the state of the pop culture union

Personal Update: House stuff. Boy coming back into town. Packing.

Geek Update: TV
- Pushing Daisies: I've seen the first 3, loved it, and the rest are saved to the DVR for Strike Viewing.
- 30 Rock: The most consistently wonderful show on television, they can even pull off forced stunt casting (I'm looking at you Jerry Seinfeld and David Schwimmer).
- The Office: Thank God those hour-long monstrosities are over. I'll take my tight 22 minutes over a freakishly painful 44 any day of the week (which in this case, is a thursday).
- Heroes: This is just getting SAD when even the always-wonderful flashback episode has me skipping through entire scenes. My indifference to some characters has now been replaced with loathing. The one show on television that hopefully will be saved by the Strike.
- Ugly Betty: The sophomore mini-slump is over, and things are looking up since Betty always does great holiday hours (3 of the first season's best episodes related to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas).
- Law & Order CI & SVU: What the hell? Criminal Intent (which has the horrible miscasting of Alicia Witt) is becoming consistently enjoyable on USA while Special Victims (which has the horrible miscasting of Adam Beach) has turned into a soap? If I wanted forced catfights between female collegues, wouldn't I watch Women's Murder Club?
- Reaper: Suffering severely from Smallville Monster-of-the-Week syndrome and illogical character development. Should be a half hour.
- CSI: Steady as she goes.
- Brothers & Sisters: Always has that one storyline that bugs you (almost always involving Balthazar Getty), but remains a nice, mellow, primetime soap.
- Samantha Who: DVR'd for Strike viewing.
- Dirty Sexy Money: DVR'd for Strike viewing.
- Battlestar Galactica: Sure its still off the air, and sure I haven't watched my Razor screener yet, but I still want to bitch about how awful the last half of season three was.

Geek Update: Comics
- World War Hulk: What? A poor shipping schedule, a lackluster final 2 issues and an ending that is so ambiguous it shouldn't even count as an ending.
- X-Men, Messiah Complex: I have to say I'm actually enjoying this. A lot. Which is unexpected since X-Men (save for Astonishing) has sucked for a few years now.
- Batman, The Resurrection of Ra's al Guhl: or as John said today, the Resurrection of Blah al Guhl. Grant Morrison is turning into the Bjork of comic books, and Batman's "kid" is lame, while Superman's is awesome even if...
- Superman, the Third Kryptonian: was a mess. Was this stuck in a drawer labelled 1994, pulled out and colored digitally?
- Spider-Man, One More Day: I can't even calculate how much I've stopped caring.
-Secret Invasion: I'm so ready for this, I just wish the Avengers books would catch up with each other.

You can totally tell that comics have switched over fully to graphic novels as the end game. So many books and arcs read wonderfully once collected, but get to be confusing and painful in monthly incriments.