"Looking Back On The 2009"

I've just arrived back in Cincinnati after a little ski vacation to bring in the new decade, so sorry for the late updating of this blog. There have been quite a lot of stories to come out of 2009, especially in the media.

One thing that has really taken the nation, and much of the world by storm is the presence of social media. The two main players in this skyrocketing category are Facebook and Twitter. It seems that 2009 brought the old school (and creepy) Myspace down a path that will be difficult for the company to recover from. Twitter has grown so quickly it is unreal, while it has many downsides it also can reveal a lot about a variety of interesting people without the interference of a PR officer being in the middle.

Charlie Sheen's Christmas tirade will go down as another story that will define 2009. It seems that the Two and a Half Men star, who makes a handy $825,000 per episode, couldn't quite handle the constant bitching of his drunken wife, so did what most Hollywood stars seemed to do this year, freaked out. Another example is the exploits of Rihanna and Chris Brown, dude, do you really think you are going to get away with doing that to her? We won't even get started on Lindsay Lohan and her lesbian outings into the world.

Horrible, and I mean HORRIBLE television ruled much of the airwaves this year. How in the world do people watch John and Kate, how can you care about their lives? Jersey Shore was beyond belief, those guys and girls are absolutely ridiculous. It is like the Real World only way worse, and way more STD's. Why MTV did gross me out with Jersey Shore and made me want to throw a chair into the TV with the Hills, they did provide me with some great entertainment in the form of Nitro Circus. Epic show, Travis Pastrana is absolutely out of his mind, but I love to watch it. I am also disappointed that Jeopardy changed their set layout in 2009, the old one was too classic to change.

I think tragedy also played a prevalent role in defining 2009. My first instinct is the recent passing of Brittany Murphy. There were also the passing of Michael Jackson, remembered as much for his downfall as his brilliance. The massively talented DJAM also fell to the drugs he so wanted to get off of. For many Walter Cronkite was the news media, and with his death in 2009 aspiring journos lost a legend to look up to. There was also the death of Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Steve McNair and Ted Kennedy. Let's hope that 2010 brings much more health and prosperity to the world.

Finally, it was the year of Barack Hussein Obama. The man has changed how the United States and its politics will forever be looked at. It was a really exciting time to be alive for, seeing a changing in guard that rivaled that of the Kennedy's. To say he has been thrown into the deep end would be the understatement of a lifetime. He has so much work ahead of his, much like our nation's people and it will be interesting how everybody deals with it. I have a lot of faith in President Obama so here is to the hope that the new year brings him a great deal of success in all of our country's ordeals.

Happy 2010 to all those reading this.

30 Rock: "Pilot Episode"

Being an avid 30 Rock fan I must confess I didn't see the pilot episode when it aired back in October of 2006. I started watching the show around the fourth episode, but once caught about 15 minutes of the pilot when the show was airing re-runs rather than new episodes. After throwing my mother's season 1 disc into the DVD player it all clicked on me that I hadn't seen the first few minutes of the pilot episode of 30 Rock. How could I call myself a fan if I didn't even realize how the characters were all introduced?

Well, now I am able to declare proper fan status as I have officially seen how the characters I have enjoyed for the past few couple came to be. Liz Lemon's introduction is classic, and very Lemon-like looking back over the past 64 episodes. She stops at a hot-dog stand in downtown Manhattan that has quite a cue and there happens to be a gentleman who cuts in front of all the patiently waiting patrons. He cockily tells her as he is talking on his Blackberry that there are are two lines. As she argues about the two lines, other patrons join his lines, so in anger Lemon buys every single remaining hot-dog from the vendor just to irritate the man who cut the line. She gives them to everyone that stayed in her line and as she walks through downtown New York City, she hands out hot-dogs to everybody she passes. Some people like the gesture and others think it is crazy, if everybody seemed happy about receiving a hot-dog it wouldn't have been Lemon-ish enough. There then starts a song called "Thats Her" while Liz is walking which is pretty fun and as the intro song winds down it also introduces Jenna.

She is wearing a fat suit for her character Pam, "the overly-confident-morbidly obese woman" and performing the song that was playing while Lemon was walking through the city. Her first words in the show are, "This fat suit smells like corn chips". We still don't know what Lemon does yet on the show. As that scene ends the camera instantly picks up Kenneth. He is guiding a tour around the NBC studio, an on the set of "The Girlie Show". Viewers now know that the show will be based around a show.Just as the Kenneth is talking about "The Girlie Show", Liz walks in and he introduces the tour to the "head writer", meaning in only about 3 minutes viewers learn quite a bit.

The next character on screen is Pete, a balding middle aged man who is the Producer of the show. He mentions to Lemon that they have to take Michael Jackson's vagina out of one of their skits. It is now clear that "The Girlie Show" is a sketch comedy, hmmmm..sounding more like SNL every moment. As all this is going on, Pete and Liz walk into the writers room to a complaining, nicely dressed black man, Keith. He is asking Lemon if there is anyway they can get a coffee samovar. To this response a trashy trucker hat wearing man named Frank ask Lemon if they can get a big coffee dispenser, to which Keith angrily replies, "That is what a samovar is". Frank answers back, "Are you and Urkel the only black nerds?". This chemistry is still prevalent even in the new episodes.

As all this is going on Liz looks over to a cute blonde assistant named Cerie Xerox. The short-skit wearing twenty something seems useless as she is asked if she wants to get the cast coffee and she instantly answers "No". As she is being lazy Josh comes into the writer's room and is asked to change his Michael Jackson skit and instead do a Jay Leno impersonation. As he does it, nobody thinks it is any good, much to the irritation of Josh.

As this is all going on Cerie tells Lemon and Pete they are needed by the head of the studio. They As they walk into the office it is being completely remodeled. It is here that we have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Jack Donaghy, of course played by Alec Baldwin. When they ask where Gary, the other exec went, Jack says without sadness that he is dead. Jack's character comes off as a massively confident GE C.E.O. who can describe Lemon's personality to a tee without ever meeting her, to this Pete is overly impressed. It is here that we see Jack's number one characteristic, market and demographic research. He says his best quality is that he knows what people want more than anything else in life. Strangely, his answer to this is the GE Trivection oven, which much to the delight of Jack, can fix a turkey in 22 minutes.

Jack tells Lemon that the one thing her show is missing is a male demographic. His answer to this problem is Tracy Jordan, "The black guy", as Pete calls him. No, "The black movie star", replies Jack. Lemon mentions that she thinks he is crazy, then the camera cuts to Tracy wearing only underwear running through the highway yelling, "I am a Jedi". It is really funny actually because I listened to the TIME Magazine 10 Question Podcast the other day and it was with Tracy Morgan who plays Tracy Jordan, he said that his crazy uncle actually did this in downtown NY one day and that is how he got inspiration for that introduction.

Tracy is then introduced in person on the show at a restaurant and it is one of my favorite Tracy quotes of all time. He says, "May I have an apple juice, when the waiter says that we don't have that, he says, okay, I'll take a vodka tonic". It is classic Tracy to go from apple juice to vodka tonic.

I think after watching three seasons of 30 Rock is it great to go back and watch how each character was introduced. It is interesting to see how each character has developed, changed or stayed the same for since the 2006 debut of the show. After doing this I want to go back and watch the pilot episode of my other favorite sitcoms including How I Met Your Mother, Californication and The Big Bang Theory.

"Television Without Pity"

After four weeks of playing around with the Television Without Pity website I have come to a few conclusions about what I like and dislike.

The Coolest Aspects

1. The Hulu on TWoP- It is great as it allows users to watch full episodes of the newest television shows.

2. The Forums- It is very interesting to read what other television viewers think of the newest episodes of my favorite shows. I haven't signed up to add post to the discussion, but I still enjoy reading them every couple days.

3. Movies Without Pity- As a movie fan I enjoy reading about the newest movies as well as television shows. The two sites go hand and hand quite well.

The Funniest/Entertaining Aspects

1. The telefile- This is in the blog section of the website and usually some type of funny commentary on shows and actors in hit shows. This weeks telefile was "10 TV characters we would like to regift" a great holiday themed blog.

2. The Wiki-Not only is this informative it is also entertaining, mostly because there is so much random information and facts that I would have not normally known about unless I read this part of the site.

3. The Best of the Year- In this section the site talks about the best and worst television shows and movies of the year. It is funny to read them blasting movies and their characters as well as exposing me to good movies that I want to see after reading about them.

The Most Informative

1. TV Listings- By far the most informative aspect of the website is the listings for all the shows that will be on for that night. I like this part of the site because I can see that shows are on that I may not usually watch.

2. The Mondo Extras- I enjoyed reading the Emmy Awards blog with Neil Patrick Harris. He is hilarious and reading the blog about him and behind the scenes at the Emmy's is quite funny and informative.

3. The TWoP Wiki- Much like Wikipedia, this portion of the site allows user to add their own comments and content about shows and characters on television. It also had random parts to each entry that are entertaining and interesting such as "running gags" on sitcoms. I used this for a couple shows like 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother and found it to be quite good.

A few things that I think need to be improved about the website are the fact that it is over whelming to look at. This site is the most cluster-f***ed website I have ever been to. The home page has more pictures and links on it than almost any other website on the Internet. I think this needs to be cleaned up to make the site a lot better. Another thing is that it is hard to find the reviews of current episodes. They should have an easy to find and easy to read portion of TWoP that is solely dedicated to reviews of this weeks new shows. I recommend that the website should slim down and become more focused on reviews in order to make it one of the better ones on the Internet. Right now I think the site just has way too much information on it for me to read daily. If the interface and content becomes easier to see, read and thus comprehend it would make me a daily reader.

How I Met Your Mother: The Last Cigarette

Instead of watching 30 Rock and blogging about it, I decided to write about my favorite episode of this week's television lineup, the new episode of How I Met Your Mother. This week's show focused around the group of friends trying to quit smoking, something viewers never knew they did. Most of the reviews on this week's show mentioned that it did not really go along with the flow of the season and it was sort of random. I disagree but I'll get back to that later.

It show starts out with Robin coming home and telling Ted that she needs to go up on the roof for five minutes. As the show usually portrays, Ted narrates that this isn't really what happened. The real story happens to be, as Robin is about to go outside to smoke, Marshall and Barney come to Ted and Robin's apartment. As she pulls out her cigarette, Marshall ask to bum one from her, to the dismay of Ted's future kids, that "old" Ted narrates to. Marshall needs a cigarette to get over the stress of his old boss coming back to his and Barney's work. As Marshall smokes it shows him back in 1991 smoking his first cancer stick, which is on a snowy-summer vacation in his native Minnesota.

Upon completion of Robin and Marshall's on the roof nicotine fix, Ted ask Marshall what he is going to do when Lily questions him of smelling like smoke., to which he replies "he has a system". This system consist of washing himself and disinfecting himself to the point of spraying cologne in his mouth. The second he walks in the door of his apartment, like most of Marshall's plans, it doesn't work. She smells the smoke, taking his cigarettes and lighter from him. Unexpectedly she then lights up a smoke, once again to the amazement of Ted's future kids.

One of the best scenes occurs next when they are sitting in MacLaren's bar, their normal hang out, when Ted mentions how crazy it is that Lily, Marshall and Robin are all standing outside in the freezing cold to smoke. Barney then says, "Remember when you could smoke in bars?". They think back to it, and it shows them not being able to see each other through the billowing smoke, they then had to play Marco-Polo with their friends to find them. I can remember in Athens, smaller bars like the Pub used to be just like this when there was no smoking ban. After the flashback, Barney says to Ted, "Let's go have a cigarette". This shocks the kids more than anything, yes, their dad Ted smoked in his day.

My favorite scene happens after this, which of course includes Doogie Howser himself, Neil Patrick Harris. As they are standing outside the bar smoking, Barney says he is not a smoker, while he is puffing on a what looks to be a Marlboro Light. He says he only smokes post coital, on boats, to annoy his mom, when the Mets are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, pre-coital and waittttttt for ittttt...pregnancy scares. To which he then says, he is always pre-coital, pretty much meaning he is a smoker. It's classic Barney and it's what makes him one of the best actors on television.

As the show progresses it portrays what smoking is doing to their health and makes the gang want to quit. Ted can't make it up his stairs, Lily speaks like a man, Marshall's boss who smokes at work has a heart attack, but Barney has it the worst, he puts a cig burn in his beloved tie. Robin doesn't want to quit at all (typical tough Canadian), and actually has a sexy little look to her with the smoke stick hanging from her mouth. She then falls in to the quit-trap as Ted mentions that her upcoming interview with NYC Mayor Bloomberg won't go well if she smells like a cigarette as he is the "anti-smoking Mayor".

The group then goes into nicotine withdraw, Ted and Marshall fight over nothing, Barney is licking his fingers to get the remaining nicotine out and Lily wants to kill everybody. It then cuts to the news studio where Robin is about to interview the mayor, the biggest day of her career. She mentions to her half drunk, slacker co-host that she is a little on edge because she gave up smoking for it. He calls her a porcelain-unicorn because she is so innocent and naive. He then mentions to her that Bloomberg cancelled on her, trying to prove to her that she is not network material and will always be a nobody news anchor. He firmly believes nobody even watches the show they are on due to the ridiculous hour it airs, so to prove it he lights a cigarette on air.

As he offers her a drag of it, and says that if anybody is watching to call in. As nobody calls for a few seconds, Robin begins to drag off it, but just then, her friends call her up at the studio to tell her not to smoke on air, which would damage her career. They say that they have all quit so she must also, to which she does....at that point. She throws the cigarette the wayward co-host's coffee which explodes, as it has so much liquor in it. As Lily, Marshall, Ted and Barney get off the phone with Robin, they instantly go against what they just told her and go smoke.

When she gets home from work, which is at something like 4:30AM, the gang is on the roof smoking and Robin joins. Barney is actually asleep while he is smoking and then wakes up telling her, "Do you know how dangerous it is to wake a sleep smoker?". Classic Barney. It is in this moment that they decide this would be the perfect moment for that last cigarette, its a beautiful morning as the sun rises over New York City. They all light up for "the last one".

This is when the show begins to wind down and I start to disagree with the critics view that this show doesn't offer anything valuable to the flow of the season. As Ted narrates the closing of the show he mentions that it wasn't any of their last cigarettes actually. He then gives a little insight into the future of everybody's life by saying when their last cigarette is. Robin's is June 13 2013, Barney's March 2017, Lily's the day she tried to get pregnant, Marshall's is the day his first son was born and Ted's two weeks into dating your (his future kids he narrates to) mother.

I have to give this episode a 9 of 10. It was one of my favorite episodes of television this year and it was refreshing to see smoking back on television. I like watching the days of Johnny Carson and his celebrity guest smoking during interviews. The show reminded me of a time when the words politically correct hadn't been put together yet.

Becoming Eric Forman

Ever since I was young I always had a thing for German cars. I can remember my grandfather telling me stories of the German automotive technology he saw when he was in the country fighting WWII. These stories led me on a path that began my love affair for German cars. Yes everybody loves Ferrari's and Lamborghini's, but the only Italian I would bring home is a girl, not a car, for that I stick with Germans.

So as time went on in my childhood I became obsessed with one brand of automobile, BMW. The company just had a "German" way of doing things, very organized and understated but massively capable. By the time 16 came around I had my license to drive and wanted a job, particularly one that involved BMW. I went to the local dealership a half hour away from my house and asked if they had any openings. They seemed tentative but after speaking with me they quickly realized I would work hard for them as I actually cared about the brand. They offered me a job working the parts department after school and on the weekends, I immediately said yes.

The job wasn't half bad but it lacked customer interaction and the use of my brain. I simply pulled a part from stock and took it to the mechanics who were a quarter mile away in the shop. It was beyond easy, but so boring. I would stare at a printer until a piece of paper came out and told me what part was needed. A oil filter would say "328001248. B12. 1. Tyler". This meant grab one of this bar code from row B12 and take it to the mechanic named Tyler. It was so repetitive but in the end I actually gained a lot of knowledge about the cars that would be useful in the future. It was in the parts department that I felt like Rabin working at Blockbuster. I was working in the automotive industry like he was in the entertainment, but it wasn't the real thing and what I had imagined.

So after a year in parts BMW moved me to the new car department and made me a lot-tech. I would be making more money, speaking with customers and getting paid to drive all the products BMW offered. It was such a great job to have during high school. While my friends went to work at Pizza Hut I would be picking up a $90,000 M5 from a customers house to bring in for service. It was from here that the dealership management realized I had good potential in the automotive industry. I think they looked at me as their little prodigy, grooming me from a young age to sell cars for them.

As graduation from high school came closer, the store asked me if I would be interested in working full time for them. I had always thought college was what I would do after graduation, not going straight into the "real world" of 9 to 5. I gave it some thought, and as a couple major tragedies in my family happened during this time period, staying close to home rather than moving away for school became a real possibility in my mind.

I met with the manager again and decided I would work for them rather than go to college. I made by choice because not only because I needed to be close to home for family reasons, but because they offered me an amazing opportunity. To be an assistant client advisor in the new car department. BMW refers to car salesman as client advisors, the German's think it's classier or something. I would be working under the guidance of the best client advisor in the 25 year history of the dealership, Ed. He became almost like a father to me, I spent more time with him than my mother it seemed. He sold and still is, even with this recession, selling 50+ BMW's a month. It was crazy, I was 18 years old dealing with the CEO's of Kroger and P&G. I was allowed to do anything I wanted with the Ed's customers except talk about numbers. I would drive them to and from their houses, teach them everything about their new purchase, and answer and questions they had, but money (i.e. lease payments) was off limits for an assistant to talk about.

It was a few months into my new job that we got a new boss in the new car department. Our old boss gave me no problems, he loved the product and was really passionate about BMW and what it stands for. He also treated me well, he knew that I was doing this instead of going to college and always seemed proud of me. He moved on though and took a BMW corporate job that paid the big bucks but required a transfer to New Jersey. It was adios to him and hola to the worst boss of all time, who we will refer to as Red Forman from, "That 70's Show".

We all knew he was awful from the get-go, he didn't seem to care about the product or the company and only focused on the number of units we were selling per month. It was during his "reign" of the store at this time that I began to feel like Eric Forman. It was just like the TV show's relationship between Eric and Red, no matter what Eric did, it was never good enough for Red. My new boss instantly seemed to have a grudge for me, maybe it was the age or maybe he was threatened that Ed seemed to have more power at the dealership than he did and I was a part of Ed's team more than the dealerships. I only answered to Ed, anything he needed I did, we didn't ask permission from the dealership. He was keeping that place alive, outselling every other client advisor 3 to 1.

Red Forman decided this way of doing business, having an assistant on the sales floor and out doing customer deliveries when nobody else had one didn't make sense. His hard-hardheadedness like Red Forman's was so easy to see. He saw me as a waste, not realizing how much more productive Ed was with me than without. Over time he seemed to grow a hatred of me. I felt like Eric Forman even more when say, I would come back late from lunch because of traffic and he would shout out me, making himself look way worse than he was making me look. Eric always tries to defend himself but it somehow just gets him in more trouble and that is exactly how it was with me. I would rationalize why I was doing what I was and he would get even more angry. Ed and I found it comical after awhile.

The whole dynamic of boss and co-worker is so much like Eric and Red's relationship on the sitcom. You always know that any minor issue is going to be dealt with one sided and you will be talked down to like Eric always is. It is ridiculous in a way because it creates bad harmony which profits nobody.

Red Forman ended up making me so unhappy that I decided to put an application in the mail for Ohio University. Once I was accepted I came to the school in beautiful Athens and loved it. I think looking back on everything it all worked out for the best. I was working 50 hours a week at BMW so 18 credit hours was cake to me. A lot of people say you should take a couple years off before you go to university because it will make you appreciate it more. I agree completely with this theory after living it from 2004-06 and I thank Red Forman for making me hate him so much it gave me a lot of motivation to go from the sales floor to the classroom.

30 Rock "Secret Santa"

The best way to sum up 30 Rock is like this, last night's episode wasn't one of their better ones but was still great to watch. That is when you know a television series is doing its job, a bad episode for them is better than everything else that was on TV at the time.

This holiday themed episode just didn't get me to laugh out loud like the previous episode did. There were not many clever one-liners in this episode where as last episode it was packed full of them. One thing that I did enjoy was Cerie the blonde interns role in this episode. When she was on her Iphone looking at Jack's high school crush's profile while Lemon was still trying to find "YouFace" was witty writing, as was when Liz ended up on a hardcore porn site instead "YouFace". Another great scene with her was when she told Jack that Nancy, his crush, was in a "weirdsie" relationship on her YouFace status and he responded O M F G. It was classic and if the boss of NBC actually said that to one of his receptionist it would be comical to say the least. They should try to work Cerie in more often, she produced quality work and in my opinion is under-utilized in the show.

Another highlight of the show was Kenneth losing his faith momentarily, something I thought would never happen. This was due to the writers lying to him about their religion to get of his intensely organized secret Santa. When he realizes their lies go unpunished he decides to stop his religious beliefs. By the end of the episode though, Kenneth returns to God because he punished the writers as they had to go to jail for calling in a bomb threat to Penn Station, which Lemon actually did, not any of the writers. Kenneth calls it his "Christmas Miracle". The funniest scene in the show happened at the end when Lutz got tazered for being Al Qaeda and drops to the floor in pain. That actually nearly made me laugh out loud, close but no cigar.

Lemon and Jack's Christmas presents to each other was also a highlight of this particular episode. Since the present had to be free, Lemon called in a bomb threat to Penn Station so that Jack's Boston accented crush would have to stay for another night in NYC. It works and Jack ends up kissing her and as TV Without Pity said, what could be a better Christmas gift than adultery and imprisonment? Jack appears to only get her a program for the Crucible play that Lemon was in back in the day, but in the end actually gets Lemon a night out with her first crush, Officer Jon Baker from the 70's hit show CHiPS. When she ask him how it was free, Baker responded that Jack promised him a chance on Dancing With the Stars, to which Lemon responds, isn't that on ABC? Once again, classic 30 Rock witty humor.

All in all I give this holiday episode a 6.5 of 10, it was good but not great or the best. To anyone who likes Christmas themed TV shows, the Secret Santa version of The Office was laugh out loud hilarious, it is worth checking out.

Scrubs "Our First Day of School"

I must confess that I am not a Scrubs watcher. I do like to catch an episode every once in awhile when they play re-runs on Comedy Central. I have never DVR'ed an episode and in total have probably caught 15 different episodes in my life.

This might all change though after watching the first episode of season 9. I really enjoyed the first show and actually ended up watching the next two shows from this season. My favorite character is Dr. Cox, his sense of humor is funny to watch. I like how he acted like he couldn't understand the Australian med school student. Him and JD have a comical relationship in the show, JD acts borderline gay while Cox is a manly man. It brings a good dynamic to the show.

My two favorite scenes in the show were when Turk asked his students who was white, and then told them that they would be receiving F's. I also thought it was funny when JD and Turk were thinking back on their first day of med school and it showed them riding a two person bike while everybody else was partying. Turk then said that they all had sex. I laughed out loud during that part of the show. The ending was also good when Lucy knew Ben, cadaver that she would be working with. It was a reminder that working in a hospital and going to med school has some harsh realities to it.

I enjoyed the show and would rate it a 7 out of 10. I'm sure die-hard Scrubs fans wouldn't have liked the show (or maybe they did?) but I think it was 20 minutes of my life well spent. ABC needs to limit those Chase Bank adverts though, after three episodes of Scrubs I probably saw 15 of the EXACT same commercials. How can you only have one advert when you are one of our countries largest banks?