olympics opening ceremony in beijing

wow. the chinese are so going to take over the world. genius move to have zhang yimou in charge of the ceremony.

screenwriters

last night was the last new episode of the office that will air until the screenwriter's strike ends. not that i've been watching the show religiously, but when i have time on thursday evenings, i look forward to it. it's one of the few shows on television that i make the effort to see. if i had tivo, it would be programmed, along with the daily show with jon stewart, the stephen colbert report, and project runway. now that i've listed the shows i watched, i just realized that 3 out of 4 of them rely on writers. i'm a supporter of the writers since i have friends who write, and i wrote in college. i feel doomed, with only one show to remind me what day of the week it is. dear studios, please concede to the small, justifiable request the writers are making and give them the additional booger-size piece of the profit that you're making on their work.

p.s. i'm not sure who to root for yet on project runway this season. i really liked rami's and victorya's pieces though. christian is going to be the pest of the show, like marcel to top chef, being the youngest but also the most stuck up. i don't doubt his talent but don't like the lack of humility and respect for his fellow contestants. definitely the bitch-queen of the season.

tv junkie

first, it was project runway. then, top chef, australian open, acc (so good to be back on the east coast!), and maybe top design, which started this wednesday. all this on top of the office, nova science now, and frontline. oh, and of course, pretty much anything on food network. now that we have cable, i'm watching too much tv. the tv i had in california received barely 3 channels so i relied on the radio. i could listen to kpcc all day and have done so on occasion. i know i really don't watch that much tv. 3-5 hours a day isn't that unusual, right? it just seems so excessive compared to what i had been used to. i feel like my life revolves around the weekly tv schedule. with the radio, it just stays on while i can do other things. it's much harder to work on things with the tv because it involves visual and audio concentration whereas radio just requires audio concentration. i've been unplugging the tv at the end of the day so i won't be tempted to turn it on, just to see what's on and veg. i should listen to wnyc more often, but they don't have all the programs that i used to listen to. thank goodness for podcasts, saving me from drowning in the abundance of crap tv and giving me no excuses to not be productive.