I am crazy-excited about the upcoming Samuel L. Jackson film, “Snakes on a Plane.” (I was going to link directly to the trailer, but the IWatchStuff.com blurb is equally priceless.)

AEJ and I had a really nice weekend with my mom in town. Lots of tasty dinners out, as well as some delicious Mom Cooking. Nothing beats that. Not even Snakes on a Plane.

I’m still irritated by the huge decline of quality in this season of “24.” If you want to watch a new show that’s really pretty fantastic — and stars the late President Palmer of “24!” — check out “The Unit.” It’s on Tuesday nights at 9pm on CBS. It has a bad title, but as a show, it’s very, very good. It was co-created by David Mamet, so there’s the occasional “Mamet-speak” in the writing (“I just… I… I can’t, but… but you want me to… you… you want… you want me to… I can’t!”, but if you can get past that (it really doesn’t happen much), it’s great television. And it’s fun to see President Palmer kick some ass.

Steve Bryant attended the U. Arkansas performance of “Turbine” a few days ago. He wrote about it on his own blog — complete with photos of the food he ate post-concert. (At the moment, it’s the second entry down.) I wish I could have been there to hear W. Dale Warren’s group give their premiere — and I can’t believe I missed out on one of those milkshakes that Steve enjoyed!

My mother is coming from Florida tomorrow to visit me and AEJ here in LA. It’ll be fun to show her Southern California, although the weather forecast isn’t great: high of 60 degrees, and a chance of rain. These LA winters are brutal.

I finally found a great place in LA to get a haircut: ChopChop. In NY, I always went to DopDop, and it’s a little funny that I’m now going to what seems to be the bizarro DopDop. (I’ll admit that I initially picked the place partially based on its name similarity to DopDop.) If you’re in LA and want a great cut — the best haircut in LA! — check out Darin Birchler at ChopChop. (Darin is the owner.)

My planned trip to U. Miami in April has fallen through, I’m sad to report. (Sorry, Lisa & Mike!) I was really excited about the trip, but it looks like I’ll have to wait a while longer for my chance to work with Gary Green. I will still be at University of Florida and University High School (in Orlando) April 9-14.

I found out this week that Ray Cramer, Emeritus Director of Bands at Indiana University, will be doing “Sasparilla” in Japan this summer! I’m excited, and wish I could be there for that. It’s funny; that piece isn’t getting a ton of play in the US, but I think it will have received nearly a dozen performances in Japan by July, including a tour of one high school band. Go Japan! (Go ahead. Click it.)

Sorry for the crazy hodge-podge of content today. (Would you believe that the link to “hodge-podge” is a blog about food?!) I guess I’d better to tidy the house for my mother’s arrival…

I won’t put any spoilers here, but let’s just say that one of my favorite shows, “24,” has officially jumped the shark. I mean, I get it. “24” is all about, “we’ll show you that nobody is safe on ’24’!!!” Ooooo. I figured that out in Season One. But give me a break. In past seasons, when a primary character was killed, it was done for a reason. The past two episodes of “24,” though, were just irritating. If I hadn’t commited 4-and-a-half seasons of my life to this show, I’d stop watching. It had already established itself as the weakest season yet (I’m pretty sure that key cards don’t work that way, and having a bad guy who seems to be improvising the entire time isn’t scary like last season’s Marwan, and, did we really need to see Kim again? ever?, and we’re supposed to believe that somebody as by-the-book as Lynn McGill wouldn’t tell anybody he’d lost his keycard? and what the hell does Jack still see in Audrey? and… oh, never mind.) — but as I was saying, if I hadn’t already become committed to the show, I’d walk away. The writers had better do something really, really good in the next episode or two to win me back, and to erase my current view that they’re writing things that are stupidly executed, lazy, and a bit desperate.

In other news, the host of my favorite game show of all time, “Press Your Luck,” Peter Tomarken, died in a small plane crash just off the coast of Santa Monica this morning. (Wow, somebody updated that Wikipedia entry fast.) The craziest thing about this is that in Googling “Press Your Luck,” I came across the story of Michael Larsen, a man who, in 1983, memorized the patterns of the Big Board on Press Your Luck, went on the show, and won over $110,000. This on a game where a big win would typically be closer to $10,000. And Larsen only quit playing after over an hour of filming — and he chose to stop. Crazy story. This link has a great detailed story of the episode, and this link has video of it.

And let me add this: At least “Press Your Luck” never jumped the shark. Well, except when they did that typically desperate 1980’s cross-over episode with Knight Rider, “The Knight of 1000 Whammys.”