vocabulary lesson, courtesy of FOX

I am down to four TV shows: Buffy, 24, Firefly, and John Doe. Due to a pretty busy schedule, I taped them this week and only got around to watching the last three this morning. I was surprised to hear the words sanguine and/or sanguinary used in all three episodes, with definitions given on Firefly and John Doe. It's as if a suit heard sanguine used in 24, thought it beyond the ken of the average FOX viewer (and, well, yes), and quickly decided to work lessons on the Latin root sanguis into the two Friday programs.



Also, on John Doe: Hey, what kind of cool-ass bar shows CFL football in Seattle?



election stuff

Cook County may be known for voting irregularities, but not involving the butterfly ballot, apparently. We've used them ever since I've lived here, and with no glaringly obvious problems. This year there were signs all about, telling us to CAREFULLY CHECK for chads not punched all the way through. I checked mine and lo, there there two dimpled. One was for deputy dogcatcher or something, the other was for my statehouse rep.



Most amusing candidate: Stephanie "vs. The Machine" Sailor, a Libertarian running for Congress. Not amusing enough, I'm afraid. But The Bruce liked her a lot.



On the national scene: it's clear the Democrats spent too much time bitching about Nader in 2000, and not enough fixing their problems. A change in leadership will be a good thing, and was probably long overdue.

Ah yes, what a month. So, we had:



increased busyness at work

Chicago Film Festival movies to attend (9 of 'em)

the start of curling season

my perhaps-foolish agreement to take on webmaster duties for the curling club (I might post a link at some point)

...all of which caused further trouble due to my procrastination about TRASH questions.



But I'm mostly out of those tunnels.



Curling is going well, despite the sore back I developed Sunday while playing back-to-back games. But I think what I'm feeling now has more to do with sitting at a desk all day and my usual horrid posture than anything else. I'm in four different leagues, playing lead in three men's events and second in a mixed event. We're 2-0 in one, 0-2 in another, and 0-1 in the other two. Pretty sad Monday night, where we got six-ended in the second end (there are perhaps three people reading who know what I mean by this, and two of them live in Michigan. Trust me when I say it's not something you want to happen). We clawed our way back into the match, and forced them to make their last shot to beat us. Which they did. On a personal level, I've improved from abysmal to bad. Which is fine; there is a marked improvement -- I've gone from most rocks entirely out of play, to some rocks staying in play, to most rocks remaining in play *and* a few actually going where they're supposed to go.



Due to two byes this week, I'm off the ice until Sunday. Tomorrow and Thursday we're going to the Siskel Film Center to see three programs of Mental Hygiene shorts; those ephemeral films from the 50s through 70s. I'm hoping, but it's sure not to happen, that they have a 16mm projector in the middle of the auditorium, and that they ask for volunteers to thread it. Sunday it's Seven Samurai at the Music Box. Whooo!

closed for the month

I have some stuff to do by the end of the month, so light bloggage for the next two weeks. Which is too bad, because I want to hold forth on the Chicago Film Festival offerings. In brief -- don't let knee-jerk reactions to Michael Moore prevent you from seeing Bowling for Columbine, regardless of your political stripe. And if a documentary called Tribute comes your way, jump all over it.

Okay, no doubt everyone has once hummed a song just before hearing it on the radio or somewhere public. Or have listened to an album somewhere and heard it later that night. But I never thought this common occurrence would happen with this one.

Some familiar faces in the Metrodome tonight. Dan Gladden is on the radio team, of course, and Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven had camera-range seats. We didn't get to see it, but Kent Hrbek was singing during the 7th-inning stretch. Tomorrow night Tim Laudner -- Boom-Boom Buck-Eighty himself-- will catch Sweetmusic's first pitch. I half expected to see Juan Berenguer on the mound in a trenchcoat.



One thing that was missing, though, was Kirby Puckett. Officially, Minnesota's most beloved sports figure has been keeping a low profile since news of domestic woes hit. But I'm not fooled. I figured out the real story.



Al Newman ate him.

I'm going to have to get closely acquainted with the Yahoo gameweb thingy. Games 1-3 of the Twins-A's series have 3 p.m. CT starts, and they're not on bradcast TV As I understand it, the start times were at the Twins' request, as they share a facility with two football teams. But the local ESPN station isn't joining the early games until 6:00, as it's more profitable to keep the drivetime yapfest on the air. Perhaps this will change now that the series outcome has become less predictable. Until then, I'll just follow the game on the web until 5 and sit in limbo for an hour, and pray nothing interesting happens. Like it did yesterday.

Some notes on the new TV season, or at least what I’ve seen of it.



New Buffy -- ehh. Giving Dawn something to do other than need rescuing is a good thing, I suppose. I don't care for or about her own little “Scrappy Gang.” And I’m not really thrilled with the back-to-high-school angle, but if getting these leftover high school tales out now means the Buffy Cartoon idea is DOA, then I’m all for it. I suppose with the exception of last season, where Buffy had to, y’know, come back from the dead and all --the season premieres have been kind of lackluster (Buffy vs. Dracula, anyone?) Odd to see such a seemingly inconsequential episode coming directly from Joss, though. With luck, that’s all part of the plan.



Firefly -- Jury’s still out on this one. I enjoyed much of the premiere, and I especially liked that they’re allowed to kill people for laughs. I hope FOX continues to let Joss keep plenty of anti in his antiheroes.



John Doe -- Hey, this was pretty damn good, I thought. Except for the voiceover in the premiere; that can go away. But I’ll be happy to keep the VCR running another hour on Fridays.



Twilight Zone-- Of course I have the most to say about the show I saw the least of. I watched a little over half of the new TZ Wednesday night. What people forget or overlook about the original Twilight Zone is that many of the episodes were, at their cores, morality plays. And heavyhanded ones at that. So, I dunno...points for sticking to the original spirit of the show, even if following that path will turn off viewers (including yours truly).

In the one segment I watched, a white guy, whose failure to assist a panicked black man in the street the night before led to the black man’s death at the hands of skinheads, gradually assumes the physical appearance of the dead man, and then of course runs into prejudices from his neighbors, wife and, of course, a meeting with the skinheads. This didn’t make me ruminate on society’s ills and what I can do, as an individual, to make this world a better place. It made me think of the brilliant National Lampoon Yearbook Parody, which includes a mock high school literary magazine in which the male drama flake writes a story about waking up in a world where whites are a substandard race persecuted at the hands of blacks. Oooh, edgy.



The other segment, with Shannon Elizabeth, lost me after about 5 minutes. I had a Sopranos tape to watch. I know it’s not fair to judge an anthology show after half an episode, but I’m sure there are a lot of good horror and SF --which is what people really love and expect from the Twilight Zone -- short stories out there. Why waste time with segments that are as obvious as the Vic Morrow episode from TZ-The Movie.



and speaking of The Sopranos -- We’re getting tapes from a work connection within a week of the episodes. The woman who replaced Fairuza Balk as “Danielle” - the undercover FBI agent sucking up to Adriana -- is pitch-perfect. And I like Fairuza.