Tag: Radio and TV

Monday Bullet Points Celebrating Standard Time

Ah, standard time. Time to sleep. Time to get up not in a rush. Time for bullet points. What were we saving all that daylight for anyway?

  • Update: note the subtle underlying concept – no one is as smart as me and my friends:

    “I think he’s a sincere and honest man,” Mr. Manning said yesterday on CTV’s Question Period. “I think the bigger question with Premier Stelmach and the administration is one of its competence. Does it have the competence to deal with these big-picture issues?” Mr. Manning said the opposition Liberals and New Democrats display even less understanding of Alberta’s potential leadership role, but predicted they could benefit from Tory failings.

    I thought Manning was a populist? How is this not elitist?

  • The battle of the spammers continues but today was a bit of a victory with everything getting filtered. Sadly we will not be able to discuss either Miss Alba or Miss Spears in the comments now but on the up side we will not be able to discuss Miss Alba or Miss Spears.
  • Fluke or no fluke? It was quite a game with New England pulling away from the Colts at the end due to a defensive play which saw a late game loose ball lead to the exciting NFL conclusion of two minutes of non-plays. If it was any other sport, goons would be sent in to interrupt the taking of the knee, a courtesy oddly granted the soon to be victors.
  • How long before the personal computer goes the way of the console TV? I liked when my TV came with a wood finish. Can I get an iPod with a wood finish? I don’t think so.
  • A TV writers strike – do you care? I know I will have to find something else to do when Numb-Three-ERs is on, but I mainly watch news and sports. If you want know know what is happening behind the line, have a read about what Ian and Tessa think. I would offer either side my full support if they officially adopt the pronunciation “numb-three-ers“. And about that show: I know it’s Charlie – he’s the evil one.

So there you go. Your first Monday bullets. I have no idea if this will continue but I am on the road this Friday so cut and paste these ones for use then if you are really having trouble with this change stuff.

An Evening Of Convergence

While the top story in my last 24 hours has to be Beckett finishing his
complete game by setting aside the Angels like a librarian shelving a book
[Ed.: Yes! My own sports analogy!] in time for the Bionic Woman’s second
episode to start, it was really the realization that BW2 [Ed.: Yes! My own TV
acronym!] is the game Counterstrike meeting Blade Runner. At the end of the
show, the guy who got booted off Gray’s Anatomy is leading a bunch of
crouched guys with newbie CS guns down a dark alley towards a fabulously unguarded lit den
of baddies when I thought “flashbang” and, lo and behold, t’was so as bang did flash and baddies
did give up.

Chat For The Last Friday Closer To 2006 Than 2008

Yes, your life is flying by. The end of June is the end of the first half of the year, the year you still think of in the back of your mind as new. Time to get another hobby or make a greater change.

  • Update: freaky:

    Authorities said Thursday they are trying to determine who altered the entry on the collaborative reference site 14 hours before authorities discovered the bodies of the couple and their son. Benoit’s Wikipedia entry was altered early Monday to say the wrestler had missed a match two days earlier because of his wife’s death. A Wikipedia official, Cary Bass, said the entry was made by someone using an Internet protocol address registered in Stamford, Conn., where World Wrestling Entertainment is based.

  • I received a copy of a 1975 game called Pub Games of England and what a treat. Who know that skittles was created as an illustration of mass conversion of pagan Germans to the faith? Who knew that darts was likely created as a response to legal bans on all games but archery for military (and not moral) purposes – it’s just a small archery game with the target being a cask of beer? And who knew lawn billiards (or pell mell) was the game of the future?
  • Speaking of early games, please lend your support to Project Protoball.
  • Interesting to note the passing of the NPR show Radio Open Source. NCPR observed the passing of another attempt at substantive convergence in this way:

    So it is with very real regret that I report the end, for now at least, of his innovative and lively evening program Open Source. The producers were unable to put together secure funding to continue national distribution, and made the difficult decision to suspend production this week. Chris has been a great exploiter of both the countertrend —and unabashed intellectual in the age of dumbing down–and of the coming trend–building a radio program upon the swiftly shifting sands of a community of bloggers.

    The other posts this week were a bit telling – the lack of a MSM partner and the “old school” actual revenue stream as well as an odd choice for a celebration of the sort of substantive social community (SSC…as opposed to vacuous linking or LSC) that has never been triggered but has been much promised and, like the emperor’s clothes, observed. Maybe they’ll do a Lessig and declare they are going to reinvent cooking or home repair DYI.

  • In not unrelated news, the CBC has been shocked to discover that when you ask people to express what they believe in they will express what they believe in.
  • I don’t even like the NBA but am happy to see that Demetris Nichols is a Knick.
  • This is a good court ruling by the US Supreme Court in the Panetti case: do not execute crazy people. But it does make you wonder about the death penalty in terms of the idea of purpose – other than general deterrence – which is sort of captured in the description “a defendant who is to be executed be able to recognize the relationship between his crime and his sentence.” But if I am dead…I can’t recognize that relationship. But nuttier is the objection by Clarence Thomas who called the ruling “a half-baked holding that leaves the details of the insanity standard for the district court to work out.” Well, seeing as there concern that the door is open to false claims of incompetency, shouldn’t the lower trial courts assess each case? Or is there a suggestion in the dissent that mental illness isn’t real? Interesting to note that Anthony M. Kennedy has decided to become Mr. Swing Vote instead of Mr. Fourth Conservative Near The Back.

That’s it for now. I have to go Xmas shopping.

Talking About The Weather

Remember when talking about the weather was a euphemism for something between being intensely dull to sensibly steering clear of controversial topics? Intersting story in the NYT this morning about the US channel the Weather Network and how the dullest station on the TV is now coping with relevance:

The daily weather forecast is rarely controversial, but the broader topic of climate change has generated no end of debate. As the network has seen its primary subject turn into a hot-button issue, it has had to grapple with how it wants to address it — and has decided not to tread gingerly. The issue started influencing the network’s coverage in a new way after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005, and has been shaping its programming decisions.

Please note: as a founding member of BFR (Bloggers For Reality) I admit and give witness to the fact I know nothing about global warming and have no idea who is right.

The Radishes Are Up

I do not particularly like radishes but I am glad they are there. They will pop out of the ground whatever the conditions well before anything else. Maybe it’s because they give you both the false senses that you are good at something and that you have a treat to look forward to…even though a radish would pretty much grow out of a concrete block and tastes like gasoline mixed with black pepper. I plant a milder variety called French Breakfast. It reminds me of the month or less that me and pals spent in Paris 21 years ago, practicing nutritional deficiency and borderline alcoholism. Maybe the seed hybridizer stayed at the same hotel with the surely staff and the meager meals and remembered when he named his radish.

My relationship to radishes reminds me of my relationship to TV. So far today I have read or heard two stories about the collapse of TV in America. Katie Couric is floundering and NBC is foundering…or maybe it’s the other way around. NBC is actually bringing back the Bionic Woman – even though it was only the second best bionic person TV show of all time. Comparatively, the Bosox are roaring ahead and TV ratings for the sport are strong as well. I appear, along with many others, to be choosing reality – as opposed to a sort of reality in news snippets, in a series or even that sort of W2 social networking where there is neither real society or work’s rewards. Baseball – the perfect passive participation activity in its association with truth, beauty and real skill – is rising up through the wasteland of quality multimedia contentlessness. One always hopes the next thing will be real and good and simple. Perhaps it will be.

Out back, there are a few struggling tomato seed sproutlings as well, near the radishes but under special plastic roofing suffering from the cold as well, needing the sort of attention no radish would demand. I have no idea if they will make it, given this colder sort of May. Probably a replanting is necessary. I hear, however, that a radish is quite good with cold olive oil. And cheese.

Saying Rude Words On The Radio

The only time I have ever had the Don Imus show on was when I left the radio WFAN on all night. It is a weird show and that essentially because it is unfunny. And not just in its current embarrassment for using a racial slur so much as the second year undergrad quality of the slur and all the other largely insult-based humour that goes on the show day after day. I don’t know who needs to hear that in the morning, just as I don’t know who needs to hear Rush Limbaugh and his apologism for anything that can hover before the addled mind behind that microphone. Is it that people in cars and with insufficient caffeine need to wake up to thoughts of superiority over over-paid idiots…or do people actually associate themselves with dolts like these and their mental wrongness?

I watched that new TV improv comedy show on NBC last night, Thank God You’re Here. Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall hosted. It was actually funny and funny in a way that was even more genial that Whose Line Is It Anyway, the last great stab at improv – especially the US version hosted by Drew Carey. Imus is essentially improv of a sort. Political audio improv. So is Limbaugh. Like the Second City sort of comedians, they really come armed with no clue as to what politics will thrust upon them on any given day (or apparently much background on the reasons behind what happens) and they have a regularly recycled set of knee-jerk reactions. Yet unlike Foley and Limbaugh, they are not witty – there is no gleam of a telling truth. Why? The inherent rut and dolt as much as anything. Can the two converge? Could John Stewart do unscripted political radio on a daily basis? Is it inevitable that there would be a wallowing in “guy laugh” – the sound unassociated with a joke – and simple vacuous nastiness? Hard to say as it as never existed otherwise.

Thank God for sports talk radio.

First Friday of February Chat

Another gentle dawn. Another month.

Friday this week finds us in a full fledged debate on who is most green. I have no idea why as I have resigned myself to ecological disaster a few short centuries after I am gone, sometime after the Venusians get us all and align themselves with our cats.

  • Green is Canada’s new story on the global scene – forget what was said a few weeks ago, please. And it makes strange bed fellows – forget the labour management divisions of the past. I still can’t figure out why our Prime Minister’s conversion on the road to Damascus or at least the next election is not being called a flop-a-rama of the highest order.
  • It is extraordinary in this day that people in leadership positions can say such dumb things.
  • I am not one to reach for the Attends every time the twits at BoingBoing announce the GroupThink of the day but no doubt there is much foaming over the embarrassment that is the NFL’s demands that churches limit the screens they show TV shows on to 55 inches, as the ever excellent Deadspin cuts and pastes:

    Initially, the league objected to the church’s plan to charge partygoers a fee to attend and that the church used the license-protected words “Super Bowl” in its promotions. Newland told the NFL his church would not charge partygoers — the fee had been intended only to pay for snacks — and that it would drop the use of the forbidden words. But the NFL wouldn’t bite. It objected to the church’s plans to use a projector to show the game on what effectively was a 12-foot-wide screen. It said the law limits the church to one TV no bigger than 55 inches.

    The law? What law? The license between the NFL and the calbe network perhaps but show me the red hand with the pointy finger next to “55 inches” please in the terms and conditions of my cable TV agreement. I declare Sunday group projection TV night. Fight the power! Fight the power that restricts us to 55 inch TV screens!

  • Hilarious to see the end of podcasting coming decidedly unbangily but with the whimperiest of whimpers as the 2007 bloggies cut the category for best podcast of a weblog. Remember when people podcasted? That was cool.
  • I still haven’t got the story right about the Space Invaders rip off images being shown in Boston as reported Thursday in this article:

    …yesterday, a subway worker less attuned to the latest in underground marketing techniques called the police after spotting one of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” cartoon characters on an overpass in Charlestown. The terrorism scare that followed touched off a massive response from police. When it was discovered that the electronic boards were only ads for a cartoon, serious condemnation flowed from Washington and Boston.

    What generation gap? Space Invaders was 28 years ago. Who in the work force who does not recognize this sort of character?

There. It is done. Soon there will be a week of February behind us, then it will be mid-month. Before long, we will meet March and this farce of a winter will be gone.

The House Of Many Mouths And Many Short Sleeps

Some days I realize I don’t have to wonder what it was like to keep watch on a ship in the British navy in around 1815. There was a period of about one hour last night when all were snoozing. On the upside, I got to watch Craig Ferguson.

Where is Mike “the Sandman” Campbell when you need him? And exactly how many Campbells do we have around here anyway? One of the things about being a house of many mouths is that you do get acquainted with these sorts of shows. Mike is right, too: Max is the man and Rollie Pollie Ollie rules. But Mrs. Shrinks – yowza!.

Friday The First Chat Of 2007

Like you, I measure out the days in Friday chats now. If I can just make it to Friday chat without emptying another jar of ginger marmalade, I say to my self, I will be OK.

  • The first group project is going well. I think this one is a high level starter discussion. Next I am going to post one about what to do with the Senate…maybe. Wait for it, though. Don’t take off on the topic in these comments. I think I will propose one every Monday leading up to the next election. The rules are basic. Very strict focus and no debate. If I need to spin out a debate, I can add that in another post later in the week once the ground work is established. I will create a category for group projects and introduce them with the prefix “GP:”.

  • The Randy Johnson experiment is over. The Red Sox’s chance for the pennant look better and better for 2007.
    • Hmmm…I wonder why their work may get interrupted?

    UK scientists planning to mix human and animal cells in order to research cures for degenerative diseases fear their work will be halted.

    One personal guideline I have for my universe: no dog-boys.

  • Syracuse lost to Pitt last night in basketball. Watched it on the best spent 25 bucks a month I have ever spent sports cable TV package. We seldom consider what a boon and blessing premium package cable TV is. Anyway, Syracuse was not looking like a team that would get past the first round of the NCAA’s, though there is some spark there. Pitt was dominant, a wall. Syracuse may get there but they need to get less chippy. Less jack-the-three with 50 seconds to go.
  • Another quarterback from the CFL makes good in the NFL. Good for Garcia. Beat the Giants.
  • I am not sure what to make of CBC’s upcoming Little Mosque on the Prairies. I am not sure I like my comedy to have twists or premises that ties it into a set of opportunities that may limit it…but then again I am quite certain I do not like my comedy provided to me by the CBC. Not since The King of Kenstington anyway – which was a ground breaking culturally inclusive kind of comedy if you think about it. That being said, one thing – one man – gives me great hope for its success: Carlo Rota. He is my favorite actor on TV ever since the Great Canadian Cooking Show. I want to be punched on the shoulder by him one day and hear him say with his belly laugh “you’re one hell of a guy, Al! Beer?”. If anything or anyone can make that happen please email me. These things are possible, you know.

That is it. The day beckons. Don’t forget to listen to David Sommerstein on The Beat Authority at 3 pm EST and then Mike Alzo at 8 pm with The Folk Show both on NCPR. And try to fit in Darcey’s Friday Night Blues and Beer which should be posted about 4 to 5 pm this afternoon. It is a full day.