television Archives - Page 20 of 25

A Most Peculiar Day

I’ve now been to two conferences this month, which I’ll have to tell you about sometime, both within NYS, but sufficiently out of town to change the schedule. For instance, last Wednesday to Friday, I was at conference #2. Grandpa picks up Lydia, takes her to the grandparents’ house. Carol meets me in Hamilton, NY, then the next day, we’re off to Oneonta, where we go shopping and to the National Soccer Hall of Fame (more about that anon) before we see our daughter. Sunday, church, Mother’s day dinner about an hour away, then home. Spent more time on NY Route 23 than I thought was possible.

But when I’m home during the school week, it’s most regular. Wednesday was a bit of a variation on the theme.
*Take bus #1 – the child to day care. Check.
*Take bus #2 to downtown (that was so late, at some point, it stopped picking up passengers and only dropped some off, saying to bewildered patrons: “Another bus is right behind me”). Check.
*Play racquetball. Check.
*Wait for bus #3 that apparently came early, and there isn’t another for over two hours. Nuts.
*See my friend Bill Anderson, who tells me the Albany Public Library main branch is without power. Oh, and there are people there I need to talk with.
* Run back to the Y, hitch a ride with one of my rball competitors.
* Eat breakfast. Check.
* Work. Check.
* Go to lunch. I often eat with a couple folks, but one had left early, because a woman in her department had suddenly died at age 50, and their group all went to the service. There are maybe 200 people on our floor, and I had no idea who this person was, but felt badly anyway.
* I was working on a lengthy e-mail, answering a reference question, when at about 3:45 pm, the power in my whole building goes out. I mean, there were emergency tracking lights, but everything else was down, including, thankfully, that damn constant white noise that’s supposed to make working in cubicles more “soundproof”. (Note: it doesn’t, just adds to the din.) After about 15 minutes, it was evident that the power wasn’t coming back any time soon. It’s amazing what you can’t accomplish without a phone, e-mail, Internet connection, printer, copier… (Fortunately, the e-mail was saved, mostly intact when I got to work yesterday.)
* Catch a ride. Usually, I’d have taken a bus, but they’re only every 30 minutes. Get to the bridge I would normally take, but there’s a car on the side of the road, a police car and an ambulance, blocking one lane, and a bus, what would have been MY bus, stuck behind it.
* Change course, and go over to the library; the power’s STILL out. Go home.
* Carol arrives home with Lydia, who had her first visit to the dentist. After the appointment, she had gone over to my building, ironically, to finally see our offices – it’s been a year now – only to be asked by the security guard, “Are you sure he’s still there?” They called my number (fast busy signal), and the main number (ditto), then went home.
I suppose the dreariness of the day, plus a couple more ambulances I saw gave the day a very odd cast.
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NBC has teases of their Fall Preview programs. I’ve watched them all, might check out a few in September, though don’t imagine watching any long-term. Didn’t find such info from the other networks, at least as of Wednesday. Nothing in the description of the CBS shows interested me especially, but I was intrigued by a couple descriptions of some ABC shows. I’ll admit I like the GEICO cavemen in 30-second bites, but to make a 22-minute (plus commercials!), 24-episode season of “sophisticated cave dudes living in modern-day Atlanta (who) will continually find themselves at odds with contemporary society and thus comment on today’s race relations” – how will that play? Then there’s that Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, which will get a short leash from me. Dirty Sexy Money is my “Studio 60” pick; that is, it looks the most interesting on paper. It features William Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause.

Oh, and speaking of NBC’s most disappointing show of 2006-07, this cheeky piece from AdAge, May 14, 2007, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the TV Upfront …but Were Afraid (or Too Busy Watching YouTube Videos of Nora, the Piano-Playing Cat) to Ask” by By Simon Dumenco: “It’s worth noting that NBC chief Jeff Zucker has so far declined to apologize for the dramatic catastrophe, though he’s gone on the record saying: “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have green-lit ‘Studio 60.’ All the available intelligence at the time suggested Aaron Sorkin was a brilliant TV auteur, but of course it turns out he’s a solipsistic schmuck.” Because formal cancellation of the show would involve an admission of an error in judgment, Zucker is said to instead be considering “de-authorizing” its green light.

Truth is, I’m looking forward to the end of THIS season because I have mucho shows gone unwatched. Scrubs, going back to April 5, The Office and My Name Is Earl from April 12, so I really DON’T what Michael did on The Office that should have gotten him fired, yet. Three Gilmore Girls, a couple each of Brothers & Sisters, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomys, several JEOPARDY! and news programs, and special about Ahmet Ertegun and (laugh if you want) Bob Barker. Except for The Closer, JEOPARDY and some news programs, nothing to be added after Sunday, when I tape (probably to watch in June) The Simpsons’ 400th episode and a show I have actually never seen before, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is focused on an Albany County family.
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Alan David Doane on the future of Comic Book Galaxy, which mentions, ahem, me.
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I heard some folks complain that Paul Wolfowitz was driven out of his job heading the World Bank, not because he got his girlfriend a $60K raise, but because he was an architect of the war in Iraq. That’s quite possibly true, and somehow I’m OK with that. Next to go will be AG Alberto Gonzalez, who quite surprisingly, has me longing for the days of John Ashcroft?
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Happy birthday, sister Marcia!
ROG

A Mental Mistake

I made a tactical error this week: I watched, and read far too much about Virginia Tech. There were two episodes of My Name Is Earl listed on my DVR Monday night; it was really Dateline NBC. That Boston Legal on Tuesday? ABC Primetime. Yeah, I COULD have just deleted them, but no, I kept watching. At least I’ve missed, so far, the controversial airing of some of the material sent to NBC by the killer. Yet I was coming to a conclusion not dissimilar to this one. Which is to say, I do feel for the VT community, and the country as a whole, but I’m struck by how one bomb in Baghdad might well kill two or three dozen people. I wonder if we – I – have become inured because it happens so damn often there.

The shock of VT will subside when the NEXT thing happens – was the Don Imus thing only last week? – only to be brought back in the spotlight by the inevitable lawsuit by some of the families of the last 30 victims. (Meanwhile, whether to lock up the guns or for everyone to be packin’ heat is addressed well here.

But the BIGGEST mistake I made this week was going here where one can find the full text of a couple of Cho Seung-Hui’s plays. Oddly, it wasn’t the plays I found most disturbing, it was the banal dialogue of people. Nasty sniping at each other. “Someone should have turned him in, gotten him therapy” (in fact, they did). Well, you can read it if you want. For some reason, the movie Minority Report came to mind, even though I’ve never seen it.

Anyway, here’s one comment. Please tell me what you think, if you will:

This guy’s sick for sure. But he’s sick because he killed 30+ people. He’s not sick because he wrote weird plays.

As a writer, I find it offensive that so many people say this kid should have been turned into counselors, authorities, school officials, etc. because of something he wrote. Do we really want a society where we judge the content of someone’s character based on a creative piece he or she wrote? If your answer is yes, then think of all the books we would have to burn. Think of the great works of the past that we would never read. Forget about Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” or almost anything else by Shakespeare. Forget about Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw.” We couldn’t read “Fahrenheit 451” even though we’d be living in a society sort of like the society in “Fahrenheit 451.” And Stephen King? Are you kidding? He’s as sick as this guy, if we’re judging people based on creative works. The school officials are not to blame. The students are not to blame. The local law enforcement officials are not to blame. This could have happened anywhere, on any campus, in any dorm. That’s what makes it so tragic.

I was intrigued, however, how the local media lucked into “the local angle” as poet Nikki Giovanni, who I used to read 20 years ago, taught Cho a couple years ago, but booted him out of class. She spoke at an already scheduled lecture at the University at Albany on Thursday.
ROG

Stuck

You know how a tune can get stuck in your head, in all likelihood. One of my racquetball buddies has a sibling who was on The Price is Right. Guess which theme song I started whistling, and quite well, I might add?

But sometimes these things come to mind for no discernible reason. What on earth lodged “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family in my brain? I seldom watched the show, I never owned any of their music, and I hadn’t heard it recently, at least consciously. (Was it background music in a store or a telephone hold button?) So I’m suddenly dissecting the amazingly bizarre rhyming pattern of a song that I don’t especially like:
So what am I so afraid of
Afraid that I’m not sure of
A love there is no cure for
(If this is wrong, I don”t really need to know; that’s how I remember it.)

I bring this up because I need new tune suggestions. Mr. Lefty Brown, as mentioned before, has sent me a year-long subscription to his favorite music site, eMusic. This means 15 songs a month for 12 months to download. So I ask you: what tunes do I want, that I really, really want? Can be old or new. I’m planning to use the thing as soon as I pull out my chainsaw so that I can liberate it from the industrial strength plastic cover that it’s encased in.
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Meanwhile, I’ve been thing about TV. Not so much about watching it; I’m actually watching less, because there have been a string of repeats on lately. But weird Thoughts, with apologies to Kelly Brown, who I think is somehow related to Lefty.
*Why do they have 42-minute programs, such as the wacky NBC lineup next Thursday? Is this to confound me? And if they do, why do they invariably run long, so that I need to tape the next program as well?
*Why hasn’t Katie Couric caught on? It isn’t just because she came from morning news/talk shows. Tom Brokaw was on NBC’s Today Show, while Charles Gibson spent two shifts on ABC’s Good Morning America. Is it gender? Maybe. It’s true Couric’s interview with Elizabeth Edwards and her husband John on 60 Minutes was rather weird, mostly because she said, “some people say” about a dozen times, thus trying to be hard-hitting, yet nice. Meanwhile, Cynthia McFadden’s Nightline interview with Elizabeth Edwards and her elder daughter this week seemed genuine.
*I’m feeling a tad nostalgic. I looked at the TV Guide, and next week features series premieres, season premieres, mid-season premieres, and season finales. Can anyone really keep track? All I want to know is when does The Closer start up with new episodes, And I can’t figure that out, even when I go to the website.

ROG

Media and Politics QUESTION

The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago will be celebrating the 75th anniversary salute to FDR on July 2. FDR accepted his nomination at Chicago Stadium and announced his plans for the New Deal. If I were in Chicago, I’d be very inclined to go to this gig. Media! Politics! Robert Vaughn!

Also at this event, the organization will be announcing America’s top 100 political moments in radio and television.

Without thinking or researching, because thinking will just confuse things, and I wanted to go with my gut feelings, my Top 11.
In chrono order:
1. Al Smith, 1928. Not many people saw it, of course.
2. FDR, “Day of Infamy”, December 1941. Still respond to it in the ear.
3. McCarthy hearings in the 1950s.
4. JFK-Nixon debates, esp. the first one. I read somewhere that people listening to it on the radio thought Nixon won, while those watching TV would pick Kennedy. This would be #1, if I were to rank.
5. I Have a Dream speech (That certainly is political), August 1963.
6. JFK assassination. November 1963.
7. Cronkite dissing LBJ about Vietnam, February 1968
8. Democratic National Convention, August 1968
9. Watergate hearings (esp. John Dean), 1973
10. Reagan in Normandy, 1984
11. Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings (“high-tech lynching”)

Of course, there are the FDR’s fireside chats, the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Jimmy Carter’s Moral Equivalent of War energy policy with the sweater, the assassination attempt on Reagan, Iran-Contra, and a bunch more, but the ones I picked just resonated more for me.

So, what would be your picks?

P.S. – Gordon, might you attend?
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I should note St. Patrick’s day, since I’m Roger O’Green, but there’s already enough blarney in this post, what with media AND politics. The primary Albany parade, though, was postponed for a week because of the foot plus of snow we received overnight.

ROG

Time, TV and Train QUESTIONS

1. Our techie guy wrote: “The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by the U.S. Congress July, 2005, extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the U.S. by approximately four weeks. As a result, beginning in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier on March 11, 2007, and end one week later on November 4, 2007, resulting in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than previously observed. These four weeks are referred to in this article as the “extended DST period”.

We have prepared a plan to correct the Time Zone entries on both your computer and our servers… We will be updating your Exchange Mailboxes on Saturday March 10th, beginning at Noon… As a result, any meeting invitation for the ‘extended DST period’ that was previously sent will be re-sent to each invitee because it will be read as a ‘new time.’ All meeting requests will need to be reaccepted or re-declined in order to update your calendars properly.”

So, the first set of questions: Has the change in Daylight Saving Time been more of a hassle for you at work? At home? I think the DVR will reset on its own, but that the VCR (purchased in 1997 and Y2K compliant!) will not. Other than kids going trick or treating when it’s lighter, do you see any net benefit to the change, which will cost companies an estimated $2 billion to deal with? I don’t, and places that are in the northwest segments of a time zone (Lansing, MI in the east, Bismarck, ND in the central, and Helena, MT in the mountains, it’ll be dark at 8 a.m. on March 12, when kids are going to school. Where’s the energy savings?

2. As you may have heard, there are plans afoot to move the Addison character on Grey’s Anatomy to a spinoff show. There are lots of Kate Walsh fans out there, as she’s the first person I’ve seen on both Tom the Dog’s Object of My Affection list AND Jaquandor’s Realizations Of Womanly Radiance list.

The Ad Age Water Cooler column of February 26 suggests other possibilities for spinoff potential:
Hurley (Jorge Garcia)-Lost
Justin (Mark Indelicato)-Ugly Betty
Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson)-The Office
Kevin Walker (Matthew Rhys)-Brothers & Sisters

Can’t speak for the former two, but I just don’t see it in the latter two, especially Dwight, who is a wonderful character relating to both Angela and Michael. Then again, I didn’t see the potential of seeing spinning off Rhoda from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, though spinning off Maude from All in the Family or even Frasier Crane from Cheers made more sense to me.

So, what do you think of spinning off any of these characters from their shows? Any other ideas?

3. This is actually a work-related request: I need a list of recorded songs about trains. I found a couple lists here and here, but I can’t help but to think they’re missing some obvious tunes that I’m just not thinking of.
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Are NY Giants QB Eli Manning and “24” President Wayne Palmer the Same Guy? [Thanks to MMcG.]
ROG