Tuesday, January 09, 2007

The Best of 24 so far...

In honor of Season Six, here are my favorite 24 moments so far...


The last thing a terrorist sees before
he wakes up from a nightmare


Day One:
- When Nina tells him that Kim is dead and Jack goes all psycho on the Drazen killing seven men including the Drazens, saving a clip for Victor Drazen himself.

Day Two:
- "I'm gonna need a hacksaw"
- When he pretended to kill Syed Ali's kids
- Jack dies for the first time
- While having a coronary event, Jack still manages to kill Kingsley's attack team including one with a Matrix-like off the wall neck break.

Day Three:
- Jack: You don't have any more useful information, do you?
Nina: I do...
Jack: No, you don't.
*Shoots Nina three times*
- When Jack emasculates Stephen Saunders by threatening to put his daughter into the infected hotel.
- When Jack decides that instead of using the ax to cut the chain off Chase's wrist, he would relieve Chase of one of the hands he uses to touch Kim behind his back. At least, that is how I interpreted it.

Day Four:
- When Jack shows the new CTU team how interrogations were done in his day by shooting the prisoner in the thigh.
- When Jack kills 10-12 (I forget the exact count) in 10 minutes to rescue Secretary Heller. Unfortunately, Audrey survives too.
- Jack tortures Audrey's husband, Paul, then gets him tortured, then Paul takes a bullet for Jack (even though he's wearing a vest...dumbass), THEN forces by gunpoint the doctor operating on Paul to stop and work on the Chinese informant he just abducted from Chinese consulate which leads to Paul's death. Paul only knew Jack for 10 hours.
- When Jack walks off into the sunset like Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk.

Day Five:
- "Let's get one thing straight, kid. The only reason you're still conscious is because I don't want to carry you. Now get in the van."
- Jack avenges Palmer's assassination the only way he knows how - in cold blood.
- Jack gets his MacGyver on and blows up a terrorist through his cell phone.
- Jack to Walt Cummings: “You have read my file, you know I will cut out your right eye, then cut out your left eye, and keep cutting until I get what I want"
- Jack shoots Robocop's wife in the leg.
- We learn that every CTU agent is given a PDA memory card that can self-destruct like Mission:Impossible messages.
- Jack interrogation of Audrey. Unfortunately, she was innocent.
- Jack trains a lowly Navy solider how to kill Bauer-style via cell phone.
- Jack tricks Robocop with the old empty clip trick and kills another unarmed man who had it coming.
- Jack kidnaps the President of the United States. Is there anything he can't do?

What have I missed?

Don't Call Me During...: Winter 2007 Edition

It's about that time again where I let you into my pathetic little world of television watching as an Olympic sport.

Let’s mourn those shows that didn’t make it this far
Runaway
Smith
Kidnapped
Daybreak
Six Degrees
The Nine (although still “on hiatus”, it’s not coming back)
The O.C.

Sunday:
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: The Simpsons (unless it is a Lisa or singing episode)
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM: Desperate Housewives / Rome
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Brothers and Sisters / Battlestar Galactica (new time slot)
10:00 PM –10:30 PM: Extras

Monday:
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: How I Met Your Mother
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Prison Break
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM: 24(I’m going to try and keep a kill count again. Towards the end of Day 5, I couldn’t keep up with Bauer) / Heroes
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Studio 60 on Sunset Strip / What About Brian?

Tuesday:
8:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Gilmore Girls
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM: House / Veronica Mars
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Dirt* (The first episode kinda sucked. Hopefully the second one will be better)

Wednesday:
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Bones / Friday Night Lights (new time slot)
9:00 PM - 9:30 PM: The Knight of Prosperity (if only ABC could have shown Sons & Daughters the kind of support they are showing this quirky show)
9:30 PM – 10:00 PM: In Case of Emergency* (C’mon, Jonathan Silverman is working again. How can you not root for that?)
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Lost (new time slot)

Thursday:
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: My Name Is Earl (I love that the NBC Thursday comedy block is back)
8:30 PM - 9:00 PM: The Office
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Smallville
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM: Grey's Anatomy
9:00 PM – 9:30 PM: Scrubs
9:30 PM – 10:00 PM: 30 Rock

Friday:
9:00 PM – 10:00 PM: Monk
10:00 PM – 11:00 PM: Psyche

Saturday:
Watching all the shows I missed on DVR

Download: The L Word, The Dresden Files*, Ugly Betty

* On Probation

Monday, January 08, 2007

Weak-end

Now I'm not one of those people who can "hold their liquor" so to speak.

Despite my unparalleled and oft-challenged1 ability to drink most alcohol at the same speed and ease at which a child drinks cherry Kool-Aid, I always seem to end up either here or here or here.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I don't learn.

Saturday night2, I went to a Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach for a friend's birthday. One of the caveats of this restaurant is that the provide a bottle of Vodka per table. So the drinking options were diet coke, water and vodka. So we were drinking Vodka straight but eventually I had to chase it with the diet coke because there was no way I was going to make it back to the city (an hour and fifteen minute subway ride).

Also, I had planned to head to Prohibition on 80th and Columbus Ave. to see my favorite 80's cover band, The Gilfords, after dinner.

So at 1 AM (or something like that), I dragged myself out of the restaurant. I should have known there was a problem when they stopped me to tell me that I had only handed them $1 for all the food.

I got on the train with good intentions. But it took me two failed attempts to transfer trains for me to surrender going anywhere afterwards.

I don't know when or where I transferred. All I know is I woke up at 125th Street and hopped off before it was too late.

I won't say when I got home. Just be happy that I did.

Oh yeah, before I left the house, I was doing my laundry. I rushed out fo the house so I didn't have a chance to put on clean sheets so I had to sleep on my bare mattress.

I woke up Sunday morning incredibly nauseous. The combination of vodka and Russian food were recreating the Battle of Stalingrad in my stomach. I thought I was going to break my favorite Don'ts for 2007 but I survived.

Then I went off to Jeremy's Ale House for 32 oz Styrofoam cups of beer, 20 cent wings and New York football.

Overall, I had four quarts of beer. Two during the Jets loss and two during the Giants loss. Between beers three and four, I managed to spill 32 ounces of Yuengling on my brand new Motorola RAZR3. After a couple of hours of appearing to be down for the count, it started working again. Unfortunately, my phone now reeks of Yuengling.

All and all, a pretty quiet weekend.

1 One person beat me in a race but she had a warm beer and I had a fresh cold one so I challenge the judge's decision.
2 I should mention that I had two beers before I left for Queens but I figured that by the time I got there, I would be fine. I'm sure it didn't help the situation.
3 One of the Don'ts I forgot to add was "Don't break your cellphone this year" as this RAZR is now my third phone in three years. Luckily, my subconscious knew this was an impossible task.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

2007: My Do's and Dont's

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty.
- John Selden
While these aren't resolutions per se, I think I'm up to the task of challenging, disappointing and embarrassing myself in front of you, my 1-5 readers.

DO write more in this blog about myself.

DON'T spend so much time on your couch.

However...

DON'T let anyone make you feel bad about spending so much time on your couch.

DO answer the phone every once and awhile and have a conversation that doesn't involve TV or the confirmation of plans.

DO start putting money into your savings account again.

DON'T spend so much money on food and booze.

DON'T
order fried chicken wings and fried rice from the Chinese food spot just because it's only $5 bucks.

DO try to go to the gym 3-4 times a week even though you hate waking up at 4:45 AM to do so.

DO read more books.

DO learn something new.

DO travel somewhere for vacation, preferably somewhere warm.

DO retire all crushes...or do something about them.

DO pay off your credit cards.

DON'T buy so many funny t-shirts. You are almost thirty for Christ's sake.

DO buy more nice clothes and retire some of your older ones.

DON'T make an ass of yourself as much this year.

DO try to spend less time on the internet at work (although this is a bad start)

DO try to find someone who satisfies all aspects of your personality (or at least 60-75% of it).

DON'T judge people to harshly by their likes and dislikes (although not seeing say anything... by now is still considered a personal crime against humanity)

DO make 2007 an alcohol-related puke-free year.

DON'T make so much out of turning 30 this year.

Wish me luck!