Grid Effect

Just a quick reminder that we’re going to be live-blogging the Oscars tonight. We’re tired, we’re hungover and we have to sit in a high school audotorium for two hours here shortly, which will almost certainly intensify said hangover. But three hours of mocking people who take themselves too seriously and do so voluntarily on an  international stage is just too much for us to pass up.

Coverage starts at 8:30 EST tonight, we’ll try to post shortly before then.

Happy new year’s, non-existent readers. Unless we went out of town, I do not recall taking a sabbatical from this site just for the fuck of it. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only was it during New Year’s week (for lack of a better term) and there wasn’t shit worth mentioning as a result, much less attributing entire posts too, but the network essentially malfunctioned and died for roughly two days (this Friday-early Sunday). So we apologize for the inconvenience as you were unable to acccess it, but in all actuality you were wasting your time regardless because there wasn’t shit new here.

But we have one more week to sift through all the bullshit and then the broadcast and cable networks start to get in the full fledged swing of things. Right now FOX is still going to be interrupting regular programming with college Bowl games (tonight and Thursday) and several series’ aren’t picking up until next week because networks are under the impression that enough suspense hasn’t been built between now and then for their season premieres. Maybe their right. I mean, for some of them its only been a year or so.

As far as we can tell, we’ll be posting recaps/reviews for the following shows: FNL, Flight of The Conchords The Office and maybe Nip Tuck. I think Survivor will be picking up their new season relatively soon, but not until at least February. Otherwise, we’re looking at an empty slate, especially for this week. So, until next week when we can post some nightly previews and have those suffice for the rest of the season, we’re probably going to be posting links and potentially…well, no, probably just links. Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited. Who doesn’t love constant updates on the status of the Arrested Development movie?

So hold onto your hats kids, your first links post from Grid Effect in aught nine is coming later today. A real seminal event.

Much like Tony Soprano in the least liked episode of the final season, we will be playing catch up for the foreseeable future. In terms of writing a television blog, it was a bad 12 days to be out of pocket. We missed the premieres and season episodes of multiple series, and just as a cherry on top we managed to be in a Greyhound on our way to St. Louis while the Emmy’s were taking place. If that isn’t a good indicator of our disinterest in the event, then I don’t know what is.

The only thing we were really concerned with is whether or not The Wire would actually win the only award it was nominated for and it didn’t, but it at least lost to Mad Men. We are constantly conflicted about this. On the one hand, it is better for the series’ legacy if it is constantly overlooked for awards (particularly Emmys). On the other, and this is with all due respect to Mad Men which is the best series on television by a mile, this is still a crock of shit. Here’s a list of winners if you care, though it is oddly agreeable for the most part.

Either way it doesn’t sound like we missed much except a Colbert acceptance speech and maybe a David Simon appearance at an award show. Other than that, we were happy to save the money on the plane ticket. At least sort of, riding a Greyhound across the country is kind of like getting on one of those Halloween cart rides at a carnival, only the thrills aren’t vicarious.

If you absolutely must travel via Greyhound, do try to avoid the Tulsa layover.

Still, here is a quick rundown of what to expect from us over the course of the next eight work days (sans links or previews or anything else that is never planned). We did manage to catch a break in that Mad Men randomly decided to take a night off:

-Recap/review of the most recent Mad Men episode “A Night to Remember”.

-Recap/review of Weeds season four finale.

-Recap/review of Entourage season five, episode three.

-Recaps of Survivor: Gabon and Office season five premieres.

-It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia review, which we’ve already sort of mentioned completing.

We hope to burn through all of this by Friday but any promise would be admittedly hollow. Though we will try to get to one of these later tonight.

Well, uh, gee whiz guys, I’m not entirely sure where to begin. We’ve been on an involuntarily hiatus for the past…nine days? If you attempted to visit the page, you probably received a “high load, come back later” message, or something to that effect. That’s not to say we were reveling in an abnormally large number of page views, perish the thought. No, our issues were technical and supposedly self-imposed. It wasn’t for nothing though, our servers can now handle more readers, or something. Whatever, the upgrade could make your computer do somersaults for all I know, I’m really not the person you want explaining this to you.

I apologize for any inconvenience, we understand that there are anywhere from 3 to 7 people (wishful thinking) who rely on this site as some sort of diversion from work on a daily or semi-daily basis. This is, of course, an absurd way to spend your time. But I appreciate your readership regardless, and am humbled that you would invite me into your office, however briefly. With that said, we promise, to never quit you again.

In the meantime, there was plenty we missed along the way, especially on the newsfront, but also recaps of two Weeds episodes, two Rescue Me mini-episodes annnddd…well, I think that’s the extent of it actually. Man, time really grinds to a halt when there’s nothing to distract you from its minutia. Seriously, it feels like the last time I posted on this site I was just learning how to fly, and here I am, spanning the globe with nothing more than a yellow and orange metallic body suit, righting my wrongs and avenging the deaths of the innocent, whose tragic deaths I now feel my prior moral flexibilities are at least partially responsible for. Yes, the site has been down too long, why do you ask?

But anyways, enough about my hobbies. I’ll be posting multiple times per day starting Thursday, and probably through next week. Again, we wholeheartedly apologize here at Grid Effect and will do everything to ensure this will never happen again. This is kind of a meaningless promise, given that we’re about as helpless as a fish in quicksand when it comes to IT, and most other facets of living.

Back tomorrow with a Weeds, episode 2 & 3 season four review.

We hate the phrasing of this post’s title, but the Oscars are the lone annual event that allows us to write about movies on a television blog, so we’ll be “live blogging” them tonight. Comments will appear roughly every commercial break. And no, we’re not blogging any red carpet nonsense. It’s bad enough we’re actually available to do this, it would usher us into a whole new stratosphere of monotony to blather on about how pregnant actresses look in evening gowns. Besides, that already consumes enough of our free time.

So join us tonight, as we disparage anything and everything under the sun for virtually no reason at all.