HEADOFCONTRACT

In the land of television…

Catching up with some new and not so new TV shows here is some thoughts on a few of the stuff out there this spring:

-Fringe
The last episode I watched was about the story of how Walter brought Peter into an alternate universe, it was nice to see them explore the childhood and background of other characters other than Olivia, I would still like to learn more about the other characters such as Walter’s lab assistant Astrid. Some of my favorite things about Fringe is the black suited ‘time watchers’ and the music to the new intro sounds better and reminds me less of X-files. Some of my not so favorite and more or less confusing things about this show is small stuff like - Why are the alternate universes co-existing in different places in time and not running on the same clock? - I find the protagonists on this show confusing to follow, especially when there is months in between new episodes makes it easily forgettable ie. who is trying to destroy the world and trying to plot what, my short attention span can only keep up with the new ‘smaller’ bad guys that appear only in one episode and don’t have any involvement in the build up of the plot.

-V
If you do some background research V is something of a re-make of a miniseries from 1983. Yes, it is alot better than Flash Foward (FF just feels like a drag on time, just watch the first one or two episodes to get the idea but don’t go through the whole season, at first V felt like this but not as bad as FF) the leading character FBI blonde Elisabeth Mitchell is also an actor from Lost, but I don’t watch Lost (I got lost in the first 4 episodes) so don’t ask me her role. At first I thought that it was the same blonde actress on FF but I think that is someone else.
Anyways, V- if you like to re-create scenarios in your head playing out alien invasions, human-alien procreation, matriarchy, conspiracy theories, ‘we’re the last 5 people on earth who can save the planet’ scenarios, or if you spend too much time on the x-box, there is probably something in it for you to enjoy. V is full of many references to today’s politics of the world, but I totally missed the Obama comparison people are making, comparing Obama to the lead alien ‘Anna’ just feels too inaccurate and way too extreme, I’m sure there is better politicians who could fit the profile. There is alot of twists and surprises per episode (or at least for me) and sometimes watching semi-bump in the night type shows can raise my blood pressure (Glee, it’s not for me) so maybe it’s not for you for that reason, but I still like it enough to see the outcome. If you like to imagine what technology, science, etc will look like in the next possibly decades of years V has some interesting concepts. My dislikes about the show is that the ‘human’ reaction to the arrival of the V’s (v is for Visitor if you didn’t know that by now) just seems so unbelievably naive, the human to V relationship way too progressive and any conflict non-existent except for the FBI agent, the one news reporter and the other 4-5 people working with the FBI agent, after the history of the Cold War and other such occurrences in humanity, and the FBI agent’s son just happens to travel aboard the V ship and be their new best friend just seems like they got cheap on characters.

-Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
This is the one where Jamie (an impressively genius chef to watch on TV) travels to Huntington USA to help the town change their diet by working with schools, and local families. He chose Huntington based on USA’s obesity related deaths per year this town had the highest rank. I find Jamie convincingly passionate about his presence there, and it’s interesting to watch him take on such a massive challenge in the psychology behind school lunches, parents, and locals of the unhealthy and nutrient lacking systems and food cultures in place. I think my heart skipped a beat when he went into an elementary school class and the kids there couldn’t name one vegetable, but they knew what a pizza, chicken nugget and french fry was and couldn’t name a potato from a tomato. Even when I was growing up in elementary school, most kids brought their own lunches their parents packed but even in Canada parents still send their kids to school with 100% fruitless and vegetable free lunches, basically lunch boxes of food I would consider to be more like candy, and enough fruit-by-the-foot rolls (not real fruit, its like a long candy) to keep their intestines clogged for the next two decades. Even in public school, at this school there was no meal plans so people either brought their lunch or their busy parents gave them money where we could ‘leave’ for our hour of lunch break. When my mom couldn’t pack me my lunch, there was this corner store closest to the school that had a pizza and soda deal, and guess where kids with money spend it on their lunch? For the 2 years I spent at that school, you could say combined for an entire school year (that’s 5 days a week) I ate pizza and drank a Dr.Pepper for lunch. This was just before society went all ‘nutrition’ crazy and the nightly news segments thankfully are becoming more informing and more consumer aware for the general public. Thankfully by highschool I learned to pack my own lunch that was notably healthy, my favorite salami and tomato on dark rye, with a fruit and some water, then some days I would still spoil myself with the best poutine from the ‘junk food’ restaurant across from the highschool. Also notable is the time my classmates fought to have our soda machine banned from (my second) highschool (the only source of dispensable drinks for 500-600 students is pop?) but sadly lost because a portion of the school’s fees relied on advertising from the soda companies. For the last FIVE years I do not drink soda EXCEPT sometimes once a month, when shitty restaurants or cafes don’t offer any other beverage than fluoride drenched tap water, so now I bring my little BPA-free steel canister with my own water when I don’t forget it if I go out.

Other stuff I’ve been watching:
Gossip Girl - you know you love me xoxo
Melrose Place - worst acting at it’s worst, its funny to watch.
Project Runway - no favorites this season, and they should have stopped using ‘Heidi Klum’ as a challenge seasons ago.
Undercover Boss - This is a show where corporate CEO’s go undercover to take on entry level jobs in their companies to learn how their employees are doing and how they feel about their jobs.

There’s a few more but I’ll leave you with that for now.

-SNACKS
If you made it to the end of this update, I am happy to reward you with an update on snacks. As a snack lover for many years I am happy to share with you..
My favorite new ‘desk’ snack - organic fig bars- they are sweet but won’t feel like they are eroding your mouth away with sugar. If you are gonna buy fig bars, buy the organic because you won’t find any brand (including Newton’s) that tastes like cardboard filled jam.
My favorite new ‘dip/spread’ - Olive tapernade on crackers. It depends what brand you buy some have more or less of that tangy olive taste, I like to use one small shake of sea salt on top and then you have something of a super low-budget black caviar. And if you, like me, like to eat mouth watering salt-licking food such as olives, pickles, or anything pickled here’s a tip- always eat it with a nice glass of water, one olive will probably contain more salt than you need in a day so just like coffee keep it portioned with water. Limit yourself to say- 2 pickles every hour. You don’t want to eat too much salty food you are salivating at your paperwork, computer, whatever you’re doing and you don’t want to run out of pickles or olives because you know you’re just gonna go and buy more the next day if you run out.

Ok, there is your update for now live well and enjoy the sun. Also I will be testing out new templates here and there.
- ML