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If the shows you've been watching don't cover such diverse topics as ComicCon, Differential Equations, the Mambo & Bartending, then you should add The Big Bang Theory (Mondays on CBS) and Beauty & The Geek (Tuesdays on CW) to your repertoire.
Beauty & The Geek is nearing the season finale, so tune in quick! If you're not familiar with the show the premise is basic: an attractive, not-so-bright, 20-something is matched with a not-so-attractive, genius, 20-something for a series of competitions to help the pair grow socially, emotionally & perhaps even academically. The team that grows the most (or just doesn't get eliminated) wins $250k. Of course the beauties have weekly challenges around learning something nerdy like geography, biology or developing an original comic book hero while the geeks learn something social like sewing (a comic book hero costume), massage or bartending.
My favorite this season has been the uber-geek Joshua. If you searched wikipedia for "geek", I have little doubt Joshua's bio will appear (give it a try and let me know how it works out...if you don't have success click on his CW bio here!) Through all the crazy challenges Joshua has given it his all, but none quite captured his sense of daring, athleticism and surprising lack of understanding of basic physics as his go at flair bartending:
- Imagine an attractive lady asks for a pina colada. Joshua is pleased because that is the drink he's been studying.
- He grabs the rum, gives it a flip, a twist, spills no more than a tablespoon and lands about 1/2 oz of rum in the shaker.
- Then he goes for the glass carafe of cream: you can see his mind turning as he thinks about how to flip and catch this very full container. Not willing to risk a shattered bottle of cream and have nothing to mix in the pina colada (like say, maybe coconut milk?) Joshua decides to put gravity to work for him. With a firm grip on the carafe, he pops it into the air and quickly moves the open shaker under the cream as it falls back to earth at 32.2 ft/sec^2. More cream is needed, so Joshua follows-up quickly with a second thrown-cream, gravity-catch (watch out, this will be all the rage with championship flair-tenders next season!)
- Now for the ice...the gravity move seemed to work well, and after a couple tong tosses of ice up, about 4 come down in the shaker.
- Once the drink is in the old fashioned glass (that's what I drink my pina coladas out of, don't you?!) and a straw is needed, so Joshua reverts to his tried and true gravity-catch. 10 straws go up, all come down, but none in the glass. On the second try, 4 go up, and two land in the glass and Joshua presents his lovely partner with a 2 oz rum & cream drink.
Please, don't be confused...I am not poking fun at Joshua (well, maybe at little at his over-use of gravity.) He gave it his all, made me laugh so hard i almost cried and he had a good time trying something new. Like one of the competing Beauties said "he can make me a drink anytime!" Sadly, Joshua & his Beauty were eliminated last week, and I'm not sure the show will be the same without him.
This is where The Big Bang Theory comes in. It mimics reality (the reality show, that is) with 2 main geeks, Leonard & Sheldon, who are physicists, like Joshua. Their two nerdy friends, Howard & Rajesh, one of which can't talk to girls unless his is drunk. And their cute waitress/bartender friend, Penny, who lives across the hall. It also mimics my reality since I went to a college where ~75% of the population could easily be Leonard, Sheldon, Howard or Joshua and the other ~25% were more like Rajesh. Of course Leonard would love to have a relationship with Penny and the show smartly delivers the humor that can be found between the academic & social haves and have-nots. My favorite moments from this season are, in no particular order:
- When Howard poses as Rajesh in a phone conversation with a would-be date in an over-the-top Indian accent that results in Rajesh admonishing Howard for making him "sound like a convenience store clerk on The Simpson's."
- When Sheldon dresses as the Doppler Effect for Halloween and everyone thinks he's a zebra.
- Any of their crazy food antics: how to split 4 dumplings between 3 people, describing how long cereal can sit in milk before it ruins your Saturday morning routine or whether its alright to have Thai for dinner after having Indian for lunch (FYI, its not ok.)
The good news is that CBS seems to be re-airing the season at its regularly scheduled time (I caught the Pilot episode again tonight-Leonard & Penny's kids would be smart, beautiful, and imaginary!) You can also catch them on CBS's website. I need a healthy dose of nerd humor in my TV schedule, so please start watching and keep my hopes alive that The Big Bang Theory will survive the writers' strike!
The Queen has spoken!
I don't know about you, but I never really cared for min-series myself. They give you a bunch a filler all week and then leave the dramatic conclusion for the last 5 minutes of the last night. Or worse yet, they leave you hanging and force you to draw your own conclusions as to what actually happened. I promise not to do that, and here, without further ado, is the dramatic conclusion:
On Friday I watched very little TV, so I've combined the journal with Saturday which was also TV limited due to a mediocre round of golf:
Sarah Silverman (Comedy Central): 30 minutes, took about 20 minutes to watch
30 Rock (NBC): 30 minutes, took about 20 minutes to watch
My Name Is Earl (NBC): 30 minutes, took about 20 minutes to watch
Scrubs (NBC): 30 minutes, I only watched about 3 minutes before I fell asleep from boredom
CSI (CBS): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
Cold Case (CBS): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
Life (NBC): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
For a 2-day total of 5 hour and 30 minutes of programming (not counting a single minute of Scrubs!)
For those that have been paying attention, that brings the six day total to 26 hours and 30 minutes of programming watched. That is far short of the Queen's 50 hour estimate and with only one day left, 50 hours seems an implausible feat...the results follow!
Fortunately for the Queen, Sunday TV watching easily allows for multi-tasking and I watched all this programming (with a few hours left in the day!)
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (USA): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes
Friday Night Lights (NBC): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes
The Soup (E!): 30 minutes, took about 20 minutes
Throwdown with Bobby Flay (Food Network): 30 minutes, took about 15 to watch
Designed to Sell (HGTV): 30 minutes, took about 15 to watch
Football, primarily consisting of GB/Minn, Phil/Wash & Det/AZ: 4 hours and 15 minutes watched over about 5 and a half hours
Sell This House (A&E): 30 minutes, took about 15 minutes to watch
The Next Iron Chef (Food Network): I watched all 6 episodes of 1 hour each. They each took about 40 minutes to watch, except the finale which took about 45 minutes.
NASCAR (ABC): I watched 3 hours and 15 minutes of racing in about 1 hour
Amazing Race (CBS): 1 hour, watched in about 50 minutes
Bring the Sunday total to 18 hours and 30 minutes of programming watched so far...
That brings the weekly total to 45 hours of programming!! With a couple hours left before the stroke of midnight, it looks like those who voted less than 50 hours have won. Whether that is a victory or if it is a defeat is uncertain...all that we know is it's a crap load of TV.
The Queen has spoken!
Well, the polls are closed and the result is as decisive as the 2000 Presidential Election! I'll be checking the back of the blog for any hanging chads...in the meantime, here's what I watched on Thursday:
Carpoolers (ABC): 30 minutes, took about 20 to watch
Kid Nation (CBS): 1 hour, took about 45 minutes to watch
Reaper (CW): 1 hour, took about 45 minutes to watch
Cane (CBS): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
Survivor (CBS): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
Grey's Anatomy (ABC): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
ER (NBC): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes to watch
The Office (NBC): 30 minutes, took about 20 minutes to watch
Evening News (Channel 12): 20 minutes
For Thursday total of 7 hours and 20 minutes of programming!
As some of you know, I've been out of town and watched very little TV Tuesday. I caught up on a good number of shows Wednesday night and here's how I did it!
Tuesday night I fell asleep watching TV:
15 minutes of news
45 minutes of The Biggest Loser (NBC)
For a total of 1 hour...
Wednesday was much more productive:
15 minutes of morning news
The remaining 1 hour & 15 minutes of The Biggest Loser (NBC) took about 45 minutes to watch
Law & Order: SVU (NBC) was 1 hour and took about 50 minutes to watch
Dancing with the Stars: Results Show (ABC) was 1 hour and took about 1 minute to watch (all I want to see if who is in the bottom two: it was Jennie Garth & Jane Seymour was sent packing)
Beauty & the Geek (CW) was 1 hour and took about 50 minutes to watch
Criminal Minds (CBS) was 1 hour and took about 50 minutes to watch
Forensic Files (Court TV) was 30 minutes and took about 20 minutes to watch
For a Wednesday total of 6 hours of programming watched!
Here's the quick recap of what I watched Monday:
3TV news: 15 minutes in the morning
Guy's Big Bite (Food TV): 30 minutes, took about 20 to watch
Prison Break (Fox): 1st hour, took about 50 minutes
Big Bang Theory (CBS): 30 minutes, took about 25 minutes
Prison Break (Fox): 2nd hour, took about 50 minutes
Heroes (NBC): 1 hour, took about 50 minutes
Guy's Big Bite (Food TV): 30 minutes, took about 20 to watch
Channel 12 news: 10 minutes
Dancing With The Stars (ABC): 1 hour,45 minutes, took about 50 minutes
For a monday total of: 6 hours and 40 minutes of programming (only counted news for the minutes watched)
A question has been raised: How is it possible that the Queen is able to watch 50 hours of TV a week? There have been some that have tried multi-variate analysis to find the answer, others have spent hours of their precious work day studying the TV Guide and still others have tried to call tivo and get a download of the Queen's viewing history for "market research." To answer the question posed by millions (ok, maybe just equal to the number of viewers that Viva Laughlin had), I've decided to journal my TV watching for the next week: Monday to Sunday.
The truth will be told and you will find out how many hours of programming I watch on an average week...and how I do it!
Get your votes in now (notice I've added a voting option this week!) I've set the over-under at 50 hours. In a week's time potentially valuable prizes will be awarded to the winners!
The Queen has spoken!
So now that baseball is officially dead to me, I had a chance to watch some TV last night. Now I'm not normally a Bachelor watcher, but happened to flip over just in time for one of the most entertaining reality moments in a while. In case you missed it several conversations between the Bachelor and one of his girls pretty much went like this:
Bachelor: "I like you as a friend"
Girl: with a huge smile on her face, "He really likes me, he really, really likes me"
Bachelor: "I'll be blunt; I like you as a friend"
Girl: with sparkles in her eyes, "I'm wearing white tonight, just like i will be on our wedding day"
And on it goes, this girl obviously only heard what she wanted to hear, but it couldn't have been the bachelor she was listening too. Maybe she had Michael Bolton's "To love somebody" stuck in her head... thats the only explanation i can come up with.
On a brighter note, upon seeing the Bachelor with his shirt off, she did tell the camera what exactly she wanted to do to him. Unfortunately ABC had to beep out about a minute of this interview along with "fuzz" out her mouth, just to make sure we weren't reading lips. I think i even blushed for a moment! Unfortunately she was not given a rose, which was proceeded by hysterical crying and constant questions of "Why me?" Very Entertaining!!! She defiantly is a quality girl that every boy would be proud to take home to mom...
