I watched the premieres of a couple of the freshman fall sitcoms. First, the kinda OK one.

Back To You

I love Frasier and I’m seriously in like with Everybody Loves Raymond, mostly because of Raymond not Patricia Heaton.  Back To You is neither of those shows, which is a disappointment though not surprising; the commercials weren’t all that good.

My first thought: “Look, Frasier’s on the news.” I suppose the hazard of playing the same character (even one as great as Frasier) for twenty years is obvious. It’s hard not to see Frasier whenever Grammar’s on the screen.  He sounds like Frasier, he dispenses advice like Frasier, all he needs is to do to complete the illusion is punctuate his sentences with “I’m listening” and I won’t be able to get past it.  Luckily Frasier is funny and I don’t mind more of him.

My second thought: “Look, Mrs. Raymond’s on the news.” Without Marie across the street, you realize something about Patricia Heaton: she’s kind of annoying. She’s not awful, but she’s not great either.

The show itself is rather bland. Easy, obvious jokes, only a couple of which are all that clever. The characters, for the most part, come straight from the ‘Sitcom Guide to People That Are Funny’ including ‘Slutty Girl’ and ‘Guy Who Makes Inappropriate Jokes.’ I’ll admit to liking Josh Gad’s too young News Director, most of the funny bits involved him.

All in all, not horrible, certainly an above average sitcom, but that speaks more to the awful quality of the average sitcom than to the quality of this particular show.

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I found out that the pilot episode of the new ABC series Pushing Daisies was in the wild (read torrented) and given my frenzied anticipation, immediately downloaded it.  And I’m glad I did, though watching it early just means I have to wait a week longer to find out what happens next. This is my kind of show. It’s quirky, funny, well written and visually arresting.  The dialogue is fast, think Gillmore Girls only it doesn’t wear out its welcome (or rather, think Wonderfalls, but I doubt you’ve seen that.)

The story centers around a young man, Ned the piemaker, who has a gift, not given to him by anyone in particular, where he can bring someone (or thing) to life merely by touching them. The problem being that if he touches them again they die instantly, never to revive.  And if he doesn’t touch them within one minute, someone else dies taking their place “it’s a random proximity thing,” he explains.

Ned makes pies for a living (being able to bring wilted strawberries back to life comes in handy for this) though he supplements his income with the reward money from solving murders.  Turns out that the easiest way to solve a murder is to ask the victim who killed them!

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Yes, it is true. To the surprise of absolutely no-one I have purchased The King of Phones, The Son of Jobs, the (angels singing) iPhone. The price drop was too much. Two months, $200 how could I resist. I could sell my old phone, sell my old ipod on eBay (oh eBay, what would I do without you and your legions of willing buyers!) and I’m pretty close to the cost.

It looks very cool on TV, I wanted it, but not that bad (meaning as long as I bit my tongue hard enough I could resist flying out the door to buy it.) Then I saw one in person. Oh my. Oh my. Geez… I’m a sucker for gadgets and this was such a gadget. You may have read complaints about it, people finding one thing or another that wasn’t quite right, and they’re true. It is definitely a flawed device. But only in context of what might have been.

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I had this pointed out to me the other day.  Parker Brothers has updated the ever-popular Monopoly game so that even really, really dumb people can play.  The assumption, I guess, is that nearly everybody now has at least one copy of Monopoly (we have three for some reason) leaving only one market left untapped; people who failed first-grade mathematics.  Introducing Monopoly for Really Dumb People an edition designed to take all power of thought away from you, the player so you can focus on moving your top-hat (or the ultra-modern Segway?!?) playing piece.

Ok, I get that this is an attempt to update this game to work electronically but come on, how hard is it to add $100 + $100?  How are you supposed to slip that extra $500 under your seat so no one knows how much money you actually have?  Where’s the fun in that?  Where’s the benefit to being the banker if you don’t get to skim a little bit off the top each time you pass Go?

Legions of kids learned how to do simple math in their heads by buying Park Place while watching someone else buy Broadway.  Now we can teach them how to use a calculator as soon as they can punch the buttons and we won’t need addition anymore.

What I really can’t wait for is for a totally cashless society so I can buy a Monopoly that simply scans the barcode tattooed on my forehead.  That would be easy.

[Edit: My wife pointed this out to me, so credit where credit is due.]

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I forgot the cardinal rule of parenting last night.  If your child says "I need to..." followed by a description of any body function, particularly those that involve fluids and chunks, quickly throw them into the nearest bathroom.  There is no negotiating.  You cannot delay, wheedle, plead or reason with said child.

The bathroom door was locked, my child said he thought he needed to throw up.  I said (why, why, why!) ‘you’re fine, lets go downstairs.’ (Why, why, why!) If I were reasonable I would have done the only sane thing: kick in the bathroom door and chuck my child in the direction of the toilet before he could up-chuck on me. I chose the insane thing instead and we went downstairs. 

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