Fringe – Friday Night Reanimation
Consider my Friday night schedule cleared. O. Dunham – can’t wait.
Slush Mug Commecial
We used to have these. Now that I recall, we had this type of Slush Mug, then later another version. I still have my second, newer one; mom gave it to me a couple years ago when we were cleaning out stuff at her house.
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature
One of my very favorite commercials from childhood. I never noticed before that she’s telling the Goldilocks story wrong at the beginning.
Vonnegut High School
I’m watching the latest episode of Close to Home, and in the storyline, the kids who are suspects of a murder investigation speed away from the scene of the crime in a car with a bumpersticker of “Vonnegut High School.” That’s pretty funny. I wonder if they’ll show exterior shots of Shortridge High School, where Vonnegut actually attended. They do an interesting job of creating “fake but reasonable” local venues and attractions as plot points. I kinda wish I’d made a list of them over the course of the season, because it would be kinda funny to do a google map of the television version of Indianapolis.
Daylight Savings Time and Cable
I noticed with some grumpiness this morning that although my digital cable had adjusted correctly to the new daylight savings time, my DVR settings did not, so my show recordings are all off by an hour — instead of recording Desperate Housewives, then Gray’s Anatomy, my DVR recorded Gray’s Anatomy and the evening news instead. Combined with the general wonkiness of the DVR’s recording in general, this didn’t make me happy. I have to go in an tweak my settings in ways that I should not have to, or I occasionally will miss something.
I know must have happened because I had the selection of “record all episodes of this show in this time slot” instead of “record all episodes of this show at all times.” But the second setting results in recording five versions of the same episode, or causing repeated episodes to “bump” other original airings of shows off the schedule without warning. I have no way to tell it to prioritize one show over another, and it doesn’t tell me if it has bumped a show off my recording schedule, so I don’t know to go back and add it in later. That’s broken.
With some other video recording programs, you can tell the recorder to get every episode of a show, but to only record any episode one time, so the when a network re-airs a program, the DVR sees it’s a duplicate episode and ignores it. You can also program them to prioritize one show over another if the schedule moves around and you accidentally try to record more than two things at once. And they will tell you what show was bumped off the schedule, so you can go back and re-set it to record the next week
I have some friends who were showing off their satellite TV/Tivo combination package, which currently weighs in at less money every month that my cable, with more features and reliability, including the ability to transfer shows from one TV to another, so I could move a show upstairs to the bedroom to watch it. I hate to go to all the trouble of doing that, but given that I’m paying more for less service, it might be time to make the switch.
Dark Kingdom
I keep seeing the ads for “Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King” on the sci fi network premiering Monday, March 27th — a dragon slayer, a two strong warrior women, a ring of fire — Nibelungenlied? Yep, after further investigation, I called that one correctly. I’ll definitely be watching that; my ancestors are Rhinelanders.
Natalie Portman Rapping on SNL
Wow. That’s truly funny, and much better than the Lazy Sunday video. I want an mp3 of this. And the lyrics.
Darn it. The video has already been yanked from Youtube.com, so my embedded file no longer works. Well, it’ll be on iTunes; go look at it.
AFA boycotting Desperate Housewives
The American Family Association is urging a boycott of Desperate Housewives. Of course my response to TV censorship is always “unplug the TV” — but this time the nutjobs are addressing my retort:
Some people have said to pro-family viewers who dislike indecent network TV programming simply to turn it off, Wildmon notes. In response, he asks, “Why should we have to do that? Why do our children need to be exposed to such trash? Why do the networks keep putting out trash?
Because some of us are paying good money for that trash, mister, and we want it on our damn TVs. You can take my favorite TV shows when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. Which will never happen, because if it comes down to me or you biting it, it’s gonna be you.
The Office
Back when the Ricky Gervais version of “The Office” premiered on BBCAmerica, I watched the first season and loved it. Eventually I had to stop watching, though, not because it wasn’t funny, but because it was too real, and watching it was too much like actually being at work, and there’s only so much of that you can take. Eventually you have to get away from it and let your mind do other things.
We’ve been DVR’ing the American version of the show this season, and I’m watching several of them in a row this morning. I keep having to pause and walk into the other room, because something will happen that has actually happened to me, and it’s funny, but too painful to watch.
Veronica Mars on delay until March
According to AfterEllen.com, UPN is delaying airing new episodes of Veronica Mars until March due to poor ratings. Huh. This is the best show on TV, people. It airs Wednesday nights opposite Lost. I expect each and every one of you to start watching, pronto.