So here is how I imagine the interview process goes:

After the bus finishes driving around gathering candidates no younger than 68 years old, they are put in a room to be interviewed one at a time.

“Thanks for being interested in our position, I just have a few questions. First, are you strong enough to push a shopping cart?”

“Well, barely, I would have to move very slowly, but I can get it going if I try hard enough.”

“Perfect. Are you free during the hours of 9am and 4pm? This is the best time to fill the grocery store with our team members.”

“Yes, our Bingo game doesn’t start until 5pm.”

“Great. Now, I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been in school, but we need people who are strong in geometry and trigonometry. Are you good at that stuff?”

“Why?”

“Well, we need people who are good at geometry to be able to locate the exact exact center of the aisles, so they can leave their cart precisely there – making it impossible for anyone to get by. And we need people who know their trigonometry to be able to trace out a sine curve with their cart as they are slowly pushing it along an aisle and actually moving.”

“Oh, that makes sense, I guess. I have to say I wasn’t that strong in math, but I remember the fundamentals.”

“We also have a training program, in case you need to brush the dust off, so that’s no problem. Now move over here to our mock aisle set up, where a cart is already placed exactly in the center of a a mini aisle, and there is a can of spinach on the shelf nearby. Please have a look at that can of spinach. Can you read the first item on the list of ingredients?”

“Well, let me get over there …. Sure. It says ‘water’ “.

“Sigh. I’m sorry to let you know that you are not qualified for our position after all.”

“Really? That’s disappointing. Why not?”

“Because you were able to read the list of ingredients right away. You did really well in not attempting to move the cart out of the way in either direction, that was ideal. But then when you picked up the can of spinach, you were able to read the ingredients right away. You did not need to tilt the can in multiple different directions, or even try to move it into better light or exchange it with a different can. Also, you showed great awareness of your surroundings as you moved from the chair over to here, and that did not display the level of utter obliviousness that we usually require.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, unfortunately, when our business is to make sure people shopping in the middle of the day are constantly blocked by slow oblivious people and prevented from getting around them in the aisles, and so forcing them to take longer looks at the shelves, and possibly see more stuff to buy, we have to stick to our exacting standards. Even the slightest lapse might allow one of these people to get through the store faster than they should. We just can’t have that.”

“Well, I certainly understand.”

“Thank you for your time, and good luck. NEXT!!”

Since the start of the summer, I have been on a horror flick spree.  It’s pretty much over now since I’ve exhausted my local video store, and I’m recycling the same recommendations on Netflix.  Here are the final results, in terms of which ones are recommended, mildly recommended, not quite recommended but heck you may like them anyway, and films I recommend you avoid.  If you are a fan of the genre, you know that it can be hard to find the diamonds in the dung, and so you can imagine that my list of not-recommended films is the longest one.  It was the first time I’d seen most of these films, but I’d seen a few (The Omen, The Thing, etc) a long time ago.  There are some films in here that probably shouldn’t be, since they’re not directly horror, like Contagion or Cold Fish.  Too bad.  There are some films I probably should like more than I did, like Tenebrae.  Too bad.  There are some I probably liked more than I should have, like Grave Encounters.  Too bad.  None of the movies have comments specific to them, but they all have a link to their IMDB pages.

Recommended

Absentia            
Apartment 143
Attack the Block
Autopsy  (Horrorfest III)
Battle Royale
The Caller
Chawz
The Cabin in the Woods
Contagion
Doghouse
Dorm
Excision
Grave Encounters
Hatchet
Hidden (Horrorfest IV)
The Host
The Omen
The Pact
Perkins’ 14 (Horrorfest III)
Pontypool
Prince of Darkness
Red
The Thing
Tucker & Dale vs Evil
Visitor Q              

Mildly Recommended

Atrocious
The Beyond
The Children (Ghost House Underground)
Claustrofobia
Cold Fish
Cookers
Devil’s Playground
The Dead                              
Feast
The Fog
Husk
Laddaland
Population 436
Premonition
The Reeds (Horrorfest IV)
The Road
Splinter
Stake Land
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
V/H/S
Wait Until Dark
The Woman

Watch At Your Own Risk 
(i.e. well, you may find something to like in them, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Ashes
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Bitter Feast
Black Death
Blood Creek
The Butterfly Effect 3 (Horrorfest III)
The Cottage
Dying Breed  (Horrorfest III)
Fragile
Frontier(s) (Horrorfest II)
The Gravedancers (Horrorfest I)
The Hamiltons (Horrorfest I)
The Hazing
The Haunting (Fangoria Fright Fest)
Haywire
The Hole
The House By the Cemetery
Infection
Kill List
Lake Dead (Horrorfest 2007)
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu
Lovely Molly
Mutants
Night of the Living Dorks
Outpost
Phenomena
Salvage
7 Days
The Shrine
Slaughter (Horrorfest III)
Truth or Die
Unrest (Horrorfest I)
The Woman in Black
Zombies of Mass Destruction (Horrorfest IV)

Not Recommended

The Abandoned (Horrorfest I)
Asylum Blackout
Bedeviled
Bruiser
Chained
Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2
C.H.U.D.
The Clinic
Conjurer
Crazy Eights (Horrorfest 2007)
The Deaths of Ian Stone (Horrorfest 2007)
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
Dread (Horrorfest IV)
The Echo
Evidence of a Haunting
Exit Humanity
Exorcismo
Exorcismus
The Ferryman
Fertile Ground
The Final (Horrorfest IV)
The Ghostmaker
The Graves (Horrorfest IV)
Grimm Love (Fangoria Fright Fest)
The Hanging Woman
Hell
The Innkeepers
Isolation
Kill Theory (Horrorfest IV)
Laid to Rest
Lake Mungo (Horrorfest IV)
The Last Winter
Mulberry St (Horrorfest 2007)
Nightmare Man (Horrorfest 2007)
Outcast
Paranoia 1.0
Perfect Host
Paranormal Activity 3
Phase 7
Rammbock: Berlin Undead
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
REC 3: Genesis
Seconds Apart
Shrooms
The Silent House
Tenebrae
The Thaw (Ghost House Underground)
Tooth and Nail (Horrorfest 2007)
The Tunnel
Unearthed (Horrorfest 2007)
Walled In
Yellowbrickroad

A Special Prize for the Worst

The Shadows  

Now that I have this internet thing all figured out, my access to entertainment is mostly unlimited.  But to protect my brain from being overwhelmed, I still like to select my entertainment items by browsing – not through Google, but the old fashioned way: with my eyeballs scanning shelves.  I like having a subset of possible entertainments already defined, and I like the uncertainty and spontaneity that goes along with browsing – perhaps I think I know what book or movie I’m looking for, but if it is not there, I get to go to Plan B on the spur of the moment.  This is the antithesis of the Netflix queue, in which you can make all of your entertainment decisions for the next several years in one 10 minute sitting.

I like going into Barnes and Noble without any idea of what I will eventually buy.  I hate it when I ask for a particular title and – if it’s not in stock – they offer to order it on-line for me.  I can do that myself, dammit, and I won’t have to waste another trip to the store to pick it up; if I wanted it delivered to my doorstep, I would have done that in the first place.  Have it on your shelves, so I have the choice of whether to get it or not on any given day I’m in the store!

So lately I have been on a horror movie kick, and our local Family Video has lots of horror movies on their shelves.  In fact, there are too many to watch them all.  And as any horror fan knows, the quality of horror films is …. somewhat varied.  So I’ve come up with a system to combine my need to browse with my aversion to having 90 minutes of my life wasted by something like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  In case anyone wants to compare notes, here is my system.

I go into Family Video with an idea of what 2-3 films I want to rent, based on the last application of my system.  (As a mathy person, it’s important to work in an iterative scheme.)  First, I look for those films.  If they are in, great,  If not, I should have a back-up or two in mind.  Then, I jot down the names of several (8-10) interesting-looking horror films in the neighboring shelf area.  (I used to note titles on my phone, but that got annoying, so now I just use pencil and paper.  I’ve also thought about just taking a picture of the shelf, but I’m not sure I could read all the titles from the photo.  And I don’t think they would like it if I took the title cards out of the plastic boxes to take home with me.)  As I’m scanning films to write down, I immediately exclude anything rated PG13 or lower, anything with a number in the title denoting a sequel, anything with a letter in the title replaced by a numeral that is turned backwards, and anything starring Tom Sizemore.  This usually leaves me with lots of movies with names like “Morgue Eaters”, “The Stalker Stalker” or “Bitches Die”.  And the cover usually shows a screaming female with her hand stretched out like you are supposed to pull her through a portal and into the safety of the video store.

I go home with my handy list and get on the internet.  Why don’t I just do my searching on the internet to begin with?  Well, that’s too random, Family Video doesn’t have a web page showing their current inventory in the store, and it skirts the pleasure of being able to browse a shelf as I already discussed above – what’s the matter with you, didn’t you read that?

Once on the internet, I head for IMDB and look up each movie.  Anyone familiar with IMDB knows that movies are rated by visitors to the site on a 10-point scale, and the resulting average is displayed.  Oscar winners usually come in with an average above 8.0.  For example, The King’s Speech and The Artist both have a rating of 8.2.  On the other hand, really crappy mainstream movies usually rate at 4 or below.  For example, The Hottie and the Nottie rates a 1.9.  But where do horror films fit into that scheme?  Well, the really well known good ones can have a pretty high score: The Exorcist rates 8.1, and Psycho rates an 8.7.  But these are not the kind of films I am browsing at Family Video; those are often direct-to-DVD films or something shot on a budget equal to the cost of a professional athlete’s shoelace.

Many, many wasted hours of my life have led to empirical data that if a generic off-the-shelf horror flick from the video store rates higher than a 5.0 on IMDB, it is probably worth 90 minutes of my time.  It may not be cinematic gold, but there is probably something worth while about it.  Perhaps it’s extra distance of the arterial spray, minimal reliance on BOO!-OH-IT-WAS-JUST-A-CAT moments, or a good even number of boobs on display.  So on my list of tentative watchable movies, I keep anything rating higher than a 5 on IMDB.  On the other hand, anything less than a 4 is automatically scratched.   Sometimes bad horror films are just plain bad, not so bad they’re good.

Those movies rating between a 4 and 5 require further research.  IMDB also provides links to User Reviews and Critics Reviews. User Reviews aren’t very reliable, since even the worst movies can get good user reviews, especially from relatives and pets of the director and leading stars.  But Critics Reviews often take me to web sites containing reviews by actual horror fans – examples of such sites are Bloody Good Horror, Best Horror Movies, Dread Central, and Bloody Disgusting.  If I can find a couple of sites that recommend the movie, then it is probably worth seeing.

And there you go.  With this system, I usually come up with about 1 in every 5 horror movies on the shelf at Family Video being worth watching.  This system isn’t perfect – as an example, this post led off with Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark as an example of an awful horror movie, but it gets a 5.6 at IMDB.  However, this was a mainstream theatrical horror release, not one of many independent or direct-to-DVD flicks.

Some not-so-well-known movies I’ve seen recently that I can recommend include:

Splinter, Claustrofobia, The Gravedancers, The Woman, Absentia, Husk, Population 436

As of today (July 20, 2012), the next few movies I’ve identified as ones to grab and see are:

Atrocious, Stake Land, Mutants, Grave Encounters.

If anyone tries to use this system, it does come with one WARNING!  Sometimes horror films aren’t titled very imaginatively.  For example, try using “Possession” as a keyword in IMDB.  Good luck finding the one you really want.  Recently I got fooled by not minding the details; I got home with my chicken-scratch written list of titles to check out, and looked up a movie called “Shadows”.  First, there are lots of movies with this as either the exact title, or very close.  I found this link for a movie called “Shadows”, which got a 6.6.  And holy crap, a cheapo horror film with a 6.6 rating has to be just awesome.  As I searched IMDB, I did not remember what the box at the store looked like, but the title I had written down was “Shadows”, and the release date in the IMDB listing was about right for a movie on the shelf in the store.  So the next time I went to the store, I got that movie, and brought it home to watch.  And the movie I saw was one of the worst films ever.  It was like watching the raw footage of a rehearsal for a bad horror film, shot in someone’s grandma’s house because it sort of looked like a lighthouse (which is where the story was set).  The sound was bad, the lighting was bad, the script was bad, the acting was bad, and there were no boobs.  I ended up giving this movie a “0” on my own personal scale of 0 through 4 (1 = don’t bother, 2 = meh, 3 = recommended, with each modified by +/-).  In 18 years of tracking my own movie watching, I have rated 1770 movies, and have given fewer than 10 scores of 0; even the worst of the worst movies have something in them, say an effective minute or two, or a moment that made me giggle a bit, to warrant at least a “1-“.  This movie got a 0.  Who were those people who gave it an average of 6.6, were they on crack?  Well, as they say in the NFL, upon further review, it turns out that the movie at the store which I rented and watched was this one, called THE Shadows.  The similarity in the name fooled me because I didn’t pay attention.  (Note to film-makers: PLEASE give your movie a unique name!) Now even this one gets a 5.0 on IMDB, but you’ll note that only 15 people have rated this gem, whereas over 1,000 have rated the other “Shadows”.   Those 15 people are probably friends of the filmmakers.

I’m about half-way through the shelves at Family Video.  Wish me luck with the rest!

I have always loved good horror films.  My experience has been that there are three ways a horror film can be appealing. (1) It can give me a good case of the heebie-jeebies, either through unexpected scares, or the buildup of a sense of unease through pacing and imagery – examples would be The Exorcist, The Changeling, or The Ring.  (2) It can develop a sense of overwhelming dread and despair; “There is no hope”.  These are often things like Romero’s early zombie films.  (3) It can be a pure gorefest, and the best kinds usually come with a good, but twisted, sense of humor.   The Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive are prime examples.

It also seems that there are two things a horror film can do to start off in a good or bad direction right away.  If the story is established in a unique or interesting setting, then the film is already on the right path – the question is, will that opportunity be squandered?  Although I have not seen it yet, the new film The Chernobyl Diaries looks like – based on reviews – an example of a movie that squanders the opportunity of its setting.  On the other hand, the worst thing a horror film can do is open with “Look, some wacky college friends are going on a road trip together!  Gosh, whatever will happen to them!”  If the film opens this way, there had better be some very unique and unexpected events in store for the characters.

It has been a while since I discovered a good horror film, and I have been pining for the days of marathons of zombie flicks or obscure foreign horror films.  So, I decided to go on a horror hunt.  Rather than grab random titles, I decided to go through the movies from the After Dark Horrorfest series, AKA Ëight Films to Die For – this was a film festival during the summers of 2006 – 2009 where theaters showed eight different movies over a short time period.  Our local Family Video has many of the films from this series, so I went through all the ones available.  And now I am here to report my findings!

Of the 32 films in the four runs of this series, our local video store had 19.  They had none from the festival’s first year, all of the final year (Horrorfest IV), and incomplete sets of II and III.  I found a few that can highly recommend, a few that are fun candy, and a lot that I cannot recommend.  Let’s go from best to worst.  The best movies, which I highly recommend depending on your tastes, are:

1. Hidden (from Horrorfest IV, 2009)
2. Autopsy (from Horrorfest III, 2008)
3. Perkins” 14 (from Horrorfest III, 2008)

Hidden shows that Norwegians not only make great heavy metal, but great horror films, too.  This movie is not jump-out-of-your-seat scary, but has a very good horrific story that is slowly unveiled as the film goes on.  At several points in the film, what you think you know gets turned on its head.

Autopsy is horribly misnamed.  Yes, it takes place in a hospital and involves involuntary surgeries, but there are no actual autopsies. In fact, the characters who are the major players and anchors of the plot are never dead.  It should be called “Donors” – you’ll know why after you watch it. This is a joyful splatterfest that takes pride in its gruesomeness, and has many moments of sick humor – you know, when you laugh hard at something and then wonder what sort of terribly sick person laughs at something like that!  The story devolves into a bit too much of “random people stalking or being stalked through arbitrary hallways in a building”, but its strengths make up for that.  And it stars Robert Patrick, who apparently lost a bet or was doing someone a favor.

Perkins’ 14 is a good story that takes a marvelous swerve about half-way through.  Take an episode of Criminal Minds, add in a bit of 28 Days Later, and I won’t say anymore.  Just watch it.

The “what the hell, watch these if you have some spare time” include:

1. Lake Dead (Horrorfest II, 2007)
2. Tooth and Nail (Horrorfest II, 2007)
3. Slaughter (Horrorfest III, 2008)
4. The Reeds (Horrorfest IV, 2009)
5. Zombies of Mass Destruction (Horrorfest IV, 2009)

Lake Dead *almost* got into my list of strong recommendations, but not quite.  However, of these three, it’s the one I would suggest first. It’s your usual road trip movie that ends badly for everyone involved, and the whole movie is spent waiting to see who gets it next.  But this film takes such joy in its plot and has enough twisted moments that you may find it worth your time.  Or not.

Tooth and Nail has a great post apocalyptic set-up, but then devolves into way too much of the random running around  for no reason in the empty hallways of a large deserted building – you know, rather than just getting the hell out of there.  Too much running in circles and stupidity on the part of the characters brings the film down, but it gets points for a nifty set up.

Slaughter has some of the best acting of any of the Horrorfest movies, at least by the two main leads, but ultimately it’s not enough to carry the film.  The payoff isn’t strong enough.

The Reeds has an interesting setting, a somewhat clever back story that develops, and a really cool pseudo-time-travel (or at least time-looping) element to some of the events in the film.  I give the writers props for trying something a bit different, but overall, I don’t know that it holds together well.

Zombies of Mass Destruction turns out to be “just another” zombie flick.  It has some really funny moments and great dialog, but that competes with very uneven special effects and editing.  It also plays nicely with some stereotypes to present something new.  However, some of the jokes and scenarios in the film wear out their welcome and drag on too long.  (As a side note, I peeked at some user reviews on IMDB for this one, and saw a couple mention a “clever twist” – but I don’t know what twist that was supposed to be, nothing unexpected ever happens.)

Here are the rest, that I can’t recommend.

This Memorial Day weekend marked my first anniversary of reading comic books.  Well, maybe it did.  I wish I had noted the actual date the first time I walked into Galactic Greg’s in Valparaiso and purchased my first comic book (Hawkeye: Blindspot #1), but I know it was early summer – by the academic calendar, not the Julian one – and so what the hell, let’s call it Memorial Day weekend.   Here are some of the things I’ve learned in this first year.

1.  Comics are like crack for people with collector mentalities.  I have always collected things – cans, stamps, books, CDs – and the publishers of comics know exactly how to exploit this.  They number everything!  Monthly issues of comics are numbered, and so are the collections released in trade paperback format.  This is just evil.  Once you start gathering together a few numbered things, it becomes necessary to make sure you have all the numbers in order. Suppose a musical group has some albums named Crumpled Lunchbox, Green Bruschetta, A Flock of Knit Scarves, and The Laundry Basket Follies.   It may not bother you much if you were missing Green Bruschetta, but if their CDs were named simply 1, 2, 3, and 4, and you were missing 2,  you would go to extremes to make sure you filled in that gap.  The smart people who publish comics exploit this.  The bastards.  Ironically, for all the numbering they do on the outside of the books, they do not number the pages inside.

2) 2011 was a good time to start reading comics.  A lot of Marvel series were restarting with #1 issues, such as Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Moon Knight, Punisher, Uncanny X Men, Wolverine and the X Men, The Mighty Thor, Captain America, and Venom.  (I tried most of these; Moon Knight and Ghost Rider eventually got cancelled.) DC was going to relaunch everything, starting all over at #1 for 52  titles.  Dark Horse was firing up some new versions of older comics, such as Magnus: Robot Fighter, Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom, and Turok: Son of Stone (all of these have now been called off).

3) I’m a Marvel man.  There are many either/or questions out there:  Cubs or White Sox?  PC or Mac?  Ford or Chevy?  Rare or well done?  Ginger or Mary Ann?  In the comic world, it’s: Marvel or DC?   This is not a question of exclusivity, but more that you just develop preferences – and while there are some DC titles I enjoy, I have developed a noted preference for Marvel.  This might be because I held off on reading DC comics until their relaunch of all their titles starting in August 2011, and by that time I had grown to like many Marvel series.  But I think that in general, Marvel characters are more likable, the books often display a broader spectrum of humor, and the overall Marvel universe seems richer.

4) Give everything a try.  Or, don’t judge a book by its cover – literally.  Regardless of how silly the premise or strange looking the book, don’t dismiss something superficially.  Right now, one of my favorite titles is DC’s Swamp Thing – but at first I dismissed the book, thinking , “How good can a series about a green, gooey, slimy monster be?”  And then I saw the first several issues getting rave reviews, so I gave it a try – and now it’s one of my favorites.   No premise is too ridiculous, it’s all about how adept the writers and artists are at handling it.

5) Dig for gold.  Outside the Marvel and DC worlds, there is a wealth of other material to explore, and that is where many of the true gems are found.  This is the same as in the music and literary worlds, too.  Once you look past the best seller lists and pop phenomenon, you start getting to the really good stuff.  I think by now, some Dark Horse titles like Hellboyand the Star Wars tie-ins are very mainstream, but others – like the Hellboy offshoot BPRD – are still somewhat in the shadows.  Other more independent titles I am hooked on are The Sixth Gun, Chew, and Invincible.  More experienced comic afficianados will probably laugh at that and point to a cornucopia of more obscure titles out there, and I may find them someday – but for now, I feel like I’m doing well  at exploring in the wings.

In all, it has been a good year.  I have seen my tastes evolve towards non-ultra-superhero characters.   I imagine there is also an argument about what constitutes a superhero, but I distinguish a true Superhero (capital S) as a character who can do just about everything and is nearly invincible (not Invincible).  So yes, I’m talking about Superman and the like.  I do not find those characters interesting.  The ones I like better are superheroes (lower case s) who are merely people with “mad skillz” at something, originating through a strange twist of fate or simple life-long training.  So clearly I much prefer Batman to Superman.  One of my very favorite characters so far is Hawkeye – perhaps because a Hawkeye book was what got me started in all of this, but more because he’s just a dude who is really good at something.  He has flaws and is vulnerable.   His victories are obtained through cunning and skill, not just by punching the villain in the face harder than the villain is punching back.

Why do I like comics so much, at least so far?   First, it’s because I can finish a complete story in a short amount of time.  I used to devour books at a fast rate.  But with age, growing kids, and an inability to stay awake past 9pm while reading, it’s harder to find the time to plow through hundreds of pages of writing.  But I can read a single issue of a comic in about ten minutes.    That’s the length of time I can lay in bed at night before falling asleep, or the duration of a good bowel movement!  Second, the stories can just be fun, but also with deep themes and emotional hooks when written well.   Thirdly, I have a great appreciation for the act of creation of a comic book, because it’s something I could never do myself.  I could probably write a book if I tried – or at least, given enough time and coffee, I could go through the act of typing out 400 pages of text – as long as quality wasn’t an issue.  And with music, I figure if I had enough time to devote to it, I could learn to play an instrument at a novice level.  But in both endeavors, there are people with gifts – a writer or musician – I could just never match, no matter how much preparation I had.  And in comics, I find the same thing in the art.  My 8 and 10 year old daughters can already draw better pictures than me; a skill for drawing is just something I never tapped into.  And so when I read comics, I get to look at images that I would never, ever be able to create myself – and that’s a pretty awesome thing.

SoI have finally unleashed that last segment if inner nerd that was hiding inside.  I’ve done all the other stereotypical stuff to some degree – fantasy books, sci-fi, roleplaying games, video games.  Mywife blames my newfound interest in comics on The Big Bang Theory and its scenes in a comic shop.  I blame it on that, and the ProgPower USA message boards, where people who share similar musical tastes have started threads on comics, too.  I’m looking forward to another year of fun and spending!

Let’s take an inventory of all the TV shows that we like to watch as a family. This is more complicated than it seems, since there are four of us – leading to a complicated Venn diagram of shows each individual likes to watch, with some overlaps, and few shows in the intersection of all four.

Joy (8 yrs) mostly likes various Nickelodeon shows such as Spongebob Squarepants, iCarly, Victorious, Winx Club, and so on. Melody (10) likes some of these, but not all. Kathy likes the pre-teen / teen shows like iCarly. I like watching Spongebob with the kids, because I see it as holding the position of a modern Bugs Bunny – superficially aimed at kids, but with humor that adults can enjoy, too. Kathy does not want to watch Spongebob. Spoilsport.

Melody likes Big Time Rush, and several Disney shows like Jessie, Good Luck Charlie, and A.N.T. Farm. Joy also likes most of these, but they are not appealing to us adults. She pretends not to like Spongebob, but oddly won’t leave the room when it’s on.

Kathy likes to watch hours of Criminal Minds reruns in a row, and various reality shows involving animals (the Dog Whisperer) or people who act like animals (Hoarders). No one else likes those.

I like sports, sports, and sports. Sometimes I even tune back into pro wrestling to see if it has changed at all since I last watched devotedly in the early 2000’s. (It has not.) I watch Fringe out of habit (see another post about that one!) Other than that, I watch animation – Family Guy, South Park, Robot Chicken. No one else wants to watch the shows I do with real people, and the kids are not allowed to watch the animation I like.

Together, Kathy and I watch 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Big Bang Theory, and Modern Family. We watch these after the kids are in bed.

All in all, it looks like we fail at the American past time of watching TV as a family.  And this is true, with the exception of one show:  Chopped, on the Food Network!  This is a show where chefs compete to make the best courses in a meal (appetizer, entree, and dessert) using ingredients they do not know about ahead of time.  I have no idea what the magic of this show is, but all four of us like to watch it together.  The girls like to pick a favorite contestant at the start of the show, and root for him or her (usually a her) as the show goes on. They generally are in favor of chefs who do not have crazy hair and are not too obnoxious or full of themselves.  (I personally don’t like the chefs who present themselves as exaggerated cartoon characters.)  The girls also root for judges on the show.  Their favorites are Amanda Freitag and Alex Guarnaschelli.  If one of them is introduced by host Ted Allen,  the living room erupts in shouts of “Yay, Amanda!” or “Yay, Alex!” They are mostly indifferent to male judges, except for Geoffrey Zakarian, who they have decided is kind of a meanie who doesn’t like spicy food.

This show has affected our own dinner time; sometimes, the girls will critique one of the meals Kathy or I have made, as if they are judges on Chopped.  It has also made them slightly more experimental with the food they’re willing to try, which is a good thing.  Melody actually ate a dish made last week with kale and tofu!  (She doused it with soy sauce first, but hey, it takes what it takes.)  It has made me more willing to just grab something random from the produce section of the grocery store and decide what the hell I’m going to do with it later on.

My favorite aspect of the show is watching the contestants who choose to support each other even though they are competitors, rather than act like complete jerkfaces as do contestants on other reality shows.  (Often the players on Chopped will talk about how they are the best in the competition, and the other chefs are lame and inferior, but often I believe that’s at the encouragement of the directors.)  I think there’s a lesson in there about how there can still be respect and support among people even though they are vying for a common goal, and maybe the girls can apply that to their own interactions.

There is no studio audience for Chopped, but man, I imagine that room smells really good after a 20-30 minute round of cooking.  I wish they could find a way to bottle it!

Having finished the last episode of Season 4 of Fringe, I realize that I have been watching the entire season out of momentum and habit rather than interest.  I just have not cared about what has been happening for a while, and now I know why – the writers of the show told me not to care.  For quite a good portion of Season 4, Peter kept telling Olivia and Walter that they were not his Olivia and Walter, and that he needed to get back to his own timeline.  And all the while, we were shown stories involving this temporary Olivia and temporary Walter.  But as Peter kept saying, these were not his, and thus not our, Olivia and Walter.  They may have looked, acted, and quacked like Olivia and Walter, but they were not the genuine articles – so why should I care about what’s happening to them?

And then, in the latter half of the season, the writers whipped up some hocus-pocus to give this temporary Olivia all of the original Olivia’s memories, declaring, well, guess what!, we’ll go ahead and now stick with these folks as the real Olivia and Walter for the duration.  Now care about them!  We won’t be going back to the first timeline after all.

Well, that doesn’t work.   These are still not the original Olivia and Walter.  They are replacement characters.  They are scabs.  And I don’t care about them.  I don’t care that David Robert Jones is trying to wreck this universe, too, because I’ve only been enduring this universe until we got taken back to the first one – which apparently isn’t going to happen now.    What about the real Olivia’s sister?  What about the real Olivia’s neice?   What about the original William Bell?  What about the cow, dammit ?!?