My DVR

Back in the early days of Sean's Ramblings, I wrote several posts complaining about good television shows or sporting events featuring Pittsburgh teams airing at the same time. Each time I wrote one of these posts, I received comments that I should get a DVR. They were right. Besides electricity, the DVR may be the greatest invention of all time. These days, with the exception of sports, it's rare that I ever watch live television. Unfortunately, I'm way behind in my DVR-viewing, and it shows that the DVR is only 14% free. I need to remedy this quickly, although the pending arrival of a new child will make this difficult. Challenge accepted! Let's take a look at what's filling up my DVR.

- Season 2 (12 episodes) of Homeland

I recorded this during a free preview of Showtime. I haven't seen season 1 yet, so these episodes just sit on the DVR until I get Netflix or hope that there's another Showtime preview that airs the entire first season of Homeland.

- 24 episodes of The Middle

I saved all these episodes since this is a show that my wife and I used to watch together. She is no longer interested in watching this show. I'm so far behind, that a recent episode I watched showed commercials for future ABC shows Zero Hour and How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life. Both of these shows have been cancelled for nearly a year!

- 8 episodes of Modern Family
- 5 episodes of Archer

- Season 1 of Game of Thrones

I had a recent conversation with a friend where he said that he watched the first season thanks to a free preview of HBO. I replied that I missed out on recording the shows. Guess what? I didn't miss out. I just completely forgot they were there.

- Nancy & Tonya

I wonder if in this version of the retelling of the figure skating drama, Nancy Kerrigan arranges to have someone attack Tonya Harding.

- The Bro Mitzvah episode of How I Met Your Mother and a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with Bill Buckner. Two excellent episodes that I didn't want to delete.

- A Jeopardy! episode featuring a good friend of mine. I should probably delete this, but how often do I get to see Alex Trebek giving my friend a nickname?

- Multiple episodes of Little Einsteins, Thomas & Friends and Dinosaur Train.

Best used during snow days. Plus, I'm so happy that there are now shows other than Little Einsteins that my son will watch.

During every free preview of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc., I record movies. For example, I recorded the Academy Award-winning The King's Speech...in January 2012! Maybe it's time to watch it.

Other movies on the to-see list include:

Zero Dark Thirty
Looper
Wreck-It Ralph
Life of Pi

I've got work to do!

Things I Learned Being Home

With the exception of trips to the hospital, doctors’ offices and the rare excursions to grocery stores, I spent most of the past three weeks at home. Therefore, I thought I would share my experiences at home as well as some additional notes from my first few weeks of being a father. (This is basically part two from last week's post.)

- There’s not a worse TV talk show on the air than the Rachael Ray Show. She is painfully annoying. I’d much rather watch two hours (maybe even two consecutive days!) of The View than two minutes of Rachael Ray.

- Speaking of painfully annoying, let’s talk about Bravo. I remember watching Bravo for West Wing reruns, but now, the station is all about Housewives or a former Housewife, Bethenny Frankel. If those programs aren’t airing, the station shows some type of talk show where the housewives talk about the episodes with some random guy who appears to be an executive producer for the shows and/or network. The only way to make the network worse would be to start showing the Rachael Ray Show or have Rachael Ray host the housewives shows.

- The local ABC station, WJLA, sponsored the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade with promos that included information about Grand Marshall “Brick” from The Middle. I love the fact that the ads never mentioned the actor’s name, Atticus Shaffer, only the character’s name. Did any parade ever say that the grand marshall was Webster instead of Emmanuel Lewis?



- It is so much easier to feed the cat and change the litter box than it is to feed and change the baby.

- Speaking of our cat, I’ve received several questions about how ZIggy is doing with the new baby. On the negative side, Ziggy was overfed when we were in the hospital and gained some weight. Then, I don’t think he was happy about being locked out of several rooms being used by either the baby or guests. Now that things are back to normal (with the exception of the new baby), Ziggy is doing fine. He keeps a safe distance from the baby but is comfortable being in the same room as him if we are there too. Overall, Ziggy is doing just fine.



- I spent time at two hospitals recently, and I didn’t see any doctors or nurses sneaking into rooms together or even flirting with each other. Television shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs and even ER always featured "relationships" among employees. I think something might be wrong in the hospitals we visited.

- I am one of those people turns on the air conditioning only when I know that I won’t be using heat for the rest of the season. With the temperature bouncing up and down, however, I’ve switched back and forth between heat and air conditioning recently because I want to make sure that the baby isn’t hot or cold. I hate doing this.

- I’ve noticed that I spend a lot of time walking around the house wearing a burp cloth on my shoulder. It’s quite the fashion statement!

- I am a sucker for VH1 countdown shows. The newest show was the top 40 one-hit wonders of the 1990s. I think they made this show just for me. Anyway, I agree with the selection of Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back for #1 and the inclusion of The Macarena, Chumbawamba, Right Said Fred and Vanilla Ice in the top ten. However, the fact that "Rico Suave" was #3 is a travesty. VH1 should be ashamed of themselves for putting Gerardo that high. My only other complaint is Whoomp! There It Is at #40 on the list. 18 years after its debut, the song is currently featured in two commercials for diapers and cell phones. Tag Team deserved better.


(I completely forgot about the Free Mike Tyson shirt at 2:18 mark.)

- Except for walking up and down stairs, I have had no exercise over the past three weeks. Remarkably, I think I’ve lost a few pounds.

Back to life. Back to reality.

A Disney Christmas

While watching the underrated* The Middle last night, ABC aired a commercial for Disney's Christmas Day parade. The advertisement highlighted the artists performing at the parade/TV special: The Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Celine Dion and Stevie Wonder in that order. I realize that they are Disney artists and that Disney owns ABC so they want to promote their artists, but did you ever think that you would live in a world where The Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato would get top billing over Celine Dion and especially Stevie Wonder?



* I actually have no idea if the show is underrated, overrated or simply rated. I do know that it's a surprisingly funny show but doesn't seem to get as much attention as Modern Family and Cougar Town. ABC did a nice job with their Wednesday comedy night (except for Kelsey Grammer's Hank which didn't work out that well; to paraphrase Meat Loaf, 3 out of 4 ain't bad!).

Photo from something called disneydreaming.com.