None of my teams (A’s, Cards, Giants) are in any of the division series, but the the participants immediately made me hopeful for either a Windy City World Series or an all L.A. one.  Sure the ratings would be terrible, but it’s neat when it happens.  Of course, thus far the two Chicago outfits and the Angels are doing quite terribly, 0-2 each as I write this.  Which is lame because I don’t actually like the Dodgers.* (I recognize that as the Cubs are playing the Dodgers only one of them could survive to keep my silly dream alive, but since the Angels aren’t getting it done, I’m not really in the mood for theDodgers to advance - besides it’s the Cubs year!)

But the best thing about the playoffs?  Cal Ripken, Jr.  He has developed this rather goofy tic of ending random sentences with the above phrase, “or whatever else.”  Mr. Sassy theorizes that old Cal trained himself to not say “um” when providing his brilliant commentary, but he had to replace it with something, and that something is “or whatever else.”  Sometimes he says it super-fast, like he knows it’s nothing but a placeholder, but every time he says it, it is hilarious.

And now “or whatever else” the most popular catchphrase in the house.  It managed to supplant ever “all of them,” which is of course awesome, and still gets a lot of play.  I kind of love the universe right now.

*I like the other teams for stupid reasons, but whatever. The White Sox because during my formative years I saw Field of Dreams and Eight Men Out and wistfully romantic about them.  The Cubs I always liked because I’m into underdogs and Mark Grace and Ryne Sandburg made quite an impression on me as a kid.  And the Angels, well, it’s mostly because they’ve had their amusing naming history - California Angeles to Anaheim Angels to The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which stupidly translates to The The Angels Angels of Anaheim.

Perhaps I would have more time if I had not recently started filling it with the following:

• Jezebel.  So pitch perfect for me.  I used to be a huge Wonkette fan, but after Election 2004 my interest waned, and the site was never quite the same after Anna Marie Cox left.  Nice that there’s still something for me in the Gawker Empire.
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.  I’m an old lady with a job so I obviously am not staying up until 12:35, so I record it and watch it over the weekends.  I was really into Conan in school, and I still love his show (and should probably be taping his show too, but I haven’t the time!), but I kind of don’t recall laughing as hysterically and consistently watching Conan as I do watching Craig Ferguson.  (Whose name I sometimes confuse with Colin Ferguson [the good one], who is awesome on Eureka.)
• Law & Order.  Law school actually drove me away - it was a little too much like homework.  I thought I’d checked it out when I saw that Jeremy Sisto, who’s always kind of interesting to watch (is it bad that I always think of Clueless first when I see him in anything?), and Linus Roache, who’s fascinated me since The Wings of the Dove, had joined up.  And even though I’ve always hated the ripped from the headlines plots that are even more prevalent now, the new dynamics are riveting and I could not have possibly prepared myself for how fascinating it is to watch Sam Waterson be the crotchety old D.A.

Element 1) Pants so wet by the time I got to work I could not stand to wear them. Silly me, I thought, I shouldn’t have worn such warm, thick-materialed pants on such a wet day. Luckily I have an emergency suit in my office (and it still fit) so I was cool.

Element 2) Arriving home to see that I had no front window. Literally. My living room window was gone and a spectacle of glass littered the driveway.

It looks like this now:

(I’m sure it’s also the storm’s fault I can’t figure out how to make these pictures bigger!)

Element 3) My next door neighbor decided to wake me up early this morning (ok, it was 10 a.m.) to insist that the leak in her garage was coming from my house. Okay, yeah, the houses are attached, but by her explanation of where her leak was there was no way the fault was on my side. Also she felt the need to point out that my window had been only eight years old and her forty year old windows held up just fine. Nice.

Update: The storm is slightly less evil than previously thought! I’m not stupid! IE7 is! Firefox rules!

Daruma 2 - Ireland’s 32 2

Cal . . . I can’t even write it.

PS Is there a cure for an eye twitch other than stop working the computer? ‘Cause that’s not an option.

Anyway, the summer season started off unambitiously with The Starter Wife, the semi-autobiographical dramatization of the novel by Brian Grazer’s (now ex-) third wife, which was both maddening and entertaining, frustrating and perfectly fluffy. I would never imagine myself devoting months of TV watching to such piffle, but six episodes was the perfect dose. I slightly hated the end - something about how apparently you do have to change yourself radically to make relationships work or something, but I had to admit I wasn’t watching for life lessons. I kind of wanted the bling.

Some summer programming choices were specifically designed to fill a hole, e.g., The History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers, a serviceable replacement for Deadliest Catch. Truckers was fascinating, if horribly repetitive, but has that same “it’s really freaking cold and we’re making a lot of money (relatively) doing manly things that most people never could and never will” element. The frigid temperatures and perpetual fear of crashing through the ice in the Northwest Territories echo the frigid temperatures, killer waves, and ice floes of the Bering Sea, and the question of whether diamonds or crabs are worth any of this resonate equally. Deadliest Catch wins, though, because the omnipresent man versus man while they’re both versus nature element is more compelling than the man versus nature and only occasionally versus a jerk.

Another source of amusement has been the burn off of shows I liked, but were yanked before their time. There are a number of shows that fit this bill, e.g., Vanished which the machine has been recording at 2 a.m. on Monday mornings, but we haven’t gone back to that yet.

In that category, we finished off Standoff, which was cool and unconventional in that they did us the favor of having the male and female lead hook up before we got there, which eliminated all the will-they-or-won’t-they nonsense by giving us an adult relationship as a twist on the buddy cop television genre. And the awesome Gina Torres was there too. No idea why the audiences never bit.

The other fun show that fits this bill is The Loop, with its fabulously endearing and catchy theme-song, “Hockey Monkey.” Again, not sure why the Loop wasn’t a hit with the kids - it featured a twentysomething with a college business degree who parlays that into a job as an exec with an airline where all his colleagues are older and more experienced (his boss calls him “Thesis”), which leads to lots of generational clashes and lots of episodes about the downsides of being drunk. But how can you not love a show with an episode where a very scary dog eats a flash drive with a crucial presentation on it?!

Probably the two best series this summer though have been Eureka and Burn Notice, which are not quite over. I fell in love with Eureka last summer, and was excited to see it back. It’s one of those quirky, fun sci-fi shows, but what I like the most is that other than casually advancing the mythology of the “Artifact” all the mysterious goings on are always the result of some scientist taking an experiment too far, grounding it in human frailties. Burn Notice was been a delightful surprise, following an ex-spy who’s trying to figure out why he’s been burned (kicked out of the spy business), and helping someone in need every week. Mr. Sassy expressed surprise that I liked Burn Notice, given that I like to “follow the rules” - which is so not true - and lead character Michael Westen has to break them to help his clients. Whatever. Anyway, the show is right up both of our alleys, fitting in with his love of The Incredible Hulk and Knight Rider and my love of Quantum Leap.

Finally, I’ve just started getting into Mad Men, AMC’s take on advertising execs on Madison Avenue in the 1960’s. So far I’ve learned that everyone smoked a lot and it really, really kind of sucked to be a woman back then. Also cool - Rosemarie DeWitt from Standoff shows up!

First, the screen announced that the movie was “From the Studio that Brought You Daddy Day Care.” Not the producers, not the director, not even the writers. So maybe this isn’t about creative fulfillment?

Second, as I asked Matt, “Wasn’t Eddie Murphy in Daddy Day Care?” Because Eddie, didn’t show up this time around. Instead, this time Cuba Gooding Jr. is dutifully playing the role of “black male lead.” Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. lapping up the sloppy seconds of Academy Award nominee Eddie “Norbit” Murphy. Seriously?

Third, even Jeff Garlin, who played the lesser-known co-star dad in the original, didn’t lower himself to participate in this project. I knew the large man who looked like John Goodman’s cousin was not in Daddy Day Care, but we were halfway through the preview before I remembered Garlin was in the original, which made me sad somehow.

Fourth, Daddy Day Camp looks terrible. Just god-awful and in no way worth whatever they paid to make it. Those kids are going to be accidentally leaving that credit off their resumes for years.

Anyway, I taped this week’s episode of Emeril, “Kicked Up Tailgaiting,” because it featured as special guests soccer stars Pablo Mastroeni and Jimmy Conrad. And by “soccer stars,” I mean people self-proclaimed soccer fan Emeril has never heard of, judging by the fact that he couldn’t remember their last names or their teams without reading them off the blue card. And these poor guys play on the national team for Pete’s sake! Mastroeni and Conrad were, of course, gracious and adorable, which made it much less awkward than it could have been. Even when Emeril thanked “the soccer organization” - whatever that is - at the end of the show.

(I only taped it because it featured the two soccer players. Every couple weeks I do a keyword search in the DVR for “soccer” so I can catch all the games I might want to tape, but that also creates lots of random hits like Emeril, usually at least one Dora the Explorer episode, the Will & Grace where Will and Jack join a gay soccer team, and whimsical bits like Cleats of Imminent Doom.)

Query - why does Emeril have a band? I suppose it’s a vestige of the dizzying heights of fame he once achieved - and the women in his audience still look enraptured by him (though other than the excessive use of cilantro, I would not say no to him cooking for me) - but it’s just so goofy.

The upside of the viewing was that not only is the “Bam!” thankfully gone, but I got to appreciate just how charming Emeril is. He was funny, though not as funny as the audience thought, and I bet no one does lime juice rage like Emeril. His was so into his stories even when they lacked payoff for the rest of us, but he endearingly made it work. And he had no problem teasing himself for his gaffes, including the running motif of measuring so casually that the various pots and bowls were not quite big enough for what he needed to put in them. I have no intention of watching again, but if the Bam! was keeping you away, it’s safe to go back.