Queueing Up the Portable Boob Tube

I have been loading up my iPod and iPhone with various TV shows in preparation for my trip and stay in Brazil. I really like to be able to sit down and watch an entire series.So far I have bought and downloaded Dexter season 2, the start of Burn Notice season 2, Mad Men season 1 and the start of season 2, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and am in the process of downloading Rome seasons 1 and 2. I cheated though and already watched the 2nd season of Dexter. I have the second Dexter audio book, Dearly Devoted Dexter, as well. I get the impression that the TV show is only based on the first book though. Currently am re-listening to the first 3 books in Saga of the Seven Suns since I now have the all 7 audio books in the series. Actually I have a bunch of audio books I haven't listened to yet.

But back to TV shows; iTunes offered the first episode of Primeval for free, so I watched it last night. It was alright, but I don't think it was good enough to purchase the whole season. I do find it interesting that UK Sci-fi still has a unique identifiable "something" about it. Even if you magically stripped out the accents, locations and other stuff that would identify it as being make in the UK you could still tell. Not implying anything bad, just saying.

I am sure they will be plenty of actual work to do once I'm in São Paulo, but there are many hours on airplanes and I do anticipate nights collapsed in bed exhausted but not quite ready to sleep. So I am also considering getting all 5 seasons of The Wire. I watched most of the 1st season before moving to Australia, and have caught several 2nd season episodes since. I also heard podcasts where some of the writers I like talking about how good it is.

Anybody have any other suggestions of stuff I may have missed in the last 4+ years I've been in Australia? I am looking for really strong character driven dramas. I've seen some of Weeds and Rescue Me that have peeked my interest. I have already watched The West Wing (still my all-time favorite TV show), Deadwood, Dirty Sexy Money, and Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I also own all of the new Battlestar Galactica series on DVD of which I've seen about half of. Its been a while since I watched it, too long ago for me to start where I left off but not long enough ago that I feel like starting over from beginning.

Roman Geeks

I have still yet to watch Rome but a friend of mine simply won't shut up about how good it is. I had seen a few seconds of a few episodes last year but it didn't really catch my interest. He claims its just as good if not better than Deadwood. I will probably buy and download it from iTunes since I had so much fun watching Burn Notice on my iPod.

The reason I mention Rome is that I learned this weekend that those Romans... they were AD&D geeks. And for just under $20K you can buy one of their 20-sided dice.

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE
Circa 2nd Century A.D.
Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with a distinct symbol on each of its faces
2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm.) wide

Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.

Can't you just imagine Ceaser yelling "Roll the dice to see if I'm getting drunk!"