February 16, 2004

TV Show: Every so often there's a TV show that comes along that looks really lame from the early promos, and I actively plan to hate it, but when I do sit down and watch it, I find it to be brilliant and captivating and highly enjoyable. This was the case with Undeclared, and with Scrubs. This fall it was the case with The O.C. Actually, I should say summer, because the show actually debuted back in early August, and it grabbed my attention almost immediately. I didn't do a rating of new TV shows for this season for various reasons, but if I had, The O.C. would most certainly have garnered a good. It's far too complicated to describe the entire show to you, and I'm feeling rather lazy, so suffice it to say that it's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer only without any vampires, slaying, or characters named Buffy. It's an intelligent and very well written character drama. If you aren't watching it, you are really missing out.

Featured Website: If you don't watch Saturday Night Live, you are missing out on some of the best comedy currently on television. Incidentally, you are also missing out on some of the worst, but that's another story for another article. What really ties SNL together, and has done so for several years, is Weekend Update. Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon have been doing an excellent job with Update for several seasons, and this is the most consistently hilarious segment of the show as of late. If you do watch SNL and appreciate Update, check out FallonFey.com, which has downloadable Real Video clips of every Fallon and Fey Weekend Update, and lots of other info.

Featured Word: Copious is basically just another way to say plentiful or abundant, but it's a fun way to say it, especially when coupled with the word quantities. Try it out. The next time you want to comment about there being a lot of something, for example, spam, refer to it as "copious quantities of spam." You'd be surprised how much fun it can be.

Featured Game: Sometimes we feature video games, sometimes we feature board games or card games, one time we even featured Slamball. Most commonly a fairly recent video game will be the featured game, however. So the fact that the latest featured game is Quake III Arena might throw you off a little. Yes, it came out five years ago. But do you know what? It was really cutting edge and full of rocket-launcher-powered fun back then, and it's still lots of fun. There are also still thousands of people playing it online, which can't be said for many newer first person shooters. If you own it but haven't played it in a while, or if you don't have it but can get it, fire up Quake III and remember the one rule of the arena — waste anything that isn't you.