No. Bread. Till Thursday! -- Back From CT, 24, and MORE!

And I'm back.

Back from Bloomfield, back to Burbank, back to work, back to the blog, and back to business. Now can you dig that.

So my short trip to Connecticut was was a nice way to celebrate Passover and to get away from LA for a bit. Basically, my time at home consisted of two family Passover seders, three straight nights of big family meals, lots of basketball, movies, brotherly competition, and not much else. Which was pretty much what I went home for, so it was all good. It was nice to finally be home again for the seders rather than at a random family's home like last year. And of course all kinds of crazy hijinks ensue when so many members of the extended Baram-Wagner clan are assembled in one place. Well, not THAT crazy.

But, for example, it's Wednesday night. I had only gotten off a plane from CA an hour or so earlier. The relatives begin to arrive -- Jean, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Jonathan, etc. We gather to sit around the table, and it's off we go, right? Wrong -- we can't find our dog, Yoffi, anywhere! And he never runs off! And if he's in the house, everyone can hear him because he doesn't stop barking for a second. So everyone's freaking out, my mom is in hysterics, my grandfather and brother are driving around the neighborhood, I'm trekking through the backyard into the depths of the Connecticut woods, brushing away thorns and stray branches, assuming that Yoffi is lying dead somewhere mauled by a coyote or runover by a car. So finally, as everyone is about to pass out from hunger and exhaustion, and it's poised to be the worst passover ever, some guy down the street calls our home and says he's found our dog. Okaaaaay .... so Yoffi lived to bark another day, we scrape off the mud from our shoes, and sit down to start the seder at 8 pm. Good times, indeed. But it's like that story -- It Could Always Be Worse (if you're Jewish you know of it) -- this was one of those times where everyone was mostly just happy that things hadn't been worse, because they COULD have been a LOT worse.

So that was my first few hours back in CT.

The two seders were filled with the usual readings from my grandparents' fifty-year-old, wine-stained haggadahs, antiquated language and all ("Praised be he who brought us up from the dunghill!"), the usual singing marathons (Who Knows One, Chad Gadyah, my mom's over-the-top rendition of "Miriam's Song", done in the name of feminist Judaism), and the always spirited dinner table conversation of my brother, grandfather, and their differing opinions on most things.

Got some good excercise with a few marathon b-ball games in the ol' driveway, where my shot was sorely lacking its old accuracy.

Caught my Dad up on his movies with some viewings of King Kong and Narnia.

Raided the Wal-Mart $5.50 DVD bin, found a few gems like Necessary Roughness, the classic football comedy.

Got in some videogame battles with my brother, which was good because we both got home realizing neither one brought home any controllers. And yes, we went to some pretty extreme lengths to ensure that we got them ASAP. Hey, what good is being home if I can't whup Matt in a little PS2 game-age. Not very good, is the answer.

Did a lot of sleeping on the plane ride to CT, but did get in a lot of reading on the plane ride back to CA -- finally made some good headway into Kavalier and Clay, got to about page 600 -- now will I ever finish the thing? Great book though.

Also, finally got a new cell phone! Yes! No more crappy Kyocera that has a 20 minute battery life and was held together by scotch tape! My new LG, gotten for FREE thanks to Verizon's New Every Two plan, has a camera, video, and a free month of V-Casts. In ya fayce!

So yeah, that was my time in CT. Saw many of my family members who I had not seen in a long while -- my cousin Abby, my Uncle Elliot, my grandparents, and more. And it's always good to get away from the daily grind and get some perspective. It is a loooong plane flight though ...

And now I'm back in CA, back to work, and already with a major craving for my favorite freaking food --- BREAD~! Oh how i love its moist texture, it's doughy composition, the way it seamlessly melds with sauce and cheese to become something divine like pizza. Two more nights and no more matzoh fer me.

Anyways ...

TWENTY BY-GOD FOUR (24):

Hmmm, I do think that last night's episode deserves a ...

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN~!

I have to say, that one scene at the end where Henderson slices up Audrey's artery and leaves her bleeding like a stuck pig, with exactly THREE MINUTES to live before she is a goner ... simply intense and, well, kind of disgusting, not to mention disturbing. That Henderson eez one bad motha.

And some part of me was almost wishing that Audrey was a goner, as her character has been kind of annoying this season. But at least next week it looks like she's gonna go INSANE and wreak BAUER-STYLE vengeance on Robo-Henderson, or at least try to.

I did kind of get annoyed with Heller's hostility towards Jack in this ep though. I mean, come on, he's going to tie Jack and his own daughter up and leave them in a random hangar? He should have known better. While Heller had a point about not exposing Logan's crimes outright, he honestly thinks that just waltzing up to the President was a better idea? And why not immediately make copies of the tape? Ugh - this whole element of the episode was probably one of the biggest logic leaps plot-wise the show has had in a while.

But ...

Everything else rocked.

Scenes between Logan and everyone's favorite stressed-out advisor Mike Novick? Awesome. Anything with Henderson? Awesome. Jack and Heller's elite agents versus Robocop and his posse? Movie-quality action scenes. Aaron Pierce has all of a sudden become the new standout character, bringing he gravitas each and every week. So, um, what happened to him? Hmm ... and where is Curtis? Nice gathering of the troops at la casa de Bill Buchanan, aka the Hall of Justice.

Great music again as has been the case lately. Can't wait for the last half dozen episodes. As for this one, despite some annoyances with the contrivances of the plot, this was an ultra-intense, balls to the wall ep that thoroughly kicked some ass. My grade: A -

PRISONBREAK:

Very good ep, yet again. Once more T-Bag and the rest of the gang stole the show, even as Michael's adventures in the PSYCH WARD were kind of, um, out there and cheesy. Otherwise, I feel like the show is losing focus a little. Does Lincoln even WANT to escape? Why would they let him leave the prison rather than bring his son to him? Otherwise, awesome character stuff as usual - the best pulp prison adventure show on TV. My grade: B+

VERONICA MARS:

Last week's ep was fantastic, and tonight's (now on TUESDAYS) promises to be even better. The mystery is REALLY coming to a head now, and I am dying to know whodunnit. Any guesses, people? We have gotta assume that Woody Goodman is involved somehow, but did he crash the bus, conspire to have it crashed, was his daughter involved? Hmmm ... so many possibilities. Please, people, watch this show. It's too damn good to not have more of an audience. Great acting, characters, atmosphere, and the best season-long mystery on TV.

Alright, fingers are tired from typing, must end this blog. Stay tuned, as always, for more, and Happy Passover once again to all my Jewz out there. May you endure two more days of matzoh with good spirits. See ya.