Odds and Ends

Some odds and ends which have been on my mind.
1) Mr. Bourdain continues his hypocritcal attacks on the commercial chefs such as Rachel Ray. For someone who constantly puts down the mainstreen tv chefs, he is always on Top Chef, talk shows and promoting no reservations. I have never understood why people have to put down others instead of positively supporting them, or keeping quiet. Rachel Ray is not a competitor of his. In fact, their audiences are vastly different. Yet, he keeps making comments about her. Glad to see she took the high road with the latest barrage.
2) Who keeps putting Elizabeth Hassleback on TV. I saw an ad for her QVC show and she had the most hideous giant bow on her top. Her TV persona is so narrow minded and dumb as a post that she gives Jessica Simpson a run for her money. The sad thing is, I think her real life persona is a lot more intelligent than she lets on. She reminds me of a lot of religious flock members who are told to quote certain passages from the bible but when you respond with a counter quote, they can't handle it and start to panic.
3) Congrats to Frank @heroesarg for the birth of his child.
4) My four year old told me something was hilarious. It is so cute hearing her say that word.
5) The Padres have exactly 1 week to begin turning around a mess created by John Moores and his wife. When we approved the baseball stadium a few years back, Mr. Moores made a commitment to be competitive and to try to make deals to improve the club. His idea of such deals were to sign aging stars to 1 year deals and draft crappy players rather than those represented by Scott Boras who, by the way, has contributed strongly to ruin baseball by allowing his clients to be jackasses and greedy. I am sure Scott is smart and he obviously makes tons of money but the message he sends to our kids is that contracts are meaningless and the dollar is more important than winning and image. Thats no excuse for the Padres to pick Matt Bush with the number one pick. I think that might be worse than the Chargers selecting Ryan Leaf. At least some people argued Leaf could be a number 1 pick, no one believed Bush was worth it. further, Leaf at least played at the professional level, Bush didn't even make it through 2 whole minor league seasons. Crikey, he imploded before even reporting to his first assignment.
6)Obama and his administration have done nothing to help the individual. none of the programs have had any effect on the economy or the individuals who are losing their homes. I don't care if he has a near perfect NCAA basketball bracket. He should spend more time implementing programs that give people jobs now, money now, debt relief now rather than providing money to banks, auto companies, and insurance companies without requiring that the money be used to help the consumer. All that AIG money was wasted on bonuses and administrative middle and upper management and all the bank bailout did was allow the larger banks to get larger and the reduction in competition so that bank fees will go up.
7) In equal opportunity ranting, the Bush family has spent 12 of the last 20 years ruining the economy and personally profitting, both directly and indirectly off of the war efforts and the oil prices.
8) Lost was good on Wednesday but I know somehow instead of Sayid changing history the PTB will make Sayid responsible for Ben's path of darkness as the island resurrects Ben and puts him into the others' camp. ben will now blame Sayid for setting him on the path. You simply can't change the past.
9) Bryan Fuller brought an edge back to Heroes with the recent Cold Snap. Loved Tracy's wink with her body shatterred all over the garage. I do have a couple of gripes. 1) Micah is rash acting and I don't buy that he is Rebel simply because Rebel has a much better grasp of life. 2) Danko would never leave Tracy's body, however shattered. He must know of the possiblity that she could reform. After all, he has dealt with water people before.
10) I will miss Daphne and Brea Grant. Brea brought a fresh look to the show and her approach to her powers combined with her convincing portrayal of someone who was given a second chance on life by getting her legs back and with the added bonus of speed.
ok. back to work.

Paris and Mickey and Goofy, Oh My

Well, my oldest stepson and my wife are off to Paris. The 14 year old boy is off to winter drum line and his girlfriend's for a week, and I am ready to party with my 12 and 4 year old girls. WOO HOO. Yesterday, it was California Adventure, Tomorrow Disney and today, after the dropoff at the airport it was pizza and popcorn and movies. Fun stuff bonding with the girls.

Whats new? A very busy week catching up on work after moving the office. Add to that a short week, a stressed out family due to the impending travel and the third week with the inlaws living with us, you can imagine how good it will be to just sleep.

I had my first two comments this week, keep em coming. Wish I had a follower though.

Published my Heroes GN 129 review on (shameless plug) HeroesArg.com. Check it out.

Trying to get someone to respond to me about getting a fundraiser started for a charity I am working with to help schools support their music programs in three ways 1) donation of money for equipment and fee offsets, 2) raising money to publish music instruction videos and provide sample instruments for students to tryout or use during the lesson and 3) Putting on shows at schools designed to get the children interested in music. I really was hoping to find a semi-celebrity or better to perform at a benefit concert or to write a song we can charge 99cents per download for and raise money that way. Or for memorabilia. Any help would be appreciated so let me know if you can help.

Until Next Time.

Ups and Downs

Up - Business is starting to improve
Down - My Wife was just laid off. Anyone in Inland Empire have a job to offer!
Up - Baseball Season is starting soon.
Down - Padres will likely have a bad season.
Up - House was good last night, How I met your mother was good too.
Down- No Heroes.
Up - New Heroes GN came out and was well written. (WE LOVE YOU JIM MARTIN)
Down - As much as Micah Grunnel is very talented, I don't like the way he draws faces.
Up - My plan to send vouchers to every individual that they can use for paying off loans on cars, houses, student loans or to purchase new cars or new homes, that way the money will still get to the banks and lenders and auto companies but the people will have less debt and own a home, car, etc. Banks would have more money and less outstanding debts so they could lend again.
Down - The fat cats in Washington will never do it because the lenders don't want that to happen.
Thats all for today's ups and downs. If you like my idea about vouchers, spread it around, maybe we can get the government to consider it.

Someone has to say it

I enjoy Twitter. I even enjoy all the celebrities who are on Twitter and tweet away. I prefer the ones who are real as opposed to the ones whose managers or assistants do the tweeting but I still like the fact that we are handed some insight into the celebrity personal thoughts. That said, I have a serious problem with people who post over 100 tweets in a 15 minute period whether they are celebrities or not. I know I don't have to follow them all and with the magic of Tweet Deck I can bury them somewhere where I can read them later but come on people, save some room for the next tweeter. I logged on last night to 200 new messages from my 62 people I follow (of which some have barely posted a tweet). Of those 200, 180 came from 2 sources! And most of those were personal conversations between a handful of tweeters.

Enough of a Rant. I will miss Heroes tonight, But I have a new House to watch!

More later.

E

My first blog

So, I'm not a movie star, or a star athlete, or a professional critic but what I am is a lawyer, father to one, stepfather to 3, Heroes GN Commentator on Heroesarg.com, tweeter at sdlaw@twitter.com, armchair quarterback, fantasy baseball guru, 40 something, opinion giver.
You may not like my opinion, but heck, thats why we have 1000000000 or more blogs to choose from. My goal is to update this weekly with whatever I find interesting or my cause of the moment. If you care to hear my daily rumblings check me out on twitter, facebook (eric siegler) or myspace (look me up under erics123@aol.com). Otherwise, maybe let me know how you like my blogposts or if there is anything you want me to talk about.

To start, I want to talk about one of my favorite shows Heroes. despite the ratings struggles, I think they Heroes producers are doing an excellent job on the show. The actors are amazing me with their ability to portray characters which, to be quite honest, have powers we just can't fathom, and still come off as characters to whom we can relate. Credit this 50% to actors like Greg Grunberg, Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden Paniettieri, Adrian Pasdar, Jack Coleman, etc.. If I left someone out, it is because there are just too many quality actors and actresses to list them all. The other 50% goes to the producers, writers, propmasters, crew, etc who together provide the excellent story, sets, props, and editing to get hundreds of plot points, hints, clues, secrets, and story lines across in 40 minutes of air time per week, 22 times a season.

As for the ratings and critics, I really hope the networks and advertisers realize that they no longer can rely solely on ratings. With DVR/TIVO so prevalent, internet web replays of full episodes available within 10 hours of airtime, and the fact that the ratings households are no longer representative households, it becomes harder to judge a show by the ratings alone. Heroes gets a lot of DVR play. I rarely am home on time to watch it. Often, if I am home, I watch less heavy fare first so that I can end my day with Heroes. Knowing that it is available on the internet, I sometimes will watch it on my crackberry. I know many people who watch Heroes on G4 so they can get the commentary.

Morale - Pay no heed to those closet Neilson homes which is a narrow and outdated technique to rate shows and pay more attention to DVR tracking, Downloads, web participation and the mass amounts of internet time and space devoted to this great show!