End Of May Lifegrind

I've been regularly adding links to my shared Google Reader items page rather than doing link posts lately.

As usual, I've played poker every day. Usual results post that nobody really cares about in the next day or two. I'm up for the month, so no complaints here. At least, not more complaints than usual.

The TV season is over, so I find myself bored in the evenings. Sure, the new season of LEVERAGE starts soon, and there's a few episodes left to BREAKING BAD, but mostly there's nothing to watch. I do plan on giving that new NBC show, PERSONS UNKNOWN, a chance, since I enjoy the "strangers kidnapped and thrown together" plot, even if it's been a bit overdone over the last decade. Other than that it's downloaded DOCTOR WHO and soon THE IT CROWD.

Speaking of TV, it seems like reviving cancelled shows that I used to watch is becoming a trend. First there's talk of an ALIAS reboot (and it'd have to be a reboot, since you know they can't afford Jennifer Garner now. She's a movie star, after all. Plus, she wanted to leave after that last season, the plan was to maybe continue the show with Rachel Nichols replacing her, but the network decided to end the show.) Apparently they want to do the show minus the Rimbaldi stuff, which I think is great. I thought the original concept of the show was great, "a spy who thinks she's a CIA agent finds out she's working for the bad guys". Once the show got too wrapped up with the Rimbaldi stuff it got a bit silly. (Season 4 was awful, and season 5 was so so. I re-watched the first four seasons on DVD during the winter, and season 5 has been sitting on top of the DVD player for months now.)

There's also word that Fox is reviving TITUS. I loved that show, and it only got cancelled because the new head of the network at the time didn't like it. The new show takes place years later, so I'm assuming and hoping it's a sequel to the original. Of course, I imagine except for Titus himself, they won't be bringing back the original cast. Shame, since Stacey Keach was brilliant on the original (but since he played the father and the father died in real life, a return seems unlikely), and the rest of the cast were great too. I may have to bust out the DVD box sets and grind through them.

Moving back to me, I've actually been playing guitar a bit again just for the hell of it. Usually just figuring out the occasional song or two. For a long time, I was lazy and would just look for a tab to a song instead of trying to figure it out by ear. Now I'm reverse lazy. Now I'm too lazy to bother Googling for a tab and just try to pick it out by ear. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, once I think I've figured it out, I'll check for a tab to see if what I figured out is right or wrong. (Then again, a lot of net tabs aren't all that accurate either.)

I finally caught up with the early episodes of COMMUNITY that I skipped over. When the show started, I watched the pilot and thought it sucked so I didn't come back for more. Then I accidentally watched an episode around the middle of the season and started watching it regularly. I like all of the movie and TV references, and a lot of them are from the era I grew up in. (Also Alison Brie is currently tied with Karen Gillan for who I think is the hottest woman on TV right now.)

I'm re-playing GRAND THEFT AUTO IV again. I forget how many times this is now. Up until this last go around, I never did the update that the PS3 prompts you for, the one that enables trophies. This time I did, so now I'm getting trophies in the game. I like how I notice things in the game that I didn't notice on previous play-throughs. Anyway, I'm replaying old games due to the combo of being down to one console, nothing all the great in the new games coming out, and being poor.

My Xbox 360 still sits unused. I can't find the motivation to crack it open again and attempt to re-fix the RROD fix. I fixed it a month or so ago, and then it started freezing again. I'm pretty sure I just need to tighten the screws a bit more. (Hopefully I won't have to redo the whole fix.) At any rate, I know the do it yourself fix is often temporary and lets you squeeze a little more life out of a dying 360. (Some people say it's permanent, but a lot say it's temporary.) At some point I'll have to buy a new one.

For comic book movies, I saw both THE LOSERS and KICK ASS. Both were okay. I can't say that I'd relentlessly badger anybody about seeing either or that I'd even run out and buy them on release day on Blu-ray. Both are titles I'd probably pick up if I could get them on the cheap. I haven't seen IRON MAN 2 because I haven't seen IRON MAN 1 yet. (Did that ever come to cable?)