My weekend is SET

For the first weekend in a while, we actually have a lot of plans. Friday night, J-Mac & I are having dinner with Jayman at our favourite German restaurant Wally's in Etobicoke. His wife MC is currently in Germany on business so we decided to do the next best thing.

What I am looking forward to most, other than the huge schnitzels, is they have Hacker-Pschorr on draught. It will probably be the best draught I've had since leaving the UK.

Saturday will also be good as my sister and her two kids are staying with us overnight. My 3 year old niece is basically a full time job on her own and I am sure she will have us up at 6:30 am Sunday morning wanting some breakfast.

However, Sunday is the big night, the 2 hour season premiere of 24 with another 2 hours on Monday night. A co-worker actually gave me a copy of a screener of the first four hours of the show on Tuesday. Due to my excitement, I just had to put it on just to see what it was like. I was enjoying the first hour, though it seemed a little short.

Your Faithful narrator lawyers have demanded I edit out some key words in the next paragraph

I was confused when all the sudden **** decided to **** by **** one of the ****. I started watching the second hour and the previews showed a scene from the first hour that I had obviously missed. It seems that the low quality of the DVD was actually skipping scenes. I officially gave up and will watch the four hours of 24 this Sunday and Monday.

24 has been all over the media this past week. The National Post has had articles about the show everyday this week. Today's article was about the torture tactics used throughout the show's run. Thursday's was from a writer who decided to watch the entire first season of 24 in one sitting. Wednesday was about Jack Bauer's(Kiefer Sutherland) right-hand woman Chloe O'Brien (Mary Lynn Rajskub). Tuesday was a feature about the ongoing hiring of Canadian actors for this US-based show. Monday's article centred on the character of Jack Bauer.

The entire cast was interviewed by an aging and forgetful Larry King on Monday night. Here is the transcript. It wasn't a great interview as King is clearly losing it, was asking the wrong people the wrong questions and forgetting people's names.

My favourite part was when Larry was about to ask James Morrison (who plays CTU Director Bill Buchanen) a question. Without looking at his notes, King starts, "Jim...". King realizes he has made a mistake so he tries to cover it up by asking "can I call you Jim?". Morrison just looks at him coldly and says, "I'd really prefer James." Guess he isn't much of a Doors fan.

The bulk of the questions were obviously for Kiefer and one viewer emailed a question asking Kiefer about whether there will ever be a role for his Dad Donald Sutherland. Kiefer sidestepped the question by saying that his character's father would be making an appearance this season and would be played by James Cromwell (you know him from Babe). I mention this only in passing as my Top 5 list is as follows.

Top 5 Donald Sutherland Movies
1. M*A*S*H
2. Klute
3. Blood Relatives
4. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
5. A Time To Kill

If you want some entertaining video, here is Kiefer Sutherland in full Jack Bauer mode for a series of commercials for a Japanese food supplement bar called Caloriemate. They are really short and amusing if you like 24 or Japanese energy supplement commercials.