Tag Archives: television

Thursday Debris

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It’s been a brilliant run of late spring, early summer days here. Rain, but not too much. Heat, but not too much. A few mosquitoes, but not many. Last week at the Klehm we did run into some large clouds of gnats, however, especially on the narrow trails.

Klehm Arbortetum May 2014

See the gnats? Maybe not. The camera’s not that good. But they’re there.

I just finished reading Neither Here Nor There, an entertaining Bill Bryson book. Mostly he dispenses with background detail about the places he visits, and focuses on his own experiences in getting from A to B and seeing what he sees in A and B. Even better, his enthusiasm for going out to see things shines through. Not many writers can pull that off without being a bore, but he does. A small example, describing Rome:

“You turn any street corner in Rome and it looks as if you’ve just missed a parking competition for blind people. Cars are pointed in every direction, half on the pavements and half off, facing in, facing sideways, blocking garages and side streets and phone boxes, fitted into spaces so tight that the only possible way out would be through the sun roof. Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.”

Since the travels he describes were in Europe in 1990, as well as flashbacks to the 1970s, he’s also detailing an increasingly obsolete style of travel, but one that I well remember myself, at least that of the last two decades of the 20th century. That is, pre-Internet, pre-smartphone, pre-debit card, pre-Ryanair travels. It won’t be long before — if it hasn’t already happened — smartphones or glasses tell tourists absolutely everything about getting to and being at a place. That’ll drain the life right out of the experience.

I wondered today whether the half-season finale Mad Men, broadcast Sunday, used all the lyrics of “The Best Things in Life Are Free.” I wasn’t very familiar with the earliest recorded version, so I looked it up.

As many songs were in the 1920s, much of it is instrumental. So yes indeed, the show used all of the lyrics. The 2010s recalling the 1960s recalling the 1920s. A remarkable scene.

That Cold Blood Moon

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It was too cold this morning to drag myself outside and document the snow clinging to the April grass and trees. Why bother anyway? It looked more-or-less like this.

Actually a little less snow coated the ground this time than seven years ago, at least as recorded by my pictures. There wasn’t quite as much sticking to the branches, and none on the street. In any case, except for shadowy spots, all the snow vanished in the afternoon sun, pale and weak as it was.

Missed the early morning Blood Moon, as some headline writers seem to be calling the latest lunar eclipse. They’re nice to see, but not worth getting up at 3 in the morning, especially when it was snowing when you went to bed a few hours earlier. It’s a hard enough sell when it’s merely cold outside, as it also was this morning.

I didn’t miss the season opener of Mad Men, which apparently got low ratings. As a casual viewer of TV, the last thing I care about is ratings, especially for a show that’s going to end on a schedule anyway. It was a decent episode, neither the best nor the worst of the series, and as usual seemed to inspire a lot of commentary, so I won’t really add to that total, even in my small way.

Writing about television in general seems to inspire a body of ridiculous, or at least pointless, writing. Not long ago I saw a headline something like this: “Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead Occupy the Same Universe.” The only reasonable reaction to that is, who cares?

Thursday Bagatelle

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I drove through thick fog early this evening. Remarkably, the fog disappeared in about 10 minutes as I was driving along – blown away by the strong winds entering the Chicago area that are still gusting outside, and which are supposed to last into tomorrow.

While writing about small-nation participants in the Olympics last week, my thoughts naturally turned to Sealand. (Whose wouldn’t?) Besides no status as an actual country, Sealand has no Olympic committee, either. But it’s always entertaining to read about the place.

The founder of Sealand died only in 2012, which I hadn’t heard. I also didn’t realize that Sealandic coins have been minted, but here they are. Somewhere out in the wide world, there’s a numismatist whose specialty is micronations. There has to be.

I watched the first part of the first episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon today – watched it the modern way, on demand, not when it was first broadcast. It’s been a good many years since I watched much of The Tonight Show. Briefly, just before Lilly was born, we’d watch Jay Leno, but I never took to him. In the mid-70s, I watched Johnny Carson regularly for a few years, which might have been unusual for someone in his early teens, but lost interest later.

I hadn’t seen much of Fallon before. Seems like an amiable fellow, and talented enough for the job. Still, I have the ridiculous feeling that the host of The Tonight Show ought to be older than me. Just to look at him, Fallon reminds me of a young assistant high school principal or a young insurance agent.

At a post office the other day – they say the USPS is losing money, but there’s always a line at my closest one – I saw an ad for replica Inverted Jenny stamps. Turns out they’ve been for sale for some months, with a $2 denomination. If they’d asked me, I would have suggested they be a postcard denomination (lately 34 cents). Sticking even a replica Inverted Jenny on a casual postcard would be fun.

Hadn’t thought about those stamps in a long time. Philately wasn’t ever as interesting for me as numismatics, but everyone ought to know about the Inverted Jenny. I made sure to tell Lilly about it. “That much for a stamp?” she said when I told her they sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s the bizarre world of collectibles for you.

Anna Maria Alberghetti in a Wintry Mix, Honey

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Another day above freezing. That’s a good thing, except for the current forecast. The following is direct from the National Weather Service, which is worthy of respect for its accuracy, but also the fact that it doesn’t fix cute names to winter storms. The NWS put out this “Special Statement” for my part of the country early this evening.

RAIN AND EVEN SOME THUNDERSTORMS WILL DEVELOP ACROSS NORTHERN ILLINOIS LATER TONIGHT. HOWEVER… TEMPERATURES ACROSS FAR NORTHERN ILLINOIS… MAINLY ALONG AND NORTH OF INTERSTATE 88… [we’re north of I-88 by a few miles] MAY REMAIN COLD ENOUGH TONIGHT FOR THIS PRECIPITATION TO BEGIN AS A WINTRY MIX OF SNOW… SLEET OR FREEZING RAIN BEFORE MUCH WARMER TEMPERATURES ARRIVE THURSDAY MORNING.

DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE PRECIPITATION COULD FALL AT A HEAVY RATE LATE TONIGHT…THIS COULD RESULT IN SOME SNOW OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE AREA BY DAYBREAK THURSDAY… POSSIBLY IMPACTING THE MORNING COMMUTE.

CURRENTLY IT APPEARS THAT A COUPLE INCHES INCHES OF SNOW MAY ACCUMULATE BEFORE THE WINTRY MIX CHANGES TO ALL RAIN EARLY THURSDAY MORNING.

Odd forecast. Deuced odd, it is.

Speaking of odd, it took me nearly 40 years to get the following knock-knock joke, as told by Ted Baxter during the Sept. 13, 1975, episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Edie Gets Married.”

Not that I’ve been puzzling over it for 40 years. I’d forgotten all about it until today, walking around in the fairly pleasant afternoon air, when I thought, What did that joke about Anna Maria Alberghetti mean? Memory works in mysterious ways.

Just as unlikely, I remembered to look it up when I got home, connecting the joke to “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” which I’d heard before – but (much) more recently than 1975. It was clearly a joke for grownups back then, back when sitcom writers actually wrote jokes for grownups.

A lot of singers have done the song. Fats Domino’s version is here.

Despite Everything, Spectacle

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It’s a little unusual these days when we sit down to watch the same thing at the same time on TV, but it happened on Friday, when we saw a fair amount of NBC’s chopped up, dumbed down coverage of the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Despite the coverage, there was no denying the spectacle of the thing. Tsar Vladimir wanted spectacle, so there was spectacle, and hang the cost.

Spectacle is nothing new for Russia. It’s the country that gave us the Potemkin village, after all. (Spectacle, pseudo-spectacle, what’s the difference, as long as the tsar is pleased?) And who can forget those May Day parades with their ICBMs on wheels? That pleased the red tsars.

Note some of these pictures from the Sporting News, especially the shots of unfinished or poorly built Sochi toilets. Funny to see in photos, not so funny to find in your hotel room. Just carping by Westerners, no doubt. We have spectacle to put on, don’t bother Russia about plumbing details! It reminds me of the Hermitage. A spectacular building indeed, with a spectacular art collection. But – at least when I was there in 1994 – dank, crummy, hard-to-find bathrooms.

Why did NBC leave this out? It was part of the pre-ceremony festivities, but easy to include, since everything was on tape anyway. Maybe it was considered too surreal for mainstream tastes.

I enjoyed the Parade of Nations, especially the athletes walking over maps of their nations, projected somehow or other onto the floor of the stadium. Now that’s a great special effect. Glad to see minuscule Euro-nations in the Games, too — Andorra, Liechtenstein, even tiny San Marino (but it turns out that country’s been in the Winter Games since 1976). No one from the Vatican City, but I guess it would be hard to scare up an Olympic-class athlete from its 800-odd residents.

Also glad to see Togo in the parade. Go Togo! I cheer the sporting aspirations of Togo. One athlete, Alessia Afi Dipol, will be competing in two events for the country, women’s giant slalom and women’s slalom, while another athlete, Mathilde-Amivi Petitjean, will compete in the women’s 10 km classic cross-country skiing event.

Since Friday, I haven’t watched any of the coverage. For one thing, I’m not that excited about winter sports, but I also know how NBC will cover the Games: first, figure skating. Then some more figure skating. After that, a little speed skating, and hockey (if Team USA is in the medal rounds), and then some highlights from figure skating, even though that event is over, plus interviews with Team USA figure skaters, complete with more highlights of the event. With occasional coverage of death-defying sports, such as luge and skeleton, but not without constant yackety-yak commentary.

Send More Chuck Berry

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Time for another winter break. The better to admire the snow drifts and icy sidewalks and salty roads and bare trees. Back to posting around February 2 — when I’ll still be able to see those things out my window and under my feet.

I didn’t know until recently that Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” a fitting song for the pit of winter, was included on the Voyager Golden Record. But so it was. Dark is space, cold is the void.

This handy JPL web site tells us that Voyager I, for its part, is now 19+ billion km from the Earth, or more than 126 AU, with a round-trip light time from the Sun of more than 35 hours (so that would be about 17.5 light hours out — not even a light day). The thing’s been flying for over 36 years. Lesson: space is really big.

I did remember that “Johnny B. Goode” went with the Voyagers. Probably because of a SNL skit that mentioned it.

Kreeg Antwoord: You see, it all started on August 20th, 1977, when NASA put up a recording of the sounds of Earth on Voyager I. A two-hour long tape included natural sounds of animals, a French poem by Gaugliere, a passage from the Koran in Arabic, messages from President Carter, United Nations Secretary Kurt Waldheim, music — everything from classical to Chuck Berry.

Maxine Universe: Uh — and you’re saying that the — another civilization has found the tape?

Cocuwa: Yes. They’ve sent us a message that actually proves it. It may be just four simple words, but it is the FIRST positive proof that other intelligent beings inhabit the universe.

Maxine Universe: Uh — what are the four words, Cocuwa?

Cocuwa: The four words that came to us from outer space — the FOUR words that will appear on the cover of Time magazine next week — are [he holds up the magazine: Send More Chuck Berry].

Twilight Filler

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We’ve arrived in late January already, down in the bitter pit of winter a little early. Good thing it’ll warm up some later in the week — up toward, but not actually above, the freezing point of water. So the ice crystals I can see on my lawn will stick around a while.

I saw an episode of the original Twilight Zone the other day that I don’t ever remember seeing before, “The Mind and the Matter.” (Been a while since I’ve seen any episodes.) I looked it up later – the urge to do that is a minor curse of the Internet age – and found that it first aired the month before I was born, which was a mildly interesting thing to find out.

Mostly, though, the episode confirmed that every TV anthology is going to have filler. Except for a few moments, it was flat and uninspired, and the cheapness of the production – which often isn’t an issue in the series – was all too clear.

A generally forgotten comedian named Shelley Berman starred (still alive at 88, according to Wiki, and maybe sour about Bob Newhart’s success). He plays a miserable, misanthropic office drone who – with remarkable ease – learns to wish away the rest of the human population of his New York-like city. Almost immediately he’s bored, and decides to wish everyone else to be like him. Almost immediately after that, he discovers that a world of miserable misanthropes is no good either, so he puts everything back the way it was.

My question is, if suddenly everyone else is gone, why would you report to the office to do any work, which is what he does? (Because the show didn’t have money for another set.) And why wouldn’t you be concerned, even in passing, that the utilities would soon go out? Maybe the idea was that this fellow has no imagination whatsoever, but if so, I’m supposed to be sympathetic with that? Never mind. Filler isn’t worth thinking about too hard.

Life on Mars

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I saw a car in a parking lot the other day with a license plate frame that said MANCHESTER UNITED. Not something you see too much here in the heart of darkest North America, but maybe an expat Englishman drives that car. Or, in the Internet age, a local enthusiast who’s become a long-distance supporter.

Which makes me wonder: are there (say) Packer fans in the UK? Probably a few.

Speaking of Manchester, I managed to watch the first episode of the British Life on Mars not long ago, which adeptly combines cop show and SF. A modern-day (2006, anyway) Manchester policeman finds himself transported to an earlier time (1973, as it happens). Or does he? When I have time, I’ll make my way through the entire series, which is only 16 episodes.

My Own 1968

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Finally this week Mad Men got around to something I remember, namely the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I don’t remember much about it, but I did think about it the next morning.

I also don’t know what conclusions I reached, but I was learning (without realizing it) that out in the wider world, it’s just one damn thing after another. Not much that happened in 1968 would lead to another conclusion.

I remember the assassination of Robert Kennedy better, because I got up early the next morning and turned on the TV. Regular programming was off the air — maybe I was expecting Captain Kangaroo — and some kind of bulletin was in its place.

The talk was about Kennedy’s death, and I was confused, since I was sure he’d died quite a long time before.

Tuesday Orts

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I hadn’t heard that Jonathan Winters had died until this evening. I hadn’t known he was still alive, but then again his most recent roles seemed to involve voicing Grandpa Smurf, something I would never have known without reading his obit. When I was young, though, he seemed to pop up on TV a lot without warning.

But that’s understandable. A gig is a gig. As funnymen of my parents’ generation go, he aged a lot better than most.

The MIT Center for Real Estate is a big deal in real estate education. It educates real estate pros and generates some interesting real estate data. Also, MIT is also not known to be short on its endowment. So how is it that the latest thing on center’s web site, under the “News and Events” section, is dated November 30, 2011? How it is that the newsletters produced by the center stop around the same time? Did the person who was maintaining it leave, and the organization couldn’t be bothered with it afterwards? I can see that for a small organization on a shoestring — in which case the site shouldn’t promise “news” — but MIT?

More than 30 years ago, I spent a few days camped out in a dorm room at MIT. I noticed a few things while there, such as that everyone on the hall went to the common room to watch an afternoon showing of Star Trek, and everyone knew the lines. (The original series; because this was 1982, the only series. Patrick Stewart was still just a Shakespearean actor who’d played Sejanus for the BBC.)

I discovered that there’s a major collection of samurai armor and art in Dallas, of all places. At the newly opened Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection. I mentioned that to Ed, who’s familiar with the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Switzerland, and he said, ” If it came out of the Barbier, odds are, it’s better than anything you saw in Japan.”

Another thing to see. But at least it’s easier to go to Dallas than, say, Geneva.