I recently watched the series premier of White Collar on USA. In all honesty, I had pretty low expectations of the show from the clips and previews I had seen. I thought of it to be more along the lines of a 48 Hours type show when it became clear that it was more along the lines of Catch Me If You Can.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised after viewing the pilot. Let’s be honest, in today’s world there are very few original ideas so what makes for good entertainment is often the characters, writing, and execution of the story and White Collar made a good showing of all four.

Let’s start with the two main characters : Neal Caffrey is the con man out of prison helping the FBI to catch other con men. He comes off as being very charming and persuasive without seeming smarmy. It’s difficult to portray a criminal in a sympathetic way without pity but he pulls it off effectively. The writers have given him a backstory of wanting to be out of prison to track down the woman he loves that left him. While this storyline may not be the most solid it does seem like a good reason to get him to suddenly want to be on the outside.

Peter Burke is the FBI agent that originially captured Neal and is now keeping him in custody working to catch other cons. He comes off as a straight-laced, but not too stiff FBI agent who seems really dedicated to his job and to his wife. It is clear from the start that while he may not like Neal much he does respect him enough to let him do his thing in service to the police.

The other characters have yet to be fleshed out but they do seem to have potential.

As far as the writing goes, the pilot episode was pretty well paced and had an ending (which I won’t spoil) that was clever and involved a plan that felt like something only an intelligent criminal could come up with to catch another intelligent criminal.

I have hopes for the show after seeing it which I didn’t when I started. It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised.

Harper Claire Presnell was born at 9:10 this morning at 7lbs & 9oz

President Pantywaist restores the satellite states to their former owner

That says it all doesn’t it?

In order to stabilize…uh huh. I wonder what instability looks like.

I know this goes without saying but we can’t keep borrowing our way to prosperity. It won’t work. Should I just ask if Congressional staffers are now wondering on the proper spelling of “kajillion”?

For those of you who don’t know what a trillion looks like, take a look

This is just getting ridiculous…

So what would you do if you’re cooking and discover that you’re out of certified organic Tuscan kale but that there’s a market one block away?

Well, you’d walk over and get it, right?

Not if you’re Michelle Obama who had three streets shut down, three dozen cars brought in, barricades set up, and bomb dogs brought in.

All that to buy some organic foods because they’re better for the environment.

Next time someone asks me about my carbon footprint I’m going to stuff them full of kale.

Congress would have a sticker shock law that would allow us to fire and sue them when a program ran over the “expected” costs

Electricity available for 3 cents a kilowatt

Scientists in Utah have created a device that would be available to the home consumer by producing a device that would allow people to create their own power from sunlight, which would also help take stress off the electrical grid.

Of course it would tick off governments who would somehow still find a way to tax sunlight.

But if we spread electricity production it also reduces the threat of a terrorist strike against a central power station.

As Glenn Reynolds says, faster please

I had to laugh out loud when I saw this story:

New Bedford tax payments inadvertently shredded

It’s not enough to throw your money down a rathole in the form of a stimulus, now it’s going into the landfill as well

So much for that whole not taxing the middle class thing : Teeing Up the Middle Class

First They Came for the Hamburgers

Once we get rid of the red meat, we end up in the movie Demolition Man and that movie stinks