Stuff to Watch Summer Edition

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