Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I forgot about the TV stuff

My title yesterday said I was going to talk about TV, and then I didn't. See, I'm a failure!

Anyway, I'm way behind on TV viewing for this year. S doesn't really watch TV -- he didn't grow up on it the way that I did, and doesn't really understand that it's my stress relief at the end of a long day. I can get him to sit and watch certain shows with me, like "House" and "SVU," but you can't start someone on "Fringe" 3 seasons in, and he'd never go for shows like "Grey's Anatomy" or "Desperate Housewives." On top of that, there were the Jewish Holidays and my boards that ate up a lot of my time, and my Masters classes that go til late 4 nights a week, and I'm always playing catch-up with my DVR. So I stopped taping the shows that were On-Demand -- namely the ones that are on NBC and CBS.

But then I never got around to watching them On Demand, and it turns out they only keep 2 episodes. And Hulu only keeps 5 -- and somehow I'm 10 episodes behind. Big problem for shows that I've loved for years -- "Chuck," "30 Rock," "The Office," and new favorites like "The Good Wife" and "Parenthood." I'm not sure how legal it is, but I subscribed to Graboid and watched 4 episodes of "Chuck" last week when I was sick for a day.

The only new show this season that I've watched is "The Event," which S and I have watched together because I thought it would be fun to have a show to watch together -- but we are about 5 weeks behind, mainly because neither of us are aching to watch it ever. We put it on out of boredom. Does anyone else watch that?

What I think is important here -- if you can read between the lines -- is that all my life, TV has been extremely important to me. Like, don't talk to me, I'm watching my shows. And since meeting S, it's seriously fallen to the wayside. I'd rather spend time with him than watching TV, and maybe it's because now I have a dining table, but we don't even usually eat in front of the TV. When I'm really tired, I'll tell him we are ordering in dinner and eating in front of the TV. And when I'm stressed out, I'll tell him I need a night of catching up and he can either watch my shows with me or leave me to it. But there's a reason that my DVR is 100% full all the time!

But here are my grades: "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" have been far better this season than the past couple years. Loving them. "Glee" is amazing. I watch those shows each week and don't usually fall behind on them. "Desperate Housewives" is silly but I keep watching anyway. "House" is going to have to find a way to make Huddy interesting before I want to stop watching. "Fringe" is fascinating and she deserves an Emmy for playing both Olivias so well. "Bones" is as entertaining a ever. "SVU" never changes. "The Event" better be more interesting in the spring, if I can remember to come back to it after a 3 month hiatus. The 4 episodes of "Chuck" that I watched were great, and I am looking forward to catching up on the rest. What do y'all think? Am I missing any other great new shows?? I will say that I severely miss "Lost," and "24." Nothing comes close to replacing them.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Movie Reviews (and some TV)

It's been awhile since I've talked about movies, but since I've seen 3 in the past 10 days, I thought it was time to do a little reviewing. Let me know your thoughts.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 1: IMAX
Got to see this with my mom, sister, and S in the IMAX theater in B'ham (which is huge, and domed -- the latter kind of made the distortion a bit strange, however). The movie was incredible. I'm kinda glad they ended up making two movies, since they stuck to the book so closely -- would have been a shame to have cut out half the story to have kept it at one film, even though they are going to make oodles and oodles of money this way.

It's amazing to watch the actors grow up like we have, isn' t it? Go back and watch the first film (it'll be on TV a lot this month as part of ABC's "25 days of Xmas"). You really feel like they've matured -- just like Harry, Ron, and Hermione should have done. In this film, you really feel like they are finally THERE, finally ready to take on the true challenges facing them. The emotions were brutal, but honest.
S had never seen (or read) any of the HP movies before. I had him read the Sparknotes on the first 5 books, then we watched the 6th film on the way to B'ham before seeing this movie. Now he's hooked -- maybe I'll be able to get him to read the books, if I can tear him away from him law books. But certainly it won't be a problem to get him to see the last movie with me! I can't wait for it to come out. And in 3D! I'll probably have to see it both ways.
My grade: A- (the minus is only for making me wait 6 months for the next part, good thing I know how it ends)

Love and Other Drugs
The story of a pharmaceutical rep, and the girl with Parkinson's that he loves. Sounds kinda boring when you put it that way, doesn't it? Way more entertaining than that, but only because it's set in 1997/1998, right when Viagra came out, and said pharmaceutical rep was barely making it until he got to sell the magical blue pill. And that girl was anti-love until she fell in love with the guy who was just a player until he also fell in love.

Kind of a cliched love-story, but done very well. Anne Hathaway is fabulous in it, and Jake Gyllenhaal looks great naked (well, mostly naked). I personally thought the stuff with the Big Pharma was pretty funny, but only b/c in recent years it's all changed and they aren't allowed to just give out free pens/umbrellas/lunches/trips to Hawaii anymore, so it was fun to watch them teaching the reps the ways to the doctors' hearts by doing all those things.
My grade: B+

How Do You Know
We got to see a screening of this new movie (with Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson) last night. It's the one where she's a softball player who loses her spot on the USA team, he's some kind of financial person who's being indicted by the justice system, and Owen Wilson plays the baseball player boyfriend she shouldn't be dating. (They do screenings for the press, and then try to fill up the seats so that people are laughing and booing at the right times, so it was free, yay!)

You can probably guess the storyline. Which is the worst part. The other bad parts are that they never really explain the indictment stuff (what he did wrong, or didn't do wrong; I think they don't want you to get bogged down in the details but the vagueness of it was driving me crazy). They also keep hinting at this idea that she's supposed to be depressed for losing her position on the team, but never show you that she's trying to do something else or that she's actually depressed in any way. So that was also extremely vague.

However, the relationships b/w Reese's character and both Paul's and Owen's characters were fabulous, funny and cute and likeable. Overall, it was a cute movie, and if you are looking for a fun romantic comedy then I'd recommend it.
My grade: B-

Thursday, December 2, 2010

I'm a failure at blogging

But a success at so many other things! Well, maybe not right now. Right now, I'm also a failure at keeping up with many of my TV shows (I've managed to make it to November on my DVR, but only because I stopped recording shows I thought would be available On Demand. Except that it turns out that CBS and NBC only keep 2 episodes On Demand, and only 5 most recent episodes on Hulu, and I'm about 10 episodes behind on 5 or 6 important shows. Damn it!). And pretty much a failure at being a research fellow, b/c it's December and I haven't really done any research. Or even gotten trained for the IRB yet. By the end of next week I have to turn in a full protocol for my project -- a model, with methods, etc. Gross. But I did manage to complete my courses, although I have one more online-final to take, and my grades aren't back yet. And still waiting on my score for my Pediatrics boards.....

However, I am a very successful girlfriend! Things with S are going very well. I guess my blog has just become very boring, and for that I'm very sorry! He came home to Alabama for Thanksgiving and had such a great time, he didn't want to leave. He's ready to move there (but I'm not. Not even close. So don't get any ideas). He loves my family, all of them. Even the crazy ones. The only not great part happened when I got upset after we missed our connection and they had rebooked me on the next flight but not him (they had booked him on two more connections) -- he didn't like that I was upset instead of just "going with the flow," the way he is. When I finally explained WHY I had gotten upset -- that the guy on the phone had been rude to me, and that I felt like I should have called originally when I knew our flight from NYC was delayed, and was stupid for not listening to my Mom when she told me to call and didn't want her to say "told you so" -- he was understanding, and we had a good conversation about our different personalities when things like that happen. In the end, I gave up my seat on the flight I had been rebooked on in order to be fly with him on his TWO more flights -- and then we were another 2 hours delayed from Atlanta, so we traveled for 14 hours instead of 6. I must really truly like this guy!!

Next week I'm doing something I've never done before -- going on a vacation with my boyfriend. I've traveled with boyfriends before -- to see family, or with family. But never ONLY with a boyfriend. We are going on a cruise to the Caribbean -- it was an amazingly cheap deal, and we are both so excited (he's never been on a cruise before!). We are also going to meet the rest of the parents on either end, since we are going out of Ft. Lauderdale/Miami. We are doing some pretty active excursions (a waterfall hike, snuba, and another hike/snorkel trip), but I've warned him that the days at sea may require some down-time by the pool, and that we don't have to spend every minute with each other -- if he wants to go do something else (since there are so many activities on this ship!), he can. We'll see what happens, I'm guessing he just comes and sits next to me at the pool until I agree to go do something with him. Either way, it's going to be so much fun!!