I was a Gordon Ramsay skeptic for a long time, mostly based off of his crappy American shows on Fox. But these BBC originals with Ramsay getting hands-on with failing restaurants are totally addictive. Even better is Kitchen Nightmares Revisited, where he shows up months after whipping them into shape, only to usually find the establishments back in disrepair. Standard British series warning applies: it seems like BBC America only has ten or so episodes, so get used to lots of repeats.
9:00 – Friday Night Lights (DirecTV 101)
I feel bad mentioning this here since it’s only available to DirecTV subscribers (of which I am not one), so I will make it up by linking to a BitTorrent site.
9:00 – Larry King Live: Sarah Palin (CNN)
She’s still here! Alive and kicking! It’s pretty funny how these days Governor Palin seems to be in front of any microphone that someone’s left on, as opposed to a couple weeks ago…
Late Night
That British comedian character of apparently rising importance Russell Brand is on Letterman, that American comedian character of potentially waning importance Steve Carrell is on Leno, Tom Brokaw is on Conan, T. Boone Pickens builds a windmill on the set of the Daily Show, and Bob Woodward begs Colbert for a scoop.
Unless you live under a rock, you know that Senator Obama has been in Iraq for the past few days. Yesterday, after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pulled back on remarks he made over the weekend agreeing with Senator Obama’s plan for Iraq, his chief government spokesman released a statement saying that the Iraqi government supports a timetable to get US troops out of Iraq by 2010. If you check your box scores you will see that is essentially the same thing as Senator Obama’s plan.
My favorite development of the past few weeks was the rise of Texas oilman and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens as a major advocate for alternative energies and wind power. Wind power is great, but mostly I just like getting to say T. Boone Pickens. Today the New York Times offers a strong endorsement of his alternative energy plans.
To go along with that, the Los Angeles Times has a survey piece on the state of oil and whether we have found all there is to find. Some say that we have but others say that we have only found the easy oil and that there is plenty of oil but it will just be harder to access. My favorite statement about the idea of “Unconventional oil” is from Al Gore’s Rolling Stone interview: “you know, junkies find veins in their toes. It seems reasonable, to them, because they’ve lost sight of the rest of their lives.”
Today’s story you should read to feel like a well-informed citizen is on how the economic downturn is affecting women. Economists had thought that the decline in the percentage of women working was the result of women choosing to stay home, but studies are showing that the majority of women who have left their jobs have done it for the same reasons men have. Namely, they have been laid off while their job was moved to Kuala Lumpur. The whole piece is worth a read and has some great graphics.
