• Fat Man and Little Boy and Jughead


    After watching this week’s episode of “Lost” (called “Jughead”), I think I’ve finally figured out the secret of the island: it loves killing unnamed people. If I were a Flight 815 survivor at this point, I’d be going around to everyone who would listen, introducing myself and giving a little bit of my backstory. And…

  • A Disquiet Follows My Mid-Season Break


    Or, “We Never Said They Had a Good Plan.” So last week was the big return of “Battlestar Galactica” (with “Sometimes a Great Notion”) after months of speculation after a huge cliffhanger and the promise that all our questions would be answered. I didn’t really say anything about it at the time, because I was…

  • SPOILER: Caesar dies


    This weekend I finished watching the last episodes of the HBO series “Rome.” It’s been a hard road to the end of the series: it was recommended by a friend on here, but it took me a long time to get into it. And they nearly lost me a few times in season 2, because…

  • Density Calls


    The “Lost” season 5 premiered with a two-parter, “Because You Left,” and “The Lie.” You can tell that they’ve finally mastered the “Lost” formula because they aired two full hours jam-packed with over a dozen characters, eight or nine locations all over the world, multiple flashbacks, a genuinely surprising reveal of a familiar character, multiple…

  • On the Air


    About two months ago, I did the unthinkable and cancelled my satellite TV service. It was both an attempt to save money as well as a social re-engineering project on myself: I’d gotten so dependent on having live TV that it never even occurred to me I could go without it. It was an essential…

  • Team Possible


    I wanted to say congratulations to my friends at Disney Imagineering for completing the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure at Epcot in Orlando. The attraction went into “soft opening”/preview mode last week, and everything I’ve seen online says that it’s a big hit so far. One of the quotes from this article about the attraction…

  • iTunes–


    Apparently, at some point today (while I was sick in bed waiting and hoping for death to come), Apple announced that it was switching its iTunes store music tracks to DRM-free versions. Fair enough, but nothing special: Amazon has been selling DRM-free MP3 downloads for a while now. And I switched to Amazon about a…

  • iList


    Because I’m in a year-end list-making mood, and I’ve got insomnia, here’s a handy list of my favorite iPhone apps. All links go to the App Store page on iTunes, so don’t be alarmed. Tweetie iPhone client for twitter.com This is the best twitter client for any platform, as far as I’m concerned. I bought…