Happy Memorial Day!

Wow, time sure flies when you are listening to the world's worst student presentations for five days straight! The picture above is directed to them, although it might be a useful message for us all. Anyway, I apologize that I was unable to provide you my weekly update last week, but I should be back on schedule now.

Truth be told, I doubt that I would have been able to update today if it weren't for the wonderful three day weekend I'm enjoying. Jennifer and I have done a whole lot of nothing with our time, which is exactly the rest that I needed, although we did do some mall-crawling and grocery shopping earlier today. Needless to say, I hope that if you were able to get some time off this weekend, you took advantage of it.

I was asked by Kent a few weeks back to do a post on the recent network upfronts. The honest fact of the matter is that what was presented has really failed to spur my interest. However, since I have nothing better to talk about in this post, I will give you my top ten highlights of the upcoming schedule. A grid detailing the full fall line up can be found here. Alright, here they are:

10. The Sarah Connor Chronicles (FOX, Sundays at 8:00 CST, Midseason)- I'm not big on rehashing old ideas, but a made for TV version of the Terminator franchise could be a lot of fun, and one featuring Summer Glau of Serenity and Firefly fame is a must see. My excitement for this show, of course, is tempered by the fact that it is on Fox and will be cancelled after three episodes.

9. Journeyman (NBC, Mondays at 9:00CST)- A lead in from Heroes will certainly help this series, which revolves around a man who suddenly develops the ability to time travel (without the cuteness that is Heroes Hiro). From the descriptions I have read, the series will be equal parts going back in time to set right things that once went wrong (which is cool) and reminicing about the girl that got away (which will be considerably less cool).

8. Moonlight (CBS, Fridays at 8:00CST)- Mick St. John is a vampire, but he has dedicated himself to protecting humans instead of feeding off of them. This naturally will put him into conflict with the rest of the vampires that are hanging around, including his former bride, who sixty years ago ended his life and began his eternal death. For the record, Angel did this better, but since Angel isn't on the air anymore, this will have to do.

7. New Amsterdam (FOX, Fridays at 8:00 CST)- In what is becoming a trend in this countdown, New Amsterdam features a mysterious man with deep secrets. In this case, it is John Amsterdam, a NYPD detective harboring the secret that he is actually a 465 year old immortal. I would go more into depth about this show, but again, it's on FOX and will be cancelled before you get a chance to get hooked on it.

6. Pushing Daisies (ABC, Wednesdays at 7:00 CST)- You have to give any show that bills itself as a, "forensic fairytale" a shot. In this story, Ned utilizes his gift of bringing things back to life to quickly solve murders by having the victim name their killer. When his childhood sweetheart is one of the victims, however, Ned rashly brings her back and keeps her alive.

5. Reaper (The CW, Tuesdays at 8:00 CST) - Sam learns on his 21st birthday that his parents have sold his soul to the devil and he must now act as Satan's bounty hunter. Reaper is almost a parody of Marvel's Ghost Rider, but a series could have worse aspirations.

4. Chuck (NBC, Tuesdays at 8:00 CST) - To be honest, the set up ( a computer geek becomes America's most important secret agent when he is accidentally encoded with government secrets) didn't really appeal to me, but a preview on NBC.com and the fact that Adam Baldwin from Firefly and Serenity is in it makes it worth the watching.

3. Kid Nation (CBS, Wednesdays at 7:00 CST) - While on the surface this seems like CBS exploiting the Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader? phenomenon from last season, there seems to be far more than that going on. In Kid Nation, 40 kids will work together to build a functioning society, including cooking food, running a business, and fashioning a new government. As a teacher, watching a bunch of arrogant kids fall on their faces week after week may become my new guilty pleasure.

2. The IT Crowd (NBC, Midseason Replacement) - I love puns in titles! This is the unofficial sequal to The Office, insofar as it is an American take on a British workplace comedy. Several of the Executive Producers for this series also produce The Office, which makes it good enough for me. The fact that it features the very funny Joel McHale is a plus.

1. Heroes: Origins (NBC, Mondays at 8:00 CST, Midseason) - Perhaps in the most telling comment on this season, what I'm most looking forward to is a rehash of something from last season. One of the worst trends from the last few years is hit series going on break for a few weeks instead of airing reruns. It was a bold plan to keep people from complaining about the encore episodes, but it appears to have failed miserably, as everything from Heroes to Lost, well, lost viewers when they came back from their breaks. In an inventive move, Heroes will take their break, but will be replaced by Heroes: Origins, where we will meet new super-powered folk, with one of them winning a spot in season three of the main show. That is a well thought out plan, and it will get my viewership.

Okay, those are the positives, but there are complaints. Here are two (in no particular order).

1. Cancelled Series- Tough year on this front. I will really miss Veronica Mars, The Class, and most of all, Jericho. I'm blaming Kelly for the last one, as she steadfastly refused to watch the show no matter how strongly I extolled its virtues.

2. Cavemen- No, Seriously? This is a joke, right? You cancelled Knights of Prosperity for this?

That OLD Timey Feeling

I mentioned briefly that I change the background on my computer frequently. The picture above is the current one, but it will soon be changing. One of my students saw it and asked me if Larissa and Rachel were my daughters! So, yeah, I'm feeling old today.

Of course feeling old may be a by-product of not enough sleep. Thursday night I was at the school until 2:30am grading atrocious power points that my students were working on, then Jennifer's parents came in on Friday, which was a good visit but not necessarily conducive to sleeping well. I preached on Sunday, which meant my weekend was filled with preparing the sermon (which did not go well). Tonight (Tuesday) I've got a late meeting and even more grading to do. I desperately need summer to get here.

I will likely make a more in depth post later in the week over the Upfronts that are being revealed this week (where the TV networks tell us what shows we will see next season), but the short answer right now is that I'm not overly impressed. They are doing a remake of Bionic Woman (like that makes any sense apart from the Six Million Dollar Man franchise) and a comedy inspired by the very unfunny Geico commercials starring the Cavemen. There are some possibilities, I guess, but right now I'm not excited.

I'm an award winning Geek!

Last week, I mentioned several comic book related blogs for your reading pleasure. One of them, Living between Wednesdays (I love that title) was running a contest about your most prized geeky possession. On a lark, I entered this photo of the awesome painting job that Jennifer and I did (okay, Jennifer did) of the Booster Gold wall in my comic book room. As you will see by following the link, I am officially the geekiest person ever (that may be a bit of an overstatement).

In honor of this, well, honor, and based off of a suggestion that Randy made to me, I wanted to spend a little geek time with you today.

Geek Topic #1- The end of 52 (Spoilers, obviously)

It was suggested that this might lure LaRae into commenting on my board, so here we go. First of all, I loved 52 and felt that it did an admirable job of elevating some previously underappreciated characters (cough* Booster Gold *cough). I won't say that I was disappointed by the ending, because anything that claims to be the beginning of the "glory days" of Booster Gold can't be bad (although I would argue that the "glory days" started with issue one of his first series. However, I don't think 52 did a good enough job of explaining how all of the earths diverged. We see Mr. Mind sucking pieces of history up, and all of a sudden we have the CSA, or the Atomic Knights, or Kingdom Come, etc. Huh? I may be a little silver age here, but I really want them to go back and say, "Mr. Mind made it so that such and such event did not happen, and therefore this is how Vic Sage and Dan Garrett are still alive." Hopefully, we will see some of this in the new Booster Gold series (!) that will debut soon. Speaking of spin-offs, I would so buy three copies of a "Ralph and Sue Dibny: Ghost Detectives" series. They would rock!

Geek Topic #2- Free Comic Book Day or The FCBD that almost wasn't!

Saturday sucked a little. Jennifer was helping out at the IISD job fair, so she had to leave home at 7:00am. Terry's didn't open until 10:00, so that gave me some lounging time, which should have been awesome. However, Jennifer got as far as the church before figuring out she had a flat tire. In a hurry, she came home and traded cars with me. No big deal, right? Changing a flat tire may take ten to fifteen minutes. However, Jennifer's car didn't have a jack. Luckily, we had an extra jack that I took out of my car before we traded it in for my current car (aren't I a stinker). Unluckily, the lug wrench on the extra jack didn't fit Jennifer's lug nuts, or rather fit them too perfectly, because once the lug nuts were off the wheel they were literally stuck in the lug wrench. In my infinite wisdom (or because I've watched one too many episodes of I love Lucy) I decided that the way to solve it was to get something slippery to loosen the nuts. Lacking in anything approaching manly car fixing stuff, I opted for what I know best: Food! To my eternal surprise, some extra virgin olive oil worked perfectly, at least on the first one. After that, the lug wrench became too slick for me to get any leverage on it. Therefore, I washed the lug wrench off and went to work on the second lug nut, which promptly got stuck because the lug nut was too big for that lug wrench. So I reapplied the EVOO (isn't Rachel Raye great!). It became this sort of ludicrous two step process to get the lug nuts off, but it worked on all of them, except for the last lug nut, which for some reason, was three sizes smaller than all the rest and therefore would not take my lug wrench. I do not have the space to explain every hair brained idea I tried to fix this malady, but let's say that more than a few things got broken and I have some newly earned battle scars. Finally in desperation, I surrendered and vowed to walk to Terry's for FCBD (because that is how loyal I am tomy geekdom). Luckily for me, I happened to notice that there is an auto parts store half a mile down the road. I went in, found a lug wrench, walked back and finished the process of putting on the new tire in like five minutes. Unfortunately, in all of my machinations, I bent the rim of the wheel, but that is a whole other story.

FCBD was only "meh". Terry didn't have everything that I thought he would have when he claimed to be a "Gold Sponsor", but in fairness, neither did Lone Star (which I drove to in my newly minted death car) and they only let you get one item.

Okay, that wasn't entirely a geek story, but it sort of keeps with the theme of the post. Alright, ladies and Gentlemen, my conference period is just about over and I'm out of things to talk about (although as Joanna points out things are better in three's). Feel free to talk about your geekiness in the comments section.