Fall TV preview, part ii

If you haven't read part i, STOP RIGHT NOW and read it!

Now onto part ii.

TUESDAY

COMMANDER IN CHIEF
(abc@9)
Chick in the White House!
How ya like me now Bartlett?
Oval is easy?

MY NAME IS EARL
(nbc@9)
Atoning for sins
is Lee's character named Earl.
Funny and quirky?

GILMORE GIRLS
(wb@8)
Another chick show!
Snappy dialogue? You bet!
Star Hollow's their home.

BONES
(fox@8)
Forensic anthro
and David Boreanaz.
Syllables galore.

SUPERNATURAL
(wb@9)
After Gilmore Girls.
Is this show 'bout Santana?
Nope. Urban legends.

AMAZING RACE
(cbs@9)
Sounds like new format
focusing on family race.
Will it be as good?

THE OFFICE
(nbc@9:30)
Steve Carell is
"40-year-old manager."
Still no BBC?

WEDNESDAY

LOST
(abc@9)
Hey, what's in the hatch?
What about the guys on raft?
Many questions here.

THE APPRENTICE:
MARTHA STEWART
(nbc@8)
What's her catch phrase, hmm?
Someone said "Your goose is cooked!"
Hair better than Trump's.

INVASION

(abc@10)
Florida town gets
over hurricane damage.
Oh . . . add "aliens".

E-RING
(nbc@9)
Pentagon drama
featuring Dennis Hopper.
"Dont' f--- with Daddy!"

VERONICA MARS
(upn@9)
It feels like Buffy.
New season-long murder plot.
Steve Guttenberg, ya'll!!!

Fall TV preview, part i

Well, it's September so you know that I am gearing up for my 2nd annual Fall TV preview. This year, like last year, I warn you ahead of time that I am not heading off to California and New York to conduct personal interviews with TV producers or bothering Tom Welling or Dominic Monaghan. Rather, I am sitting on my butt in my own home and reading Entertainment Weekly's Fall TV double issue and surfing to a few websites.

In short, I am blatantly repurposing the hard work of real journalists and passing it along to you. I hope you don't mind. I doubt that I will cover every new show or give opinions on every returning show. Instead, I'll try to convey what some new trends are for this year, what are the shows getting lots of early interest, discussing some favorites from the past, and casting criticism on bad shows that should never have money wasted on them (Whoopi anyone?).

But, in an effort to spice things up a bit this year and to make it more interesting for you and me, I will present my thoughts on shows in haiku form . . . so, its fun for everyone.

On with the preview.
Fall TV is upon us.
Let's get it started.

*****
SUNDAY

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
(abc@9)
Emmy noms for them
Alfre on Wisteria
Is it hot once more?

WEST WING
(nbc@8)
Now on Sunday night
Alda runs for White House berth
Does anyone care?

THE WAR AT HOME
(fox@8:30)
New sitcom on Fox
Smells like Married . . . with Children
Dime-a-dozen show

AMERICAN DAD
(fox@9:30)
Works for CIA
Voted for Dubya--no doubt
It's no Family Guy

EXTREME MAKEOVER:
HOME EDITION
(abc@8)
Ty P. as savior?
What happens when camera's off?
Palace in the 'hood!

THE SIMPSONS
(fox@8)
Seventeen seasons . . .
How can they keep it going?
More Sideshow Bob, please!

GREY'S ANATOMY
(abc@10)
Never watched the show
But it's got Sandra Oh, right?
No wine; she's a doc.

MONDAY

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL
(fox@8:30)
Alias' Will and
Xander from Buffy means that
I'll give it a shot.

HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER
(cbs@8:30)
Flashback from future
Tells of dates in the present
Wonder Years . . . Doogie!

7TH HEAVEN
(wb@8)
Ten years of this crap?
Only on WB, I reckon
Red States must love it?

PRISON BREAK
(fox@9)
Debuted last Monday
Already gets lots of buzz
Brothers in the clink

SURFACE
(nbc@8)
This is a "Lost" clone
Sea creatures cause stir world-wide
I think about Signs.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
(fox@8)
Critics love this show
but its ratings always poor;
will Mondays fix that?

WIFE SWAP
(abc@8)
Returns from last year
Want to try out a new spouse?
e-mail ABC

Information on Technical Tweaks

Attention everyone:

Herein follows a boring technical post that describes the minor design changes that I implemented on WWYG?!

This occurred this afternoon while I was at the office but technically was "off" since the building officially closed at 2 pm to honor the Labor Day holiday. (We are off on Monday.) Tegan had stuff to do, so I caught up on my Internet time-wasting and fiddled with web page template design.

So, what did I do?

Well, I removed the NotifyList box that was cluttering up the sidebar. It's a good idea, but it didn't do what I thought it was going to do. I hoped it would automatically send notifications to those that signed up, but all it does (seemingly) is provide me a handy list of well-wishers that I must then email to tell when new posts are live. NotifyList is a good idea, but I don't need their help to do that, so off it goes.

Second I adjusted my Links list (or as I like to call it, Interesting Sites to Visit). I took a few web pages off--pages that don't need my help anyway and adjusted my settings so that when my listed links update, you can see it with a pretty "New" starburst. (If this encourages my fellow bloggers to update more often, then that is good for everyone don't you think?)

I hope you enjoy these twiddly bits as much as I enjoy wasting my time putting them there. If I make further changes, then you will be the first to know.

Hurricanes, floods, celebrity concerts, Homeland Security, and other disasters

I haven't said anything about the continuing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the growing societal nightmare that is unfolding along the Gulf Coast for two reasons: 1) that's not what this blog is really about, if it's about anything at all and 2) there are others who do it much better than I could.

What I usually do is throw together stuff and try to find links between them or just write to amuse myself.

Plus I don't want to diminish what is happening to Real People when Awful Stuff Happens by sandwiching it amongst my musings on "Desperate Housewives" and what my youngest daughter said at the dinner table last night.

But I have found a way to combine some stuff in such a way that it gives me justification to throw in my 0.75 cents.

Entertainment Weekly informs me that (in the depressing tradition of most media-publicized disasters) musicians are performing tonight to raise money for hurricane relief. That is fine, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. It always stirs my cynical nature, however, when these concerts happen. I would rather give to the Red Cross than be motivated into it by Tim McGraw.

(Speaking of giving, my company is providing matching funds for our donations and Tegan and I have offered to donate some money that my bible study group had been gathering each week for a (then as yet unknown) charitable donation. Now our small amount of money can be doubled. So, good for my company. I don't know how long this corporate-matching program will continue for Katrina, but if any of my family is planning to donate to the Red Cross, why not send it to me and make your money go farther?)

But, back to business . . .

The celebrities are mobilizing quickly to sing and dance for aid, but the government is taking lots of heat about the slow response to get supplies and aid into the hurricane zone. Personally I keep going back and forth on this. I understand that mobilizing anything down into a twisted, flooded mess with no transportation infrastructure is REALLY hard to get done. But at the same time, that IS the mandate of the Department of Homeland Security, isn't it? If not them, then who?

I helped clean out the flooded house of one of my dad's colleagues back when parts of Southwestern Georgia flooded in the early 1990s. It is my only experience with the aftermath of such disaster. I remember the stifling heat, the muck, the smell, the almost total loss of interior furnishings, and non-structural stuff. And that was only 4 feet of river water--nothing like what is happening in Louisiana and Mississippi.

So, I am worried that things are getting worse before they get better. And I try to remain hopeful that the people in power are doing EVERYTHING they can do to set things right as fast as possible. They'd better be.

Kindergarten blues

I know that I take a lot of time on this blog talking about my kids, especially Ariel's development into a young girl.

But tonight I realized that Ariel really is still a little girl in all the most fundamental ways. She sometimes acts older and I remain convinced that she is ahead of the curve in a lot of developmental stages, but she is (after all) only five years old.

Tonight she got upset as we were trying to get her down to bed. Not extremely angry or throwing a tantrum but just general crying and weeping. The cause? I think it was a feeling that she isn't getting enough attention. Tegan has been working too hard and while I have been handling both kids lately, I have had to focus more on Ruth . . . because she needs more attention being younger and because she's been sick lately. And, I had always reasoned this choice by saying that Ariel is older and can play more by herself if necessary.

Well, I think Ariel is bothered by all of this and maybe she is feeling a bit of psychic stress about next week's upcoming kindergarten start. It has been so long ago since I was in school, and impossible to recall what kindergarten was like anyway, that I don't recall the turbulence that schools can place on kids, especially when they are experiencing it for the first time.

So, I was reminded tonight about Ariel's still tender years and the fact that she has many years to go before she is self-sufficient and more than willing to avoid me and ignore whatever I say.

Having said all of that, please stop a moment and marvel at this recent drawing done by Ariel. She created it weeks ago, but it was done in pencil and on a legal sized piece of paper. That is important because it took me a while to trace the pencil with ink and then reduce the original image to fit on my scanner bed.

It is still a bit hard to tell what is going on, but I can provide a bit of explanation. Down in the bottom corner is a small girl who is holding a kite by a very long string (the kite is in the upper left corner). What is strange about the picture, however, is that the girl is dreaming about another person who is the central image of the drawing. This boy and his dog are both wearing crowns and are the most detailed figures in the picture. This boy is also dreaming of something in the top right corner of the page, but it isn't clear what that dream figure is. Surrounding this central dream bubble are a mixed up collection of random letters.

What I found most striking about this picture is its surreal quality: someone dreaming something that is also dreaming about something. It's kind of like Salvador Dali, but without all of the artistic training.