NBC Fall Preview

NBC has their 2007-2008 line up (click the "All Shows" tab) out, and there are some interesting things to take from what's out there.

It seems that they have learned that there can be too much of a good thing. The season will start for the first time in a decade, there will only be one Law and Order show, and they went with the winner of the three: Law and Order: SVU. While the subject matter of the stories is not what you would have dinner table conversation about, the cast is far and away the best. Don't worry. If you think you will be having withdrawal, the other two shows are back at mid-season.

In other news, it looks like Crossing Jordan has come to an end. Not only is the show nowhere to be found in the full schedule, the cast/credits for the new Bionic Woman series, you will see that Miguel Ferrer (formerly Dr. Macy) is listed second below the main character. This may explain why the finale had such a clean ending a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, I saw on Amazon that Season 1 of Heroes will be available on DVD late this summer. I expected these to be pressed and ready to ship after the finale last week, but it looks like the end of August is the date. This won't leave much time for folks to catch up. According to NBC's fall preview, the new season will begin the week of September 24. You will have to be pretty dedicated and average an episode every day or so to catch up.

Until next time...
PH

Hollywood - No More New Ideas?

We spent our afternoon going to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Let's cut to the chase. If you haven't already done so, don't waste your money. This one falls into the category of "movies that didn't need to be made". The movie is long and convoluted, and they leave the door open for more (at least one) sequels to be made. It is clear that the notion of moderation or too much of a good thing are foreign concepts in Hollywood. In addition to this poor offering, we saw previews for not one, not two, but five other sequels that will be out by year's end.

I guess we really only have ourselves to blame. If we didn't repeatedly shell out money for reprocessed drivel, they wouldn't make it. However, I found it interesting that this Pirates movie did not top Spiderman 3's opening weekend gross, nor did it even match Dead Man's Chest from last year. While it still pulled in over $100 million, perhaps it is a signal that this act has grown tiresome. We can only hope.

Until next time...
PH

Fire Update II

A trip to Fry's was all that I needed to put Humpty Dumpty (our computer) back together again. A couple of power cords, a keyboard, a co-ax cable, and an ethernet cable and we were back in business again. State Farm can thank me because I went saved them some money with where I went.

The Fry's in South Arlington can be a rather interesting place to go, and today was no exception. I don't know if they were exceptionally busy because of the holiday or what, but I was there for over an hour to retrieve the above mentioned supplies.

We've relocated the computer downstairs to the bedroom that is nearest the kitchen. We needed a spot for it until after all of the work was done upstairs, and we decided to make the move permanent.

Christy has been a bit out of touch for the last week, but look for her to resume regular e-mail and blogging in the very near future.

That's one piece of the puzzle that is done. We expect the contractor to begin work on all of the repairs upstairs on Tuesday.

Until next time...
PH

Fire Update I

We've had some preliminary discussion on repairs for the damage caused by the fire last week. Our adjuster was out Monday, and since then we've also had a carpet person and a general contractor out. We are looking at having the upstairs and downstairs living rooms painted along with wall and baseboard replacement where the fire was. Then they are going to replace the upstairs carpet. The timing on these things is still somewhat up in the air, but the wheels are turning. Finally, we will have an electrician out to inspect the outlet where we had the computer plugged in.

As for the computer, a couple of the plugs were melted in the fire, and a number of other connecting cables were damaged. I'm going to be going out to get replacements for these before we even know if the computer works or not. That's my big to do for tomorrow.

Other than that, things pretty well back to normal. I'm hopeful that we will have the house back on the market by the middle or end of June.

Until next time...
PH

Review: The Childer of Hurin

Yesterday, I completed the reading of The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkien (previously mentioned on April 17). Though his primary works have been varied in style and reading level, I have enjoyed all that I have read. This latest tale is no different. To give some context for what this compares to consider Tolkien's other primary works. The Hobbit was written as a children's story. The Lord of the Rings was accessible but written for at least a middle school reader. Finally, the Silmarillion is a work not for the faint of heart. The Children of Hurin is comparable in style to The Lord of the Rings.

However, it differs in many ways from the The Lord of the Rings. While The Lord of the Rings is a classic story of good vs. evil with conquering heroes, The Children of Hurin is more of a tragedy. The brave Hurin squares off with Morgoth (the analogue of Satan in Tolkien's Middle Earth), and Morgoth places a curse on Hurin's family. The tale deals primarily with how this curse plays out in the life of Hurin's son Turin. Though brave and mighty in battle, the curse follows him wherever he goes.

Hurin is also a protagonist with deep flaws. While he is, as mentioned, mighty in battle, he is also filled with pride and rarely listens to good council. In addition, some of his actions make him unfitting as a hero with which most would wish to identify. However, all of this makes for a story that is very different from what we are spoon fed these days.

I also had some reservations about how good the story would be. Tolkien's son Christopher had to do a fair amount of piecing together of this novel as his father left no completed manuscript before he died. Fortunately, that does not detract from the quality of the work in a noticeable way.

In conclusion, I think this is a book well worth reading. It fits well under the umbrella of Tolkien's Middle Earth without seeming like a rehashing of his other well known works. At some point in the future, I plan to read Unfinished Tales which includes an earlier version of this same story along with two others. Look for a comparison of the two coming to a blog near you in the future.

Until next time...
PH

Heroes Season 1

NOTE: There really aren't any updates for today from the fire.

One of the best new shows in quite some time had its season finale on Monday. Series creator Tim Kring gave us something of rare quality (if not truly original) in Heroes. I remember seeing previews for this last summer and wondering if it would be any good or not. Honestly, I wasn't convinced after the first episode, but it took about three episodes to really set the stage. I'm a bit surprised that America's short attention span tolerated this; however, Heroes went on to be NBC's only show to consistently break the top 20 in the weekly ratings.

Season 1 was built around the premise often repeated, "Save the cheerleader. Save the world." If you are new to the series, the only real way to get into it is to start with episode 1 and watch them straight through. Each week builds on the previous week, and sometimes they reach back multiple weeks to connect the dots. We intend to rent the DVDs over the summer to watch it again from start to finish fully expecting to understand things more fully now.

So what is it about this show that is so appealing? At its core, it is about the struggle of good vs. evil. However, it is not a simple sunshine experience where things always go the way of the good guys. You see people struggling to deal with the curve balls that life throws them. Many search for meaning and a purpose beyond their own self gain. Also, they are not perfect. Some make decisions or take action that lead them down a bad path, but you get the satisfaction of seeing them come around and redeem themselves.

Some have compared this show to ABC's hit Lost. I see a significant difference between the two. While Lost can be summarized as a tease and ultimately frustrating, Heroes does not string you along indefinitely. Season 1 (or Volume 1 as it is referenced in the finale) reaches a logical conclusion while giving a glimpse into Volume 2 - Generations. To me this shows that they paid pretty close attention to what people liked and didn't like about Lost.

So take the summer and get caught up. This is one of the few shows out there worth watching.

Until next time...
PH

What a Weekend!!

First for the preliminaries: no one (people or pets) was hurt in any of the events that follow.

How's that for a lead? It was about 4:30 a.m. Saturday (Damon was at his dad's for the weekend), and Christy and I awoke to the sound of an alarm going off. Neither of us had a good sense of what it was for although we both thought it was from someone breaking in. Well, that turned out not to be the case.

I followed the smell of smoke up to our loft and found a small fire near the computer. Luckily, it was still very small, and we were able to dump a small amount of water on it and put it out.

Afterward, I was having a look at the scene, and noticed that some of the power cords to the various components of the computer had melted at the plug, and the cord to the cable modem had burned the most. However, even at this point, we are not sure of the exact cause. Our insurance adjuster came yesterday and collected a couple of pieces to be sent off for investigation. It may be some time before we know the cause if we ever do.

It is now about 5:00 a.m., and the immediate crisis had passed. However, we now had quite the scent going in the main part of the house. There wasn't much that we could do at that point so we tried to lay back down.

After calling around to our agent and talking to other people with State Farm, we had a crew out that evening to treat the air ducts to neutralize the order. It wasn't really clear to us what we signed up for by having them come that evening, but before they got started at about 9:00 p.m., they told us that after they finished, we and our dogs would need to be out of the house for about an hour. Ugh!

So we went ahead and loaded up the dogs and headed out to kill time. Though it seemed like madness, the first place we went was the dog park in Fort Worth. We thought we'd give the dogs a chance to wear themselves out if the park was still open. Much to my surprise, the hours of the dog park were 5:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. So we stayed there for about an hour. There were a couple of other dogs there so Kassie and Rocket got to run and play quite a bit. However, once the dogs showed signs of being tired and the mosquitoes showed signs of being hungry, we decided to pack the dogs up and move on.

Luckily, it is still fairly cool in the evening so we knew the dogs would be OK in the van while we went elsewhere to kill time. So at this point so we headed over to Borders at Hulin and 30. Both dogs crashed by the time we got there, and the slept quietly in the van while we milled about. We got the call about 10:15 p.m. that we could return home in about an hour. This was perfect timing since Borders closed at 11:00 p.m. and it was about 20 minutes from our house.

When we got home, it smelled considerably better, and we went to bed quickly as we don't typically stay up this late as a matter of course anymore. I think we were both tired enough that we slept without much consideration of a repeat incident.

We have temporarily taken our house off the market until we can get the carpet and other damage replaced. At a minimum we have to replace some power cords on the computer at home before we can even check it out to see if it is still in working order. Our e-mail access during that time is going to be fairly sparse in case you are wondering why we are slow to respond. Everything is going to be fine; it's just going to take a bit to restore order again. I'll try to get posts up on a semi-regular basis between now and then.

Until next time...
PH