Well, I'm back in LA, and after one day or so of having that relaxed, "just got back from sleepy New England" sense of calm, I'm already back in the LA grind. Yikes, that didn't take long.
In any case, it was nice being back in CT for a bit, as I hinted at in my previous post. My trip there, however, started on a somewhat unpleasant note during my Southwest flight from Vegas to Hartford. Initially, I thought I had lucked out, as I had an empty seat next to me and a quiet-seeming woman on the aisle. However, things took a turn for the worse when this awful couple asked if they could switch seats with the woman. The woman unfortunately obliged their request, and I was left stuck sitting next to Joe Dirt and Brandine. Holy lord, as soon as they sat down, they brought out bags and bags of fast food, which they quickly splayed across their tray tables. I swear, they did not stop eating the entire flight, and they just kept stuffing all of their used wrappers and cups and cartons into the back of their seats. They were probably semi-wasted when they boarded the plane, but they also each had several beers throughout the course of the flight. They also kept getting into these incomprehensible, redneck-ish arguments that would have been hilarious if I wasn't stuck listening to them.
Finally, I made it to CT around midnight last Tuesday night, was picked up by my dad, and was en route to Bloomfield by-gum Connecticut. On Wednesday, we still had a few precious hours of normalcy before Pasover began at sundown. Therefore, there was only one logical thing for my brother and I to do: go to Luna's Pizza in Simsbury to enjoy a slice or three of their patented pies. And oh man, that was some damn good pizza.
Wednesday night was our first Passover Seder, and it was quite a production. Parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc. For the second Seder on Thursday, I volunteered to lead, and I made sure to put my own unique spin on the precedings. At our family seders, we use extremely well-worn haggadot, wine-stained and time-addled books that are probably several decades old. The language in the books can be hilariously antiquated, to say the least. Lots of "Lo's". Lots of "yea's", and one all-time classic passage that praises God for lifting our people out of "the dunghill." Yep, the dung-hill. Due to my consistently sophomoric sense of humor, I have, for years, been unable to read or even hear this passage without bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Well, you can bet that as I led our seder on Thursday, I fought through the laughter and made sure to remind everyone, with extra emphasis, that we had indeed been lifted from the proverbial dunghill. Dammit all.
Also on Thursday, I accompanied my dad to his new office in the CT State Legislature. As I walked into the building, I remembered that I myself had actually worked there in the summer of 2003, when I did an internship in the CT Senate Democrats' Press Office. Suffice it to say, while it was cool to see my dad's new digs, I was also quickly reminded of why local politics is probably not for me.
On Friday, my brother and I went to see OBSERVE AND REPORT, which will, of course, be reviewed here in this very blog ASAP. We then had our third consecutive family dinner in a row, this time a Shabbat dinner and not a seder. Later, the Baram boys hunkered down for a viewing of action-movie classic POINT BREAK.
After that, I had one more day in CT, and then it was back to LA early Sunday. After two seders, other assorted home-cooked Passover food, a few movies, and multiple instances in which I proved to my brother that my videogame skills are superior to his (note: this final point may be subject to debate ...), I was ready to return to Hollywood. To be sure, it was nice to know that I only had to endure a handful of days on my own of matzoh-pizza and Crispy-O's (the defacto kosher-for-passover cereal). Being a guy with limited cooking skills is not ideal for Passover, that's for sure.
Sidenote: I think I've mentioned this before, but the Subway restaurant location in the Las Vegas airport is easily the slowest and most poorly-run Subway in the country, if not the world. On my way to CT, I had a long layover in the Vegas airport, and only because I knew that I had over an hour to spare did I dare wait in the endless line to get that Subway sandwich. The problems with this Subway are endless. It uses a strange system in which you place your order, pay, and then get placed into a second line where you wait for your sub to get made (which basically necessitates that you order twice). Also, the woman who takes your oder and works the register is quite the sub-Nazi. She frequently makes mistakes and gets orders wrong, and deals with customers in an antagonistic manner that makes transactions take forever. Finally, this Subway is perpetually understaffed despite its popularity. As I walked past this Subway while en route back to Burbank on Sunday, I could only shake my head in pity at the poor travellers who were waiting in its unmoving line, just beginning to realize that they were in fact in the fast-food line from hell. My advice to anyone passing through the Vegas airport: if you have time to spare and are really hankerin' for a sub, then brave the line at your own peril, but know that you will be there for a while (and that you will pay crazy, inflated prices). If you're in a hurry, avoid at all costs! If there is a Subway in hell, this, surely, is it.
Anyways ...my flight back to LA was a bit rocky, but overall I made it back to Burbank on Sunday evening relatively unscathed. No crazy rednecks this time, luckily.
So yeah, since being back it's been a busy couple of days catching up at work and getting back into the groove. But, enough about me ...
TV STUFF:
- I thought last night's LOST was a fun episode that, while not packed with edge-of-your-seat excitement, was an interesting look at Miles - a character who's quickly grown into a fan-favorite. I thought the revelation that Pierre Chang is Miles' father was pretty intriguing, but at the same time, I kind of thought that Pierre / Marvin Candle was cooler when he was just that enigmatic guy who appeared in the Dharma videos. Fleshing him out as yet another source of daddy-issues seems like it might be a slight case of overkill. Really though, the highlights of this ep were the many great exchanges between Miles and Hurley. There was a lot of fun banter there, and so many great lines covering everything from time-travel to global warming. The little subplot about Hurley trying to write his own version of Empire Strikes Back was a bit goofy, but at the same time was an interesting kind of side-note to the whole "can you change the future or is it set in stone?" theme. Anyways, I'm psyched to find out what Daniel Faraday's been up to and to see his story play out - great cliffhanger that should lead to big things in two weeks' time.
My Grade: B+
- Now, a quick word on *last* week's huge LOST episode - just wanted to mention what a kickass ep that was. The Ben flashbacks and Ben's eventual "judgement" at the hands of ol' Smokey made for extremely compelling TV, and the Ben-Locke interaction was as sharp as ever.
My Grade: A-
TWENTY (24) FOUR:
- Sonofa ... say it ain't so, Tony! Say it ain't sooooooo ....
Is it true? Could Mr. Almeda really have turned to the dark side? Could the Sultan of the Soul Patch really have gone evil? Monday's jaw-dropping episode of 24 contained a number of intense moments, and even before the oh-no-he-didn't cliffhanger, this was shaping up to be one hell of an episode. The last several episodes have spent a lot of time building up Jack's tenuous connection with his fellow man, and so the scenes between Jack and his daughter in this ep were pretty powerful. It was cool to see Kim Bauer again, all the better since there were no cougars in sight. In any case, between the climactic showdown with Starkwood and the capture of Jon Voight, the emotional moments between Jack, Kim, and Renee, and the game-changing twist involving Tony, this was one crazy episode. My one complaint? The scenes with the President and Jon Voight were a bit absurd - I mean, unless Voight had been presented as a complete lunatic, which he wasn't before now, how in the blue hell did he think he was going to sit down with the Prez and convince her to turn over all of this power to him? Got to take my grade down a notch for that one.
My Grade: A-
- I also want to talk about TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. If you've been reading the blog regularly, you know that, in general, I've been a fan of the show, but have had reservations about its relative lack of action and forward momentum. In fact, earlier this season, the show suffered through a slump of several consecutive episodes that were so dull and slow-paced that I almost decided to drop the series entirely. That said, the season's final few episodes really kicked things up a notch, and suddenly, I was glad that I hadn't given up on the show. In any case, the season, and possibly series, finale continued the trend of the previous batch of eps and was a pretty riveting hour of TV. We FINALLY saw Sarah and John meet with Weaver, and got some pretty big hints regarding her ultimate agenda as far as John Henry and her attempts to build a sort of anti-Skynet. What really impressed me about the last few eps and this one in particular was how so many threads finally came together. The flash-forwards to the USS Jimmy Carter, the "three dots," Cameron's spotty behavior - all of it came together to create a finale that did really feel like the culmination of everything that we've seen to date. Not only that, but this ep had what so may eps of the show have lacked - action, drama, and intensity. From some tension-filled pseudo-sexual moments between John and Cameron to Weaver's liquid-metal morphing, there was a ton going on in this ep, and that's before we even got to the crazy-ass cliffhanger. Now, when I first watched it, I was so caught up in the coolness-factor of John and Weaver travelling through time into a John Connor-less, post-Judgement Day future that I didn't really stop to think about it in a broader context. It's a shocking cliffhanger, to be sure - but if this in fact the series finale, then man, it's a pretty unsatisfying note to go out on. Even aside from that, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense why John would time-jump after Cameron. He's leaving his potentially sick mother alone and on the run from the law, and furthermore, his jump could be dooming the future, as John is effectively taking himself out of the timeline during the all-important years when he is supposed to rise up and lead the anti-Skynet resistance. Again, it just didn't seem to add up - why would John fling himself to who-knows-when? In any case, the questions surrounding the ending can't take away from what was a pretty damn good finale. I give the show a ton of credit - through compelling characters and some intriguing twists, I'm now substantially more invested in the Terminator mythology as a whole. The show added some genuinely cool elements to the mythos - Cameron, for one, is an awesome character - I can only hope that Summer Glau will find her way to the big-screen franchise. The relationship between her and John is just too intriguing to be ignored in the movies. Similarly, while it took a long time for Weaver's story-arc to gain momentum, the idea of a rival AI to Skynet that works with the humans is a potentially fascinating avenue to explore. Characters like Derek Reese, John Henry, and Weaver are more-than-worthy additions to the Terminator cannon. I think the ideal might be to bring this show back for a short run next fall that bridges the gap between the series and the new films. It'd be a brilliant marketing move for FOX and WB, and it could pave the way for characters like Cameron to find their way into the film franchise. As it stands though, even though I've had issues with the show, I respect it for being an intelligent, character-driven drama that never talked down to the audience. If every episode matched the quality of this finale, it would have been one heck of a series.
My Grade: A-
Alright, that's all I've got for now. Check back tomorrow for an OBSERVE AND REPORT review. Happy End-Of-Passover! Time for some glorious, glorious bread.
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