Watch out – I’m about to become an expert in a bunch of sports I know nothing about.

NBC Olympic coverage is annoying.  I mean, of course there are a ton of commercials, I can understand that, but stop with the stories.  I don’t want the stories, I want the events.  SHOW MORE EVENTS.  Tomorrow, I’ll see how they handle it on the website.

I watched some swimming today, and whatever the long cycling race was today.  I saw the accident the Dutchwoman in the lead had – it was AWFUL.  I thought she’d broken her back, and there was NO coverage of it while the race was still going on.  Luckily, there’s Google (and it had happened a couple of hours before – turns out I wasn’t watching it live), so I found out she had a concussion and some minor fractures, but was NOT dead or lying on the side of the road with a broken neck.  It was really upsetting to watch.

Anyway, now we’re watching gymnastics and lots of uplifting stories about teenagers.  And that one 41-year-old.

I did it!

Goal met!  Two books finished as of 6pm today.  I can never complain about that kind of weekend, not that I complain about weekends much anyway.  I’m more likely to whine about having to work tomorrow, but lucky for you, I’ve already done my whining about that for the evening.  Instead, we’re finally ready to start the Peter Capaldi seasons of Doctor Who.  The first episode with a new Doctor is always jarring.  I’m bracing myself for change.

Sunday reading

I spent about four hours in a coffee shop five blocks from our house just reading.  I could have done that at home, but it was nice to be around people.  Then I came home and kept reading.  Then we watched three episodes of Happy Valley and got all disturbed, but then I went back to my book.  I cannot complain about today.  Or this weekend, in fact.  All of my weekends should go like this, although maybe with less disturbing TV.

Bad news about our shows

Last night, Will told us the truly terrible news about Agent Carter, one of my favorite shows: it’s been canceled after two seasons.  I’m very sad.  Today, John found out that two characters who left Agents of Shield (we were very unhappy they left) were supposed to get their own show (yay!), but now that’s not happening, either (boo).  Maybe they’ll come back to Shield.

Castle (which we don’t watch anymore, but still – Nathan Fillion) has been canceled, The Muppet Show has been canceled, and The Grinder has been canceled, which is much sadder than the other two.  The Grinder is hilarious.

Galavant, a show I’ve been meaning to watch, has also been canceled.

Networks suck.  Maybe Netflix will pick some of these up.  At least Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Shield, Elementary, and Supernatural will be back.  And it’s not like we don’t have enough TV to watch already, plus a LONG list of shows to add.  Just…I love Agent Carter.

Agent-Carter-645x370

My fictional White House

Man, I miss The West Wing, but if I can’t have that (in real life or on TV anymore), at least I can occasionally have things like this: West Wing Fans: ‘C.J. Cregg’ Returns To The White House Briefing Room.  I love Allison Janney, too.  I’ll watch her in anything.

For TV, I recently heard that Madam Secretary might be better than The West Wing.  We haven’t tried it yet, so I’m just passing on someone else’s (possibly crackpot) opinion.

My love for Crazy Ex Girlfriend, short form

I think I’ve mentioned this show in passing, but Crazy Ex Girlfriend is crazy fun.  It has a terrible title (sounds belittling), but it’s really good AND it’s a musical AND it won some awards lately AND I love it.  I just watched the latest episode yesterday (episode 11, they’re all on Hulu), and it was the best one yet.  There’s a riff on the theme song that is FANTASTIC.  (Also, I love the theme song and I love the first song from the first episode and how they bring it together at the end of the first episode and I will be watching episode 11 again VERY soon.)

Had to share.  Gotta go!

AMC makes some good TV

We starting watching Halt and Catch Fire on Netflix the other day, and that’s all we’ve wanted to watch since then.  I was initially…not resistant, exactly, but not terribly enthusiastic about starting it.  Hey, a show about building computers in 1980!  Yay?  Haven’t they made this movie (the Apple/Microsoft/IBM, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates in their garages thing) over and over again?

But, wait!  It’s compelling.  The two married people actually TALK THROUGH THEIR PROBLEMS.  The sales guy is idealistic and an ENORMOUS TOOL.  The people at the company are smart and solve problems.  Everyone is mostly likeable with a little bit of horribleness or mostly horrible with a little bit of likeableness.

It’s GOOD TV.  Also, it has Lee Pace in it (cute) and the other lead actor’s name is Scoot.  How could you not watch that?

I don’t really want to talk about the weather

Half the country (at least) is dealing with snow right now, and I don’t want to be just one more blogger talking about it.  In fact, the more I think about it, the less I want to talk about it or post pictures.  The pictures aren’t that exciting.  You’ve all seen snow before.

Let’s talk about TV instead!  Specifically, the new Legends of Tomorrow show.  We watch The Flash and Arrow (although we enjoy The Flash more), and they do crossover shows a couple of times a season.  They’re definitely happening in the same universe, which is fun.  There was a pair of crossovers this season meant to introduce a couple of characters who were going to be in Legends of Tomorrow, characters I’ve never heard of and who sound pretty dumb (Hawkgirl and Hawkman).  Legends of Tomorrow premiered recently (this week or last week, maybe?), and we watched it this morning.  I was excited to watch it, and I’m still excited even though the pilot was not that great BECAUSE Arthur Darvill is in it.  Love him from Doctor Who, love him MORE from that panel he was on at Awesome Con last summer, and I will love him as Rip Hunter, another character I’ve never heard of.  But Rip Hunter appears to be a cross between the Doctor and Mal from Firefly, and that’s very cool, and that makes me very willing to give this show some time to get better.  The other characters on the show (at least in the pilot) are a combination of B and C team heroes from The Flash and Arrow (with maybe lots more crossovers?).  I have no idea if they’re permanent cast members, but it’ll be fun to find out.

(I like TV.  I like comic book TV.  I like crossover TV.  I am a nerd.)

Teddy bears and sprinkles and unicorns requested

We have a watched a LOT of violent TV lately.  Last night, we finished watching Jessica Jones on Netflix.  It’s all we watched last week, and I loved every minute of it, but holy hell, was it violent.  We just finished watching John Wick on HBO Go, which was surprisingly good, but crazy violent, too.  I mean, it’s about a hit man with LOTS of reasons to go after the entire Russian mob, but still.  I haven’t checked IMDB yet (or Google), but the body count has to be near 100.

Thanks, Google.  84.  84 people die in this movie, mostly by gunshot.

So maybe we should take a break from all the violent TV.  My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, maybe?

Everyone’s a comic

I’m home!  The flight was a little bumpy, otherwise uneventful.  Not full.  The flight attendants were practicing their stand-up routines, but one of them liked my hat, so I’ll give them a pass on that.

We spent much of the day watching more Supernatural episodes.  Season 1 Sam and Dean were such babies!  We’ll have to work that show back into our regular TV rotation.  I’ve missed the Winchester boys.

Oh, hey, I learned a new joke on Thanksgiving that is my new favorite joke, but I can’t write it down.  The joke is in the delivery.  I have a video of Christine doing it, but John just pointed out that I took that video in portrait mode, not landscape, so I can’t post it online.  I’ll be laughed off the internet, possibly with tomatoes thrown at me.  You want to hear it?  You’ll have to come see me.  Or call me.  Skype is also good.  We’ll work it out.

Pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza – man, that looks weird

You know how you can go for months on end without eating fast food, without craving it or even thinking about it, but then you’re on a trip and you go through a drive-thru and then find yourself craving it?  And, probably, eating more of it?

Yeah, I’m doing that with pizza right now.  I love pizza, but I tend to go overboard and eat ALL the pizza when we get it, so I’ve been avoiding pizza.  But I love pizza, and when Jess suggested pizza for our movie night this week, I thought it was a brilliant idea.  (We watched Mean Girls and Bring It On (she had never seen either) and then Victor/Victoria (which I had never seen) and then the first episode of Crazy Ex Girlfriend (because I can’t be the only person who loves it) and then we were well into the third bottle of wine and called it a night.  It was great.)  The problem is that now I want pizza.  More pizza.  Pizza again.  It doesn’t even have to be good pizza.  I will eat all pizza.

I could go to the one place in town I know about that sells it by the slice (and only buy one slice), but I am also trying to stop eating out for every meal, so I went to the store. My compromise is pizza muffins (cousin to the pizza buns that became one of my food obsessions growing up, along with hot dogs and then toast).  We have tomato sauce, we have mozzarella, and we have English muffins.  That’ll work, right?

Muppets forever

We are 100% convinced the episode 3 of the new Muppets show (The Muppets) included a callback to our favorite moment of the original Muppet Show ever.  Here’s the original:

LOVE that joke. So tonight, we watched the third episode of the new show. Fozzie is out in the woods, and Kermit is looking for him. Some campers come running by screaming, “Bear! There’s a bear!” Kermit shouts after them, “Wait a minute! Is he wearing a tie?”

John and I got so excited. No other explanation will do. I love the Muppets.

I like TV

It’s fall, and that means we get our TV shows back!  Yay TV!  I might be over-selling this a little bit.  I’m not that excited.  But I’m a little excited.  In the last two days, we’ve watched the first episode of the current season of Gotham, The Flash, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  We’ve found that we remember what was going on at the end of the last season of Gotham and The Flash, but SHIELD we somehow managed to completely forget.  The season premiere started, and we were both like, wait – what?  What’s going on?  Where’s [some character]?  We’re not really any clearer having watched the episode.  We might need to go back.  But with SHIELD we don’t really mind.

Until this week, we haven’t been watching much TV, but we’re likely to fall back into old habits.  Are we fighting it?  Not so much.  Winter is coming.  Why not watch TV?  And in support of that goal, we started a new show tonight called Blindspot.  Jaime Alexander stars in it, and we’re pleasantly surprised to see that she can act.  The only other things I’ve seen her in are the Thor and Avenger movies (maybe just Thor?) and one episode of SHIELD.  She’s doing a hell of a lot more acting in this show than she ever did as Lady Sif.

Brand new, totally original thoughts about TV!

You know what phrase I have never uttered?  “Well, I’ll be.”  Also, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” or any  other variation.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say either of those things in real life, actually.  Just TV.    Something else that only happens on TV: big dramatic pauses after someone says “I did something bad,” when any normal person would be like, “Bad how?  What did you do?  Bad like illegal?  What are you talking about?  Stop looking all tortured and talk!”  “Never mind – I’m sorry I said anything!”  I mean, really.  No one talks to each other on TV.  Or when they do, it’s cloying and horrible.  Or maybe that’s just on CW shows.  And yet, I keep watching them.

If I imagine myself eating, I won’t feel so hungry

We spent several hours this morning and early afternoon watching the rest of season 3 of Downton Abbey while the tantalizing smells of a brisket cooking drove us mildly insane.  The brisket just came out of the oven, but the potatoes aren’t ready (John’s in charge of those).  I’m SO hungry.  I will attempt to distract myself with the best science fiction and fantasy short stories from 2007 and our ongoing CD-ripping project.  Wish me luck.

No more (for now)

We’ve decided to take a break (again) from Downton Abbey.  Last night, all we did after we got home from work was make dinner (John was in charge – penne with olive oil, mushrooms, spinach, and parmesan) and then watch several hours of that show.  (You can’t watch just one episode!)  I feel like a slug.  Maybe it’ll be a weekend-only show.

I need to get outside more.  The forecast is encouraging…in fact, I might try to get outside at lunch time today.  I brought my lunch (Again!  I know!), but that’s not a reason to stay chained to my desk.  Leaving the building doesn’t mean I have to get something else for lunch.

Abandoned the lunch idea.  The plan: work through lunch (which I usually do anyway) and try to get out of here a little early and go for an easy jog!  Get some sunshine and feel less slug-like at the same time!  I feel confident I can pull this off.  Semi-confident.  Okay, there’s a 50% chance I can get out of here early.

WHAT?!?

One more episode of Downton Abbey before we go to bed?  Sure!  It’s a fun soap opera, right?  Sure!  Right up until….

SPOILER ALERT FOR SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED THREE YEARS AGO

SPOILER ALERT FOR SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED THREE YEARS AGO

SPOILER ALERT FOR SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED THREE YEARS AGO

…Sybil DIED?!?  I could have sworn she was still on the show.  Well, that sucks.

So melodramatic

John and I watched the first two seasons of Downton Abbey several years ago, I guess pretty much when they first came out, and then took a break while we waited for season 3 to come out on Netflix.  That break took nearly 3 years.  Oops.  So starting yesterday, we picked up it up again.  And now we both have new impressions of the Dowager Countess.  And fresh disdain for Mary and Matthew.  Jesus, they’re obnoxious.