"It's okay to cry...Crying takes the sad out of you..."

I must admit...I am pretty excited for the return of these idiots.

Get More: Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV Shows, Full Episodes

"The Killing"

So, I guess you might not know this about me, but I likes to watch me some tee vee. And I am interested in watching this new show coming up on AMC called "The Killing". I could tell you all about it, but why don't you watch the video below, and then meet me after a little further down. Go on, watch the trailer, you know you want to.
 


Now, I know what you're thinking...Pretty reminiscent of "Twin Peaks", but I am sorta okay with that. I mean, it does have the basic plot points of  "Twin Peaks", but it has a completely different style to it, and I think it looks intriguing. And I am someone who adores Twin Peaks.This just looks pretty intense, and I also have faith in AMC, based on "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", "the Walking Dead" and even "Rubicon", which got cancelled, but which I liked quite a bit.
  I am pretty jazzed for this show. What do you think after watching the trailer?

"If Woody had Gone Right to the Police, This Would Never Have Happened"

When I was a kid, I used to love watching the Woody Woodpecker Show. I think I watched it as much, if not more, than Looney Tunes. Woody and Chilly Willie, and Sugarfoot and Andy Panda and Maw & Paw with Milford the Pig. I loved those cartoons, even the ones where Woody looked kinda unhinged.

 I loved watching Woody tangle with old Buzz Buzzard. I think this one was always my favorite(mostly because it produced the title of this post- I have always loved that line):




  And now I have a question for you: Does anyone remember a cartoon that i think had a dog in  it, and he was trying to avoid waking up a sleeping bear, and he ends up having to hold up a HUGE stack of logs, and he keeps hiccuping, and his pants keep falling down? And he ends up doing this for years? Sound familiar to anyone? I think the same dog might have been in one where he was breaking out of jail, and he ends up inside a television set, and he has to act out tee vee shows? Maybe they were Droopy Dog cartoons(but this was not Droopy himself)? Anyone?
  UPDATE: I found one of them. Here is the one about the prison break.




 I thought i found the other one, and I did find one about a dog trying to keep a house quiet for an ill tempered hibernating bear, but it did not end with the hiccuping, pants dropping log holding thing.

  UPDATE #2: I found the other one! It's a Woody Woodpecker cartoon called Log Jammed(not to be confused with the ludicrously acted "Log-Jammin'"). I had accidentally combined two cartoons!

  Here's the Woody Woodpecker- "Log Jammed"



 And , for good measure, here is the other one, about the hibernating bear:

My Issue With "The Wonder Years"

Does it bother anyone else that in the very first episode of "The Wonder Years", adult Kevin Arnold states that "nothing ever happened" with he and Winnie Cooper, and yet they dated later in the series?

Ron Fu#king Swanson!

I think he may be the greatest character currently on tee vee. This is absolute brilliance(and worth the commercial):



This episode had me almost crying a couple of times, and that was WITHOUT the Swanson Yin-Yang of Failure. It's the funniest show on tee vee.

  Here is the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness:

 "Remember gentlemen: Zero passes is selfish, one pass is American, two passes is communist!"

FINALLY....

So, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about  the series finale of LOST(I'm not quite able to get it out of my head yet)some of the Series Finales I have seen in my life, and I know that this is far from original, but I thought that I might share my thoughts on some of the Series finales of shows that I watched fairly regularly.
  So, here we go.In no particular order, except for how they are popping into my head. And, I assume it goes without saying that there are spoilers afoot.And for those of you who might remember, I did do this before, so call this an update, or "re-boot" to use the Hollywood parlance of our times(I totally misused "parlance of our times" didn't I? Oh well, who gives a rip?).

 St.Elsewhere: This is one that receives a lot of ridicule, but I remember watching this show, and I remember quite liking the Series Finale...In the end, we find out that the series was all going on in the head of an autistic boy who had a snow globe with the St. Eligius building in it.I thought it was pretty brilliant.If I remember correctly, there were also a ton of references to other tee vee shows in the dialogue. there's a barber in the episode and his name is Floyd, and someone says "yeah, old  Floyd, he may bury(Mayberry?) us all." and there is a runaway stretcher nad someone yells "Grab that Gurnee, Hal!!" and Hal Gurnee was the director of Late Night with David Letterman at the time.There were a lot more that I am not remembering.



Quantum Leap : This was absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking.In the final episode, Sam leaps into a bar, and actually sees himself in the mirror(he usually sees the face of the person he has leaped into.The owner of the bar is named Al(also the name of the guy who helps Sam with his leaps) and he seems to know a lot about Sam and his leaping(is he God? They never say). Sam sees someone else i n the room turn blue and disappear, just like he does when he leaps.
  Sam thinks that this Al is the person who is leaping him, but comes to the realization that he has been at least partially in control. He wonders about the use of helping one person at a time, but Al tells him that all the lives ah has touched have touched others,and those lives, others, and so on.
  the bartender asks Sam where he wants to go, Sam replies: I want to go home, but I can't I have a wrong to put right for Al.But you knew that didn't you?" the bartender puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and says"God bless, Sam". And Sam leaps back to a time when he leaped into the life of Al's ex-wife, but did not tell her that Al was still alive(all was a POW in Vietnam and his wife thought he was dead and remarried. Al was never the same) because it was not while he was there.He proceeds to tell Al's wife that Al is alive, and that he's coming home.The camera closes in on a picture of Al that turns all blue...the screen goes black, and then reads(I'm paraphrasing):  Beth never remarried.
  She and Al have 5 daughters and will celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary.
  Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.
Sniff, sob.

  Newhart: Bob wakes up in bed and tells his wife about the dream he had.Emily(Suzanne Pleshette), his wife from the old Bob Newhart Show rolls over in bed next to him. Best spoof "of it was all a dream EVER." Just Awesome!



(You might recognize Lisa Kudrow as the  middle bride of Larry,Darryl and Darryl.)

 X-Files:You know what? I do NOT remember the series finale of this show.I do remember that I thought it should have gone off the air like 3 years earlier, but I simply do not remember a moment of it.

 Sopranos: I don't really remember much about this finale except for the last scene, which I simply thought was brilliant.They build this tension, and it just ends. Cuts to black.You don't know what happens. Will someone kill Tony? Maybe. Will it be in that diner? Maybe. Maybe not.But it will always be lurking there, won't it?







 Seinfeld: I thought this was a brilliant and completely appropriate end for this show.I didn't think the episode itself was that great, but I thought the ending of them in jail for not helping someone was funny and completely appropriate for them. And then reprising a conversation from the first episode was brilliant as well. They learned NOTHING.



 Twin Peaks: All these cliffhangers that go nowhere. Absolutely brilliant. "How's Annie? How's Annie?"



Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I liked the first series finale two years earlier better than this one, but I did like this one as well.Buffy distributes the Slayer power to all the potential slayers in the world. Destroys the Hellmouth(or one of them) and defeats the first Evil. I nitpick on the fact that they sort of disrespected Anya after she died, and I would have liked it if they killed off the Principal(never liked his character), but overall, it was a satisfying ending to the series.

Freaks and Geeks: Great show. Can't believe it was only on one season. Loved this final episode.Lindsey gets introduced to the good old Grateful Dead, and then leaves to go on tour instead of going to mathlete camp.The look on her face when she says goodbye to her Mom seems to say she's not sure she's coming back. Greatness: great scene, great episode, great show(great band :) ).




And, of course..."I Married Dora"




So, what else is on?

What Do You Do When Your Pack-Ratness Works In Your Favor?

My name is Paticus, and I'm a Pack-Rat.

  I'm not a hoarder(at least not yet)...Now, I know that every hoarder in the world will tell you that they are not a hoarder...But I really don't think I am.I guess every hoarder would probably say that, too. Oh, well, I guess I'm fucked either way, so I'll stop trying to convince you.Just suffice it to say(that is a dodgy saying to try and write, I hope I got it right) that my house does not have "paths" in it, I still can find my children, and there are no carcasses in there.

  Enough of that. Anywho, here's the sitch from yesterday: I was in the kitchen , whipping up some breakfast, and I heard a crash in the living room. It was a crash I had heard many times before, the sound of the TiVo remote hitting the hardwood floor.But, there was something different. It sounded louder, more jarring. I called out,"What was THAT?". And I heard, "I dropped the remote." from My Special Lady, in her extra annoyed voice, the one she gives me when I have asked an idiotic question. So, for a second, I thought that I had misheard the crash, that there had been some sort of aural anomaly occurring between the living room and the kitchen, and it had intensified the sound of the remote crash. I breathed a sigh of relief.
 
  But then, I heard the words that make a man's blood run cold..."Now, before you freak out...". I could tell by the tone that she was approaching the kitchen. And I knew. And her warning fell on deaf ears. I already started to freak out. Then, she entered the kitchen and I saw what was in her hand...The TiVo remote...It was split almost in half...Hanging together by a plastic seam at the bottom. I took it gently from her hands.And I will admit it...I lost it. I yelled:"Dropped the remote? Where'd you drop it from, the sky?"

  And then, I noticed that the top button the "TiVo CONTROL BUTTON" was gone altogether.No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no...This isn't happening....It cannot be...

  Once again, My Special Lady showed why she is the Batman to my whiny,sniveling Robin. She took the remote back from me, and took it into the living room to see if she could fix it, while my daughters and I stared at her, useless.She quickly told us all to go away and leave her alone.

  I returned to the kitchen, and went back to work on my breakfast.My Special Lady came in a few minutes later, I looked at her, eyes wide with hope...But she grabbed the phone book and left again."What are you looking up?"

  As I entered the living room she was hanging up the phone."It's after, ten, right?" She asked. I nodded."I"m calling Best Buy," she said,"to see if we can get a new remote."

   I turned to leave, and a thought occurred to me..."Where's the old remote?" I asked. We had a previous TiVo that had died, and for some reason, we did not send the remote back with it.When the girls were younger, we had let them play with it, but they had not played with it in a while.We probably should have thrown it away(it was in pretty sad shape)...But I was pretty sure we had not. My Special Lady's eyes lit up, and she quickly went to the bedroom. She emerged seconds later with the old TiVo remote.

  I took it from her and sat down at the coffee table. I carefully removed the batteries from the broken remote, and out them in the old remote. I held it to my lips, agave it a small kiss and some words of encouragement, aimed it at the TiVo box and pressed the Power on button...The tee vee came to life. I pressed the "TiVo CONTROL BUTTON", and the TiVo main menu popped onto the screen. HUZZAH!! It still worked !!

  We were saved!!!

  So, now you see the dilemma. I have been trying to combat my pack rat tendencies, but I was just saved by those very same tendencies.

  What's a guy to do?

The Ace Of Cakes....

It's not a big secret that I watch a lotta tee vee. And with the invention of TiVO(BEST INVENTION EVER), it has only increased exponentially. I'm okay with it. So keep your judgments in your pants.

  And I watch all sorts of tee vee, scripted and reality-esque. I don't really watch the Network reality shows(Bachelor, Survivor, etc.) but I do watch a fair number of the basic cable reality shows, both contest driven, and just plain train wreck shows.We watched all seasons of Rock of Love, we watch Flipping Out and Top Chef and the MTV Real World/Road Rules stuff. So, I am not trying to claim to be high- falutin' or some kind of connoisseur either.

  But I DO want to tell you why I like Ace of Cakes so much.

In case you don't know, Ace of cakes is about a bakery called Charm City Cakes in Baltimore that specializes in really elaborate cakes. cakes like this:

That is a cake. or most of it is...Anyway, the quality of the cake isn't really even the point.I will tell you what I like about it(and it's NOT that I'm a big fat guy and I like cake-okay, maybe that's PART of the reason...But it's NOT that i think one of the cake workers is cute...Okay, well maybe that's part of the reason, too. But it's not the main reason either)...What I like about this show is that none of the people are evil fuckers. they don't have reason to fuck each other over, so they don't. They work together, they help each other. They make fun of each other, and they turn out a pretty kickass product.

  I know it's corny and all., but I really find it a refreshing show to watch.They don't revel in other's failures, they don't do things to insure other people's failures.They make cakes. they make them for weddings and birthdays and as surprises. They make them for events and other tee vee shows(the LOST cake was pretty cool).

  They are challenged and they figure out how to overcome the challenge. Things fail, and they fix them. And help one another fix them. And the looks on some of the clients' faces when they get the cakes are pretty priceless.

  They make people happy, and they seem to enjoy themselves most of the time when they do it. And I really enjoy watching it. I really do. It makes ME happy.

  Okay, I'm done ranting. Later.