Category: Television

  • ODDS and ENDS: Doing Impressions, AI Algorithms, and I Picked Yale

    ODDS and ENDS: Doing Impressions, AI Algorithms, and I Picked Yale

    (Can’t believe you fake it…)

    I’m not great at it, but I am pretty good at impressions; especially at parties where people have been drinking for several hours. Now, I would like to get better at my impressions. Being that there isn’t a school for it, I’m left to my own devices for study. Currently, I’m working on a Keith Morrison impression which is developing nicely. I need to expand, and I’m thinking that a Warner Herzog will be my next goal. Then I want to go really obscure and have an impression of Bill Hader doing his impression of Al Pacino.

    I wonder if the AI algorithms get together on the dark web and swap notes of how stupid humans are, and why people keep watching the same shows over and over?

    My bracket is doing okay. I picked four games wrong yesterday. I had Clemson beating McNeese, which was the big upset yesterday. But! I had picked Yale to beat Texas A&M. Not that I’m a fan of Yale, and I don’t hate A&M; In fact I have four family members who went there. I had mentioned the other day in my Bracket blog that I always pick the Ivy League team for silly reasons. But this year, I did take a hard look at this game. Would I make the logical choice, and go with A&M, or would I stick to my plan and just make my goofy picks? My family will give me shit for picking Yale, and for many justifiable reasons. But like the McNeese win, it’s fun when the “little guy” defies expectations. Yet, I see the irony of viewing Yale as the “little guy” here. The tournament makes strange bedfellows, I guess…

  • If You Know, Then You’re a Nerd

  • Brackets

    It is almost Spring, which means that it’s time for everyone to make a bracket for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

    I don’t follow college basketball; I just need to get that out there first. But what I do follow is competition, and the chance to show old friends how good I am at something I know nothing about. That’s why I love making a bracket. I don’t know crap, but now and then, I will make better picks than my friends who spend hours researching, and working on their predictions.

    For my method of making picks. I just kind’a make up a story in my head about what I think will make a dramatic tournament. I have to have several huge upsets, and small schools beating powerhouses. I like to pick the Ivy League to win in the first round, just because a “brains” beating the “jocks” is a story that is always entertaining. And then, for no good reason at all, I’ll pick a #8 seed team to win the whole thing, in honor of the 1985 Villanova team.

    I downloaded the ESPN Tournament app on my phone, but as of writing this, I haven’t put a bracket together. I normally do three, because why the hell not. One is for my “real” picks, one is just random, and one is my best guess as to which team’s mascot would win in a fight against the other team’s mascot.

    The one development this year is that my daughter is interested in make a bracket. We will knock that out after school today, and I will let her pick whatever she likes. I won’t lie, I like the idea of watching the games with my kid. That feels like a wholesome father/daughter thing to do.

  • DIY Home Remolding Videos

    I used to watch HGTV for all the remolding shows. I will stress the word “used to” because after a few weeks, I noticed that all the shows were the same in their structure, and they didn’t show you how to improve anything in your home. Such as every HGTV show had the same reality tv plot wherein half way through the show, the hosts discovered some huge “whatever” that would cost way more money to fix, and then they had to call the client and get their reaction, and decide what to do next. But no matter what the issue was, it all worked out, and Joanna put a huge “LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE” sign up on the wall. Oh, and they only thing I learned about fixing my home was to hire a good contractor.

    All of this has now lead me to watching YouTube videos. At first, I was looking for clips that would help me patch a hole in the wall, or install trim, or build a built-in. But, the Algorithm caught on to me, and started pushing all these renovation videos on me. Like, “we bought a school building in the country and turned into our dream house” type videos. Or “I bought a row house in Boston, and am fixing it up with my girlfriend and our dog.”

    I won’t lie, late at night, these videos suck me in. Not so much the people, or their story, or how they did it all (though I wish they would go into more of those details), but I get sucked into their home renovation ideas, and I try to figure out if that would work in my apartment. See, I have a mudroom area, and a place for a built-in buffet/bookshelf but I can’t figure out how to make it work…

    As I have watched more and more of these renovation videos, I have started to notice, especially the ones that are a long series, that they all kind’a do the same thing. They all have a time-lapse video of their demo, or a time-lapse of the contractors doing something, with a jangly guitar underscoring it. Or, they do this confessional thing where the “admit” that they might have bit off more than they can chew, and the whole project might fail.

    But it never does.

    They always figure out a solution, or they pay more money to the contractor who figures out a solution. Yeah, it’s all rather cliché.

    Or to put it another way…

    Once, you know, I’d like to see someone just throw in the towel; They can’t do it, it’s just too expensive, or they settle. Sure, that wouldn’t be a very interesting video, but it sure would be a cautionary tale for all of those middle-aged guys out there, that have no experience at home improvement, but think they can do it because they watched a video at 1am.

  • Man, Am I Tired

    Not sure what happened. I went to bed at my normal-ish time last night. I did stay up and watch the Oscars, so maybe that had something to do with it.

    I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the Oscars, but it has been over 15 years since I have seen all the best picture nominees, let alone half of them. But I am a movie fan, and I like the spectacle, and it is something fun to debate with friends, and I wanted to see what Conan would do. With all of that said, it was a rather dull affair. My kid wanted to stay up and watch it with me, which I agreed to, but she was out by 9pm.

    When the Oscars were over, and the kid off to bed, I started to watch Becket. I hadn’t seen it since high school, and I didn’t get too far into it. I found Peter O’Toole’s Henry II grating on my nerves, which I understand was the point. Then I thought about watching Lion in Winter, which is also about Henry II but at the end of his life and with succession being the driver of that plot. Though Lion in Winter is not a sequel to Becket, with O’Toole playing Henry II in both films, it sort of very loosely, kind’a is.

    I bring all of this up for no other reason than it occurred to me last night.

    And this morning, I just felt off. Very tired, a little anxious, and all around uneasy about myself and the day before me. The last time I felt like this was when I was working a particular job that I started to despise, and knew it was time for me to leave. But I couldn’t pin down why I was feeling this way, especially on a day like today.

    But there is a very harsh reality with being the age that I am and also having responsibilities of my family; I had to push through it. I had to make breakfast for the gang. I had to get people up and on their way. I had to do laundry and clean up. I had to making chicken stock for dinner, and lunch for the wife. In a little bit, I will take that chicken stock and tech my kid how to make Greek Lemon Soup.

    I just have to keep pushing through, but that feeling hasn’t gone away today.