Gilmore Girls. AGAIN.

You might possibly remember when I was deeply immersed in my passionate love for "Gilmore Girls" and completely wasted my time and had some serious withdrawal when I finished watching them. Good times.

And now I get to experience them again. Because...and you are not going to BELIEVE this...Tom and I are watching them together. Truly a DVD viewing miracle.

It all started when we began watching "Everwood" on DVD from Netflix. Netflix had suggested this series after it saw what we were watching and because what Netflix commands, we must do, I ordered the first season. My reaction was basically "Meh" but Tom LOVED the show. LOVED IT. So we watched. And the more we watched, the more I though, huh. Everwood is a lot like Star's Hollow. And this show is a WHOLE LOT like "Gilmore Girls" in many, many ways. The small town. The interpersonal relationships. The love stories. The friendships. Hey. I wonder if Tom might actually like..."Gilmore Girls".

So he agreed to give it a try. And we ordered the first season. And we put on the first episode and I sat back in my chair and waited to see his reaction. The first time he laughed out loud, I knew I was in. I was going to get to watch one of my favorite shows again. And even though I already know what happens with all the characters?

I'm going to enjoy it just as much the second time.

Check out my Herald-Leader post today at: Happy Early Halloween!

PSYCH Me Out!

I know what you are thinking. Really. You are thinking....how good I look in my tight black jeans today! See. I knew it. Psych!

Seriously, have you seen this show? We love it! Not with the passionate love we reserve for some of our very favorite shows, but there is love. Some love. This is not what you would call a GREAT show, but it is cute and mildly funny. Actually, this is one of the few shows where we watch the whole introduction because we love watching the way Shawn acts when he is supposedly having a psychic episode.

Netflix and I had an issue when I put this show on our "kwee" and somehow we ended up missing the first disk. We dove right in anyway and enjoyed the shows, but it was not until we got Disk 1 that we actually understood how the two of them got involved in pretending to be psychic to solve crimes. Some of the shows are written better than others and they are really the best when they let Shawn act like a total idiot and when they showcase the true friendship between Shawn and Gus. But they are all enjoyable.

Do you watch? What do you think?

Riding Through The Glen

So, I was looking for some new TV series to add to our Netflix kwee (as my son-in-law called it) in order to fill the DEEP AND ACHING HOLLOW HOLE IN MY HEART left when I finished "Gilmore Girls" and I stumbled on a TV series called "Robin Hood". I thought, heh. Probably some old series that will be really lame but it might be mildly entertaining, so I added it. And we started watching it a couple of weeks ago.

Let me just say. If you like action and adventure and romance and stories about a group of individuals who are friends while at the same time being heroic and smart-alecky; if you like a show that can make you laugh out loud and bring tears to your eyes in the same episode, you are going to like this. Let me just give you one example. At one point, they think Marian is dead (of course, she recovers) and the outlaw gang is standing by her bed, mourning her. And Little John says "Her we liked". And Robin gently corrects him in his oh-so-sexy-could-you-die British accent and says "Her we looved. Robin looved." And it's so sad and so sexy and so fabulous, you could just die. Even if, for some inscrutable reason, Robin is talking about himself in the third person. I'm telling you, go add to this show your Netflix kwee now. You will like it. Let me know.

Apparently, there are all kinds of shows going on that we know nothing about. It's amazing the things going on out in the world that I know nothing about. I am constantly surprised. This show was produced by the BBC last year and actually just finished the second season in December. There will be a third season, probably in the fall. I was also surprised to learn that we get the BBC as part of our cable lineup so there may be other shows we will start watching as well.

While researching this "Robin Hood", I stumbled on a web page and this song began playing.











And I thought, " I KNOW that song. I have heard that song. It is faintly tweaking a childhood memory. It's the theme song from a TV show called "The Adventures of Robin Hood" from the 50's. I must have watched it. All I remember is the theme song. Sound familiar to you???

OK. I'm A Little Bummed

So I just finished the last DVD of the last season of "Gilmore Girls". It was seriously SO GOOD. If you have not watched this, immediately go to Netflix and sign up for it. I'll wait.

Did you do it? OK. You'll have to let me know what you think. Because I am so serious. It is SO GOOD. But the only thing is. Now I MISS those people. I MISS Stars Hollow and learning the minutiae of their everyday lives. I want to know what happened with Lorelei and Luke? Surely they got married, right? And what about Logan? Does he come back for Rory?

Yes, I realize these are not actually for real people. But...they SEEM so real.

It is completely different watching a TV series on DVD than it is watching it weekly on TV. With no commercials and the ability to watch one show right after the other, you find yourself totally immersed in these people's lives. And. You MISS them.

So. I guess I need something else to watch. Some new friends. Some new places.

Just give me a minute. One minute. To move on.

I Had A VERY Productive Day

We had a snow day last week. Actually, to be technical, an ice day. I decided I would make use of the free time at home to be really productive. To get some things done. To clean. To organize. To work on my Ebay sales. Right after I went back to bed for a couple of hours.

OK. Good to go! NOW I'm going to be productive. Do some laundry. Clean the kitchen. Organize my closets. Clean the bathrooms.

And then the mail came. And I had two DVDs from Netflix. The last two DVDs of the last season of "Gilmore Girls". You KNOW I had to find out how it ended. So. My day was not TECHNICALLY that productive.

Unless you count lying in bed in my sleeping pants, eating tomato soup with Ritz crackers crumbled up in it (the FOOD OF THE GODS. And please. Let's not have another Pop-Tart with butter debacle here. Surely everyone eats their tomato soup this way) and watching "Gilmore Girls" as being productive.

If you count that. I was TOTALLY PRODUCTIVE.

Practice Makes Perfect

I have experienced many perfect days. Eating in Puerto Vallarta. Wearing the perfect outfit. Any day with my grandson. But I believe yesterday approached perfection in many ways. Let me just bullet them for you.

• Instead of going back to school, we had a snow day. A SNOW DAY. Added to our Christmas vacation. As a bonus. And they decided the night before. So I never even set my alarm.


• I got the first DVD of Season 5 of Gilmore Girls in the mail. And let me just say? I am still annoyed you did not tell me about this show. It is quite simply fabulous. I put on my boots and parka (0ver my pajamas) and got it out of the mailbox. Bless Netflix. Bless them, I say.


• I had candy left over in my Whitman's Sampler.


• I had leftover snacks from our New Year's Eve Lord of the Rings extravaganza. Yes, we watched all three movies in our pajamas on New Year's Eve. We live on the edge.


• I took the DVD, my leftover snacks, my candy and a big glass of Diet Mountain Dew in bed with me. I popped in the DVD, pulled up the covers and didn't get out of the bed for about four hours. Aside from bathroom breaks.


• Could life POSSIBLY get any better?


• I didn't think so.

I AM That Girl

Y'all already know that Tom and I are serious TV addicts. You have heard about it here and I have mentioned it in several other posts. We are also movie addicts as I told you here and the two addictions can now easily and conveniently be combined with our couch potato, dinner on TV trays, clothed in pajamas status, since Netflix was invented and now will deliver movies and TV series to our mailbox in a virtual cornucopia of entertainment.

I LOVE that you can get TV series to watch from Netflix. I decided I wanted to catch up on "Gray's Anatomy" since Tom started watching it before I did. He does this often. And then he nags me until I watch it with him, even though I am so obviously doing something critically important to the state of the world like blogging or reading the latest best seller. And then he gets me addicted and I have to watch it with him. I think this is how cocaine dealers work also. So, I'm watching the first two seasons on DVD. And, I will just tell you. This is the ONLY way to watch TV. No commercials. No waiting to find out what happens when they leave you hanging with that last crucial scene. Did she? Will he? Oh, my God, what next? Well, let me see. Let me just click on the next episode. Ha. Now I will find out! How great is that?

Well, it's pretty damn fabulous. But I have something even more fabulous to share with you. Even more spectacular. There are REALLY OLD TV SERIES ON NETFLIX TOO! We saw the preview for the new Bruce Willis movie this weekend when we sent to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" - and, by the way? The people who say it's too long, it's too slow, it's not as good as the others - they are just simply full of crap. Disregard all their advice and go see it this weekend. It's good. But I don't have time for a movie review right now because y'all? When I saw Bruce Willis in the new "Die Hard" movie preview (and isn't that just SO COOL when he propels the car in the car like a rocket and tells the kid he did it because he was out of bullets? Is he COOL or what?) I got to thinking about "Moonlighting" and I wondered if that was available on Netflix because I would love to see that again. Bruce Willis with hair. Oh, yeah, baby. And you know what? It is. So I thought "Hmmm...I wonder what other TV shows are on there."

I'm so excited I almost can't bring myself to share this with you. Because maybe you will go to YOUR Netflix and add it to your queue and I will have to wait for it because you will take FOREVER to return it but I just had to tell someone. "That Girl" is on there.

I...almost can't believe it. I WAS "That Girl". I LOVED that show. Marlo Thomas was just so cool. I can't wait to watch them all. And "Mary Tyler Moore" is on there too. And "Bob Newhart". God, the Friday nights Tom and I sat on the couch and watched those shows when we were dating. Our Friday night had to be planned so that we would be home in time to watch them. Maybe it was Saturday. Whatever, it was the weekend. And we had to be home because VCRs had not been invented yet. That's right, kiddies, they had not even been thought of. If you missed a show, you just missed it. You didn't have it recorded on a tape. You didn't TIVO it or DVR it. You didn't go to the website and watch it. You missed it.

But now I can watch them all again. No commercials. No interruptions. Snacks and pajamas. Could life POSSIBLY get any better?

Well, maybe if someone would rub my feet while I am watching. Tom?


I just had one more thought and went to check and see if "The Monkees" was available. It IS. I LIVED to watch that show every week in high school. God, I was so in love with all of them. A different one each week. I was pretty fickle. I may have to rent those too. The series, not the guys. Although I bet Davy Jones has held up pretty well. I wouldn't mind renting him.

Cars Will Fly

And we will all have jet packs and everyone will wear those shiny silver jumpsuit things that are skintight. What, everyone in the future is skinny? Apparently.

In the meantime I just found out that that Netflix has movies you can actually watch on the computer. I know, I know, this has been in the realm of possibilities for quite a while, I just didn't realize that my Netflix membership included this ability. If you go to the Netflix site and click on "Watch Now" you can TOTALLY watch movies. On your computer. Dude. No waiting. No adding them to your Queue (and I SO had to look up how to spell that) or, as my son-in-law called it, to our endless delight, your Kwee.

In reality, most of the movies are kinda old and kinda...lame. But I'm hoping that they will eventually offer all their movies this way. Maybe it's a copyright issue at this point.

I know this will work for us because last night? When we realized that we did not have the last episode of "Lost" on our DVR because (Tom erased it by accident) the DVR made a mistake, after crying and moaning in agony that we might possibly miss a TV show and life as we know it would come to a screeching halt, Tom found it on the network website, hooked up our laptop to the TV and we WATCHED THE SHOW ON OUR COMPUTER HOOKED TO THE TV. We are such technology wizards.

OK, Tom is a wizard and I'm a wizard-in-training.

But I did tell him after several minutes of fiddling with the audio that maybe the sound just needed to be turned up and, after sighing loudly, he turned up the sound and it worked.

So I'm getting out my jet pack. Or maybe I'll just get in my flying car. 'Cause, apparently? The future is now.

Step Away From The Television

"So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall."
— Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Our elementary students are participating in a reading contest. It involves paper race cars representing each class, posted on the walls in the hall, zooming around a race track to the finish line. Progress of the race cars is determined by how many books the students have read. Some of the 5Th graders were complaining to me this morning.

Them: Our race car is last!
Me: Well, have you been reading?
Them: We don't have time to read!
Me: Turn off the TV.
Them: Whaaaaaat?
Me: Turn off the TV. And the electronic games. And the computer.
Them: But....
Me: Turn them off. Just for 1/2 an hour. Try 1/2 hour of reading every night.
Them: Stunned into silence.

I left it at that. Didn't say anymore or lecture anymore. I felt pretty sanctimonious. I was super librarian. I was just so awe-inspiring. I even found this quote to include in my inspirational blog post.

"American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV."-- The Kaiser Family Foundation

And then I thought about it. Really thought about it. 22-28 hours per week. Tom and I watch roughly three hours of TV every night. More on the weekends. Say, four hours at least. That's 23 hours a week, at a minimum. Whoa. We are losing YEARS of our lives.

Now, in our defense, we do watch a lot of movies. And we DVR just about everything now so we hardly ever watch live TV with commercials. And we watch series on DVD. But...still...that's a lot of TV.

I do read a lot. Probably at least two books a week. But think how much more I could read if I turned off the TV a little more?

But then we would have to cut back on all the episodes of "Smallville" we are catching up on. Six years worth. Can't possibly quit now.

We would have to stop watching the of-course-we-watch-them-don't-you shows like "Grey's Anatomy", "Boston Legal", "House", "Bones", "Heroes", "Jericho", "Two and a Half Men", and "Christine". Can't. Stop.

We would have to give up on our new, interesting and are we the only ones watching this show?, Blood Ties. Noooooo.

We would have to flick off HBO and stop watching Rome and Entourage. We are addicted, I admit it. Would suffer serious withdrawal. Can't do it.

We would have to cut off our subscription to Netflix. I have a copy of "The World Trade Center" at home right now we need to watch. Just not gonna happen. Too many movies to see. But that doesn't really count as TV watching, right? It's ON the TV, but it's not really TV, right?

OK, I'm grasping at straws here. We do watch a lot of TV. But...we enjoy it. It's fun to watch together. We laugh, we cry (OK, I cry), we discuss, we banter, we make fun of each other, we...bond. We do. We bond. It's a good time for us.

Maybe I could wait just 1/2 hour to start watching. Get a little more reading in.

Maybe I need a race track of my own. Just to have a little incentive, you know.