My Life as a Sitcom

I dreamt that I was in college again last week. I know, I know, there is nothing less interesting than reading about someone else’s dreams but stay with me here. There were a couple of aspects that probably give you every insight into my psyche that you will ever need to know.

1) I was heading back to my dorm room with my roommate to drop off some books and then head to the cafeteria for lunch. This was my standard protocol back in the day.

2) Once I get to the room I realize that I have not finished my lab report writeup for that afternoon’s class so instead of having lunch I was going to have to quickly try to finish it before class and skip lunch. This is more stressful than my life usually was and is probably a sign of one thing or another.

3) While realizing that I hadn’t finished the lab writeup I also realized that this is the same class that has appeared in multiple other dreams where I had attended the first day of class, which was ended early without any experiments, and then missed classes for the rest of the semester without realizing that I hadn’t dropped the class. This is my usual stress dream of the class that I forgot that I was taking. On one hand I was unnerved to realize that I only have this dream when I am stressed out of my mind. On the other hand at least I could rest assured that I had at least started trying to make it to class again.

4) My roommate was Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

5) My dorm room was surprisingly clean. I mean, my desk was immaculate with everything neatly stacked and no stray papers floating around. I could only dream of having a desk that clean and I guess that I apparently did.

6) Yeah, I guess I should explain point number four in greater detail.

Yes, I dreamt that I was sharing a college dorm room with Sheldon and that did not shock me in the least. I mean when I woke up it seemed perfectly logical that he would be my roommate and I was much more upset that I had waited to the last minute to finish a report and that I had missed months worth of classes and would probably fail as a result. The fact that my roommate was a) the embodiment of modern geekiness and b) fictional seemed par for the course. Which, given my experience in college, makes a lot of sense.

Being an engineering major makes for a very odd college experience. I saw somewhere online where they said that the average engineering student spends 20 hours a week on homework and my first thought was “only twenty?” I remember one four question assignment taking a team of ten of us twelve hours to complete and we still only got two of the questions right. I remember being in the EE building at 12:30 at night and not leaving because the bars closed at 1 and I didn’t want to walk past everyone leaving the bars while carrying my backpack. I don’t even think people would have made fun of me; it was just that the act of walking back to my dorm past people who had a much better night than I did was too depressing to expose myself to. As a result you end up with this strange, insular group of friends and, well, the Big Bang Theory becomes surprisingly accurate. Luckily I ended up with Penny.

We'll just cry in our pizza

Well, I guess I am happy that I decided not to live blog the Bears game this afternoon. I thought about it then realized that I had too many other things to take care of than to dedicate three plus hours in front of the television and my laptop and in the end that saved me a great deal of heartache. Basically this post would just be “Oh wow, another incomplete pass…”, “Cutler is playing like crap today”, “Is Todd Collins the drunk Collins quarterback or the vaguely good Collins quarterback or neither” and “Why is the Bears season resting on the shoulders of a quarterback that I have never heard of before? Not in the sense that I didn’t know that he was on the Bears. I haven’t heard of this guy in college or the pros.” That said, I never fault a team for over achieving and no one expected the Bears to get this far at the beginning of the season. Hell, some people had them coming in last in the division.

I’ve also discovered that I’ve either become less of a Chicagoan as I’ve spent a decade now not living in the city or old age has finally caught up to me in terms of the weather. I spent most of my life shrugging off the cold. I often mention the fact that I once went to class when the air temperature was fifteen below zero (and a wind chill in the range of minus forty.) And this was for a 9 AM college class when I was a senior. Hell, I didn’t even have to go; I just went because there was no way a little wind was going to stop me from doing my job. Now, I go outside and it is twenty degrees out and I am just dying. I’m shivering and my fingertips ache (probably due to my walking to a freaking psychology class in below zero weather). I’ve become a snowbird in waiting.

Oh, and I guess I will say right now that I am very upset regarding the television schedule this week. Both How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are repeats and The Biggest Loser is only going to be an hour due to the State of the Union address. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this country needs to get its priorities straight. A speech regarding our future should not preclude us from watching the two hours of joy that comes from watching obese people exercise. Especially since last week two of the contestants somehow gained nine pounds apiece while on the show. I don’t think I’ve ever gained nine pounds in a week in my life. I don’t know how you do that on a weight loss show.

Also, is it just me or has everyone fallen a bit out of favor with The Big Bang Theory. I don’t know if it is the move to Thursday or just the fact that it has been a real lackluster season but it has gone to one of my favorite shows ever to one that I watch when I get around to it. I’ve missed episodes and I have a few sitting on my DVR that I will watch eventually but I am in no hurry to see. Meanwhile I get upset if I miss an episode of Holmes Inspection, which has taught me to never hire a contractor in Canada. But I want the Big Bang Theory to be good and this season just isn’t working and I don’t know why. The addition of Blossom is good, the Bernadette character is hysterical and Penny and Leonard actually make sense as a broken up couple which is weird given they had no chemistry as an actual couple which is made even more bizarre by the fact that they were dating in real life. Anyone else feel this way?

That is about it. Let’s all be safe out there this week.

Best of 120 Minutes: For some reason I was struggling to think of a song to post tonight and Primus jumped into my head. Two things: 1) I never did get a chance to see these guys in concert and I kind of feel bad about it and 2) I completely forgot about the nachos subplot in this video.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Tift Merritt “Home is Loud”
2) Josh Rouse “El Turista”
3) Liz Phair “Liz Phair”
4) Golden Smog “Weird Tales”
5) Guided by Voices “Human Amusements at Hourly Rates”

Can they let Raj talk to women already?

It is fascinating to find out that Penny and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory were actually dating in real life. Not in the sense that two people on the same show would date; that seems rather common and hell, if I was Johnny Galecki I’d date her in a second. More in the sense that for a real life couple they never really had very good chemistry when they were portraying a couple that was dating. You never could quite believe that they would actually be dating. Which means that acting real life is somehow more difficult than living real life thus explaining how the people on Jersey Shore still have the semblance of a career.

Not much else to write about tonight as all I did was watch Project Runway (Mondo wins again, Gretchen pouts, April acts tough and Michael apparently has a son.) They did hit on the reality show cliché in which everyone gets to see their family without any prior warning and they all break into tears. This has always bothered me a little on every show. No matter what the show the contestants always break down in tears. Even on a show like The Mole, where the game was essentially an extended European vacation, everyone acted as though they had not seen each other for two years. I wish shows would stop doing this.

Otherwise I think I am going to call it a week. It’s been nice to actually get a chance to sit down and write consistently. I’m going to try to keep up the pace. Have to do something now that the jigsaw puzzle is complete.

The curse of being good at math

I saw some interesting comments online about last night’s Big Bang Theory episode. They were on the topic of Raj and how unrealistic it is that he is unable to speak around women. Given that he has a doctorate and works at a university they tried to argue that there is no way that he could function without speaking to women. To which I (and a few others) replied: you obviously haven’t spent much time in a science department. Now I never reached that high level astrophysics section of the world that Raj is in but even on the lower levels of science and engineering two things are guaranteed. First off, we do everything possible not to actually speak to another human being. Second, while it would be wrong to describe a woman in a science department as a unicorn given that they do exist let’s use the analogy of a giant panda: you know they exist even if you have never seen one in the wild and while they look cute and cuddly they are most likely going to tear your head off.

And people wonder why I spent a little time in marketing as a change of pace.

Now the interesting thing is the chicken and egg question regarding the first point. (And yes, women are more than able to be scientists and engineers and typically make up the best that I have met in my life. Why there aren’t more of them in the field is a question for another night.) Are engineers anti-social because we are engineers or do we become engineers because we are anti-social? What type of person chooses a life of numbers and equations and discussions of appropriate gauge wire for use in a circuit?

There is something to say that there is a connection between the two. There are a group of people (myself included at times) who simply like dealing with numbers more than people. Mainly because numbers follow very specific rules and there is no ambiguity to them. Well, except when you are dealing with infinity where everything is ambiguous but for the most part there are laws that must be followed. People don’t work that way. There is no equation to predict human action the way you can predict the flight of a cannonball. To a certain group of people that makes for a very attractive career path.

What makes it worse is that the work itself promotes that type of bunker mentality. Even in my current job, which is way more social than some of my previous roles, I still find myself spending days mired in data crunching. On those days it is just spreadsheets and headphones and literally millions of data points being sifted until I come out with an equation on the other side. This isn’t work that you do by discussing topics at a Starbucks. It is just brute analysis. To do it well you really need to know how to put up blinders to the outside world.

I guess that is one of the reasons that I like the Big Bang Theory so much. Sheldon is someone who is so antisocial by nature that there is no other field that he could possibly be in than theoretical physics. He is happiest when he is alone with his equations in a structured environment. Leonard, on the other hand, loves his work and numbers but wants more out of life. He wants that social aspect but his career path has given him none of the skills to make it work. I’m more of a Leonard. I’d like to think that I have more skills but I’m still a work in progress. Maybe there is hope for me yet.

I think I had this date before...

Some random thoughts based on comments and other moments of my life.

1) One of the wonders of having Wii Fit is that you tend to weigh yourself on a daily basis. This really does make you want to do anything and everything possible to lose weight just so you won’t have the computerized voice say “You’re overweight” every single day. Well, on Saturday I weighed myself and discovered that I had lost two pounds, which was a bit of a surprise given that I really didn’t exercise or do much of anything from when I weighed myself the day before. In fact, I realized that the only thing that I did do was get a haircut. As a result I have now decided that the foundation of my weight loss program is going to be full body waxing.

2) It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was well aware that I could get a Ric Flair branded scratch off lottery ticket. Remember, I am the guy who was working on getting a mortgage through Ric Flair Finance. I mean, he had the patented Figure Four process! What could possibly go wrong, other than a complete meltdown of the financial system due to the fact that people were getting home loans from a pro wrestler who felt that feathered boas were a great addition to his ring gear. Sigh. It is sad that his sixteen world title reigns are matched by a nearly equal number of divorces leaving him unable to keep up with his limo riding, jet plane flying lifestyle.

3) Also, I’m not sure if I can consider the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff as my least favorite tag team of all time. Sure, we all hated the Sheik but Volkoff was hated only because he was vaguely Russian though you always had the feeling that he was really from Detroit. Personally, I hated Ivan and Nikita Koloff more even though Ivan was from Canada and Nikita was from South Carolina.

4) I will grant the point that Kitchen Nightmares is the best Gordon Ramsay show but only if we are discussing the British version. That show should be required viewing for anyone thinking of opening a restaurant or even running their own business. The American version is so staged that it barely counts as reality television. And I still like Hell’s Kitchen as a guilty pleasure and the only cooking show on tv that gives an indication of what actually takes place in a restaurant kitchen.

5) How can anyone rank Wallowitz over Kuthrapali? True, Wallowitz broke out the Green Lantern belt buckle tonight but Kuthrapali brings it week after week. I am still a bit torn on the Penny and Leonard relationship. I want Leonard to get the girl because, well, I am a sucker for those sorts of things. The problem is there really isn’t anywhere for the story to go with them together. The four guys and Penny is funny. Leonard and Penny with Sheldon and the other two is really awkward.

6) I really liked How I Met Your Mother tonight. It at least showed that Ted has matured a little over the years (dude, you should have called her back.) It does show that Ted has set his standards so unbelievably high that you can’t imagine him getting anyone that fits his ideal. Ooh, she has cats I’ll never speak to her again. Just seems a little too judgmental. Also, weird in how they didn’t pay off the Barney and Robin arguing in the strip club. They built up tension and it didn’t go anywhere. Still Barney is awesome no matter what the setting.

Now what is left to see in South Bend?

I have some sad news to report. The College Football Hall of Fame is relocating from South Bend to Atlanta. This means, well, it means absolutely nothing to most of you. Heck, all of you unless you actually happen to work there. Mainly it means that those in the South Bend region will no longer have to put up with constant commercials on how they should visit the museum. That and expect a significant reduction in the number of former Notre Dame players inducted into the hall as that was one of the ways they insured a large crowd during the ceremony. It was actually a rather nice museum though and I’ve been at both the South Bend and Kings Island incarnations.

Oh, and best sign seen at the Pittsburgh G-20 protests. “Obama: Put Arrested Development back on the air.” See, that is what we need more of in this country. I am sick and tired of people having reasoned debates about topics like health care and international conflicts. I demand presidential action regarding television sitcoms. It might be the only thing that all of us as a nation could agree upon.

Since I was out of country for the past few weeks I am a bit out of touch with several of my favorite shows. I have finally caught up with Hell’s Kitchen as they are now at the portion of the show where the only contestants left are the ones who can actually cook. Of all the reality shows on the air this one is the most fake (even though the people I know who work on the show swear to me that it is on the up and up.) More than anything about half of the contestants would have absolutely no right working in a top restaurant much less being a head chef so the first few months of the show revolve around Gordon Ramsay swearing at people who can’t cook. It is entertaining but not entirely exciting. I am still a few episodes behind on Top Chef where this season’s cast is a lot more talented than the last but that actually takes out a bit of the drama. There is such a defined top group that we are just waiting to get to the final four or five so that they can all fight it out. Plus, Vegas just doesn’t serve up as many fun food opportunities as the other cities did.

How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory had their season premieres this week. Interesting that the more I read about HIMYM online the more people refer to Ted as a bit of a douche, which to be honest is pretty true. During the first season you cheered for the guy, in the second season you were glad that he was happy with Robin but since then he has grown insufferable. That doesn’t even take into account that he is telling his kids all about all the women he slept with before he met their mother. The show is basically a vehicle for Barney and as long as he breaks out the tuxedo I am still a fan of the show.

Big Bang Theory is at a strange point in its development. The show has become entirely about Sheldon, which is great because he is the best character. Except that the conceit behind the show was that it was about Leonard and Penny as a couple and to be honest, no one really cares. The chemistry just isn’t there and we aren’t as invested in the character as we should be. It will be interesting to see where they take the plot lines this season.

How can you run out of bait on a fishing boat?

My goal of writing an interesting take on the speeches that all graduates are forced to sit through (inspired by the recently released David Foster Wallace speech “This is Water”) will have to be postponed for yet another night. Due to a lack of sleep, lack of creativity and a new episode of Deadliest Catch my mind just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to write what I needed to so hopefully you will have that to look forward to tomorrow.

Instead I’ll just write about television including the strange addiction that is Deadliest Catch. On the surface I’m not sure you could ever think of a more boring show in existence. Let’s show a bunch of guys in a boat throwing steel pot after steel pot over the side and then retrieving the pots and unloading the crab. That is the show, week after week just more footage of guys crab fishing. Yet it is some of the most amazing television you ever see. All of these guys out there on the open ocean in the middle of the Arctic, just suffering like mad and occasionally nearly dying. You really can’t take your eyes off of it. Plus, I now firmly believe that every workplace should be required to have a fifty year old Hungarian who barely speaks English on staff. It just makes the world a more interesting place.

The Big Bang Theory ended its season last night on a rather odd note. They brought back the Penny and Leonard relationship with Penny seeming to fall for Leonard as he goes off with the guys to the North Pole to search for sub-atomic particles. Sounds like a perfectly logical summer vacation to me. (Personally I loved the line “we’ll be able to drink for free at any bar in a college town with a strong science program.”) What this show did portray correctly is the fact that guys like Leonard just cannot take subtlety. We (and I mean that in less than the royal sense) are just unable to read between the lines. Despite the fact that we are brilliant when it comes to relationships we are dumb as a box of hammers that went to school in Arkansas. But we really mean well.

As for How I Met Your Mother at least we can rest assured that Stella is not the mom. However, I am completely confused as to where the series goes from here. Robin isn’t the mom, Stella isn’t the mom, we were just told that Ted is finally on the path to meeting the mom yet there is no one left for it to be. Meaning that there is no logical character that we know about who could potentially be the mother. Though I still hope that the last scene of this season will be a knock on the door and Ted opens it to see Victoria standing in the hallway. That would be a great ending to the season.

(Sorry, I’m just a hopeless romantic at heart and think it would make a great ending to the story.)

I know that part of the story (of the show and of life) is that the journey is what is important. That everything we do until we meet the one is what makes it possible for us to find that certain someone. But it is interesting that we as the viewer are beginning to feel Ted’s frustration. We want to get to the ending or at least a new beginning. But that is kind of the point. Life doesn’t work on our own timelines. Forcing something just makes it go pear shaped. I haven’t learned much in my life (at least in terms of things that don’t involve differential equations) but I’m beginning to realize that at some points you just have to let the universe be. Things will come around much better than if you try to force reality to match your own visions.

Television worth watching, or at least recording

This will be a relatively quick post as I just got back from the Phillies game. Yes, after only a few weeks I am already going “Yay team from vaguely my geographic location!” I mean, I can understand cheering for Philadelphia without actually living in the city. I’ve cheered for Chicago teams all my life even though I did not technically grow up in the city proper. However, I’m not even living in the proper state to cheer this team. I should be cheering the local Delaware team which is the….I’ll get back to you on that.

There is something odd about living in one of those states which when shown on a map simply have a line pointing to it because the name of the state is bigger than the state itself. I’m not even talking in terms of scale on a map. I believe that if you just wrote the word “Delaware” in the middle of the street you would technically cross state lines. And get hit by an idiot on his cell phone so I wouldn’t recommend it as an experiment.

I’ll just spend the rest of this post reviewing my favorite shows on television: How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. I’ll start with The Big Bang Theory, which still amazes me that it got renewed because there can’t be that many people out there who appreciate physics humor. First off, props for showing Sheldon using the t-shirt folding device that was discussed on this blog a few years ago. It is the easiest and most effective way to have perfectly folded t-shirts. That was the highlight of the episode.

Sadly, that was pretty much the only highlight of the episode (well, that and the whole Indian cinema section). It just seemed to me that the chemistry between Leonard and Penny was completely off. We spent all last season building up to where they kiss and they did and there seemed to be something going there. But in last night’s episode I couldn’t even imagine them being a couple. Heck, even understanding why they were friends seemed to be a stretch. The entire story is built on Penny liking Leonard, maybe not as the man of her dreams but a definite connection being there, while Leonard is totally smitten and completely lost. Last night they just seemed like neighbors who were trying to avoid one another. I hope that is fixed in the future.

(Oh, and the discussion as to what would be required to become Green Lantern was also quite good.)

As someone who has stated that How I Met Your Mother has gone beyond stealing several of the ideas behind my novel but has moved into taking sections of my life and placing them on screen I was rather disappointed with last season on a whole. Ted became a bit of a jerk and a pretty big man slut. (I’m not sure what the technical term is for a guy who sleeps around more than he probably should. A More?) Robin just kind of existed in her own little world and Barney was the only one on the show worth watching.

Well, the show moved in the right direction though I still have some issues. We have luckily quickly forgotten the whole “Barney got hit by a bus” subplot as well as the “We all hate Barney” issue. Ted is engaged to a character who, other than the three minute date, the audience has no vested interest in other than it is really nice to have Sarah Chalke on television. When they brought up how Ted knows nothing about her it was a nice way of saying neither does the audience. I’m not sure where that story is going and since he is our hero (and my surrogate) I’d sure like to know what is going to happen next.

Easily the best part was Barney’s falling in love with Robin. First, yes my new apartment resembles Barney’s in great detail up to and including the life size stormtrooper statue. This is the storyline that will probably carry the show for the rest of the season. We want to see Barney and Robin together because they would make a great couple. Plus, Barney would become human and have to change his ways. Most of all, this is awesome because we have a situation in which Barney doesn’t have a clue how to act. It is always fun to watch someone so put together be absolutely clueless. And the fact is, when she left him at the end of the episode you felt sympathy (and in my case, empathy) for the guy. Not bad for a sitcom.

The harpist in the garden...

First off, I hope that everyone had a very merry Dyngus Day today. What, you don’t know what Dyngus Day is? It is simply the best holiday ever. Consider it a reverse Mardi Gras. Well, not in the “I’ll give you beads if you put your shirt back on” sense of the term but from a theological standpoint it is very similar. See, on Mardi Gras you go wild because it is your last chance to have fun before you have to give up all of your bad habits for Lent. Dyngus Day works the same way as it is the day after Easter and we can go back to our ways of sin and debauchery. Also, sauerkraut is involved. Don’t ask me why, it just is.

Actually, back in my Czech homeland we would celebrate this day in the following way. A young single male such as myself would sneak into the house of the girl he was pining for, pour water over her head while she slept, and then whip her across the legs with long twigs. I’m not making this up. It says so on Wikipedia and we all know Wikipedia doesn’t lie. Sometimes I wonder why we left the old country behind. I think this would be a great tradition to continue, restraining orders aside.

Speaking of things that are going to result in a restraining order after a week of careful deliberation I have come up with my solution to the Say Anything dilemma. Since I no longer have a boom box and holding an iPod docking station over my head seems rather pathetic I have decided that I must up the ante. Yes, one day a lucky lady will find myself outside her window with a backing band. And since I have money and a strange sense of humor it won’t be any band; it will be The Polyphonic Spree. Imagine the sight: waking up to see twenty five people dressed in white choir robes dancing and singing and playing music in someone’s yard while I directed the action in an attempt to prove my undying love for whoever was at that moment most likely calling the cops. That said, I don’t thinking being too awesome for words should technically be considered a crime.

(To get a sense of what this would be like they kind of did this on an episode of Scrubs. And I do look like Zach Braff if I lose the glasses and intentionally dishevel my hair as opposed to its usual unintentionally disheveled state.)



I have a couple of notes on The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother that I have been meaning to mention. First off, while I will always consider myself to be a Fitzgerald in search of his Zelda or a Gatsby in search of his Daisy it might be better if I just say that I am a Leonard in search of his Penny. True, I prefer the Fitzgerald reference (even if he did die an alcoholic in Hollywood) and Gatsby certainly had more style (being shot to death in his pool aside) the Leonard reference is probably more accurate. That’s pretty much me. Good guy, too smart for his own good, who wants to fall in love and be in a relationship but can’t because his brain always seems to get in the way. Also, he did hook up with Darlene from Roseanne so he does have that going for him.

Best reference in last week’s show that explains how my mind works: The guys wiring up their entire apartment so that they can control everything through the internet and then granting open access to the entire world to turn their lights on and off. Why? Because they can. Is there another reason?

I watched last week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother last night and once again that show seemed to be taken from my life. It’s kind of stunning given what I had written right before I watched it. Ted, my slightly cooler alter ego, goes too far one night, wakes up with a black eye, and is finally shown that he is going in the wrong direction. Pretty much dead on to what I’m going through; that realization that you have become someone you don’t particularly like. Since Ted apparently picked up the umbrella of his future life we can only hope that both of our lives are headed in the right direction.

Also, tonight’s episode was classic with the two minute date. Sure, you might not be able to get that to work so flawlessly in real life but in terms of turning a no into a yes it is probably a great move. Plus, I loved the fact that it showed that trying all of the games and schemes failed miserably mainly because I can’t pull them off. Maybe if I just be who I am then things will work out. Wow, be myself. That idea is so crazy it just might work.

Oh, and Brit’s performance tonight? Not bad. She didn’t set the set on fire or anything. I’m speaking literally here as in the fire department was not called in. It was a pretty harmless guest spot, she didn’t blow a line or seem completely out of it and if you ignored everything that has happened in the past few years it would seem pretty inconsequential. For her, this can be considered progress.

All bands should wear Illini sweaters...

Wednesday Night Music Club: It dawned on me that I mentioned Sufjan Stevens yesterday and that was probably the one reference in the entire piece that people might not get. I mean, I did include a song on Battling the Current Volume 2 but there are a lot of people reading this now who weren’t around back then. So here is a stripped down, live version of Chicago, which is just on this side of amazing. I’m in awe of any song that has a chorus of “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time.”

It might be time for a Volume 3 as well. We are nearing the third anniversary of Battling the Current after all. Wow, five nights a week for three years. That’s a lot of words.

And on what I wrote last night, I’m glad that I’ve gotten some positive comments on it. I haven’t written something like that for a while, mainly because I have a hell of a time writing something like that and keeping it from being so sappy that it is suitable for use as a breakfast topping. I think I did a good job, especially given that it really was written in half an hour. For some reason while driving to work in the morning the opening paragraph floated into my mind and I decided to go with it.

(I will say that driving home from Lawrence in a massive storm one night really was the impetus of the piece. It wasn’t really raining, just huge sheets of lightning crisscrossing the sky. Given that the area between Lawrence and KC is simply a bunch of open fields it was a pretty awesome site. It’s nice to be awed by something you’ve experienced a thousand times but never thought about.)

Anyway, it was either that or write about how The Pick Up Artist got a shout out on The Big Bang Theory this week. Not that I’m, you know, writing scripts for that show or anything. Sure, I’ve gotten some calls to help tighten a few up but I’m not technically writing for them. Yet. I do have to say that this episode was absolutely spot on from the innate geek joy of dressing in costumes to the complete incomprehensibility of how to interact at parties to Leonard deciding to think and be nice when Penny is kissing him. I think I’ve had that exact same conversation myself including the “yep, I’m a freaking genius” line. I checked and this show is actually getting better ratings than How I Met Your Mother so it might miraculously survive this first season.

HIMYM still hasn’t seem to have found its rhythm. While it is brilliant that porn can be a topic of a sitcom at 7 in the evening I’m not sure if the story went anywhere. The thing with that show is that there is always an overriding plot. In season one it was Ted trying to get Robin. In season two it was Ted and Robin as a couple and Lilly and Marshall getting married. This season doesn’t seem to be about anything yet and we still haven’t addressed why newlyweds Marshall and Lily still haven’t dealt with the fact that they are sharing an apartment with their bachelor friend from college. I know New York is a tough place to make it on your own but doesn’t that seem a little weird? Or have I just spent too much time in the Midwest?

Cleaning out the DVR

Just found out that one of my favorite artists is finally having a couple of pieces go up on auction. The above image is a Banksy, this brilliant British graffiti artist who is either the most amazing person on the planet or an arrogant, talentless prick depending on your point of view. I’m strongly in the first camp as I think that this guy just does some brilliant work. It is graffiti masquerading as fine art or fine art masquerading as graffiti. It always makes you stop and think, which is pretty much the definition of art in my book.

Anyway, so they are putting a handful of his original pieces on the auction block and it is a pretty rare event. That’s the problem when your medium is spray paint and public property, it makes it really difficult to sell the pieces. It looks as if I sell everything I own, cash out all my accounts, get rid of that spare kidney, and sell the rights to my biography I would just have enough money to make a bid. Not actually by the piece, mind you, but I would be allowed to raise one of those little paddles with a number on it. Sigh. One of these days I’ll win the lottery and I’ll get to own one.

Switching gears, I finally got around to watching my tape of How I met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory tonight. Is it me or are they trying to get really cute with HIMYM this year? We’ve had Mandy Moore and Enrique Iglesias as guest stars. Tonight we had Barney drawing graphs in the air. Now I am personally all for discussing relationships in graphical form and the Betty Mendoza line is a pretty awesome line but it seemed a little too cute and sitcom-y, especially from a show that seems to be pretty realistic. That said, the entire episode was meant to provide some backstory on how everyone met.

Mainly this finally meant that we find out how Ted and Barney met. I don’t think this was ever discussed before. Barney was always their friend but it was never shown how they met other than they met at the bar. I still think there is a story here that hasn’t been explored. We know a bit of Barney’s backstory and how he learned to suit up but what drove him to grab Ted at random and make him his wingman has to have some deeper significance. I’d help write it but you know, with the upcoming writer’s strike and all I’ll probably have to hold back on my scriptwriting.

(Oh, and here is another “They are stealing my life to write this show” moment. They’ve revealed that the mother is a woman in a yellow raincoat and a yellow umbrella. Which would make her look vaguely like the Morton Salt girl. Which is precisely what a girl I talked to at a bar a year ago said she was going as for Halloween. I’m telling you, someone on that writing staff reads this blog.)

I have really grown to like The Big Bang Theory. The show does seem to be written specifically for me as I don’t think that anyone else gets the physics humor. The good news is that they have done a much better job in writing the character of Penny, the only normal person on the show. Basically, they smartened her up a little and had her start firing back at the guys and going off on them for being so socially inept. Not meanspirited but realistic. That didn’t exist at first, probably because I bet they didn’t have a single woman writer on staff for the pilot. As a rule, guys interested in writing sitcoms with calculus jokes are probably not going to be very adept at writing convincing female characters.

Still, this is a really good show. We’ve had a few Roseanne reunions that have been worthwhile. Sheldon’s supergenius character is just outstanding. There is a level of brilliance one can reach where the common world just seems completely incomprehensible and that’s what Sheldon inhabits. I’m not there, I’m more of the guy who wants to fit in but wonders why everyone else is so slow at times, but I understand the type. Basically, I’m a sucker for humor that involves a whiteboard. Oh and my favorite exchange tonight

(Leonard provides an in-depth analysis of his potential relationships)
Sheldon: “You know, you are lucky that I am one of the three people in the Western Hemisphere who could follow your train of logic.”
Leonard: “Really? Thanks for listening.”
Sheldon: “I didn’t say I cared, I just said I could follow it.”

My favorite season: Fall TV Season

Random Point # 1: Here is a helpful hint for everyone in the future. Don’t go grocery shopping while on painkillers after having spent the weekend thinking up Tang related puns. Let’s just say that it made shopping a much more interesting experience than it really should be. Plus, I might need to find a new grocery store for a while…

Random Point # 2: So, I was reading superficial.com and apparently Britney’s bodyguard tells a story about Brit nearly overdosing on meth with Howie Day. Now, of all the parts of that sentence to strike you as bizarre the one that gets me is Howie Day. How the hell did he get involved in this mess? I mean, the guy is a screw up and all but doesn’t he just seem like the last person to be caught in a super high profile celebrity gossip ring. Another part of the story has the bodyguards needing to be armed when Howie was around. This really makes me question the accuracy of this story because I could kick Howie Day’s ass. And probably should for being a prick and showing up so stoned he couldn’t play one of the times I saw him.

Anyway, today was television premiere night. Specifically, my life story started its next chapter with How I Met Your Mother getting off to a…well, they got off to a start. I mean, I knew it was going to be a sucky episode once they announced that they were having Enrique Inglesias and mandy Moore guest star. Ted getting a tramp stamp was funny, though. (For the record, I’ve never gotten a tattoo while drunk. Came dangerously close one time but sobered up just in time.) Plus, Barney yelling “This is so going in my blog” will probably become my new ringtone.

It’s going to be an interesting season. First, they have to try to find a way to keep Robin in the storylines even though staying friends after a breakup is really difficult especially in a show that is fairly realistic. My fear is that she is going to turn into a fifth wheel, much like Barney did at times last year. The other thing is that it looks like Ted really is going to meet the girl of his dreams. Hey, if it’s going to come true for my avatar, maybe it’s about to come true for me.

I also watched The Big Bang Theory and…ok, I have a theory I need to put forth. Everyone knows that I spend a lot of time studying pop culture and products. Every once in a while I come across a product that I feel is just tailor made for me. At that point I know one thing for certain, this product is going to fail miserably because if I am your target market you are effectively screwed. And The Big Bang Theory is screwed because I just loved the show.

I mean, we had physics jokes throughout the entire episode. The duality of light was used as an analogy for a jerk of a boyfriend. They talk about playing Klingon Boggle, which rules by the way. Essentially, you have a couple of guys who are uber nerds trying to talk to their beautiful neighbor. For me, this is high end comedy. For the rest of the world, they are probably wondering what all those weird letters on a whiteboard meant. Here is why I love the show already…

“What if my kids grew up and didn’t know whether to use an integral or a differential to calculate the area under a curve?”
“Well, you’d still love them.”
“Really? I wouldn’t.”

Yeah, Monday nights are going to rock.