Resisting the cult of the new

About a year and a half ago, my wife gave me a Garmin Forerunner 220 for my birthday. Before that, I had just relied on Runkeeper on my smartphone (which necessitated getting a new smartphone when my Galaxy Nexus's GPS started to become erratic and unreliable). Once I experienced the advantages of a GPS watch -- much faster GPS lock, more accurate tracking -- I was sold. I've been super-satisfied with the 220.

Today, I took my dad to Road Runner Sports to look at GPS watches. For his purposes, Runkeeper would be perfectly adequate, but he doesn't want to run with a phone. We looked at the Forerunner 25, 230, and 235, and then I came home to do some research -- i.e., reading DC Rainmaker's reviews. It didn't take long to determine that the 25 would be the most cost-effective option for my dad. (He mostly runs laps at a non-standard track at the local elementary school.) I don't think he would use the fancier features on the 230/235.

However, as I read DC Rainmaker's review of those higher-end watches, I started thinking, hey, those sound like pretty cool features.... I use my Galaxy S5's step counting app, but it would be nice not to be tethered constantly to it, which the 230 or 235 would allow with their activity trackers. (That recent study about cellphones and cancer seems pretty questionable, as this column argues, but it wouldn't hurt to be cautious.) And the 235 has a heart rate monitor based on the wrist pulse, meaning no need for an uncomfortable chest strap.

I began to toy with the idea of offering my 220 to my dad (clearing all the settings, of course), and then getting a 235 for myself.

"Hey, wasn't that a present from Mommy?" my pre-teen son asked.

"Um, yeah," I answered sheepishly.

My wife was non-plussed. (She's so awesome!) "Go ahead and get it if you like," she said.

I got maybe 75 percent of the way toward pulling the trigger by ordering from Amazon, but I read some more reviews/comparisons. The third post in this thread from Let's Run included the following suggestion:

The GPS function of the 230 and 235 are both spot on, so tracking your run is fine. between the two I would get the 230. Less S*** to fail on you. better yet, save money, buy a Forerunner 220 (best running watch by Garmin currently in my opinion)

That threw some cold water on my idea. I did some more reading and it seems that the optical reader in the 235 is pretty new technology, and hence good but not great at picking up the HR. It would make more sense to wait for Garmin to work out all the kinks before adopting it.

The thrill of getting something new faded, and I told my dad that I thought the Forerunner 25 was the best choice for him. If/when my 220 dies, I'll upgrade, but until then, I'll stick with old reliable.

Ranking the seasons of "24" (in anticipation of "24: Legacy"

I can't wait for the 2017 Super Bowl to be over. Not because I dislike football; I feel guilty about how much I like watching the concussion-inducing sport. It's just that when the Super Bowl ends, "24" returns.

Okay, Jack Bauer is not going to be back, not yet. In the meantime, while I reminisce about the past nine seasons, here's how I rank them. Obviously, chock full of spoilers:

The five best episodes of each of the "Star Trek" series (imho)

A good friend of mine (in real life and on Facebook) made an interesting and provocative assertion, namely, that every incarnation of "Star Trek" has been worse than the previous series. I responded that I didn't think the original series (TOS) could be compared to the others, because its production values, tone, and acting were so different; and that I agreed with the assertion as to the offspring except that I believed that "Deep Space Nine" (DS9) was superior to its predecessor. Naturally, this being Facebook, a time-sucking argument ensued.

I didn't want to attack TOS, but when push came to shove, I resorted to pointing out all the dreck from the third season - episodes like Spock's Brain, The Mark of Gideon, and The Cloud Miners, among others. My friend defended even these atrocities, noting that they were memorable. Apart from the general awfulness, I remembered not very much about Spock's Brain - and it turned out that the line that I thought I remembered wasn't even in the shooting script! That episode was so bad, I was inventing better dialogue for it....

Anyway, my friend then asserted that the best episodes of TOS were better than the best episodes of the other series. "Best" is going to be subjective, of course, but I decided to come up with my list of the five best episodes from each of the series.

ABC's "Once Upon a Time" and the Bechdel test

ABC's "Once Upon a Time" is my favorite scripted TV show that's currently airing. (Perhaps Fox's "24: Legacy" will take that spot when it debuts in the next TV season.)

I don't think it's ever quite matched the sense of wonderment that it engendered in the first season, although the Peter Pan arc in season 3 was very good. It's gotten darker in recent seasons, which is generally good as far as I'm concerned, but "OUaT" has done it unevenly. For reasons I can't quite fathom, the male antagonists have been much more interesting than the female ones, which is quite surprising considering how much the female protagonists drive the show.

Apart from Rumplestiltskin and maybe Killian/Captain Hook, most of the male characters are either dull (David Nolan/Prince Charming, Robin Hood) or plot devices (Henry). However, there is a cornucopia of strong women who light up the screen and get things done: Emma Swan, Regina/Evil Queen, Mary-Margaret/Snow White, and even secondary characters like Mulan and Ruby/Red Riding Hood.

This is a show that easily aces the Bechdel test:

1. The [show] has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man

There are entire scenes in this show in which the only speaking characters are female, and they are not talking about a man. (Okay, in some of those scenes, especially from the first season, Emma and Regina are squabbling over a male, but that is their son Henry - Emma's by birth, Regina's by adoption. I suppose that may be a technical violation of the Bechdel test, but they are defined in their relationship to Henry by motherhood, not romance.)

Indeed, a recent episode [SPOILERS for the episode "Ruby Slippers" OAD 4/24/16] involved the backstory of how Red and Dorothy Gale met, with no discussion of men at all, because the episode culminated in the two women declaring their love for each other.

Other continuing arcs/relationships involving just women include the sibling rivalry between Regina and Zelena/Wicked Witch; the even more complicated triumvirate of Regina, Zelena, and their mother Cora/Queen of Hearts; Regina's and Snow's rivalry for dominance of the Enchanted Forest; Elsa's and Anna's sisterhood (ABC is owned by Disney); the trio of villainesses Cruella De Vil, Ursula, and Maleficient and their plan to take over Storybrooke; and others. About the only major female character who is defined primarily by her connection to a male character is Belle (who is Beauty to Rumple's Beast).

Random thoughts about fall 2015 TV shows

Most of my current TV shows are entering hiatus, having aired their winter finales. I've got questions about them. [SPOILERS AHEAD for "Grimm," "Supergirl," "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD," and "Once Upon a Time."]

- On "Grimm," there is a mayoral candidate who's been on the City Council for the past 8 years, and claims his district is #1 in terms of job growth. Considering that "Grimm" is not just set in Portland but also filmed here, you would think the writers would've been able to figure out that Portland elects its city councilmembers at-large, not by district.

- I get that Supergirl is largely invulnerable because of her Kryptonian background and something about the sun's yellow radiation, but her costume is made from Terran materials. When she steps in front of an out-of-control train and uses herself to slow it down, how do her boots not get eroded to nothing by friction?

- One of the results of watching as much TV as I do is that I start recognizing potential twists because, at a meta-level, it's what would be surprising. In "Agents of SHIELD," the Hydra sleeper Grant Ward takes nerd Fitz and some Hydra redshirts to the alien planet via the black monolith portal, in an effort to grab the alien god or something. Fitz's unrequited love Simmons spent several years on the alien planet, surviving only because of the presence of stranded human astronaut Will, with whom she fell in love. Fitz finds the astronaut's underground home, tries to escape from Ward, but ends up getting himself and Will captured. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if that's really the astronaut ... or if he's the alien god? Sure enough, "Will" turned out to be just a shell, with the real human having been killed covering Simmons' previous escape. And when Fitz "killed" the body with a flaregun, we later saw a silvery substance slither out of the charred remains - all of which reminded me of the black oil from "The X-Files" and the body-stealing alien from the underrated sci-fi horror flick The Hidden.

- In the resolution to "Once Upon a Time's" "Dark Swan" arc, Emma gets freed of the darkness when Captain Hook sacrifices himself to stop the revived Dark Ones, by sucking them into the sword Excalibur, which he then begs Emma to use to kill him. She does, but only later does she learn that Rumplestiltskin charmed the sword to become a conduit, rather than a vacuum, so that all of the darkness flowed into him, reinvigorating him as an uber-Dark One. Emma forces him to help her open a portal to the Underworld so she can rescue Hook; he agrees to do so because she threatened to reveal his treachery to his love Belle. All fine and well, but in the next scene, it's not just Emma and Rumple at the river Styx. Snow White, Charming, Regina, Robin Hood, and Henry are all there! Now, first of all, why oh why would you bring Henry on a journey to the freaking underworld?!? But more importantly, how does Emma explain to the others that Rumple can open a portal to the underworld? Doesn't this mean the others also know that he's back to being the Dark One?

UPDATE (12/15): Is Kara Danvers' (aka Supergirl) catty boss Cat Grant the smartest human ever in comic book TV history? I realize that Kara puts on glasses and ties her hair back in the ponytail to "disguise" herself, so it's a good thing she doesn't give in to vanity to get contact lenses. But Cat notices some interesting coincidences, corners Kara, and asks her to take her glasses off.... Wow, someone in a comic book show actually figured out a superhero's identity by, you know, observing things!

Discretion, valor, patience, and running

I first experienced Achilles tendonitis at the very beginning of 2014, after running a double race on a Saturday morning consisting of a 1 mile run followed by a 5K about half an hour later. I spent the weekend limping because both ankles felt very sore. On Sunday evening, I discovered that massaging the Achilles tendon area increased the short-term pain but provided some relief after I stopped.

Thanks to Dr. Google, I was able to get a sense of what had happened. I stopped running for several days, relying on the stationary rower and stationary cycle. On the first run I tried when I felt like I could handle it, I was heel striking for the first 1/2 mile or so. In retrospect, I got back to running too soon, because I failed the pinch test. However, I was able to run without pain, or at most, a few moments of soreness that would fade during the run. It wasn't until May or June that I could pass the pinch test, so I guess I'd say that my running didn't aggravate the injury, but it did retard the healing process.

From the summer of 2014 to May 2015, I had a largely injury-free block. And then in May, I ran a race that I refer to as "the world's longest 10K." Due to a miscommunication caused by race staff, we were misdirected about a quarter of a mile after the start of the race, and some of us had run 1 1/2 miles or more before being told we were off-course. I ended up running 9.5 miles that day. Although I stopped running at my 10K pace early on, I felt a recurrence of the dreaded Achilles pain afterward.

The tendonitis waxed and waned over the next several months. It was never debilitating enough that I couldn't run, but there were also few mornings that were entirely free from initial stiffness and aches. During the typical run, there might be anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes of low-level achiness, and sometimes after running, the response to the pinch test would be more pain than before; other times, not.

It wasn't really getting worse, but improvement was marginal and slow. I decreased my weekly mileage slightly (well that was also in part because of some recurring family travel I had to do over the summer), going from my target of 150 miles/month to just under 130 miles/month for June-October. On October 31, I ran a double 5K race - first time as a regular 5K for speed, and then a second time through going through the optional obstacle stations. That aggravated my Achilles tendon, so November's total was just 88 miles.

As of now, my last run was a 10K race on Thanksgiving morning. Since then, I've rowed a ton on my Concept2, and my Achilles has been feeling steadily better. No morning stiffness or ache. It still feels a bit tender when I do the pinch test, so I'm exercising some more patience - better to take one more day off than necessary, than to get back to running one day too early. I don't know if I would be able to handle all this not-running if it weren't for that Concept2, though.

ABC's "Scandal" - please just end the Olivia/Fitz forbidden love storyline!!

For various reasons, I didn't get around to watching the last seven episodes of "Scandal" from season 4, and by the time summer rolled through, my TiVo - needing space - had deleted a few of those episodes. I had to wait for the entire season to come out on DVD, and then wait my turn on the hold list at the local library.

I've almost caught up completely now; there are just two episodes left, and then I can turn my attention to season 5, whose episodes are sitting on my TiVo as I write this.

[SPOILERS for the last third of season 4]

The first episode I caught up on was the one where Lena Dunham plays a political intern who writes a tell-all book about her sexcapades with over a dozen Washington insiders, including the current white hat Attorney General (David Rosen) - a storyline vaguely reminiscent of the Washingtonienne scandal from 2004. I'm not a fan of Dunham, and I vaguely remembered that her presence may have caused me to delay watching this episode back when it first aired. Notwithstanding Dunham, this was quite an enjoyable episode, because Olivia Pope was in her full "I'm in charge" mode, especially as she dealt with the collection of men who'd been with Dunham's character, trying to get them to see that paying collectively the $3 million that Dunham was demanding was the best option for them.

The next four episodes continued the "Gladiators" trend - that is, political fires that Pope is called on to put out, in addition to the continuing storyline about the effort to stop the covert black ops unit B613 that Pope's father commands. I was reminded of how fast and funny this show can be, as long as it doesn't turn Olivia Pope and the President into a pair of weak and whimpering creatures who want to be together but can't do what it takes to achieve that for good. From what I've picked up about season 5, the President is divorcing the First Lady, so perhaps Pope and the President will get some sort of happy ending - and the viewers, too. They can be together; please just spare us the forlorn glances and all that.