Fall TV preview (belated)

Returning shows I’ll be watching this fall:

• The Amazing Race. Always entertaining, often exhilerating, it’s head and shoulders better than any other reality TV show.
• Bones. The funniest crime drama on television! (Joss Whedon alumni show # 1)
• Chuck. This one really picked up steam near the end of its strike-shortened freshman season. Season two already has a full 22-episode order, and I’m expecting good things. (Joss Whedon alumni show # 2)
• Dirty Sexy Money. Frivolous rainy day DVR stuff. Love it.
• Eli Stone. One of the quirkiest, character-driven legal dramas I’ve ever seen. An absolute joy.
• How I Met Your Mother. The season opener was a little weaker than past episodes, but I still have faith. (Joss Whedon alumni show # 3)
• The Office. The most perfect, painfully hilarious show on television.
• Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Just keeps getting better. (Joss Whedon alumni show # 4)

New shows I’ll give a shot:

• Worst Week. Reviews are good. We’ll see.
• Fringe. Three episodes in, I like it, though it’s the least awesome J.J. Abrams show so far. 
• Crusoe. This show gets exactly one episode to convince me it won’t be terrible.

Mid-season debut/returns:

• Dollhouse. Joss Whedon alumni show # 5!
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Jeff Goldblum on a police procedural. Could be interesting.
• LOST. Will probably DVR the whole season and watch all at once.

Limping Las Vegas

Forget Leaving Las Vegas. I practically limped home.

Yep, I’m still painfully gimpy two days after Tuesday’s big hike. But that’s okay. I have physical therapy this morning and hopefully they can figure out what new hell I’ve inflicted on myself.

Anyway, I’ve made it home and thought I’d post my impressions of the company trip. I went into it pretty skeptical due to my inherent distate for all things Las Vegas, but I have to admit it was a much better experience than I’d expected.

Smarter Travel has grown so much in the last few years and this really gave me a chance to get to know some of my coworkers whose names I couldn’t even remember before the trip began. (It’s nerdy, but there’s something really cool about discovering you share the same taste in books with a coworker, for example.)

And the trip was really well executed. All of the activities were fun, the food was okay, and the hotel was fine. I even gambled a little. (And I do mean a little.) I had no idea what I was doing, but the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom slot machines at the MGM Grand are now a dollar richer because of me.

Fortune and glory, indeed.

Venus, not penis

Day one here in Vegas is nearly in the books, and it was much better than I expected. This morning’s team-building event was a Vegas-themed version of The Amazing Race, with eight teams of eight racing up and down the Strip following clues, completing challenges, and choosing between various detours. Apparently my love for The Amazing Race is stronger than my dislike for Vegas, because I had a blast.

Among my favorite tasks:

• Find Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog stand at the New York, New York casino, and then get three complete strangers to each eat a foot-long hotdog. (Surprisingly easy to do, even at 10:30 in the morning.)
• Race through all four floors of the M&M store counting the many varieties of M&Ms, then multiply and divide by other factors like the number of M&M tubes on the wall and the number of colors in the M&M rainbow. This one was harder than you’d think; we took two 10-minute penalties for getting our math wrong.
• An international scavenger hunt in the shadow of the faux Eiffel Tower that had us begging European-looking tourists for various types of international currency, among other things.

In the end, my team came in second. It was a heartbreaking finish because we’d surged into the lead on the second-to-last clue only to fall short by misinterpreting the final one. The clue was to “Find Love” and we spent half an hour searching for the statue of Venus at the Venetian before we realized that Love is the name of the Beatles show at the Mirage.

So yes, we arrived second, but it was worth it simply to hear one of my teammates have to clarify to the concierge that we were looking for a giant statue of Venus, NOT a giant penis. 

‘Cuz in Vegas, you just never know.