Category: Television

  • ODDS and ENDS: World Cup Time, Coffee Shops, and Mother’s Day

    ODDS and ENDS: World Cup Time, Coffee Shops, and Mother’s Day

    (This rock had got to roll…)

    Man typing on laptop in a busy NYC coffee shop with pedestrians outside
    It’s uncanny how much this AI image looks just like me.

    Just about a month until my favorite world sporting event which is run by one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. I speak of FIFA, and I am not the first person to say this, but the funniest at it would be John Oliver back in 2014. I won’t beat that dead horse again, but I will say that outside of the ridiculous train tickets to get to MetLife Stadium, or the lack of hotel reservations, or how everyone thinks the tickets are too expensive, everything seems great for the tournament! I hate the fact that everything going into the World Cup is nothing but greed and bullshit, and at the same time, the whole thing starts in a month, and I am stuipdly excited about it! I download the FIFA app, and yesterday I started looking at the schedule to figure out which matches I will be watching. I have a good feeling for a month, I won’t get shit done. No writing, reviews, or parenting in fact. Nothing will be happening other than me parked in front of my tv watching football.

    I wrote in a coffee shop yesterday and it was pretty cool. I hadn’t done that in a long time, and I was a tad self conscious about it for a minute. But I needed to make a change in my writing habits as I had run into a wall and wasn’t getting the productivity at home like I used to. The main reason was that there are too many distractions at home, which is also one of the big reasons I never liked working from home. I will watch tv and nap before I will get any work done. But if I go to an office, or some place that I am paying to be at, then I have skin in the game and that makes me focus. Which is what I received yesterday in the local coffee place, that was out of my neighborhood, but still was a cool place to be.

    Call your mama.

  • Tottenham: I Got My Hopes Up

    (I know that today is May 4th, and I don’t celebrate.)

    With everything going on in my life, and there is a lot, nothing awful is happening, I’m just very busy. As such, I don’t have a ton of time to sit around and watch football. This weekend especially, as me and my family were jammed packed with events. I am saying all of this because, I didn’t have time to watch Tottenham play on Sunday. Sort of…

    With all of the running around I had to do on Sunday, I didn’t think I’d be home in time to watch the match, but as luck would have it, I got home which allowed me to watch the last fifteen minutes of the game. This means that I was first shocked to see Tottenham ahead by tow goals. Then I watched Aston Villa score a goal, and the affect was that I thought Spurs were about to lose, only to actually watch Tottenham win.

    They won a match.

    They aren’t in 18th place anymore.

    I have a little hope.

    I am also aware of how much of a huge mistake “hope” is.

    I decide the best course of action was to start watching Ted Lasso again.

  • ODDS and ENDS: I Have a Substack, Ride or Die with ChatGPT, and Tottenham

    ODDS and ENDS: I Have a Substack, Ride or Die with ChatGPT, and Tottenham

    (As long as you’re groovin’, There’s always a chance…)

    Nervous writer at typewriter with giant robotic figure and drones in glowing city background
    A frightened writer types as a menacing robot looms behind him in a futuristic cityscape

    Did you know I have a Substack account? There isn’t much to it. Right now, I just republish my reviews over there. It’s got a pretty good name, “Short & Novel.” I’m not 100% sure what to do with it. Somedays I get to thinking that I might move my reviews behind a paywall, as 90% of the traffic to this blog is people looking at my reviews. See, the thought goes that I keep this page for my blog about random things, and also use it as an online CV so to speak. The Substack page ends up becoming the place where I try to personally generate some income from my reviews. I have been kicking this can of an idea around for about a year now. Still haven’t decided what to do.

    Then I had this idea that I should as ChatGPT what I should do with the “Short & Novel” site, in reference into making it a page that generates an income for me. Then I thought, I might want to try this as an experiment. You know, give people full transparency of what I am attempting to do; ChatGPT or whatever AI will manage this page, but all of the creative writing will be generated by a human, me. Such as AI would create a lists of tasks that I would need to accomplish to make the Substack grow, and I would go about creating the content and executing the tasks myself. It’s an idea…

    They’re going down this weekend. The death spiral has begun…

  • Earworm Wednesday: Woke Up with This One Preloaded in My Head

    Am I a fan of Jane’s Addiction? Yes. Do I own a Jane’s Addiction album? No. I will argue that this music fandom paradox can exist, and does exist all the time. But I don’t feel like arguing this morning.

    Not sure why, but when I woke up at 5:30am, this song was in my head. Maybe I’m a kid of the 90’s? Maybe it’s just a good song.

    Anyway… Here you go…

  • ODDS and ENDS: C’mon Rangers, Time, and Keep it Together

    (I’m just waiting on a friend…)

    I grew up in Arlington, Texas and as such I spent a lot of time watching the Texas Rangers. The ownership of that team has always sucked. Sad to find out that the owners and management are continuing the tradition of being awful.

    I am bad with time. I was supposed to spend an hour on writing this little blog post, but I am now entering my second hour of work on this. Mind you, fifty-five minutes of that first hour was looking stuff up online. Things from Texas history (due to the article above) and general curisoty of stuff, like “what are the best lights to buy for an art display in your living room?” I knew I needed to get my writing done, so I could clean up and go run my errands… But I could stop farting around. I don’t think this qualifies as procraternation… just a general laziness and… well… farting around.

    There are many thing I do for my family, but the one I have found myself doing the most this week was being the calm guy in the room. Which isn’t my natural state, as I am loud, talk too much, and can be a rather obnocious drama queen/king from time to time. But being in a family means that sometimes you have to take on different roles to get things accomplished. I think in the olden days, this would have been called “being the strong one.” What it really means is that I can’t freakout until everyone else is doing freaking out. There’s nothing major going wrong; just getting the taxes done, and the kid dealing with school.