Category Archives: Media

Blu-ray and TV, or how I spend too much of my free time

Last month, two things of note happened, one of significantly more import that the other.

Firstly, my family was sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Utah LDS temple.  It was a long time coming, but it was awesome when it finally happened.  My little boy, of course, just slept through the ceremony, being one of those infants and all, but my wife and daughter were quite awake and I have never had a more happy experience in all of my life.

That was the important thing.  Naturally, I’ll talk more about the unimportant.

My wife let me buy a new TV and a Blu-ray player, and didn’t kick me out of the house when I bought a bunch of Blu-ray discs.  (It is important, at least to me, that I didn’t get kicked out of the house, because it is cold outside.)

Amazon had a deal that I was too weak to pass up, and so I didn’t.  When the TV arrived at my house, the delivery guys opened the box and liberated its content, and my daughter promptly asked, “Dad, why is our new TV so small?”

Well, she had a point; the screen size is actually a bit bigger, but physically the new TV is quite a bit smaller than the old one, on account of being an LCD flat panel, where the old one was a free-standing CRT rear projection model.

So anyway, the discs themselves are still really expensive, but with Black Friday I was able to find some deals and bought a bunch of movies that I already have on DVD, because I am apparently easily suckered.  I also bought a few movies that I didn’t already have on DVD, like WALL-E and The Dark Knight.  Somehow I must justify my Blu-ray buyingness.

And since my post from about a year ago I have some new TV shows to add to my List of Shows to Which I Will Admit Having Seen Every Episode, namely:

Arrested Development
The Batman
Bones
The Mentalist
The Spectacular Spider-Man
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I also intend to watch Battlestar Galactica and Monk eventually, and possibly Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.  Also, I am somewhat fibbing on my list above, as I have not yet actually watched all of Arrested Development, but I intend to.

I also am intending to finally read the Harry Potter books.  I read Ender in Exile last month, and it was fantastic, as I have come to expect from Mr. Card.

Finally, Christmas is almost here, and just today I finally bought Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong album.  It’s wonderful.  I also am enjoying Bebo Norman’s Christmas… From the Realms of Glory.  I intended to buy Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked for the Holidays from an Amazon sale, but I couldn’t find a Linux version of their download client for the distribution on my laptop, and I am too lazy to boot Windows just to download some music.  Maybe I’ll download it from my desktop computer, which runs Kubuntu.

Now I’m just rambling.  The end.

So the writers are striking…

It’s old news by now, really, and it’s not really what I wanted to write about, although this week’s Foxtrot made me laugh, mostly because Foxtrot is funny.

I really have no strong opinions one way or the other on the matter of the WGA strike. The only reason I mention it is because I have been watching my House, M.D. DVDs and I am sad that there will be no new House for a good while. Other than that, I’m good as far as currently-airing shows go, because I have a semi-big backlog of DVDs to get to, several books to read, a few video games to play, and a family to attend to. I reckon I should be able to fill my time rather easily without any new TV. Besides, Smallville really just needs to get some Superman action going on. I’m reeeeeeeeally tired of Lana, and have been for about four seasons now. Perhaps the writers can take this time to reflect and finally find a way to kill her off, once and for all. I watched the episode where she died and Clark went back in time to save her twice, in the vain hope that the second time she would somehow stay dead. No such luck.

I thought about putting a spoiler alert there, but who would I be spoiling? The -1.3 readers of my blog? Okay, then.

So without further ado, I bring you a boring list.

List of TV shows to which I will admit to having seen every episode
Alias
Aliens in America
Batman: The Animated Series
Batman Beyond
Blind Justice
The Closer
Dilbert
Firefly
Heroes
House, M.D.
Justice League (+ Unlimited)
Life
Mad About You
My Name Is Earl
NYPD Blue
Smallville
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series
Star Wars: Clone Wars
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Superman: The Animated Series
That ’70s Show

It is also possible that I have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Friends, but I’m not sure about those two.