Watched - 3/14 to 3/21 - where I've clearly filled the empty hole in my life left by my wife being out of country with TV and video.

Ace of Cakes - my niece is digging on the culinary/pastry arts, and apparently likes this show. Interesting in that Food Network kinda way. It's no Iron Chef America, though...

Friday Night Lights - same review every week. Best drama on TV.

Battlestar Galactica - how this show doesn't end with everyone crying and slitting their wrists at this point, is beyond me. Next up is the series finale.

Dollhouse - kind of an "eh" episode, but glad to see some more movement towards the big "arc."

Real Time with Bill Maher - painful to watch this week. Usually the level of panel discourse is pretty good, which is one of the reasons I watch the show. But this week, the shouting heads were ridiculous. Michael Eric Dyson is a smart dude, but doesn't let anyone get a word in edgewise. Andrew Breitbart is a moron, but actually had a decent point or two he really wasn't allowed to articulate. Sarah Silverman was hilarious though. I couldn't get into her Comedy Central show, but her standup rocks.

Uncommon Valor - flick from '83 with Gene Hackman, Patrick Swayze, and a bunch of other actors you'd recognize, even if you couldn't necessarily name. Uncommon Valor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"...1983 war film written by Joe Gayton and directed by Ted Kotcheff, about a Marine officer who tries to put together a team to rescue his son, who he believes is a prisoner of war being held in Laos after the Vietnam War."

Good flick. Wanted to see it... well... I'm a child of the 80s, Rambo and Chuck Norris, and far too inclined to conspiracy theories, and have little to no faith in the venality of politics and politician... so it doesn't take much of a stretch for me to think that the government abandoned men it knew about at the end of the war. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Recently read quite a bit about it in my obsessive online political surfing, particularly about how both John Kerry and John McCain, in their roles on the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs [1991–1993] really did a piss poor job, and imho, it looks like they intentionally whitewashed the hell out of the possibility of Americans still being held in Vietnam. Vietnam War POW/MIA issue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"...Committee vice-chairman Smith seemed to back away from the committee's findings within months of their being issued, appearing in April 1993 on Larry King Live with POW/MIA activist Bill Hendon, stressing his partial dissent from the majority report and touting new evidence of North Vietnam having held back prisoners in 1973, and then in the Senate in September 1993, saying he had "very compelling" new evidence of live prisoners. He also asked the Justice Department to investigate ten federal officials for perjury and other crimes in conjunction with a cover-up of POW/MIA investigations, In what he dubbed "Operation Clean Sweep", Smith said the targeted officials had a "mind-set to debunk". Kerry and McCain both denounced Smith's actions...

In 1994, journalist Sydney Schanberg, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1970s for his New York Times reporting in Cambodia, wrote a long article for Penthouse magazine in which he said the committee had been dominated by a faction led by Kerry that "wanted to appear to be probing the prisoner issue energetically, but in fact, they never rocked official Washington's boat, nor did they lay open the 20 years of secrecy and untruths." Schanberg stated that key committee staff had had too close a relationship with the Department of Defense, and that while other committee investigators were able to get evidence of men left behind into the full body of the report, the report's conclusions "were watered down and muddied to the point of meaninglessness." Kerry denied that the committee had engaged in any cover-up."

Former NC Republican Congressman Bill Hendon wrote a book in 2007, called An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia. On my list of books to read.

Most important lesson learned from the film is, however, -

"Most human problems can be solved by an appropriate charge of high explosive."

The Last King of Scotland - Forest Whitaker was phenomenal. I've dug African history since college, though there I studied mostly Kenyan/Mau Mau and South African. Uganda, from my limited perspective, is monumentally screwed up.

The Bank Job - this was a really good heist movie. Ostensibly based on a true story, which makes it all the more interesting. And I dig on Jason Statham.

SNL with Tracy Morgan - wasn't bad, really should have been better.

The Obama Deception - Alex Jones' latest conspiracy documentary. I'm of two minds on Jones. On the one hand, he rightly pays attention to a lot of things that don't get enough attention, regardless of whether you buy his overarching conspiracy. On the other hand, he's such a bombastic asshole. So there's that.

Conspiracy wrt Obama is seductive. Why after campaigning against lobbyists is his staff stacked with them? Why vote to renew the Patriot Act and support Bush's wiretapping of American citizens? Why so long to withdraw from Iraq, especially considering his rhetoric? Why all the support for a clearly broken banking and regulatory industry?

The answer is just as simple as complex systems + yet another typical politician, but at least conspiracy makes a kind of sense.

Worth remembering what the esteemed RAW said on conspiracies -

"I think there are 3 factors, A - noboby likes to take the blame for their own problems so they look for somebody else to blame. It's not your fault, it's the Jesuits, the Freesmasons, the Jews, the CFR...

Another motive is we are living in very weird times, the world is changing faster and faster... the transmission of info is going faster and faster due to internet... which means that most people are living in a world they can't understand. And when people can't understand they tend to go for sinister explanations...

...and the 3rd, of course, is that there are lots of conspiracies around."

In the same vein I watched the miniseries from a few years ago Secret Rulers of the World. Ronson's a heck of a writer, but his voice as the narrator is grating. The subject matter is always interesting.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold - this cartoon's version of Aquaman is the breakout of the show. Brian Blessed as the King of the Sea. [Not literally.]

The Mentalist - the eps that touch on Jane's background, like this one, are better than the standard fare.

Eastbound and Down - the continued fall of the Southeastern US hero. Funny.

Revolver - if you're prepared for a metaphysical examination of how to kill the ego disguised as a crime movie, you'll do all right. If you're expecting another Ritchie flick in the vein of Snatch or Lock, Stock... it's not the best.

The week's Daily Show and Colbert Reports...

Castle - Nathan Fillion is awesome. The show has great potential.

House - standard boilerplate House. Still entertaining.

2 eps of Lie to Me - Tim Roth continues to raise the level on this show. The more the show digs into the personal lives of the characters, the better it is...

Kings - As much as I despise and deplore the actual Bible - biblically inspired stuff, like this, fascinates me. A touch too melodramatic near the close of episodes, but Ian McShane, of Deadwood fame, chews the scenery just the right amount.

Life - Zen policing. Damian Lewis as the quirky cop is outstanding. The whole series has a wry sense of humor that's very, very cool.

Towelhead - a girl's coming of age story set in the US during the first Gulf War, starring Aaron Eckhart as the pedophile next door. Complex, complicated, well-acted. The kid in the center of incredibly dysfunctional divorced parents was something I could totally, if sadly, relate to.

Ricky Gervais: Out of England - the first half of this show was some of the funniest comedy I've seen of late.

The Office and 30 Rock - still the funniest hour on network TV.

Better Off Ted - new, funny, weird and quirky. Worth checking out.

Delocated - eh, not turning into my cup of tea. Done, for now.

Smallville - man, this was not good. Continually on the bubble.

Doug Stanhope: Incident in Austin - Doug Stanhope is hilarious. That is all.