TDTVS

Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket

For practically forever, we have been buying a Mega Millions quick pick ticket that gets us into the bi-weekly drawing for 5 weeks at a time. We routinely end up not winning squat, so every month and a quarter we get an Andrew Jackson out of the ATM, and place that money down on a chance at winning mega-millions.

Thursday last week, we when out for an evening drive and in the middle we stopped at Fred Meyer to use the lottery vending machine and bought our next Mega Millions Lottery Ticket.

The bought ticket hangs on the upper shelf of my computer desk and earlier this week while watching a movie on the PC I noticed there wasn’t one there. My “prop” Mega Lotto Jackpot ticket with the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 & 42 that Hurley won $114 million with was still there, but no real life Mega Millions ticket. By the time I finished watching the movie I had forgotten all about the lottery ticket.

Yesterday, while I finished watching the last episode of Devs, I again noticed the missing lottery ticket. This time I clued Donna in, so we commenced to searching for it. The last time I remember seeing it, it was in the center console of the Miata. That was what we were driving that evening. I put the ticket in there because I didn’t want to put in my pocket where it would get wrinkled. We started there. Not in the center console. It was also not in the glove box. Or the trunk. For thoroughness we looked in the Mini too. We came back upstairs and while I searched every pocket in every item of clothing that I could have been wearing when I bought the ticket, Donna was busy searching in the living area where any piece of paper could be laying. We both came up empty.

Thus we became owners of a Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket. Because I didn’t think to memorize the 6 numbers on the ticket and there has been two Mega Millions drawings since then, right now we are both winners, and losers, until we somehow happen to find that ticket.

Not wanting to not find the ticket and then read in the local paper of a Klamath Falls individual who purchased a jackpot winning ticket and never coming forward to claim the prize, we went out this evening and bought another ticket.

Chronologically TDTVS

While searching for LOST podcasts I stumbled onto one by two women called “Lost in Order.” Anna & Wendy watched an episode and every week or so dropped a podcast on their thoughts. I can’t listen to it though, it is not their voices or the sound quality, it is in the way they are watching the show.

Not long after the sixth and last season of TDTVS came on on DVD, some genius or madman or possibly Mad Genius, using a timeline found in the Lostpedia re-cut the show in chronological order. Anna & Wendy are podcasting about the results of Mike Maloney’s masterpiece, Chronologically LOST. Mike has taken all 118 aired TV episodes and created 101, roughly forty-five minute long, chronological episodes for a total of 84 hours of LOST watching pleasure.

In a way I wished I’d found out about this a month ago before starting to re-watch the show as I think it would be interesting to see the show in linear time. Would it be more interesting than the non linear original? I’ll let you know someday, I’m a little more than halfway through downloading the torrent. It is going to take about a week to get it all because unlike current popular movies, there aren’t hundreds or thousands sharing it, but each time I’ve looked in on the progress I am connected to anywhere from six to twelve peers.

TDTVS Re-Redux

Ten years ago on the third Thursday of August (it was the 21st not the 23rd) I wrote about waiting impatiently for the fifth season of LOST to start. On this third Thursday of August we watched the first two episodes of season three, having blown through the first two season in the last 2 weeks.

We tried another of The Lost Boys podcasts a couple of weeks ago, but gave up as it just didn’t work out. As with any podcast, even if you are passionate about the subject, if the voices aren’t pleasing to your ears, you just can’t listen. It was sort of a good thing that we didn’t like this podcast as we would have caught up to them in short order anyway as they were currently just starting season two and we were already in that boat with the The West Wing Weekly podcasts.

Because the King’s English from the blokes of The Lost Boys podcast was hard to understand, I went looking for another one for us to listen to about TDTVS. I hit the Jack pot (a little LOST word play) with one called Getting LOST from a couple of dudes, Clint & Adam, who speak in ‘Murican English. Their premise is eerily similar to The Lost Boys one in that one of them has seen the show seven times before and the other is watching it for the first.

Clint and Adam started back in October of 2015, so they have already finished doing podcasts for all six seasons of the show making it perfect for our two-a-day habit. But the two Getting LOST host’s voices are also somewhat similar to each other making it hard to distinguish who is who, sort of like the Flight 815 survivors Scott and Steve who are always being confused for each other by the main cast. Given enough time I’m sure we would have eventually been able to tell them apart, but after a couple of tries at listening to them, they were not to our liking either.

I think we are just going to have give up on the LOST podcast idea as all my other searching has not turned up another show that has done all six seasons or one that is currently in production and I’m OK with this.

TDTVS Redux

Well it is happening again, we are catching up to the episode of The West Wing Weekly that Hrishi & Josh discussing. They posted 5.09: Abu El Banat last Wednesday and we have now finished 5.06: Disaster Relief. We have been watching an episode a night and they are covering an episode a week, so it was inevitable that we would. There is no way we would start over again for a third time, so we have decided to just watch one episode a week. Each new podcast episode is released on Wednesday, so we are going to watch our The West Wing TV episode on Tuesday night.

If we do that, what are we going to watch the other six nights a week? There are very few TV shows that we both enjoy and wouldn’t mind watching all over again. And it would be nice if there was a podcast for the show to listen to the following day to mirror The West Wing experience. Then, in an brilliant bit of internet serendipity, I happen on an article about Evangeline Lilly talking about being cornered into filming a nude scene on the TV show LOST. She had given an interview discussing it on a podcast called The Lost Boys. Ooh, ooh, LOST was a show we really liked back in the day.

We are going to rewatch TDTVS. Thursday night we watched Episode 1.01: The Pilot – Part 1. Friday we listened to its corresponding The Lost Boys podcast episode. Hmmm, this is not as satisfying as The West Wing Weekly podcast. The premise is cool, it is one fellow’s 1st time watching the show and the other’s 7th time, but I’m betting it is a language thing, these guys are speaking English. They are in England, so it is the King’s English and one is slightly harder to understand than the other. Both of their voices are kind of similar too, so that doesn’t help either. We have now watched the first 6 episodes of LOST and still only listened to just the one of the podcast. We should probably try at least one or two more episodes of the podcast before giving up entirely. Maybe tomorrow.

Previously on The West Wing

Just the title of this post has been sitting in the drafts folder since January 9th of this year. This not too long after Donna and I decided that maybe we should give one of our favorite TV shows a re-watch. The phrase comes from the intro of the show before it shows little snippets of past episodes to foreshadow what is coming up and to perhaps remind you of characters or events that will be featured in this show that you might have forgotten.

The phrase also perfectly fits our desire to go back to, even if fictional, a less calamitous presidential administration. We wanted a version of the goings on in The West Wing of the White House that seemed to be filled with smart caring people that selfishly wanted to serve in government to better the lives of everyone in the country, not just the top one percent.

We have been watching an episode a day, with the exception of a couple of two-part episodes we watched back to back, and are now two-thirds of the way through season 4. We are a little more than halfway through the, 155 episode, seven season run.

So, after gathering dust in the drafts folder for the last 2-1/2 months, why have I decided to flesh out the post you ask. Good question. I have been having trouble finding a book I want to read the whole way through and after my failed attempt at audio books I started to widen my passive entertainment search and opted to try some podcasts. Wow, there are as many of these things as there are books and finding one I’m interested in is actually harder than finding a book that works for me. For one here is the whole voice issue, with a book, it is my voice, which I really like1, while with a podcast not only does the subject have to be interesting, but the person(s) have to sound pleasant to me.

Sunday I found a perfect one that will keep myself (and Donna) entertained for a good while, it is called the The West Wing Weekly. Once a week the two hosts watch an episode of the TV show the West Wing and talk about it. One voice is Hrishikesh Hirway a musician and composer, and the second is Josh Molina who played the character Will Bailey on the show from 2002-2006. Because of the continued popularity of The West Wing and possibly because of Mr. Molina’s showbiz connections they will occasionally have actors from the show on as guests.

They are doing one episode per week and started doing the podcast 2 years ago. The trouble with this is that the latest show they did a podcast for, 4-17: Red Haven’s on Fire, is exactly the same episode as Donna and I watched last night2, so we are now perfectly in sync. But with the differing time tables we will be soon be long ahead of the podcast. By the time we have wrapped up watching the entire seven season run of the show the podcast will only five episodes into season five.

We have been going back through some of the earlier episodes of the podcast to listen to some of the TV show’s stars guest appearances and then binge listened to the first few of the first season’s shows. I think now we are at the point where we might just jump back to season one of the TV show, starting over, so we can watch an episode and then right afterwards listen to the relating podcast.

Danger! You May Get Lost!

A co-worker stumbled on a couple of rerun episodes of Lost and thought it might be cool to see it from the beginning, so I’ve lent her my box set of season one. But before I handed it to her I attached a big warning label to the front.

Warning Sign

I found a place where you can create your own warning signs or warning labels, but I had to modify one because they didn’t have a TV icon…

I Can’t Believe I’m Still Listening

I must be a real fan. As of this morning, depending on which version you believe, the FRS playoff chances stood at 3, 4 or 5%. That was before the Yankees won their game today and the Sox lost the first game, postponed by Earl from last night and will likely lost tonight’s regularly scheduled game (they are losing 3-1 in the 7th.)

As much as I enjoy the coffee (and the coffee cake muffin) from Dunkin’ Donuts I fear they may have lost our business forever this morning. We should have taken the hint. On our way into the place this morning we passed a car with a fellow in the drivers seat talking very loudly to himself, or rhetorically to his passenger inside the store, saying, “How long does it take to get a double coffee?!?” There were three employees with only three customers, so it shouldn’t have taken too long, but somehow it did.

One associate, because of the headset, must have been the drive-up person, who’s job description read, “Do not leave the window for any reason, even if there are no cars in line. And when you are not busy please feel free to carry on a personal conversation with your fellow employees to aid in the disruption their productivity.” Employee number 2 was the main counter person and was either very new at the job or only used to dealing with humans via texting or stoned and having a hard time completing a complex order that consisted of three coffees. To be fair, this person was dealing with someone who had either never been in a Dunkin’ Donuts before or never ordered coffee or was hungover. The third person dressed in a pink polo shirt with DD embroidered in brown on their right breast was probably the “cook” and tried to help out the second person in line (whose partner was outside with steam escaping his ears and possible thinking of driving his 15 year old purple Dodge Neon through the front window), but was stymied by the request for iced coffee and the unexpected return of customer number 1 to ask where they kept the “to go” sugar. We took this opportunity to leave the store.

We headed back across town at a small family restaurant called Autens that we had been meaning to try for some time. We ended up spending a bit more money there and the coffee was nothing special, there were three really nice surprises. First was they offered a salmon cake as a meat side, which Donna ordered, and I sampled, which was very good. The second was instead of having “home fries” as the alternative to grits they offered something called potato scramble, which turns out to be, I’m guessing, last nights mashed potatoes with some butter mixed in and fried on the grill into a sort of pancake. Thirdly, our waitress was Evangeline Lilly who was possibly doing research for her next movie. She is a little younger looking than she seemed on TDTVS and her freckles were covered by makeup, but it was her alright.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
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