Television

I rented the season 1 DVDs of The Flight of the Conchords over the weekend. Very funny show. I noticed that one of the writers was the creator of one of my all-time favourite shows, NewsRadio so I'm not surprised it's up my comedic alley.

My New Icon...

Is courtesy of a LJer who seems to have the same sitcom obsessions that I have! LOL

This is from an episode of NewsRadio where they discover that Dave, the main character, is from Canada, not Wisconsin as he had told them. Dave explains that he moved to the US when he was five, and at the time, he withheld that information because he thought other kids would think they were spies.

My Favourite Sitcoms

I was watching my Friends DVDs while having lunch. I never ever tire of that show. It's one of those few shows I can watch over and over again, and still enjoy tremendously. I don't tend to want to rewatch dramas as much as sitcoms.

My favourite sitcoms:

1) Friends

2) NewsRadio

3) Cheers

4) Arrested Development

There are a lot of other sitcoms that I enjoyed a lot at the time (Seinfeld, Mad About You) or that were guilty pleasures (The Nanny, Full House, the whole TGIF lineup), but nothing beats the 4 mentioned above.

Care to share your favourite sitcoms/TV shows?

Awesome TV-on-DVD

I just saw that Action was released on DVD this week! I really enjoyed that show back in 1999 for about... 8 weeks. It was wickedly funny but pretty politically incorrect (there were prostitutes, lots of swearing, and killing of people, I believe! LOL) All this to say that FOX put the kibosh on it even before having aired all the episodes ordered. Damn you, FOX! I was looking on IMDb, and saw that Jim Vallely, one of the great writers of Arrested Development, as well as Will Forte were writers for Action. Awww, you guys! I loved your writing before I even knew who you were. LOL

This week, season 3 of NewsRadio is coming out on DVD as well. So so good. I am buying this for sure. I watched my S1/S2 set so much. It's so great because it is chock full of extras. Mmmm...extras.

Arrested Development! NewsRadio! Favourite Songs & Albums! Kittens & Puppies! All About The Love, Baby!

I rented the first DVD of the first season of Arrested Development. I never doubted it was a show that I would like but I always forgot to watch it. It was really right up my alley. I love irreverent comedy. Just how I like them. It reminded me in many ways of the kind of humour on NewsRadio (still pimping those DVDs!) although the format of AD is different because it is filmed with hand-held cameras & has a fast pace...

My previous post had current songs I like but I thought it was time to do a top 10 list of my favourite songs & favourite albums of all time. I hope other people post their choices too. I love to read about great albums I might not know.

Top 10 songs (in no particular order)

1. Like A Prayer-Madonna
2. Tiny Dancer- Elton John
3. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant- Billy Joel
4. Bridge Over Troubled Water- Simon & Garfunkel
5. Let It Be- The Beatles
6. I'll Stand By You- The Pretenders
7. With or Without You-U2
8. The Path of Thorns (Terms)-Sarah McLachlan
9. New York, New York by Frank Sinatra
10. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours- Stevie Wonder

Best cover ever: Bob Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love" covered by Billy Joel.

Guilty pleasure: "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies

Top 10 albums (in no particular order) from the last 25 years. I decided to focus on more recent albums because a) it was just too hard otherwise, and b) I mostly own compilations when it comes to older artists.

1. Little Earthquakes- Tori Amos
2. Surfacing-Sarah McLachlan
3. The Joshua Tree-U2
4. Jagged Little Pill- Alanis Morissette
5. Play- Moby
6. Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live From Central Park- Sheryl Crow
7. White Ladder- David Gray
8. This Way- Jewel
9. Rumors- Fleetwood Mac
10. Welcome Interstate Managers- Fountains of Wayne

Amazon Celebrates 10 Years, Heat & Terrorist Attacks

How is that for a post title? LOL I'm having varied things on my mind. I actually mostly have work things on my mind these days (I'm buried in books) but I need to talk/write about other things so here goes nothing...

I was browsing Amazon.com last night to see when the third season of NewsRadio would be released on DVD (soon, please, Mr. Simms!), and I saw that Amazon is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and having various activities to celebrate. One of the coolest things they are doing is the Special Deliveries. A celebrity delivers a package containing a book he/she wrote, a DVD of a movie or TV series he/she appears in,... As far as publicity stunts to flaunt the wonderfulness of a company go, I thought it was pretty cool. I loved the clip of the girl whose Sex & The City DVDs were delivered by Chris Noth. Hee. The girl moved from Greece to NYC, and she said her cousin would tease her, asking if she had met Mr. Big yet. Her cousin is in for a big surprise, pardon the bad pun. LOL

Besides that, it's really hot in TO. We are under a smog advisory, a humidex advisory, and an extreme heat advisory. Yikes. We beat a heat record today; it was 34°C (93°F), 40°C (104°F) if you factor in humidity. It's supposed to be like that until Saturday. It was actually kind of funny how they kept reiterating on the news how hot it was, getting Joe Q. Public on the street to comment. Gee, I didn't notice it was boiling hot! It is kind of funny that they have created emergency cooling centres in a few points in the city, yet the province has asked us to turn off our ACs to conserve electricity. Apparently, the hydroelectric grid is at a breaking point. I'm all for turning off lights and non-necessary appliances but the AC? Is kind of crucial this week if I don't want to turn into a melted brain. We didn't have it on last night, and it was just unbelievably uncomfortable. We do turn our AC off when we're not home but that's kind of as much as we can muster for now.

Terrorist attacks... It's really terrible what happened in London. So, now, of course, they are saying Canada is probably next. That's not exactly a surprise to me. But according Public Safety minister, we're not psychologically ready for it.

My inquiries are three-fold:

1) How can you ever be ready to get the crap bombed out of you?

2) Is she suggesting we should now live in a constant state of paranoia to ensure readiness?

3) Should I buy more duct tape?

Of course, I am living in the Canadian city most likely to be bombed (we have earned this title 4 years running! How lucky are we?). Honestly, I don't really buy the idea that we can be ready for it. Sure, we have to protect ourselves against it but are we going to live our lives in constant fear that the other shoe is going to drop? What a terrible way to live. I think it's this powerlessness against these groups of extremists that is most frustrating. How can we stop them? The war of terror sure has done diddly squat.

The Daily Show was back tonight! In a new studio too! The studio looks nice but the only thing I'm not liking about it is the words constantly floating behind Jon's head. They were distracting me big time; I felt like it overloaded my attentional resources. It was nice to see him satirize the media sensationalization of the London attacks. Marci Hamilton, who was there to discuss her book God vs. The Gavel , was quite an eye-opener on the overprotection and exemption from the law religious groups receive in the US. She was talking about how the Catholic Church has been seeking protection under the First Amendement for keeping its eyes closed on cases of child abuse. And it seems to have been working. Truly disturbing.

Music & Sitcoms: Chicken Soup For The Soul

This blog is a funny thing. It allows me to be as neurotic as I want to be, a luxury not really afforded to me in the real world. Well, except when talking to my mom & my very close friends, who know the weird intracacies of my mind. I was rereading my recent posts, and some of it reminds me of the tortured teenager I used to be. I was a good girl as a teenager (except maybe for the heavyhanded sarcasm! LOL) but boy, was I an anxious mess. I used to have a lot of difficulty managing it. Everything was a crisis. I was succeeding, at least mildly, at most everything I did but I was always waiting for the impending failure or the other shoe to drop. Fortunately, I grew up, and things got better. I became more adept at managing stress, and I noticed that things have a way of working themselves out. At the same time, I've also learned that I'll never be happy in a job where I have too much stress. Having to repress the anxiety-filled side of me has had its consequences at time, especially in terms of my health.

Anyway, two of my surefire weapons against stress are music & sitcoms. I've termed them chicken soup for the soul because I was being so new age, and had to borrow the names of those books! LOL I'm listening to classical music at the moment, and it just made whatever knots in my stomach I may have had melt away. I think that's why I love singing in a choir so much. There is such a power in singing at the top of your lungs. This semester, we are singing Summertime by Gershwin! I love Gershwin as many of you know; I just wish we had also sung Someone To Watch Over Me, which is my favourite song. We're also singing some Rachamaninov & Dvořák pieces, and one badass Bach piece, Lobet Den Herrn, Motet #6. This Bach is so tough because it have no melodic line that repeats. The harmonies constantly change, and it is just so hard to count the beats because it goes so fast. Still, it is an entertaining challenge.

I have now changed my CD to classic 70s Quebec granola rock. LOL It's from one of the most popular bands of all time in Quebec called Beau Dommage. They've sold an incredible amount of records/CDs over the years considering only 8 million of people live in Quebec. It's urban poetry about love, friendship, city living (mostly in Montreal),... I feel home just listening to it. They wrote one of my favourite songs in French called La complainte du phoque en Alaska (literally The lament of the seal in Alaska). It's about a male seal who sits by itself on his iceberg in Alaska, missing his girlfriend who joined a travelling circus in the continental US. He ponders whether the ephemeral joy gained from exhibiting in the circus is really worth leaving loved ones behind. Anyway, it's a beautiful love song to which I could never do justice. I never tire of listening to it. Another balm to my soul.

Sitcoms are the comic relief in my life. You never get enough laughter in life. I love my NewsRadio and Friends DVDs. Oh, and they've been airing Cheers on the Comedy Network, which makes me happy. :) I got say, Cheers has aged well (unlike The Cosby Show) but the one thing that has not aged well about it are the clothes. Dear God, Sam wears horrifying sweaters, and Diane's clothing is plain scary.

Finally, I did forget one other stress relief in my life. Cute, ain't she? :) I need to scan even better pictures of her.