Beginning at 6PM MST, DirecTV will offer it’s Election Mix channel — channel 352 — with feeds from eight networks so you can switch easily to the commentator that annoys you the least.
Category: Television & Radio
Redux line of the day
“Now when I try to watch there is so much scrolling and popping up that I can’t see the play on my television. I don’t care that LaDainian Tomlinson has two receptions for 8 yards in the first quarter of another game that I am not even watching.
“There’s a reason why people watch TV — because they don’t want to read.”
Comedian Lewis Black on “Inside the NFL” on HBO quoted via Sideline Chatter.
First posted here three years ago today.
Two best lines
“1) Given that Palin is now personally responsible for saving Katie Couric’s job, is there any kickback scheme in the offing?”
. . .
“3) Do we really know whether or not Sarah Palin is Sacha Baron Cohen’s greatest role?”
Prime time
Barack Obama’s audience for his acceptance speech likely topped 40 million people, and the Democratic gathering that nominated him was a more popular television event than any other political convention in history.
More people watched Obama speak from a packed stadium in Denver on Thursday than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final “American Idol” or the Academy Awards this year, Nielsen Media Research said Friday. …
…
Through four days, the Democratic convention was seen in an average of 22.5 million households. No other convention — Republican or Democratic — had been seen in as many homes since Nielsen began keeping these records for the Kennedy-Nixon campaign in 1960. There weren’t enough television sets in American homes to have possibly beaten this record in years before that.
Yahoo! News
One hour into the Olympic opening ceremony….
James Fallows watches the Olympics opening ceremony in real time and tells you what to look for when you watch it 11 hours later in NBC time.
The first 35 minutes sound awesome!
Free at last
No more Comcast at Casa NewMexiKen. I have installed Qwest high-speed internet (fiber optic) and it seems at least as fast, even much faster. (How does one tell for sure? And how much does it matter anyway?)
It’s definitely cheaper!
DirecTV delayed until Wednesday due to installation limitations. (That pesky HOA.) Guess I can continue to blog, as potatoing on the couch not much fun with only 10 channels.
You people are so boring
… that after two-and-a-half years without cable TV I’ve ordered DirecTV (and Qwest Fiber-optic internet). You’ll miss me when I’m a couch potato instead of a blogger.
I had to renew my vehicle registration this month. Every year I just renew for one year instead of two because I figure I’m due — now after seven years — for a new car. (I had the last one seven years before I got this one.) Anyway I went over to the air inspection place, got the necessary inspection, came home and registered the car online. Altogether, 30 minutes — it was 3:14 when I left and 3:44 when I started updating this post.
Registration in New Mexico is $51 a year (unless you have a special license plate). There are no other taxes or fees for cars that I know of. How much do you pay?
This plate is $37 extra. I think about it — and then figure, who cares.
Most revealing line of the day
“But as far as sitting down and watching a sporting event, that’s just not part of my day, it’s not part of my night, and, ahh, I’ll be honest with you, watching The Bachelorette is.”
Joe Buck, Fox Sports’ lead announcer for Major League Baseball and the NFL, on ESPN Radio’s The Herd via Awful Announcing.
NewMexiKen wrote this about Buck six months ago (January 6, 2008):
I’m thinking that Joe Buck doesn’t actually like sports. He likes the life — he learned that from his dad, and he can recite from his notes with the best of them (and then some), but I don’t think he actually likes sports (the game on the field). He got into this because it was the family business.
The ‘Real’ Ron Burgundy Passes Away
Take me out to the ballgame
This item was first posted here four years ago. I had found it at “Morning Briefing” in the Los Angeles Times.
There was an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO in February in which Larry David, the show’s star, creator and executive producer, took a lady of the evening to a Dodger game so he could use the carpool lane on the freeway.
Footage shot at Dodger Stadium for that show, The Times and other media outlets reported recently, exonerated Juan Catalan, who had been charged with murder.
Outtakes, viewed by Catalan’s attorney, showed that Catalan, as he had maintained, was at the Dodger game last May at the time he was accused of committing the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley.
As a result, a judge set Catalan free.
The National Open Championship
NewMexiKen has been watching sports for at least 56 years that I can remember and while fully understanding the emotion that makes the contest du jour the event of the century, I must say that the past three days of U.S. Open coverage have been absolutely compelling. It just doesn’t get any better.
91st hole, sudden death. Woods putts for win, misses, then taps in. Mediate putts to tie (and continue the match).
P.S. The four most dramatic putts in memory (on 18) and the imbeciles who manage the local NBC affiliate run a programming crawl that cancels out the high definition picture, then forget to change back until Woods and Mediate have finished.
Fire his ass this time, too
“So — but my point in telling you this is that there must be real animosity toward the Clintons at high levels of this party. To go with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he’s black.”
Rush Limbaugh, June 2
When Limbaugh made the same kind of remark about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, he was fired from ESPN’s Sunday Night Countdown. Football, now that’s religion in America. You’re gone if you make a blatantly racist remark.
Who gets elected president, say what you will.
Dick Martin
Comedian Dick Martin died Saturday at age 86. Martin’s biggest claim to fame by far was the TV show Laugh-In that ran 1968-1973. Martin is on the right with partner Dan Rowan.
Is she still Goldie Hawn, or do we just call her Kate Hudson’s mother now?
Heeeerrrreeee’s Johnny
Johnny Carson last hosted The Tonight Show 16 years ago today. The mental_floss Blog has “5 Memorable Moments from The Tonight Show.” Videos.
Obscenity
You know, you can’t say “fuck” on the radio, but here’s a real obscenity —
“The poor guy’s been suffering for years, you know? Unfairly he’s been accused of alcoholism, but we see now that it was something much more deep-seated. And so, to cut this out in some respect for Ted Kennedy, here’s a tune coming at you from the Dead Kennedys. Go ahead and play it, please.”
Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage yesterday, the day Senator Edward Kennedy’s tumor was announced.
Idolatry
In last week’s New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones had an interesting profile of American Idol. It included:
“Idol” watchers have been trained to think about aesthetic concepts like arrangement and song choice, and, by the time the judges weigh in, we have already been sorting out our thoughts. The viewers need compete only with Cowell; Jackson and Abdul both give us plenty of opportunities to feel superior. The self-flummoxing Abdul is physically incapable of not reassuring the contestants. One of the few variables that Jackson seems able to track is pitch.
Fun
New Mac ads. I like this one best, but watch them all.
Oh, BTW, some HBO shows are now available from iTunes.
Best line of last night
“And sadly, the ‘father of LSD’ is dead.” He “has died at the age of 102. But the good news, the ‘mother of LSD,’ still alive and working as a judge on ‘American Idol.'”
Jay Leno
What do you think?
I gotta find another way to spend my time (rather than blogging)
Here’s the top four search strings in the past few hours here at NewMexiKen:
katrina campins 306
virgen de guadalupe 13
warning sign 11
“katrina campins” 9
Katrina Campins was among the first group on the Apprentice. It’s no doubt her photo they want now. I’m guessing this is the one.
I feel used. I’ve never posted that photo or linked to it before. The one I have that gets the traffic headed this way is, I suppose, this one from four years ago.
Hey Albuquerque Comcast customers
You really should see the Masters in HD. It’s awesome.
[To explain, the CBS channel here is not in HD on Comcast; some sort of contract dispute. I am watching a free HD signal through rabbit ears.]
Hmmm, let me think about that while you put on your sweater
“The presence of a grandparent confirms that parents were, indeed, little once, too, and that people who are little can grow to be big, can become parents, and one day even have grandchildren of their own. So often we think of grandparents as belonging to the past; but in this important way, grandparents, for young children, belong to the future.”
— Fred Rogers, born 80 years ago today.
Around 35 years ago NewMexiKen (I was just Ken then) wrote Mr. Rogers a letter. I thought the way two elderly characters were portrayed on the show was silly, especially the old messenger Mr. McFeely (McFeely by the way was Rogers’s middle name).
I received back a five paragraph letter, apparently from Fred Rogers himself (and oddly not dated). The man took the time to respond to my criticism in a thoughtful way that — at least it seems to me — showed the type of class he evidenced in everything he ever did. Read for yourself his reply. Click each image for larger version.
Best line of the morning, so far
“Adams was famously (infamously?) sardonic and pompous. Convinced that he was the smartest guy in the room, even when the other occupants included Franklin and Jefferson…”
Ari at The Edge of the West panning Paul Giamatti’s portrayal.
OK, OK this is absolutely the last item about this year’s Oscars
Reality TV
NewMexiKen has come up with a sure-fired idea for a new reality TV series. I don’t want to give too much away while I search for backers, but what I’m thinking is a combination of “Cops” and “Supernanny.” This supernanny will prowl high schools, movie theater lobbies and, of course, malls looking for unruly teenagers.
Big deal you say. Ah, yes, but here’s the attraction. Starring as the supernanny will be Javier Bardem in his Oscar-winning characterization of Anton Chigurh.