Around The Dial

Back in December I called my local cable operator and said, "Sign me up!"  $75 later and my soul was sold.  It had been a couple of years since I had cable, but I figured since I was making a little more money I could afford to pay close to fifty buck a months for something I don't care that much for.

After the cable was finally hooked up, I did a quick run through of all my channels and began the process of deleting all the shit from my TV's memory.  It started with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which isn't funny at all to me anymore, then MTV and VH1 and two, count 'em TWO, Lifetime channels.  After the first week I'd deleted a quarter of my channels.

The common thread between these channels is how much they annoy me.  I mean, why would I ever be curious about Bruce Jenner's family.  When "CHiPs" was cancelled I stopped caring about Bruce Jenner.  Little did I know that he was on every other channel that my cable provider provided in it's dirt-poor tier.  No, it is not literally Bruce Jenner on every other channel, but it may as well be.

Ahem, a Blog Update

The blog is still alive, just not all that active.  Plus the url has changed, mainly because I let the damn registration expire.  Now the name is in some kind of redemption period, and I've yet to figure out how the hell that works.  How do I redeem? No matter, right, because I'm not posting all that much.

Splash!

And That's the Way It Is

I have been mad at Walter Cronkite for years. Here's why: On December 10, 2003, John Glenn went back into space on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Cronkite, forever associated with the moon landing, provided commentary for the network providing the coverage I was watching. He waxed nostalgically about the Mercury program and Glenn and how the film The Right Stuff did a great disservice to the program by comparing the astronauts to monkeys.

It angered me that he said that about The Right Stuff, a film I've admired since I first viewed it many years ago. In my eyes, Cronkite came off looking like a senile old man who couldn't understand how much the film admired the astronauts, and couldn't understand the subtle social satire of a media and culture that didn't just admire the astronauts but attributed to them god-like celebrity. It bothered me that the "most trusted man in America" couldn't understand what I understood at a very early age.

Fun with Digital Television

So, I'm digital now. Or my TV is. Actually, I've been digital for a few months now, but as of midnight last Friday I could no longer toggle back and forth between digital and analog--meaning that I can no longer watch certain networks because of the poor reception in my apartment building.

One thing I've learned watching digital television is that I never really knew how shitty television could get. For instance, my local NBC affiliate is running an alternate channel called Retro Television Network. RTN is great if you like old episodes of Airwolf or Knight Rider or Emergency! Not only do you find out how shitty television can be, you realize how shitty is has always been.

I now have six--SIX!--religious channels. Trinity Broadcasting runs five different channels off of the local affiliate, and the ION affiliate (yes, this is a real network) has one of its four channels devoted entirely to religious programming.

In a fit of boredom yesterday, I stumbled across an infomercial on one of these religious networks. The infomercial was for a Christian comedian named Jeff Allen. He's not very funny, and he's prone to making strange faces, but not in a funny way like Jim Carrey.

I should qualify the unfunny bit to say that he's not very funny for a comedian. I'm sure if he were at my church I would find his jokes amusing, but only because I wouldn't know him as a comedian. He'd simply be that guy who showed up at church and made things less boring. If I'd paid money to see Jeff Allen, not knowing this guy was a "Christian comedian", I'd probably ask for my money back.

He's got a lot of jokes about raisin' kids (the hilarity!) and being an obediant husband (Oh, women, you know you're always right. Guffaw!). Sometimes he makes a clever observation, but nothing memorable and certainly nothing that could sustain an audience for over an hour. At least not an audience that cares little for good clean fun.

The point here is that at some point during the infomercial I decided to hit the mute button on the remote at select moments of Allen's routine. If you do it at just the right time, any Christian comic sounds like Lenny Bruce; if you do it at the wrong time--well, at least you don't have to hear the whole punchline.

I had to change the channel once Jeff Allen brought out the guitar. Guitar comedians can be funny sometimes, just like prop comedians can be (though, I'm going to have to think for a while to figure out which ones), but I wasn't going to stick around to find out if Allen could be. My assumptions shall remain unrealized. Whether he brought out a sledge-amatic I'll never know, but I doubt smashing watermelons counts as good clean fun.

Another Blog

I've got a new blog. It won't be very funny, but it was something I needed to do. I've got a lot on my mind, and Radioactive Cotton is much to silly to deal with serious topics anymore.

The Addled Runner is here.

Things I Know About Star Trek That I Shouldn't

1. The name of Spock's mother is Amanda.
2. Kirk's middle name is Tiberius.
3. The phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty" was never uttered on a Star Trek episode.
4. Spock, hung-over from Romulan Ale, once tried to mind-meld with a toilet bowl.
5. Kirk cross-stitches in his spare time.
6. Chekov was once suspended by Starfleet for his ideas on wealth distribution and the benefits of a police state.
7. Sulu likes other guys.
8. Data secretly hypnotized the Enterpise-D crew early in season 1 of The Next Generation to make them all believe it would be a good idea to have an android in a leadership position even though he will get them in more trouble than he'll ever get them out of.
9. Time is malleable, depending on the circumstances.
10. Scotty enjoys haggis, but his favorite dish is macaroni and cheese with wieners cut up in it.
11. The original Enterprise was made out of spare Volkswagen parts.
12. Spock has died twice: The first time was after radiation poisoning while repairing the Enterprise; the second was in a comedy club outside of Denver.
13. When making love, Kirk talks in the first person.
14. Jean-Luc Picard once made a porno in the holodeck.
15. Bones puts up a facade of gruffness so that no one will know he is crying on the inside.
16. Spock first wrote off his human side after watching Uhura's collection of "Diff'rent Strokes" episodes.
17. Kirk sometimes pretends a stuffed bear is writing his Captain's Log.
18. Bones is a television historian and doesn't know how the early twenty-first century survived the switch to "Goddamned Digital."
19. William Riker feels that the previous generation was the better, more entertaining and less derivative generation.
20. Before the Eugenics War, Khan spent his downtime tuning up his Harley Davidson.

Why Does Babe Want to Kill Us?

That pig's got a lot of explaining to do.

A New Post From Li'l Red

Hi. I'm Li'l Red Auerbach. You wouldn't know me unless you've read this blog for a while. Garry let me write a little bit one day. You can read that post here, but it's not worth all that much.

I'm writing now because Garry doesn't seem too interested in blogging these days, and since I'm a much better writer than I used to be, I figured I might as well give it a go. Garry has all these writing books laying around, but he never reads them. I went through some of them a while back, and I can see why he rarely picks them up. But I did manage to pick a few things up here and there. I hope I write well enough for you to demand more.

I think Garry likes the blog, but he just seems distracted lately. I don't know why. He says it's because he's busy, but I never see him doing much. I think he's sad. He misses his girlfriend, or misses having a girlfriend. She broke up with him. I would say "dumped" him, but she was really quite nice about it. It was sort of a time-release break-up which occurred over the space of three months.

Wait, can you write "I would say"? when you are writing it. I wouldn't say anything. I would write it, right? But writing "write" just sounds weird. Or looks weird. I don't know anymore. There's nothing in the books about this.

I think Garry just needs to get laid. Or get drunk. Or both. Maybe one can precede the other. He's got a fridge full of beer, but he never drinks it. Not so much with the women though. If I said he had a fridge full of women you'd think he was a serial killer.

I'm not sure where a 36 year old even finds women these days, especially for someone who's so insecure. And how does a guy like Garry find someone else like his ex-girlfriend. I've met her. She's pretty. And funny. And smart. I liked her.

Anyway, I'm here on the internet and all I can write about is Garry. That kind of sucks, doesn't it? But I'm observing, right? I'm establishing Garry as a character, fabricating a personality for him out of snippets of facts. That's good for a writer.