A Solution for Fibby

Here in little ole Maine, I still go to Dunkin' Donuts all the time. Sure, we have Starbucks here, but they don't have drive-thrus. I have a three-year-old who can climb in and out of his own car seat, but buckling him and unbuckling is a pain in the neck, so we drive right on through. The beauty of driving through at Dunkin' Donuts is that they never even ask you your name, thus avoiding all of Fibby's (and MOMP's) trials and tribulations. Nonetheless, when I ran across this article in the blogosphere, I just had to post it. Your Starbucks name is a chance to adopt a new identity any day of the week... how very post-modern of us!

Yay!

Yay for the Patriots!

Yay for the snow!

Yay for winter in New England!

"It's wicked cool"

In Maine, the phrase "it's wicked cool" rolls off the tongue, but I don't really expect to see it in the esteemed New York Times. And yet David Pogues's description of the iPhone is strangely apt and seems to extend to the whole darn (newly renamed) company and particularly to Steve Jobs (whether he actually back-dated stock options or not).

I've been trying for two days to think of some profound way to write about the odd buzz in my head as I sat on my couch for two entire hours and watched Steve Jobs perform his annual unveiling. I have watched his performances at Macworld before. They are really quite extraordinary even when the thing he is unveiling is completely expected and rather run-of-the-mill, like an upgraded operating system or something. Jobs has a comfortable mastery of public speaking that is extraordinarily rare. I don't think I've ever seen his level of skill outside of a church. Politicians can't pull off twenty minutes without a teleprompter and without putting me to sleep. I sat and watched this guy talk in a tiny Quicktime box in the corner of my laptop for TWO HOURS. He moved with ease around the stage, played with his new gadget and made phone calls around the room, even filled time with extraordinary grace when his projector remote stopped working and he couldn't advance his slides. If I were still teaching high school, I think I would put together some sort of lesson on giving an oral presentation based on clips of his keynotes. When Jobs trotted out the CEOs (and Chief Yahoo!) of other companies during the keynote, his own skills at an orator were brought into focus. The Cingular CEO was just plain awful: he read from note cards, poorly, throughout his 5 minute appearance, and he had very little to say.

The reward at the end of the keynote was a lovely little performance by John Mayer.

Apple is just plain wicked cool. If that makes me a geek, well, no one will be surprised about that!

Happy New Year!

We had a party. There was (too) much alcohol. There was dancing with a three-year-old, who was "dressed up." (I told him all the boys had to wear ties so he dressed himself in his Brady jersey and a plaid tie. Is he his father's son or what?) There was this photo of N. Enough said, no?

Happy New Year to all! May I outwit, outplay, and outlast the teeming masses of folks at the gym tonight who had the same resolution as I did.

Another Show to Watch: Brothers & Sisters

The folks over at TV Squad have been complaining loudly this season about the fact that all the new shows on TV have been serialized this year. And a bunch of them failed (e.g., the Nine, Daybreak, Jericho, etc.). The serialized shows are killing TV, they argue, because people can't commit to watching so many shows without missing an episode. You can tune in to CSI one week and then miss a couple weeks, then see it again and you're fine.

But if you take a look at the list of shows I watch over there on the lefthand side of this page, you'll quickly see that I don't subscribe to this theory of TV watching. I watch the shows I watch. I watch them every week. I am not a casual TV watcher. And I have TiVo, so I can still have a social life (not that I really do). I can watch my shows whenever I feel like it and never miss an episode. I watch TV because I love stories about characters that I am interested in. And if I'm interested in a character, why wouldn't I tune in every week to see what happens next?

With everything good on hiatus for about a month this holiday season, I decided to check out something I could stream from ABC. After suffering through some wholly unsatisfying nights of crappy, frequently freezing streams, I finally found some time to watch when everyone else wasn't on-line. And as I suspected, the serialized Brothers & Sisters is good enough to hold my interest for 43 minutes and has enough interesting characters to earn a season pass on my TiVo.

I realize that's not exactly a rave review, but I think this is the sort of show that will get better with time as the characters gel. It's like Everwood for a slightly older crowd -- no teenage characters at all -- which is sort of well... unique ... maybe even refreshing. And Sally Field is simply fantastic. Even Calista Flockhart is really good. I never watched Ally McBeal and was never drawn to Calista in general, but she and Sally have some of the best chemistry on TV at the moment. Who woulda thunk it?

And Rob Lowe starts a regular guest role next week... who could ask for anything more?