My last post was a long time ago. Since then a lot of the shows I’ve been watching are now cancelled.

Shows I watched last season that are now cancelled:

Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles – awesome near the end
My Own Worst Enemy
Eli Stone – loved that show
Knight Rider – finally started getting decent near the end
Pushing Daisies – another show I loved

There have been a few things worth watching this summer:

Warehouse 13 on SyFy has been decent so far on Tuesday.

The Philanthropist on NBC has been ok on Wednesday night. Not sure if this show is going to make it to a second season though.

USA has two great shows on Thursday night: Burn Notice in its 3rd season is arguably one of the best shows on TV and Royal Pains has been really good in its first season.

True Blood on HBO Sunday nights is another one of my favorites and Hung right after it has been enjoyable so far.

To fill the gaps, I’ve been using Hulu.com to entertain me this summer since not much is on.

Two shows that I wanted to watch while they were on, but didn’t, are Castle, and Legend of the Seeker. Both are getting second seasons and rightfully so. Castle is a lot of fun with a mystery novelist shadowing a detective to get more storylines for his books. Legend of the Seeker is a great fantasy series based on the Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind. I am almost done with the first season and looking forward to the second which starts in November. Its so good, I may even go back and start reading the books.

Over the last few years, it seems that each new season I end up watching more weekly programs.

This year there are a ton of shows my wife and I have interest in seeing, some of which are new, some of which have lost their luster.

Monday night:
8pm CBS – Big Bang Theory
8:30pm CBS – How I met your mother
8pm FOX – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
9pm NBC – Heroes
10pm NBC – My Own Worst Enemy

I find Big Bang Theory and How I met your mother to be 2 of the funniest shows on TV. I still look forward to these each week and not even the Terminator can keep me away.

The Terminator has been good and the first season had me looking forward to each new episode. I’m not as excited this season and it has been kicked to the DVR.

Heroes Season 1 was awesome. Season 2 was ok. Season 3 has started out ok but seems to be just more of the same. Not looking forward to Heroes as much each as I used to but at least nothing else exciting is on at 9pm.

My Own Worst Enemy is a new show with Christian Slater which looks like it has potential.

Tuesday night:
9pm FOX – Fringe
9pm ABC Family – Greek
10pm ABC – Eli Stone

First off, I tried watching the new 90210. I missed the first episode and started watching the second. 10 minutes in and I was ready to turn it off. 40 minutes in and it still sucked and I’ll never watch it again. The dialogue was horrible and the storylines were even worse. Sorry Shannon Dougherty, you’ll have to revive your career elsewhere.

Fringe is a neat new show that has been a pleasant surprise. It is still a little strange and hopefully they don’t go too nutty with all the paranormal pseudoscience, but so far it has the right balance of thriller and science fiction. I’ve been looking forward to each new episode the first few weeks so this is one of my favorite shows at the moment.

We kind of forgot about Greek but its a fun show.

Eli Stone is one of those shows that is just odd. He imagines things that he thinks are real and other people think he’s nuts. My wife wanted to check out the show last year so I started watching with her. At first I wasn’t impressed but for some reason it is now one of my favorite shows and I’m really looking forward to the second season starting Oct 14.

Wednesday night:
8pm NBC – Knight Rider
8pm ABC – Pushing Daisies
9pm ABC – Private Practice
10pm Comedy Central – South Park

I have this on DVR and have yet to watch Knight Rider. I was excited for this show especially after the special last year. It seemed to have potential. The word on the web is that the first episode is so horrible that it won’t make it longer than the Bionic Woman. Maybe that’s good for me because I actually like the Bionic Woman? We’ll find out soon enough.

Pushing Daisies’ first season was absolutely wonderful to watch. It was just different from every other show out. It has it’s own ecclectic feel and is fun to watch. Hopefully they can continue to write intriguing episodes.

Private Practice is ok. Not one of my favorites but the spinoff to Grey’s Anatomy is entertaining. My wife really likes this one but I’m kind of indifferent to watching it.

Thursday night:
8pm CW – Smallville
9pm ABC – Grey’s Anatomy
10pm ABC – Life on Mars

Smallville is one of those shows that each week you don’t know what you’re going to get. One episode is awesome and the next is barely watchable. Usually the bad ones are when they just make up some random guy who got a power from kryptonite somehow. The good ones move the plotline along and usually involved other members of the justice league. This season it sounds like they will have Green Arrow in a lot of episodes which should make for a good final season.

Grey’s Anatomy was a great show in its first couple of seasons. It hasn’t been as great but its still a good show.

Life on Mars is one of the new shows that looks like it has potential. We’ll see on Oct. 9.

We might have to DVR Eleventh Hour and check that out as well.

Friday night:
8pm CBS – Ghost Whisperer

Friday nights the last few years have meant either Las Vegas or Doctor Who but the first is gone and the second is on hiatus unfortunately.

We just started watching repeats this summer of Ghost Whisperer since there was nothing else on. We decided to throw it on and were presently surprised. We’ve watched about 6 or 7 repeats and are now looking forward to the new season.

Crusoe is on NBC and might be worth DVRing to check it out.

Sunday night:
9pm HBO – True Blood
9pm ABC – Desparate Housewives
10pm ABC – Brothers and Sisters

True Blood is another show that has a lot of potential. It is so strange that you can’t help wanting to find out what happens next. Each episode so far has ended with a nice cliffhanger that leaves you not wanting to wait a whole week to see more. I wasn’t sure about this show about vampires at first but it is one of my favorites so far this fall. Hopefully it will continue to please.

Desparate Housewives has lost a lot of its luster since the first season. I’m not as excited this year but maybe the jump forward 5 years will make it watchable again.

Brothers and Sisters is a pretty good drama. Again I’m not as excited but it is a solid show with a lot of good characters and decent storylines.

So there you have it. Hopefully some of the shows we really enjoy will actually last (r.i.p. Jericho, Las Vegas, et al).

The last couple of weeks I have immersed myself in the Olympics. I have watched almost every hour of primetime on NBC plus a little extra.

It is fun to actually care about sports that are neglected by the masses for all but 2 weeks every 4 years. Swimming, track and field, water polo, you name it. Even BMX biking was neat. On Monday, I won’t watch a single minute of any of these for another 4 years.

Now I understand that it is impossible to show every sport and there are too many events going on at the same time to show everything on one station. We’re also watching everything about 12 hours after the fact.

They are currently showing Bryan Clay in the 10th event of the decathlon. He has an “insurmountable lead” as the announcers stated. On Thursday night they did not show any of the first 5 events in prime time because the beach volleyball gold medal game went long. Tonight they only showed maybe three of the events from the second half.

They show all these swimming, diving and track preliminary rounds. Once upon a time, the decathlon crowned the greatest athlete. When it was an American, the media let you know it. Bruce Jenner and Dan O’Brien were put on a pedestal and thrust into the spotlight. This year I feel like it was glanced over and not given its due. Bryan Clay owned the first 9 events and it got about 5 minutes of coverage. I want to see the long jump, high jump, javelin and all the rest, dammit. I guess next time I have to stay up until 4am to watch more events.

I hope you already know who Steven Spielberg is. He’s the guy who’s directed such movies you may have heard of like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, the Indiana Jones movies and many more.

Well, the guy who wrote the music scores to most of his films and a few others you may have heard along the way, like you know… a small film franchise called Star Wars, is named John Williams.

John Williams was a long time conductor of the Boston Pops in the 80s and 90s and for the last 10 years he has come back to conduct the Pops at their summer home in Tanglewood, Massachusetts for Film Night.

He performs his own works as well as other famous film scores. This year he did mostly his own selections along with a score from the original Robin Hood movie and another from a movie I had never seen. They changed the last number of the first half and strayed off course a little. They played Olympic Fanfare in honor of the Olympics coming up next month. None of us got upset that it had nothing to do with the movies. The second half, however, was all Indy.

In the writeup for the event, it was billed as John Williams with special guests. I assumed that since it was movie night it would be other composers or something. The first song of the second act was “Anything Goes” as sung in the foreign language at the beginning of Temple of Doom. A whole chorus ensemble sang along with it and the lead didn’t come out on stage until after the song was over. John Williams introduces none other than the original singer and female star of Temple of Doom, Kate Capshaw! Cool guest, right?

Well if Kate Capshaw is there, it makes sense that her husband is there too right? So he then introduces Steven Spielberg! Spielberg is on stage the rest of the night introducing all the rest of the songs and giving little tidbits of info about the pieces and movies. It was awesome.

Throughout the night they had a screen come down on certain pieces and show the film or montages along with the music.

The Raiders March was supposed to be the last piece, but of course there are unannounced encores and the first was Marion’s Theme. And then they bring out Marion herself, Karen Allen! So cool.

The E.T. theme was the final number of the night which ended a magical evening. We had so much fun we’re ready to go again next year!

Day 3 was a bit easier than day 2 thankfully. I had a bit more energy and I smartly took a little more time between sets so muster up what I could. Week 4 doesn’t look like too big a leap forward so hopefully I should make it through ok.

I also realized that I really need to do full body workout rather than just doing a few isolated muscles. I’m breaking out the jump rope and getting back to crunches and stretches. One of these days I will jump back on the Wii Fit too for all the Yoga and other exercises.