Five With Flores

So I was just watching this week’s episode of Top Chef and I was shocked at who got booted. If you don’t know who had to pack his [or her, but not really] knives and go, ctrl+f “Sunday” and skip the rest of this section.

Anyway, it was ridiculous. Alex, the bald dude whom no one on the show loves (who probably stole Ed’s pea puree and won the motherloving challenge with it two weeks ago) did basically nothing [his teammates didn’t trust him to cook] and instead Kenny — probably the 2d strongest chef on the season — went home on account of being executive chef on the losing team.

At least my girl Kelly is still on the show. Obviously Angelo is the strongest chef this season but I can’t think of a time that the strongest chef won.

Come on Kelly!

Only thing I’m worried about is that Kelly’s palette has been called into question for over-salting a steak, and the fact is that she is a smoker and that is basically like rubbing your tongue against burning leaves while licking a cancer-coated ashtray for fun.

Whatever.

Top Chef inspired me to do another tv-centric blog post. Enjoy!

Sunday

Sunday is the most ridiculous tv night of the week, once again. There are basically a bazillion great shows to watch on Sunday, and I watch them all on account of staying up all night writing for TCGPlayer (I usually turn in my TCGPlayer column on Monday morning).

If you haven’t been reading my column over there, here is the best one:
The Seven Deadly Sins of Mediocre Magic

Big Brother
Big Brother is actually on three times a week. I am probably a more engaged fan of Big Brother than I am of Survivor, to be honest. The concept if you have never seen it is like The Real World, but with a more diverse cast typically (the age cutoff on The Real World is 25 or so), and instead of just sticking them into a house in a posh city, they isolate them and people get voted off every week.

The baseline uniform on Big Brother is a bikini for, say, half the house but unfortunately they have already voted off a couple of the lookers this year.

True Blood
True Blood is a fantastic television show to watch. I have battled my sister over this a couple of times and I think True Blood imagines Sookie Stackhouse’s universe better than the original Southern Vampire Mysteries. Sookie’s universe is reminiscent of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books but I think that the similar themes are handled more deftly on account of Sookie’s books have not de-volved into 100 page long passages of extremely boring porn. I mean there is a fair amount of smut in the books, but Anita Blake went from celibate to nonstop meat hole about 8 years ago and the books have become unreadable since.

The characterization on the tv show is superior in my opinion. The addition of legitimate visuals makes the shocking more shocking given the supernatural elements. For example this season a vampire is compelled to make sweet vampire love to his former master (mistress, actually) and he doesn’t at all want to / like her despite the fact that she is quite the undead looker. So while being compelled to go to vampire nether-town he breaks her neck and 180s her head… Lethal for a human woman, but just — you know — hot vampire monkey love for the pointy-toothed crowd.

This year it’s mostly werewolves drinking vampire blood. Also, a decent number of decent boobs.

Mad Men
As a marketing director who works on Madison Avenue possessed of truly great hair and undeniable charisma… well… I might have a slightly different perspective than you. I — like the Emmy panel — feel like Mad Men is more-or-less the best show on television.

Hung
Hung is pretty good. It is about a high school teacher (and the Punisher before Titus Pullo, but after He-Man) who makes extra bank by working as a male prostitute. Also, boobs; plus the occasional short and curlies.

Entourage
Adrian Grenier plays a Marky Mark-type character surrounded by his high school buddies as he navigates success, riches, and a neverending river of beautiful concubines. This season (the last?) had my second favorite episode of the show’s storied run, so I am mad digging it. Also Sasha Grey plays, um, herself this season… so boobs.

Rubicon
I haven’t watched this yet but given how awesome Breaking Bad and Mad Men are, I assume this is like the third best show on television (care of AMC, of course).

Monday

I usually just catch up on USA tv shows that I DVR’d other times during the week while I work on my DailyMTG column. No idea what actually plays on Monday.

However Weeds is coming back next week! Weeds jumped the shark long ago but it is still fun to watch. Weeds is in fact the perfect implementation of “the breakout novel” … Basically you put your characters in “the shit” and then put them deeper and deeper into it.

You’d think that a such a MILF-focused show would have more boobs, but nope. Still, great fun.

Tuesday

I used to watch Breakthrough With Tony Robbins, but apparently I was the only one.

Actually I don’t know how that is possible. In the first episode Tony threw a quadriplegic out of an airplane in like the first 15 minutes. Shrug.

I think White Collar comes on on Tuesdays but like I said I only watch USA stuff on DVR so it doesn’t really matter. I was surprised how much I liked White Collar, but probably shouldn’t have been because I absolutely adore Psych; I can only assume Covert Affairs is awesome (it’s basically a sluttier version of Alias, which was in its first 1-3 seasons one of the best shows on television before the creator got bored and accidentally invented Lost), plus I like all the USA stuff apparently.

Wednesday

Wednesday is a strange tv night for me because I am literally never home. Wednesday night a bunch of us attend Movie Klub — transplanted to New York by Lan D. Ho — at Jon Finkel’s house. So I watch whatever we are watching at Movie Klub and then have Shake Shack for dinner. In fact, my love of Shake Shack comes directly from Movie Klub. Believe it or not, I had never gone to Shake Shack before last summer, at the behest of Jonny and Lan.

That said, Wednesday is pregnant with fine tv.

At eight we have another ep of Big Brother (typically the coverage of the weekly veto competition), but also Top Chef and Psych.

Psych is, given the current available shows to choose from, probably the show I look forward to the most every week. It is lighthearted and decidedly not-deep, but on balance Psych has literally the best dialogue on tv. Bar none. The situations are ludicrous and the talkie talkie matches that quite well. I always laugh and I always want more. Plus the co-star is Dule Hill, who played my favorite character on The West Wing.

Thursday

Who knows what is on tv on Thursday? Sometimes I check out a 30 Rock re-run but mostly it is just Big Brother and watching whatever else I missed Wednesday night.

Friday

Friday is basically Date Night in the Flores household. We catch up on whatever we missed during the week (together) or catch a movie.

Saturday

Here is another night with nothing in particular right this second.

However even though it is cheating (Dr. Who ended two or three weeks ago) I just wanted to throw another shout out to my favorite tv show from age five. This past season with Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor has been one of the best seasons ever. In particular the last three eps were pure music.

I would particularly like to call attention to episode 11, “The Lodger”. Last time I did one of these posts I was able to share “Blink” — the consensus all-time best episode of Dr. Who. “The Lodger” is a close second… and much different. “Blink” is a horror episode that barely features the Doctor. In “The Lodger” the Doctor moves into a bachelor’s spare room while he investigates an alien upstairs. It is basically The Odd Couple — hilarious and uncomfortable — with the Doctor playing soccer, filling in for his hapless roommate at work, and engineering a sappy and predictable romance.

Even my wife — who typical for a beautiful and educated woman — does not typically go for the SF loved it.

No embedding this time; I couldn’t find “The Lodger” on YouTube, but it is still playing on BBC America On Demand. I recommend you go there immediately and spend 40 minutes on some charming comedy / SF.

Anyway, that’s it.

For the die-hards out there, I will probably get to updating more regularly after Nationals (or even early next week as I am taking a couple of days off before I fly out to Minneapolis). I have been spending the time I usually blog on actually playing Magic.

Crazy, I know.

LOVE
MIKE

Because you demanded it (and by “you” demanding it, I mean because I felt like writing it), my nightly television schedule!

I watch maybe six hours of television per day; probably more on the weekends. People are sometimes surprised to hear that, and there are other grownups / parents who seem horrified to hear that. However the fact is I stay up working most nights… Either working on my blog or other Magic-related projects (or just playing Magic Online); and of course I wrote a real live book last year.

My wife is much more reasonable than I am and goes to bed at a halfway reasonable time. But for me? I just like having the television on while I am up.

Anyway, I was inspired by Facebook posts by Ken Krouner and then Osyp Lebedowicz recently and decided to do something that Zvi Mowshowitz does on an (at least) annual basis; and post my general tv schedule. Of course I am not 100% married to any given time of day (thanks to DVR), but for the most part, this schedule will adhere to the regular times or nights that these shows appear.

DVR and On Demand:
There are some shows that I never watch live; I just watch them on Prime Time On Demand; these shows include veteran comedy Parks and Recreation and Justified. Who even knows when they are on?

Sunday:

In other circumstances I would list shows like Entourage (incidentally coming off a blah season but absolutely five star season finale) or Dexter (ditto to the season finale; was not blah), but I wanted to concentrate on what I am watching right now.

60 Minutes
I don’t watch 60 Minutes slavishly, but I enjoy it and watch it most Sundays; partly based on the fact that it comes on right before…

The Amazing Race
Another show I don’t watch slavishly; back in the day I was an immovable fan of Fox’s Sunday night lineup (The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development, etc.); now we watch The Amazing Race partly as compromise, having moved over the years between Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Alias and the various masterful HBO Sunday lineups including The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, and so on. Katherine got me into Survivor and Big Brother very early in our relationship but it took years for us to tag onto The Amazing Race, which is (critically at least) considered the best of the competition reality lot. I would rate it as pretty gripping / pretty good; but if there were a strong HBO option at this time of the year, I would probably be taking it.

Breaking Bad
The amazing thing about Cranston is that he was on what was on (pre-Arrested Development) the best comedy on Fox [and probably on television] but never really got the attention for his comedic or physical work (largely overshadowed by Jane Kaczmarek who was of course fabulous); but now that he is playing the exact opposite character on the exact opposite show, he’s rocked the back-to-back Emmy Awards. I know that Breaking Bad is generally marketed as “the best show on television”. I don’t know I would rate it there; it is very good, though. It is like Weeds in that it follows the formula of The Breakout Novel (starting the characters in the shit, then putting them increasingly deeper in it), which ensures its gripping-ness. Gripping it is, and challenging like nothing else on television.

Monday:

Monday is a heavy television night for me. Because I watch two “simultaneous” teevee shows on Monday, it is consequently a heavy DVR night. Here goes:

How I Met Your Mother
Zvi rates this as the best comedy on television. I don’t know that I would have it as top 3 even, but I love How I Met Your Mother anyway.

Like much of the initial audience, I started watching because of the Doogie Howser, M.D.-meets-Willow Rosenberg casting… and never stopped. They aren’t even the main characters!

House
I adore this show (which most of you remember was initially just drafting on American Idol‘s popularity); it has sustained a strong level of quality for years. It somehow features not just great writing but the hottest woman on earth (which is a not uncommon joke on the show), and a cast of truly lovable misfits and geniuses.

Gossip Girl
Longtime Top 8 Magic podcast listeners know that I long called Blake Lively as “the next it girl” two years before the premiere of Gossip Girl. That’s how good michaelj is at calling an it girl

Gossip Girl is a lot less interesting than it was in, say, the first two seasons when we were still trying to figure out who Gossip Girl was / is; I must admit that despite the acquisition of Kristen Bell (who is the voice of Gossip Girl), I was initially embittered at the fact that Gossip Girl supplanted my all-time favorite television show Veronica Mars on the CW. What, they couldn’t have two shows set in an environment of mystery and rich teenagers? I still like Gossip Girl enough to follow it closely, based on an adoration of Blake Lively (versus Serena) and Chuck Bass, though I am kind of annoyed by every other character but Nate Archibald (who is the unsung baller of the show, having tagged basically every major character-ette despite being poor for about half a season) and Little J (us something-Js have to stick together).

24
This last season is easily the worst season ever. However the show has not gotten less gripping, and being the worst season of one of the best shows of all time does not remove it from the must-view list. The way they are scripting 24 right now, I am tired just watching. Poor Renee. Poor Jack.

Tuesday:

Glee
They had me with the pilot-closer “Don’t Stop” and haven’t let go. This show features so many people I love (Kristen Chenoweth being the best example) and such great performances of such great music… If you don’t watch Glee (and twice-plus), you’re dumb basically.

Lost
Is the final one the best season ever of one of the best shows ever (like a mirror to 24, kind of)? I don’t know. But I can’t look away. If you aren’t deeply into Lost yet, you are in for a treat. I am going to re-watch my DVDs from season one starting this summer. There are so many details that even though I know the macro story, I bet I will love making small connections for myself all along the way; I can’t imagine how great it will be for first time viewers.

A lot of the criticism of Lost comes from a position of ignorance. Zvi actually makes the best analogy when he talks about the complexity of Magic (you know, the best game of all time); yes, it’s complex. Lost is a complex show. Both are necessarily complex and difficult for new devotees. But if they weren’t so complex, they wouldn’t be so unassailable. And they both are. When was the last time a president moved the State of the Union for a television show. TDG.

That.

Damn.

Good.

V
It took me a while to get into V because it was originally on Wednesday nights, when I have Movie Klub… But it ended up being the first show I bought to watch on my iPod. V is so surprising and scary it made me jump while watching it on a little three inch screen.

I am not unique but probably still a little bit unusual in that I am a current fan who was also an original 1980s V fan. However I have some additional crossover in that Elizabeth Mitchell’s character Juliet was my favorite character on Lost, and she is the lead on V now. Anyway, a very watchable show that I don’t like to miss. Full of alums from Firefly and other SF geek stuff you might like.

Wednesday:

Earlier this week, KK was lamenting the lack of good television on Wednesday nights. Wednesdays are actually a special case for me; I have Movie Klub, hosted by the incomparable Lan D. Ho at casa Jon Finkel and try to hit that every week. I don’t have any real / regular Wednesday night viewing, but I really should catch up with Top Chef Masters and possibly The Ultimate Fighter. But right now, I am behind on both.

Thursday:

Survivor
Arguably the first great competition reality show, Survivor is now in its 20th (?) season… and this is probably the best season ever. Survivor: Heroes v. Villains is an All-Star season that brought back all of my favorite players (Tom, Boston Rob, and Russell H.) along with a host of other popular players (Rupert, JT). The game play has been amazing. The best players have been putting on a clinic and the players who were supposed to be some of the best are all gone now. Russell made a move that looked to me like the best move ever on his way to ousting the dominant Boston Rob (early favorite for “best ever”) and just last week Parvati (Russell’s chief ally) made a move that required a truly inspired read on the enemy — the perfect marriage of information and opportunity.

Like much of the Survivor audience I fell in love with Russell’s hardcore game play last year, and he took the #1 spot in my opinion from Tom, despite finishing only second. This year I was afraid that Russell might not have been able to play his balls-out swing-for-the-fences style, but he has been as aggressive as ever, and a dominating player from the social side, making plays that cracked Boston Rob’s numbers advantage and eliminating JT (with JT never seeing the blindside coming). However it might be Parvati (seductive winner of the last All-Star season) who emerges as the best player of all time. KK (Survivor superfan) and I are separately rooting for our favorites between these two allies, against one another.

The Office
By the second season, I had The Office as the funniest show of all time. While I think that it has dipped in quality somewhat, I still have it as the #2 comedy on television.

30 Rock
Arguably the best show on television, probably the best written, and certainly the best comedy.

So obviously it will lose its Emmy lock to Glee later in the year (but I’d be fine with that). One half an hour I try to hit every week, and without fail.

Friday:

Ben 10 Alien Force / Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, Batman the Brave and the Bold, Star Wars – The Clone Wars

These are all Bella’s shows; we watch them on Saturday morning before the rest of the family gets up, typically; however they all get DVR’d on Friday night.

Batman the Brave and the Bold is charming; it has more of a reverence — even fanboy quality — for the superhero mythos than any Batman cartoon in recent memory. I will not soon forget the Christmas episode when [robot] Red Tornado gets Batman a mug that reads “World’s Greatest Detective” for a gift. It is probably not a better show overall than the early 1990s Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series that spawned the Superman and Justice League franchises, but I like Batman the Brave and the Bold more than the 2000s The Batman.

Star Wars – The Clone Wars really hit its stride this season; much better than the first. I love a lightsaber fight.

Saturday:

Doctor Who

Without a doubt the high point of my television week is my favorite show, Doctor Who.

Back when Battlestar Galactica was on Friday nights on The SciFi Channel, I secretly looked forward to Doctor Who even more.

I have been a Doctor Who fan since the age of four. I used to dream about his companions as a kindergartner and after a fair sized gap based on living in the wilds of western Pennsylvania (I don’t think our PBS affiliate had Doctor Who), I came back to Cleveland, eyes stuck on Peter, Colin, and Sylvester (Doctors five, six, and seven) until the show’s cancellation at the end of — if I recall — my Seventh Grade year. I saw the made for tv movie as a freshman in college, but like everyone else I didn’t like it. Today, Doctor Who I find better than ever.

Peter Davidson was “my” Doctor growing up (Doctor #10 David Tennant has said the same thing), but Tennant ended up my favorite Doctor of all time. He wound up his run just earlier this year.

The show has re-started a bit with Matt Smith as the eleventh man [in continuity] to play The Doctor, with Stephen Moffat taking over as head writer with this season. My sister and I have been positively giddy, because Moffat wrote all the best eps the past several seasons anyway (typically creepy one-ofs).

If you don’t know what I am talking about, here are the basics:

• The Doctor is / started out basically the smartest man in the universe. He is a Time Lord, a member of a race who can travel through all space and time. In fact he was chief among the Time Lords. In the early 1960s he quit his job as Lord President of the Time Lords to run around all of time and space adventuring. Yes, he is a bit mad.
• The original actor who played the Doctor was quite old but the show had to go on; the writers conceived of an idea where — by nature of their immortal alien backgrounds — Time Lords can change their faces and regenerate bodies that have been ravaged by age or ravaged by bullets (as in the case of #7)… Really just opening the show up to a separate actor. The Doctor is in a sense the same person (same genius, same madness, same sense of justice), but each actor puts a very different personality on that framework. They are all different men as well, act differently, and so on.
• In the current continuity, The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords and has basically declared himself God. While 99% of the time he exudes a foppish, fun-loving, outward persona, he harbors a darkness that did not exist before the 2005 reboot. You see it was the Doctor who was responsible for the destruction of all his own people — and these are a people who could theoretically travel through time and space — in order to end a great war. My favorite element of the current series (that was not really present when I was a kid) is when the Doctor goes all Alpha Male on the enemy. He can beat a conquering alien in a swordfight, stop an entire invasioni single-handedly with no weapons, or get really nasty; for example a family of aliens who tried to steal the Doctor’s immortality… he made them immortal, but basically locked them in unending hell-like punishments for crossing him.
• The Doctor has always travelled in his adventures with designated Companions (usually beautiful British women), though apparently there is no sex. My favorite companion was Dr. Martha Jones (an actual medical doctor); my second favorite Companion is Matt Smith’s current one, Amy Pool, a scottish redhead who was the victim of the Doctor’s absent minded time meddling starting at the age of seven. She is also a superbabe in that pasty redheaded Scottish way that we Americans only see on foreign television shows.

If that seems SF-nerdy, oh well. Doctor Who is the epitome of SF nerd television. Doesn’t matter. Favorite show. Et cetera.

As with Figure of Destiny, I am embedding a YouTube video of my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time, “Blink” at the end of this blog post. “Blink” won the short form Hugo Award in 2008 (Moffat’s third consecutive win for a Doctor Who episode, beating out Battlestar Galactica‘s best ever episode, “Pegasus” in 2006). The Companion is Martha Jones (my favorite), and the Doctor is David Tennant (my favorite); however most of the screen time goes to Carey Mulligan, who in the last two years has become an international celebrity via her roles in Public Enemies, An Education, and the upcoming Wall Street sequel.

I hope you like “Blink” … As I said it’s my favorite ep ever, and I find it genuinely creeptacular; if you do, there is hope you might like the rest of the show, and thereby adopt it as your favorite as well.

Peace out,

LOVE
MIKE

A new card that lots of my Twitter followers have been asking me to write about is Gideon Jura:

Gideon is an interesting and potentially powerful card; not one that I would necessarily have identified on my lonesome. Apparently people think it’s going to be a chase rare (and by “chase rare” you probably can’t miss the fact that Gideon Jura is actually Mythic Rare).

Gideon Jura costs five mana, specifically 3WW. It costs exactly the same amount as, you know, Baneslayer Angel.

So which is better?

Baneslayer Angel.

Baneslayer Angel is better than Gideon Jura. Baneslayer Angel will win games that no other card would be able to win. We played Baneslayer Angel in the mono-Cascade (you know, Black “Baneslayer”) deck because that deck’s mana base put us behind against Anathemancer; one or two hits from a Baneslayer Angel and you don’t really have to worry about Anathemancer any more. Baneslayer Angel blocks. She blocks so well that often she doesn’t have to block. You lay her out there and the bad guys are terrified of attacking. Baneslayer Angel blocks so well that when she motherlovin’ attacks, the five life you get back is basically like she hung back to block.

So Baneslayer Angel is better — given my snap judgment superficial never-played-a-Gideon-Jura-yet assessment — than Gideon Jura, card-to-card.

So why are we even having this discussion?

Just because Gideon Jura isn’t as good a card as the best large creature in the history of Magic doesn’t mean that he won’t be a significant and useful potential tool. In fact, Gideon Jura will be more applicable to many strategies than Baneslayer Angel was, or is. For example, creature-poor decks often lose their Baneslayer Angels immediately. Lay her out there… and she’s dead. Gideon Jura wouldn’t be immediately dead. You can’t Terminate a Gideon Jura; ergo you won’t be sitting there with a stray Terminate in your hand when Gideon Jura shows up, poised to blow up the new Planeswalker.

We know Baneslayer Angel is worth tapping out for. Is Gideon Jura?

I think it depends.

It depends on what you want to do, and what your deck wants to do, and how you want to hold hands and go about doing what you plan on doing. For example, a deck like Naya Lightsaber can play Noble Hierarch, Great Sable Stag, Bloodbraid Elf, Baneslayer Angel… threat, threat, threat; pressure, pressure, pressure. Baneslayer Angel is great there in a way that Gideon Jura might not necessarily be.

A control deck can play block, tempo, counter, bluff, Baneslayer. If she lives, great. If she dies, well… You were probably going to play Day of Judgment anyway. Baneslayer Angel is worthwhile there.

This is a spot where Gideon Jura might actually be better. You can counter, kill creatures, play your Planeswalkers, Day of Judgment with no loss of card advantage, and then clean up with Gideon Jura. He’s pretty strong in the sense that a White control deck can sweep the board and then go Mishra’s Factory with a 6/6, essentially unopposed. In this sense, Gideon Jura is a fine finisher.

But for all his lack of “ultimate” Planeswalker abilities, Gideon has three… It might be worth looking at all of them:

• [+2] This ability seems applicable in [at least] three broad ways: 1) “Delayed Blast Falter” … a White Weenie deck (or whatever) can make all the opponent’s creatures attack Gideon Jura, leaving him (mostly) open for a return Alpha Strike, 2) “Turbo Fog” … Gideon Jura could fit into this kind of a strategy, both as an additional White Fog-proxy (and ultimately an alternate kill condition), 3) Boosting Gideon’s loyalty … Because sometimes you have to.
• [-2] Gideon Jura can go Nekrataal immediately upon hitting the battlefield. The opponent just attacked? You can spring the slaughter and have four loyalty left.
• [0] Probably best in a true control deck, but serviceable in any deck that plays Gideon.

Gideon Jura is a potential one-card combo. You can play him, activate the [+2] and win almost on the spot. If you have some decent blockers, one or two Gideon Jura-directed suicide runs will make for some kind of a no-limit swing. You can actually sit there activating [+2], forcing the opponent to run into a Celestial Colonnade or whatever, until he decides he is tired of banging his head against the wall and throwing his creatures into the graveyard.

I think Gideon might be a nice component in a Planeswalker-themed control or board control deck. He has lots of colorless mana costs, and should therefore hang it nice and loose with Everflowing Chalice. As a fourth or fifth turn follow up, Gideon can play big brother to Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Just keeping attackers off of Jace will be worthwhile a fair amount of the time.

As already implied, Gideon Jura is a solid potential finisher in a true control deck. He does everything you need him to do. You need to kill creatures? Gideon kills creatures. You need to keep damage off of your own neck? Gideon might just play Baneslayer Angel, heroically, for a turn or two. You need to win the game? Gideon can handle that action, too.

If there were a rating between Role Player and Staple, that’s where I would position Gideon Jura; but there isn’t.

Snap Judgment Rating – Staple

LOVE
MIKE