Okay, awhile ago, I mentioned that the cable network in our area was being rebuilt.
Ongoing situation: basic cable in our non-rebuilt area is a weird hodgepodge of crap and the only way to get a different list of channels is by getting digital cable. Period. We were on digital cable (basically so I could watch the Farscape episodes on rerun every day), but when I got laid off in January we switched to basic. Since then, we just haven’t been able to justify going back. (Because Farscape is only-just-barely not worth the extra 30 bucks a month. It is also not worth 25 bucks for DVDs containing only 2 episodes — sales departments take heed).
This has all changed with the rebuild. For not-much-more, we can have the channels we’re interested in; we just hadn’t gotten around to ordering it. There was some impetus added last week when the rebuild finally kicked in and we dropped down to REAL ‘basic’ service instead of the un-moderated open feed, which cost us Animal Planet and ESPN (nasty, since football season is coming up), but since Trading Spaces was still there (Jackie checked), it wasn’t that bad. According to my wife, the channels died at 24, just after MTV. Life continued.
Then a funny thing happened.
Jackie and Justin had gone off to the store on Sunday afternoon, and I was hanging out on the couch with my good buddy the sinus headache, and I did something I just… never do.
I channel surfed.
With a range from 2 to 23, minus 5 (Skinemax), 14 (Starz), 15 (HBO), and 18 (who knows?), it didn’t take long: I went from the WB’s Sunday Matinee up to Road Rules and back down again.
Then, at the bottom of the dial, I hit the down arrow, and wrapped around to channel 61… and there was something there.
What’s this?
My thumb continued to tap along as I scrolled past a cooking show, WGN, and few other forgettable bits.
50… espanol.
49…
48…
48?
There’s picture. There’s sound. There’s a familiar little saturn-shaped logo in the bottom righthand corner. Score!
The channels died out again at 47.
Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
I. Want.
*hack*
So, after some deliberation, I pick my team name for the Weblogger Fantasy Football League.
It’s a really appropriate name for my team.
Oh… my… bubbles…
Dear sweet god in heaven, thank you for the Angels.
(via xkot, bless ‘im)“Check out the feature on muzzle velocity…”
A few days ago, I found Jackie downstairs watching TV. I asked what was on (it was on a commercial break), expecting the standard Trading Spaces answer.
“A special on Kevlar.”
“On what?”
“Kevlar. The stuff they use to –”
“I know what it is, why are you watching it?”
She shrugged. I went back upstairs. Today I asked her about it again.
“I just feel like I’m in the dark about body armor compared to everyone else [that we know].”
A telling statement about us and our friends, to be sure.
How is this possible?
Susan Lyne, president of ABC Entertainment, told reporters that ABC’s spy series Alias will take on a new level of complexity in its upcoming sophomore season. The mind boggles.
This announcement has sparked a small, panicked avalanche of copycats “making something that already is incredibly __________ even more incredibly __________” in arenas outside of television. Sources report that Dick Cheney plans to have small devil’s horns in the shape of nuclear warheads surgically attached to his head, George Bush is scheduled for a full frontal lobotomy, and Big Oil and the American Tobacco Growers Association have revealed (in a prepared joint-statement which closely matched the original ABC template) that they plan to “take on a new level of rapacious self-interest in the coming year”.
Review
So, went to see Mr. Deeds tonight with a couple free movie passes. I’ll provide a short review (sure, you’ve probably either already seen it or aren’t going to, I know… I just feel like talking about it), but let me first frame this up for you:
I don’t worship Adam Sandler. Little Nicky was an abomination, for example. That said, I’ve enjoyed several of his movies (I quote lines from Happy Gilmore under my breath while golfing far too often.) Everyone clear? You know where I stand?
Okay, the review: I think this is probably the best Sandler movie. If you liked The Wedding Singer, you’ll like this — it has the same feel-good vibe with Sandler playing a genuinely nice guy (no dumb voices, no abject stupidity, etc.). It’s upbeat, it’s funny.
Still not convinced? Okay, here comes the big guns:
John Turturro, whom you might remember as Pete Hogwallop in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (“Do Not… Seek… the Treasure…”) plays Emilio, the spanish butler.
He’s a genius. There are other reasons that this is now my favorite Sandler movie, but if you removed all the rest of them and left Turturro playing Emilio, it’d still win by a nose. Great stuff.
“Actually, I’m just from Heck”
In other news, I watched From Hell last night. Very much like Sleepy Hollow in that Depp was great, the female lead was interesting-looking but not compelling, the cinematography was good, the story was quite predictable and a fine actor was under-used in his role as the bad guy.
I did like how many of the various historical Ripper theories/possible suspects they managed to work into the overall story. That was interesting, as was the secret society stuff that underlit the whole thing — I’ve been a sucker for that sort of thing since the first time I saw the fnords.