TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

It’s back and frosty.

Today:

Nothing makes me more angry than the fact that my apartment doesn’t have actual windows. It has sliding glass door sized set into one wall starting at waist level. So, of course, the building supplies air-conditioners since there’s no earthly way any air conditioner would work in the window.

Saturday was 95-degrees and, wouldn’t you know, the A/C doesn’t work in this worthless apartment. No problem, call down to the super. The super doesn’t work weekends. Called him after work today. He leaves at 5. So, for those keeping track at home; the first three days of the first extended heat wave of the year have featured Tom with no A/C and windows that barely open.

For F*ck’s sake.

OK, obviously the guy is still really hurt. Obviously he has no grasp on knowing if he’s OK or not. He’s sat down two games.

Send the guy back across the country on a train and put him on the DL. If teams can’t figure it out then the league needs to create a “if you’re diagnosed with a concussion, you go on the 15-day DL. No questions asked. No exceptions” rule.

Concussions are nothing to screw with. Winning baseball games is not as important as the guy’s long term health.

Besides the fact: I have a man-crush on him and don’t want to see that lovely soul-patch hurt.

I was a big fan of Reaper throughout the entire 2007 season and, as it turned out, it was the only show I was really pulling for to get a second season. My prayers to Satan (no contract) were answered as The CW did pick up the show for a 2nd season… which makes it pretty much the only freshman show I like other than Terminator that got picked up. It was probably a borderline call for the CW… it was the #2 most popular new CW show after Gossip Girl but consistently came in low in its time slot. Relief for me.

I can’t say enough good things about Reaper. I had a few complaints about it at the mid-season point:

What I Say Now: This show is kind of fading on me. Each episode has been very formulaic. It’s the same show week after week. The few interesting pieces of plot they’ve started (like Sam’s dad burning certain pages of the contract) were never mentioned again.

Since it turns out that Hollywood is listening to what TDL has to say, pretty much all my complaints were addressed when the show came back from WGA Strike hiatus. The fact that Sam’s dad removed pages of the contract turned out to be pretty important. They added Ken Marino and (sorta) Michael Ian Black to the show as a gay demon couple who lived next door to Sam and his group. They created a faction of demons who were trying to overthrow the devil. It turns out that there’s something strange going on with Sam’s parents. They moved a bit away from the “Monster of the Week” format they’d been using and went toward a more long storyline approach. They added Kandyse McClure’s disturbingly gorgeous eyes (and presumably the rest of her) as Ben’s girlfriend; ending the horrific and pointless “Ben marries someone out of guilt so she could get a green card” storyline.

(Aside: the next show up on the Netflix list is Battlestar Galactica… there are 4 discs sitting on my entertainment center waiting for this stupid west coast swing for the Mets to be over. I can’t put into words how happy I was thirty seconds ago to find out that McClure’s on that show, too.)

It probably didn’t hurt Reaper that Smallville is ending its thousand-year run after next year. I presume they will heavily promote Reaper as the heir-apparent for the network’s sci-fi/comic geek junkies. It’s got Kevin Smith cred, after all. Right place, right time.

Also, I’m not sure what this says about the CW, but 5 of the top 10 DVRed shows are on this network. I guess this says something about the viewing patterns of the younger audience.

Grade: A, and you should be watching this if you’re not.