Larry King-style, but with fewer dot-dot-dots:

In an earlier post I mentioned that I signed up for a gym that is a block away from my apartment, as opposed to going to the Upper West Side three times a week after work. Well, it hasn’t been long, but so far I’ve been able to stay in the groove - three or four times a week I wake up at 5:30, eat breakfast, put in my contacts, apply deodorant, brush my teeth, and walk over to the gym. I do about 45 minutes of weights, sandwiched between 30 minutes of cardio. I hate cardio.
I still hold the opinion that people who are out of shape should be clandestine about their exercising habits. “Don’t tell unless you’re asked” is how I feel about it, so I don’t know why I’m telling you about this.

The Summer movie season is well underway. Even though Summer officially began like two weeks ago, the Summer movie season is well over halfway done. Yeah, it’s weird how Summer in movie-world begins in May and ends in early August.
I wasn’t too impressed by Transformers; Live Free or Die Hard gave me an enjoyable evening but didn’t live up to its predecessors; Knocked Up was overrated, but thankfully not as badly as 40 Year-Old Virgin; Spider-Man 3 was sappy but hilarious; Fantastic 42 blew nearly as much as Fantastic 41; the new Pirates of the Carribbean I’m sure would have been good if I knew what actually was going on more than half of the time - an annoying trend found in many popcorn films lately; and Sicko tried to get me to like French people, to no avail (regardless, the rest of the film was fine).

The other day was the 4th of July. My plans fell through because of the bad weather, so instead of going to the Brooklyn Bridge to watch the fireworks I stayed home and watched some movies and a 10-hour To Catch a Predator marathon on MSNBC. I got up on the roof when the fireworks started and was surprised to see hundreds of others also watching the show from their rooftops.

Going back to the topic of marathons, Sci-Fi Channel had a Twilight Zone marathon, which I think they do every year. There is this episode - one of the most famous ones titled Time Enough at Last - of which I have seen clips. It’s with Burgess Meredith as a bookworm who rarely gets to read, until a nuclear holocaust wipes out the world’s population except for him and he finally can read his books without being disturbed by anyone (I wouldn’t mind that myself, either, if I got to watch movies as well)… and then he breaks his reading glasses and can’t read anymore. It’s a classic episode that I’ve wanted to see for years. I have missed so many airings - often noticing that it was on shortly after I tuned in. Last year I watched some of the Sci-Fi Channel marathon and caught a bunch of episodes, but this one I missed. It’s been frustrating, time after time. This year, sadly, the same thing happened. Hopefully there will be a day when I can finally say to myself that I have seen Time Enough at Last. (according to Wikipedia, it’s on Google Video, so I’ll look into that sometime soon)

I started going to the New York Public Library. After having trouble getting a card in New York while living in Jersey City, I decided to give it another try now that I actually live in the city. It was very easy. All I had to do was bring my driver’s license and a piece of mail. Within minutes I was browsing the Donnell Media Center for movies. Yeah, I’ll be honest. That’s probably the only thing I’ll be getting at the library. I borrowed a tape of the movie Wings (the first Best Picture Oscar winner, together with Sunrise) and a 2-disc set of Buster Keaton films made for MGM (including The Cameraman, another classic I had never seen). I also checked out Sergei Bondarchuck’s 7 1/2 hour War and Peace film adaptation, which is considered the most expensive film ever made. I didn’t watch it, though, because it turned out to be Kultur’s crappy unrestored pan&scan release. This is a 2.20:1 film so watching chopped up version is unacceptable to me. Thankfully, a little further research told me that Ruscico restored the film and Image has since put out a special edition, which I have reserved. What’s nice is that I can drop these off at the library right around the corner from me so I don’t have to make the trip to Midtown. City taxes are insanely high in Manhattan, so you can bet that I’ll get my money’s worth out of the library.

I went back to Colbert Report a few more times. Sadly, a picture of me behind the desk has still not been developed. Maybe next time, given how I update this thing about once a month.

Tonight, CBS will start re-broadcasting Jericho. I enjoyed this program very much and was disappointed when it was canceled at the end of last season, without even a conclusion. The show got solid ratings when it launched last Fall but ratings slipped following a Winter hiatus. Thankfully, some of its more devoted fans united to make an unprecedented effort to get CBS to continue the show. In the final episode, somebody said “nuts” and within days of the cancellation announcement, the CBS offices were bombarded with nuts. Tons and tons of ‘em. New episodes will go in production for a mid-season relaunch. Hopefully the ratings will improve and the series will continue beyond next year. Do tune in if you are into the post-apocalypse genre.

This weekend I’m going to take a look at the 7-11 on 42nd Street. It’s been turned into a Kwik-E-Mart as a way of promoting The Simpsons Movie. I hope that they haven’t run out of Krusty-O’s breakfast cereal.

Have a good weekend, DOT DOT DOT.