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Long before the History Channel, Biography, A & E, or Discovery, PBS proved itself pretty effective at doing documentaries. They still make them, and this six-hour DVD focusing on American Jews proves they can still pull out a decent documentary from their taxpayer supported rumps every once in a while.

Thanks in large part to its six-hour length, The Jewish Americans has a chance to really go in-depth in their study of this people and culture, unlike the other documentary I recently reviewed, NFL The Leaders: Breaking Racial Barriers In the NFL, which brushed over much of the depth of detail that one desires in a good documentary.

The Jewish Americans, however, gets its style down just right; the approach is Ken Burns-esque, mixing solid narration provided by Liv Schreiber with well-edited interviews with prominent American Jews of all ages, as well as old footage, newspaper clippings and other methods of presenting the historical information at hand, most notably through beautiful photography. But the emphasis here is on telling stories – real stories about real Jews and their experiences throughout their history in America.

One aspect that surprised me was how the documentary related the pre-World War I and World War II tensions between German Jews, who seemed eager to immigrate and blend into America other than inside their own homes, and the Eastern European Jews, who held on more tightly to their heritage and had a lesser desire to “blend in.”

While there are plenty of Jewish folks in entertainment, and actor Fyvush Finkel is interviewed throughout, the documentary, to its credit, does not focus overmuch on just the entertainment community Jews. Instead, the net is cast wider to encompass tales of Jewish folks who came to inhabit all levels of society, be they a family that ran a market in a frontier town, a mayor of some village, or even a tailor who would go on to spawn the Levi Strauss & Company brand of denim jeans.

The two-disc set is brief on extras, but with six hours of history-filled stories to explore, there’s plenty to like about this package even on the merits of its four episodes only. More than just a cursory treatment, The Jewish Americans is a significant and well-detailed coverage of the topic it tackles, and delivers some information that is sure to inform nearly every viewer of some new fact they didn’t know previously. Was the creator of billet grilles or the founder of Lehmann Brothers Jewish? This documentary is long enough to give you at least one of the answers to that question.

While I’m not exactly ready to make PBS-watching a regular habit in favor of History, Biography, A&E, or Discovery, any network that released a package like this would have a solid documentary to air. This one will stay on my video shelf for a long time to come.

The makers of Mega Brain Boost may not claim to be able to deliver you an acne treatment that works, but they do want to lay claim to being a brain-training game that gives Brain Age a run for its money. Unfortunately, the bar for impressive and entertaining brain training games was set pretty high by the Brain Age franchise and, in their first outing, the makers of Mega Brain Boost simply fall short of the target. Well short.

My wife, who is a fan of Brain Age 2, played the game longer than I did, and, given that she is familiar with the competition as well as the product under review, I trust her word on the matter. What she noticed while playing Mega Brain Boost is that the game is too puzzle oriented and lacks the variety of activities found in Brain Age 2. She also mentioned that although the game boasts about eight different game types, they’re all too similar and therefore she didn’t feel the game was as effective as Brain Age 2 at delivering any sort of “brain training.”

Personally, I also found the game to be lacking; the design’s a bit bland and unmemorable, and while it is appearing on the DS platform, Mega Brain Boost doesn’t deliver quite as much in the way of incorporating the touch-screen in creative ways, another area in which Brain Age 2 is head and shoulders above the crowd.

My time playing the game was OK, but it’s just not a game that seems fun enough to capture my attention long-term. And let’s face it, folks; if a game isn’t entertaining enough to keep you coming back for more, not a whole lot of brain-training is going to take place in the long run.

In the end, Mega Brain Boost is, at best, an average game that simply doesn’t deliver the challenge or variety of exercises needed to hold the attention of most gamers. It’s unfortunate, since I enjoy watching franchises compete against each other, with the efforts put forth spurring both companies on to bigger and better realizations of their franchises down the road. But so far, I doubt the makers of Brain Age 2 are losing much sleep over Mega Brain Boost.

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane explained the rationale behind making an all-Star Wars episode the best way possible: “We were doing so many Star Wars jokes that some of the network people were worried about getting sued by George Lucas, so we set up a meeting with him.” As it turned out, Lucas was a nice guy who loved the cartoon and got on board with the Blue Harvest concept pretty quickly, apparently.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest is the big, hour-long Star Wars retelling the show opened the season with last fall. There are several guest voices that range widely and even include such obscure celebrities as radio host Rush Limbaugh, who basically plays a version of himself as a pro-Alliance, pro-Darth Vader establishment-loving radio talk show host. Other cameos are more mainstream, like Judd Nelson, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, among others.

The show adds some gags they were unable to fit into the one-hour episode that aired on Fox, mostly stuff that was cut due purely out of time constraints. All the familiar Family Guy cast members appear, with mostly obvious takes on their Star Wars alter egos. For example, Stewie is Darth Vader, Quagmire and Cleveland are C3PO and R2D2, and Lois is Leia and so on.

What’s amazing about the episode is that it packs just about the entire two-hours-plus plot of Star Wars: A New Hope into about 40 minutes of satire without cutting much. The obligatory screen-crawl gag-text to open the episode had grown old by now, but McFarlane punches some freshness into it by getting about as nasty as network censors would allow, including talking an awful lot about Angelina Jolie’s kissing habits in general, and in the movie Gia especially.

But anyone who’s seen the episode already knows what it contains, basically; what’s added is what makes the DVD presentation special, and that includes a hilarious commentary track led by McFarlane, a making of documentary, a “conversation” with George Lucas himself, and a load of other, minor features. Special collector’s edition disc are also available that pack in some Family Guy/Star Wars-related collectible goodies, like t-shirts, 3D glasses, trading cards and the like.

While hardly an original concept, it is how the episode was pulled off and melded with the Family Guy characters that makes this one unique. If you’re not into Family Guy, this might not be the episode to convert you – unless you’re a Star Wars fan, perhaps. Loaded like most Family Guy episodes with lots of pop culture references, from a Deal Or No Deal tribute to nonsequiter punchlines about seemingly random topics, like small business phone systems or the lke, Blue Harvest – like most Family Guy video releases – has it’s trademark humor intact, as well as plenty of extras and features to make the purchase well worth it.

I’m over the whole Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie thing. The Simple Life was goofy fun the first season and went downhill from there, but when I had a chance to see the E! Channel-exclusive fifth season DVD, I figured why not. Even if it’s a tired concept by now, made so by the one-joke nature of the show, at least it’s some brainless fun on a boring Sunday afternoon.

Well, I was wrong on a couple of counts. First, I didn’t watch it on Sunday afternoon; my wife and I watched it together over a couple of weekday nights to fill time left void by the writer’s strike – even though it’s resolved, the airwaves are hardly filled with new content quite yet.

The second thing I was wrong about was assuming it would be too stupid, boring and repetitive to be worth the time invested. Were the pranks of Nicole and Paris silly, stupid and worn out? Well, for the most part, yeah. We’ve seen the “brainless bimbo” routine they pull on this series too many times now.

But what captured me were the small touches of charm, mode possible mostly by the non-celebrity cast members. Having the girls become camp counselors at a summer camp provided plenty of variety without tons of travel, and a core supporting cast who weren’t always completely shocked and Paris and Nicole’s narcissistic obsession with themselves. That provided a by-now-jaded viewer like me with some characters to relate to on the show.

The show throws Paris and Nicole some curves, from a weight loss camp to a couples camp to an actors camp and more. Through it all, the prankish hijinks Paris and Nicole devise are the most annoying part of the show; but when one of the male camp counselors starts falling for an allegedly newly-unattached Paris, the show provides some real moments.

The guy isn’t fooling himself; he admits to a fellow male camp counselor-buddy that he doesn’t expect the flirtation to last beyond the summer camp experience. There is a poignant moment, however, when his friend asks him, “I know you’re ready for that. But are you ready if it really does become something more?” The guy replied, “That’s a good question,” and it was.

Foolishly, the guy relies on Nicole for advice in capturing Paris’ eye, and being the devil she is, she misleads him consistently down paths that will humiliate him. While that works the first time to a degree, when she’s still doing it by the eighth episode, it just gets frustrating on a couple levels. First, why does the guy keep turning to Nicole, who’s never led him right once; and second, is it even remotely possible for Nicole to have an on-screen moment as real as the two male camp counselors had?

Sure, the show is pure put-on and one of the least-real of all reality shows; but this season as much as any shows why the show is so limited in appeal that it was booted off Fox to E! Namely, that Paris and Nicole’s adopted personas on the show are too flat and limited in their emotional range to either demonstrate any real acting ability, or to hold the interest of viewers who never see their on-screen characters grow or grow up.

I’ve never used Cisco routers or dongles; I’ve found that one can get by quite well, usually, with a less prestigious name brand just fine. For example, I run my PC off an Encore dongle and get completely acceptable download speeds, especially now that I’m using Windows Vista and have a stable driver for it.

However, I remember not long ago, when I was living in Wisconsin and only had dial-up at an affordable price, just how annoyed I was at the rush toward broadband. I didn’t want to be left behind, just because I lived in the sticks.

Now, I live in a major metro area and broadband is both readily available and affordable; it greatly enhances the online game experience and it’s hard to imagine going back to dial-up. But sometimes I still wonder if we’re not being a bit unkind leaving folks in low-population areas behind, technologically.

I love my PS3 and my wife and I hope to have an HDTV by the end of this summer. But with the digital switchover less than a year away, I still have concerns about the people being left behind technologically, even though I’m no longer one of them.