The Cape: Kozmo

The Cape has now moved to its actual timeslot of Monday at 9PM. It has the geek favorite Chuck as a lead-in so there is a good possibility the show will do well. As long as it doesn't turn into Heroes.

Remember, there are spoilers behind the cut!

I found this episode to be slightly informative, yet annoying at the same time. We learn a bit more about the origins of the cape. It has been handed down among master magicians who all turn on the persona of "Kozmo." Max Malini was the last official Kozmo. His apprentice was Gregor Molotov. Gregor did receive the cape as the new Kozmo but he used it to murder a woman. So Max took the cape back and Gregor traveled around various Russian prisons for 20 years. However, as an escape artist, Gregor managed to find his way out of every prison. This time, he has come back to the Carnival to retrieve his cape.

While at the Carnival, Gregor meets Vince and figures out that he is the one with the cape. At the same time, Ark is breathing down Orwell's neck. Ark raids her hideout mere minutes after she flees. Orwell turns up at Vince's door berating him for trying to shake down one of the members of Ark's police squad that set him up as Chess. Thanks to his shenanigans, Orwell has lost her hideout.

So now both Gregor and Orwell are at the Carnival. Gregor reads Orwell's palm and reveals a few tidbits about our unknown computer expert. Unfortunately, these aren't really informative facts. She's spoiled, has daddy issues, and she's been imprisoned. In all, it's pointing toward Orwell being Peter Fleming's daughter.

Of course, Gregor doesn't get the cape. Of course, Vince proves to Max that he is honorable enough to handle the cape without going to the dark side. Of course, Vince's wife, who believes he is dead, is starting to move on with her life. And, of course, this shows his tortured soul side.

I believe Scales is back as the Villain of the Week next Monday. If the show doesn't pick up the storyline a bit more, it will definitely lose the audience. I know this is only the third episode (the pilot consisted of two episodes) but people won't wait around forever.

JDorama review: Tsuki no Koibito

Title: Tsuki no Koibito Broadcast dates: 5/10/10 - 7/5/10 Number of episodes: 8 Genre: Romantic Drama Cast: Kimura Takuya, Shinohara Ryoko, Lin Chi Ling, Kitagawa Keiko, Matsuda Shota Plot: Hazuke Rensuke (Kimura) is the president of an up-and-coming furniture company. His life changes dramatically when three women compete for his love. What is good: I liked the ending. What is bad: It took so very long to get there. Letter rating: C

This show made me absolutely hate KimuTaku for the first 5 or 6 episodes. Since this is only an 8-episode series, that's an awful lot of time hating the main character. He does redeem himself, of course. It just would have been nice to see that change start around episode 4 or 5.

Shinohara Ryoko is awesome as designer Maemi. She made me feel so bad for her character, even though she didn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. I think she totally made up for the crapfest that KimuTaku was.

Poor Kitagawa Keiko got robbed though. Onuki Yuzuki is completely a throw away character. She has no real importance to the show. Even when she tries to make big reveals, the information has already been given by another character. She's convenient but unnecessary.

Now onto Lin Chi Ling, who, in my opinion, takes up way too much time. I'm pretty sure her role was to show what a hardass Hazuke is with everyone, even those he claims to love. But all she really did was take away from the awesomeness that is Maemi. However, the interaction between the two women was nice. I guess that is one redeeming value.

This show absolutely depended on the actors and their characters. There wasn't a big plot to reign the characters in. If the characters failed, the show would fail as well. For the most part, the characters are annoying. It isn't until the last few episodes that anyone shows any redeeming values. I didn't think the show was horrible. It was just meh.

Weigh In

I haven't weighed myself since before the holiday season. The week before Christmas, if I remember correctly. The good news is that I haven't gained any weight, despite eating an awful amount of food over the holidays and not exercising at all for about 3 weeks. The bad news is that I haven't lost any more weight either. I've only been back on my routine for about 2 weeks so I shouldn't be too hard on myself. But I really hope I can lose a few more pounds by the end of next month. I don't want to be humongous at the instructor training class.

Slow down, you're going too fast.

As I've been doing research on this whole teaching Zumba thing, I find that I am freaking myself out about things I don't need to worry about. At least not yet anyway. Things like business debt consolidation. The word 'debt' worries me. Then again, I'm also bored enough to do be doing research on things way out of my league. Like commercial buildings to rent or buy to run my own fitness company. Then ideas of hiring other instructors to teach other classes and....I'm getting way way ahead of myself. This is why I should not have ideas. Ideas are bad for my brain. But don't worry. I won't actually act on any of these ideas yet. I will take this slowly. I promise.

Teaching Zumba

I am seriously thinking about becoming a Zumba instructor. I'd need to complete the Zumba training, which shouldn't be too difficult. Then I might need to complete some other courses, depending on where I'd teach. I already have a dance background and I really love the official Zumba class I attend on Saturday mornings. I guess I'm just not very confident in myself right now. (Not to mention that I'd need to get together like $200 for the training course.) Maybe I should just take a deep breath and plunge in. It might be good for me. (Better than asking "what are the best diet pills" at least!) After all, I'd be doing something I love instead of something that drains me every day. That's good, right?

Buy.com iPhone app

Sometimes my sister is totally hysterical. She found out that buy.com has an iPhone app. I was over her house Thursday night (getting ready for Zumba) and she was using the barcode scanner to scan everything in her house. See, you can point the iPhone camera at an item's barcode to scan it. Then the app finds the item on buy.com so you can get reviews and deals on stuff. I have to admit that it was pretty awesome. I took a few minutes to play with it myself. It was super easy to use. Just scan, type or even speak what you are looking for and *boom* there it is. I know that sounds dumb but so many apps take forever to do a simple search. We went through a good portion of my sister's house in less than a half hour. (She has a lot of stuff so that says a lot.) I'm just amazed at how fun it was. Stuff like this shouldn't be fun. It should be boring and informative. This makes me want to run out and buy an iPhone. I wonder if there is a Android version available that I could use on my Epic.

Speaking of apps for my Epic, should I start reviewing phone apps? No one in my house has an iPhone but my mother, my sister, and my stepfather do. I'm sure I could get them to tell me about their favorites. Maybe this will be a new feature!

TV review: The Cape

The 2-hour pilot for NBC's The Cape aired on Sunday, January 9 at 9PM. I've been waiting for this show to air for a long time. While I wasn't able to watch the show live, I did record it to watch last night.

Vince Faraday is a cop in Palm City. Many of the officers around him are corrupt and a mysterious blogger known as Orwell has been outing them. When the city's new police chief is killed by a masked criminal called Chess, Faraday sets out to make things in his hometown right again. He joins Ark, a private security company, run by Peter Fleming, on the edge of privatizing the police force.

Shortly after joining Ark, Orwell sends Faraday a message pointing him toward a shipment of a deadly toxin. Faraday and his partner, Marty Voyt, check out the cargo train delivering the shipment. Unfortunately, Voyt instead delivers Faraday into the hands of Chess, who is none other than Fleming himself. Fleming frames Faraday as the masked villain and sends his security force, armed with Nikon rifle scopes, to catch him. During the chase, the news helicopters above see him die in a large explosion.

However, Faraday is not dead. He is discovered by the Carnival of Criminals, a strange circus-themed group of bank robbers. Faraday buys his freedom with his Ark passcard. Soon, Faraday asks Max Malini, the head of the circus, to help him clear his name and get back to his wife and son. Max and the others teach Faraday hypnosis, cape tricks, and other skills that will transform him into the superhero known as The Cape.

As The Cape, Faraday goes after Chess and his henchmen. While on one such mission, he comes across Orwell trying to get the dirt on Chess. Quickly, Orwell and Faraday join forces to take back their city.

I had a lot of fun watching this show. My favorite character, by far, is Max Malini. He's not only wise, he's also funny and devious and just plain awesome. I almost wish he was the superhero! As for the rest of the characters, I am willing to give them time to grow. It seems like a lot was shoved into two episodes, almost like the audience missed a season and had to catch up to the storyline. I think that the writers should have kept the pilot as an origination story and kept some of the baddies for later. Hopefully they will not disappoint me. I want this show to be successful and, in order to do that, it has to be good.

Aluratek Cinepal

I was planning on waiting a few days to talk about this...but I just can't. On Friday, I received my Aluratek Cinepal multimedia player. After charging it and loading up a few jdorama episodes, it was ready to go for my daughter's Saturday morning swim class. I expected it to do "OK." It did a lot better than that. It blew my expectations away. For my first viewing, I used the earbuds that are included in the box. They are rather uncomfortable, but so are most packaged earbuds. The sound still came through nicely. There was no fuzziness, even when I had to turn the volume up to overcome a very loud swim instructor. Acceptable but not preferable.

The video, however, was beautiful. Absolutely no artifacting or slowness at all. It even handled the subtitles well. My one complaint here is that it auto-plays the next video if you have more than one uploaded. I had the first and second episodes of Tsuki no Koibito ready to go. Once the first episode ended, the second immediately started. I would prefer to make that selection on my own. But that really is a minor complaint that is more of a preference anyway.

Today, I used the device's speakers to listen to the second episode. They aren't anything amazing but they are adequate. No fuzziness or tinniness or anything distracting. Just don't expect to be amazed by them. However, I would suggest using the speakers over the earbuds. The speakers sound better and it will eliminate the uncomfortableness of the earbuds.

I can't believe how awesome this 8.9" media player is. It doesn't play video games, like an iPad, but it will play mp3s, be an eReader, and be a photo album. If you're looking to pick one up, I got mine at Newegg. Hopefully you will be as happy as I am.

No more snow please!

Today was a snow-filled day. It started shortly before I left for Zumba class, which made the drive slow-going. By the time the hour-long class ended, a good inch or two had fallen. Then my daughter had her first swim class for Level 5. Luckily, the roads were cleared by the time we had to leave. But the snow was still falling. It slowed a little as we walked into class but it was back in full force on our way out. In all, I think we got three or four inches. (I'm terrible at guesstimating that sort of stuff.) At least I don't have anywhere to go tomorrow. I'll be spending the day doing laundry, snuggling with my daughter, and trying to stay away from Googling things like North Carolina health insurance. Whatever I end up doing, I want the snow to stay away!