“FlashForward” – new ABC series

I watched the premiere episode of this show and was very impressed. It began by showing people doing their daily jobs and chores, and then the screen went blank. When it came back, things were chaotic. Cars were crashing, patients were dying in hospitals because doctors had blacked out during operations, planes were crashing and everyone was running around not knowing what was happening. An FBI guy had been in a car chase, and he managed to find his way back to his office where everyone was in a state of shock. What they eventually learned was that globally everyone blacked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds! No one knew why; all they knew was that it caused world-wide mass destruction. They eventually decided to start a website where everyone could log on and tell what they experienced during the blackout. As it turns out, everyone had glimpses into their own futures which happened six months ahead – April 29, 2010. And what these people saw wasn’t good. It left them depressed and wondering if there was anything they could do to change their own futures. This show held my attention all the way – I found it to be different from what I’ve seen so far, and I know I’ll keep watching this one. It’s really exciting!

It also got me to thinking about my own dreams. I don’t think I have “future” dreams. My dreams are always full of strife, anxiety and things not so fun. The one I have the most is that I lose my purse, and I spend the entire dream running around haphazardly searching for it. Sometimes I even know I’m dreaming, but I keep looking for that damn purse. I never find it. Another favorite is I’m going to my piano lesson – I majored in music in college – and as I walk across campus, clutching my music, I realize I haven’t practiced in months! I’m horrified and don’t know what to do. I never quite get to my lesson and piano teacher before I wake up, thank God! Another dream is of me at a party or some gathering where I really want to look nice, but I’m wearing something ghastly and ugly and can’t find anything else to wear. I desperately search but never find anything to wear. By ghastly and ugly, I mean rags hanging off my body! What the hell is the matter with me? I keep hoping I’ll have some good, sexy dreams, but for the most part, I spend my dreams looking for my purse.

Emmy Show – 9/20/09

I watched the show last night and was surprised and pleased. I thought Neil Patrick Harris did a great job as MC and managed to hold it all together; he even moved it along enough so that it didn’t go over the time slot more than a few minutes! That must be a first for any award ceremony. I liked his song that started off the ceremony – very well done and clever. I don’t think he pissed anyone off with crude remarks which has been done in past ceremonies. I still would rather not see 500 hundred people pile onto the stage for one award and then thank everyone they have ever known. This all takes time away from just handing out awards. I guess they all want to share in it and be a part of it, but I don’t like to sit through it.

I like that “Mad Men” won for best drama; I would like it if “Breaking Bad” had won. Too bad they can’t give out two awards. I like “30 Rock” winning best comedy series; that one is really hard to beat. It’s absolutely hysterical sometimes. I think Alec Baldwin is so good in “30 Rock” and deserved winning for best actor in a comedy again which he did. Best actress in a comedy went to Toni Collette for “United States of Tara,” which I’m sure is very good, but I don’t get Showtime so I would rather have had Tina Fey win that award. But the biggest disappointment to me was the award for supporting actor in a drama series. It went to Michael Emerson of “Lost.” What is “Lost” anyway? I’ve seen bits and pieces of it but never watched an entire episode as I think it’s so far out there I would be left too disturbed to function normally as I usually do . . . I guess. Who are those weird people and what the hell are they doing? I’m sure Michael is a very good actor, but I think Aaron Paul from “Breaking Bad” should have won that Emmy. He was fantastic in his role as far as I’m concerned. He really impresses me and deserves recognition for his work. Bryan Cranston of “Breaking Bad” won for best actor in a drama which really made me happy. He’s great in the part he plays. He and Aaron do some very good acting in the show, and there are many exciting and unexpected situations that come up – some brutal and very surprising. I love it!

So I was generally happy with the whole show. I think Neil should become a permanent fixture there.

“Lie To Me”

I watched the premiere episode of the Fox show “Lie To Me” this morning. This will be its second year, and it looks even better than last year. I wrote all about it on my January 23 blog this year, and those things still hold true. Tim Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman who runs the Lightman Group that now works with the FBI. Dr. Lightman is the world’s leading deception expert by observing someone’s eye movements, body movements, facial expressions, eyebrow twitches, etc. He can tell if someone is lying, angry, or even telling the truth. Kelli Williams plays Dr. Gillian Foster, a psychiatrist, who sort of manages to keep things on an even keel, if that’s at all possible. The show is based on and inspired by the real scientific work of Dr. Paul Ekman.

This year some things have changed in the lives of the characters. I think it’s going to be very interesting. Dr. Foster divorced her jerk of a husband and now wants to have fun and wear a red dress! I’m all for it. The show moves very quickly and manages to solve more than one problem during the one show. All the characters are good and Dr. Lightman doesn’t coddle anyone, but they still seem to like him and work hard for him. He’s also pretty cute.

So I highly recommend this show, just as I did last time.

Crazy Happenings

This picture is of Teri and Cindy taken years ago with Bonnie and Clyde, our duck and goose. I don’t have a picture of a chicken or I’d use it. I think I have one of me holding a chicken when I was a little girl, but it’s blurry and it may have been a rabbit . . . or a bull frog . . . or possibly a pheasant. So a duck and a goose was the next best thing. This is all because of an article recently in the paper of a woman who has a pet chicken who eats bugs and gives her one egg a day. It’s a Rhode Island Red, and there’s a picture of her drinking red wine out of the woman’s glass! She apparently loves wine now that she knows what it is. This is in a suburb that has a law that doesn’t allow chickens in the city limits unless they are 100 feet from the residence. So that cuts out any chickens in town. All cities have their own rules; some allow three chickens but no roosters, another town allows them just as household pets, and one allows 50 chickens and roosters as long as they don’t violate the noise restrictions! So the woman with the pet chicken, Baby Girl, will fight for new regulations so she can keep her chicken. I wonder if Baby Girl likes Chardonnay. Red wine gives me a headache – I hope Baby Girl doesn’t get headaches. Can chickens have headaches?

On the news the other night, the anchor told about a woman who was flying from Reno to Portland on Southwest Airlines. They made her buy two tickets as she weighed about 350 pounds and that was too much for one seat on that airline. What I found strange about the whole matter was the fact that her husband was interviewed and he didn’t seem upset at all. He just said his wife was upset and hyperventilating, but he didn’t seem the least bit distressed. In fact, he took a picture of her in the seat and it was shown on that news program. Not very flattering! Why did he let himself be interviewed about the incident? Wouldn’t a person normally not want to publicize something like that? Especially about his own wife? If I were his wife, I’d lose weight and then dump him! I think I’d dump him and then lose weight . . . that would be quicker.

Yesterday on my morning walk, I noticed a photo-sized, color picture on the sidewalk. It was of a stark naked, well-built man sitting down with his well-built penis lying against his leg! I was quite surprised and felt like shouting, “Come look at the guy with the big dick!” but I didn’t because I didn’t see anyone else around. I wanted to lean over and get a better look – possibly even pick it up for a really good look – but something held me back. I was afraid Chris Hansen of “To Catch a Predator,” the popular NBC series, might be hiding behind a bush and filming me. If he had, he might arrest me for distributing pornography and I would disgrace my two innocent daughters who would never suspect their mother of anything like that. So I just kept on walking. This morning I took the same route, but the picture was gone. Where did it come from and why was it there . . . and where did it go? Another mystery of life.

My mom has visitors

Here’s my mom with two of her great grandsons, Pat and Nick. Pat is now 25 and Nick is 22, so you can see they must have probably grown since this picture was taken. My mom was living in a retirement home after my dad died, and Cindy, the boy’s mother, brought them over to see their great grandma. Cindy is my younger daughter and Teri is the oldest with a 13 year old boy. It was always a special occasion if any of the grandsons visited, and my mom loved it. I think she had some cookies in a baggie for the boys. She was dressed in her favorite red outfit for us.

I took the picture from behind as I like pictures like that. There is a vulnerability about characters in pictures that is captured only from the back view. Maybe that’s just my point of view – I’m not a photographer. I just take random photos with not much thought involved, just hoping they turn out well. But this one tugs at my heart when I look at it. I don’t know why – maybe it’s because the boys are so small and they seem so engrossed with what my mom is doing. They are so little; they look like they need someone to protect them. Fortunately, they were protected and are now big strong men.

I have that picture framed and on my wall. I love it.

HOUSE premiere

I just watched the 2-hour season premiere episode of HOUSE which will begin on September 21 at 8pm to 10pm on Fox. I felt like I had been to a good movie, and one good thing, I could put it on “pause” to go to the bathroom which you can’t do in a theater. I have never watched HOUSE religiously. I don’t mean that in the religion way, I mean it in the way that people say when they do something all the time . . . religiously. But by the end of last season, I was getting into it more and this looked like a good place to start watching again.

It begins with House checking himself into Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital to break his addiction to Vicodin and possibly stop the hallucinations which have made it impossible for him to practice medicine any longer. He goes in voluntarily, but the doctors have to feel he is cured before they will release him. This entire episode concerns his attempts to bully his way out and then his decision to really try and help himself. His roommate, Alvie, is his accomplice in all of House’s efforts. Alvie is manic most of the time and raps incessantly. He did a wonderful job in that role. The actor is Lin-Manual Miranda, and he should have a long career ahead of him. Hugh Laurie, as House, was excellent in this role. It showed a different side to him – many sides, in fact. Andre Braugher plays the psychiatrist who has quite a time with House, but they come to understand each other. He is very good.

We don’t know what House will be like this season after his stay in the psychiatric hospital – it’s so much easier to just say loony bin. It’s easier to type that too. I know I’ll be watching to see what transpires. Whatever it is, it should be very interesting. I highly recommend it.

I think I’ll stop reading the newspaper

Today I was reading my daily paper, and the news was so glum – horrible things happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, the health care business is not moving along as quickly as it should, a girl is kidnapped and found years later and the media is being worked into a frenzy over it. I know we all like to hear the news, but sometimes it gets to be a little much. Everyone is interviewed over and over again on television. How can they do that and why do we watch? Michael Jackson was finally buried, but that’s not the end of it. That will go on and on for years and there will be many specials on television about him and his brothers. I say, who cares?

So this morning I read my paper and looked for something to make me laugh. I first read an article about something that happened in Jericho, Arkansas, population 184. That tiny town is notorious for its speed traps and speeding tickets handed out. That’s all the cops do there as there isn’t too much crime with population 184. So when the fire chief was hauled into court twice in one day for tickets, he told the judge what he thought of the whole business. And then the cops shot him – right there in the court room! He’s alive in the hospital, and I think there is a change in Jericho in the way they do business now.

And in Montana, a police officer resigned because he had written on his Facebook page that there should be a law allowing the police to put people in jail for being stupid. I can’t really see anything wrong with that, but I guess he thought it was in the best interest of the police department or so the City Manager said. So I guess stupid people in Montana have nothing to worry about.

Not so for stinky people in Honolulu. The City Council there had considered making it illegal for stinky people to use their transit system. I think that would have been a great law and should be mandatory everywhere. But it didn’t pass. When I was waiting to board a plane in New York, there was a man waiting behind me who smelled worse than anyone I’ve ever smelled. I was scared he was going to get on my plane, but he didn’t. Why couldn’t there be a “smell” test for people before they enter public transportation. It couldn’t be nearly as bad as going through all that security they do in airports.

Now that’s the kind of news that makes me smile – and I like when that happens.

GLEE, BONES and FRINGE – new season for Fox

I just spent the last few days watching new episodes of those three shows for this fall. I’ve written about all of them before, but this is a new season!

I had already seen the premiere episode of GLEE which I liked, and now have seen two other episodes which will be coming up. I think GLEE will be a hit. It’s not deep with a serious story line; it’s light comedy that doesn’t require serious thinking! But it has great music, singing and dancing. How could that go wrong? Jane Lynch is so good in her part and makes it necessary to see what she’ll be up to in new episodes. I like it and will keep watching this one.

BONES starts out the new season with a continuation of the circumstances that occurred in the last episode. It moves smoothly in the transition and continues on with the great actors that are so much fun to watch. Booth and Brennan are terrific in their parts as they talk and argue with each other. They are so different, and yet they get along so well. I love the show and am glad it’s finally coming back. I’m tired of watching the same old reruns, but I’ll probably continue to do so!

The premiere episode of FRINGE starts in the same creepy way they all do! This show is very far out and makes you think to keep up with it. The three main characters, Walter, Peter and Olivia will face some big obstacles, but they manage to get through them. As they do so, they find themselves drawing closer and caring more about each other. You never know what’s going to happen next. And sometimes it’s even creepier than you could imagine. But Walter’s lab always stays the same with him making weird concoctions and the cow mooing off to the side! Walter and Peter seem to be drawing closer – Walter is Peter’s father. Peter rescued him from the loony bin to help them solve crimes which he does quite well. At first, he was rather resentful of his dad, but now has grown to really care for him. They are a crazy, fun bunch! It’s worth watching this one.