Monday the 5th

Commuting:

• Polished off Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and then watched the "Charlie Goes America All Over Everybody's Ass" episode of It's Always Sunny on my iPod.

Nighttime viewing:

• Watched the baseball park episode of Man vs. Food. Adam Richman is totally one of my TV boyfriends - I love his good-natured enthusiasm and appreciation for the ridiculous. The concept of the shore is, of course, appalling - food challenges no one should attempt - and yet it is done with such unabashed glee.
  
• HIMYM, something about Robin school. Total meh-pisode. Keeping the Robin/Barney relationship as a focus is dangerous, shark-jumping territory.
  
• Trauma. Episode 1 - First thought, is that first guy is a "That Guy". Turns out to be Herc from Friday Night Lights. (Thanks, IMDB!) And so far... not looking like this is gonna stay in the DVR recording list. Watching car accidents occur in places where you drive is creepy. Also, the set-ups and the characters just seem so artificial. I think the idea of first response medical teams is dramatic enough without starting the characters off with a flashback to give them a "Troubled Past!" and "Complicated Relationships!" or characters with nicknames who holler catchphrases. Fast-forwarding to see where they filmed... and... HEY! It's Buddy from Friday Night Lights! I love when that happens, when you see multiple actors from one show on another. Anyway... fast forward... and... we're done. That was dumb.
  
• Starting on episode 2... and... realize I do not care at all. I don't need to watch this to see where they film because I live here, and can also just GO OUTSIDE to see San Francisco. But I do find it funny that people are just walking by in the location shots and ignoring the paramedics. I kinda think that's more likely to happen with film crews than with actual paramedics. City dwellers are jaded, but still full of schadenfreude.

Nightstand:

• Might push through to finish off Alive in Necropolis tonight.

Sunday the 4th

Morning Run:

• Yeah, that's right. I went for a run. So Amazon has MP3 daily deals, and I've picked up some interesting stuff there. Recently, I downloaded Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon. My current favorite tracks are "Ain't That Pretty at All" by Pixies and "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" by Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt.

Laundry viewing:

• The Soup. They made Wendy Williams up, right? That can't be real.

Mid-morning commute:

• Read Revenge of the Spellmans.

Evening commute:

• Polished off 3 Story of the Day podcasts - 2 on healthcare (enough with the healthcare!) and one on a children's orchestral program from Venezuela. Then most of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, which had a timely and unwelcome series of anecdotes for the "Bluff the Listener" segment - ridiculous legal stories. The true one was about a brief being tossed out for poor stapling, and the listener got it right because she used to be a paralegal. Yup. I got that one right, too.

Nighttime viewing:

• FINALLY sat down for SYTYCD, and that New Orleans Bounce audition was fantastic. It got me to wondering, what's my favorite audition ever? And one still stands out. Phillip Chbeeb, Season 3 (his first attempt). Now he did not turn out to be one of the best contestants - but what he did was so unusual and yet lyrical that I have never forgotten the feeling I had watching it. An edge of my seat, joyous amazement that made me want to scream "Did you SEE that?!"
  
• SNL. Checking IMDB now to remind me what Ryan Reynolds has been in bc I'm confusing him with... oh. He WAS Van Wilder. Which I didn't even see. He's like Dane Cook without the constant shouting, or Ryan Gosling without the indie cred. Anyway, intro over and I haven't laughed yet. 2 minutes into the Family Feud parody aaaannndddd... I am done. I am deleting this from my scheduled recordings. We are on a break, SNL.
  
• TAR (That's The Amazing Race, to you non-TWOP readers (and that of course is Television Without Pity). I'm not gonna lie - it makes me very, very happy that the loud-mouthed attorney is such a dumbass when it comes to figuring out the Race.
  
• The Office, finishing up "The Promotion". And this one has inspired me to coin a term - it was a meh-pisode.
  
• Mad Men. The Pete & Trudy moments were very well done - they captured that awful wordless exchange, where you go from feeling so optimistically close to someone to realizing things have gone very, very wrong.

D(VR)leted:

• Dollhouse. I just don't care. I had high hopes, because Joss Whedon's Firefly was fantastic, and I like Eliza Dushku - but the overacting in this show is horrendous. I will stare at Google images of Tahmoh Penikett (hhhaaawwwwtttt) rather than sit through this festival of meh.

Insomnia viewing:

• HIMYM, "Little Minnesota". Kaela had told me this is her favorite episode and it took me until the 2nd repeat to catch it. And it was pretty good, but I think my favorite is when Robin sits in as Barney's bro.
  
• It's Always Sunny, "The Nightman Cometh". He's a master of karate, and friendship - for everyone!