THIS. IS. MY BLOOOOOG: LOST, HEROES, Captain America humor, A RANT OF DOOM, and MORE!

And so the craziness begins ...

Tonight: Mom, Dad, and brother Matt fly in from the CT for five days of family fun in LA. For them this is a vacation. For me it is five days of holding my breath, preceded by heavy cleaning, shopping and mentally preparing / bracing. Good times, good times ...

Anyways, should be a good weekend, and I'm taking Monday off from work to add to the allotted quality time. The sad part is that all of my cleaning (my dad is a notorious neat freak) is probably in vain, as within five minutes of my brother setting up camp in my apartment, my studio will likely look like a hurricane just ran through it. Oh well. In any case, I am looking forward to a little bit of classic videogame competition with Matt, even if I can't say I'm looking forward to sharing the apt with him for five days. Sorry, but two guys in one studio is not my idea of fun. I am very big on personal space, as you may or may not know, hence part of the reason why I live in a studio to begin with.

BRACE YOURSELF - FOR DANNY'S LATEST RANT OF DOOOOOM:

Right now, I'd like to take a moment to give a giant FINGER OF SHAME to my apartment complex, Avalon at Media Center in Burbank, CA (for those of you interested). Mostly, I really haven't had too many complaints with them. It's a nice complex with good facilities. But ... they are certainly not infallible. I mean, it's two years into my time there and I am STILL stuck with a freaking smoke alarm that will blare like hell's bells whenever I take a hot shower. So yeah, the apartment complex has been riding a thin line between me being happy with it and me wanting to strangle someone every morning when I hear that stupid smoke alarm go off. The sad thing is I'm almost numb to it at this point, which can't be a good sign for my hearing.

So anyways, last weekend I drop off my rent for February in the leasing office drop box, and because it was mistakenly one day late, I got to my apartment on Monday night to find a voided rent check and a 50 page copy of my lease agreement, with an added form stating my rent was late, the check was voided, and I now owed the rent plus an additional $75. Okay, pretty lame for the rent being a day late. So I call on Tuesday afternoon, and talk to someone from the leasing office who was completely rude and obnoxious, talking to me as if I was a criminal and saying that I was lucky I wasn't being evicted. At first, I was basically just calling as a last-ditc effort to see if I could avoid paying the extra $75, but the leasing rep was being so obnoxious that it prompted me to become argumentative. I made my case that I found it somewhat absurd to slap me with a $75 fee with no warning for having the rent be one day late, after two years with zero rent problems. Finally, she admitted that there actually WAS a policy that waives any late fees for a first-time offender (as if this was the equivalent of drunk driving or something). She probably hated me afterwords, but she said to just pay the original rent amount (okay, so why did they void my original check then? does that make ANY sense?). So Tuesday after work, I dutifully drop off off a new check in the drop box. All settled? Not quite. Wednesday at work I get a call from the office from a different guy saying that any late rent checks must be in the form of a cashier's check or money order. Oh, I see, thanks for telling me the first time (sorry, apparently it was written in the 50 page copy of my lease agreement they sent me -- however, seeing as how my late fee was waived and I was essentially just re-submitting my original check, why would I assume that this rule would even apply?). So, this info was relayed to me on Wednesday at about 4 pm. So after work on Wednesday, I go to Vons to get a money order. Turns out they only do money orders until 7 pm. I usually don't get out of work until 7 pm. I called Albertsons - same story. So now it's Thursday, and I'm going to have to leave work at lunch time, get a money order, and then bring it to the leasing office - all this on what was a very busy day when most of my coworkers didn't even take a lunch. So I figure okay, I'll call the leasing office one more time and see if this is absolutely necessary -- little did I suspect that I'd have to talk to that same, terrible woman again. Now I don't know if this woman is having some external problems or if she's just generally a huge jerk, but she completely gave me the runaround again. All I wanted was to verify if it would be absolutely necessary for me to leave work to re-submit a rent check for THE THIRD TIME in the form of a money order, seeing as how doing so was going to cause a pretty big inconvenience. Anyways, I started out trying to be nice and asking a simple question. Within minutes, I was once again being talked to like a criminal, and I kid you not, this woman sounded about to break out into angry tears, asking "What do you want from me?" over and over, and even going so far as to repeatedly ask me "I don't understand - you have time to talk to me on the phone but don't have time to go get a money order?" Sorry, I anticipated a one minute phone, friendly call, not a back and forth defense of my character with a total beyotch. I mean, just unbelievable. Looking back, I cannot believe I paid my rent THREE TIMES. I mean, I realize I live in a large apartment complex, but I didn't realize I was living in Nazi Germany here. What happened to customer service and friendliness and common decency? I mean, I work for freaking General Electric, and in my job of getting our shows on iTunes, every day slip-ups and delays occur from our end and Apple's that, if looked at a certain way, do cost us money. But that's business - you remain calm and realize that there will be the occasional, unavoidable setback. But in my stupid little apartment complex, that CAN'T EVEN FIX MY SMOKE ALARM AFTER TWO YEARS, a rent check received a day late for a short month is a friggin' RED-ALERT. So I go to Vons, wait for 20 minutes for someone to help me who knows how to do a money-order, and then run over the the leasing office to give them said money order. Luckily, in those offices where they are courting prospective tenants, everyone is all smiles and handshakes. No room for psycho rent-Nazis there. So I gave my money order (why do they need a money order anyways? somewhat absurd ...) and that was it, or so I really, really hope. Rest assured though, my March rent will be early and on-time, because who knew that a day late meant a week from hell.

TV STUFF:

- This week's LOST was a very fun episode, although it still had it's share of problems. However, the creators realized something that most geeks innately know, and this alone made for some quality pulp goodness: Characters with eye-patches are cool. Yep, who doesn't love a good eye-patch-clad hero or villain? From Snake Plisken to Nick Fury, you've gotta respect the 'patch. So ever since Lost first showed that one tantalizing glimpse of ol' Patchy staring menacingly at Locke from one of the Dharma hatch monitors, geeks everywhere collectively jumped for joy at the thought of the Lostees squaring off against That One Dude in the Eyepatch. And this week, finally, we saw more of Patchy McGee, and who out there didn't didn't love this guy? Let's see: Badass Russian accent? Check. Cool Street Fighter-esque fighting style? Check. Obligatory backstory invloving him being an aimless soldier at the end of the Cold War? Check. Obligatory ambiguity over whether he's lying or telling the truth? Check. Eyepatch? Check and check. And there you have it folks, the making of a classic Lost villain in a few easy steps.

Otherwise, this ep was kind of disappointing in some ways. I appreciate the show's ability to throw a bone to its fans and poke a little fun at itself (I was dying of laughter when, withing the opening minutes, Paulo, aka "Take a $#%& guy," entered the scene having just come from, well, the name says it all, people. But, as much as that was funny, the other Island stuff was just kind of overly jokey and cute, and took away from the urgency of the main plot. This is a recurring problem with Lost - the subplots, the flashbacks, etc, often become really intrusive and rob the main A plots of their gravity and length. This week, the Sayid flashbacks were okay, but not really very necessary, not really adding much to the character or the overall storyarc.

It has to be said though that Naveen Andrews as Sayid is great, and brings a real intensity to the show that some of the other actors don't. And thank you, writers, for actually having Sayid ASK SOME RELEVANT QUESTIONS to Patchy. Of course, the cop out is that much of what Patch revealed was then revealed to be false. One step forward, two steps back ...

Overall though, this episode had a fun sense of discovery and adventure in its A plot, lots of action, intrigue, and cool moments. Even if there were some logic gaps (why would Dharma require one to beat a computer chess game to activate a security fail safe?), the main A plot was great, and featured an eye-patch-sporting badass villain to boot. It just got weighed down by the overly cutesy Hurly-Sawyer ping pong game and the pretty pointless flashbacks.

My Grade: B+

- Meanwhile, this week's HEROES was once again pretty awesome, which was great to see as I was worried that last week's great episode was more a blip than the start of a trend. But once again, I was really captivated by almost every plotline, and even some of the more annoying characters (Mohinder, Peter) took on an added element of intigue this week by being put in mortal danger (always a good way to spark some interest). But man, my eyes lit up when I saw Malcolm McDowell turn up as Linderman at episode's end. Somehow, I had totally forgotten that McDowell was scheduled to appear, so I was genuinely surprised to see such a great actor appear on the show. McDowell gives Heroes an instant shot of gravitas, exactly what the show needs, as it is filled with a number of photogenic but learning-on-the-fly faces. Good stuff overall, and some classic cliffhangers to boot - this episode had at least 5 really good twists, which is pretty damn impressive. And who doesn't love the new shape-shifting girl? Kudos to Heroes for raising the bar.

My Grade: A

- I thought last night's 30 ROCK was one of the weaker episodes to date, though still pretty decent overall. Not a lot of big laughs, though as usual I smiled at almost every line that Tracy Morgan bellowed. "He's pointing right at me!" Hahahaha ... But for the most part, a lot about this episode just seemed a bit off, and the Alec Baldwin plot about his con-artist family got kind of grating after a while. Like I said, it was a decent episode, but just slightly disappointing since the last few weeks of the show have been off-the-charts hilarious. This is still one of the best comedies on TV, so check it out if you haven't seen it.

My Grade: B

ANNOUNCEMENT: You guys all need to check out NBC's newest comedy, ANDY BARKER P.I.. Nope, it hasn't aired yet, but all 6 episodes (including one that won't air on TV) are available RIGHT NOW on iTunes, including a FREE download of the pilot. Now many comedy fans know that FOX's Andy Richter Controls the Universe was one of the funniest shows of all time, and one of the saddest premature cancellations in recent memory (when will it be on DVD already?). Now, that stupid Quintuplets show sucked, but this is a return to form for Andy. It's not quite at Controls the Universe levels of funny quite yet, but it is well worth checking out and with plenty of laughs. It's co-created by CONAN O'BRIEN himself, so any Conan fans must check it out. Plus, if you're a real Conan afficianado, you'll recognize that Andy Barker is in many ways a retooled version of Conan's legendary unaired Adam West pilot, LOOKWELL (see it on youtube). So yeah, check out ANDY BARKER PI on iTunes now!!!

OTHER STUFF:

- You've probably heard by now that over in the pages of Marvel Comics, CAPTAIN AMERICA is DEAD. I have yet to read the story itself, but the great thing about events like this is that they garner mainstream attention, meaning that we get lots of comic book discussion on national TV, in this case we even have conservative blowhards hurtling condemnations of the death as liberal propaganda! Awesome! Hahaha ... stupid conservatives ... But, last night on COLBERT, his segment "The Word" was all about Captain America! Hilariously amazing! Yes, my blog's first ever embedded video, courtesy of the Lord of Truthiness. Check it:



Pretty awesome, huh? Also, The Onion got in on the humor as well:
http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/captain_america_killed
Pretty classic ...

- Official announcement today about Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes in Dark Knight. I like the actress, but the character was the weakest thing about Batman Begins' script. No stupid love interest is needed (unless within minutes she becomes Harley Quinn).

- I picked up the new Arcade Fire CD and so far am really into it. I love the song Intervention.

- Also picked up Borat on DVD - I've never seen such hilarious packaging. The DVD looks like a generic DVDRW with the word Borat written in faux-Sharpie on the disc. LOL.

- Read the Rudy Guliani cover story in this week's Newsweek. This guy is pretty nutty and I hope his current popularity fades. In the same issue there's a great op-ed about how the last thing we need in the Whitehouse is yet another stubborn urban cowboy.

- Tonight, WE DINE IN HELL. Okay, not really, I'll probably be having dinner with my parents. But after that, 300, baby! YES~! Can't wait. THIS IS SPARTA. I wonder if the legions of Gerard Butler fans I met via working at the Tonight Show will be all over this one, or turned off since they are mostly middle-aged women and this movie is geared aquarely at my inner 14-year-old boy. On second thought ... don't wanna think too much about that one. And I'm out.