Pod People

I've gotten really into podcasts lately. It all started last summer when they changed my work assignment and sent me to the gritty urban location two days a week. I usually take the train, and needed some audio entertainment to pass the time. I wanted something other than music to listen to. I started with This American Life. But TAL is only one hour per week. I needed to branch out. Downloaded a few samples of this and that, and settled into a group of podcasts that grows larger every now and again when I discover something new. Now that I'm hooked, the podcasts get me through all kinds of otherwise boring tasks -- yardwork, road trip driving, routine tests that I have to do after hours at work.

My newest favorite is Radiolab. I also listen to lots of Fresh Air interviews, some silly thing by John Hodgman, the Freakonomics podcast, and for reasons I can't quite explain, CBC Radio's WireTap.

Any of you have any favorites you'd recommend? No politics, please. Just geeky stuff, humor, and stories, or some combination of the three.

Suburban Widowed Pot-Dealing Mom

Five simple words successfully used to pitch TV show Weeds to the execs at Showtime, according to an interview with the show's creator, Jenji Kohan.

It's back for a fourth season starting tonight. I'll be watching. The plot twists are wildly absurd and silly. While this show makes light of heavy topics, it does so without ever taking them lightly. If that makes any sense. And it probably doesn't, if you haven't seen it. Great cast, unpredictable show. Yeah, I will definitely be watching. Good TV is hard to find.

Not The Same, But Still Funny

I stayed up late last night to watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report. Or "A Daily Show", as Stewart renamed the interim writer-free shows. Both shows were different than they were before the strike. Stripped down, for one thing. But what I like the most about them was still there, only more of it - the opening monologues and the interviews. I enjoyed seeing Andrew Sullivan on Colbert, but laughed more during Jon Stewart's monologue (or "improv" opening statement, or whatever we should call it when it technically cannot be scripted in advance - even by Colbert or Stewart). Although Colbert did note that Stewart's monologue (or whatever) seemed alarmingly well prepared:



I've missed these shows, especially The/A Daily Show, and am glad they are back because there is so much to poke fun at. If you missed it, Stewart's bit on the Writers' Strike was hilarious!

Stardust is Magic

It was a beautiful late summer day yesterday, but we've had so many of those lately we decided to spend this one sitting in a dark movie theater. When you can't remember exactly what you saw last, you are way overdue for going to the movies again. I think maybe it was Spiderman 3, or possibly Waitress...

This time we were choosing between the latest Bourne movie or Stardust. I pushed for Stardust in spite of the negative reviews it garnered. I was in the mood for a good fantasy. It turned out to be an excellent choice. We both loved it! It was a good story, with lots of pretty visuals, adventure, magic, romance, and plenty of humor mixed in throughout. If you have been on the fence about seeing it (possibly put off by the lukewarm reviews* as we were), you can hop down on the "gonna go see it" side now.

*It currently has a 74% (fresh) rating on the Tomatometer, but it has a 90% user rating. Our newspaper gave it a "C". We give it an "A", and plan to buy the DVD when it comes out.

Just an ordinary Thursday night...

... but sometimes the ordinary can be very, very satisfying.

This thought occurred to me as I was sipping wine and listening to a local duo sing "Into the Mystic". I was sitting next to the man I love. Our friend Boomer was tending bar. We talked to the owner for a few minutes; he is also friend of ours. We had full bellies after a good meal. I had the lobster ravioli. PDM had his old standby - fish and chips with beer. Laughing and talking easily, we were watching the Braves game on a big screen TV while listening to the live music. The place was full, but not crowded. The musicians, Mike and Barry, have a long-standing regular gig at this place on Thursdays. They play the kind of old rock and roll that is always welcome and never goes out of style, and enjoy an easy back and forth with the crowd during their performances. They're regular guys in jeans and tee shirts, just like most of the patrons. And as we listened to them play, that's when it hit me out of the blue: it doesn't get much better than this. Nothing fancy, just good.

At the end of the evening, something on the check made us smile. Boomer had been running our bar tab as "PDM+WIFY".

He's a lumberjack and he's OK...

The physics meeting last week included a "night out" event, that was held at Nicollet Island Park just over the Mississippi. They had food and a beer tent, a roving Dixieland band, a dance band in a highly air-conditioned building, and something called a "Lumberjack Show". I had never seen one, but speculated that it involved men, plaid shirts, axes, and saws. Turns out that was a pretty good guess.


The show was loads of fun. They divided the crowd into two camps, one for each competing lumberjack. We were encouraged to cheer for our guy and jeer the other one. The host, or whatever you call him in lumberjack terms, explained each event and its significance in old fashioned logging. There was an axe throw, speed carving, power sawing, speed climbing, springboard chopping, log rolling, and more. All three guys made lots of corny jokes and puns, and generally made things fun for everyone. Although the show itself was very entertaining, it was almost as entertaining to watch all the physicists in the crowd so far out of their element. Especially the nerdier ones.


I'll come clean and admit that part of what I enjoyed about the show was the scenery. And I'm not talking about the river. Before the log roll, the females in the audience convinced one of the lumberjacks to remove his shirt. These guys had some very well-developed upper bodies. My pictures definitely do not do these men justice. They had the natural kind of athletic build that comes from physical activity, not steroidally-out-of-proportion weight-lifter type musculature. It was quite nice to look at. Ahem. So the ladies in particular seemed to enjoy the show.

Meet the people I dumped Jack Bauer for...

Heroes is, without a doubt, the best show on television. The choice was easy. Besides, with the incredibly detailed minute-by-minute plot summary on the 24 website you can get caught up in just a few minutes without ever watching the show. Problem solved.

I enjoy 24. It is entertaining, but I cannot get through a single episode without yelling "Oh, come ON!" at the television multiple times, each time I have to suspend disbelief in order to accept the latest plot device. That show relies on the most absurd coincidences, mistakes that would never be made, bizarre and convoluted plot twists, smart characters displaying very bad judgement, cliffhangers every hour on the hour, humans who can make it through 24 hours without sleeping, eating, or peeing, and incredibly bad luck to move the story forward.

You might be thinking, "Hey! Don't you have to suspend disbelief to watch a show about people with superpowers?" Well, sure! Obviously people can't really fly, heal themselves, become invisible, read minds, create radioactivity, erase memories, melt metals, paint the future, or control time, to name just a few. But you need only accept the single premise about the emergence of these super powers and the rest of the story becomes completely believable. That is one big difference between the shows.

Another difference is that Heroes is better at fleshing out its characters. 24 has some interesting characters, but there are so many players and so much action that the audience doesn't get to really know many of them. The characters on Heroes are much more three-dimensional. No one is 100% good or evil (except maybe Mr. Linderman). Introduced slowly and featured in small subsets, Heroes lets you spend a lot of time with each character. As the mysteries get deeper, you are learning what makes these people tick and starting to care about them. Even some of the ones you think might be bad guys. The plots on 24 remind me of a Rube Goldberg contraption. The plots on Heroes are more like peeling the layers of an onion. With everything you learn, there is some deeper mystery at the core, but it all works together and it all makes sense (once you are in on it). Instead of "Huh? WTF!?", you have "Ah ha!". Much more satisfying.

Heroes has done the impossible: it makes me look forward to Mondays!