It's Friday Night, and The Mood is Right...

Gonna have some fun, show you how it's done TGIF!

It's friday evening (on the West Coast) and we recently celebrated our movie's progress with a bottle of champagne, a couple of beers, and a game of power-ball (a combination of wall-ball and hand-ball, but contained within a small, enclosed office space... our director invented it four years ago), so right now I'm ready to spout out random thoughts in bullet-form...

At the risk of sounding like the loser right-fielder on an 8-year old little league team... Let's Get Some Chatter Going! How bout these recent fall premieres, huh? Personally, I thought South Park was amazing. I spent an entire semester playing one of those stupid-ass MMORPGs (for class, i swear) and they just nailed every aspect of it. Dare I say, it's one of only two comedies (currently running new episodes) that is always worth the watch and geniunely hysterical

I've really enjoyed "The Office". Over the summer I watched all of season 1 and 2, thanks to Dan's downloaded copies... I know, I know, my mom scolded me and in my defense i pointed out "everyone does it"... "yes" she said, "but this is what you do for a living"...

None of the new shows have enticed me at all, not even one iota. I hear "The Nine" is actually really good.

"Ugly Betty" is supposedly a crowd pleaser, although I can't get into it because it seems like it belongs on the Disney channel (with it's crazy sets, one-dimensional characters, and hokey music... plus it has that evil mastermind who sits in the dark, watching tv screens, and might as well be stroking a cat, just like Claw from Inspector Gadget. Another reason I can't watch that show is because i've seen the Colombian version and like every spanish-speaking tv program, it is ludicrous, over-the-top, and jam-packed with women I would marry (who can't act for sh!t)... Everyone's seen "Not Another Teen Movie" right? Remember when they're picking out the ugly girl that Jake is going to have to turn into the prom queen? They bypass the siamese twins and some hideous looking chick, but finally settle on Jeanie, because she's got braces ("eww!") and a pony tail ("gross!!)... well that's exactly what the Colombian version of "Ugly Betty" is like (an obviously gorgeous woman who is hardly hidden behind a few easy fix-ups). alright enough "Ugly Betty"...

How bout "Studio 60" losing so much of its audience (they started at 13 million and now they're down to 9 million). I heard that in this past week's episode, the characters were discussing how they would need to retain 90% of the first show's audience for their second show, otherwise "heads were going to roll", and so of course, they were able to retain 109% (they gained a bunch more viewers) - well in real life they only retained 80% of the first show's audience and dropped another 84% on their third episode...

Any thoughts on "Friday Night Lights"? Our roommate Dave is working for Imagine who produces it and so he was at a premiere party for it on Tuesday. I think most critics like it, but the ratings were only so-so. I just caught the last 20 minutes and I thought it was "okay." There are so few shows that can ever capture game-action accurately ("Hang Time" was probably the worst at this... their court was less than half the size of a normal court, Anthony Anderson was a starter?#$@, a 5'-7'' chubby, Italian kid who couldn't defend or even shoot was getting recruited by Duke, and they had a girl playing on the boy's varsity team (and hey, I'm not saying that girls aren't talented athletes... in several instances they've been able to compete at a level with (or above) boys, but this was Indiana - the heart of high school basketball - and they were supposed to be an elite program... if that's the case, no girl is making that team). While "Friday Night Lights" was better than "Hang Time", it was still severly lacking. Bill Simmons pointed out something that I was also confused by: How could they (the good guys) recover an onsides kick (at around midfield), gain 20 yards on a running play, and then have the QB drop back and hurl a 50-yard pass that gets caught at only the 30 yard-line??? How big is that field? Just ridiculous. Another play that struck me as inaccurate was their goal-line touchdown run: they were at the 1, faked a handoff to the left, then another to the right, and then finally gave the ball to a guy on the left... i mean "C'mon!!!" You had 3 guys lined up behind your quarterback in your backfield? What is this, the exlamation point formation? And you wasted that much freakin' time with fakes? Any decent defense would have gotten some penetration if you had waited that long to finally transition the handoff, and if in fact they couldn't push the O-line back at all, the fakes would have been completely unnecessary. The whole "first-string qb gets knocked out and the clueless second-stringer has to fill his shoes" was undoubtedly ripped from "Varsity Blues" (but "Varsity Blues" was funny, and a great movie). I see this show going til midway through the first season, although it does stand a chance of making it to the beginning of May (I don't see a second season in it's future... when was the last time NBC had a prime-time drama that won over a significant portion of the teen demographic? This is the network that caters to the white-collar, middle-aged, six-figure earning audience. Their hit dramas have been "West Wing", "ER", and "Law and Order"... they don't do "OC"s and "One Tree Hill"s. Their shows can sometimes get by with low ratings because of the "quality" (aka - spending power) of their demographic, but with this show, the target audience is obviously the younger (not-yet-professional) crowd.

I've lost any buzz I had been working up

Rogan's is gone? seriously? how did this happen? and on Tina's watch... mmm-ummm-hmmm... since Jamie Anderson used to work there, she has volunteered to make us Stingers with a bit of "Rogan's" authenticity whevener we want (I'm kind of putting words in her mouth, but that's the gist of what she said)

How is Sam Adams Octoberfest? Sam Adams Summer Ale is one of my favorite beers but I haven't been too pleased with some of their other varieties. I'm thinking about trying the Octoberfest though.

October baseball is exciting, I got to admit it. I don't think I watched one regular season contest outside of 613 Hudson (aside from the Rockies game my sister and I went to in Colorado)... it's only enjoyable when you're around people who are invested and excited (and it helps if there's High Life, Shark and Petri, a conspicious arrival by Drunk Tony, Dre knocks a bowl of pasta out of your hands, Sam takes 20-1 odds on the pitcher throwing a no-hitter, you can hear Limmer (without a shirt and with a toothbrush jammed in his mouth) muttering something like "Fuck Dude" from his bedroom off the kitchen, and it's always great when there's a relief effort by Jeff Weaver (hilariously pitiful) or Duaner Sanchez (awe-inspiring... espescially when he wears those Dwayne Wayne glasses - from a "Different World"... you know who I'm talking about, he was also in "Renaissance Man"... okay now, you probably don't know who I'm talking about). My point is: October baseball is fun and I'll watch, but 613 would make it even better.

Who is actually still reading this post? There's no way Mark or Shott is. I'm probably going to delete it (or at least edit it down) in a couple of days.

I can't wait to see and hear what the Eagles fans do this week at the game...

CORTACA party at our place, if you just so happen to find yourself on the West Coast on the morning of Novermber 11th.

That's it. It's all over. "Call of Duty!!!" (Jim's new Pam is hotter than Scranton Pam... agree? disagree?)