Travelog: Return of the Attack of Spokane

Spokane holds a special place in my heart - not only because I had such a fine time during my two visits to the city, but also because it comes at the expense of very trying times at Farichild AFB. Despite those latter times, I was plum tickled to return to eastern Washington, and even though my second trip was considerably shorter than my first, I was set to make it equally, if not more noteworthy, than the first.

The reason for the visit was water survival. The aircrew that have parachutes on board have to go to Pensacola, FL, while the remainder have to go to Fairchild. The oil spill in the Gulf put a hiatus to the Pensacola classes and sent them all to Fairchild for intermediate training, to hold off on completion until Pensacola opens again. However, while higher ups unaware of my airframe's lack of a parachute initially decided I needed to go to Florida, the subsequent cancellation allowed me to get reassigned to the Fairchild one - the one I should have attended all along. Got it? Good.

I don't care for water. I'm not afraid of it, per se, but I'm not a big fan of it, either. "Brad, you want to go swimming?,"  you would say, and I would reply with a solid "no," for I do not care for it. However, I think I would be able to survive in the ocean should my plane have to crash into it, as was the premise for this water survival class. The focus of the class is on use of the equipment provided on the plane and procedures for using it, so I didn't have too much problem. You know those life preservers that they demonstrate on civilian flights? Well, we got them too, and we know how to use them, amongst other things.

An entire situation was developed, and a simulation took place with the help of a 20-man life raft, a gym pool not exceeding 10 feet in depth, the darkness, and men with hoses. While it doesn't seem like you could create a realistic simulation with only those components, they did quite a good job, and we practiced procedures for surviving on a raft in the middle of the ocean. It was only two days of training, but they really do manage to pack quite a bit of content into there.

I think my dislike of water activities stems from my nearly drowning at the age of four. I remember being mouth-to-mouth resuscitated by a public pool lifeguard, and my toenail never being the same. Scarred for life though I may have been, I've realized that basic competence in the water is a necessity, so I work to overcome my fear. Two swimming classes and a survival course later and I'm still not a great swimmer, but I believe I could last on the high seas if need be. Provided there's no waves, at least.

I was glad to be done with my water survival class in only two days, because it also signaled the end of my dealings with Survival School altogether. Yes, the three weeks I spent learning how to survive in the northern Washington woodscape, combined with the vague references I can make about learning how to deal in a prisoner of war scenario were very challenging things for me - perhaps ranking in the all-time most challenging. But those earlier weeks were also punctuated by some great eats, and I wished to continue that during my return trip. I only had basically two days out on the town, though, and while I had some great places lined up, it all changed the day after I arrived.

I was sitting in my hotel room at the end of my first of the four nights I had when I saw a reputable website that claimed that Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives was up filming locations in Spokane and Coure d'Alene, their sister city in Idaho. The way the filming works, the production crew sets up approximately seven restaurants in the city, a film crew goes and shoots some crowd scenes, and a week or two later Guy Fieri drives out and does the one on one shoots. These rumors were pretty fresh - somewhere between the crowd filming and the Guy visits. Not only was the prime information for stupid groupies like me who try to visit as many of these places as possible (because I can visit before all of the crowds start to show up after the episode airs), but I was also not likely to be visiting the city again for quite a while. On top of that, my water survival class meant that I was only likely to have one day to visit as many as possible. On top of that, the trusty though not very timely shuttle service that most people in Fairchild use only really goes downtown, so I couldn't use it to get to most of these places - I would have to rent a car. The more I thought about it, the harder it would be to make this happen, and that's exactly why I had to do it.

The following three paragraphs are almost completely tangential to the rest of my trip. Unless you want to hear my introspections about Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, you can skip ahead to the designated spot.

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This isn't my first time doing a DDD binge, - I accomplished a seven restaurant DDD tour of Houston last year, and did five stops in Dallas earlier this year. Having a couple of these binges under my slowly expanding belt, I've gained some wisdom from them. First, this isn't me going around and eating a full meal at each restaurant - this is a strategically-planned amassing of food, largely in takeout containers. If you can get it to go - which is often the case for cheaper fare like burgers and pizza - you can save yourself a lot of pain, as you can get your impression of the restaurant as you wait, and you can sample the food in your car (and maybe take the rest home for leftovers). The first three places I visited were burger, pizza, burger, respectively, so I was doing good, only taking a bit or two from each and calling it good. I made a mistake at the next restaurant with a large dinner salad, eating it all. If only I had realized that they offered some takeout, too, but as a positive I was able to overhear a conversation a worker was having about the DDD filming. The trouble continued with another sit-down restaurant, though I ate lightly, and I was near capacity when I finished my last restaurant, even though I took half of that meal home in a doggy bag. I purposefully placed a barI as the last stop of the night, and it worked out as well as it could, with me resigning myself to ordering a cup of soup and a beer and calling it good.

How did it come to these 8-hour eating binges? I started visiting DDD locations when I took my 3-week tour around the central United States after I graduated - they served as well-publicized places that were guaranteed to be pretty good. Plus, it was cool to sit there watching the show with someone, and when a restaurant comes up, and they say "hey, that looks pretty good," you get that little bit of satisfaction from saying you can vouch for that yourself. But what began as good restaurants to look for if I was visiting the area, turned into me going out of my way to visit these places, and that turned into my traveling specifically to visit these places, and that brought me to where I am today - doing everything I can to visit as many locations as possible. It's no longer about the show - my restaurant tour helped propel me into my epicurean pursuits, and my writing about them on Yelp - but it's just now for the bragging rights. I don't even have cable television anymore, so I can't see new episodes anyway, but that doesn't mean that I don't stay abreast of the list. I already know off the top of my head that there's around 8 places to visit in Kansas City, 6 in Oklahoma City, and maybe even the several in Omaha if I ever make it up there, and I intend to visit them all. So no, I don't like having to order the product of someone's livlihood - something they are oftentimes very proud of, and ultimately discarding half of it simply for the bragging rights. It's a waste of food, a waste of money, and I'm probably never going to return - so they're not getting any new customers, either.

If there is one thing I can provide, it's a positive review. Perhaps me writing and telling the story about some of these places will inspire others to visit, and maybe they'll do the same. My Yelp reviews have been as much about supporting local businesses as they are scratching my writing bug (even if no all of my reviews can be stellar - I've certainly hammed in my fair share [though to be fair, how many different ways can you write about a burger?]), so in that respect, I can do some good. And after going back and forth about it, I don't have any problems writing a review based upon two bites of a meal, either. I think, so long as you've come to terms with your impressions of the flavors and textures, of the meal, finishing the dish is simply a matter of satiation. 

END RANT

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In the end, my efforts to knock out the Spokane DDD locations were unsuccessful, as a few other restaurants hit the rumor mill a few days after I returned. Some of the ones I visited might not have even been filmed, but we won't know for sure until they air. 

Spokane was a pretty cool town - the downtown area was littered with some great restaurants and culture, and Riverfront Park was very nice. Fairchild, on the other hand, was amongst the harder things I've had to do in my life, whether through physical strength, force of will, or simply sacking up and not freaking out when being sprayed with a garden hose while in a gym pool in pitch black while fighting for a liferaft. It was clear during my second trip that nostalgia was creeping in from the experiences and relationships formed during the first trip, but no matter if or when I return to Spokane, I'll never forget the Suction Goat.

For Dinner: Asparagus Terrine

Sometimes I just peruse Good Eats episodes and find things that I might want to make. This was one of those times, with the recent asparagus episode's Asparagus Terrine catching my interest. I love asparagus, but I don't typically use it in ways other than the standard boil/roast.

• 2 teaspoons unflavored powdered gelatin
• 2 tablespoons cold water
• 8 ounces quark or farmers cheese, room temperature
• 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 3 to 5 good quality, jarred anchovies in olive oil, drained
• 7 whole, fresh chives
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 recipe Steamed Asparagus, cooled, recipe follows
• Toasted French bread slices, for serving
• Special equipment: Spritz bottle filled with water

Quark is a new ingredient to me, and despite Alton's claim that it's available in most megamarts, I couldn't find it. Finding farmers cheese was hard enough, with me getting to the Jewish Refrigerated Foods section before I could find the full fat farmers cheese.

My mother used to eat anchovies out of the can when I was a kid (and probably still does), but like their appreciation for brussel sprouts, it took me a little while before I could appreciate these culinary delights. And while I no longer hold a beef with the sprouts, I've been dodging the little fishies for a while. I kinda tricked myself into trying them - I didn't have any problems with processing a few into my cheese mixture, I was left with 3/4 of a can of anchovies after I was done, and I couldn't just throw them away, could I? So I toasted them with some toast, and ate 'em straight up. I thought there would be at least a little crunch, as I knew I was eating bones, but they were quite soft. The tail was a little pokey, but it chewed up just as well. There was certainly a very fishy taste to them, so I don't know if they were one of my favorite things ever, but I feel stronger for finally bucking up and trying them.

At first, the taste was a little overwhelming - a big cheesy/creamy note, combined with a little bit of asparagus, finished with a distinct fishy note from the anchovies. These first couple of slices I was eating straight, and I was like "ehhhhhhh...", but then I made some toast, and smeared it on that, and it made it a hell of a lot better.

I think I like standard asparagus too much to try this again, but at least I conquered my anchovy hangup.

Android App Spotlight #20 Brody Button

Price: Free
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Android App Spotlight #19: Sipdroid

Price: Free
Appbrain
Website

Session Initiation Protocol is commonly used to control multimedia streams at the application layer, according to Wikipedia. While there's a little too much on that page to wrap my head around, the most popular app that takes advantage of it, Sipdroid, presents a dead simple interface.









Using it along with several other services, you can do things like this:

I was able to set it up with these instructions and no issues whatsoever. Of course, it defaults to being used whenever I'm connected via wifi, which I don't like, as it isn't as glossy or integrated with the Android interface. You can turn that off, though, so it sits in the background, waiting for a call to your Google Voice number. I wouldn't leave it running all the time, because it probably uses at least a little battery life, and also if you use the integrated Google Voice app, your phone essentially rings twice, and you immediately miss one of the calls. Nevertheless, I was able to make a call this afternoon with no sim in my phone, which might be helpful if you, for example, take a little jaunt over to Qatar in the future.

Android App Spotlight #18: SportyPal

Nike+ is the main reason I purchased an iPod Touch. It was pretty cool to have the software track the distance you've run, and I used it quite a bit after I got it. It was not without its faults, though - the device tracks movement via an accelerometer, which calculates distance via a standard calibrated step, so if your stride varies, it can throw off the measurement. The way the app interfaced with my music was a bit clunky, too, making it difficult to select anything other than a playlist. While the website provides a nice medium for tracking your runs and communicating and challenging other users, the site is absolutely drenched in Flash to the point where it affects usability. It's difficult to share general information, too.

Once I got my Nexus One I realized that there are apps that do a similar tracking to Nike+, though using the GPS, thereby making it quite a bit more accurate, and since multitasking is no big deal, it's easy to leave the running app... err, running, and switch over to the music player with no fuss. It didn't require a special dongle in my shoes, either. The only question then is to choose the best app.

When I started looking, there were only two main contenders: Buddy Runner and SportyPal. Buddy Runner seemed the most like Nike+ in that it duplicated pretty much all functionality - including the computerized voice telling you the distance remaining - but the interface of both the website and app was not very pretty, and it was hard to share my workouts. I ended up going with SportyPal - it looks quite a bit better, and you can do other exercises, like cycling, rollerblading, down to "exercises" like sailing and surfing. What's better is that you can manually add exercises - so if you do things like weightlifting or running indoors, you can add those to your profile. The thing doesn't speak to you like Buddy Runner, so if that's your thing, you might want to keep looking. The original idea was that I would use SportyPal outside and Nike+ inside, then manually add the run later to my SportyPal profile, though that idea never came to fruition and I sold my iPod two weeks ago because of lack of use.

I haven't had too much trouble working with SportyPal, though apparently the appscape has broadened a bit since I last looked. A Lifehacker poll  says good things about RunKeeper and Endomondo, but I'm not really interested in checking them out. SportyPal meets all my needs quite sufficiently.

Travelog: Mile High Music Festival 2010

My old friend and Del Rio escapee Rob begun seeing concerts together last year when Tool came to San Antonio. After that, we had a fairly successful (though muddy) run in Austin for ACL 2009. We made preliminary plans at the time to check out Mile High Music Festival in Denver, as he was moving to Colorado Springs in a few months, and when the lineup was released in late March, we took a shot in the dark and purchased tickets, hoping that my perpetual state of training would allow we to take some time off to attend.

Though I still have a couple of months before I'm finally out of training, I was able to talk a few days of vacation on either side of the weekend-spanning event in order to comfortably make the 9-hour drive to Colorado Springs. I suppose that I may have been able to make the trip even if I didn't get the Friday and Monday off, but I don't know whether that would have involved an inordinate amount of driving or having to fly out there.


After leaving Colorado Springs for the first time in May of 2008, I thought I would have spent more time away than I have - I've returned every year since, first in April of last year and now again 14 months later. I must have been distracted failing out of Pueblo at the time, because I think this was the first time I've appreciated the wonderful views we had in the city - San Antonio was only a little bit hilly, and Wichita is as flat as the day is long. The city is basically built on top of the shallower parts of the mountains, which becomes obvious when trying to push my car up and over the many steep hills that are consistently featured as part of the Springs' typical roadways. It became a factor for my car, which encountered trouble as soon as I arrived in the city.

I had begun experiencing some light stuttering issues with my car in Wichita, but it was only a rare occurrence when the engine was being heavily tasked in idle (like, for example, running the air conditioning at a stop light). My amateur research online pointed to a possible problem with the fuel system or a spark plug issue. The former being the easiest problem to correct, I purchased a bottle of that fuel injector cleaner stuff you put in your gas tank. It seemed to make the problem better, so I continued to keep an eye on it. Fast forward to me completing the 500 mile trip to Colorado Springs, in which the sputtering was seriously noticeable when idling or driving in first gear. I was lucky I made it to Rob's place, but the next stop was an auto shop.

I was going to take it to a dealer and be content that I was getting consistent service in addition to being ripped off, but I decided to see if I could find a reliable auto shop in town and press my luck. Luckily, it worked out, and not only was I able to get my car fixed, but I did my homework while I waited, and learned how the induction coil increases the voltage from the battery and passes it to the spark plug which sets off the combustion in my engine. I'm interested in learning more about how my car works, but it's difficult without being able to take the thing apart and tinker with it. At least I'm getting some lessons through my mistakes. Now that my car crisis had been averted and I could make it back to Wichita, the focus was back on the vacation.

Living in the northern part of the Springs for four years, we spent most of our time hitting up the multitude of chain restaurants that surrounded Academy Blvd., though also by that time I hadn't become interest in food as I am now, so it didn't bother me. This time, though, I wanted to see more of what C-Springs had to offer - less than an hour from Denver, I knew there had to be at least a few places for fine dining that trickled south from the Mile High City, similarly to how Milwaukee's food benefited from having the (much) larger city of Chicago so close, and San Antonio had Austin (not larger than SA by any means, but certainly a lot more creative).

Despite my intentions, my visit to Colorado Springs was bookended by indulgences in nostalgia, beginning first with a trip to Leon Gessi's, a parlor of pizza in which we began many nights eating pies and drinking pitchers of beer. My trip's last stop was Egg and I, a breakfast (now chain, as there was even one in San Antonio, though I never visited) restaurant started in Fort Collins and which I spent many Sundays sitting eating the same Hiker's Benedict and drinking a pitcher of coffee in an effort to reclaim some of my sanity after spending day after day living in a 10x12' room with another dude.

The remainder of my time was peppered with new places, some better than others, but all nice in their own right. Rob having to split time between me and his girlfriend who was leaving for Nebraska the Monday after the festival, combined with me being a relatively early riser, meant that I had the opportunity to splurge and get my fix for fine dining as well as a try a few classic breakfast places. It worked out well, giving me a healthy amount of time to explore the city on my own and not having to worry about the smothering that can happen when a visitor is staying with you for several days.

For lunch the first day we decided to eat lunch in Denver, and I chose one of the highest rated places on Yelp, Big Jim's Hot Dogs, which I didn't realize was featured recently on an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. It's a food stand, though, and those can be tricky to find, as we found when we arrived at our supposed destination and found no wieners to be had. I called Big Jim, and was surprised to discover that he was actually serving at the festival! He was in the VIP tent, however, so we tried to get hooked up to no avail. There was a nice little Mexican restaurant nearby that got the job done.

I enjoy going to these things with Rob because he's content to sit at the back of the crowd and chill out for the day. I never liked being one of those people that crowd the stage, for several reasons:

• I didn't pay for these things to look at the artists - it's a music festival, so as long as I can hear, I'm happy.
• I like my personal space.
• I don't dance, so I would rather not stand there uncomfortably for hours.

I reviewed the particulars of the festival already, but with regards to the music, there were more smaller acts that I kinda wanted to see rather than one or two must-see acts. You can see the lineup here, and I made this sampler of songs from the acts that we saw.

ALO was a band I heard good things about when I was really into jambands, but I never got around to checking out. They're pretty mellow, but not Jack Johnson mellow. That's just too damn mellow, if you ask me - that man needs to wear some shoes every once in a while.

Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was one of the best albums last year, and they were sure to put most of the focus on that album, despite it being their fourth since 2000 (first in the US, though). Many bands don't really add too much to their songs when played live, and this was one of those cases. If I wanted to hear the tracks played note for note for the album versions with crappier acoustics, I would play the CD while wearing hearing protection or something.

I've seen Drive-By Truckers several times by this point, but they're a good live band, which we heard as we were waiting to gain entry into the venue - I accidentally got us there an hour later, as their set was ending. It sounded good from what we heard, though.

My favorite act of the festival was Chris Thile's Punch Brothers, a progressive bluegrass band and my second-favorite bluegrass personality behind Béla Fleck. Aside from their new album, Antifogmatic, being a pretty great album, the bluegrass in Colorado reminds me of the absolute stellar times I've had in Telluride during their bluegrass festival. You can take any of these other music festivals if you must, but I love the few times I've been lucky enough to camp and enjoy some bluegrass music surrounded by the beautiful Rockies. The drive itself is amazing, and it kills me that I've missed it the past two years.

For as many people that came and saw Weezer, they could have easily been the headliner for the first night. I'm a pretty casual fan of Weezer, but I know their better albums are behind them. I think they know it, too, as the set was pretty focused on the older material. Hell, they should just tour featuring songs solely from their first two albums.

I have quite a history with Dave Matthews Band, and while they maintain an important part of my musical history, I am well aware that they are not infallible. I think I have a four-year streak going on seeing them live, so this worked as fulfilling this year's quota. I don't really like going to a pure DMB concert anymore because the fanbase is pretty douchy and I have to stand the whole time. On the other hand, the band plays it safe with their setlists for festivals, so I can expect to hear the same old crowd pleasers rather than the more interesting stuff they've been doing this tour. We left about an hour into the set - Rob wasn't that big of a fan and worked the next day, and I realized that the set wasn't going anywhere good, and didn't want to get caught in the deluge of traffic at the end of the night. I also remembered that there was a live webcast of the show, which I was able to watch on my phone as we drove back to the Springs. We were walking in the door literally as the last note was being played.



With 11 hours of driving (including the time zone changes) ahead of me, I grabbed that breakfast at Egg and I and drove away. This was certainly one of the more laid-back festivals I've been to, and I was lucky that I was able to score some time off of work to attend. As I thought when moving to Wichita, the plus to living in the dead center of the United States is that I am a day's drive from a lot of cool places, and this proved the point. I hope the lineup for 2011 looks good, because I would love to do it again.

Android App Spotlight #17: Adobe Flash 10.1

Price: Free
AppBrain
Website

One of the biggest complaints about iOS is the browsing experience is considerably hindered by the lack of Adobe Flash. Yes, there are better solutions for browsing and video on the way, but in today's world, Flash is the background of too many websites to be ignored. This might not be such a big deal on a phone you're using to  quickly check a website, but on a big device like the iPad, it can be very obvious that you're not surfing the "full internet."

Steve Jobs has said that Flash is buggy and a battery suck, but this is also the guy who also insisted the original iPhone not be 3G, there was no need for copy/paste, and the iPhone didn't need apps. Rather than waiting for the very nature of web design to come around to HTML5, Android Adobe were quick to jump on this hot button issue and announced that Flash would be available with Froyo at this year's Google I/O.

Like some of Froyo's other touted features, it doesn't came native to the phone - you have to visit the app store to install it. My guess is that this was done in order to show respect to my Nexus One's precious 512MB of storage space (more developers need to enable the ability to store their apps on SD cards), though I reckon it's not a real consideration if you have a post-N1 phone.

Installation is easy enough, and in usability, it seemed to work fine - just recently I was able to visit a restaurant's website the featured a Flash splash page, while my Flash-less friend was out of luck. I haven't noticed a significant degradation in battery life, either, but that's because of the feature that makes this work so well: in the browser (default browser, anyway) settings, select the "enable plug-ins" option, and choose "on demand." For every piece of flash content you visit, there will be a little green download icon over it - click it, and that piece of Flash content will be opened. This is especially great for avoiding ads, both from having to look at them, and having to use the battery to download them.

I haven't done a lot of long-term testing of Flash videos, but I would imagine sparing use would be required for your battery life to not completely go to hell. Flash on Android is more about removing some of those big barriers to surfing on the go, and with the ability to only activate it when you need it, there's no reason to not download.

Fall Summer Preview

When all the network shows were finishing up in May, I looked at my severely reduced TV schedule for the summer, and saw this as an opportunity to catch up on my backlogs and movie collection "A Criterion a Day!," I promised myself in my head. We are now on the precipice of the fall TV season - only a month to go - and I haven't even been able to catch up with the current releases of Criterions, much less the back catalog. And the TV? It's still a-coming.

Nowadays, when I list my hobbies, I include television amongst them, even though I don't think many people know what I'm referring to. I'm not vegging out on the couch zoning to stupid VH1 reality shows or whatever reruns are playing on the CW (though that's how I spent a large portion of my teens) - this is specific, target watching of artful television. I think that there is TV today that is producing at a quality similar to that of films, and it can be approached similarly. Looking forward to the next few months, there's a daunting 23 shows whose seasons are premiering, and all but four of them are during the month of September.

Weeds - 16 Aug - Showtime
I've already written a review of the Season 6 premiere, but hopefully Season 6 will get us away from the unfunny Mexican storylines and try something fresh.




The Big C - 16 Aug - Showtime
A new show about an older woman who discovers she has stage 4 melanoma. Stars Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious). Between this, Weeds, United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie, and The L Word, Showtime has a good track record with strong leading ladies.


Sons of Anarchy - 7 September - FX
Though I have yet to watch The Shield, Kurt Sutter has created some great characters, and the writing has kept tensions high throughout all of last season. With the resolution of the Nazi gang last season, I wouldn't be surprised if SoA takes on another season-long storyarc this season.

Terriers - 8 September - FX
A new series costarring the dude who played Renée on the first season of True Blood, it's about a couple of misfits operating a makeshift detective agency. I don't have any reason to believe this will be good other than FX being one of those basic cable channels like AMC which I will try just about anything they put to series.

The Venture Bros. - 12 September - Cartoon Network

With Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! ending last Spring, The Venture Bros. is one of the few remaining Adult Swim shows I follow (aside from ATHF and - hopefully - Check it Out! With Steve Brule). Things got shook up this season, with Brock stepping back from regular status, the death of 24, and Sgt. Hatred pussyfooting all over the place, but there is still plenty of good humor to go around. Plus, I love the into music.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - 16 September - FX
After Seinfeld ended, there were a deluge of crappy sitcoms that directly tried to emulate their style, but I believe Sunny features the irrelevant storylines, callous characters, and wild situations to be as close as we dare to get to another Seinfeld while still pushing the boundaries for 2010.

The League - 16 September - FX

Given FX's previous willingness to attach whatever show featuring crude humor it could find to Sunny (I'm looking at you, Testees) I was reluctant to try The League. After becoming familiar with Paul Scheer through Human Giant, and learning that creator Jeff Scheer was a writer, director, and producer of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I gave it a try this morning. Despite my unfamiliarity with fantasy football, I found a much funnier show than I was expecting, a good pairing for Sunny, and I'm excited to see what a full season will look like.

Boardwalk Empire - 19 September - HBO
A new show from HBO, the first episode directed by Martin Scorcese, starring Steve Buscemi as a mafia boss in the days of 1920s prohibition in Atlantic City? There's no way this can't be good.

Chuck - 20 September - NBC
Chuck is one of those shows that I download but have yet to watch, but there's been enough positive buzz over the past three years, not to mention a Cinderella story with Subway for season 2, and with a failed Jay Leno Show for Season 3, have kept Chuck around for far longer than would be allowed at a more successful network.

How I Met Your Mother - 20 September - CBS

Until I get bored enough to start into The Big Bang Theory, HIMYM is the only CBS show I bother watching. Season 5 was pretty weak, choosing to feature more sitcom-y plots than furthering the story of The Mother, but Barney Stinson is a legen-dary character and the creators give me hope that Season 6 starts turning things around.





Parenthood - 21 September - NBC
Peter Krause, Craig T. Nelson, Mae Whitman, and Lauren Graham give Parenthood some serious television clout, and the first season more or less maintained the balance between the troubles of the families and the feelgood moments.

Glee - 21 September - FOX
The first of two seasons to be ordered by FOX before the show concluded its freshman season, Glee is a hot property right now. While I don't mind most musicals, I don't find the format for television quite as endearing. For the fast storylines and whiny archetypes, I appreciate the quirk, and I champion Jane Lynch's role as Sue Sylvester as the primary reason why I continue watching. She is an amazing comedic talent and it's too bad it's taken this long for it to be recognized.

Modern Family - 22 September - ABC

Tied for best new sitcom alongside Community, there's not much to say about the show aside from it being genuinely funny through and through - though I think it's at its best when the families are co-mingling.






Cougar Town - 22 September - ABC
Scrubs Med School may have flopped, but luckily that wasn't the only show Bill Lawrence had last season. Originally a pretty average sitcom about a woman trying to find sex with younger men, Cougar Town quickly evolved into a suburban ensemble comedy that was much funnier than the title would have you believe. Lawrence tried to change the title over the summer, but alas, we're still stuck with "Cougar Town."

Community - 23 September - NBC
An excellent first season featuring some great comedic talents, Community struggled but ultimately succeeded to straddle the line between pop culture references and storytelling (as well as two very attractive leading ladies). What's next? Keep the streak alive, plus more John Oliver.

Outsourced - 23 September - NBC
Sadly, Parks and Recreation is on hiatus until midseason because of Amy Poehler's baby, but NBC has been doing pretty well the past few years with Must-See TV Thursdays, and presumably they feel strongly enough about Outsourced to place it amongst these veterans. The premise is interesting enough - focusing on Indians who take over an American call center - if the show can set aside cheap "culture differentiation" jokes, if the characters are likable, and if the writing passes muster, it might be something worth watching. (There's a lot of qualifies in that last sentence)

The Office - 23 September - NBC
Last season was pretty weak, establishing and quickly abandoning storylines, and featuring a Michael Scott that was dumb even by Homer Simpsons standards, hopefully the announcement of Steve Carell leaving at the end of the season will spur some more thoughtful and fleshed-out writing for the popular series.

30 Rock - 23 September - NBC
30 Rock may not have had its best season last year, removing some believability from the characters and introducing the boring Wesley storyline, but we can still hope that as the show approaches its 100th episode, it might get a creative shot in the arm.

Eastbound and Down - 26 September - HBO

Though essentially a Ferrell-McKay character stretched to fill a six-episode season, Kenny Powers is an unapologetically great character, and I await Season 2, which will abandon the majority of the cast and setting as Kenny goes to Mexico to play for a local team.




Bored to Death - 26 September - HBO
About as far from Eastbound and Down in terms of theme, Bored to Death's first season was a little light on comedy, a bit heavy on the hipster side of New York, but featured some great performances from Jason Schwartzmann, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifinakis.

The Simpsons - 26 September - FOX
It's been on the air for nearly as long as I've been alive - it wouldn't be television without The Simpsons. As someone who's seen literally every episode, there has been a boon in creativity since The Movie, and I've been getting a good solid laugh or two from most every episode. Not bad for a show in its 22nd season.

In Treatment - October - HBO

Recently announced for October, it takes some damn good writing to carry a 30-minute serial drama that takes place entirely within a therapist's office, and I'm hoping Season 3 will continue to bring the high level of quality despite no longer having the Indian show to pattern itself off of.




Peep Show - Autumn - Channel 4
A long-running UK cult sitcom that is shot entirely from the POV perspective of one of the characters, Peep Show has an everything-goes-wrong element similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm. The entire series is available to watch on Hulu, if you're so inclined.

Good Eats - ? - Food Network
Scripps has no rhyme or reason as to when it shows new episodes of its Nighttime lineup, so I can assume that there will be some episodes shown in the fall, coming off of a sweet 7-week run a few weeks ago. Continuously entertaining and informative even after 14 seasons, I learn something new about cooking in every episode.

Food Wars - ? - Travel Channel
Another hammy food travel show in the vein of Man v Food, I haven't seen Food Wars in months, though I know they're still filming.

A lot of good television to be watched, for sure. This is just a snapshot for the season - there's going to be a dozen more for the midseason and summer seasons, too - but the point is that there is a very large amount of high quality television that is being produced today - you just have to go find it. I'm sure I'll find the time to watch them all, though this is the hardest time of year to keep up, especially given my profession, but I'll enjoy as much as I can. It's a great medium.

Android App Spotlight #16: CallTrack

Price: Free
AppBrain Link
Website

One of the great things about Google Voice and Gmail is that all of my communications are saved. While it's nice to have a record of every text message, voicemail, and email saved, phone calls themselves are fleeting. Who tried to call me last month? How long was my last conversation with my mother? Why is no one keeping track of these statistics?

CallTrack is a simple program that does one thing well: it logs every call and its duration to a Google Calendar. You can choose to log incoming, outgoing, and missed calls, and you can choose on which of your Google Calendars to save. That's all there is to it, but it serves as a means to fill the gap in your communications records.

Weeds Season 6 Preview

The new season of Weeds begins August 16th, and I was recently able to check out the first episode.

No one I know who likes Weeds speaks highly of seasons four and five, and it's easy to see why: the show began as a suburban comedy about a widowed wife who turns to selling weed to support her family, but at the end of the third season, the show decided to set suburbia literally up in flames and start anew with a bit of Mexican flare. Add some ganglords and a baby, and the lighthearted show many appreciated turned into a pitch black "comedy" about a woman who makes increasingly poor decisions*.

*In this respect, the show reminds me of Breaking Bad, as both main characters begin their stories as seemingly decent people who were forced into selling drugs as means to survive. Over the course of their respective shows, however, after being presented with plenty of opportunities to do the right thing for both themselves and their families, they choose to push forward into situations that bring them increasingly closer to their self-destruction. 


Fortunately, from the teaser trailer released by Showtime a few weeks ago, it looks like the Botwins might be separating themselves from the Mexicans, starting what is sure to be an arc-long chase resolving itself in the finale:



And the first episode seems to start these events in motion, with the family packing up their old life and separating the remaining ties to Ren Mar - essentially Andy breaking up with Alanis Morrisette and the rest of the family coming to terms with Shane's murder of Pilar. While everyone treats it lightheartedly, there wasn't much by way of big laughs throughout the episode, the jokes failing to connect under the dark cloud of Nancy coming to terms with how her life is about to change yet again, and why these things continue to happen to her. It's sad, because the audience can see why, and the it's frustrating to watch just how stupid this woman can be.

Regardless of how good or different seasons four and five may be in comparison to seasons one through three, I can't help but respect the brave decision to change the show's focus three years into a successful sitcom. It's a bit incredible to believe that in five years a nice suburban mother of two has become a drug smuggler on the lam from hitmen with her illegitimate child of a Mexican mob boss, a homicidal son, a different, drug-dealing son, and an infatuated brother-in-law. I partly watch because I'm invested this much time already, and partially because I hope it will get better. There's no way a person in real life would be able to escape this much peril time and time again, but if I wanted to watch real life, I'd turn on Shark Week.

For Dinner: Chinese Short Ribs with Long Beans

Long Beans are in season, and I was surprised to see that my local Dillon's had some on sale (though not cheap, at $4.69 per pound), so I grabbed some while I had the chance, with an epicurious recipe in mind. I wanted to continue the Chinese theme, so I found a Tyler Florence recipe for short ribs to accompany them.

The peanuts worked well with the beans - though given Serious Eats' writeup, I was expecting a significantly different flavor than regular green beans. I don't really like ribs, though - they're typically hard to eat, and these were no different. I managed to cut a few ribs for myself, but there was still a lot of fat remaining that I was not interested in eating, and I dreaded trying to salvage the meat from the remaining half rack for my leftovers, so I ended up just throwing them away. The flavor was nicely complex from the five spice rub and the glaze, though a bit salty - something I take responsibility for, given that I only had full-salt soy sauce, not the low sodium the recipe required.

Android App Spotlight #15: Rdio

Price: Free, with $9.99/month subscription

Website

Back during my freshman year of college I recall getting turned on to this new service called "Rhapsody" which allowed you to play any song you wanted via the desktop client of your computer. It wasn't the only service of its kind at the time, and since then the space has grown further. I stopped using the service within a year (and stopped paying for the service a year or two afterwards, because I completely forgot to cancel my subscription), because I had my ample iTunes music collection to allow me to listen to anything I wanted. The service would be nice for trying new music without having to buy, but because I'm adept at the internet, I can discover most any music to try without paying the $15 a month.

Today, my music collection is 175GB strong, and I still have no desire to pay to stream a compressed song over my desktop speakers. My phone, on the other hand, is a different story. Music apps like Pandora and Last.fm are popular on both Android and iOS, and while they can provide an easy way to introduce you to new music based on algorithms, you don't have too much say in which song plays next. Given the ubiquity of 3G, and the lack of 175GB microSD cards, I can't carry most of my music with me, so streaming once again becomes an option worth considering.

Rdio is a new social music service currently in invitation-only beta. It offers the music library of streaming services like Rhapsody, but also some social aspects like Last.fm. More importantly, the service offers a way to sync the music on your desktop into the service - similar to the gone-but-not-forgotten Lala, so provided Rdio has the rights to it, it is automatically entered into your collection. Even more importantly, there's a pretty slick Android app, which not only looks better than the stock Android music player, but also offers the ability to sync songs to your phone for offline play.

It's still a new service, so there are some problems - after syncing my desktop music, I have the same album listed sometimes three times in my collection, and others with notes in the song titles - particularly in rap albums - might not match the song title that Rdio has it listed, so I have to search and manually add those tracks. Other albums were added to my collection, despite the fact that Rdio doesn't have the rights to them, so I can't play them - this angers me more than it should. 

I have a 16GB microSD card in my Nexus One now, and about half of that is filled with albums I'm listening to at the moment, but there's been more than one occasion when I'm in my car and want to listen to a song but I forgot to put it on the card. Provided Rdio offers it, I think this will be a useful service, though I'm not sure if it's useful enough to justify the cost of subscription. I think others who aren't as reliant on their offline music collection might find it immediately more useful. Lifehacker has a good rundown of the features if you're interested in learning more.