NBC Olympics Coverage is Unbelievably Bad

[Whoops, I forgot to press publish on this last night. The specifics change but the basics are always the same.]
It’s 10 PM and the NBC coverage of the Olympics just went something like 30 minutes without showing any actual competitions. We got people talking in the studio, mind-numbing preproduced bits about the Great Wall of [...]

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Missing News Story

We got all the way to the end of the local news last night before I noticed that a story was missing. There was no coverage of last minute taxes! For the last 20 years, I have hated the April 15th news when they send some junior reporter out to a post office to cover [...]

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The Writer’s Strike and New Media

In my first job out of college as a chemist, I worked in a factory. I was in QC and worked alongside lab technicians that were unionized. A lot of progressives have a love of unions that I don’t share because I saw a lot of pure human sorriness excused by the union rules. I [...]

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Anthony Bourdain/Harvey Pekar Crossover

Boy, I wish I had found out about Harvey Pekar appearing on Anthony Bourdain’s TV show before it aired, rather than after. It showed last night, and while the Travel Channel replays the living hell out of most programs, they don’t seem to be repeating the episode in the next week. I’ll have to keep [...]

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Don’t Mess with Defcon

Via JD Lasica comes this story of a reporter who fled Defcon while being chased by a mob. There is a certain ironic and poetic justice aspect to a TV reporter trying to do an ambush story getting ambushed instead. I know that in general, I wouldn’t pick the Defcon populace as the ones to [...]

Popularity: 19% [?]

RIP Tom Snyder

I was sad to hear of the passing of Tom Snyder. I’ve always liked him and in a lot of ways I try to emulate certain of his strengths when I do interviews. I remember sneaking out of bed and watching the Clash on the Tomorrow show, carefully only turning it up as loud as [...]

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My Last Word on the Sopranos

I’m going to make one more post about the final episode of the Sopranos and then cash out of this discussion forever. A lot of what I’m saying and why I’m saying it is adapted from a post I made to the Nicola Griffith mailing list on the subject. It probably goes without saying that [...]

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More Thoughts on the Sopranos Ending

This is spoiler laden for the Sopranos final episode, but honestly, at this point can I possibly spoiling anything for anyone? I think the surprises are pretty widely spoiled for anyone who hasn’t seen the show.
I’ve seen a lot of reactions about the final scene of the final episode, and I think it is completely [...]

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The End of the Sopranos, Beginning of John

The second the last episode of the Sopranos finished I realized that I’d had this sensation before. It felt just like watching the last Matrix movie, waiting for something to happen and finally finishing with a big wet sloppy WTF? Now I think my previous diffidence was probably the correct response. I’m glad I didn’t [...]

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Sopranos Winding Down

You know, I must be a more diffident Sopranos fan than I thought. Even though I intellectually know there is only one more episode left, I had to have it pointed out that it is, like, in a few hours. The true fans are excited and conjecturing, I forgot it was even happening.
A few [...]

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Firefly and Serenity

Spring of last year when the Serenity DVD was released, I picked it up as well as the Firefly box set. Around the same time I placed a preorder for the Done the Impossible documentary. My original plan was to watch all the episodes of the TV show, then rewatch the movie (which I saw [...]

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Gentle Readers in the Wild

Here’s one from the “holy crap” file. I was watching the episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations set in his childhood home of New Jersey. At one point, they were in the strip club that you see as the Bada Bing on the Sopranos. While Tony is doing the voiceover and a young lady is [...]

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The Return of WKRP

Several people have written in to me about this. After I pointed out WKRP in Cincinatti and the music rights nightmare as an example of what happens with the heavy hand of the Man, it is coming out on DVD after all. However, my understanding (I think someone emailed me this, I didn’t see it [...]

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Rosie v. Trump

Quote overheard on the Craig Ferguson show, about this Rosie O’Donnell thing with Donald Trump.
I’m trying not to take sides, but it’s hard. Rosie is like America’s plain-talking lesbian sweetheart, and Trump is like America’s forked tongue publicity whore.

We saw the promos for the Apprentice in LA. Wow, it looks really bad. I mean, [...]

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Dixie Chicks and PBS

Last night An Evening with the Dixie Chicks was on PBS. I recorded it with the DVR and am watching it today. Bless you, little DVR. Pledge drive programming on PBS is watchable again! Bob help you if you don’t have one and have to sit through the mind-numbing faux populism of the on-air pledge [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]

Holidays and Elections

Written while bored on an airplane.

I deal with holiday fatigue and political fatigue in exactly the same way. I ignore all XMas stuff until after Thanksgiving. It doesn’t matter how early before Halloween you hang the decorations and start playing “Jingle Bell Rock”, I’m not paying attention and will block it out with measures up [...]

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The Day I Quit Giving a Shit about ER

Also written while bored on an airplane.

I was a huge fan of the ER tv show from the first episode. A year or three ago we stopped watching. We’d been tapering down and found it less and less essential for years. I can tell you the episode of shark jump for me personally. It was [...]

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Amanda’s Next Step

I just got an email from Amanda Congdon that talks about what she’s doing next, working for the online component of ABC News and doing a show for HBO. Wow! Her Amanda Unboomed video about it is right here. Congratulations Amanda!
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Popularity: 27% [?]

Sharpe

All summer long, I’ve been watching the Sharpe TV movies that aired on BBC America. For years, I’ve been hearing from people in the science fiction tribe about how good these books and movies are. Other than one or two that were lost in a DVR flakeout, I saw every one of the films. I’ve [...]

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Studio 60

I’ve seen the commercials for the upcoming Studio 60 series and heard the hype about it, and I have a one word reaction: “Yaaaaaawn.” I’m one of those people who thought the West Wing was good in parts but I never worshipped it and never found it great. Frequently I found it too annoying and [...]

Popularity: 23% [?]

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