24 – Another one bites the dust

You know this season of 24 was seriously lacking when I enjoyed The Simpsons 24 spoof, 24 Minutes, more than the season finale of 24 itself. In fact, I watched the Jack Bauer parts twice.

I loved it when Bart and Jack’s lines got crossed and Jack said, “I’m Jack Bauer, who the hell are you?” and Bart replied “Ahmed A. Doodie”. So Jack tells Chloe to cross-reference the name and she comes back with all this intel causing Jack to reply, “really?” to which she says, “No, Jack, he’s messing with you” or something to that affect. Then at the end Jack tracks down Bart and since he pulled all CTU agents off their current assignments, a nuclear bomb explodes in the distance, but everyone shrugs it off when he says it was just Shelbyville.

So getting to the season finale. *Yawn* What an anti-climax. First off, how do we know Philip really died? There was a boat right there. And what about Chang/Cheng telling Bill his people won’t abandon him like they did for Jack? Didn’t you want to see Bill slap that guy? I think the writers intentionally neglect to wrap up certain plot lines in case they want to use them later.

Jack’s confrontation with Secretary Heller had to be the best ten minutes of the entire two hours. I loved the part where he said, “If you send someone after us, I’ll kill ’em. I’m pretty good at that too”. I had to replay that scene again, it was so good. I liked seeing Jack angry with how he’s been used and asked to sacrifice a normal life for a government who turns their back on him when he needs them most.

Even though in the end he did the right thing regardless by letting Audrey go, his confrontation with Heller was fantastic. I thought for sure he was going to hit Heller when he made that remark about Teri dying thanks to his job.

Also, I’m glad Audrey didn’t wake up or say Jack’s name because that would have been super daytime soap cheesy. Let’s just hope this doesn’t encourage a return of Marilyn Bauer because I seriously hate that woman and her freaky too-blue eyes and I will personally kick Jack’s ass if he hooks up with her.

So how about the predictable stuff? Who else knew Chloe was pregnant as soon as she passed out, or that Mike was going to get blown up by a fake circuit board? Lame! Time filler!

Oh well, here’s to hoping for a better seventh season. AE&E aired all the past seasons’ finales of 24 Saturday night, which I DVR’d and wanted to watch this week, but my DVR went crazy last night recording for hours on end and effectively erased everything else I had saved including those finales, SNL, and MadTV. I’d be madder but that’s the first major DVR screwup we’ve had in almost two years, so oh well. It’s not like I can’t watch the finales on DVD anyway.

TV Talk

So let’s talk TV now that most shows are done for the season.

Season/Series Finales

How I Met Your Mother
Nobody should be surprised by Ted and Robin’s breakup considering that she’s referred to as Aunt Robin when future Ted is telling his children how he met their mother. I personally never understood what Ted saw in Robin other than her looks. Barney, as always, steals the show. Next season is going to be Legend.. wait for it…

King of Queens
Could this have ended any worse? It was terrible! It’s like they fast-forwarded everything just to get some type of closure for each character. It felt so forced. I could never picture Doug and Carrie with kids and to slap them with two on the last episode, one adopted and one biological, is just nuts. How cheesy can you get? “Oh, let’s adopt” … “Oh no! After all this time suddenly I’m pregnant the day we adopted our Chinese baby”. Lame! The entire season was just awful, so I’m not as sad to see this show go as I thought I would be. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise, huh?

My Name Is Earl
I was a little confused with this ending, but I guess they could just pick up next season two years into the future after Earl has gotten out of prison. It was a good episode, though. I especially liked when Joy was trying to sign to her lawyer that Earl wanted to do her!

The Office
As much as I really didn’t want to see it, I admit I was pleasantly surprised that Jim and Pam might be getting together after all. I certainly wasn’t expecting that, nor did I consider that someone else from the office would get Jan’s job. The best part was at the end when Kelly asks Ryan “who was that?” and he says “no one”, then pauses, keeps looking off to the distance with his back to Kelly and says, “we’re done”. Awesome! I just don’t know what Michael is going to do now that he’s back with Jan and she’s jobless. Plus he’s going to get negative feedback on E-bay for retracting the sale of his condo, LOL!
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Interviewed

Well you’ve seen this all over the blogosphere by now, haven’t you? And I’m jumping on the bandwagon. I asked, and he delivered. Here is my interview, courtesy of Kevin.

1. So what’s the deal with “Sleepy Froggie” and why don’t we really see it anywhere other than in your URL?

Well it was never meant to be a theme site, just a domain where I could hang my hat. I wanted a URL I knew I wouldn’t tire of; something that was cute, unique and meant something to me. So I chose my nickname for Joe: sleepyfroggie. It was born out of his physique (torso wider than his hips/legs, similar to a frog) and the fact that when we first started dating he was always falling asleep on me. So he became my sleepyfroggie. It was only natural to choose that as a domain name since he used to have a blog here as well.

2. Take this opportunity to predict the season finale of 24. What will happen?

Hmmm. That’s a tough one. I want to say Jack will end up sacrificing himself for Audrey, because I’m having a tough time seeing his character go through another horrific day. But on the other hand, that would be suicide to the series, so I don’t know. I’m having a rough time with this because this season hasn’t been up to par until last week’s episode. It’s really heating up, only supporting my theory that you don’t need a catastrophic explosion to make a show exciting. All this sneaking around and Jack going dark is much more enjoyable to me than worrying whether the U.S. is going to be blown to smithereens.

3. How did you get into blogging?

It was probably born out of boredom because it started in March 1998 when I was between jobs. I had just moved out of my parents’ house into an apartment with my ex. He got me set up with an account at Enteract, now known as RCN. I started messing around with web design from there.

At first I was more interested in building a Cure fan site, which was called Cold Colours, if anyone remembers it. It was actually fairly popular, but as I slowly added more personal content, I felt I should build a separate site for that stuff. On my site I started posting rants, and from there it grew into a journal that I manually updated until Greymatter came along. From there I used Moveable Type, and now WordPress. So yea, I’ve been blogging for nine years without much interruption. Probably the longest dry spell was right after I broke up with the ex and was staying out too late to bother getting online to write.

Oh and any of those other Cold Colours sites you see now are not mine. I took that site down years ago. The ex wanted to keep it to maintain but I said no because I had worked hard on it and it was mine, including mine to destroy. ;)

4. If you could afford to live in any of Chicago’s burbs, which would it be and why? Money is not a concern.

Probably Wheaton, which I live nearby. It’s got big houses, tree-lines streets (which I adore), and a cute downtown area. It’s also home to Cosley Zoo, which is really nice. The whole town just has a very calming feel to it and it seems like an ideal suburb if I must stick to the Chicago area. Ideally, I’ll be moving out of state in several years, most likely before the 2016 Olympics, should our fair city be chosen.

5. You’re on your dream vacation. All of a sudden, your camera craps out. Do you chalk it off and enjoy the rest of your vacation cameraless or do you make a beeline to the nearest store and buy a new one, cost be damned?

That’s a tough one. I know I couldn’t stand the thought of buying a brand new camera without endless hours of prior research, so I’d probably buy a disposable. That way I could capture things here and there and still enjoy myself. But honestly, this scenario would never play out in real life since we typically bring three cameras with us on vacation (Joe’s, my 20D, and my Powershot).

Now it’s your turn. Do you want to be interviewed by me?

If you are interested, just follow the instructions below.

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me!”
2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

You know, it’s right about this point I’m glad I don’t have a lot of readers because I’m worried I won’t come up with any interesting questions, but don’t let that stop you from requesting an interview! I will do my best to make it fun for you.

Voicemail

Voicemail – Described on ABC’s site as “a voyeuristic peek into the life of a single guy, captured through the lens of real voicemail messages”. They post three new shorts every Wednesday and they are pretty damn amusing. Go check it out!