Volume 364

KNOW YOUR SPUDS

TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See

TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out

1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton

ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan

NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

 

 

It’s almost November. I’m sitting in front of the horking big computer as listening to the second game of the World Series. I much prefer baseball on the radio, being afflicted with the modern spud’s ADD, because it allows me to do several things at once and still getting the full effect of the game. It’s the bottom of the 7^th inning and The Yankees are leading the Phillies 3 to 1 and I’m in spud heaven, iteration #4. There’s something really cool about baseball on the radio. It reminds me of my youth when me and Doug Ineson and Rick Schuler would sit out in Schuler’s back yard, sucking on cokes in glass bottles and listening to the World series. The air was crisp and cool and everybody was an expert. We didn’t have a home team too root for per se, but Fort Erie, where I grew up was American League Territory all the way. The Yankees and The Red Sox, The Detroit Tigers and the Chicago White Socks, The Cleveland Indians…it didn’t matter. The game was the thing. I sort of feel the same way still, although this year, I kind of like the National League Phillies, cause my sister is a rabid Yankees fan and that just keeps things interesting.

Well it’s Halloween in a couple of days, and I have to say, that while the wife is usually pretty gung ho about it, she seems to have lost a little of her fervor this year. We’re gonna head down to Fort Erie to see my dad and the rest of the clan on Saturday, and take the long way back, stopping somewhere for dinner in Oakville or Mississauga. It’s not that we’re grinches. It’s just that whenever we do Halloween, we always buy too much crap to give out, get too few kids coming to the door and have a whole bunch of empty calories to consume as a result. This is not something we’re into these days.

 

WHATEVER WORKS (NO SPUD 4U)

Woody Allen doesn’t seem to like to be in his own movies these days. So he found himself the next best whiney middle aged Jewish guy he could find in the person of Larry David. And that would be fine, except for the fact that Larry David is really a one trick pony and after a few minutes of that trick, what comes across to you in spades is that this guy can’t act for shit.

Woody Allen is an acquired taste at the best of times, except for his earlier funny movies and if it weren’t for all the film snobs in New York City who have dubbed him a cinematic genius, I’m not sure he would have had any sort of career in the film business. His movies are all self-indulgent and maybe for the past 20 years or so, have had nothing new to really say.

This movie, Whatever Works, is a prime example of a Woody Allen re-tread (of Manhattan), with the whiney and grumpy Larry David playing the whiney only Woody Allen character, which is really only a thinly disguised avatar of himself. This movie is primarily all about bitching about how the world and most of its population sucks. It’s tiresome, arrogant and thanks to the profoundly untalented Larry David, just plain monotonous.  In fact the acting overall in this movie gives you the distinct impression that the director was really elsewhere when the talent needed directing.

Guess you could say I have fallen out of love with Woody Allen. He’s made more than 50 filmsand I can only honestly recommend half a dozen or so.  Annie Hall, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Love and Death and of course Bananas.

Sorry Woody. But it does get old.

MY TWEET: Apologies to Woody Allen, but this movie sucks. Apologies to Larry David, but dude, you can’t act. (No Spud 4U)

WHITE COLLAR   (2XL SPUDS)

IN A NUTSHELL: This is, without reservation, one of the most entertaining new shows of the season.  It stars Matt Bomer (Chuck, Traveler, Tru Calling), who plays an really smart thief who is taken out of prison by an FBI guy  (Evans Forlidas) and together they solve really complex White Collar crimes. This show treads the same path as shows like Moonlighting and Remington Steel, but here it’s done with great writing, solid plotting and a lighthearted attitude as opposed to Star power.

THE REVIEW: This show, thanks mainly to the high quality production (thanks to Canuk Director Bronwyn Hughes), and the great writing, is up there with the best of the US cable network shows like Dexter, Damages, and the Sopranos. Yeah, it’s that good.  I hope this show has a good long run because it’s not too often that you come away from watching a show and wish you could just watch another episode right away. FEARLESS FORECAST: As JM Schneider’s advertising agency said. “You can taste the difference quality makes.” And White Collar tasted Mmm mmm Good. If they can keep up this level of quality, these know reason why this show can’t enjoy a healthy run of at least three seasons.

MY TWEET: White Collar. Top notch action adventure caper series. Slick & complex, just like I like it. 2 XL Spuds right out of the gate.

SANCTUARY THE FIRST SEASON (2 SPUDS)

I just finished off the first 13 episodes of Sanctuary, the outstanding sci-fi series that airs on the Sci-Fi network. This should be out on DVD shortly and if you like your sci-fi mixed in with a bit of literary fantasy, with great characters, solid high end TV effects, weird creatures and a story line that’s a couple hundred years in length, then this series will be right up your alley.

Sanctuary started originally as a web based series, but got amazingly popular after its launch that it was switched up to TV. In short The Sanctuary is a kind of research facility that specialized in studying what are called in this sci-fi world, abnormals. These are weird creatures of pretty much every shape and size that can be found pretty much anywhere in this particular world. The Sanctuary, once of many around the world is run by a doctor who is almost 200 years old (thanks to an infusion of, you guessed it, pure vampire blood) she is part of a cult of immortals with special powers which include Jack the Ripper, Nikola Tesla, Dr Watson and a bunch of other memorable characters. It’s a real historical ensemble cast.
Of course there’s a rival group of scientists called The Cabal, which is as intent on destroying the abnormals as the Sanctuary types are on saving them. So there’s an overarching conflict that keeps things very interesting.

The individual episodes are more like stylized episodes of the Twilight Zone than anything else. They are all incredibly clever and I have infinite respect for all the great minds at work here. Obviously you have to be a big fan of flat out fantasy to buy into the premise of this show but once you do, you get to spend your hours in a very well imagined universe that bears very little resemblance to our own. It’s called escapism and these days we would all use as much of it as we can get.

THE WORLD SERIES AND OTHER STUFF

Just so you know, my fearless forecast for this years world series was Yankees in 6 games and then I was so bold as to predict the final score of the winning game 7-3. This is verifiable on my Twitter page. And I will be damned if this prediction didn’t come absolutely true.

Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that my ability to predict these types of events and generally predict twice as many winners as losers in any given NFL season, I have a chronic fear of actually putting my money where my mouth is. This may stem from the fact that a long time ago now a friend, who was a 20^th level hermatician (astrologer), which is pretty much as high up as you can go in the astrology field, did a chart for me and found nothing in the chart to indicate that I would ever gain anything other than through the process of hard work.

So I have always been wary of contests, lotteries, sports betting, casino gambling, even board games with my family, safe in the knowledge that I will never really win. What I’m really good at, however is the prognostication. My approach to this is almost purely intuitive, because my judgement is not tainted by the pressure of laying out, and potentially losing, money. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether I won or lost because was nothing to be lost or gained. Yet I still get all the added interest in the games, which makes them more fun to watch.

It’s kind of the best of both worlds.

Well that’s all I’ve got for this volume. I’ve been very busy with work and working on the Our Green Directory Site and have very little spare time, it would seem these days. Oh well, it’s not like I haven’t had my share of spare time in the past and probably in the future too.

MY TWITTER LINKS

http://twitter.com/TheCouchSpud

And the green site twitter is quickly approaching 1000 followers.

http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com.  We have begun our search engine optimization program, which means we’ll be signing up even more companies. And we have a few more bells and whistles that we’ll be adding to make it most appealing to visitors. It’s fun. We have also started to localize this site, because it’s one thing to find something you’ve been looking for on a directory site, and quite another to be able to go and get it. So our Green Directory is going to be all about GTA green businesses, and on line business.

 

Volume 363

KNOW YOUR SPUDS

TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

It’s October so Jimmy has a cold. A big nasty cough-your-guts-out-head-feels-like-a-bag-of -hammers-and-your-mouth-feels-like-you’re-suckin’-on-an-old-sock cold. I really don’t care what anyone tells me about Cold fx or megavitamins or sweating it out in a sauna, a cold is a goddamn cold and it’s finished when it’s finished. Sure you can take all kinds of drugs to make yourself feel a little more numb, but at the end of the day, you’re just a numb guy with a cold. I kinda don’t really mind them all that much. It gives you an excuse to lay around and take it real easy. Which is exactly what I’m gonna do. Hell it’s a good time for laying around.

You got the President’s Cup, great baseball playoff games, pre-season basketball and a bunch of new shows to watch and none of that pesky exterior home maintenance to deal with.  ‘Scuse me while I ingest some spicy noodles and drain the sinuses a bit.

GHOST TOWN (2 SPUDS)

Ricky Gervais is a tubby little British comic who got really famous making a series called The Office, which is head and shoulders about its ripped off American counterpart. Ricky is funny in a droll kind of way and that makes him just perfect for the role he plays in this inventive little flick in which he plays a curmudgeonly dentist who goes in for a colonoscopy and manages to die on the operating table, but only for a few minutes. This is evidently enough to attract the attention of all the lost souls hovering around in New York city waiting to move on, but needing somebody like Ricky to make that possible. And so it goes. This movie has a lot of nice touches and strong supporting performances, especially from Greg Kennear as a wheeler dealer who gets hit by a bus and who really needs Ricky to prevent his widow from marrying the guy she’s intending to marry.

Ricky is a very skillful actor and manages this character’s arc with real aplomb and believability if you can use that word to describe anything that goes on in a movie about ghosts.

This is the kind of movie that Hollywood does well and it’s really worth checking out if you’re looking for something light and touching.

GI JOE  (1.5 SPUDS)

This a completely manufactured movie. It was directed by Stephen Sommers, who, among

Other things is responsible for the Mummy series and Van Helsing, all top notch action adventure stuff. When I say completely manufactured, I mean that the first thing we notice is that the Hasbro toy company has a whole lot to do with this movie, which means that the suits who were barking at the creative people on this movie are not necessarily the kind of suits they are used to dealing with.

I’m not exactly sure that that all means, but I do know that this movie suffers from a fundamental lack of charm, in that all the characters are so stereotypical and all come across so serious that they just manage to suck the fun out of what could have been, with a little more humour, a super good film. In other words, this movie was all about the CGI effects and the gizmos and the technology. It sure as hell wasn’t about good guys and bad guys because I had a heck of a time telling them apart.

On the upside, the technology and the actions sequences in this film are nothing short of amazing. But that’s more a tribute to how far these effects have comes in the billion terabyte universe of digital technology. And for students of that aspect of the film business, this is a must see movie. But if you look at GI Joe as a complete movie experience, well, compared to other less tricked out films in this genre, it comes up way short in a lot of categories not the least important of which are character development and character interaction.

Most people who watch this movie might not be bothered by any of this, after all they’re mostly going for the testosterone rush, and there’s plenty of that there. I just came away feeling that if I had a couple hundred million to spend on an action picture, I’d go and  watch things like Die Hard, and Hellboy and make sure I didn’t create wooden characters to fit into my titanium and nanobot universe.

MY TWEET: GI Joe. Looks like the CGI people beat the movie people in this one. Great to look at…Hard to watch & appreciate.

THE BORDER (2 XL SPUDS)

I’ve been watching this show for two full seasons and really do think it’s the best Canadian television series ever made, just a hair ahead of Intelligence, the great and unjustly shortlived Chris Haddock series about weed dealers on the Left Coast. At the end of last season a very complex story line came to a head with a mafia massacre of immigration people, putting the head honcho (James McGowan) into the hospital and several other agents in the morgue.

This season I am assuming more of the same but with more politics, as the RCMP and the Ministry they work for are trying to close them down all together.

This show is as good looking fast paced, intelligent, well acted and well written as anything in its genre on TV and yet at the same time, it’s unabashedly Canadian. We should be proud of shows like this and support them 100%. And the best part of all is that that is really easy to do, since The Border is extremely entertaining.

MY TWEET: Looks like the CGI people beat the movie people in this one. Great to look at…Hard to watch & appreciate.

THE PROPOSAL (2 SPUDS)

For what this is, namely a light, fluffy chickflickish romantic comedy, it’s pretty entertaining.
It’ stars Sandra Bullock, who still looks pretty good though she’s not too far from the next stage of her career. ie. Somebody’s Mom, and Ryan Reynolds, who’s really just Ben Affleck’s other younger brother. Sandy plays this dragon lady book editor from Canada whose visa has expired who gets the big idea to marry her assistant (Ryan), so she can stay in the good old USA and continue to make life miserable for everyone around her. The bulk of this story takes place is Alaska where Ryan’s family lives, and the supporting cast here is very good, including Mary Steenburgen (the mom), Craig T Nelson (the dad) and the amazing Betty White as the grandma.

Though this film is kind of on the fluffy side, it’s one of those things that Hollywood does well a lot of the time and that makes it worth a looksee. There’s not too much more that you can really say about it. Everything in Hollywood has been done a couple of times at least. There’s nothing original going on here. Just pleasant fun.

MY TWEET: The Proposal: Solidly entertaining chickflick w Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds. Romantic comedies are hard to pull off.

THE SPORTS SPUD SPEAKETH

THE NFL…THE BEST OF TIMES & THE WORST OF TIMES.

Well, we’re well into the NFL season now and the like oil and vinegar the good teams are starting to separate themselves from the bad ones. The trouble is that, unlike most years,

the gap between the good teams and the bad ones is a lot wider.  Case in point. The New England Patriots open up a can of whupass on the hapless Tennesse Titans, pummeling them 59-0 with Tom Brady playing only half the game. Can you image what the score would have been if he had played the whole game? The Washington Redskins, who were supposed to be a factor this year, lose to the pathetic Kansas City Chiefs. The Green Bay Packers stomp all over the Detroit Lions who can’t remember when they last won a game before last week.

The Cleveland Browns suck. The Buffalo Bills can only kick field goals. The Philadelphia Eagles are up and down like a toilet seat and the list of underperforming teams goes on and on. This could be the worst year ever in that regard. But on the other hand. The teams that are playing well are an absolute joy to watch. Brett Farve, at 39 is proving that age barriers are meant to be broken is leading the Minnesota Vikings on an amazing race to the superbowl. The Manning Brothers Peyton and Eli could end up facing each other in this year’s Superbowl and it’s anybody’s guess who will take that. The New Orleans Saints are playing amazing football behind Drew Brees. And the Denver Broncos (who) are one of the four teams who remain undefeated as the season moves into its 7th week. So there you go, just like the opening line of a Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”. I don’t know about you, but I’m focusing my attention on the best.

MY TWITTER LINKS

http://twitter.com/TheCouchSpud

And the green site twitter is quickly approaching 1000 followers.

http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com.  We have begun our search engine optimization program, which means we’ll be signing up even more companies. And we have a few more bells and whistles that we’ll be adding to make it most appealing to visitors. It’s fun. We have also started to localize this site, because it’s one thing to find something you’ve been looking for on a directory site, and quite another to be able to go and get it. So our Green Directory is going to be all about GTA green businesses, and on line business.

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

The new Spudcycle is in the shop today. It’s making a weird clunking sound when I pedal it and it’s driving me crazy. It’s probably the crankshaft bearing assembly. Or it could just be a ghost. I don’t know. I bought it at Canadian Tire and I didn’t pay a fortune for it. But it was the only  bike I tried that I was comfortable sitting on. And it was also the only bike that my back carrier (an old Sealtest milk case) would fit on. These, for me, are the two most important criteria. It was a lot cheaper than a bike store bike, but by the time the bike store guys trick it out and make it run smooth, it will have probably cost just as much. What you pick up on the hobby horses, you lose on the swings, so to speak.

It’s Friday afternoon and I am fed up with working. I need time to contemplate football and then, of course watch it. The NFL is going into its third week, and so far the games have all been pretty so so. The Giants & Cowboys game last Sunday night was by far the best of the weekend. This week, I’m looking forward to the Indianapolis Colts and the Arizona Cardinals. And also, believe it or not the New Orleans Saints and the Buffalo Bills. The Bills are very good this year and getting better. New Orleans has been scoring like crazy. All these teams are pretty healthy and look like contenders. But in week 3, nobody really knows nothing, especially me.

THE NEW FALL SEASON

OK…here we go.

MODERN FAMILY (2 SPUDS)

With the advent of shows like Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm, the sitcom has taken on much more of a filmic quality. This show is pretty typical of that trend.

IN A NUTSHELL: Three families 1. A ‘normal’ one man and woman and three kids family, all the usual kid stuff. 2. Old guy and much younger woman with a young kid of her own. 3. Gay Couple (male) who have just returned from Vietnam with an adopted baby. The hook. These people are all part of the same family.

REVIEW: I thought this show was pretty funny. It’s a bunch of stereotypes in a blender. Could be interesting as it goes along. It’s not really about anything at the moment, although I’m sure somebody will come up with something at some point to give it some legs.

FEARLESS FORECAST: The writing on this show is actually quite good, which means that a lot of people won’t really get it, because, we all know that a lot of people are BDIs. (Brain Dead Idiots). I’d say it’s got a 60/40 chance of surviving its first season, mainly because the characters are likeable, although the dad of the ‘normal’ family is a bit of an a-hole and he could really be a turn-off in the long run, or as the late William F. Buckley would say, “in the fullness of time.”

MY TWEET: Complex, funny well-written and very watchable sit com about 3 different families who are all one.

COUGAR TOWN (1 SPUD)

IN A NUTSHELL: Courtney Cox (a babe) plays a 40 year old divorcee who is “getting back out there”, in what looks like Sarasota Florida. But she’s heard a lot of talk about them there cougars ie older women who prey on younger dudes, and she’s thinking maybe she’ll get herself some of that, albeit somewhat reluctantly, because well it wouldn’t be much of a character arc if she was already a cougar.

REVIEW: This episode sucked. It’s guilty of trying to hard to cram too much into one show. It’s also irritating in that it feels the need to explain the cougar phenomenon to all the BDIs out there. Criky, they already read the Enquirer and the National Star and are hip to all this trampy crap. There’s so much going on that the humour is all lost, and the characters, of which there are many, all come across as kinda cardboard. You don’t hear Courtney bragging to David Letterman or Conan that this is her most challenging role to date. In fact when I saw her on those shows, she seemed almost apologetic, like she had stepped in dog poo.

FEARLESS FORECAST: This show needs to slow down and get funny. Right now it’s cartoony and sad and it will die soon in spite of the Courtney Cox factor.

MY TWEET: Courtney Cox vehicle. Tries really hard to be funny, ends up being mostly a frenetic mess. Too bad.

NCIS LOS ANGELES

IN A NUTSHELL: The east coast isn’t the only place where NCIS type stuff goes on. Apparently it goes on in La La Land too, with a stalwart crew, CSI Miami style computer technology and hunky agents.

REVIEW: Again, this is a pilot, so there were a lot of (re) introductions going on. Chris O’Donnell and rapper LL Cool J play the two field agents. They are supported by a bunch of dweebs and geeks back at the office and basically do a lot of driving around. The plotting is pretty much the same as the east coast version, and maybe it’s just because I like the characters better in the original, but I don’t think this version has the same audience drawing power. There’s real power at stake in the power struggles in the original. The west coast version seems, well kinda removed from that somehow.

FEARLESS FORECAST: I may well be a dissenting group of one here. The Bellasario family, which produced both shows, have one of the best track records on TV. But time will tell. I’m pretty sure it will find its way into the top 20.  But I’m not sure that it will ever really make the very top of the heap like it’s east coast NCIS cousin.

MY TWEET: NCIS Los Angeles. I don’t know. Kinda lame and the characters aren’t very interesting. I may watch again, yawn. (1.5 SPUDS)

THE GOOD WIFE (2 SPUDS)

IN A NUTSHELL: Julianna Margueles is the Wife of Chris Noth. He’s some big elected official who gets caught with hookers yadda yadda. She’s his wife, but also a lawyer and is forced, through this scandal, to go back to work at a big law firm after 13 years of just being The Good Wife. This show is the latest venture from Ridley & Tony Scott (Numbers).

REVIEW: As legal dramas on TV go, this is as good as it gets. As productions go, this is exquisite to look at. I’m reading the new John Grisham book, The Associate, right now and this TV show feels like that book. So there’s real authenticity there. The story line was very compelling. Julianna’s character has to carry a lot of baggage and be really pissed off while doing it, and at the same time not get too hard to watch for us, and she pulls all that off in spades.

FEARLESS FORECAST: This show should do extremely well, because it’s extremely good. If it doesn’t do well, it’s not because of anything that’s wrong with the show, it’s that the TV viewing public have all turned into BDIs.

MY TWEET: Legal drama that’s a hell of a lot better than I thought it would be + the Wife didn’t hate it either.

MICHAEL (1 SPUD)

IN A NUTSHELL: Michael Straihan, former defensive back for the New York Giants in a comedy about Michael Straihan, former defensive back for the New York Giants, who goes home to visit his family and decides to stay there. His dad is developing Alzheimer’s. His brother is in a wheelchair, something he blames Michael for. And his mom is the referee, keeping all three of these warring parties out of each other’s grilles. Sounds like a lot of fun doesn’t it?

REVIEW: The most notable things about this show is that Michael Straihan can actually act. The second most notable thing about this show is that it’s mean spirited and not very funny at all for a comedy. The third thing is that it was an hour long. I don’t know if it stays in an hour long form or not. But I don’t really care, because it basically sucked.

FEARLESS FORECAST: Black TV audiences in America are famous for keeping shows as bad as this alive for long periods of time. This, however, will not be the case at Spud Central, where we see no colours, but insist on quality entertainment.

MY TWEET: Michael NFLer Michael Straihan stars in a pretty angry comedy about duh, a retired NFLer. Who needs it? Not me (NoSpud4U)

FLASHFORWARD (2 SPUDS)

IN A NUTSHELL: It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood when all of a sudden everybody in the world blacks out for two minutes and 17 seconds. In that time everything, as you can well imagine, goes to hell in a hand basket. Airplane crashes, car accidents, patients in hospitals dying, dogs and cats sleeping together the whole ugly ball of wax. But also during this blackout period everybody has a dream about what’s happening to them, exactly six months in the future. The series, I assume will put that all together.

REVIEW: A) The opening post blackout sequence is one of the most spectacular things I have seen in a TV series.  B) A-List movie star Joseph Fiennes stars as the FBI agent around whom the story is centred, and that’s quite a coup for the network. This is slick and compelling TV sci fi and I loved it.

FEARLESS FORECAST: I’m planning to tune in regularly and then hang in for Fringe right after. Now that’s a couple of power hours on a lonesome Thursday night. As far as predicting what will happen to this show, who the hell knows? It’s high quality entertainment and deserves at least a season. Not sure if it has the legs for any more than that, but hey.

MY TWEET: Hi concept big budget ABC sci-fi mystery. Absolutely outstanding. Well worth checking out for sure.

HANK (NO SPUD 4U)

IN A NUTSHELL: Kelsey Grammar plays a pompous ass New York CEO whose company has gotten rid of him and who has lost all his money somehow. He is forced to bring his family back to his home town in Virginia and start all over again.

REVIEW: This show had zero spuds written all over it, so we didn’t watch very much.

But what I did notice was that Kelsey Grammar can ham it up with the best of them, and that’s OK if you actually have a script to work with. In this case it was not OK. Everything about this show felt wooden and cliched.

FEARLESS FORECAST: This show probably won’t last very long, because Kelsey’s character will just start pissing people off.

MY TWEET: Pompous ass Kelsey Grammar in yet another lame sitcom. How many more chances does this guy get?

THE MIDDLE (NO SPUD 4U)

IN A NUTSHELL: This show stars Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond). as a mother of three living in the middle of Indiana, struggling to make ends meet.

REVIEW: It’s a cross between Corner Gas and Rosanne, and nowhere near as funny as either of them. In fact, it’s kind of depressing. Heaton looks like a fish out of water the same way as Courtney Cox looks in Cougar town. These women are both too smart and too good looking to be in the situations their show puts them into. And if course, there’s the humour factor. This show is just not funny. It’s actually kinda sad.

FEARLESS FORECAST: Early death that probably no one will notice.

MY TWEET: Yet another in the seemingly endless parade of comedies that mistake stupidity and weirdness for humor.

TRAUMA (2 SPUDS)

IN A NUTSHELL: This is an action drama about paramedics/emergency rescue people working in San Francisco. They are brave, smart and a little bit crazy. We pick up the story a year after a fatal helicopter crash killed half their crew and some of them are just getting back to work after the trauma.

REVIEW: This is hard hitting powerful stuff. It moves at a good clip and the characters

all wear their emotions on their sleeves. There’s no real plot to speak of. Just cool accidents and a lot of competent rescue work. But it’s extremely well put together, and the kind of show that you pick up on easily, even if you miss a week because you were out bowling or something.

FEARLESS FORECAST: This show has lots of potential to for a long run. Let’s face it, accidents keep on happening.

MY TWEET: Trauma. Solid drama about the people who rescue us when we screw up, mostly in cars. Lotsa legs. Good characters too.

RETURNING SHOWS IN BRIEF:

CALIFORNICATION

MY TWEET: Californication Season 3. Welcome back. Dave Duchovney in the raunchiest, sharpest TV series of all time. (2 XL Spuds)

NCIS

MY TWEET: One of the top rated shows on TV and for good reason. Great stories.

Solid cast. Excellent leadership from Mark Harmon. (2 XL Spuds)

DOLLHOUSE

MY TWEET: Solid TV Sci Fi. Great Friday night one-two punch with Terminator. Joss Whedan (Buffy TVS) keeps making good shows.  (2 Spuds)

HOUSE

MY TWEET: This is probably the best written show on TV. They really push the prime time envelope every time out. totally compelling. (2 XL Spuds)

THE MENTALIST

MY TWEET: Lightweight whodunit with Simon Baker basically running and stealing every show. Good underlying theme and great fun to watch. (2 Spuds)

FRINGE

MY TWEET: Back for a second season of freaky thrills. This season the plot really thickens up and a lot of things are revealed. This is yummy stuff. (2 XL Spuds)

Well, that’s all the gas in the tank for this Volume. I got a cold and my head feels like a bag of hammers. I’m not good for much other than watching golf and baseball, twittering and downloading photos for one of my clients from photos.com

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location is back in action. Now that all my proposals are out of the way and I’m actually back in a work rhythm.

http://twitter.com/jimbobmur

And the green site twitter is quickly approaching 1000 followers.

http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com.  We have begun our search engine optimization program, which means we’ll be signing up even more companies. And we have a few more bells and whistles that we’ll be adding to make it most appealing to visitors. It’s fun.

Volume 361

DVDS
Charley Bartlett (2 Spuds)
District 9 (2 XL Spuds)
Angels & Demons (1.5 Spuds)
Easy Virtue (2 Spuds)

TV SHOWS
The Jay Leno Show
 (2 Spuds)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

The last couple of nights have been very cool. I slept like a log both nights. Every day the temperature gets a little lower, Not enough to bother you, just enough to let you know that things are changing. That you’re more comfortable with a short on. That you’re not walking around with that yuccky layer of dried perspiration on your face and neck, Stuff like that.

THE NEW FALL SEASON

This is Week 1 of my two week cycle. With the exception of the new Jay Leno  prime time show, the new shows will start rolling out next week. This week, the only real notable event is the return of Fringe. Unless you have been locked in a sensory deprivation tank for the past year, Fringe was probably the hottest new show of the 08 season. Part X Files, Part Twilight Zone and all the brainchild of JJ Abrams, this show is was rockem sockem good. It’s about a special team created by the FBI to investigate strange shit. It’s composed of a gung ho agent (Aussue Anna Torv), A Mad Scientist (Canuk John Noble) and his son (Joshua Jackson). Together they try and piece together all the reasons for the strange goings on, most of what all relate back to experiments that The Mad Scientist  used to do back in the day, before the government locked him up in an asylum. There is also a continuing mystery that will undoubtedly run the length of the series that has something to do with life in other dimensions.

Fringe is absolutely captivating TV entertainment. I’m totally pumped because it’s on tonight and it really is one of the few shows, besides Dexter and Damages, that I am really looking forward to. I’ve been researching the new fall lineup and so far I am a bit underwhelmed about what’s available. I was tremendously disappointed Glee, the only new show I’ve seen so far. It was just too syrupy and soapy for me. Likewise for the Vampire Diaries. So far not so good.

THE NEW JAY LENO SHOW (2 Spuds)

I’ve only watched one episode so far, but I like it. Jay was able to take all the various stuff he developed on the Tonight Show like headlines and Jay walking and all that other stuff and transplant them into this new show. While there is a bit of talk, it’s really more like an extended version of the first half hour of the Tonight Show. I imagine it will take a week or so for them to feel their way through what works and what doesn’t, but I have a lot of hope for this one. And since it’s on 5 nights a week, we’ll always have something to laugh at over dinner, which evidently is very good for the digestion. (Tape them all and watch them the next day, in case you’re wondering about that last sentence)

@THE MOVIES

DISTRICT 9 (2 XL SPUDS)

This is an exquisitely violent and extremely well made sci fi film, directed by South African, Neil Blomkamp. It was also produced by Peter Jackson and his band of happy hobbits.

It basically a story about a gigantic space ship that came to a dead stop in the skies over Johannesburg SA. What the J’Burg people found inside was a whole lot of bedraggled looking aliens, whom they relocated into a large camp outside the city, where they were essentially forced to live in complete squalor, just like any other refugees. After about 2o years, of this, the SA government decides to move them and that’s where we pick up the story. The guy in charge is a high level bureaucrat who, in his attempts to evict the aliens, starts a skirmish that quickly escalates into a rebellion.

The style of shooting and 3d animation are the real stars of this film. It’s shot in this quirky documentary style with shaky cameras and quick editing and everything looks hyper real. The aliens, all 3d creations, are amazing. They speak in a kind of gutteral slavik type language, and are able to both be understood and understand the humans.

The action and the level of violence in this film are very intense. In fact, that’s pretty much all their is. But the story flows extremely well and you find yourself getting sucked right into it.

Usually when you watch sci fi films it’s pretty easy to tell the special effects from the live action effects. In this film it’s pretty much impossible. There are a few gaffes, for sure, but for the most part, everything looks extremely realistic. And that adds to the level of scariness and (personally), admiration.

District 9 is one of the best sci-fi action pics I’ve seen in a long time.

EASY VIRTUE (2 SPUDS)

The Wife and her pal Nina missed their chance to see Love Happens at the movies on Friday, so to make up for that we got another seemingly romantic comedy called Easy Virtue.

This a an adaptation of a Noel Coward play about a female American race car driver who marries into a bankrupt aristocratic family, just after WWI. This film isn’t as funny as say The Importance Of Being Earnest, but it has its moments. Jessica Beal, who is still one of the best looking babes in filmland plays the fiesty American. Colin Firth and a lot of other people the Wife recognized from other British flicks were also in it.

LIke most stagy movies, this one doesn’t move around much and relies a lot on its characters. Fortunately there are a hell of a lot of really good actors in England and they make this movie quite delightful.

I seem to spend a lot less time reviewing movies than I used to. But most people who write reviews any longer than this one, are inevitably giving away the plot.

ON DVD

ANDELS & DEMONS (1.5 SPUDS)

This is the second installment in the Rob Howard/Brian Grazer/ Tom Hanks blockbuster big time Hollywood movie making vehicle. Now Ron Howard really knows how to put up a big motion picture. Lots of crowds. Lots of action. Lots of cinematography. Lots of big time actor types doing their thing. And that’s all good. What’s not so good is just how predictable everything is. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just seen too many thrillers in my life. But this one had a very low thrill factor for me.

The basic premise is that the pope has dies and an old scientific sect called the illuminati has appeared and kidnapped four of the cardinals, who are all gathered in Rome to elect a new pope. Tom Hanks is a professor of symbology or something and for some reason he is called in to check things out. He is eventually give the run of the Vatican and starts chasing clues all over Rome to try and save the poor cardinals. All the while, he’s with some great looking scientist chick and a cop, to whom he gets to explain everything that’s going on for all the uninformed idiots like us. Admittedly this is useful in helping us understand the story, but man, this is one ultra ornate kidnapping plot. So I kinda fell out of bed with it right there. Tom Hanks’ character is leading the way, but he’s not really a hero in the traditional sense. In fact, he’s kind of a wimp when it comes to getting shot at and stuff. So that was kind of sad. And the ending tries its best to be tricky and surprising. But I’m not sure how many people they were fooling. Cause when you make it uber obvious that one guy is causing all the trouble it’s almost a sure bet that he’s not the dude causing all the trouble.

Anyway, if you can get around all that. It’s pretty much your typical big budget Hollywood pic. Love it or hate it…I did neither.

CHARLIE BARTLETT (2 SPUDS)

This is a kind of a black comedy about life in high school. A rich kid, by the name of Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin),ends up at a public school where he is treated, at first, like a bit of a freak being rich and preppie and all, but later manages to turn perceptions around to the point where he becomes a kind of self-styled head shrinker to the student body. During the course of events, he clashes with the principal (Robert Downey Jr), falls in love with the principal’s daughter (Kat Dennings) and gets to be best friends with the school badass (Tyler Hilton), among other things.

I found this film to be both funny and sad at the same time, which is really a testament to the quality of the screenplay and the actors. Charlie, who is very smart, very talented and very devious, is doing everything he can to simply get people to like him. But like all movie heroes, he eventually become a threat to someone. Won’t say who, cause that would spoil it.

This doesn’t seem to be one of those John Hughes (RIP) type movies, that are really nothing more than thinly disguised autobiographies. This film goes a bit deeper into the life of the main characters and ties them together in interesting ways. On the surface, Charlie Bartlett seems to be a comedy and it’s very funny in parts. But mainly it’s a pretty serious film about a lot of the different things that high school kids feel. This does lend itself a bit to creating cliched archtypes for some of the characters, but I didn’t really mind that.

Anyway that’s all I got for this edition. Next one will be devoted pretty much to the new shows, so you might want to tune in for that.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location is back in action. Now that all my proposals are out of the way and I’m actually back in a work rhythm.

http://twitter.com/jimbobmur

And the green site twitter is quickly approaching 1000 followers.

http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com.  We have begun our search engine optimization program, which means we’ll be signing up even more companies. And we have a few more bells and whistles that we’ll be adding to make it most appealing to visitors. It’s fun.

Volume 360

DVDS
Twilight (2 Spuds)
Last Chance Harvey (2 Spuds)
Duplicity (1.5 Spuds)

TV SHOWS
Glee (1.5 Spuds)
Vampire Diaries (1 Spud)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

GOOD GRIEF…IT’S SEPTEMBER

I’m sitting here as the last days of August have quietly slipped away into oblivion and now, all of a sudden, it’s September. I’m wearing a T-shirt because there is a cool autumn like breeze wafting in through the window. This is the kind of weather I have come to think of as ideal. Days in the low twenties with a mix of sun and cloud. Nights in the low teens with the same mix and a big bright late summer moon. When you think about it, it really doesn’t get any better than this.

This wasn’t really much of a summer, or so everybody seems to be saying. I personally have been fine with it. Only one heat wave with stifling temperatures and energy draining humidity. I moved the office to the basement when that happened and toiled like a mole in the cool subterranean paradise we had created down there. I’m not, and never really have been one of those people who think that swampy Mississippi Delta weather is the cat’s ass. In fact I’m quite the opposite. I like having the full use of all my energy all of the time. I hate the sluggish feeling that accompanies high humidity. I’m really not very good a being still, which I think is the main quality required for enjoying, or at the very least surviving, that dreadful sort of weather.

We did have some cool  storms this summer, which I maintain are the result of hurricane alley now stretching right up through the Ohio Valley of which southern Ontario is a part.

You could argue that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, because every year the weather gets stranger and stranger. But one thing is, and always will be true, and that is that is always going to be easier to stay warm in the winter than it is to stay cool in the summer. So bring on the autumn. I’m ready.

LAST CHANCE HARVEY (1.5 SPUDS)

This is one of those movies that actors like to do. Because there’s a lot of acting that’s require to pull of the characters. In this case, it’s Dustin Hoffman and Lea Thompson. Dustin plays a small Jewish jingle writer from New York who comes to London for his daughter’s wedding. He’s very much an outsider in his family having lost both his wife and his daughter to James Brolin, the rich second husband. Lea Plays an airline worker who is getting older by the minute and still single. The two meet in a restaurant after Dustin ditched his daughter’s wedding and finds out that he has lost his job. And it goes on from there. It’s a little depressing at the beginning but the actors are really worth watching and the story is one we’ve all seen before. It has a nice flow and a happy ending, but it’s most assuredly a chick flick of the highest magnitude, because older chicks will love it too. It’s well made and has a sort of lonely but feel good quality to it. Other than the fact that’s it’s really not up my alley, it’s  not too bad.

DUPLICITY (1.5 SPUDS)

The writer and director of this film is a guy name Tony Gilroy and he has written some of the best action dramas of recent years. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006904/. including Michael Clayton which I consider to be one of my very favourite films.

In Duplicity, however, Mr Gilroy, has, as the saying goes, blinked. While this movie is packed with star power (Clive Owen & Julia Roberts), there’s something about it that just seems kind of absurd.

In Duplicity, Clive and Julia play a couple of spooks who fall in love and decide that somehow, they are going to make a big score in the private sector. So they get into the industrial espionage business. The narrative jumps back and forth a lot in a stylish attempt to fill in the back story and that’s fine. Clive and Julia are both commendable and believable as terribly good looking spooks. They even manage to pull off a big score and that’s all pretty exciting. But I still came away from this movie feeling a bit like I had been promised filet mignon and ended up with a flank steak. A little hard to take right at the end. And these are the kinds of things that can ruin an good movie.

I won’t be too specific here, because the movie’s not all that bad. Just something about the ending left me a little flat. And I’ll leave it at that.

TWILIGHT (2 SPUDS)

This is the first movie made from the novel series by Stephanie Meyers about a pale brunette girl names Bella Swann who falls in love with a pale vampire named Edward. Set in the cloudy and rain drenched northwest the a small tribe of vampires who eat only animal blood populate the local community. Unlike the vampires in True Blood who are pretty nasty, these undead types seem to want nothing more than to mind their own business. In fact the Patriarch of the family is actually a doctor in the small town in which they live.

This movie is alright. It’s dark, kinda gothic and shows the vampires in a kindly light. The only problem I have with it is that I have seen True Blood and made Twilight an exercise akin to watching pain dry, This is always going to be a challenge for any forms of entertainment in which the bar has been set very high.

But that didn’t really stop the movie from achieving box office success. And it actually did hight the market around the same time as True Blood. So it’s kinda hard to say who’s zooming who here.

This movie was a whole lot more interesting than I thought it would or could be and there is an element of indian legend which is part of the backstory here that’s really quite interesting.

I was looking at Stephanie Meyers’ web site and noticed that the second book in her (so far) four volume series, New Moon,  went into production and is slated for release probably around Christmas time.

GLEE (1.5 SPUDs)

IN A NUTSHELL: Glee is a kind of a High School Musical type show aimed at a much younger demographic than the one I reside in. Or maybe it’s not. I’m not sure. It’s essentially the story of a Spanish teacher who for psychological reasons that only make sense in TV shows, decides to take on the Glee Club and keep it alive, after the music program is cancelled due to the ubiquitious budget cuts that are everywhere in TeeVeeLand these days.

REVIEW: If you go by the promotion that flowing joyfully though the Fox Broadcasting system, you could easily be led to believe that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. When you actually watch it however, it comes up a little short of that. Or maybe a lot depending on the kind of experience you had in high school.

There’s lots of good music and acting in this show. And it’s a first rate production from top to bottom. The only thing that really bothered me about the show was that the stereotypes depicted here were all very black and white. Almost old fashioned. The jocks were evil and nasty to those who were not jocks. The cheerleaders were snotty and bitchy. The nerds were ultra nerdish and the teachers were all good hearted softies. So what happens as a result of that is that the show itself becomes very predictable.

FEARLESS FORECAST: Now Fox is selling this as a feel good show and it kind of is. And first episodes tend to be all about introducing characters and setting up scenarios, so I tend to grade it on a curve a bit. It was OK. I loved the musical numbers. And I’ll tune back in to see if the things become a little less predictable.  But all in all, it should do alright. Just barely 2 Spuds at the moment.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES (1 SPUD)

IN A NUTSHELL:  Yep, another vampire show. REVIEW: OK, I was looking forward to seeing what they would do with this, and about 20 minutes into it, I realized two things.
Thing One.  What they were doing, and unabashedly so, was ripping off Twilight and
Thing Two.  They were doing it very poorly.

This production was so full of obvious stuff, crappy fog effects, overwrought teenage angst and DeGrassi level high school characters (read plastic) that it made me want to hurl. I’m pretty sure this was aimed at the dumbest deb in grade nine. The Wife actually got up and left, claiming to have already gleaned from the promos that this show would be directed at the aforementioned dumbest deb in grade 9 and why the hell was I watching it other than to warn my readers about it.

So there’s really nothing much to review here except to reiterate that having now seen almost 2 complete seasons of True Blood, which I consider to be a work of art on TV,  and a pretty good other Vampire flick called Twilight, well this lame crap isn’t even in the same category.

Granted it’s always gonna be hard to make one Vampire thing different from another, and maybe one or two variations is all you got. But please, grown up TV watchers do have standards. If you want your show to thrive instead of just survive on a steady diet of cliches and angry young band rock music, you need to keep that in mind.

FEARLESS FORECAST: The weird thing is that there are a lot of shows out there surviving because they are aimed at either the dumbest deb or the smartest nerd in grade 9.  I’m just not either so I thought it was just another piece of flotsam floating in the ether of TV, like 80% of everything I see.

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKETH

THE NFL OPENER

I don’t care if it means that the cold weather is just around the corner. Summer’s overrated for sports fans. All we have is golf and the dog days of baseball. But when NFL football starts, there’s a little nip in the air, there’s excitement on the breeze.

Football is by far the most popular sport in North America, and for a number of very good reasons. It’s extremely hard to play well. As a player have to be strong, smart, highly intuitive, instinctual, athletic, durable and probably a little nuts to play it at the NFL level and you have to really truly understand the art of playing as a team. You have to know your role and perform your function flawlessly, or else you can create a domino effect that can really screw your chance of winning. You have to be as good offensively as you do defensively and you have to be able to read minds.

If you are a quarterback you have to have all the manaagerial skills of a fortune 500 CEO and be a people person at the same time.

If you are a coach, you have to have all the charisma of a rich televangelist and all the patience of a psychologist.

And if you are an owner, you have to be able grow your balls to the size of small buildings and take chances of people based pretty much on their reputations.

So if you think football is all about are big overmuscled jugheads beating each other up on the playing field, well you couldn’t be more wrong. Football, as my sister Sharon is fond of saying is ‘human chess’. A football game is all about strategy and coaching and execution of orders from commanders who are seeing the game from many different points of view.

Both college and pro football games are extremely well attended. There’s an excitement and adrenaline rush that comes from being part of a football crowd that is a drug for most of the people who go to games. Football is also the most watched sport on television.  For the more cerebral of us, the analysis isolation shots and running commentary all add immeasurably to our ever accumulating knowledge of and appreciation for the game.

I watched bits and pieces of a lot of the pre-season games. This is where the new players get to audition and get some real game experience. But there really is no substitute for the real thing. And so when Thursday night came along, I was all over the opener pitting the Superbowl 09 campion Pittsburgh Steelers against the Tennessee Titans.  These are arguably, two of the best teams in football. And in spite of the fact that everyone was still shaking off the rust, these teams put on a hell of a show. Pittsburgh won it by a field goal in overtime and it wasn’t a very high scoring affair. But football isn’t really about the numbers. It’s about the strategy. Both teams were pretty evenly matched in that category.

All in all, it was a terrific game. Lots of excitement. Lots of great running especially. Defensive floating back Troy Polamalu, probably the best defensive player in the league, went down with an leg injury and he will be missed for about 4 weeks.

The great thing about living in a city like Toronto is that, we don’t have an NFL team. So I don’t have a specific rooting interest. Besides, with our track record, if I did I would just be depressed all the time. So I mainly root for a good game. And the season opener was all that and a bag of chips.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location is back in action. Now that all my proposals are out of the way and I’m actually back in a work rhythm.

http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
And the green site twitter is quickly approaching 1000 followers.

http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com.  We have begun our search engine optimization program, which means we’ll be signing up even more companies. And we have a few more bells and whistles that we’ll be adding to make it most appealing to visitors. It’s fun.

Volume 359

TV SHOWS
Shaq VS (2 Spuds)
Warehouse 13 (2 Spuds)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS

TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

THE BIG STORM OF AUGUST

On the trailing cusp of Leo, there arose in the sky a powerful storm. We began watching it at around 5 in the afternoon, in between watching Roger Federer and some crazy shouter named Ferrer, playing an early round in the Cincinnatti Open. There were rumours of tornados touching down in South Central Ontario.  Some little town called Durham. The talking heads from everywhere were all over this one. Weather news on almost every channel. All for a thunderstorm. I was thinking  wow this must be gonna be some badass storm and that I had better get the barbecue started pretty damn quick. All the while I was cooking my chicken, the sky grew blacker and blacker. The first raindrops started falling as I took the chicken off and made it into the house. All the time I was cooking a could hear the vague yet distinct rumble of thunder far off in the western distance.

The storm came in with a real vengeance, although I’m pretty sure we were spared the worst part of it, which like most of these storms, tend to be felt much more strongly north of the city. The rain came down hard and heavy and then right in the middle of dinner, the power went out. Right in the middle of catching up with SYTYCD eliminations which we had recorded from last night. A double piss-off. The house was already pretty warm from the mugginess of the last few days, so this wasn’t going to help at all. There wasn’t much to do except go upstairs and sit by the window with my little battery powered radio and listen to the non-stop weather coverage.

The storm moved through the blackened neighbourhood quickly, and as I sat in the front window and looked east I could see it rumbling along to terrorize Pickering and Ajax and Oshawa.

It was fully dark by then and we decided to go for a ride and scope out some of the potential damage. There was really not much else to do, except maybe read, and it was too clammy for that. So off we went to lower Scarberia for a DQ. I had a blizzard with Skor pieces. The wife had a cone with sprinkles. It’s kind of a ritual we go through at least once every summer. As we sat there in the car loading up on our DQ we noticed a little mob of about 4 older teenage guys hanging around out front. They were white homeboys with really close cropped hair, many more layers of baggy clothing than they needed, cell phones in their hands and attitude up the wazoo. I call them Scaribaldies.You have to be careful not to look directly at them, or they will immediately confront you. These were the quintessential angry young men of the new age, and I for one didn’t want to mess with them. We sat in the Spudmobile and listened to more news about the weather, got bored with that and put on the baseball game. All the time were were watching the Scaribaldies. They seemed to be quite agitated about something. Like they were waiting for another Scaribaldy to come and pick them up but he was way late. They were getting pissed, buzzing like hornets around garbage. You could feel the bad energy burning. I thought about what Chris Rock said in one of his concerts, that the scariest thing on earth is a 19 year old white guy with attitude. We had four of them., I casually relived the Wife of her cone and she cranked up the Spudmobile and we got out the hell of there before we got caught up in another storm. Know when to hold ‘em…know when to fold ‘em.

When we came home, the house was even hotter than when we left. There wasn’t much else to do so I got a couple of candles and went to bed. I read about 20 pages of my new John Sandford (a Kidd story), and then laid it down and nodded off. I laid there for a couple of hours. Maybe I slept, maybe I didn’t…I’m not sure. The next thing I heard was the loud sound of a truck and guys talking to each other on walkie talkies. I’ m thinking that this is some kind of dream. But I opened my eyes and there they are, the Hydro Guys, getting ready to light up my life again. And so it was.

I spent the next half hour straightening up, shutting lights, resetting clocks and machinery that were left on, cleaning up and then I climbed back into bed with the company of my favourite black fan.

The minute my head hit the pillow, again, I knew with absolute certainty that I had been thrown completely off my rhythm, and that sleep, if any would not be coming until about 4 in the morning, the result of complete exhaustion. It’s 3:46. Looks like I have just a few minutes left.

Tomorrow is Friday and it’s already been formally declared a mental health day. I will do some shopping, some vacuuming, polish up a proposal for Monday delivery and then essentially goof off. It’s what you do when you end up staying up all night, after being thrown completely our of your rhythm by the Mother Nature, who can sometimes be a genuine bitch.

WAREHOUSE 13 (2 SPUDS SO FAR)

The Wife and I went over to have dinner last weekend with The Boy and Mel the Fiance, (Beer Can chicken and it was delicious). And, of course one of the main topics is shows I have seen that he hasn’t and vice versa. One of the shows that came up in the conversation is something called Warehouse 13, which runs here and there on the sci fi networks.

This series stars Canuk Saul Rubinek as the caretaker of a gigantic warehouse full of  “Stuff That Could Destroy The World”. This warehouse is funded as a black ops project, so hardly anyone knows about it. We pick up the story as two secret service agents, one of whom is a little clairvoyant, (Eddie McLintock) are assigned to Warehouse 13 duty and gets that the assignment could be interesting. The other agent, an uber ambitious female (Joanne Kelly)…
not so much. However, they are both good secret service agents and this is their assignment.

I have only watched the pilot episode of this series and it was actually quite entertaining and very much on the light side. Saul Rubinek, who has kind of carved out a niche for himself playing wacked-out eccentrics, is the centre of the show. He’s crazy like a fox and everything pretty much revolves around him.

But the story line was pretty decent and I could see that this series could have more legs than a centipede. The effects were a bit cheesy, but you do dial back your expectations when you’re talking about TV. I’ll try to nail down when it’s on and let you know. It’s a nifty little show fantasy.

SHAQ VS (2 SPUDS)

Over the years, the reality shows that I would recommend can be pretty much counted on the fingers of one hand. But Shaq Vs (Versus) is something a little different.

The concept of the show is that Shaquille O’Neal, currently of the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers, and one of the best centres to ever play the game, is challenging superstar athletes to a competition in their own sport.

In the opening episode, Shaq has challenged Ben Roethlesberger, QB of the Superbowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers to a game. Ben will quarterback one team, Shaq the other. Shaq will have a 20 yard advantage and they will see who wins.

This challenge is turned into a localized event in a small town outside of Pittsburgh. Shaq goes through all the training and conditioning thhat an NFL quarterback would go through, even a small combine trial to establish that he is in game shape. This show is part documentary, part sports event, part mocumentary and pretty much all Shaq, which is not a bad thing because he is one of the more charismatic superstar athletes in sports. He has a never say die attitude and works on getting inside the head of his opponent, which is something he’s extremely good at doing.

THE LOST ARTICLES

Last night I wrote a couple of pieces that seems to have somehow disappeared, as the Iworks file I was working in froze up and wouldn’t allow me to open it. Macs don’t get quirky very often so I really can’t complain. But it is a pain in the ass in a way, because this column is mostly an organic kind of exercise for me as a writer and I guess for all of you as readers.

The first piece was all about the weather and the shortness of the Canadian summer, which, believe it or not is almost over. In retrospect that was kind of sad, so I won’t tray and recreate it. Too much like work.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE

The second piece was about the TV series So You Think You Can Dance, which I will refer to as SYTYCD, because I’m too lazy to write it out each time. The main point that I was making is that in my neighbourhood, which is nice, but not all that upscale, you see a lot of kids around and you can look at these kids and kinda shake your head and say ask yourself just where they are actually going. Then you see them a few years later with kids and collecting pogey and hanging around at the Coffee Time on the corner of Coxwell and Gerrard, working on their heart conditions and their lung cancer and you can come away with a pretty dim view of what the world is coming to. And I’m sure it’s the same where you live to a greater or lesser extent. But when you watch SYTYCD, what you see are literally thousands of young people who are working their ass off to have a career in the performing arts, and in addition to the pure delight you get from watching them perform, you also get to feel a bit better about the future, knowing that there are young people out there who are hell bent to ride into adulthood with skills and poise and the level of self-confidence that will make them successful.

And more than a few of these kids, especially in the US version of SYTYCD, have really climbed out of fairly deep holes in order to get where they are. And that becomes a real factor in your overall appreciation for their performance.

Shows like SYTYCD, whether they started out with that intention or not, have become a real catalyst for young people with an interest in the arts to see a career in dance or music or theatre or movies as a very reachable goal. This is why I am such a big booster of this show. Because not only is it some of the most exciting entertainment you’re going to see on TV, it’s also real sociology happening right before your eyes. In the competitive part of the show, some of the most beautiful and memorable dances were actually choreographed by former contestants, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

The other thing I wanted to say about SYTYCD is that the Canadian version of the show has started and I’m already getting the feeling that the top twenty competitors chosen for this season’s show will actually be stronger than the top 20 chosen for the American show. Which says a whole hell of a lot about this great country of ours. We don’t really have to stand in any country’s shadow any more. So there.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
The summer’s over. It’s getting busy again. So I have decided to put this twitter site in limbo until things slow down a bit. So until then you can keep up with me at  http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry

The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com. But we’re not making a big deal out of it until a) we have all the kinks ironed out, and there are a few. We’re just adding more than 100 new listings.

Volume 358

MOVIES
Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince (1.5 Spuds)
Terminator Survival (1.5 Spuds)

TV SHOWS
Rescue Me (2 XL Spuds)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

The rain seems to have followed us down from the north country. Along with the heat and humidity and all of a sudden it feels like summer in the Big Smoke. But tonight the rains have stopped and much cooler air is wafting in the windows here at Spud Central. There will be good sleeping tonight.

I got an email from my sister Sharon who lives the dream with Dr. Bob down in Fort Erie and she informed me that my dad wanted to buy me a new computer for my birthday, which is evidently coming up sometime later this month. My dad is in his late 80s and has a rather tenuous grasp on reality these days due to his advanced age, so I have a sneaking suspicion that this gift concept was more my sister’s doing than anything else.

Changing computers generally, especially if you do a lot of work in the internet like I do, can take about a week or more. I could probably do it in a couple of days if I had the time. But I never seem to. This new computer will, unlike most new computers I have acquired over the years, come at a time when my present computer is still working just fine, which is a relief. I have my eye on one of the new Imacs. It has a larger screen than my current Imac and tons more memory and computing power. My present Imac will be relegated to the basement of Spud Central and will be used primarily for working on writing projects, as I will have to upgrade my design software, and of course the two versions will not be completely compatible. But that doesn’t matter, because over the years I have learned that whenever you get a new computer, your old computer becomes somehow antiquated by comparison and less desirable to work on.

I’m looking forward to having the larger screen for sure, mainly because when I am busy I am always using two or three applications simultaneously and with a small screen, that means a lot of shifting and minimizing and all kinds of other inconvenience. It will also be a chance for me to touch base with my computer set-up guru Joseph. Having somebody like Joseph to set up your computer for your and configure all you internet settings is the best money I will ever spend. When he’s done, all I do it turn it on and go.

Anyway, that’s the good news. And It’s really ironic, in a way, because both my sister and I pay very little attention to birthdays, opting for the old adage, ‘You’re only as old as you feel.” But that’s the weird thing about growing older. Some days you feel like superman, and other days you feel like a bag of hammers. I’ll take the Superman days, please. As many as I can get for as long as they are available.

A SHOUT OUT TO DENNIS LEARY

Dennis Leary is an angry guy. He’s the closest thing we have to Lenny Bruce as a comedian. And as a writer and producer he’s absolutely brilliant too. The show he co-created and stars in, Rescue Me, is one of the most entertaining series on television today. And into its fifth season, when most series start to become caricatures of themselves because they have run out of ideas, Mr Leary and company seem to be chugging along pedal to the metal like they are never gonna run out of gas.

If you don’t know anything about Rescue Me, it’s a story about a Fire House in Manhattan that was  decimated by the events of 9/11. “The heroes who died just doin’ what they do”, as Alan Jackson pointed out in a classic song about that tragic day. The story revolves around Leary’s character Tommy Gavin, a part that probably no one else could play, as a third generation Irish American firefighter, who suffers from a whopping case of survivor guilt, having lost many friends on that day, including his best friend and cousin. Tommy’s life is a mess and because he’s crazy and an alcoholic and a fireman with a real death wish, he manages to screw it up a little bit more with each episode.

The characters in this show are some of the strongest supporting players in TV. And the world you get to visit in this show is one where brotherhood and interdependence can be the difference between living and dying.

Now if you have read everything I just wrote about this show, you’re probably thinking, whoa what a downer. But strangely enough, this show is amazingly funny and I do mean laugh out loud funny. Mr Leary and his parter, TV veteran Peter Tolan have created characters who always manage to see the humour in just about everything. They are wisecracking, smartass firemen. They live out on the edge of really warm and crispy, and they are sucking every bit of life out of life that they can.

The energy in this show is every bit as amazing as its humanity. If you haven’t seen it yet, well, you’re in for a real treat. The first four seasons are available on DVD. Go get ‘em.

MOVIES

TERMINATOR (THE UMPTEENTH) SALVATION (1.5 SPUDS)

There was something really magical about the original Terminator movie and probably even the first two sequels that it spawned. But the farther this franchise migrated away from the influence of director/creator James Cameron, the more it started to look like every other post apocalyptic battle for the survival of the human race that ever got made.

This one is no exception. Granted it was directed by the super hip McG, so it had that certain je ne sais quoi, oh yeah astronomical CGI budget, to create more chaos on screen than your average demolition derby. But this episode was focused on the people, and frankly, in a Terminator movie, you really want to be focused on the the terminators, since they are infinitely more interesting. And besides, the (very good) TV series is already plowing that field.

My thesis here is a simple one. It can be summed up in three little words. “I miss Arnie”. Let’s face it. The Governor was the glue that held this franchise together and without him, you’re really just left with a big budget Battlestar Gallactica, played out on a bombed-out earth in the near future.

Oh yeah, and I’m not sure if this is one of those unwritten Terminator type rules, but does every single sequel have to end in exactly the same way…in some foundry where all the machines are running, sparks are flying everywhere, lights are going crazy, there’s all kinds of metal crunching noise and yet, oddly enough, there’s nobody working there. I didn’t even have to watch the ending to figure out how this all turned out. The minute they ended up running into the foundry, it was pretty much all over for me.

Now this is not a bad movie. And it’s probably a pretty good one if you have been trapped in a sensory deprivation tank since the early nineties and know nothing about the Terminator
franchise. But for the rest of us, it’s just another big budget attempt to suck movie and overpriced movies treat money from the pockets of the almighty and exalted 18 to 35 male demographic.

It’s what Hollywood does well. But not here, I’m afraid, on the big wall of light at Spud Central.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE  (1.5 SPUDS)

This is the fifth or sixth Harry Potter movie and it’s one of the few that I actually go to the theatre to see, as opposed to waiting till it comes out on DVD and then borrowing it from The Boy.

So off we went to the early show on Civic Holiday Monday. Now Harry and his little crew are growing up and starting to deal with things like romance and infatuation, so that’s all woven into the fabric of the movie. And, of course, there’s a ton of money in the production treasury to make a movie that is visually as stunning and spectacular as anything going on out there. And, of course there’s all the amazing creative nuances of genius author JK Rowling.

But. But, somewhere in all that wonderfulness and big budgetness and cleverness and stylishness, this movie managed to forget a lot of the things that made the first four or five so very terrific, which was the adventure. Maybe it was me, but I just wasn’t feeling that this film told a complete story, or should I say, properly completed its part of the story. It seemed to me kind of like a bridge between what had come before and what was on the way. There was a real lack of ominousness in this film that made it feel, relatively speaking, of course, flat.

I hate saying that about this franchise. Because it’s been one of the very best things to happen to movies in years. But I’d be lying to you if I told you I thought it was brilliant. It was brilliant looking, but then they all are. But there was just something missing this time out and it bothered me all throughout the film. It kind of felt more like the prologue to the book than the book itself. That’s not to say it’s not worth seeing if you are a fan of this series. But because it has been so great, my expectations were very high and this film fell short of that. Which means it’s a just good film not a genuinely great one.

BOOKS…YEAH BOOKS

Tami Hoag

Tami Hoag is an LA based mystery/thriller writer who doesn’t really have a consistent character about whom she writes. In fact, she’s kind of all over the place, with several different series’ going and a number of one-offs. She doesn’t have a fixed locale that she explores, although she seems to like the south more than the north. And she tends to write in the voice of her main characters, although sometimes she doesn’t. I’ve read about 10 of her books so far and everyone has been a different kind of experience. The only real thread of consistency is that her female characters all seems to be both courageous, smart and severely flawed in one way or another.

As a writer I can see how she would prefer to work this way. I would probably do the same thing f I were into writing novels. While I greatly admire guys like Michael Connelly and John Sandford, for being able to crank out umpteen good novels about the same characters in the same locales, I’m too sure I would have the patience to do that.

To each his or her own. But Tami is a very good writer and all her stories are reasonably cool.
And the worlds she manages to concoct are all quite interesting. The book I am currently reading is called The Alibi Man, and it’s the second novel featuring a character names Elana Estes. It’s set in southern Florida and seems to have a lot to do with the equestrian world, and of course the rich folks who populate that world. Elena is an ex-cop who is working for some rich guy as a groom, when she discovers the murdered body of another good from her ranch and decides, much to the chagrin of the local cops, to investigate the murder herself.

Tami’s characters all have a lot of back story to explain how screwed up and obsessive compulsive they are. And that’s a good thing because otherwise you might think that her characters are just really nosy.

TAMI HOAG’S TITLOGRAPHY
SERIES

Hennessy
The Trouble with J.J (1988)
Magic (1990)

Quaid Horses
Rumor Has It (1988)
Man of Her Dreams (1989)
Tempestuous (1990)

Rainbow Chasers
Heart of Gold (1990)
Keeping Company (1990)
Reilly’s Return (1990)

Doucette
The Restless Heart (1991)
Lucky’s Lady (1992)
Cry Wolf (1993)

Deer Lake
Night Sins (1995)
Guilty As Sin (1996)
Night Sins / Guilty as Sin (omnibus) (2008)

Kovac/Liska

Ashes to Ashes (1999)
Dust to Dust (2000)
Prior Bad Acts (2006)
aka Dead Sky

Elena Estes
Dark Horse (2002)
The Alibi Man (2007)

Random Novels

McKnight in Shining Armor (1988)
Mismatch (1989)
Straight from the Heart (1989)
Sarah’s Sin (1991)
Heart of Dixie (1991)
Still Waters (1992)
Taken By Storm (1992)
The Last White Knight (1992)
Dark Paradise (1994)
A Thin Dark Line (1997)
Kill the Messenger (2004)
Deeper Than the Dead (2009)

FORT ERIE IN THE SOUP

The Wife and my sister Sharon are good traveling buddies. They are heading out tomorrow to New York City, where all the best museums, galleries and book stores are. They have found a really nice apartment hotel right near Radio City Music Hall which pretty much puts them in the centre of everything.

For me this means a solid week of doing almost anything I want. So I have prepared with a bunch of movies and TV shows I know that the Wife is not interested in, as usual. I have also stocked up on easy to cook dinners for one and will have unbridled use of the Spudmobile all week long. Which is good because I have lots of meetings to go to this week.

Sounds like hog heaven for a long time married guy. But the fact is that it’s kinda lonely not having the wife’s smiling face around. I will miss her dearly as I know she will miss me.*

*Naaa…that’s all bullshit. Long time married people should take as many breaks from each other as possible. This would definitely cut down on the divorce rate and probably impact strongly on lowering domestic violence numbers too.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
I’m starting to post mini reviews and new show heads-ups there, so if you’re twittering, it’s a useful follow.

I also have a new twitter for ourgreendirectory.com
http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry
The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com. But we’re not making a big deal out of it until a) we have all the kinks ironed out, and there are a few. And b) we are through with our holidays. I’m actually taking one this year. We’ll probably start getting serious about it in late August, early Sept.

Volume 357

SPECIAL COTTAGE
COUNTRY REPORT
Random Musings
From The Middle of Nowhere

DVDs
Return to Me (2 XL Spuds)
Push (1 Spud)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

RANDOM MUSINGS FROM THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

This edition of the Chronicles is coming to you from lovely Cordova Lake, which for all intents and purposes is just slightly west of the middle of nowhere in Central Ontario.

Actually, it’s really not all that far from Toronto. The closest real town is called Havelock, which is somewhere about 20 miles south of where I am sitting. The part of the lake we are on is a small isthmus in the southern part of the lake. There is a small arc of cottages around us. Right next door is the owner’s cottage. His name is Ric and he is a retired Hydro guy who lives here in a gigantic house with room for lots of relatives on the weekend. He owns this cottage and one other one and is the unofficial care taker for the fire road, which is the access to this part of the lake. The lake itself is pretty shallow. Ric says it’s not more than 40 feet deep anywhere. It’s also overgrown with seaweed, which is the result of high water in the early spring. Evidently, the guy who cleans up this overabundance of seaweed is 9 weeks behind in his schedule. So there’s no hope of him actually getting here to save me from having to swim through it to get out the where I can float freely with my little $1.99 Styrofoam noodle.

The weather up here has been mostly cloudy for the past few days. But I don’t really care about that. If it was sunny, I’d probably just go out and sit in it till I burned, (I’m stupid that way), and then complain about it for the rest of the week. But all I really care about is not freezing my nads off when I do go into the water and that’s not an issue. The water is fine.

The people next door are a pleasant Eastern European couple who are here with their granddaughter who looks to be about 4 years old. She’s a real princess and knows she can have whatever she wants from grandma and grandpa, so she’s actually having quite the time.

In addition to the European people we also have for neighbours a family of loons. No, I don’t mean white trash people from Mississauga, I mean real loons. A mother, father and a kid.
The loonling doesn’t look to be very old and is still covered in his grey primer coat. The adult loons are magnificent creatures and seem to spend their entire day diving for fish and feeding their kid. So loons are a lot like the rest of us, except for the diving for fish part.

When I mentioned that to the wife, she remarked that we didn’t really have to do that any more. But that’s only true in one sense. As parents you feed your kids for the rest of your life.
Just the other night I got off the phone with my daughter (who is no longer referred to as the Princess of Pain), and fed her a ton of advice on what to charge for writing a project she has just sold to a big design company in the US. I’m always talking with The Boy about his business, feeding him advice and acting as a sounding board. I have designed all his packaging, his logo, business cards, brochures and web site too. The Wife has provided accounting advice to both of them. Now don’t get me wrong. This is all a very large labour of love and I love doing it. But it does reinforce the premise that even after you have finished with the in-house part of parenting, the feeding goes on and on. And it’s wonderful, because that’s a part of what holds families together.

Well that’s enough for now. Don’t want to start feeling like I am working or anything. Thank God I can’t get an internet signal up here.

TV IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

Our cottage has an old relic of a GE TV set. The picture is very fuzzy, but then I’ve been watching high def for close to two years now, so almost everything else is fuzzy. Everybody up here uses a satellite of one kind or another. They seem to get more channels than we do even with our Rogers VIP plus package. There’s even a couple of porn channels, which we had a look at last night. The Wife remarked that she thought sex was supposed to be fun, but that the women on the porn channels all seemed to be writhing in pain and working really hard at it. Of course most women don’t get to have sex without a uberhung partner and a director shouting orders, and cameraman and crew idly watching. It’s gotta be a tough gig no matter how into sex you actually might be. They also get HBO and The Superchannels (don’t let the name fool you), up here so we will be able to watch a lot of our favs, just like back at Spud Central.

We’ve had a lot of rain since we got here and so the reception via the satellite is kinda dicey but  who cares. As long as I’ve got about 500 channels to choose from I can always find something, even if it’s news about the garbage strike.

DVDS ON THE COMPUTER

In spite of the fact that there are about 500 channels to choose from up here, the bad weather has forced us into resorting to watching TV  or movies during the day. And just like at home, there’s really nothing on but crap. To compound the situation, I was not able to figure out a way to get our little DVD player working and watch movies on the TV. That just left good old Mr Computer, which I had brought for the purpose of writing some lyrics (if I got inspired) and working on this column.

PUSH (1 SPUD)

So yesterday, as the rain poured down on our vacation, we figured out an easy arrangement
and tried a couple of movies. The first was a movie called Push, which is one of those Hong Kong inspired sci-fi action adventure flicks, that has a lot of effects, not much of a story, characters that are never developed enough for you to like or hate and artsy fartsy editing.

It had something to do with people with extraordinary powers, of which there are a diverse range and bringing down the syndicate that is trying to round these people up and destroy them. It was all very interesting for the first little while, maybe an hour. And then we finally realized that this movie was a lot of smoke and mirrors and not written deeply enough to even have an issue that the story revolves around. Young Dakota Fanning was in it and she player this creature called a watcher, who could see into the future, and while she’s always interesting to watch, it really just wasn’t enough for us to hold onto.

RETURN TO ME (2 XL SPUDS)

Whipping through the stack of DVDs we brought with us. I saw the Wife had packed Return To Me, the outstanding romantic dramady starring David Duchovney (Californication) and the amazing Minnie Driver (The Riches). If you haven’t seen this movie, just go out and get it. The writing, the acting, the supporting cast and the story are exactly why you watch character driven movies in the first place. Even telling you a little about this movie would spoil the fun, so I won’t do that. This movie is one of my very favourites, right up there with A Good Year, the excellent Ridley Scott dramady, Love Actually and Chocolat as some of the very best ever made.

THE WEEK TRUDGES ON IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

One of the things you can usually count on in cottage country is a good old fashioned sunburn. I was really looking forward to mine. But noooo…we have really only had one decent day since we arrived here, and a ton of  rain. I’m not complaining mind you, because I did come here to rest and while I’m really not a big fan of sitting out in the sun for absurdly long periods of time, I am a true believer in the fact that sunshine makes your whole world feel a little brighter. It makes the water seem warmer and it gives you cool things like sunsets and sunrises. So far this holiday has been bordering on clinically depressing.

Tomorrow we’re going over to the owner’s place and call home. I’m kind of hoping that my sister took our offer of coming down for an overnight stay, but I’m hoping that she didn’t choose Friday to do it.  Because that’s when we’re coming back. We could stay until Saturday, but I figure that if the weather’s going to be shitty and we’re stuck indoors, I would  much rather be stuck indoors at my own house with internet, a screen bigger than my computer to watch movies on, my own bed to sleep in and my own shower to shower in.

As cottages go, this one is pretty nice. I have no real problem with it at all. My big issue is with the fact that the more I take these week long holidays, the more I realize that three days would suit me just fine.

To be brutally honest, I’ve been doing advertising for so long now that it’s not really what I could call work any more. It’s more like doing crossword puzzles than anything. It’s fun and I love it and all that good stuff. So can you really blame me if I don’t believe I really need a vacation from it?

As we grow older we become used to certain things. They make us happy. Sleeping on a old box spring mattress, cooking on a barbecue that won’t hold a beer can chicken, swimming in seaweed and hanging around waiting for the rain to stop for just about a whole week can’t really be classed as anybody’s idea of a good time, mine included.

Anyway, live and learn is my motto. No more week long escapades of any kind for this spud.
I’m a funaholic and I’m going to stay right where the fun us. And the good bed and the big LCD and the full sized barbecue and the internet and ….Yadda Yadda Yadda.

LAST DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

I’m sitting in the kitchen with some crackers and cheese and a Bacardi Breezer.

This morning the loons and crows woke me up at about 6. But I fought that off and went back to sleep for another three hours. I dreamed about an invention, which I am going to actually build.

The sun finally came out today. I got that sunburn I was so fervently craving. I went for another swim n the weeds. Later today I will watch the first round of the Buick Open and see if my man T. Woods can get back on track. Tonight we’re going into Marmora (where the good cherries are) and look at some cool old cars then go for ribs at The Ranch on Highway 7. Then come back to the cottage and see who makes the cut on So You Think You Can Dance. Life in the middle of nowhere is so much better when the sun’s out.

Tomorrow we pack it up and wind our way home via Port Hope where the wife has to drop of some fliers for her club’s big Miniatures show in October. (email me if you’re interested in info), then back to the Centre of the Universe.

It hasn’t been the best of weeks weather-wise. But I did stop working for just about the whole time, except for some thinking. So I guess you could call it a good holiday.

VACATION IN A NITSHELL

Nice cottage. White with red trim. All the amenities. etc.

Too much seaweed, so shitty swimming.

More rain than sun. So a lot of sitting around inside.

Managed to get a bit of tan in spite of the almost incessant cloud cover.

Not many bugs at all, considering how damp it was.

Small barbecue. Intense flame. Everything was medium (including chicken-not good), until a figured out how to cook on it.

No internet. But we both played a lot of Snood.

Loons swimming really close. Parents and a kid. He was all grey.

Saw a blue heron fishing. Kinda bucc.

Saw a tree fall into the lake. Loud.

Read two books. Heather read four.

Bought some amazing fudge and marmalade in Marmora.

Bought a Corona Extra hat in Corova mines. Can’t believe I forgot mine.

Drank a lot of Bacardi Breezers. What a wimpy drinker I am.

Bed made my back sore. Thanks got for Ibuprofen.

Had two big product ideas.

Other than my column, I didn’t write a damn thing. That’s a first.

Got rid of 2227 emails in my sent file. I don’t know where they all come from.

Had Satellite TV with porn channels. Heather thinks porn girls are all in pain when they are doing their thing. So that was a turn off.

Watched Return To Me again. I love Minnie Driver.

Watched ‘Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden’. American film makers are idiots. Good film. Crazy guy for doing it.

About 20 miles of dusty road to the nearest store.

About 30 to the nearest town

Went to Marmora cruiser night…saw a lot of really cool 50s — 80s restored cars and trucks. The colours were awesome. Made me think of Fort Erie when I was a kid.

Found a good restaurant call the Ranch, right on highway 7. Fall of the bone ribs.

Came home through a large Indian Reservation. Resisted the urge to buy cheap cigarettes. It was easy since neither of us smoke.

Couldn’t live up there, even if I had a great job. It just feels really far away, even though it’s not.

Still amazed we got all the stuff we did into the little Honda.

Oh yeah, saw a beaver too and not on the porn channel.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
I’m starting to post mini reviews and new show heads-ups there, so if you’re twittering, it’s a useful follow.

I also have a new twitter for ourgreendirectory.com
http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry
The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com. But we’re not making a big deal out of it until a) we have all the kinks ironed out, and there are a few. And b) we are through with our holidays. I’m actually taking one this year. We’ll probably start getting serious about it in late August, early Sept.

Volume 356

DVDs
Watchmen (2 XL Spuds)

TV SHOWS
Trust Me (2 Spuds)
Entourage Season 6 (2 Spuds)

SPORT SPUDITORIAL
The British Open In All Its Glory

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

THE KITCHEN NIGHTMARE DOWNGRADED TO BAD DREAM

The crazy Polish kitchen re-builders have just about completed their magic. Transforming the humble little Spud Central kitchen of the past to the kitchen of, well let’s just say, more present day. The guy who did most of the work was named Adam. And he was amazing. He came, he worked. He talked on his cell phone in Polish at least a couple times and hour and he made the transformation look dead easy. I’ll throw in a picture or two at the end of this column, because we should be completely done by that time. Now, the Wife, never one to be satisfied is starting to make goo goo eyes at the basement. I personally object to anything that would force me to move the big Spud Central window on the world. I’m hoping we can leave it until next year. One major disruption a year is about all I can handle these days. And yes, folks, the refrigerator is still out in the dining room. So we’re not out of this particular bit of hell just yet, as there seems to be come question as to whether or not it will actually be able to make it back to its original location (only about 8 feet from where it sites right now) without taking it out the front door, down the street, up the driveway, in the back door and up a half a flight of stairs, which of course is something you pay big burley guys to do. We shall see and the renovation beat goes on.

RENOVATION UPDATE:  It’s pretty much all done. We’re treating it like a real kitchen, although I have to confess that I still deak toward the dining room when I have something that needs to go into the fridge. But other than that everything is just peachy. And in retrospect, this went just about as smoothly as it could, all things considered.

ON DVD AND BLU RAY

WATCHMEN  (2 XL SPUDS)

In my humble opinion there are only a handful of graphic novel adaptations that have made it to the big screen with their integrity intact. Sin City, Hellboy,  The 300, Ironman, Spiderman and most recently, Watchmen.

The Boy gave me the graphic novel of Watchmen to read, and I have to confess, I wasn’t very good at it. I admire the creativity and the copious amounts of pure blood, sweat and tears that must go into the making of a graphic novel, especially a great one.  But I just had a hell of a time focusing. The pages of these books are a complete assault on the senses, unlike a written novel, where there is a very linear process of taking in the information.

Having said that, I love to watch these graphic novels come to life on the screen. Watchmen is particularly lush and skillful at using entire songs to layer over their visual narrative. The opening sequence is cut to Bob Dylan singing The Times They Are A Changin’, and it set the stage for the rest of the movie so brilliantly that it actually made me cry. Now, I have to tell you that they are playing a little fast and loose with the time frame, here. It fact they have set this film in the mid 1980s, in an America that is being run into the ground by President Richard Nixon, who actually served from 69 to 74. But that hardly matters, although it might offend a few purists. But at the end of the day, hey, it’s fiction. They can set up the world anyway they like. I think setting it in 1885 has a kind of allegorical significance, (ooops, sorry for sounding like a New York times critic).

The plot of Watchmen is extremely complex and highly allegorical. In fact this movie arguably raises the IQ level of film making quite a few points here. The characters are all, in their own ways, absolutely amazing, and the action sequences are exquisitely violent and balletic and the same time. And that’s understandable, because Watchman was directed by Zack Snyder, who also directed 300. This guy is right up there with JJ Abrams and Steve Spielberg in terms of his film genius. And the best part is, his career is just beginning, as he only has a couple of masterpieces under his belt so far.

There’s a truly mythic quality to this film. It’s not trying to be a film adaptation of a graphic novel. It is a graphic novel brought to life through the alchemy of a director’s genius. That sounds kind of flowery, but if you look closely at the phenomenal amount of attention to detail being paid to every single frame of this film, it actually staggers the imagination. And, hey, nobody likes having their imagination staggered more than me.

TV

TRUST ME (2 SPUDS)

This is a US cable series which stars Canuks Eric McCormick (Will & Grace), and Tom Cavanaugh (Ed), as a creative team (art director Eric & Writer Tom) working in a large Chicago ad agency.

This show is a more intense reworking of Thirtysomething, which was also about a creative team in an agency as well. But Trust Me tends to revolve more around the goings on in the group than Thirtysomething, which had more to do with the characters’ whole lives. What that do have in common is the authenticity that they portray regarding the advertising agency business. I can attest to this having spent 17 of the most fun years of my life working in ad agencies. I’m sure my old partner Danny Floyd would love this show to, but probably thing that everyone in it was full of shit. But then that’s the nature of the advertising business. The people who are the most full of shit tend to do well, hence the title, Trust Me, which is the adman’s invitation for you to believe all the bull shit he is flinging in your direction.

Eric and Tom are extremely well cast as a team. Eric is the stodgy suburban team leader with the big house in the suburbs and the paranoid disposition. He always has to keep reminding himself he’s a creative person and when he does he’s brilliant. But more of the time he’s just a worry wort. Tom is a maniac. Full of brilliance and the aforementioned bullshit. Different girl every night. Hang the expense attitude towards creativity and always in trouble with somebody, but always managing to creatively think his way out of it.

The rest of the agency is also well cast, especially Griffin Done as Tony, the group’s leader and Monica Potter as a superstar copywriter who can’t seem to settle on a partner.

This is a serial drama so it would be good to watch it in order. Right now it’s only available on the Superchannels, where they also show Burn Notice. But Season 1 should be out on DVD shortly. I’ll find out when and let you know, because this is a worthwhile series to watch and I’m not just saying that because it’s about advertising, (which is how I pay the bills, cause you know it’s not from writing this column). It’s about interesting characters and an interesting setting and some great writing and acting especially on Tom Cavanaugh’s part.

ENTOURAGE SEASON 6  (2 XL SPUDS)

It’s hard to believe that this show has been on for this long. That may be because of the lightning speed with which the episodes whiz by. In case you have been living is a cave on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, this is a series about 4 childhood friends who come to Hollywood to help on of them (Vincent) make it big. Actor Mark Whalberg had a lot to do with the creation of this series and I think, in the beginning at least, as lot of the plot lines came from his personal experience, and probably, to some extent, still do. These guys have always gone through a lot of ups and downs, but always seem to come up smelling like roses. Everyone in this show is a memorable character, most notably, Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold, a hyperkinetic superagent who has more energy than the Tasmanian Devil, who swears like a sailor and is as cunning as a fox. Ari uses the success he creates for Vincent to further his own ends and at the end of the day everything’s good.

This show has a pulsing energy that never lets up. And this year, it seems to be concentrating on the other characters, The Manager E (Eric), The Brother, Johnny,
and the go-fer Turtle, all of whom have aspirations of their own. The anchor of the show is Adrian Grenier, who plays Vincent, is very good looking and moviestarish, not quite in the same mold as Mark Whalberg, but close enough for rock and roll. Vincent is a purely organic character who runs on ambition, loyalty and self-knowledge. And in spite of the fact that he’s getting good advice from just about everywhere, you always get the feeling that he is very much his own dog, and really the master of his own fate.

You always come away with a good feeling after every episode of Entourage. And the big object lesson here has to do with learning to play the system, and understanding that when one door closes another door inevitably opens, things which each of the characters, in their own way, are in the process of mastering.

SPORT SPUDITORIAL

THE BRITISH OPEN  (2 SPUDS)

This is probably my favourite golf tournament on the PGA tour. Mainly because the whole golfing world is well represented and they are playing on some of the most beautiful courses all roughly hewn out of amazing natural landscapes. The weather has a profound effect on play, and it always ends up feeling more like a matter of last man standing, because four days on a links course is a very grueling adventure, even for the toughest of golfers.

This year’s British Open was remarkable for a couple of reasons. Reason 1. Tiger Woods, who shocked the hell out of everyone by missing the cut and going home on Friday. And as weird as that was, it’s the kind of thing that’s bound to happen every now and then. Reason 2. however is something that may very well never happen again in my lifetime and that is the stellar performance of  59 year old Tom Watson, who held the lead in this tournament through all four days, only to blow up in a 4 hole payoff against Stewart Cink. On the last day of the tournament I sat down and glued myself to the TV, rooting as hard as I have ever rooted for any professional in any sport.  The whole point of being a sports fan is to hang in and hope you catch the magic one of a kind moments. I hung in all one Sunday to see Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon. I hung in to watch Michael Jordan win his sixth championship ring. I hung in to watch Tiger Woods win the Masters by 20 something strokes. I hung in to watch Kobe Bryant throw down 81 points against the Raptors. I hund in to watch Michael Phelps win his eight gold medals. And yesterday I hung in to watch a grizzed veteran and 5 time British Open winner try to do something no one had ever done before.

It all came down to a fairly routine 8 foot putt that would have won him the championship on the 72nd hold of the tournament. And poor Tom chose that exact moment to run out of gas. You could see it in his stroke, in his body language, on his face and of course on the green as the ball curled away about a foot short of the hole. And things just went downhill from there in the playoff.

I’m really glad for Stewart Cink. It was his first major victory, and he’s one of a handful of golfers I have always liked. And lord knows this victory will change his life in amazing ways. But even though he didn’t pull it off, Ton Watson proved a whole lot a the world that is more than willing to stick old folks up on a shelf somewhere. Way to go Tom. Thanks for one of the best British Opens ever.

OFF TO THE COTTAGE

This is a short posting, mainly because we spent a lot of time this past week finishing off the kitchen, which is 99.4% done and getting our shit together to spend a week up at lovely Lake Cordova at a cottage we have rented there.

I will send you my thoughts from there as soon as we get back.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
I’m starting to post mini reviews and new show heads-ups there, so if you’re twittering, it’s a useful follow.

I also have a new twitter for ourgreendirectory.com
http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry
The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com. But we’re not making a big deal out of it until a) we have all the kinks ironed out, and there are a few. And b) we are through with our holidays. I’m actually taking one this year. We’ll probably start getting serious about it in late August, early Sept.

Volume 355

DVDs
Gran Torino (1.5 Spuds)
Babylon AD (1.5 Spuds)

TV SHOWS
The Philanthropist  (1 Spud)
Royal Pains (1.5 Spuds)
Hung (2 Spuds)

SPUDITORIAL

Sara Palin (My Favourite Politichick)

KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks

The first heatwave of the summer is winding down. The night is cool and calm and for the first time in a few days, I’m sitting here without the fan blowing on me and the air conditioner humming down at the far end of  Spud Central. I’m not a big fan of heat and humidity, a dislike I’m sure I share with millions. I don’t like the way it makes you feel like you always need a shower. I don’t like the way it drains your energy. I don’t like the way it makes a good night’s sleep so difficult to achieve. People are generally more grumpy when it’s hot and humid. In the areas of the world where it’s hot and humid all the time, people life a different kind of life. They know how to keep still and not waste energy. Here in the Centre of the Universe however, life’s overachieving breakneck pace continues regardless of the temperature or the humidex. The accounts for a lot of things like spikes in road rage, domestic violence and general idiotic behaviour on the part of those who think that half a dozen beers will actually cool you down in a heatwave.

But that’s all in the past for now as I just went and opened the window and sure enough, it’s finally cooler outside Spud central than it is inside. Time to crank up the old silent fan and suck some of that cool air in here, ‘cause it’s getting close to beddy-bye time for this Spud. Tomorrow is domestic chore day, with windows to clean and grass to cut and garbage of all kinds of manage.

DVDS

GRAN TORINO (1.5 SPUDS)

This is probably the lamest Clint Eastwood movie ever, except for that one where he drove around in a Cadillac with a chimpanzee. In it he plays this bigoted old fart who has just lost his wife, who becomes reluctantly involved with a family of Vietnamese people who live next door. Clint’s character is a Korean war vet and doesn’t take any crap form anyone, especially the gang that’s trying to recruit the teenage boy in the Vietnamese family.

I’m not gonna tell you much more, cause this movie is kinda lame. Clint’s character growls a lot, which I found pretty dopey. The setting is depressing, the acting overall is crap, the script is mediocre, and the ending, while not that dumb, is extremely manipulative. There are a couple of decent scenes in the film, but mostly it’s all kinda hammy. I guess we can allow Clint a brain fart every twenty years or so. And Gran Torino really does fit the description to a T. If you want to see a good Clint Eastwood movie, try Unforgiven,  Changeling, Absolute Power, Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Mystic River or Play Misty For Me.

BABYLON AD (1.5 SPUDS)

Vin Deisel has a type, and it’s very seldom that he plays against it. His type can best be defined as ‘Badass’. And in this semi good, but slightly confusing sci-fi  thriller. He’s as badass as he has ever been.

Babylon AD is set in a post apocalyptic world, where Vin, a retired smuggler, is exiled to somewhere in Russia. He gets a request from another badass higher up the food chain to deliver a girl to The Big Apple, for which he will be paid enough money to retire to his parents old farm in upstate New York. Since anything is better than what’s going on in his life at the moment, Vin takes the assignment, smuggling the girl in to the US across the Bering Straits etc. What we see here is a lot of big post apocalyptic CGI sets and thousands of extras dressed in post apocalyptic rags, as they make their way out of Russia and into the USA. Vin has to kill quite a few people, but he’s really good at it, since his self-proclaimed motto is “These days, you can never really have enough firepower.”

After the movie moves to the New York CGI sets, things start to get a little confusing. It was like, hey this is a great road picture, but now we’ve gotta actually have some story line here and what are we gonna do about that? I admittedly lost track of things here. But Vin was still being pretty badass, so I was still watching.

I won’t tell you any more about this other than to say if you like raw post apocalyptic sci fi, this is pretty good stuff to watch. If, however, you like a story that actually makes some sort of sense, well you may be disappointed. Hence the less than two spud but more than one rating.

TV SHOWS

THE PHILANTHROPIST  (1 SPUD) (Wednesdays @ 10:00)

IN A NUTSHELL: This really rich businessman, played by South African actor James Purefoy, decides he’s not doing enough, personally, to help the needy people of the world. So he decides to dedicate his life to doing just that. This is brought about as a result of getting caught in a cyclone in Nigeria and saving a young boy’s life. It’s all very touching and very dramatic. PEDIGREE: This series is created by Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, whose company created among other things, Homicide-Life On The Street and Oz, which are both amazing shows, so that kinda made things more interesting, cause these guys are real heavy hitters. FEARLESS FORECAST: I found myself puzzled by the pilot episode. I wasn’t really sure if I should be taking this seriously or not. After all, the lead character is sitting in a bar telling this story to the bartender who keeps telling him he’s full of crap. He’s doing it all in a kind of tongue in cheek fashion, yet all the action that takes place is really quite serious looking and sounding. So what we have here is a show with two distinct personalities. That means that either the producers and writers really blew it, in which case everybody will think the show is a joke, or they just haven’t figured out how light or how serious to make the show and will hopefully decide in the next episode, which I will watch. But if it’s as wonky as this one was, that will be it for me. I hope not though, because I really like James Purefoy. He’s a real star quality leading man, and I also really like the idea because it’s positive and refreshing for network TV. FOLLOW UP: The same inconsistencies in tone haunt this episode as well. I feel as if these people are trying some sort of dramatic experiment and it’s just not working. Final verdict: 1 Spud.

ROYAL PAINS (1.5 SPUDS) (Sundays @ 9:00)

IN A NUTSHELL: This doctor (named Hank) from Manhattan gets blacklisted in the Big Apple and through the kind of dumb luck that only happens in TV shows, ends up with his brother in a big mansion in the Hamptons, where da rich folk lives. He and his brother decide to open what they call a concierge medical practice for da rich folks who, for one reason or another, don’t want other rich folks or any folks at all to know they are ailing. Somewhere in the first act the Doctor played ably by Mark Feurstein acquires an assistant in the form of a drop dead gorgeous east Indian doctor (Reshma Shetty), and away they go. PEDIGREE: Created by Andrew Lenchewski, who comes pretty much right out of nowhere. FEARLESS FORECAST: This is light entertainment like Northern Exposure, but by no means in the same league. It was kind of enjoyable, but I somehow got the feeling that everything about the rollout of this concept is going to be extremely clichéd. I’ll give it another look, cause hey it’s summertime and the pickin’ are slim. According to TV.com, it did pretty good in its premiere so who knows. I sure as hell don’t.

HUNG (2 SPUDS)

IN A NUTSHELL: This teacher in Detroit whose name is Ray has watched his life, along with the life of his city, go to hell in a handbasket. Everything in his life that could go wrong has and Ray is actually living in a tent in the back yard of his parent’s house, which has burned partially down. In an attempt to turn things around Ray decides to capitalize on his main asset, which is the fact that he is a well-hung individual and very good in bed. Hence the title. PEDIGREE: This series was created and is run by Dimitry Lipkin, whose main claim to fame is the creation of The Riches, a series which ran only two season but is incredibly worth seeing especially for the performances of Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard. FEARLESS FORECAST: The first episode of this series is a bit of a downer, mainly because Mr Lipkin is establishing the circumstances which bring about the real story. Thomas Jane is cast perfectly as Ray. He’s good looking but not devastatingly so. He’s smart but not too smart, and he’s very personable, which is kinda necessary if your gonna carry a really good show. I can see where this show is headed and I like it. I hope it’s a monster hit for Mr Lipkin and he gets to do a bunch of other series. Because so far he’s been nothing but real entertaining.

SPUDITORIAL – SARAH PALIN FOR PRESIDENT…OH BOY

Just when we all needed some much deserved relief from all the chatter about the economy, gun totin’, home state scandal ridden, ex-beauty queen, just plain folks Sarah Palin has decided to step up and do her patriotic duty and distract everybody for a while with her Machiavellian plan to usurp Barack Obama in 2012.

I for one couldn’t be happier. I found this woman strangely alluring in spite of the fact that she is completely full of shit, has little or no political acumen, and probably not a snowball’s chance in hell of even getting close to the Republican nomination (I mean that can’t be that stupid again), let alone the presidential race. Sarah is plucky as all get out, I’ll give her that. And pretty hot looking for a 45 year old. But-the-sad-but-true fact is that every comedy writer from New York to LA is following her like a hawk, because this is the stuff that great prime time, late night and HBO Comedy special jokes are made of, especially in this day and age where top notch political bullshit is so hard to come by. And while the straight press will do their level best to flush her down the crapper, it’s not those people she has to worry about, because nobody trusts or gives a shit about the press these days, except for the people who are manipulating them. No what Sara has to worry about is Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Conan Obrien, John Stewart, Lewis Black, Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live and Mad TV, and everybody else with their own TV Bully Pulpit plus a about a zillion bloggers who are going to very quickly become Sara’s worst nightmare.
A long time ago Elizabeth Taylor said that any publicity was good publicity, but that was back in the dark ages when everyone believed just about everything they saw or read in the press. But we all know that the times have changed, in fact you could strongly argue the converse of Liz’s statement these days, especially when you consider the viciousness with which that publicity is going to be gained. I’m not an American or anything close, but if I were, I’d be rolling my eyes right about now and singing softly to myself the immortal words of The Who….We Won’t Get Fooled Again! No. No. No. No. No. No.

MY  TWITTER LINKS

My regular twitter location
http://twitter.com/jimbobmur
I’m starting to post mini reviews and new show heads-ups there, so if you’re twittering, it’s a useful follow.

I also have a new twitter for ourgreendirectory.com
http://twitter.com/OurGreenDirctry
The site is actually on line now at http://www.ourgreendirectory.com. But we’re not making a big deal out of it until a) we have all the kinks ironed out, and there are a few. And b) we are through with our holidays. I’m actually taking one this year. We’ll probably start getting serious about it in late August, early Sept.