Why do ribs always lose to PB&J with the crusts cut off?
Living the rough and tumble, high adventure lifestyle I do, it's very dfficult for me to sit and watch a little TV at night. I catch a show now and then, but I increasingly rely on DVR to bank what I care to see. Which, alas, isn't as much as I feared it might be- mainly because most of TV sucks so mightily.
So OK, I sit and spend 10 minutes a week scrolling through the menu, finding shows and movies Lady Lethal or I might care about, and set them up to record. It's in that way that it really hits home how just criminally poor television programming is, and the amount of garbage viewers will tolerate.
Case in point: several days ago I was home in the pm, flipping around, and there was Superfly on Cinemax. How I missed it in previous scan/record sessions I don't know, but there it was. Once. One time only, on a random Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I was pissed because I missed it, and an opportunity to conduct a side project I've been considering for awhile now (viewing with a stopwatch to record how much of the film is devoted to showing the front end of Priest's car as he drives around. Seriously.)
What really gets under my skin is that I can catch Top Gun, Major League, and A League of Their Own in any language seemingly at any moment on about any movie channel. Look, we've all seen them. Many, many, many times. And I think each brings their own value or insight to the medium, particularly Top Gun's exploration of gay military aviators. That's super.
But why do choice flicks like Superfly have to get the Shaft every time?
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(viewing with a stopwatch to
The answer is six hours, forty-two minutes and three seconds. In a film of less than two hours.
You could also do the same thing with a stopwatch for Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song to measure how much time the protagonist spends screwing a) hookers and b) white women. Seriously.
If you've got the DVR hookup, here's what I think you cannot miss, unless you have better things to do.
- My Name is Earl, NBC Tuesday 9 PM
- The Office, NBC Tuesday 9:30 PM
- Scrubs, NBC whenever they decide to start the damn season already!
- Battlestar Galacaticatica, of course
- Reruns of Futurama! on the Cartoon Network (or is it Sci-Fi?)
- Judge Judy
I also enjoy Arrested
I also enjoy Arrested Development. I don't watch much network tv - though I have started watching the Rome series on HBO. Pretty impressive, and fairly bloody. I dig it.
I tend to bank up on documentaries, and watch them when I've got a moment. Naked Science on National Geographic is pretty good. Ancient Discoveries has some neat stuff. And NOVA, of course.
Another fun show is Dirty Jobs. I forget the channel, but the host is a hoot.
Ack! Arrested Development,
Ack! Arrested Development, the sun in my sky, the gin in my vermouth, the gasoline in my hoverbike!
It has a clear shot at being one of the best shows of alll time.
I'm not watching TV with
I'm not watching TV with either of you.
Several people whose opinion I respect have recommended Arrested Development, but I have yet to watch a single episode. It's hard to get into it when everyone says I'm supopsed to be into it.
The BBC production of The Office is the best possible iteration of the concept. I saw the first Yank episode, and it blew: joke-for-joke bites off the original.
I'm off every show- EVERY show- about doctors, lawyers, and cops, including crime scene investigators and people training to be any of those things. That eliminates roughly 2/3 of all television programming right there.
I watched mebbe 10 minutes of one episode of Rome and decided I was finished with Romans, or other Classical characters, who speak with fake English accents. I just had it.
NOVA consistently disappoints me with their topics. I seem to recall cool shows about bears or whales and whatnot, but now it's more social biology and semi-history. Geh.
I think now the standing orders to the DVR are Cosmos, Family Guy, and South Park. I scroll through about 2 weeks' worth of The Military Channel and Turner Classic Movies for the rest.
The BBC production of The
Well, yeah. THey used the scripts from the original series for the first few episodes to set the tone, assuming that 99.9% of America hasn't seen the original. Trust me, they're off in their own thing now, and it's great. Very Scranton, I might add. Very Scranton.
I need to start watching that
I need to start watching that - I never saw the original, so I won't be messing up my head trying to compare the two.
Many years ago, back when I
Many years ago, back when I was cool, I lost the side mirror of my Z28 in the vicinity of Scranton.
The highway was so ludicrously damaged, as if a rocket attack had hit it minutes before, that the jarring and the craters actually knocked the glass out.
That's what Scranton means to me.
J,
J,
Besides, regarding "...assuming that 99.9% of America hasn’t seen the original", a similar proportion of people are douchebags anyway. Why should we care for their needs?
Patience, dear Geeklethal. We
Patience, dear Geeklethal. We shall drive the mass of humanity before our whips yet. But do realize that we, quasiomnipotent as we are, are still not the buyers of Charmin, Chryslers, and Geico who the television people must cater to when writing their shows.
We may not care for them, but we must accept the tyranny of the moron majority for the time being. At least until the coming of the giant space robots.
While I would like to be the
While I would like to be the first to welcome our giant space robot overlords, I hope they will be kind to the little people. For who wouldn't miss their silly antics?
"The Moron Majority".
"The Moron Majority".
I like that. And it cuts across party, social, class, and race lines too. It can apply to Greenwich WASPs as readily as it can to Newark thugs.
Brilliant.
Now- let's get them voting a straight non-Fuckwhytte ticket.