I just learned that the last episode of Reading Rainbow aired on August 28th.  So sad.  That was a great show, and I watched it daily. You must remember it.  It showcased one book per episode, plus all sorts of interesting segments. And who could ever forget Levar Burton?

On a related note, I read somewhere that Sesame Street, about to celebrate its 40th anniversary, is rated somewhere around 26th in the ratings.  Other animated shows are ahead.  You gotta wonder if the clock is ticking on this series too.

It is sad that the good quality program suffers as a result of the animated shows that get you to buy their merchandise.

io9.com had a pretty neat list of their Top 100 Science Fiction / Fantasy Shows of All Time.  It’s a good list. Check it out.  A lot of good shows that I grew up on are on here.  Quantum Leap should have been higher.

Jason Green, CHSN Class of '94

I guess we’re getting to that stage that people my age are dying.

Back in 1995, a great kid that I went to high school with died.  I remember getting that weird call from a former fellow student.  David Oransky had been driving down the Palisades Parkway, lost control of the vehicle, and wrapped his car around a tree, and instantly killed.  He was in a number of my AP courses, and we played together in the orchestra (school and country and state festivals.)  He was such a bright kid…… a great kid.

I just found out this week that another junior high / high school classmate had died about five years ago.  His name was Jason Green.  He was a bit of a goofball who asked a lot of honestly dumb questions, but he was a good guy. On Facebook, one of my HS friends (Bradd) had written the following status quote:

….wishes he could wish JASON GREEN a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! He would have been 33 today.

Yeah, Jason Green from High School. The one and only. He died 5 years ago this past February. He was highly allergic to peanuts, went to dinner with some friends in the city one night, ate a baked clam that was apparently brushed with peanut oil, & collapsed on the floor of his apartment building lobby and died about a half hour later.

One sick little girl

What a week.  The kids have been sick all week long, and taking turns going from good to bad to worse.  We have made so many trips to drop them off late, pick them up early this week. 

1. On Sunday, Lily got sick first, and starting looking very clingy and not happy. 
2. On Monday, one of us had to pick her from the daycare in the afternoon.
3. On Tuesday, Lily went to the doctor, and then stayed with one of grandparents Tuesday.  Turns out she had an ear infection.  After I picked her up from the grandparents, and on the way to the daycare to pick up Joshua, I got a call that he was now sick.
4. On Wed, I kept Josh with me, and Lily looked recovered, so we took her to daycare.  I took Josh to the doctor, but he appeared to just have a regular viral infection.  I took him around with me as we ran errands that morning, and then we took my parents to Newark airport for their trip. As I was just arriving to pick up Lily, I came to see her screaming and vomiting orange in her classroom.  Uh oh.
5. On Thursday, they both looked okay, so they both went back to school.
6. On Friday, they both had to go to school.  In the afternoon, we got the call that Lily had a 104-degree temperature.  I picked her as she was screaming her head off.

Concerned about this high temperature, and one bout of vomiting, and not thinking this was an ear infection, we took her to the doctor.  An hour later, all tests were inconclusive.

What a week. Sick children are no fun at all.

For the paparazzi…..

I just uploaded additional Balloon Festival photos that I swiped from my brother-in-law Robbie, without permission, with extreme prejudice.

Also, I posted a multitude of August 2009 photos, so I’m all caught up.

I have finally watched The Simpson Movie. It came out in 2007? That long ago?

It was really no big deal. I recorded it off HBO, and watched it while folding laundry. True, it’s 87 minutes long, but I had a lot of laundry to fold.

Back to my review.  It was okay. It’s the Simpsons, so you are just looking for some dumb, mindless entertainment.  Every so often, you get a little (LITTLE) thought-provoking theme or story, but for the most part, it’s just Homer doing something stupid.  I’m not looking for a tour de force.

After I turned it off, I thought it was an expanded Simpsons episode, but only a few occasional laugh out loud moments. As always, there are often a few quotes that make you laugh.  For the rest of it, eh, no biggie.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

Bollywood Hero (2009)

Has anyone caught Bollywood Hero, starring Chris Kattan on IFC? I saw an ad plastered on the side of a NYC bus a few weeks ago, and had thought it was some Indian movie.  Instead, I learned it is a 3-part series on IFC. Not at all what I expected. Chris Kattan as the lead actor?  It’s a movie about him, and yet, not him.

To summarize, Chris Kattan plays….. Chris Kattan, who no longer wants to ride on his Mango or Roxbury history, and wants to be known for more serious work.  In a moment of his desperation, he accepts an offer from Indian producer to come to India and star in their newest movie, Peculiar Dancing Boy. There’s more background on the IFC series website, but here is an excerpt:

Filmed over 10 weeks on location in Mumbai, India, BOLLYWOOD HERO also co-stars Maya Rudolph, Julian Sands (A Room with a View, Gothic), Neha Dhupia (former Miss India, Shootout at Lokhandwala), Pooja Kumar (Flavors, former Miss India U.S.A.) , Ali Fazal (The Other End of the Line) and Rachna Shah (The Last Monk). Actors making guest appearances include Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Coolidge and David Alan Grier.

BOLLYWOOD HERO revolves around Kattan, who plays a facsimile of himself in this otherwise fictional comedy. Tired of being rejected as a leading-man in Hollywood, he burns his professional bridges in L.A. and accepts a starring role in the Bollywood film Peculiar Dancing Boy. Fresh off the plane, Chris is flung into a world of sibling rivalry, cultural faux pas, a film with no funding, power hungry starlets, and a movie industry, as competitive and cutthroat as Hollywood, where dance moves are essential. This all leads to a pivotal moment when Chris finds himself making out with a horse. But all is not lost!

In his quest to become Bollywood’s leading man, Chris unexpectedly finds a great dance instructor (part Patrick Swayze, part Mr. Miyagi), trawls India’s countryside for his leading lady, falls in love, and ultimately fulfills dreams he never even imagined. Facing culture clashes, language barriers and complex dance moves, Kattan will stop at nothing to conquer his destiny.

I’ve watched the first two episodes, and plan to watch the last one sometime this week.  It’s not the greatest series, and the whole “American weirded out in India but finds out he likes it at the end” theme has been done many times previously.  Chris Kattan is also not leading man material, but hey, it’s okay.  It’s worth watching something different every once in a while, and it’s definitely better than watching reality tv.

Edit: I finished watching the last episode of Bollywood Hero.  Overall, this 3-part mini-series was still okay.  The ending was a bit rushed.  I liked the dance sequence at the end, which was reminiscent of the one at the end of Slumdog Millionaire.  My favorite part of all three episodes?  Any scene with Beeji, the ornery grandmother. Now SHE made me laugh.

What’s this bit of news that I stumbled on? Visual Voicemail for the BlackBerry Bold is now up?  I want to go to there. Has anyone tried this?  Do I need to wait until Tuesday? Will it cost anything? I love new technologies and capabilities, but I have so many questions.

http://gizmodo.com/5343799/blackberry-bold-visual-voicemail-feature-now-live-os-drops-tuesday

Today, we had a nice family brunch at our favorite diner, and then went over to ShopRite for some weekend grocery shopping.  Geez, the place was wall-to-wall people.  I guess Sunday is a popular time for folks to go grocery shopping.  I was at the deli, holding my ticket number 63 in the queue, and I watched everyone talking to the deli clerks, ordering their meats and cheeses.

[Before I describe further, I should explain what I'm doing on the deli line, as there is a backstory to this.  I have an agreement with my wife that if I bring lunches from home, I take the theoretical money I would have spent, and place it in a virtual cookie jar.  The theoretical money in the virtual cookie jar goes to our future HDTV.  There's also an accounting spreadsheet that I am tracking all this.  I have been standing on the various deli counters weekly.]

I have noticed that it’s not a formal affair ordering at the deli counter. You don’t just give them your number, place your request, and walk away at the end.  There’s a lot of…. conversation.  Everyone is talking, the deli clerks are giving recommendations on the cuts of meat and cheese, they’re asking how you want it (thin or think sliced), and the deli clerks will even give you a slice or two to taste before you get locked in to your 1/2 pound of oven-roasted turkey.

Maybe this is normal, but doesn’t it strike you as odd? I’m not saying it’s wrong at all.  Frankly, the way we spend our workdays screaming at backstabbing each other, it’s mildly refreshing to see such a relaxed and friendly atmosphere…. at the deli counter. I wonder why it’s so friendly and jovial? You wouldn’t chat this much while placing your order at a pizzeria, would you?

I am the proud owner of a newly-alive, Dell PC, with a completely new engine and applications!

I never found my missing Windows XP CD.  I debated briefly (briefly!) to buy a copy of Vista Home, but I fought off the temptation.  If I could wait another two months, I could get the new Windows 7.  Why pay for an OS with many customer complaints, and then blow it away in two months? Release Candidate has been out for a while.  In the end, I decided to install Windows 7, and rebuilt my machine Saturday night with it.  It was surprisingly easy.  After doing one last search through my C: drive for errant data, I started it at 1:35am Saturday night, and it finished about 45 mins later.  I spent the next few hours checking out the OS, and installing my new apps.

Through an employee program we have at work, I purchased MS Office 2007 for a great price.  I then went back and installed a fresh copy of most of my other applications. I also spent time researching and, with mixed success, installed updated Win 7-compatible software. While most apps were compatible, I didn’t find a compatible version of Logitech’s SetPoint software (replacement for their previous Mouseware keyboard/mice utility), and my Acronis backup software is not compatible either.

Lastly, my McAfee Antivirus/Firewall software was free through Comcast, but obviously that’s not available now.  I didn’t want to spend more money to buy replacement software, as my cute-as-a-button wife would attack me physically with extreme prejudice. How can I live without anti-virus software in this age of botnets and trojan worms? Was there a solution, besides cheapo AV software?

You won’t believe it, but I found it — a beta program. McAfee offers a Beta Lab testing program, where consumers can sign up to beta test their new programs. I signed up, and am using McAfee Total Protection 2010.  So far, not one issue with it.

There are many reviews of Windows 7 out there (with quality screenshots), so I won’t post them here or go into that kind of detail.  I will say that Windows 7 is really nice and fast. If you’re interested, download and install Microsoft’s Upgrade Advisor, and find out how your PC stands.  If it gets flying colors, get Windows 7.

Screenshot of my new Windows 7 desktop