I am Jerry O'Connell's best friend...

...on TV.

Sort of.


You see, my real name is pretty uncommon. In fact I only know of two other instances of my first name being used. I'm sure there are hundreds of people with the same first name as me, but I only know two. One was a kid in a Hallmark store who's mother kept saying my name over and over, and I kept lookin over at her to see what she wanted but she was never facing me... So I started to move in her direction and as I rounded the display I spotted a little towheaded boy under the rack. 3 or 4 years old. I said hello to the woman and told her that the little boy's name was my name too. "It was his father's idea," she replied with just a hint of distain. Then she introduced me to the kid (the handshake got him to come out from under the rack) and I asked him if he liked his name. He kind of shrugged and looked at his shoes. I told him that he probably wouldn't like it now, but when he grows up he is really going to be glad he has a cool name. He kind of looked up at me sideways and smiled. Wonder if he remembers that.

My name was MY father's idea too. It comes from his youthful fascination with comic books... primarily one "dynamic duo." When/if I get a tattoo it will have my namesake's (copyrighted) symbol incorporated somehow.

The other instance is (or was) a cat named after me in a little Washington State town someplace. I used to be on a wacky morning radio show (have been on a couple actually) and one of our listeners named her tabby after me. Called in to let us know. I thought that was nice.

My first name IS a pretty common LAST name. In fact when I was in college, a member of our football team who's last name was the same as my first name was arrested for aggravated rape. The local paper's headline read: "'NAME' ARRESTED FOR RAPE" or something like that. I kept that page for a while, but have since realized that a headline like that just isn't ever going to be something I want framed.

So what does this all have to do Mr. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (I know the Stamos is gone now, but it just rolls off the tongue so nicely that way)? Well. On Jerry's new ABC sitcom "Carpoolers," he plays Laird (the show is full of weird names) and Laird is best friends with a guy who has the same first name as me! It's spelled differently (WRONGLY in my opinion) but Jerry O'Connell must have said my name like a MILLION times last night during the show. It was so cool!


You have to understand that I'm the guy who can never find his name on those pre-printed souvenirs at the amusement park, who has to repeat his name 5 or 6 times to anyone who hasn't heard it before, who was mocked mercilessly (and prophetically as it turns out) because my name is easily twisted into a gay joke. My name is not a name that is heard in Prime Time on network television.

The show? I liked it. Last night's storyline revolved around Dentist Laird and his Mediator best friend who share office space near each other. I got a strong "Bob Newhart Show" vibe while watching. The one set in Chicago, not the one in Vermont. The office scenes were like "Bob Newhart 2.0" minus Marcia Wallace.

I've established an early crush on carpool newbie Dougie and am weirdly looking forward to more story lines with my namesake's son Marmaduke (yes Marmaduke) and his tighty whities. The fact that Bruce McCollough, the cute one from Kids in the Hall, is the creator, executive producer and writer (of this episode) makes Carpoolers all the better.

So yeah... me and Jerry (eat a sandwich Jer) are best buds now. At least for 22 minutes on Tuesday nights following Cavemen on ABC.

diagnosing my neck... the results show

The judges have voted and much like Josie Maran (whoever she is) on Dancing with the Stars, cancer is the first ailment eliminated from my possible neck issues.

It turns out I have something kind of like a kangaroo pouch in my neck. When I swallow it's pushed open just like the pouch of a kangaroo diving into a swimming pool. Sometimes food gets caught in this pouch. Most people with this problem report many many disgusting symptoms which include "coughing up" uneaten or undigested food, rancid breath, problems breathing, problems swallowing... None of which I have.

My kangaroo neck pouch is NOT in the usual place, or at least not in the place doctors find them most of the time. That means operating to shut the pouch and hose out any material it may have collected is not a simple process. Actually ANY surgury in the neckal region is not a simple process... there are a lot of tubes and wires in that little space. One of the nerves that controls my larynx is one of those wires. It looks like that nerve has become kind of intermingled with the kangaroo pouch (which has really become kind of a kangaroo tube). Severing or damaging that nerve could qualify me for a spot on the local boys choir. Remember the "High Talker" on Seinfeld?

How they can see all this is beyond me... I can't wait to have them show me what these tests look like.

So the good news: not cancer. The bad news: not easily fixable.

Tim Daly Stream of Consciousness

Yesterday's mention of Tim Daly and his new series on ABC got me to thinking...

Remember him on Wings? He was totally the cute brother... Brian was the fun brother but Joe was the good looking one. How were those two even brothers? Didn't look a THING alike.

Who knew that Tony Shalhoub would go on to be the most successful of all those Wings actors? Have you seen Shalhoub's movie Big Night by the way? Very fun little film... I would love to see a timpano made in real life.

Speaking of food,I'm surprised that girl who ran the lunch counter in Tom Nevers Airfield main terminal didn't go on to have a bigger career after Wings.

Actually, now that I think about it, the guy who I liked most on that show was Lowell. Lowell once took over Helen's lunch counter for a day and made a delicious cold shredded cabbage salad with a tangy dressing he called "Lowell-slaw." I STILL think that's funny.

A friend of mine growing up lived down the street from a guy named Lowell who was kind of slow... we were probably 14 or 15 and he was probably close to 20 but was really challenged mentally. He could hold a conversation and all but he got scared really easy and had that sort of uneasy look all the time. Like a deer who thinks it hears a hunter coming but is really thirsty and trying to get a drink out of a pond while staying tensed up just in case it has to bolt. Lowell also did this kind of praying mantis thing with his arms and hands... not due to a palsy or anything, that was just the way he held himself. I remember always being surprised at how fit Lowell (my friends neighbor, not the Wings character... though he was fit too, everyone on TV is) was. Didn't seem logical to me that this guy who was so crippled socially could posses the drive to keep his body so... well... hot. I remember too that Lowell had chest hair and I thought that must be so confusing for him... here he is just a child mentally, but he has all these grown up physical attributes. Actually, it was probably perfectly normal for him and confusing to ME, now that I think about it.

Did Joe ever marry the lunch lady on Wings? Helen?

Mr. Daly was on a lawyer show for a while after Wings... or a detective show maybe... but last time I saw him on TV he looked older, less like the cute brother on Wings.

USA used to have this programming block called "Primetime in the Daytime" and they would show Wings INCESSANTLY! Wings and that show with Leah Remini, the redhead who was married to Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue and that little, hairy, muscled, fucker. They all lived in a clock tower over a bar and sold advertising or something. "Working" and "Suddenly Susan" too. Those shows were ALWAYS on USA. Sometimes you'd get a "Caroline in the City" thrown in there for spice (did ANYONE believe for a SECOND that Caroline's TOTALLY GAY assistant was ever in love with her?) I used to have a crush on the kind of slow guy who always wore roller skates on Caroline in the City. I saw him on something else recently... Cold Case or something, as a cop maybe... still looks good. Whatever it was, it was probably the show I was watching when I saw the promo for Private Practice. That's when Tim Daly stepped back into my life.

He's gone from kind of Joe Hackett skinny-fit to kind of Christopher Knight big-fit, and it suits him. I think my tastes are changing... 51 is very often just as hot at 25 for me lately... maybe because I see these older dudes lookin' awesome and think to myself... it's not too late! So I've set a TiVo Season Pass for this new show, and even set one for Grey's Anatomy even though I have never seen an episode of that show before.

By the way, Roy Biggins... the owner of Sandpiper Air's competitor: Aeromass... totally gay. SURE he TALKED a lot about the ladies... but trust me... he was the one who taught Senator Craig "the tap."

Fantasy Dancing

OK... there were no takers on my Fantasy Football team.

No takers on the Survivor pool.

How about the Dancing With the Stars pool? That gay enough for ya?

Survivor Fans?

If you'd like to play along with me I have 7 spaces open on my Survivor Fantasy League Private Tribe! There are prizes...

Shoot me an email (condoblogger at gmail dot com) and I'll send you an invite!

Bionic Bad Start

So TiVo has this feature where you can download movies and stuff... kind of like "On Demand" from your cable company except Amazon.com is TiVo's partner and all the content comes from them. It's called Unbox and I don't think you need TiVo to use it. I'VE not used it much because it usually costs money to download content and I don't need any other splurges in my life right now.

AAAAANNNYYYWAYYYY...

Last night I noticed that NBC is offering FREE downloads of some of it's new fall season pilots on TiVo's Amazon Unbox service. One of the shows offered: Bionic Woman.


Being sci-fi dork to begin with I was already excited about this show... and the fact that the producers of the new Battlestar Galactica (which is awesome) on Sci-Fi were the ones behind this "re-imagining" of The [original] Bionic Woman I was over the top excited.

Not so much anymore.

Just SO MANY PLOT HOLES!!! SO MANY CLICHE'S!!! SO MANY CHARACTERS!!! SO MUCH BAD SCIENCE!!! SO LITTLE HUMOR.

The new Jamie Sommers (Michelle Ryan) does have a very sideways resemblance to the bionic woman I remember as a kid, but she has NONE of the character, charm, wit of Lindsay Wagner's Jamie Sommers. For the 44 million dollars more the new Jamie costs I think they could have afforded a bionic personality to go with her arm and legs. I DO like Miguel Ferrer but I wish his character had been named Oscar Goldman... just as a nice nod to the original. I was very pleasantly surprised to see more than just one Galactica cast member making an appearance in the show. Along with Katee Sackhoff, Aaron Douglas who plays Deck Chief Gaylen Tyrol on BSG has a (what I hope will be recurring) role in the pilot.

I don't want to give any of the season premiere away, but wow... if you can't see every single one of the "twists and turns" from a MILE AWAY then you might want to look into getting a bionic eye of your own because they are blatant and frankly a little insulting.

Another strike against the show... Isaiah Washington who was so famously fired from Grey's Anatomy after an incident where he called (the adorable) T.R. Knight a bad name will begin a several episode arc in the weeks following the premiere.

This is only the pilot... so a lot can change by episode two, but I'll only be watching to see if Aaron Douglas is back. The official season premiere is Wednesday 9/26.

By the way...

Someone may be making an appearance at the end of this show tonight.

TiVo made me smile today...

...while watching last week's 30 Rock.

Network exec Jack Donaghy correctly assumes that up and coming young west coast NBC exec Devon Banks is in from L.A. in order to take his job. After some investigation Jack puts two and two together and realizes that his new rival has a secret.

Jack: "Good God, Devon is gay... He's even more powerful than I thought!"

Gods that was good

It's rare... Really, really rare that I am impressed by a TV show anymore. For all my love of TiVo and the medium in general, the word, "Wow" is not a common one for me at the end of a TV show. Usually reserved for episodes of The West Wing, SportsNight and South Park.

I just finished watching the Season Finale of Battlestar Galactica however and, "Frakin-A." Good Stuff.


I can't say that I was completely happy with the ending... frankly I'm a little disappointed in it... I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on spoilers... so I guess I will wait till I read about it in Entertainment Weekly before I really go off on my feelings about the ending. Suffice it to say I was not totally surprised.

One thing that DID surprise me were the revelations regarding four Galactica crew members and their taste in music. I have a theory on that one too though. This one I think I can talk about without ruining anyone's fun though. First of all, I think they are mistaken about their main assumption. Second, I think the music is coming from Earth. Remember in Contact when Jodi Foster explained that once our TV and Radio signals leave Earth, they keep going, and going and going and going out into space forever? For reasons yet to be explained, I think that a bad sitar version of All Along the Watchtower was broadcast on Earth and now 4 crewmemebers are picking it up in their fillings (nod to The Partridge Family).

Speaking of those 4 crewmembers... I'm OK with two of them disappearing. But the other two (especially this one - what? not who you expected?) I'd be bummed to loose.

P will not watch BSG with me because it has spaceships in it.

Now I have 8 sectars until the fleet returns in 2008 to convince him to give the last Battlestar, Galactica, a look as it leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest, for a shining planet known as Earth.

Holy CRAP I am a dork.

Series 2 Dual Tuner TiVo BABY!

Love is a word that I reserve for very few things in life. At present I love P, I love my family, Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond ice cream, and I love my brand new Series 2 Dual Tuner TiVo!

This is my 4th TiVo but it is my FIRST NEW TiVo.

My first was a christmas gift given to me about 7 years ago. It was one of the very first models to come out and it was deeply discounted because it had been a demonstration unit in a store. It only had 15 hours of record time! But they were precious hours. Due to the limited recording space I became a master at organizing my season pass list to avoid conflicts... selecting only the new episodes of the shows I really wanted and then following each of those shows with a less important program in the same time slot which I instructed TiVo to record ALL episodes of. That way when the first show was a new episode it would get recorded, but if it was a rerun TiVo would record the secondary program. My season pass list was tight as a drum and nearly flawless in it's organization.

Then... one Superbowl Sunday in 2001 there was a bad fire in the house I was living in. Some overly dramatic people might say that it burned down. It actually just burned really badly, and what didn't burn was drenched from the fire hoses. No one was hurt and insurance was good to us but a lot of stuff got ruined that night... TiVo #1 didn't make it.

About two years later I was ready to try again. #1's replacement, TiVo #2, was a unit that had been returned to Best Buy. Because the box had been opened the Best Buy people had to sell him at a discount. The price was too good to pass up and on impulse I became the owner of a 40 hour TiVo! I was giddy with the thought of organizing my new season pass list with over TWICE the amount of hard drive space to fill with programing. But it was not to be. Hours after setting him up TiVo #2 suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure. I tried and tried to revive him, but no luck. Best Buy wouldn't let me exchange him for another TiVo because he had been on sale. All they would do was give me my money back.

TiVo #3 was/is a TROOPER. About 3 weeks after #2 died I managed to outbid some other TiVo fans on eBay and just a few short days later #3 was up and running!

That was sometime in 2004 I think. I do not know how I survived between the fire and TiVo #3. I had lost two TiVo's... one dying a horrible death in a burning building, the other suffering a catastrophic drive failure right in front of my eyes. Having been so scarred it was hard to love again, but thanks to TiVo #3, I learned to open my heart and once again feel the warm embrace of TiVo.

Now the next chapter has opened in my TiVo scrapbook. For my b-day I got my first BRAND NEW TiVo! This bad boy has 80 hours of hard drive space (at lowest resolution) AND can record TWO shows at once! This is a feat that until just recently only the DirecTV TiVo's were capable of. Once again a whole new world has opened up to me. How do I have to manage my season pass list now that I no longer have to worry about programming conflicts?

The weird thing about all this is that thanks to my relatively recent foray into the blogosphere... I have actually watched WAY less TV than I used to. I try to turn off the computer and relax in front of the tube, but I'm drawn back to the internet more and more lately... and NOT just for the porn! I've also discovered that I tend to spend more time programming TiVo #4 to record programs than I do actually watching said shows! In fact I should be watching the season finale of BattleStar Galactica, but instead... I’m writing pages about the machine that I use to record BattleStar Galactica so I can watch it.

Is that ironic? Where is Alanis Morrisette when you need her?

By the way... over on eBay the Game Boy Advance I won a while back is on sale... the auction is ending soon!!!

Top Design

If you haven't seen the Wednesday, 2/7 episode of "Top Design" and do not want to know the outcome, don't read anymore.

There is a whole 'nuther blog in me. One in which I tell everyone what to watch on TV and why. I know good TV. I also know crap TV. I watch both, and everything in between. TV has been my career for the past 15+ years (I've been "in" broadcasting since high school). That does not necessarily qualify me as an expert... I know many in my industry who have been doing it longer than me and still think that "Full House" (aka: Mom Died, Lets Have a Party) and "I Love New York" (aka: Mom's HERE Lets Have a Party) are good shows. For the record, they are not. My ability to judge shit from shinola did not come from my job, rather my job is a manifestation of my desire to make more shinola.

OK... so that's my pedigree. Here's the post:

Bravo is home to some of my only "appointment viewing" anymore. Top Chef just ended, and honestly, I don't love that show... and I KNOW this is going to sound naive... but it looks too edited. I KNOW EVERYTHING is too edited... if Top Chef wasn't too edited we'd be watching someone whip egg whites for 15 minutes or sitting through 15 minutes of dough rising. I GET that we have less than 50 minutes to jam 48 or 72 hours or even a whole WEEK into and I accept that those...

Shit... this is warming up to be too big a post.

Here's what I LOGGED ON to say:

TiVo records Top Design for me and I like it. Maybe it's because I am looking for inspiration to cover up the "builder beige" color on the walls in This New Condo, maybe it's because of the high number of "family" members, maybe it's because I have just a tiny crush on Ryan (was his jacket tonight cool or lame?), whatever the reason, I like it.

Tonight John got kicked off. Pissed me off. This guy (and I use the word "guy" loosely) should have gone, at LEAST according to the way the show was edited.

They've totally sold me on this show. That's not easy. I'm SO jaded that the twists and surprises on "Law and Order" I can see coming for miles, even the episodes that are not "Ripped from the Headlines." P constantly accuses me of having seen a show before because I say the next line before the actors have a chance.

Top Design has surprised me... but not in a "oh my gosh!" kind of way, more in a "they lied to me," kind of way. Tonight they built John up as someone to watch and by the end he was gone. I read about him on Towleroad, where I learned that he was going to announce on the show that he is HIV positive. I was pullin for him even before I found that out though. He has this kind of wierd dual energy thing going on. Half daddy half drama queen. Fun to watch because you never knew which side of him would speak next.

I have a feeling that John will be back. Someone will have to drop out and he'll be called in to replace him or her, or there will be SOME twist (like in last season's Project Runway) where booted designers will be back. Though it IS pretty early in the season... usually if you are gone in the first or second show, you are G-O-N-E. That's probably John's case.

I worried the day would come when I would start just posting for post's sake. So far I have been able to keep this blog pretty condo-centric. Top Design at least has SOMETHING to do with my experience as a homeowner in that I am trying to find cool, cheap, creative ways to make my house my home. But this is DANGEROUSLY close to being just a random posting.

Hi Ho!

It's back to work for me today. I had the good fortune to have the last two weeks off and have really gotten used to not working. Almost feels a little weird to be gong back to work. We (THEY really) are in the process of shaking things up as far as shifts and schedules are concerned and so when I go back today, I'll be going back to a very different schedule. Still the same hours and still pushing the same buttons, but doing so at different times than I used to. Your new schedule at any job can be a little weird to adjust to because you get to know your routine, you get to know the people who work with you, their peccadilloes and whatnot, the subtle differences in the machinery and all that... and then, your duties change a little, and everything is just a smidge off.

I used to be a fan of that show, SLIDERS. Ever see that show? Kinda hot dude who is now on Crossing Jordan was the star, his brother was "The Bachelor" one year. Anyway, on SLIDERS the premise was that they were moving between alternate realities all the time. So it always took place in pretty much the same location and always in the present day, but one week they were in a reality where the Nazi's had won the war, in another only Women were allowed to hold public office. Sometimes things would look exactly the same, EXCEPT that bugs were revered and could not be squished... maybe I made that last one up... the point I am trying to make is that when I get back to work today it will be like sliding into a slightly alternate reality. Everything will look the same, but at the same time everything will be just SLIGHTLY askew. A little like crossing the border from Washington State into British Columbia.

Plans for THIS NEW CONDO this week are to get the tile replaced in my bathroom, getting a poster finally framed & hung and returning the ladder that I borrowed from my neighbors.

I'm also going to look into some mirror related ideas I've seen lately. On Small Space, Big Style I saw a woman use mirrors for her kitchen backsplash... what do you think? I think it could be a less expensive alternate to stainless steel. I also saw a BIG use of mirrors in Polo by Ralph Loren at Lenox Square. They used really tall panels of beveled mirror to line the back wall of a really masculine bedroom vignette. My bedroom is not huge, so I thought I'd look into stealing that idea for my space. Speaking of mirrors, anyone know a good glass cleaner? The stuff I have been using leaves a noticeable residue on the mirror I have hung in my living room. When the sunlight hits it it looks really crappy.

Next time: my embarrasing hobby