Wilkins_III's Blog: Portions for Bombers: Week 1

Who knows if this will last, but I've decided to blog a little differently on Giant Bomb. Once a week, most likely Sunday or Monday, I'll post a summary of the past seven days. I'm hoping to cover a broad range of topics, and that might include albums I checked out, tennis matches I've been watching, and television episodes I want to praise. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the primary one is that at the end of the day, just like GameSpot, this is a community that is strongly passionate about videogames, and I just don't share that passion anymore. At the same time, I want this blog to be accessible to everyone I've kept in touch with, and to make a lot of entries television-centric wouldn't bode well, I imagine. Hopefully, there will be something each week that is relevant or interesting to all of you guys. And yeah, this is a Giant Bomb exclusive. One final note. Chances are that my blog won't be limited to just these weekly entries. If there's something on my mind and I can't wait five days or however long, I'll post independently of the weekly stuff. So now that I've got everything out of the way, let's have a crack at this...

Television

With the 2007-08 season over, the startling amount of free time has given me ample opportunity to play catch up. A few weeks ago, I got around to watching the post-strike episodes of Reaper (enjoyable, but a shame that the finale was rather lacklustre), and just last week, I went through Season 4 of Desperate Housewives. As someone who has never seen the first three seasons, I can't believe I missed out for so long. I just assumed it was a lame soapy comedy, and I was wrong to think that. It's far from being among the cream of the crop in today's television, and Grey's Anatomy does the whole "dramedy" thing more effectively, but Desperate Housewives is great fun and is now officially my favourite guilty pleasure. Next on my list is Season 2 of Weeds. Season 4 is currently airing and will continue to do so over the summer, but I've only just discovered this witty comedy about a single mother of two who has to cope with her kids while supporting them by dealing weed. Like most cable shows, Weeds isn't immediately accessible, but I found the first season a breath of fresh air, and I hope it continues that way.

Of course, all of that is probably overshadowed by the announcement of this year's Emmy nominees. I won't go through each category (you can see all the major Primetime nominees here), but I'll quickly give some of my thoughts. Firstly, it's great to find out that Lost has been nominated for Outstanding Series, Drama (along with Dexter) after its fantastic season. Though I'm not surprised to see House nominated, too, especially after the amazing two-part finale, I can't help but think it doesn't deserve to win after an awkward transition with House's new team. However, I have no problem backing Hugh Laurie to win Outstanding Actor, Drama. Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother and Kristin Chenoweth of Pushing Daisies more than deserve their Outstanding Supporting Actor/Actress, Comedy, and I really hope they come out on top (though Entourage's Jeremy Piven is just as awesome, too).

As usual, though, there are snubs I'm not particularly happy about. I would have loved to see Pushing Daisies being up for Outstanding Series, Comedy, and I think it's shocking that Henry Ian Cusick, after his absolutely phenomenal performance in "The Constant", didn't make the cut for Outstanding Supporting Actor, Drama (I have nothing against his Lost co-star Michael Emerson, but Cusick deserved it way more than he did). And where is the Friday Night Lights love? Granted, they had a slightly weaker sophomore season, but it's still disappointing that they missed out again.

Tennis

Rafael Nadal is now just 300 points behind Roger Federer in the ATP Rankings after he won the Toronto Masters. Federer lost in the second round (he had a bye in the first) to rising French star Gilles Simon. But the highlight of the week as far as tennis is concerned is seeing how much Andy Murray has improved. To put it bluntly, he was shit against Nadal at Wimbledon. Yet, in his quarter-final match against Novak Djokovic, Murray played some of the best tennis I've seen him play. His stubborn defensive play--thanks to some great footwork--made it tough for the world number three to hit winners, and helped him win in straight sets. With his confidence high, Murray also gave Nadal a run for his money in the semis, which resulted in both players hitting some brilliant winners (and Nadal saved a break point with a really, really outrageous and daring drop shot from the baseline). I don't think I've seen Murray play so well before, and it was a shame that he couldn't win the big points. Let's see if he can maintain that form going into the Cincinnati Masters this week.

Video Games

It's common knowledge by now, but I wrote my first review in a while last week: A Sound of Thunder for the GBA. It's for a reviewing competition at HonestGamers, the twist being the judges actually assign what game you had to play and review. I thank everyone who gave me feedback back on my GameSpot blog. It was much appreciated, and I feel my review improved as a result. Anyway, the deadline has passed now, so we should see how well I do sometime this week. I also started playing Rock Band again for the leagues in the Rock Heroes Union, again on GameSpot. I'm pretty sure I didn't win any of the songs this week. If no one's bluffing, Timma has most likely won Highway Star and Mississippi Queen, and Verdugo on Creep. I know I only played the songs two or three times each (due to how sweaty and hot England has been recently), but I'm surprised and glad that everyone around me is improving. Yes, even you, Skrutop.

Music

Ever since I used music as motivation during my summer exams a couple of months ago, I've become a little bit addicted to it. I guess something has to fill in the television void. I even have my own Last.fm profile. I don't claim to be a music expert (I'll leave that to Psychomode, while I stick to television), but I enjoy it enough to talk about it. This week, I got myself a few new albums. The first two, at the start of the week, were the Subways' "Young for Eternity" and Charlotte Hatherley's "Grey Will Fade" (the latter courtesy of Psychomode). I've not really had the chance to listen to Hatherley much, partly because I've been enjoying the Subways. At around the same time, I also re-discovered the Go! Team. I had some of their stuff a while back, but I never got into it. Then, I hear "Huddle Formation" on Top Spin 3, and all of a sudden, I love them. Strange how that works. Probably not coincedentally, "Huddle Formation" was also my most played track last week.

A couple of days ago, I also checked out Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous". I had "Under the Blacklight", their most recent album, for a while now, but the band's shoutbox was filled with hate for it. And to be honest, I didn't get where it was all coming from until I listened to "More Adventurous" for the first time. To put it simply, it is miles superior, and the direction they've gone since--they now sport a more mainstream poppy sound--has been for the worse. "Does He Love Me?" is such an epic and amazing song, and totally shits on everything on "Under the Blacklight". The build-up throughout it is awesome and climaxes in a glorious string instrumental. Speaking of awesome songs, I've been listening to "Impossible" by Shout Out Louds quite a bit recently. It surprised me how a song like this can evoke such powerful emotions. The first five or six minutes are pretty gloomy, but by the time you're into the final, seventh minute, the tone dramatically shifts and becomes optimistic and even a little cheery. Did I mention that the track is all sorts of awesome?