I've been on 'hiatus'

Wow, it's been more than a month since I last blogged here, and you'd think a lot would have happened in between that time. But eh, not so much.

Couples are still running crazy around the world in "The Amazing Race" and those poor people are still "Lost" on that island.

But there has been a few new TV shows to talk about. My latest appeal has been in yet another spy show ala "Alias" (in fact it follows "Alias" on Wednesday nights) is the appropriately named "Eyes", starring Tim Daly. (Remember him when he was just a goofball on that comedy show "Wings" on NBC?) Daly plays a witty but goofy (see, he just can't get away from it) detective. In the first episode he apparently has money problems for his private investigation firm because of an impending lawsuit. But when you really look around the set with the fancy technology, sleek glass offices, and Gucci-wearing associates, you get an idea where the millions went Tim. The pilot episode had some interesting twists and turns but the last few episodes have been weak on surprises and suspense. Still, Daly does a nice job of playing the fool who ends up on top almost every time.

Speaking of new shows, I enjoy the Food Network but have been bummed that some of my favorite stars haven't had new shoes for awhile, such as Jamie Oliver of the Naked Chef and Florence Tyler. They've been busy promoting new cookbooks or opening new restaurants. But now comes Dave Lieberman, a young hot shot personal chef in Manhattan who's going to teach us how to make simple and affordable meals. Of course he does it from his uber-fancy kitchen. But hey, I love watching him shop around New York.

And of course, baseball season has started which is probably the biggest culprit for my reduction in blogging. There's not much to say about TV viewing when it's simply a Saturday afternoon on my sofa watching the San Francisco Giants age before my eyes and struggle with closing a game. It's going to be a long summer.

Politics, religion and TV

Tonight I had the treat of watching "The West Wing" after having to skip it a few weeks because of American Idol. But because of some graphics person (probably fired now) who put up the wrong numbers for the call-in vote after Tuesday's night show, the results show typically on Wednesday had to be a "redo" so that people could vote again. Oh. My. The controversy. Oh well, I didn't need to watch a whole hour of teens singing again. So I watched West Wing instead, where the votes really matter.

I missed the twists and turns and witty banter of the West Wing, and what I liked about tonight's episode, focusing on Republican candidate Alan Alda wrapping up the nomination but getting into his first controversy about religion. You know those right-wing conservatives, they think the rule the ballot boxes and the church pews all in one. In the end, liberal sounding actor Alan Alda really came out in the Republican character that he plays. He's a softer, nicer George W. Bush.

It'll be interesting to see how the future of this show goes. The producers may feel that they'll make the Republican win so that we'll have eight years of Republicans on TV after eight years of a Democrat. But please, after suffering real eight years of a Republican in the White House, do we really need to be reminded about how a Republican can screw up a country on TV? I don't think so.

So my bet is that Jimmy Smits will get the starring role and will be elected as the first Hispanic President. Now that'll pick up a lot of viewers in California and Texas. You heard it hear first. I called it. It'll be President Santos for eight years, or until NBC cancels the series.

Sooner or later, I'd be talking about Bush

Billy Bush, that is, the host of Access Hollywood. Just wanted to say, Why is this guy on TV? He started off as a reporter just a few years ago and in just that short time he's no the co-host? How can that be? He's not that cute, he's short, and he's the biggest celebrity ass-kisser I've ever seen. I think it's because he's dating the sister of Jennifer Lopez. Or maybe people think he's related to the political Bush (I think he might be). But I can't stand hearing him on TV. This morning I woke up to hear him deliver an exclusive interview with Jennifer Anniston on the Today Show. And with this big scoop, he spent most of his time asking questions that were phrased in a way to make the media look bad for harping on Anniston as she goes through her separation from Brad Pitt. After listening to the exclusive interview, I don't think I learned anything about Anniston's situation, other than I still hate all Bushes.

Comcast is Satan, part deux

More evidence that Comcast is the devil, this weekend they upgraded their system to make it more protected against viruses. It became so protected that most of the Bay Area couldn't access their own accounts! Including me, thus my rant.

The frustration, as I pointed out in my earlier rant, Comcast is Satan, is that when you call technical support for help, you don't get any support at all. All you get is the assumption that you're some dumb person who doesn't know how to plug your cable into your computer or modem. The burden is always on the customer, that something must be wrong on your end. But as the last two instances have shown, Comcast was the broken party each time. Apparently their upgrade weren't able to recognize most of the IP addresses of clients in the Bay Area. You'd think they would have people testing that before launching such a major upgrade. And then the frustration of having to arrange for a person to come and fix it is maddening. Luckily, with so many people complaining, Comcast had to send a tech out to fix it. Which eventually it did. Still, the DEVIL. Ugh.

The Ocean Is Pretty, but This Ain't No Andes

My favorite team on "The Amazing Race," the two blondes who grew up together and spoke Spanish with flavor, got eliminated tonight because they don't know how to follow a map. Even though by a miracle they were able to catch up, they still finished last, and it was not a non-elimination round. I think they would have noticed that when the clue said to go up the Andes mountains in Argentina and all they saw was the coast line, that they would have stopped earlier than two hours! Sigh, another TAR team lost to poor directions.

But another team emerging as my favorite are the two brothers, who seem to really have fun in what they do. So they're my favorite now and they had a nice finish near the top of the pack.

Romber, the Survivor media whores, continued their conspiring, and of course other teams followed them like sheep when they couldn't finish the eating challenge. (C'mon, you eat all sorts of junk on Survivor and you can't eat four pounds of meat? Geesh.) You could see that Rob and Amber were proud of themselves for pulling the wool over the other teams and still finishing in the middle of the pack. Rob, I wouldn't be so proud of being a snake, if I were you.

Argentina is really beautiful. I'm enjoying these early rounds in Latin America.

Big Stage Jitters

So tonight was the big night for "American Idol" with the 12 finalists (sans Mario Vasquez) performing on the big stage. And Judge Randy "The Dawg" was not happy. Nobody could get him excited. He had something up his butt or something.

I have to say, with Mario gone, it doesn't seem as exciting. I think he probably would have been the American Idol. Now, it's too early to tell who will emerge the winner. For tonight, I say Constantine Constantine was my favorite. I loved how his voice sounded, and of course he looked fantastic in his leather pants. Always a plus with me. Another guy who looked good, Anthony Fedorov. Who knew he was so built for a guy that's often compared to Clay Aiken. And I love his sound, although it doesn't always excite the crowds. But I like em.

Again, nothing exciting with the girls although everyone's falling for Nadia Turner. So far, not me. She's OK, but she's no Tamyra Gray.

I think I see a hit...

The freshman NBC TV show "Medium" is turning out to be one of my favorite shows. It's innovative, surprising and well written. I'm not a big fan of Patricia Arquette (or any of the Arquette family of actors, actually), but the show is incredibly engaging.

It's about this suburban mom in Pheonix who realizes that the dreams that she has are actually messages from the dead. She uses her skills to help the Pheonix district attorney's office solve murders.

What I like about the show is that there's always a twist or turn that you never would have guessed. The first few episodes had to deal with a straight forward murder, with Arquette's dreams eventually solving the case. Tonight's episode was a dream about two boys running along a train. No death. No murder. Just two kids running, and then one falling down and missing the chance to cross the track before the train came and blocked the kid from his brother. So what's so exciting about that?

That's the genius of the show. As it progress, the pieces come together one by one. The dream is revealed as a connection to the story of a psychologist that Arquette meets at a friend's party. Then the dream is really a scene from an upcoming movie. Well, turns out the movie was written by the boy who fell when he was chasing the train. Turns out the boy is the brother of the psychologist who thought his brother had been kidnapped and murdered all these years.

Wow.

Every week the show never fails to surprise me. And I like being surprised. I also like the actor who plays the husband, Jake Weber, although he is starting to get a bit bitchy about his wife always waking up in the middle of the night with dreams. And I don't like the idea that almost all of her three young daughters are showing signs that they also have the "gift." Makes it creepy when the little kids have dreams of murderers.

Still, this is one show that pushes the boundaries of the imagination. It definitely keeps me glued to the set, like that's so hard.

What? A mall in Orange County?!

It was only a matter of time before "The O.C." featured an entire show at the mall. OK, well, not the entire show, but pretty much. I kept watching tonight's episode and kept thinking of what movie talked about kids being stuck in the mall? Someone, help! I guess I should be glad that I spared myself of recalling such a movie. I'm sure it was a block buster. Enough reminiscing about the 80s.

Despite the premise of the mall, I still enjoy watching this show. Granted, there's a certain amount of eye candy, but I am a big fan of the witty dialogue between the main characters, especially the teenagers because they deliver the lines with such authenticity that it's hilarious. But this is the sophomore year of this show, and there's a lot of expectations, trying to see how much they can keep up with the incredible success of its first year. Unfortunately, I have to say the writers have been failing. What with the stupid story about Kaleb's illegitimate, unknown daughter who becomes the new love interest of Ryan, and the most recently horrendous storyline of Marissa, the pretty popular girl, playing with her early lesbianism. How believeable is that? In just three episodes the cracks of her lesbianism are already showing. Don't they know that most kids who come out at that age must really be gay, or else why would they put themselves through the humiliation of growing up with the stigma of gay. Sure, we're in the 00 (is that what we're calling this decade?), but kids are still mean.

So as a way to continue the downfall in the stupid storylines, looks like a new blackmailer is in town and apparently he has some racy tapes of Julie Cooper doing porn when she was young and broke. (And a VHS version to boot! What? The production company couldn't re-release it in DVD format? Not that I'm an expert on porn and all, but really. VHS is so not the big sellers.) And after a boring storyline of Peter Gallagher's character revisiting his first love, they introduce a love interest for his wife, Kelly Rowan. OK, so at least it's pretty-over-40 Billy Campbell of one of my favorite canceled shows, Once and Again, about those over 40 lovers, but still, previews for next week looks like his character is going to turn ugly. Boo, I don't like seeing Billy mean. (Remember him as the ex-husband of Jennifer Lopez in that abuse movie. Oh, wait, another movie I didn't see. I'm good with missing bad movies.)

I just hope "The O.C." doesn't fall into the trap of predictable storylines. Please writers, keep up the witty banter and enough with the drama.

Side note: Wow, the preview for the new Stars Wars Pre-quel looks cool. I just wished I watched the earlier two movies. Now to watch this final installment, I'll have to rent the first two movies. Oh heck. I'll just wait until George Lucas does a marathon night at a Marin theater 50 years from now.