MikeDonald's Blog

Is it just me or are there just too many Presidential Candidates??  Not to mention the fact that the election is still 6 1/2 years away.  This is just too much.  It's crazy.  Ron Paul was delivering a speech in California today?  Ron Paul, Isn't that a rapper?  Or a hair products mogul?  I'm confused.

And these debates - isn't a debate supposed to be two people arguing points and counterpoints?  I mean we all thought is weird when Ross Perot snuck into those debates to add a third podium to the mix.  But now?  8, 10, 27 podiums on stage?  How is that a debate?  This is ridiculous.

Everyone has an opinion.  What's yours?

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Okay, they're in - the 2007 Emmy Nominations.

This means it's time for my "not-so-unbiased" Instant Emmy Analysis & Predictions

First things first... Who the crap is still watching this "Two & a Half Men" show????? I mean, are you kidding me? Why is this thing still on the air, let alone getting nominated for Emmys??? Charlie Sheen & Jon Cryer stopped being funny when Carter left the White House. No wait, they were never funny. You know who else isn't funny? That chubby kid who sits between them. Not only is that show not funny, it's not witty, clever, or even mildly entertaining. I realize there aren't a lot of great sitcoms on anymore, but please.

I. Don't. Get it.

Okay,. moving on...

"Lost" got the shaft. I get that it took a dip last season, but it made a definite resurgence this year. It was fantastic, suspenseful, fulfilling and definitely cool again. It should have gotten a "Best Drama" nomination.

I like "Heroes" too and I'm glad it got nominated but the fact that "Heroes" and "Ugly Betty" got nods over "Lost" just reeks of the Academy paying less attention to the actual shows and trying to be more trendy than ever before.

"The Office" is far and away the best comedy on television and it better win this year before it starts to lose its ZEST. I predict this inevitable dulling will come as early as next season for the Dundler-Mifflin gang so it's now or never for Mr. Emmy!

Next post I'll get into the least interesting, "who's even heard of the shows these women are on" category... Best Actress in a Drama

We've just witnessed the DEADLIEST shooting in U.S. history.  I am horrified and speechless.

STORY LINK: Virginia Tech Shooting Leaves 32 Dead

Are things worse than they used to be in this world?  or is it just more in our face because of mass communication? 

When you become a parent, you look at these things differently, as well as life in general.  It is hard to feel safe about sending your child off to college or off into the world. 

This is just disgusting.  Horrifying and disgusting.  Who is to blame for this?  The media?  Where do people get the idea to do something like this?

The racial remarks that Imus made about the Rutgers Women's Basketball team sparked a lot of discussion and debate, just like every incident like this of late has.

 Personally, I think Imus is a racist and has a lot of other bad seeds in him - he should be fired by MSNBC. 

 But is there a double standard in today's American culture?  Is it unfair that no uproar is ever made about the racially insensitive and demeaning slurs made by African-American hip hop artists or comedians, done under the guise of art, comedy or performance?  And is this fueling the problem?

 It's a fair question to ask.  Let me know what you think.


 

So, I was walking out of Jamba Juice yesterday and was approached by a fellow whom I perceived to be homeless, and he was asking me for some spare change. Normally I just give a casual shake of the head and keep moving past these folks. Actually, almost always I do that - I can't remember the last time I actually gave money to someone on the street asking for it.

And I don't foresee a big change in my philosophy in the near future - that's not the point I'm about to get to. It's not that I'm unsympathetic to those less fortunate than me - I am - but I have my own set of personal reasons why I don't usually do it. But that's a topic for another blog.

My point is this - He asked for spare change and I said "sorry, don't have any." And then I thought about it - "Who the hell ever has change anymore???"

 

I sure don't. I pay for about 99% of everything with my credit card these days. I'm serious. Everybody takes plastic now - even McDonald's, Starbucks, Gas Stations - I use it for everything - why use cash when there's no extra fee to use the plastic, it's easier, you don't have to fumble with bills and coins, and it's an easy way to track your monthly spending budget?

 

So the thought occurred to me - It must be really tough to be a street beggar in today's age of credit and debit cards! Nobody carries cash anymore. At all. Why would we? It's getting tougher and tougher to scrape spare change from strangers these days. Is it going to get to a point where homeless people need to start taking plastic? What choice will they have? They'll have to scrape together change to buy the credit card machine. Who knows what the future holds, but they're going to have to figure out something.

 

(and if you're curious, the last part of that sentence is the root of the other blog post I was talking about earlier)

What's with the recent trend of people getting Oscar nominations for movies that I've never heard of?

I don't like it. In recent years, it's gotten worse and worse how studios cherry pick films that they have award ideas about and sneak them into 3 theaters the last week of December so that they qualify for the year's awards shows.


What that does is:

1. It makes it impossible for any bad or mediocre publicity to get generated about the film, and...

2. It makes them fresh in everyone's mind during the awards months of January and February.

The most recent glaring example of this is "The Last King of Scotland" which Forrest Whitaker won a Golden Globe for and got nominated for an Oscar. We saw it with Don Cheadle's "Hotel Rwanda" as well. These are just two examples of many.

I'm crying fowl.

I think there should be a new rule that states that for a movie to qualify for the Golden Globes or the Oscars, it must be released by December 1st if it is limited release. And if it is released after December 1st, it must be a wide release in at least 800 screens.

It's dipped below freezing in the valley the last few nights and has been in the 30's and 40's a lot for the past few weeks.

Okay, there are a lot of transplants here, like myself, from cold-winter cities who will all agree that you are a wimp if you think this is really cold and troublesome. So, here are my top five reasons why we shouldn't complain about the cold weather here in Los Angeles:

1. You still don't own a snow shovel, do you?
2. Was snot running down your nose as the wind whipped at you?
3. Are you wearing long underwear? Didn't think so.
4. You have no idea what "wind chill factor" means.
5. Did icicles form on your still-damp hair as you walked to work this morning? No? Oh that's right because you weren't walking to work from the train station, you were driving your Beamer and even when you stepped out of it, nothing froze because IT'S NOT REALLY THAT COLD (wimp)

So, I love "24" (again) but I think maybe they should just be honest with the viewers, and call the show "36."

Why do I say this? Well, if you watch the show, and you know anything about Los Angeles (and the traffic), let's just say you should be a little skeptical about Jack's ability to get from one place to another around this town.

I mean let's just take Sunday's 2-hour premiere episode as an example. It was supposed to be in real-time which obviously means that everything we saw took exactly 2 hours. Well, these are some of the things that Jack Bauer did:

- He was transfered and released from a Chinese prison
- He gets his hair cut and shaves his grizzly beard (that's easily 30 minutes at least)
- Jack is held captive by Fayed, and grotesquely tortured. Then he fakes his own flatlining, kills a guy by biting him in the neck, frees himself from the torture chamber, hides out for a while in some underground tunnel and finally escapes Fayed's evil lair. (this entire sequence could have easily taken a couple hours)
- Jack finds the house that Assad is hiding out in, busts in, debates with Assad for awhile about a trader in his group who Assad then shoots. Then the house gets bombed, Jack and Assad escape and run into another house where they then torture the trader for a while and discuss their next move.
- Jack and Assad head to a subway station where they find a potential suicide bomber. Assad follows the hand-off guy and Jack follows the bomber into the subway, where he fights with him for awhile and then kicks him out the back as the bomb explodes. Then Jack stops the train and runs out the back himself, presumably running down the track until he can escape out the next closest station.
- He then heads to Union Station (by foot) to help Assad cut-off Fayed's guy.

Okay, there you have it. Look, I like the show. I enjoy it and I'm glad I'm back on the bandwagon this season. All I'm saying is that they should add about 12 hours to the season, make it take place in a day and a half, to help accommodate for some of the unbelievable jumps across town. But we all know that already... it requires a little "suspension of disbelief" to enjoy the ride.

It's January, which means...

...that's right - New TV shows!

Yes, this is a new trend in the last few years. New Shows and returning hits debuting mid-season (and summertime).

Anyway, let's talk about The Apprentice: Los Angeles

The First episode was fun. Personally, I haven't watched it since season 1 but I decided to jump back in for two reasons:

1. I live in Los Angeles and thought it would fun to see how it played out in this city.

2. Ivanka, Ivanka, Ivanka!

Now, I was a big fan of Carolyn and George, and still miss them on the show. But after watching Ivanka in the first episode, I think we can all agree that she's grown into this role nicely. We'll just leave it at that. (Hint: just watch the bumpers of her and the Donald during the commercial breaks)

There was also this other little new show that debuted on NBC last night called Grease: You're the One That I Want

If you are an American Idol junkie (like many, many people) and you would often watch the show and say "this person would be much better on Broadway" - then this is your show.

They've got the whole business -

1. The trio of judges (including slightly sarcastic British guy)
2. The make or break phrase - instead of AI's "welcome to Hollywood," they have "You are the one that we want!"
3. And finally, they have their cheesy, Ryan Seacrest wanna-be in Billy Bush who proves that there is only room for one Ryan Cheesecrest in this world.

We are only a week or two into the new fall tv season, so of course I thought - "It's time to evaluate!"

Here are my super-early awards in no particular order and based on nothing much other than whims and my own concrete opinions.

The awards go to:

LEAST SURPRISING SUCCESS, BUT A SUCCESS NONETHELESS
"Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"
I mean really, did anyone have any doubt that this would be good? We could declare this a solid hit without even seeing the first episode. And it delivered. Aaron Sorkin and David E Kelley are the best at this menuever - "Take a show that's grown a bit tired, slightly re-cast it and put it in a slightly different setting, then sell it to the public as a completely different show (even though it's the same show)"

BEST SHOW AT THE GREATEST RISK OF EARLY CANCELLATION
"Six Degrees"
The concept here is fun to watch and somewhat intriguing - six key people in New York City lead different lives that gradually intertwine in unexpected and mysterious ways. It's not extremely revolutionary, although we've seen it mostly in movies in the past and not yet in series drama. And the cast is top-notch - Bridget Moynahan-Brady, Hope Davis, Erika Christensen, the guy from "Dying Young" and a couple other guys.

YOU KNOW WHAT? IT'S ACTUALLY NOT TERRIBLE
"Standoff"
The critics are all over this show, giving it as much of a boost out of the gates as I've seen for any new show this season. They're dropping the classic vocab. like "smart" "sexy" "suspenseful" - and well, hey, it did get me to tivo it. This features the guy from Office Space and some unknown redhead who's kind of hot at certain angles but also annoying about 60% of the time. Having said all that, it's pretty decent. Sure, there's some cheesiness and it's not always believable, but it has its entertaining moments. I'll keep watching FOR NOW, but I'm not sure if the tivo season pass will survive all the way to May.

NETWORKS HAD NO BUSINESS PICKING UP THESE PILOTS
"Til Death"
"Jericho"
"Twenty Good Years"

Okay, that's it for now. I'm sure I'll be back for some more TV chatter when LOST starts up again.

Here's my take on the Emmys, which are this Sunday evening.

First of all, congratulations to the Television Academy for finally having the show BEFORE the start of the new season. BARELY. But at least it's not in September after half of the new network schedules have already kicked off, displaying the glaring ommision of several nominees who were apparently good enough to get nominated, but not good enough to stay on the air another season. This season has PLENTY of those - including the lead actress in a comedy series category, which has 4 of 5 nominees from show's that are no longer on the air. And the 5th nominee, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, is from a show (Old Christine) that probably deserved to be cancelled more than any other show.

Ideally, they would start holding these awards in June or early July, as a true "wrap-up" to the season. Then the nominees would be remembered for the season that just completed, not the weird "is that show still on?" confusion that comes with having them at the beginning of the next fall season. It's embarrassing when Seinfeld is accepting an award for a sitcom role when he can't even remember his character's name b/c it's been off the air so long.

But I digress...
I'm looking forward to Conan hosting the show. I will say it here and now -

Conan O'Brien is the most entertaining host of a prime time awards show EVER. Better than Billy Crystal, Whoopi, Letterman, Carson... Bring it on! I will defend it to anyone who would like to post a comment and debate this with me.

I'll continue the rest of my Emmy thoughts a bit later...