Category: Television

  • ODDS and ENDS: Time for Some Trust Busting, Vacation, and a Cigar

    ODDS and ENDS: Time for Some Trust Busting, Vacation, and a Cigar

    (Something Clever Goes Here…)

    Looks like Paramount is about the buy Warner Bros./Discovery, which means there will be five companies that control 51% of the media. If what the Ellison’s did to CBS is any indication of what they’ll do to WB/Discovery, then we are about to enter into a dark age. Prices will go up, coverage will be pro-conservative, service will decrease, and market share will continue to be concentrated. The good news is that this has happened before in America, and we have the tools to break all these trusts up. And I mean all the trusts; media, social media, airlines, online shopping, web services, and banking. The only thing stopping it is the will of the people. The laws are on the books, but they’ll only be enforced if we elect the right people to do it. I’m telling you, we gotta get involved before its too late, and we are getting very close to it being too late.

    I think I might vacation in West Virginia this year. Somewhere up in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe along a river or a creek. Nothing crazy, but a cabin away from everyone and it should also be a place where it gets cool at night, like low 60’s or high 50’s. This is Summer after all. Just a thought I have been having of late.

    I haven’t smoked a cigar since college; it was after a cast party and I was feeling on top of the world. I don’t particularly like cigars or the smell, but the idea of sitting on a porch as the sun sets, smoking a cigar with a glass of bourbon in my hand sounds wonderful at this point. This might be tied in with the West Virginia vacation thing from above… but it’s on my mind.

  • Earworm Wednesday: It Took A While But I Came Around to This Song and Video

    The true problem here is that I heard this song when I was a little little kid, and it just seemed so weird. The video didn’t help my understanding either, it also seemed sooo weird, too. But now that I am older, I can now see how Gary Numan was way ahead of his time in both this song’s sound and the video as well.

    What gets stuck in my head is the way Numan sings the words, “In cars…” That little inflection he does is hard to mimic, so his cadence gets stuck on replay in my brain.

  • Earworm Wednesday: So Much Silence

    No one talks about Depeche Mode anymore. I mean, they were huge, and a big part of the early 80’s British New Wave Invasion. And then they seemed to seamlessly fit into Alt Rock early 90’s. In my group of friends, everybody loved them. This song especially was on heavy rotation with all of us. The chorus is the hook that gets in my head. No real surprise.

  • Personal Reflections: The Super Bowl, Commercials, and Bad Bunny

    Personal Reflections: The Super Bowl, Commercials, and Bad Bunny

    The Super Bowl sucked. Let’s just start right there. Not that it was bad so much as it was boring. Defensive battles, or whatever people are calling it, are dull to everyone except defensive players and defensive coaches.

    In the end, I’m glad that Seattle won, as I do think they were the better team, not just in the game last night, but the best team for the whole season. And it was a rather exciting NFL season, with lots of drama and close games. Which makes this “meh” of a Super Bowl such a letdown.

    But that’s sports for ya!

    This bring us to the commercials, and for the life of me, I cannot remember a single one. Nothing stood out as particularly interesting or creative. Just felt like the same old slop. And there was lots of AI slop on display, too! The impression I was left with is that America is a sickly nation that needs more drugs and screenings, likes to bet on everything, and still thinks crypto isn’t a scam. There might be something to be said that the cost for a fifteen to thirty second commercials is so expensive now, that it has made brands, marketeers, and ad wizards hesitant in trying anything new, as so much money is on the line. This situation has made what used to be entertaining advertising into something that is homogeneous now.

    Which gets us to Bad Bunny who was the real big winner of the evening. (Other than the Seahawks.) I’m not going to go into the controversy, because there was no controversy, because Trump only said the stuff that he said to try and create a distraction from the Epstein Files/Poll Number/ICE, and Turning Point USA was just a little too thirsty to get involved and in the end created a half-assed badly lip-synced train wreck of a dumpster fire that 6 million people watched which isn’t bad if you consider that 12 million tuned in for the Puppy Bowl…

    But I’m not going to get into it.

    What I will say about Bad Bunny’s show was that it was fun, and cool, and was exciting to watch and had guests and Easter Eggs, and what I thought he did was show off how wonderful, and complex Puerto Rico’s culture and people are, AND he did that really great thing that great performers do, which is makes his audience feel connected and vital to the show being performed. It was great.

    But I did make Buffalo Wings, and they were really good.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Today Was An Odd End

    (I wanna be in the room where it happens…)

    This was just an odd day. I went to bed on Thursday feeling like I might be sick. Come to find out when I woke up that I was sort of sick; stuffed up nose and a sore throat. But it never got any worse than that. I kept expecting to have that run down feeling come over me, yet it never showed up. I just felt odd.

    As such, I got a bunch of stuff done except writing.

    Now, here I am, writing on my phone while sitting in bed, ready for sleep, but knowing that I cannot end this day without writing something.

    And this is it; purely a statement of being – I am here, I exist, and I have made a squeak in the void.

    Goodnight, Springton! There will be no encores!