Category Archives: TV
My New Best Friend
Maps showing what games are scheduled to be televised in that area.
What do the grey areas mean?
Welcome to the world of blackout rules. The short answer is: no game at all. This can be due to one of two rules: a) no games can air at the same time as a local team’s home game on another network, or b) if a game is blacked out because it doesn’t sell out, the network with the doubleheader can only show one game. Don’t shoot the messenger, I think the rules are stupid too.
Preach it, brother. I’m glad the Redskins have improved to the point that they will have some prime-time games, because that means no blackout on Sunday.
via Daring Fireball
D'oh Say Can You See
Map of Springfield and an interactive version (the website mentioned on the map leads to a dead-end)
via Neatorama
Please Tell Me You Don't Teach Math
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Absurdly Implausible Excess in the NY Times discusses “Nuking the Fridge,” the expression spawned from some inanity in the latest Indiana Jones flick.
Jason Nicholl, a 37-year-old high school teacher who runs one of the sites, said he went to a message board shortly after the new “Indiana Jones” film was released and saw that the phrase had already caught on. He thought it was likely to be more than a passing fad.
“‘Jump the shark’ is for people over the age of 60, who remember the show,” he said, adding that “nuke the fridge” was a “new, fresh take.”
Wait, what? I remember the show, and have a ways to go before I hit 60. Happy Days ran from 1974-1984 and it literally and figuratively jumped the shark in 1977. You don’t remember the show if you were born after 1948? Nobody who was under the age of 26 when it first aired remembers the show?
All Thumbs
Roger Ebert reminisces about Gene Siskel, following the announcement that Ebert & Roeper were leaving the show.
The first time they appeared on the Johnny Carson show:
We were scared out of our minds. We’d been briefed on likely questions by one of the show’s writers, but moments before airtime he popped his head into the dressing room and said, “Johnny may ask you for some of your favorite movies this year.”
Gene and I stared at each other in horror. “What was one of your favorite movies this year?” he asked me. “Gone With the Wind,” I said. The Doc Severinsen orchestra had started playing the famous “Tonight Show” theme. Neither one of us could think of a single movie. Gene called our office in Chicago. “Tell me some movies we liked this year,” he said. This is a true story.
I liked their — unlike everybody else, who would just criticize, they’d bother to tell you if they liked the movie, even if it wasn’t great cinema.
Put Your Hand Up My Back and I'll Sing Along
Rockin’ with the Muppets on Sesame Street
Feist, counting to four
R.E.M. singing “Furry Happy Monsters”
via Madam Lamb
Boom De Yada
Say it Ain't So, Joe!
Er, Marlin.
As part of its case, ”Cruel Camera” showed scenes from that much-beloved series ”Wild Kingdom.” It was broadcast regularly on NBC from 1968 through ’71, and then went into syndication, although new episodes were produced through 1978. How did ”Wild Kingdom” rescue a bear, apparently stranded in a swamp? Someone pushed the bear overboard and scared him half to death first. How do you get an alligator to attack a water moccasin? Tie a string to the water moccasin’s tail; throw him out and reel him in. Wait long enough, and the alligator will attack the water moccasin out of sheer boredom or exasperation.
Oh, man, I did not need to know this. But now that I do, I’m not keeping it to myself.
Via Bug Girl, who asks
Is this just a cost of doing business? Or is it that we prefer our nature television like we prefer our porn?
Everything is pretty, the narrative is simple, and there are lots of money shots. It’s close up, sped up, and set to music. There is always a climax to the story.
And they’re faking it.
Cut! Print! That's a Wrap!
McKee examines story-telling like a biologist dissecting a rat. But after taking it apart, he explains how to build a story yourself using rules that wouldn’t look out of place in a computer programming text book.
[. . .]
Using McKee’s rules they compare the script of the film Casablanca, a classic pre-McKee movie, with scripts of six episodes of CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), a classic post-Mckee production, and find numerous similarities.That’s hardly surprising since McKee learnt his trade analysing films such as Casablanca, so anything written using his rules should have these similarities.
I also note that one of the producers for CSI has a PhD in applied physics. Chicken? Egg? Common cause?
(Not to name drop, but I went to high school with this person, and actually helped, in some small way, with the first script he wrote)
"Land, Land. . . Ah, Land: see Snatch."
Oh, boy, was he strict. Harvey Korman, 1927-2008
I remember watching him on the Carol Burnett Show, trying not to laugh at something Tim Conway had done or said. That was as funny as the rest of the stuff.