Celebrity Sighting

The Wife has become something of an expert about this Sarah Palin woman who's been in the news lately. A few week ago she appeared on CNN Headline News to give the Working Mother perspective. She was such a star they asked her back but she wasn't able to go on. Last night, The Wife was a person on the street for Entertainment Tonight. By a startling coincidence they had just interviewed her boss at her magazine and both people on the street were staffers. What are the odds of that? They also said they interviewed her in Times Square even though she is clearly across the street from Grand Central Station. Well, it's an easy mistake to make. The point is I'm proud of The Wife.

Last night, people started to call saying they had seen The Wife on Entertainment Tonight but when we watched it, she wasn't on! I guess they must re-edit the show during the day but New York gets the earlier version? It makes no sense to me. Luckily, our buddy JoEllen taped the show and sent us a copy. The Wife shows up at the 1:01 mark.

GBF!

As I often say, God Bless Football! Not only do we get football but we get fantasy football, videogame football and the endlessly fascinating NFL TV Distribution Maps website. This year they've upgraded to Google Maps which are a bit poky right now but are still endlessly fascinating. Why is San Diego getting Kansas City at New England while the rest of the west is getting Jets at Miami? Is Los Angeles getting the Saints game because of Reggie Bush? And when did Brian Billick start announcing games. Who knows? It's all about the question not the answer.

You also get a forum with post comments like "On another note, the last time Cincinnati got the Bills on FOX was Week #3 of 2003 vs Philadelphia." and "What game did Cincinnati get in Week 7 of 2003 at 4:15, CHI-SEA or TB-SF, since it wasn't WSH-BUF?"

American Life Television: Thursday and Friday

American Life's Thursday night lineup is composed of juvenile 60s sci-fi (Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and it would be easy to knock their predictable plots, cheap sets and poor acting but they have a nice energy and I don't think anyone's expecting too much when they put these shows on. They are what they are and it couldn't of been easy putting together 39 hour-long shows every season on a tiny budget. At the end of a long day I'd be perfectly happy to crack open a brewski and veg out in front of any of them. But why the producers of Time Tunnel thought it was a good idea to put Lee Meriweather in a lab coat and stick her behind a desk I'll never know.

Why are these shows on Thursday night? Because if you combine the creepiness of Land of the Giants, the technology of Lost In Space, the time travelling of Time Tunnel (three shows about people who can't get home) and the ocean of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea you get Lost.

Friday night is 60s Icons Night meaning Batman, The Color Honeymooners and The Green Hornet. I don't believe any of these shows are 60s icons. Let's examine these shows one by one.

Batman: An eternal classic, one of the all-time great TV shows. It was always in reruns when I was a kid and I kept falling in and out of love with it as I got older. First I liked it for itself, then I didn't like the camp, then I did like the camp, then I didn't like it and now I like the whole thing. Batman isn't a 60s icon, he's an eternal icon. Here's a story from Mark Harris' excellent book Pictures at a Revolution: "Other directors assumed [Spencer] Tracy was simply no longer functional; at the time [Stanley] Kramer approached him, the only other call he had gotten for a job was from William Dozier, the producer of ABC's campy, popular Batman series. "[He] said, 'Didn't I have a grandchild who'd get a kick out of seeing grandpa as a cameo on Batman,' " grumbled the actor. "Wasn't even one of those villain things." Spencer Tracy knew there was a Batman show and knew there were guest star villains, that's awesome.

The Color Honeymooners: I can't get past two minutes of this show without wanting to pound my head into a wall and end the pain. Take a claustrophobic show about people yelling at each other and pad it out with songs. Great. The Honeymooners are 50s icons if that.

The Green Hornet: I coudn't wait to see The Green Hornet. I'd seen the crossover episode of Batman where the Green Hornet is introduced many times but I'd never seen the show until American Life started running it. This is a terrible show. Every scene seems to take place in muddy day-for-night lighting and there are endless fights and chase scenes which are endless themselves. I think there maybe was a 10-page script for every episode. But the show's biggest crime is undoubtedly the waste of Bruce Lee's talents. Bruce Lee playing Cato is like keeping Michael Jordan on the bench or building an atomic bomb and never testing it. I still get worked up just thinking about it. Bruce Lee, people, Bruce Lee.

Anyway, Green Hornet is a 30s icon, if that.

I hope you've enjoyed my look at American Life Television, they have a bizarre and entertaining website you should check out. If you love Susan Sarandon, Bobby Nystrom and lorem ipsum it's not to be missed.

Bruce Lee, people, Bruce Lee.

American Life Television: Tuesday & Wednesday Nights

Tuesday night on American Life is "Greatest Generation" night and I've never watched and don't have much to say about any of these shows except if you didn't grow up with Rat Patrol reruns on at 4 A.M. on weeknights and 5 P.M. on Sunday afternoons you didn't grow up in America, buddy.

Wednesday night is the best night of the week because it's Spinoff Night! The spinoffs are are Lou Grant (spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore) and Trapper John, MD (spinoff of MASH). Lou Grant was on for five seasons and Trapper John for seven, numbers that shocked me when I looked it up. It seems a show would have more effect on the popular imagination if they were on for so long but I guess not. I probably never would have remembered there was ever a Trapper John, MD show if American Life hadn't of started showing these reruns. Both are pretty typical shows for the late 70s-early 80s with issue-oriented episodes, stuffy authority figures (why do they hate you, Dr. Riverside?), undeveloped, too small supporting casts and cheap sets. Both are hour-long dramas and not half-hour sitcoms like their original shows.

The Wife and I love the kitschy appeal of Trapper John, MD but most of all we love the theme song. Let 'er rip! Pretty good, no? This is the jazzed-up second-season version. It's funky, exciting and has nothing at all to do with the show. Maybe they wanted to wake up the audience of people watching TV at 10 P.M. waiting for digital cable to be invented. And to make it even better the musical cues during the show are all riffs off of the opening theme. So you get to hear sad, tense and bouncy versions of the theme during the episode.

Here's the Lou Grant opening and theme song. You get the entire history of a newspaper from tree to birdcage liner. What's the point of that? Why does the theme tell you it all means nothing? That might be appropriate on The Office but why on a show where the main characters battle a corrupt system every week.

American Life Television: Monday Night

Monday night on American Life is their best night. It boasts "The Greatest Comedies" which are Newhart, The Bob Newhart Show, Mary Tyler Moore and WKRP in Cincinnati. This is a very impressive lineup. My only question is what is the Mary Tyler Moore show doing on American Life? It's one of the greatest television shows of all-time. Have DVD shows so saturated the appetite of America no one will pay top dollar for this show? I guess so. When I grew up The Odd Couple, the greatest show ever, was on four times a day and now it's not even on television. Sadly, my children won't know the pleasure of coming home from school, watching Mary Tyler Moore at 4:00 and The Bob Newhart Show at 4:30 (unless something good was on the 4:30 Movie). I look forward to my daughter Gwendolyn's blog in 2030 about how there aren't good infomercials or court shows on television anymore.

There's not much to be said about the Newharts and Mary Tyler Moore. I think they stand the test of time and have great casts especially the underappreciated Ted Knight and Suzanne Pleshette. But like many of my friends I have a special place in my heart for WKRP, the struggling rock station trying to make it in an uncaring, uncool world. If you are now too old for Obama and too young for Clinton or had a zine or liked that band before they hit it big this was probably the show that spoke to you. Anyway, it a great show even though much of the original music has been replaced.

American Life Television: Sunday Night

American Life Television claims to be "for baby boomers and their babies". The Wife and I are neither but we love it anyway. On Time Warner Cable it's on channel 153 and for some reason the channel guide has the NBA League Pass logo instead of the actual logo. They really should do something about that.

There's a continuing cycle in cable television. In the beginning stations start out with cheap reruns of shows and then gradually find a niche or a successful show and build from there. When I watched A&E in 1990 it showed The Second Hundred Years and other shows I'd only read about in Television encyclopedias. Then came Biography and look at it now. The same thing for the Sci-Fi Channel a few years later. They used to buy up any sci-fi show they could find, an all the better if it only lasted nine episodes. Now there is American Life Television.

Every night on American Life is theme night and Sunday night is "Greatest Dramas Night" or as I like to call it "Pretentious 80s NBC Television Night". Back before television got really good about ten years ago there were a few outposts of "culture" that critics and people who watched a lot of TV would point out as important and necessary to save every year when schedules came out. I've never liked these shows.

First off is Hill Street Blues which was a about a "typical" police precinct in a "typical" big city. There were good cops who were somber and filled with self-doubt and the bad cops who were caricatures. And remember when Daniel J. Travanti was a big star? I haven't thought of that guy in years. Go on, click on the link, I know you're dying to find out what happened to him.

Next up is L.A. Law which I watched consistently for a little while. It had a nice technique of having multiple continuing storylines at different stages so, for example, the Susan Dey story might be starting while the Corbin Bernsen and Jill Eikenberry stories were in the middle and the Blair Underwood storyline was reaching it's climax. I watched L.A. Law for a few months until I missed a few episodes and forgot about it. Still, I remember some cringe-worthy "very special episodes" about drunk driving ("I only got off because I'm a lawyer, there's something wrong with the system.") and the Rodney King beating. It might have been a great show if it hadn't of taken itself so seriously.

The final show is St. Elsewhere. I know this is a kind of sacrilege but I can't stand this show. It is that brand of realism where realism is equated with bad things happening. One of the few episodes I watched had a painful reconciliation between father and son ending in the son driving home, falling asleep at the wheel and getting in an deadly accident. I bet they were really proud of that one.

The irony of course is that these shows which were considered so advanced now seem clunky and cheap compared to the best shows of he past ten years like The Sopranos, Law & Order, Rescue Me, West Wing and Lost (and that doesn't include shows I haven't seen but people tell me are great like The Wire, Battlestar Gallactica and The Gilmore Girls) which is why they are on Channel 153 with the NBA League Pass logo.

What the Hell Happened to Star Trek?

So, I'm forcing my family to watch Space Seed last night and I noticed that all the special effects have been redone. All the shots of the Enterprise and the Botany Bay look like CGI. It's very disconcerting since I grew up thinking spaceships were grainy and you could see the boxes around their mattes. What the hell happened? I could Google it but since I haven't gotten any comments in ages I'm counting on you, the fans.

By the way, Star Trek needs to be released on DVD with a commentary by Gwendolyn. Who wouldn't want to watch a show with this in the background:

"Daddy, which ones are the good guys? Is he a good guy? Where are they going? Now, where are they going? Which ship are they on? Which one is the bad guy? Who's he? Is everyone in a red shirt shirt a bad guy? Is he the leader? Why did he hit him? Is she a bad guy?"

NFL TV Distribution Maps

I love this website. It tells what NFL games are being telecast all over the country. I like it not just to find out what games are being shown in New York (Washington at Jets at 1 PM and the big Patriot-Colt game at 4. Since the Jets are at home there's no Fox game at 1 even though the Giants are off. The NFL won't show a game against a home game which sucks if you live in New York where we have two teams. This rule is particularly annoying since a)The home teams always sell out and b)I never go to football games. I should mention I will be at a christening on Sunday and couldn't watch the game anyway.) but these maps are highly entertaining in their own right.

This week there's no non-HD game but it's always fun to see what will be the one none-HD CBS game. Sadly, it's The Wife's beloved Cleveland Browns almost every week. Is there any excuse for not having every game in HD? I bought my HDTV for sports and I can't even watch non-HD sports at this point. Spend the money for the equipment, CBS!

I like finding oddball scheduling to show hometown heroes. Austin will get the Carolina/Tennessee game to see Vince Young even though most of the rest of Texas sees Green Bay vs. Kansas City and southern Mississippi gets to see local boy Brett Favre.

Why is Miami seeing Green Bay/Kansas City instead of the Tampa Bay game? Kansas City isn't even a divisional rival of the Dolphins. Are they that alienated from northern Florida?

Next week's Patriot/Colt game will be shown nationally except in Houston (playing at Oakland) and Cleveland which is hosting Seattle on Fox. Sorry, guys. Thanks to the handy chart at the bottom we can see northern California came to their senses and will get the big game instead of the Raiders game which is expected to be blacked out. You could really piss some people off in the Bay Area by buying the remaining tickets and forcing them to show the local game!

H.B.No

Ugh. Our free HBO finally went out Saturday after three plus weeks. Anyone know if I missed anything big this weekend?

Hug it Out, Bitch

I love Entourage, or Entourajjjj as Michael Scott calls it. In fact I think I relate to it more than anything else on television. I'd take it over Sopranos, Sex in the City or The Office in a second.

What's that? A 40-year old middle-class dad in Brooklyn relates to the Hollywood hipsters on Entourage? Are you insane? We all know I'm not from Holywood. Let me explain.

There's a lot going for Entourage. Last night's episode was the best yet. The cast is excellent; plenty has been written about Jeremy Piven but Kevin Dillon is gloriously over-the-top as Johnny Drama, Kevin Connolly is dead-on as Eric and who can resist Adrian Grenier's limpid pools? The cameos are entertaining and much better done than in season one, it's a great parody of celebrity culture, a window on behind-the-scenes Hollywood, the scripts are funny and the plot is engaging. There's lots of hot women, too.

But Entourage is really about stress.

Every episode is a pressure cooker, there are deals, deals within deals, competing agendas, a sense of having no idea what you are doing, a hostile outside world waiting for you to fail and often conspiring against you. The show is filled with ticking clocks, ticking clocks inside ticking clocks (a recent episode had a deal that had to be concluded by sundown but it was Yom Kippur and two Jewish characters had to walk between temples working it.). It's all contained within the giant ticking clock of Vincent's ephemeral career.

That's my fucking life. I rush everywhere to hurry up some more. Too much of my life is controlled by other people. I need a flow chart to keep track of the possibilities for my daughter's pre-K. My building is a money pit filled with neighbors who are always looking for ways to spend money. My life alternately goes in fast forward and slow motion and nobody totally gets it or can help me as much as I want. And there's not enough time to don everything much less do it right. I'm also the happiest I've ever been,
I just with I had an Ari Gold to make all my difficult phone calls for me.

Now I just have to hope my free HBO holds out (See? More stress!).