Reviews and More

Now this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for! I just read a BackgammonMasters.com press release stating that they’ve now added blackjack to their popular family of games that already includes backgammon, poker, and perudo. This is truly exciting news for a diehard blackjack enthusiast like myself, especially since most other game sites focus almost exclusively on poker these days.

Anyway, the new blackjack game room over at BackgammonMasters.com ought to go far towards satisfying my craving for a few hands of 21 whenever I want. According to the press release, each blackjack table can accommodate up to five players, which I think is a great number. The key to having a good blackjack session (at least for me) is getting into a nice rhythm at the table — something that isn’t possible when you’ve got 7 or more players crowded around or when you’ve got a poser who doesn’t even know Basic Strategy.

In addition to this seating limit, BackgammonMasters.com has a special View Mode in the blackjack room that allows players to watch at a table before deciding to join in, just like at the casino!

As with backgammon, poker, and perudo, there are two different gaming options for blackjack. You can play just for fun or you can put real money on the line. I’d recommend starting with the fun version until you get used to the software and the rules; then you can ease into the money game if you want.

As you probably know by now, BackgammonMasters.com is one of the most popular game communities out there, with thousands of players online at any given time. The real-time chat modes allow you to interact with these other players if you want to, or you can just tune them out and focus on playing your game. Either way, it sounds like a fun time!

Okay, remember to always split aces and eights, and good luck to you out there!

The fall primetime television lineups are more or less in place at all the networks, so now I’ve got to decide which shows I’m going to recap here at Reviews and More. Last year was the first time I did recaps, and I think I learned a lot during the course of the season. For instance, I’m probably not going to recap shows that air on the same night because I simply don’t have time to get two write-ups done by the next morning. I remember last year I really struggled with Mondays (Prison Break, 24) and Thursdays (Grey’s Anatomy, CSI), and I don’t really want to go through that again. I think I can handle an hour-long drama and a 30-minute sitcom on the same night, but not two one-hour programs.

Here’s my tentative schedule for Fall 2007:

Sunday: Desperate Housewives
Monday: How I Met Your Mother, 24 (from Jan. 2008)
Tuesday: House
Wednesday: Private Practice
Thursday: Grey’s Anatomy
Friday: N/A
Saturday: N/A

Prison Break and CSI are officially on the bubble with me. I think these shows had more bad episodes than good last year, so I’m not going to continue wasting my time with them if they start off with utter crap. I’ll give each series one month (four episodes) to prove that the upcoming season will be worth watching. After that, I’m dumping them for good (or at least until summer reruns). Private Practice, as a new show, will be on probationary status as well. I’ll give that one five eps to win me over before I write it off.

I’m also going to continue watching Cold Case on Sunday nights, but I won’t be recapping it. That’s a show that I love to just sit back and enjoy, without worrying about taking notes or remembering every single detail.

In addition, I was planning on continuing with The New Adventures of Old Christine this year, but I haven’t been able to find any info on it. It’s not listed in the preliminary CBS schedule, so I don’t know what’s going on there. Has it been canceled?

A good friend of mine moved to London three years ago in order to take on a teaching job in the public school system. Apparently, the school put forth a pretty sweet offer to entice her over there, and now she has just fallen in love with the place. While she certainly enjoys teaching and raves about the kids, the biggest draw for her is the fact that she can travel all over Europe during her school vacations.

In 2005, she spent her winter holiday in Crete, which turned out to be a full two weeks. I received the most beautiful post card from Crete, and ever since then I’ve been trying to come up with a way for my family to visit that island for our own holiday. I’ve even done some research into what a vacation like that would cost.

For instance, I looked closely at accommodation options (since this is usually our biggest expense) and found a beautiful private villa that would be perfect for us! It’s called Petrino Dream, and since it was constructed in 2006, it features all the modern amenities we could hope for, including a private swimming pool. It’s in a fantastic location, can comfortably sleep up to six guests, and has a full kitchen so that we can prepare our meals instead of having to eat at restaurants. Plus, the villa is available for monthly rentals in the winter at a price that no hotel can match.

I would give anything to be able to take a month-long holiday in Crete this winter, but I doubt that my husband could get that much time off from work. Hopefully we can come up with some sort of compromise and just visit for a week instead!

Last night’s episode of Burn Notice was called “Wanted Man,” and it served to highlight the Fiona character more than any other single ep so far this season. I thought this was a good move because she was in danger of becoming something of a caricature at the rate things were going before. What I mean is we hardly knew anything about her except that she liked Michael and guns (not necessarily in that order), and she kept pressing those two points in every single ep. It was nice to see her get something else to do for a change.

Odd Job of the Week: This one comes courtesy of Fiona. She’s been doing work as a bounty hunter rounding up people who skip bail. One of the guys she nabs is Thomas McKee, a South Beach liquor promoter who was arrested for robbery after a $2 million brooch was stolen from the safe of the Victor Hotel. The police investigation showed that the robbers used McKee’s access card to get into the office, so McKee was the most likely suspect. When Fiona collars him, however, he claims that he’s innocent and asks Michael and Fiona to help clear his name. If they can do it, he’ll give them $8,000 — twice as much as Fiona would have made by bringing him in on her own.

Michael, Fiona, and Sam then go through their usual method of taking down a bad guy. They first find out who the real thief was, pose as potential buyers of the stolen brooch, mess around with the guy’s security detail, and eventually flush him out in front of a bank just as the cops arrive to handle the matter from there.

Burn Notice Progress: In the last episode, Michael persuaded Jason Bly to hand over the confidential dossier detailing the reasons for the burn notice. Michael reads through the dossier trying to figure out who set him up. He comes up with a single name, Phillip Cowan from the NSA. But because of Cowan’s security clearance, there’s no way for Michael to get to him through ordinary channels.

So Michael decides to get help from fellow spies. He sets up a meeting with a man named Anwar, who is a Libyan operative. Michael wants Anwar to start mentioning Cowan’s name whenever he thinks it’ll be overheard by the right people, send him a gift basket, whatever. The point is to connect Cowan to the Libyan secret police, which will certainly raise flags over at the NSA. In return, Michael will give Anwar information on who bombed an oilfield several years ago.

The episode ends with Cowan calling Michael to find out what the hell is going on. Cowan then says this is just the beginning and that Michael doesn’t know what he’s getting into.

Character Development: We got a lot of stuff about Michael and Fiona as a couple in this ep. We saw Fiona’s apartment for the very first time and learned that she likes to collect snow globes from all the exotic places she traveled to as part of the IRA. We also saw her take a different tack in her pursuit of Michael. Not content with merely sleeping with him last week, she wants them to go back to the way they were before Michael left her. This time, however, she decides to try to make Michael jealous. Fiona accomplishes her goal by hanging on Thomas the whole ep, which actually does get Michael’s attention. He ends the episode by giving her a snow globe from Miami and opening the car door for her!

My Reaction: I thought “Wanted Man” was much better than last week’s episode, especially in terms of the OJotW. This case was more interesting than the last one, and the resolution was far more believable.

I also have to admit that this ep helped me slowly warm to the idea of Michael and Fiona as a couple. I think the tide turned for me when Michael actually started reciprocating Fiona’s feelings instead of pushing her away all the time. I felt the whole relationship was a bit disturbing and tiresome when it was one-sided (imagine if a man kept relentlessly pursuing a woman despite her repeated efforts to stop him), but I guess it’s not so bad if both of them want it to happen.

I was disappointed that we didn’t get a single glimpse of either Madeline or Nate. This was the second week in a row where Madeline was absent from the storyline and Nate has been gone for three or four eps. I like the family aspect of Burn Notice, and wish the writers would give these two characters more to do!

Someone recently asked me what my pet peeves are as far as movies go. One thing I really hate is how long movies tend to run these days. Remember when you could generally count on a film being just 90 minutes? Didn’t matter what the genre, they were all more or less limited to that magic number. Heck, even the screenwriting books cite 90 as the number of pages a script should be because the general rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of screen time. But now it seems like most movies fall into the 105-115 minute range — or more. And most of the time, the films would actually benefit from editing out those extra minutes.

Another pet peeve is character stereotypes where the writers are too lazy to create anyone unique and memorable, so they just throw clichés out there. For example, instead of giving the town seductress an actual personality, they just let the audience know she’s a seductress by decorating her room with animal print bedding (most likely leopard skin) or something like that. That type of characterization is not original and it’s not interesting!

These are the two biggest pet peeves that jump to mind. I know there are others, but it’s far too early in the morning for me to remember them all!