The Yin Blog

About the Secret Service prostitution scandal . . . par for the course?

I just came across this passage in Gary T. Marx's book, Under Cover: Police Surveillance in America:

Of course, [video/audio surveillance] can be a double-edged sword should agents forget that video or audio tapes are present (in one case, agents were overheard discussing the sexual activities and attributes of an attractive female assistant U.S. attorney, and, in another, the agent asked  an informer to locate a prostitute).

2011-12 TV season wrap up -- CBS shows

Last week, I blogged about the ABC shows I watched this past season. Today, it's CBS's turn!

Veteran shows

"Survivor" continues to fascinate me even though it's had more than 20 seasons now. I think it's largely how game theory can be used to analyze the moves (or non-moves) by the players. The fall edition had "Redemption Island" idea, where you could be voted out, yet survive duels long enough to get back in the game. Hence, we viewers were treated to the unusual strategy of repeat player Ozzie asking to be voted out himself so that he could beat the woman then holding Redemption Island (knocking her out of the game, as she was hostile to them), and then getting back in. Pretty gutsy, and it worked. On the downside, dweeby player John Cochran certainly did no favors for those us in the law school arena, as CBS kept describing him as a Harvard law student, and he didn't do much on the show to make law students seem like survivors. . . .

The spring edition ("One World") had a somewhat boring cast. The women started off slowly and clumsily, but mastermind Kim soon took control of the game. One can admire her ruthlessly efficient play in voting out the strategic threats one at a time, but it did not make for compelling TV. Well, there was immense satisfaction in seeing the odious and spoiled Colton get taken out of the game due to a medical injury. (The satisfaction wasn't the injury -- wouldn't wish that on any player -- but his departure from the game.) Grade: A- (Redemption Island); B+ (One World)

"Hawaii 5-0" is much like ABC's "Castle" (which it airs opposite -- thank you, TiVo, for producing dual tuner DVRs) -- a slick, well-executed formula. "H50" in HD is gorgeous, as Hawaii's lush scenery pops off the screen in vibrant greens and blues. So what if Alex O'Loghlin's Steve McGarrett is an impossibly cool superman? That's part of the appeal of the show! And I continue to love how it showcases so many Asian actors -- not just co-stars Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim, but also Masi Oka (technically a co-star, since he gets billing in the opening credits), Mark Dacascos (still weird seeing him in something other than "Iron Chef America"), Taylor Wily, Kelly Hu (before getting killed off), Will Yun Lee, Dennis Chun, Brian Yang, and Ian Anthony Dale. Grade: A-

I watched half of an episode of "NCIS: Los Angeles" because it was a crossover episode with "H50" and found it so . . . dull . . . that I gave up. Apparently lots of people disagree with me, as this is one of the top-rated shows, but sheesh . . . . Grade: F.

New shows

"Person of Interest" hasn't been anything special, but it does deliver what it promises, which is Jim Cavaziel's mumbler dishing out painful justice to wrongdoers in New York. All courtesy of some super-magical -- er, technological machine that sees patterns in the surveillance cameras set up after 9/11 and detects criminal activity before it occurs. Or something like that. Grade: B.

Shows I didn't watch even though they might have appealed to me

I used to be a big fan of "The Amazing Race," but I stopped watching a few years ago; not sure why, it just stopped holding my attention. The same is true for the original "CSI."

"CSI: Miami" has been canceled. I thought it had the best opening theme music of any of the "CSI"s, but it was hard to take David Caruso seriously. Maybe we weren't meant to?

***

Next up will be the CW. That won't take long, since the only show I watched on that network was the "Nikita" remake, so I'll also cover Fox.

2011-12 TV season wrap up -- ABC shows

Another fall/spring  television season is winding down (and summer shows are starting up, but that will be the subject of a different post), so it's a good time to take a look back at how new and veteran shows fared on my TiVo the past 9 months or so. Let's get started with ABC!

Veteran shows

"Castle" has never really been a groundbreaking show in any way; it's more about Nathan Fillion's roguish charm coupled with Stana Katic's exasperation/attraction to that same charm. I haven't watched the season finale yet, which supposedly moves their relationship in one direction or the other. I'd say this season largely treaded water, and while it was never disappointing, it didn't make me feel like I had to watch it right away either. Grade: B.

"Shark Tank" (spring) continues to fascinate me, not just the awful ideas, but also the good ones. Lesson: when there are competing offers from Sharks, and they ask to step outside to make a call, don't do it! All that will happen is the competing Sharks will combine their offer into a less desirable one. I do wish they would get rid of the real estate Shark and make permanent the QVC Shark; the former sometimes comes to me across as nasty and curt, whereas the latter seems much more willing to deal and is more pleasant. Grade: B

New shows

I liked "Scandal" (spring) much more than I thought I would. It was brutally unrealistic in many ways, but at the same time, it had a compelling season-long plot arc. I think having only seven episodes worked to its advantage, in that it was a stripped down, lean story, without 57 different subplots. Grade: A-.

Much of the same could be said about "Missing," (spring) which fortunately wrapped up its plot with two minutes to go in the season/series finale. I thought Ashley Judd did quite a good job as mom/ex-CIA agent Becca Winstone, and it's too bad the show wasn't renewed. Then again, maybe it's just as well. If you think of this as a 10-hour long mini-series, like how networks used to schedule 2 hours a night for an entire week, you'd see this as a pretty kick-ass presentation. Sure, it was basically a remake of the movie Taken, but much more complicated and tense. I gather that the one of the reasons no one makes miniseries any more is that the economics don't work out; you can't syndicate them, and you can't amortize the cost of sets, etc. over a long season of 20+ episodes. "Missing" definitely looked expensive to produce (except for a few scenes that were obviously shot with a screen in the background), but most of that cost was probably marginal, not fixed, in that you weren't having to build fancy sets so much as navigate actual locations in Europe. Grade: A-.

My favorite new show is "Once Upon a Time." I've posted about it before, and my views haven't changed. I love the juxtaposition of Fairy Tale Land with Storybrooke (aka the real world), and the matching of the characters there and here. The acting is generally strong; the guy who plays Prince Charming/David makes Charming look pretty cool/studly while David is downright wimpy, and similarly Snow White would give Xena a run for her money, while Mary-Margaret in Storybrooke is so mousy. So glad this is coming back. Grade: A+

Shows I didn't watch even though they might have appealed to me

As much TV as I watch, even I have limits, so I'm not going to comment about shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Private Practice," etc. that simply don't fall within what I would be expected to like. There were some shows on ABC that either I had anticipated liking but didn't watch, or didn't watch but in retrospect maybe would have.

"The River" seemed interesting from the upfront previews, but I'm not a fan of the handheld, "you are there"-style of horror made popular by "The Blair Witch Project." The ratings for this were pretty bad, so it's just as well. A quick check of Wikipedia makes it sound like this ended with an unresolved cliffhanger, too.

Although I've never read the novel, I did like the movie version of "The Count of Monto Cristo" with Jim Cavaziel, so in retrospect, I probably should have given "Revenge" a chance, as it's basically the same storyline, which also means that the show is something of a serialized drama. Oh well, I probably watch more than enough TV as it is.

***

That's not a bad year for ABC. It's had some high concept shows before that have started off magnificently, only to crash and burn spectacularly ("FlashForward," anyone? Or "V"?). "Once Upon a Time" looks to have avoided that particular syndrome. "Scandal" had a nice short season, and the word is that season 2 will be 13 episodes or fewer, so it sounds like producer Shonda Rhimes likes the idea of a tighter season.

NBC's "Revolution" (fall 2012)

If you're a TV producer and your show gets picked up by NBC, it's kind of a "good news, bad news" situation. The bad news is that NBC's ratings are so bad, there may be nights when cable shows on USA and other channels draw more viewers. The good news is that the ratings are so bad, you don't have to attract a lot of viewers to avoid being cancelled.

Anyway, here's one of NBC's new dramas that looks pretty interesting. It's our country after some kind of massive destruction of all power sources (more than the electrical grid failing), with a MacGuffin secret power source, a quest for find other supporters, and an evil controlling militia. And archery! And swords!!

The record of serialized dramas with complicated mythology on network TV has been mixed. "24," "Lost," and "Prison Break" did well, and "Once Upon a Time" is this past season's break-out hit (and NBC's "Grimm" did enough to get renewed). On the other hand, "Terra Nova," "Alcatraz," "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "Dollhouse," "Invasion," "Surface," "Threshold," "V," to name a few, all crashed and burned. "Fringe" and "Nikita" have managed to get to season 5 and 3 respectively (next season) inexplicably. In other words, I wouldn't hold my breath for "Revolution" to make it to year 2.

Anyway, here's the promo clip:

 

Lake Run 5K race recap

I am not a morning person, but I'm sort of used to getting up around 7ish because of my son's elementary school schedule. Voluntarily getting up at 7 am on the weekend, though, is a different matter. Yet, I did it for the 36th annual Lake Run around Oswego Lake. I signed up for the 5K race; there was also a 12K race. Here were the courses:

Millenium Plaza, the site of the race and the festivities, is the place in Lake Oswego that hosts the farmers' market and various summer events. I picked up my racing bib and race T-shirt there yesterday afternoon, just as the various vendors were getting set up. Blast Burgers was there, and I was sort of tempted to suggest that the family come back for dinner.

Anyway, parking wasn't too bad this morning, even with the local merchants having put up "No Lake Run Parking" signs in their lots. I ate yogurt for breakfast, left home around 7:20, and parked by 7:30. It was pretty crowded (over 600 5K runners, and almost 500 12K runners). I was wondering how jammed the race route was going to be, but the race organizers know what they're doing: we ran on the road, which was blocked off from traffic.

Before the race started, someone from one of the local gyms led us on a warm-up routine, which consisted of bodyweight squats, pogo jumps, and some other kind of stretches. I went along half-heartedly, keeping in mind what I'd read in Born to Run (and other sources) that pre-running stretching doesn't do anything useful.

The horn sounded the start of the race, and we were off. I was much nearer to the front than the back, but there was still a slow mass in front of me that I threaded through for 50 yards or so, before settling into a position behind the really fast runners.

Now, the grim part of the recap. I had expected the course to be more or less flat, since it's a LAKE RUN. That's where I was wrong. We started on State Street, heading south, and then turned right on Northshore Road, which is when the course became hilly. Rolling hills, not the brutal steep slope of the Mt. Tabor run I did back in February, but several more hills along the way.

I must have missed the first mile marker, or there wasn't one. I did see some pink line spray-painted on the road somewhere around 7:15; maybe that was the marker. There was a mile 2 marker that I crossed at 14:37ish. That sounds about right, since mile 2 had more hills, and I eased up a bit on the uphill parts.

I got passed by a bunch of lean young teenaged guys who seemed like they part of the Lake Oswego High School cross-country team or something (checking the results, there were a bunch of 14- to 16-year-olds, all from L.O., who finished ahead of me).

I'm not sure what time I hit the 3 mile marker, but it was downhill from there to the end of the course, which I could see. I went into fast mode - at least, as fast as I could muster, except when I heard someone (two?) behind me, I poured on the speed and sprinted to the end. It turns out there were two 18-year-old females catching up to me (I must have passed them early on, since they hit the start line 3 seconds ahead of me). Our "gun time" was the same, but my chip time was 3 seconds faster.

I finished in 22:59, which was 44th out of 629. I was 4th out of 26 for my age/gender group (4th out of 67 for age group). I got "chicked" by four women, including two 50+ year olds(!). In fact, the 52-year-old woman was the fastest woman in the entire race with a seriously good 6:40 pace (20:44 overall).

By the way, it doesn't bother me to get beaten in a road race by women; I'm not like that private high school in Arizona that forfeited a baseball championship game rather than play a school with a girl playing second base. I'm actually kind of surprised it doesn't happen more often, since middle distance running would seem to be an athletic event in which physical size/strength differences between men and women should matter less. I'm a reasonably good runner but far from being elite, and I would have thought that many 20- or 30-something women who run a good amount would be as fast or faster than I am.

Subsidize my fitness please!

From a forthcoming health study:

Subsidizing exercise and fitness-related lifestyles in middle age could significantly reduce the ballooning cost of health care in later years, a new study of more than 20,000 people suggests.

Running has certainly done wonders for my blood lipid profile and the like. I had not-so-good cholesterol level and blood pressure during my early 30s (hmm, when I was a law firm associate -- coincidence?), but I had better numbers across the board at my check-up last year than at any other time in my life.

I especially like this part of the news report:

Exercise affects "so many chronic conditions leading to major health care costs," said [Dr. Suzanne] Steinbaum, who also is the hospital's director of women and heart disease. "We should have financial support for people to go to gym facilities."

People who are more fit should "get some benefit" from insurers, Steinbaum said. Society should "give them the ability to become fit," and then "give people a reward when they demonstrate" fitness, she added.

Well, I certainly won't complain if my health insurance plan is going to help pay for my running gear, gym membership, race entry fees, and the like! Come to think of it, I'd like a stationary rowing machine for the home, too.

Britney Spears joins "The X-Factor" . . . (snooze)

I wasn't all that impressed with the first season of "The X-Factor"; Simon Cowell stopped giving his harsh but accurate critiques, and the other judges were pretty lame -- except for L.A. Reid, who was the closest thing to the "American Idol"-version of Simon.

Then, the two lamest judges, Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul, were fired in the offseason, and now it's official: Britney Spears is replacing them. I'm not sure this is an improvement, and I think I may be done with "The X-Factor."

Note, however, that if Spears were to replace Christina Aguilera on "The Voice," that would be a definite improvement! Sheesh!

You know, if NBC really wanted ratings, maybe it should match up Christina Aguilera against current "Celebrity Apprentice" contestant Aubrey O'Day to see who has the colossally biggest me-me-me-me ego.

TV round-up: "The Voice," "The Apprentice," "Survivor," and "Touch"

Just some quick thoughts on TV as we near the end of the regular 2011-12 season (spoilers through 5/7/2012):

NBC's "The Voice": The final four performed last night. I thought Jermaine was okay but overwrought yet bland, which is not a good combination. I don't get the appeal for Chris (the opera guy) but last night's songs seemed to suit his style much more than his earlier butchering of Coldplay's "Viva la Vida." Juliet was quite good and probably deserves to win.

But I threw all 10 of my internet votes toward Tony. I just don't get why judge Christina Aguilera is so irredeemably nasty toward Tony, constantly trashing him throughout the season. It certainly provides fuel for the speculation that, back when they were both on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, she may have had some unrequited crush on him or something.

I guess it's too much to hope for that the producers would get rid of her after this season.

NBC's "The Apprentice": Now we're down to the final three: Aubrey O'Day, Arsenio Hall, and Clay Aiken. Wow, that means Lisa Lampanelli was first to be fired after the "interviews" with last season's winner and runner-up. I've utterly loathed Lampanelli's mean-spirited, profane, abusive tirades this season, so I had to rewind and rewatch the part where Trump fired her. I do have to admit that she handled it well and in a classy fashion, so perhaps she's not as nasty a person as she sometimes came across.

One more of the three is due to be fired as a result of the interviews. I would prefer that the final two be Arsenio and Clay, because Aubrey is just "me me me me me I'm so great I'm awesome me me me me." Based on their performance in the game, though, I think it should probably be Aubrey and Clay, as Aubrey has done a lot of work, and Clay has been very steady. However, Trump's decisions are bizarre and make sense only if they validate his greatness or they help ratings. Therefore, I believe the final two will be Arsenio and Aubrey, given the conflict they've already had during the season.

CBS's "Survivor": This show sure does have a long season, doesn't it? I mean, it seemed like there were so many weeks where loathsome Colton dominated the screen, and then he was taken out for a medical emergency well before making the jury! Well, it looks like Kim is in strong position to make it to the finals, considering her prowess in challenges, her possession of a hidden immunity idol, and her approximately 500% greater strategic intellect than virtually everyone else put together. (I'm not sure about Sabrina though; she's been somewhat under the radar, so she could be quite the strategic player herself.)

Fox's "Touch": I wanted to like this show, but it's . . . kind of boring. At one level, I know it's not fair to expect "24" because it's not the same show, not even the same type of show. But I can't help but see Kiefer Sutherland and long for Jack Bauer.

Zombie running shirt

I think I may need to get one of these T-shirts:

 

 

Why be on the strongest team on "The Voice"?

So "The Voice" is down to the final four. [Stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled!] They are:

- Chris the opera trained singer (Christina's team)

- Tony the former Mousketeer (Adam's team)

- Jermaine the one who I don't remember much about (Blake's team)

- Juliet the hardcore rocker (Cee Lo's team)

I acknowledge Chris' vocal prowess, but I really haven't liked his performances, especially when he ruined a Coldplay song. (I had to go to YouTube to listen to the original just to wash out Chris' version from my brain.) Jermaine leaves me feeling absolutely nothing. I like Tony, even more because Christina Aguilera keeps trashing him -- is she trying to forget her Mousketeer past (they were on together)? However, I think Juliet will and should win, as she's just put up the strongest performances.

Yet, next week is the first and only time that the contestants will actually be competing against ones from other teams. Up until now, it's been intrateam fratricide. There could be week where one team's singers got the lowest votes, and yet singers from other teams still got booted because it's been an equal number of cuts from each team.

This means that being on the strongest team was actually a bad thing, not a good thing!

I suppose the counterpoint is that if you simply let all contestants be exposed, you could end up with a situation like that on "The X-Factor," where Paula Abdul's team (the groups) got eliminated quickly, leaving her with nothing to do. Then again, some might view that as a feature, not a bug.