Thing’s I’ve noticed: Planning my TV-on-DVD summer is complicated

Now that the 2011-12 TV season has pretty much run its course (I’m still waiting on Cougar Townand Mad Men to wrap up, and deciding on whether or not to watch season 2 of The Killing) I’m looking forward to attacking my towering stack of TV shows on DVD.

Last summer my wife and I checked out the HBO series The Wire, which rests comfortably in my top five favourite TV shows of all time, so this year I figure we should follow up with a show from FX I’ve always been meaning to finish, The Shield.

Years ago we watched the first four seasons, but after taking a break of a couple years found we were totally confused by the beginning of season five, so over the next few months we are going to do our best to watch the whole series at a rate of a couple episodes a night.  On top of that we’ve got about a dozen other shows we’ve been waiting for the summer to see, so now we decide whether or not to alternate between The Shield and other shows season by season, or to just watch The Shieldstraight through and see how much time we have left afterwards.  One thing I will say for most of the shows from Showtime, FX and HBO – the fact that these seasons run 10 – 13 episodes definitely makes for a great feeling of productive tv watching once you decide to check out any of their shows.

On the horror/SF/Fantasy front, the only shows I’ve got are the final season of Millennium and perhaps a re-watch of The X-Files, oh yeah and a Bruce Campbell series called Jack of All TradesI’ve been meaning to check out.

The next few months are looking pretty good, and if I juggle all my goals of school, family, TV watching, Video Game playing, Movie watching, book reading and whatnot, I might even get outside for a few hours before September!

Things I've Noticed: Budgetting for Summer 2012 is tricky

So here we are at the beginning of the 2012 Summer Blockbuster season, a day before The Avengers opens (and hopefully will not be considered this years Green Lantern - btw, for anyone who decided to start watching genre movies with that one, I humbly apologize) and I'm thinking exactly what we all are...


How best can I work my entertainment budget this summer?


Yup - as  parent/blogger/video-game enthusiast/reader/film buff/couch potato/Grad Student/husband, I simply cannot see every movie/book/game that comes my way.  In fact, as grad school is pretty pricy I have to cut down from the nearly ten movies I saw last year from Thor to Fright Night.  


I think I'm going to try and get down to four movie theatre trips this blockbuster season.


Yup.  Four.


That doesn't mean I won't see more than four, it does mean (B-Day movies with kids immediately comes to mind, or my BFF Mike dragging me to see Men In Black III, quietly hoping I'll forget the irreparable harm that MIB II did to me, and that I've held him responsible ever since).  It mostly just means that most of these movies will have to wait for DVD for me to check them out.


Which four do you ask?  That's actually a kind of tricky question... Tell you what I'll get back to you next week with my finalists.


Good news for my TV watching followers however, this summer is looking up for my TV-on-DVD viewing.  After enjoying The Wire with my wife last summer, I'm thinking I'm going to give a try to The Shield this summer.