which is going to be a classic generational matchup. A young powerhouse against an older powerhouse. This is going to be incredible to watch. And the best part is the games will not be starting at my bedtime.

PS: That all happened as as of this posting date, the Championship series is tied one-one. And it’s going to be a big time battle all the way.

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Volume 3

Rating System

√√√√ – Must See
√√√ – Worth Seeing
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan
√ – Sucks

Here we are on a bright sunny and warm Saturday, the first of the long Victoria Day holiday weekend. I’m just waiting for the dew to burn off the grass and am heading out to cut it. The low pressure system that was stuck over us for the past week has moved on to depress the hell out of other North Americans. I’m sure it will be back, but for right now I’m all about making hay while the sun shines, and if you took a look at the length of my front lawn, you’d know that was actually the case.

Canada’s Worst Handyman √

Incompetent boobs polluting the airways with their stupidity.

The first two questions you have to ask yourself, even when you are just thinking about the concept of a show called Canada’s Worst Handyman are these:

Question 1. Is television really so desperate that they would green light a show that showed inept idiots basically making a complete mess of some renovation project?

Question 2. Why on earth does there seem to be no shortage of inept idiots who are willing to totally embarrass themselves by participating in a show that makes them looks like inept idiots.

Then there is a third question, which has to do with the fact that this bottom-of-the-barrel reality show has been on the air for 6 seasons. Six! The question is why? The answer to this question has very deep socio-psychological roots and it goes something like this. People, bless their shallow minds and pointy little heads, like watching other people fuck up, because it makes them feel less like fuckups themselves. This is a very sad state of affairs for our culture to be in when watching someone else inadequacies on display gives us a weird sense of satisfaction…makes us feel less inadequate than we do most of the time.

I’m not very big on people. In a general sense most people are slobs. They have nano second attention spans, no sense of history, and more and more these days cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. The do stupid stuff all the time and get angry whatever someone points it out to them. And they tend to believe that anything they see on television is somehow just as real as a lot of the stuff they see in real life. This is why a lot of people think manipulative bastards like Charlie Sheen, are just nice guys who are misunderstood. This is how, in another era someone like Tiny Tim could spin a number a one hit single singing Tiptoe Through The Tulips and accompanying himself on the ukulele.

Television is either directly or indirectly responsible for most of the world’s stupidity.

Mainly because they put stupid shit on the air and people watch it, and get stupider doing so. And that’s because television is both hypnotic and addictive. Why do you think it cost 3 million bucks to put a commercial on the Superbowl or any other massive event on television?  Advertisers aren’t stupid. But the people who allow themselves to be influenced to buy something they don’t really need or never really even knew existed until they saw it on TV, are.

And this isn’t really your run-of-the-mill, don’t-know-simple-math-or-grammar stupidity.

Because most people are smart enough in that regard, to hold down a job and manage to make a living. This stupidity expresses itself in a willingness to surrender yourself to whatever contrived idiocy comes your way on TV. Whether it’s a show about inept idiots fucking up a renovation, or a sexist sitcom like How I Met Your Mother, or the complete and abject venom spewing trailer trash confrontations on Jerry Springer. This shit is everywhere and it will kill your brain slowly, almost like you don’t even know it’s happening.

But you can start to do something about it, by making it a rule that you will never watch Canada’s Worst Handyman. First of all, you won’t be missing much, because it’s a stupid show starring idiots. Secondly, not participating in the watching of idiots will do more for your self-esteem that watching this kind of programming ever could. You can feel proud that you haven’t sunk to ‘idiot level’.  Because watching these shows is time you will never get back.

The Top √√√√ TV Series You’ve Probably Never Seen (May 2011)

With very few exceptions, mainline network television is an ever iffy proposition. And since the point of this column, besides being a place for me to rant, is helping people get the most out of their entertainment time, the following list make another appearance. It could actually be much longer, but, hey if I put everything in one column what would I have to write about next time?

 1. True Blood. Modern day vampire tale created by Alan Ball. This isn’t your father’s Vampire series. It’s tough and cool and extremely powerful, with amazing characters and story lines.

2. Rubicon. AMC-produced story of power and corruption in the intelligence business. Everything that happens in this exquisitely produced series has two meaning and the puzzle takes a long lovely time to figure out.

 3. Wallander. A Swedish/British series of made for TV movies based on the novels of Henning Mankel and starring Kenneth Branaugh as a manic Swedish police detective whose sleuthing abilities are the only thing in his life that isn’t totally pooched

4. The Shadow Line. British made mini series about the heroin trade in England. Full of nasty characters and extremely clever plotting. Like all British series, the writing is incredible and the acting superb.

5. Outcasts. British made sci-fi series about a group of earthlings in the process of establishing a colony on a far planet, after our earth becomes unlivable. Totally compelling viewing and complex plotting all the way through.

 6. Justified. Just finished its second season, this extremely well put together series features a collaboration between Graham Yost and legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard. This is arguably the best American made series on cable.

7. Thorne.  Another extremely complex murder mystery series that plays out its season in three episode long stories. Very powerful stuff.

8. Episodes. Black comedy about a couple of British TV writers who sell their successful series to an American producer and go through hell trying to get it made.

9. Game of Thrones.  Epic HBO production based on the fantasy book series of George RR Martin. It’s a soap opera on steroids, kind of a Lord of The Rings for TV. Absolutely amazing.

10: The Killing. This is an AMC produced murder melodrama set in Seattle. It’s slow moving but filled with tension and interesting characters. I found this at least as good as the other great AMC series, Rubicon. At AMC their motto is “Story Matters”. They stay true to that all the way here.

A Good Case For Justifable Homicide

This is the kind of asshole that causes accidents, anger and road rage. Kind of sad when you think about how self-centred a lot of people in our society have become.

I’m going to have lunch with T Lewis and a potential client up in the wilds of Thornhill or Markham or whatever it is called up there…nosebleed territory as it’s known by people who live near the lake. It’s the middle of the day so I figure it will be OK to take the Parkway up cause I also have to get a couple things at the nearby Costco and could use the extra time to do that. So I get on at Dundas and start heading north and I’m making good time, singing along with old Bob Dylan songs from my Ipod which we have recently discovered, can be plugged into our car stereo. I’m clipping along, just approaching Eglinton, when all of a sudden things start to slow down dramatically.

Now this is not unusual, because as you approach the 401 cutoff a lot of the dufeses in this town still don’t know which lanes to use for east or west or to continue on to the 404 to God’s country.  It’s a rare beautiful day so I open the window, since I’m only doing about 55 km/hr. Off in the distance ahead of me I’m hearing strange noises, as a continue, I realize that they are car horns. Lots of them. And I’m thinking maybe it’s a wedding. Yeah right let’s gets hitched on a Wednesday morning and then head up the Parkway. Now I’m continuing on to the 404 so I get into the outside lane, which is moving considerably faster than the centre lane which I had been occupying. In a few minutes I come up on what looks to be a convoy of cars,  all honking horns, not in the celebratory fashion either. This was angry shit. Soon I find myself slowly passing a grey minivan. In it is a nerdy looking guy with a white short sleeved shirt and tie, wearing horn rimmed glasses. His hands are at the top of the steering wheel and not just holding onto the wheel, but also a small Blackberry phone. This dumb fuck is doing about 50 km/hr with a mile of empty lane ahead of him and dividing his attention between looking around like a scared rabbit and texting on his goddamn phone, with a huge chorus of horns blaring behind him.

This asshole was a one man DVP traffic jam. In the space of a few seconds, which was really all I had, since I was moving much faster than him, I had a crystal clear fantasy of some homeboy in a little Honda or even a big Escalade, pulling up beside this guy, drawing out a Beretta 9 mm, lowering his passenger side window and putting several slugs into this asshole’s head. That fantasy was easily one of the most satisfying of the day for yours truly. But the reality is that in a lot of other places, especially in the big democracy to the south of us, that wouldn’t be a fantasy…it would be just another day on the highway. Texters beware.  Texting and driving are a lot more dangerous than you think. If somebody kills you for fucking up their day by your asinine behaviour, you only have yourself to blame. And in my book, it’s totally justifiable homicide.

Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 – Volume 2

Spud Rating System
√√√√ – Must See:
√√√ – Worth Seeing:
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan:
√ – Sucks.

MAY 2, 2011:  O Bin Laden – Occupation: Pushing Up Daisies

The USA has finally done what it’s been trying to do for 10 long years. And while I have not always seen eye to eye with the Americans on a number of issues, I can’t help but applaud them for this. Sure it was probably cold-blooded murder. But the American people have been needing something to feel good about for quite some time and even if the killing of Bin Laden is just a temporary feelgood moment, it is a feelgood moment all the same.

I remember the utter feeling of disbelief I had when I watched the events of 9/11. And even though I was in a different country, I grew up with a lot of American friends and while I don’t always understand Americans, the ones I knew were all basically good people. You can’t judge a country’s people by their government, especially a Republican government run by bozos and warmongers, not necessarily in that order. But maybe the killing of Bin Laden will give the people who lost loved ones in 9/11 and in the many battles in the War On Terror, some sense of closure and renewed faith in their country’s ability to kick back when kicked.

On Bin Laden’s side, his death will be hailed as an act of martyrdom and probably fuel a lot of recruitment to terrorist organizations. But today, and for probably a couple of days to come, the USA can turn east and shake a fist at radical Islam.

Facebook Rant Followup

Last time I did a little rant on Facebook and my bright young nephew, Michael Gunn, dropped me a line to straighten me out on the matter.

“Congrats on getting back into the blog. I figured you would eventually get tired of not talking about TV shows and movies. And I agree with what you said about FB. But if you want to know the truth, it was made for my generation, and we know how to make the most of it, because we use it to plan social events, even mundane social situations. We extend our consciousness into it, and for some reason it works for us. The risk of addiction is the price we willingly pay.”

Now in addition to skillfully putting me into my place (old fart who knows how to use a Mac), he managed to very succinctly sum up the attitude of a whole generation of people, about whom, it could very well be, I know very little.

I do understand Facebook. And my criticism really doesn’t have much to do with anything, especially people like Michael Gunn. I guess what I really find lacking on Facebook is the true conversation that people are supposed to be having. The real interchange of ideas. Mostly, any maybe it’s just the result of the ‘friends’ on my page,

I get a lot of ‘Just checking in” from wherever stuff. And a lot of attempts to start conversations that are really to abstract or too trivial to get your head around. It’s hard to respond to thing you think are dopey.

But in a blinding flash of insight, it just recently occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I need to get some new friends.

Sport Snort Sort Of

As I said before, I was only following one payoff series in the east and one in the west and quite frankly neither of them has been disappointing. I know that there are not a ton of hoops fans among my readers, but when it gets to playoff time, in almost any sport, the energy level and the quality of the playing is really hard to resist.

My sister Sharon once told me that sports is the original reality TV, and she’s got that absolutely right. Most of the new reality TV out there is really nothing but crap. Remember that reality TV really got its start about eight or nine years ago when there was a big writer’s strike in Hollywood and there weren’t a lot of scripted programs getting produced. And since it’s a well known fact that the majority of people out there will watch pretty much anything you throw up in front of them, a lot of this stuff simply wormed its way into the public consciousness, caught on and simply stayed there. But unlike these reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother and all the rest of the crap that sprang up around it, sports has always been compelling, not because it brings out the worst in people but because it brings out the best.

Now there is an upside to the reality show craze and that is that it has brought about shows like So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol which really are designed to bring out the best in people and also give a real shot in the arm to the performing arts  communities that have been virtually decimated by the economic crisis. (Art is always the first to go).

Anyway, having said all that, the NBA series that I have been following; Chicago Bulls/Indian Pacers in the east and Denver Nuggets/ Oklahoma City Thunder in the west have been real solid examples of exactly the kind of playoff action I was talking about.

Every game has been exciting, hard fought and full of athletic heroics by one or more players.

Tonight as the Chicago Bulls closed out their series against the Pacers, I was almost sad to see it end. But then I realized that in a few short days, they’ll be back at it and be forced to take their game to yet another level of excellence. And so on and so on until, if they manage to do that each series, they will be the champs. And it will also be sometime in June and I will no longer be bitching about the weather every chance I get.

 TEEVEELAND

Breaking In (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630574/)

This is a very funny new show that was created by actor/writer Adam Goldberg for his pal Adam Sandler’s company, Happy Madison Productions. It stars Christian Slater and   a bunch of relatively unknown actors and is set in a high tech security company which is owned by Christian’s character. The show is very quick, very slick and very almost over the top (into slapstick) funny. Christian’s character, who is called Oz, is a strange mixture of high tech madman genius and special ops assassin so he’s both feared and admired in the way that only fictional TV bosses can be.  This show is a pure shot of adrenalin mixing breakneck pacing and staccato dialogue with insanely clever plotting all in a 30 (23) minute comedy. It’s one of the brightest things I’ve seen on network TV in quite some time. Of course, it’s on Fox and the other biggies probably wouldn’t have the balls to put it on. √√√

Fade Up A Sunny Day In Toronto

I couldn’t believe it. I woke up this morning and the sun (vaguely remembered) was shining. The temperature was cool but the air pressure was high and I knew it would warm up. I immediately went down and started checking the weather, just to make sure this nice sunny morning wasn’t just a temporary aberration in the pattern of shitty weather we have been having since, I don’t know, last September. I checked all the possible sources of weather news at my disposal and determined that this is deed was every bit what it appeared to be. A sunny day in Toronto. At about 11:00 I went outside and stood in the sun for a good ten minutes, starting at the sky in all directions. I know the Weather people all told me it was going to stay sunny for most of the day, but I was still skeptical. The last thing I wanted to do was to head out for my mega bike ride (what else would you do on a sunny day) and end up getting rained on and ending up catching a cold or some other crap like that.

 Cut to the end of the sunny day.

It was a whole day of sunshine. We had somehow managed to cheat the devilish weather bitch La Nina who is causing all this crappy weather and a ton of death and destruction further south. I’m not sure, but when I look at all the tornadoes and violent weather and flooding that’s occurring on a regular basis from here down to the Gulf of Mexico, I get the feeling that somebody has saddled up one of the horses of the apocalypse. God, I hope not.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day. It’s supposed to be shitty so we can all relax and give up our hopes for a summery like spring season…that is of course, until the next sunny day comes along.

Network Series Worth Watching When They Re-Run

 OVERVIEW: All in all this was a pretty good season. Not so much for new shows as it was for returning shows, but I can’t remember a year when it wasn’t like that. These blurbs are in the order of the night of the week the shows appear.

HAWAII FIVE-O: Action packed remake of the original with a great cast and more political intrigue that you would have thought possible for such a small place.

CASTLE: Light police drama about a big time novelist who gets permission to hang with a good looking NYPD homicide detective. The plots are complex and the character interaction is a lot of fun.

CRIMINAL MINDS: After 6 seasons, this very violent cop series is getting ready to bring on a whole new crew, run by Forrest Whittaker. This new crew is much more physical than cerebral, but it’s a good logical extension to one of the TVs most successful shows.

NCIS: In its 8th season and still right on top of the rating charts, this show has a great blend of character, plotting, forensics and politics. It’s like CSI only with a pulse.

THE GOOD WIFE: This is right up there with Harry’s Law in terms of the quality of writing, acting character interaction and storyline. Julianna Marguiles, where I was never very crazy about has found herself the perfect vehicle as a wronged woman torn six ways from Sunday. This is probably my favourite show of the season.

NIKITA: This is an updated version of the ‘B’ series from a few years. Maybe it’s because McG is at the helm that the overall quality of the show is that much better. It’s kind of a spy series and it’s kind of a ‘you go girl’ show too.

HUMAN TARGET: This is another heavy-on-the-action show about a group of bodyguards who take on impossible cases. The characters are terrific and though the plots are always kind of out there, you really don’t mind because you’re having so much fun watching them.

CHASE: As the name implies this show is about a squad of US Marshalls in Houston who end up tracing down people on the run. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer show, so you know that the quality will be very high. The main character is a little unlikeable, but she kina grows on you.

BLUE BLOODS: This is the story of the Reagan family, who are all either cops or DAs and its one of the best new shows of the season. Tom Selleck is the father, and Donnie Whalberg one of the sons, so that’s a lot of punch right there. Lots of cop politics mixed in the great police work.

MODERN FAMILY: A multigenerational comedy about a family told in a kind of mockumentary style. This show can be very funny or just very pleasant. A lot of the stuff that happens in your family happens in this show.

THE BIG BANG THEORY: This is, in my humble opinion, the best sitcom yet. Four genius level nerds who work at a big polytech and do all the stuff that nerds do and some of the stuff they don’t. Jim Parsons is absolutely amazing as the head genius. This show is extremely well-written and very funny.

THE MENTALIST: Simon Baker plays a consultant to something called the California Bureau of Investigations and helps them solve crimes through intuition and observation. The show has a perfect balance of seriousness and whimsy, which is a common element in most of the highly rated TV shows.

 THE DEFENDERS: This show, about a pair of Las Vegas lawyers is a lot of fun thanks to Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell. The plots are not much to write home about, but the show is charming and fairly easy to watch. Seems like there’s always room on TV for a show set in Vegas.

LIE TO ME: Tim Roth is amazing as a facial action coding and body language expert who works for law enforcement agencies and anybody else who walks through the door. This show is very intense and complex and Roth is powerful enough to carry it without breaking a sweat. I love it.

 FRINGE: This show, in it’s third and what looks to be final season, has been a fascinating sci fi journey. It’s one of those show where everything doesn’t make sense then suddenly it does. Man, I wish I could write like that. All that plus Aussie Anna Torv, who is one seriously hot chick. PS Finge has been renewed for a 4^th season. Hot socks.!

Plus Second Season Debuts

THE CAPE: A very lavish filmed graphic novel with a solid good vs evil premise and great stuff happening every week. My only fear with this show is that because it’s a big budget show without a big audience it may not be able to support itself.

HARRY’S LAW: David E. Kelley, one of the best writers in the history of modern TV is back with a news series about a former patent attorney who decides to start running a local criminal practice in Cincinatti. As usual the characters (starting with Kathy Bates) as Harry, right on down are all incredible because Mr. Kelley and his crew are just the best a giving this great stuff to say. I love this show as much as I loved Boston Legal.

The Couch Potato Chronicles 2011 Vol 1

Spud Rating System

√√√√ – Must See:
√√√ – Worth Seeing:
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan:
√ – Sucks

Back From The (Brain) Dead.

It’s been close to two years since I shut down The Couch Potato Chronicles. But here we are again. After ten years and 375 or more (I really don’t know) columns, you would think that I had had enough punishment. And I thought I did I did too. But as time went by and I experimented with different blogs, Twitter and Facebook and all that other anti-social media, I came to the conclusion that the Internet is really just another tool designed to keep us dumb and scared. Scared and dumb. Absorbing info in byte sized bits, none of which really have any substantial impact on our lives, but the sum total of which have turned us into zombie-like creatures with attention spans that are way too short and a manic nature that ebbs and flows like the tides. By us, of course I mean me. I have no idea what the fuck is happening to you. But I suspect you may be feeling a bit of the same new age malaise.

So here I am. Back to writing in sentences that could run on way past 140 characters and reviewing the stuff I expose myself to as either a good tip or a stern warning. Either way, I will attempt to be as entertaining as possible. Because I know reading a whole one of these columns can be a bit of work, especially if you are attention span-deprived like me.

Hopefully, together, we can conquer the evils that the modern world is throwing down in our path and get back to where we used to be, when we could read rolling stone from cover to cover and tear off a good chunk of Tolstoy or Salman Rushdie in one sitting. I miss those days. I miss the way my brain used to function back them, before the Internet with its blazing barrage of tiny tidbits took over my life and turned me into a moron. I want to reclaim my brain and with it, hopefully my soul.

Hope you will come along for the ride.

Facebook…Addictive Even If You’re Not Nosey or Have A Political Agenda

Facebook, I really do believe, is one of those ideas the world can do without. It’s proof positive that a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands and need something to do with it. Maybe that’s what Steve Zutterberg was thinking when he created it in the first place. Way to go, Steve, you guessed correctly.

A lot of people say that Facebook is social networking in its ultimate form. But there’s really very little that’s social about it, save for the odd time you run into someone from your distant past and agree to reconnect with them, physically that is. Person to person. Across a  Starbuck’s table or in a pub. Reconnecting with people on line is just about as unfulfilling a process as you can imagine. Yet, there are more than half a billion people on Facebook, and from my observations, the majority of them are using it a lot.

I’ve never been exactly sure why people feel the need to share so much with people they don’t know. Maybe there’s a weird kind of release that comes from posting personal stuff to an anonymous audience. Kind of like all those teenage girls who use their web cams to shoot themselves masturbating in their bedrooms. You can do anything you want on line, and chances are nobody will ever remember it, because there’s just so much crap floating around that after a while it all starts running together and anonymity within chaos is pretty easy to preserve.

I will say two good things about Facebook. One is that, if someone is a little bit off, and I have a couple of people on my friends list that are like that, it’s kind of amusing to follow their (usually downward) spiral. It’s like watching a train wreck. You know it’s gross but you can’t stop watching. The second good thing is that Facebook can put you in touch with people from your past. In my case, it’s a guy named Dave Menear. Dave was the first art director I ever worked with at a small agency called Butler MacKenzie and then later on during the dreaded Clancy years. Dave moved to Montreal about 30 years or so ago and has gone through as many job changes as I have. I actually first tracked him down on linked in when he sent me a link request.  Anyway, the long and short of it is, on Monday, if the gods are smiling, we’ll be getting together down on Queen Street somewhere to play a little catch up.

Now admittedly, I’m no expert on playing the Facebook game. And it is a game for sure. I could have a lot more friends. I could take the time to search out more people from my past. But hey, I’ve never been very big on the past at the best of times. Like all forms of internet activity from porn sites to jack-ass videos to games to social media, you can take it or leave it. I’m not sure I know why so many people are addicted to Facebook. But I do know that it is addictive, and that eventually all addictions will damage you in some way.

Maybe I’m just a masochist and hanging in to see how it damages me.

TeeVeeLand

Game Of Thrones - Blockbuster TV Sundays on HBO.

Game Of Thrones √√√√

This is a much anticipated HBO (Hurl Bucks Obsessively) production of first novel of the “Songs Of Fire & Ice” fantasy novels by George RR Martin. I don’t know who this dude is but he borrows heavily from both Mervyn Peake (Ghormagast) and Tolkien and has created a pretty amazing fantasy realm in which to tell the story.

Essentially Game of Thrones is the story of a mythical kingdom that looks to be set in about the 10^th Century. There is a King on the throne and another king who has been exiled and it looks very much like a war is brewing between these factions.

This series is beautifully detailed, costumed, written and acted by a very large cast of characters. But it mainly seem to revolve around the Stark family, of whom Sean Bean is the head. He’s the current king’s right hand man and will probably manage the battles to come.

In the opening episode there are several different sub-plots which are established and it’s a bit of a brain teaser keeping up with exactly who is who. But the storyline is compelling and the forces at odds here are extremely powerful. This series has the look and feel of a made-for-TV Lord of The Rings or Robin Hood and will probably be worth owning when the DVD comes out too.

Game Of Thrones is more than just a new TV series. It’s a real HBO event and it is all its been hyped up to be and a bag of chips

Sports Report

NHL

I’ll be the first to admit that I have completely lost it for NHL hockey. It is a league run by reactionary old farts, managed by old school sadists and played by young idiots with shit for brains. So as far as the playoffs go, you won’t get any news here. You will get however a plea from me to boycott watching NHL hockey until all the brain dead idiots  finally wise up and stop trying to concuss each other to death. For what its worth, I feel the same way about mixed martial arts, which, in addition to being all the idiot sport hockey is, has the distinct advantage of being extremely boring as well.

NBA

It’s playoff time and there are so many series going on that you kind of have to pace yourself or run the serious risk of getting ‘basketballed out’, which will make the next couple of months no fun.  So I have picked one eastern and one western series to follow. 

Derrick Rose. NBA MVP or there's no god.

Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers

Although this is a 1 seed – 8 seed matchup, the Bulls and Pacers match up well and that always makes for some interesting basketball, by which I mean strongly contested tight games. The Bulls will probably sweep this series but it really doesn’t feel that way from the three games I have seen so far, in which the Bulls have just squeaked out a V. But the quality of basketball being played here is absolutely outstanding and their MVP point guard Derrick Rose is showing everybody just why the Bulls had the best regular season record in the NBA. PS Bulls lost game 4 which is actually making this feel like a series and not a sweep.

OKC Thunder and Denver Nuggets

Kevin Durant - Big Gun In OK City

My west pick is a 4/5 matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Denver Nuggets. The Thunder, with recently acquired big man, Kendrick Perkins, are probably the best balanced team I have see this season. With points leader Kevin Durant and his back court buddy, Russell Westbrook, and a bunch of really fine role players, this team looks unbeatable. They are already up over the Nuggets who are also very well balanced, but lack the scoring punch that of their opponents. This was lost in the Carmelo Anthony trade. However, this basketball is fun to watch, and I think Oklahoma City can go all the way to the finals. Whether their young players have the stamina to endure the grueling playoffs is the only question in my little brain.

PGA

No Tiger. No news.

MovieLand

Nothing much to report here. I’ve been too busy with the NBA playoffs to watch any movies. Plus it’s a bad time of year for them. Nothing but schlock horror and movies that weren’t good enough to compete at Christmas.

Avatar

I’m pretty much on par with the biggest James Cameron fan there is. First of all he’s a fellow Canuk. Secondly, he has gone to Hollywood and pretty much taken over the place. Thirdly, his movies are always, always very interesting.

This time around, however, things are a little different, because while I thought Avatar was a visually stunning movie to look at, its story line (big bad mining company raping a planet at the expense of the indigenous people) is nothing really new in sci-fi. I also thought that it appeared to have been very much created as a movie for everyone to watch and that kinda made me uncomfortable. Like sometimes I was at a kid’s movie and other times not so much. The net effect for me was an unevenness that a true master like Mr. Cameron very seldom displays in his work.

Avatar is now officially the largest grossing movie of all time, slipping ahead of Titanic, not coincidentally, also produced and directed my Mr Cameron. And in the movie business, you really can’t knock success, so I will concede that, my two caveats aside, that Avatar is a great movie.

For the two or three of you who have not yet seen it, I would suggest that you do so in the biggest baddest theatre you can find. It’s also available in 3-d. But I’ve yet to embrace that concept. Think I’ll wait for the holographic version.

There is a lot of really good stuff in this movie, although I found some of the creatures, especially the more violent ones to be very obviously CGI constructs. This is weird when you consider all the hype this movie got for breaking new ground. Maybe they just meant in marrying live action with CGI effects, I don’t know. But the scenes in which the violent characters appeared were damn scary, regardless of the quality of their rendering.

Being a great film maker and storyteller, Mr Cameron is very good at taking you along on a surreal kind of ride. And, of course, his choice of actors is always impeccable. Sigourney Weaver is terrific as the chain smoking scientist who invented the Avatar concept. Likewise with Giovanni Ribisi who plays the head of the mining consortium that is draining the planet. He’s a little slimeball. With the exception of Stephen Lang, who plays the Colonel in charge of the Marine unit stationed on the planet, pretty much everybody else is kind of unknown. So there’s not a lot of star power getting in the way of the movie here, which actually adds to your enjoyment.

Anyway, I’m glad I finally saw Avatar, and when you see it, you will be too.

(2 Spuds)