What I Did on my Winter Vacation

One of the good things about working in education is the roughly two weeks we get off for the winter holidays. As you can imagine, I spent a not insignificant portion of that time in front of the TV, rotting my brain as surely as all of the Christmas treats were rotting my teeth.

Very little of this viewing was actualy on holiday-related fare. I do have the hour-long How the Grinch Stole Christmas special on the DVR, but I did not partake of Frosty, Rudolph, or TBS's annual 24 hours of A Christmas Story. I tended to favor bowl season over the holiday season, with more time watching minor college football bowls - and their attendant fifth-string crews and repetitive tourist promotional ads - than was strictly necessary.

Spent a little time catching up with Jericho, though not all of the episodes were available through Comcast On Demand. They are available through CBS's Innertube service, so I'll likely fire that up at some point. It's still not the best show - folks in Jericho seem exceedingly slow at times - but it's diverting enough.

We also blew through most of our DVR backlog, getting caught up pretty much with every show we regularly follow - just in time for the return of 24, American Idol, and (in February) Lost. We'll be up over 90 percent capacity in no time.

One new show I sampled was Top Chef, Bravo's unscripted cooking competition. It was OK. I think I'd have to watch more of it - or at least start at the beginning - to really get into it. That being said, the challenges are interesting, even if the drama between contestants seems a little forced at times.

Sticking with food, I also watched the Las Vegas and New Zealand episodes of No Reservations, and found myself less annoyed with Tony Bourdain than normal. I imagine part of this is the production staff sanding off some of the rough edges, and certainly part is Bourdain's willingness to have a laugh at his own expense. Both help soften his usually annoying New York exterior. It also helps that the show manages to balance food and travel better than most shows that try to combine the two. Now if I can only talk a well-know Kiwi chef into inviting me to his next beachside cookout...