A week of absence

I just walked in the door from a week long road trip to Texas. My sister and her husband moved to Dallas in August and this was the second time this year that I have been down to see them. This trip also marked my 11,000th mile on road trips this year alone! One trip was 7,700 miles all by itself. That helps explain the title of my blog, Terra Nomad. More on travel later...

TV on DVD

Sports Night - ABC and then Comedy Central - Written By Aaron Sorkin - Sabrina Lloyd (Natalie) and Joshua Malina (Jeremy), Felicity Huffman(Dana) and Peter Krause (Casey), Josh Charles (Dan) and Teri Polo (Rebecca) - Ted McGinley, Greg Baker- William H Macy (married to Huffman?) guest starred. I started watching this when it was on ABC. Whenever a fan talks about this show, it's usually something like, "I am not a sports fan at all, but the show isn't really about sports." It's a dramatic look at the making of a 'Sports Center'-like show, with a lot of comedy and some romance thrown in. Robert Guillaum plays Issac, the boss and father figure. He had a stroke during the show's run and they wrote it in to the series. It was cancelled after one and a half seasons Both Seasons are out on DVD in one set.


Six Feet Under - HBO - Peter Krause (Nate), Lauren Ambrose (Claire), Michael C Hall (David), Rachel Griffiths (Brenda), Frances Conroy (Ruth). A show about a family-run funeral home, Fisher & Sons. Peter Krause again shines as the central character who is uneasy about death and his own mortality, yet feels the need to help run the business after his fathers death. Each episode starts with someone's death, and the corpse usually ends up at Fisher & Sons. They have to contend with being a small fish in a big pond, and stand up to a conglomerate, Kroehner, that keeps trying to take them over. Ruth is the matriarch who plays the victim pretty well. Claire (my favorite) is the youngest child, the angst-ridden 17 year-old only daughter. David is the obedient middle-child who finally came out to his family after his father died. Keith is his on-again off-again boyfriend who has family problems of his own. Federico (you might have seen him in Can't Hardly Wait, with Lauren Ambrose) works at the funeral home to support his wife, Vanessa, and two kids. Nate's girlfriend, Brenda, brings a even crazier family into the mix. It gets complicated, but her parents are shrinks that enjoy screwing with people's heads and her brother Billy is just plain wacko (well, so is she). Her mother is my second favorite character and is played by Joanna Cassidy the boss from 'Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead'. Her character is hilarious! Robert Foxworth, aka Chase from Falcon Crest plays her father, but he's not much of a character.

Season One is out on DVD. I have also seen Season Two on VHS (from some friends), but there is no word on a DVD release date. I also saw a season 3 episode by accident, which has ruined some surprises for me.

Grounded for Life

I hate hate hate Malcolm in the Middle. I always have. There is a much better show that gets the whole dysfunctional family thing right: "Grounded for Life". Today's episode was a great example: Lily's boyfriend Brad accidently sees Claudia, the mom naked and the middle child, Jimmy needs to start wearing deodorant (he's becoming a man) and the parents have a hard time telling him. The uncle, Eddie used to be my favorite character, but I think the daughter Lily is getting to be the funniest one. Last week's episode was about her drinking and the parents thought she had driven home and were upset. I know this might all sound kind of preachy, but they always make it funny, and not at al after-school-specially. It's kind of like an middle-class Irish-Catholic version of Roseanne.

Troy

I guess the preview for this is being played with the new Matrix movie:

Troy

Synopsis: In 1193 B.C., Prince Paris (Bloom) of Troy stole the beautiful Greek woman, Helen (Kruger), away from her husband, Menelaus, the king of Sparta, setting the two nations at war with each other, as the Greeks began a bloody siege of Troy using their entire armada, led by Achilles (Pitt), that lasted over a decade.

Starring:
Brad Pitt
Orlando Bloom
Peter O'Toole
Diane Kruger
Sean Bean
Saffron Burrows
Julie Christie
Brian Cox
Brendan Gleeson
Garrett Hedlund
Director:
Wolfgang Petersen

Pitt and Bloom? Talk about Eye Candy!

Damn that's cool!

If you haven't seen the White Stripes video for 'The Hardest Button to Button', you need to go see it. I saw it on AOL, but you can probably get it on Yahoo or download it. I don't know if they are playing it on VH1 or not. That's where I first saw the video for 'Seven Nation Army' It's the better song, but Button's video is cooler.