Posted in November 11th, 2009
- When I was a kid, today was the day that was celebrated as “Veteran’s Day.” The armistice which ended WWI was signed on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. That’s a lot of ones. I still find it odd that we move “special” days around to accomodate people’s desires to have long weekends. However, I suppose overall productivity for the week is higher if you have a three day weekend compared with having a day off in the middle of the week.
- Also when I was a kid everyone knew veterans. If you didn’t have a veteran in your immediate family, you certainly had one (more likely several) as uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, etc. It is my feeling that these days many kids growing up have never met a veteran of actual wars. I consider this a mixed blessing.
- The reaction of the mainstream media and the nation’s “elites” to the Ft. Hood act of terror is as predictable as it is despicable. To hear our Homeland Security Secretary react to the shootings by telling kids in a Muslim school that the USA would focus on making sure there is no “backlash against Muslims” is nothing but evidence that this country is no longer a serious country. We can’t even address an actual fatal threat in our midst without bowing and scraping before the false god of “diversity.” Frankly as long as this is our reaction to such events, we deserve to have our asses kicked on a regular basis.
- Perhaps the most cynical and disgusting single thing to have happened after the Ft. Hood massacre was to hear Obama’s despicable exhortation to Democrats in Congress to compare their vote on Health Care to the deaths of our innocent soldiers. I have rarely heard such a blatant attempt to use a tragedy to promote a partisan political agenda. One can only imagine what the worldwide outrage would have been if Bush had done anything remotely similar.
- Hillary Clinton has been perhaps the least effective and least visible SecState in my lifetime. If her career in politics isn’t over when she leaves this office, I will be amazed. In reality her gross incompetence has been simply stunning.
- I’ve been watching “Stargate:Universe” for three or four weeks now, and it sure seems like the driving force behind their plot development is how to keep the cost of set design, special effects and costumes as low as humanly possible. I’m not sure if this is a trend in Hollywood or just this one show.
- I remember when Monday Night Football was actually entertaining. I pretty much tune out the commentary now. To call Ron Jaworski, John Gruden and Tony Kornheiser(?) boring would be to vastly inflate their appeal. John Gruden seems to be deliberately pantomiming John Madden in the way he sits, the way he talks and the way he tends to flail his arms around as he talks. I know Gruden is a football genius and all, but I don’t believe it is possible to be more irritating and shallow as a commentator. Plus he’s ALWAYS wrong, and the more forcefully he says soemthing, the more wrong he turns out to be. Jaworski is like that guy at your high school lunch who was always trying too hard to join the conversation. You know, the guy who is always leaning in too far, laughing too much and trying too hard to be oh-so-clever. Kornheiser may as well not even be there. Even when he comments on something I can’t remember what he said ten seconds later. I truly don’t even listen to them, they don’t improve the game, they make it less enjoyable. I can’t imagine how the network figures they deserve the millions of dollars they are paid. And the female reporter? I don’t even know here name, but more than half the time I can’t even hear her, and when I can hear her she makes Jaworski sound brilliant. Which takes some doing. Why would anyone run after a coach at halftime and ask them how they feel after falling three touchdowns behind? Is that reporting? Is there any sports fan on earth who can’t give you exactly the same answer that head coach is going to give? Isn’t the first rule of reporting not to ask questions you know the answers to?
- Andre Agassi was married to Brooke Shields and apparently lusted after Steffi Graf. What am I missing? I mean Steffi isn’t bad, but Brooke friggin’ Shields?
- So, speaking of female athletes, who was hotter, Katarina Witt or Gabriella Sabatini? And am I the only one back in the 80s who thought Tonya Harding was pretty hot? What a waste…
- It occurs to me that I haven’t taken my family out to eat at a restaurant in months. I think I’m going to have to do that this weekend, just for fun. Is there a movie worth seeing this weekend?
13 users commented in " Random synapse activity, 11/11/09 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI thought all the Stargate series looked pretty cheap next to Battlestar Galactica.
I saw The Box this past weekend and I sort of liked it. It was basically what I expected from the guy who brought us Donnie Darko; great idea; interesting film; unnecessarily complicated plot.
Richard Kelly is what you get if David Lynch tried to make mainstream movies. Still, I say give it a whirl.
I’m going to see 2012 this weekend. I think I’ll get what I pay for on that one but the effects look great.
I say check out either of those two films. (And go rent Ghost Image gosh darn it!!)
Kornheiser was in the booth last year. Gruden replaced him. The play-by-play is done by Mike Tirico.
I think Tirico is fine as a play-by-play guy. Maybe not as good as Michaels, but good enough for MNF. But Gruden has no business being there; he’s too young to stop being a coach. He needs more real NFL experience before trying to fill the Howard Cosell role.
Jaworski is fine, he fits his role really well. Gruden is the big problem. Too bad the networks couldn’t take a chance on Limbaugh; they would instantly bump their ratings, and he would almost certainly make Jaworski and Tirico more interesting.
Thanks pianodude, I wasn’t sure about Kornheiser. The thing with play-by-play is that announcers calling plays are NOT (no pun intended) the “skill” position for MNF. For the most part on TV play-by-play mostly just drones into the background. Radio needs good play-by-play but TV just needs someone to remind you what down it is and how many yards the play covered.
I may be being too hard on Jaws. I don’t really have anything against him, and maybe the dynamic between him and Gruden is just accentuating Jaws’ traits.
What I do know is that I find the whole package to be monumentally irritating and uninformative. Just about the only things I want from the MNF crew is to be informed and entertained and that’s pretty much exactly what I don’t get. Gruden is the absolute master of stating the obvious, but he doesn’t just “state” it, he is assertive about it, as if it never occurred to anyone on the planet that Ben Rothlesberger was a big, strong, play-extending quarterback who has won a couple of Super Bowls. I just wanna reach into the TV and SMACK him to make him shut up.
The problem is that, in order to make 3-4 hours of listening to someone interesting, you need at least one “interesting” person.
The problem with most “interesting” people is that they are either “interesting” for the wrong reasons for the bulk of society (e.g., Limbaugh) or are only “interesting” to a small niche (e.g., Miller, Kornheiser, “Chuckie”).
MNF seems to have given up after Miller and Kornheiser in their quest for the next Madden and have gone for bland.
They succeeded in bland.
Oh, and most of us know a vet or three. It’s just that a “vet” ain’t what a “vet” used to be…
CC/Drax, you guys are right about the bland. It’s a snooze fest. I typically watch MNF with the 30-second skip-ahead button firmly under my left index finger; I get a lot less prattle and can typically see the entire game in less than an hour.
I’m a Stargate fan, particularly since I have the whole collection and it’s highly watchable while working out on the crosstrainer.
Universe appears to be trying to be BSG with their low-light shooting, everyone not trusting the scientist guy who has his own agenda, and lots of shakey camera work. I still kind of like it, but they’d better move to something interesting quick, or it’ll be canceled. The “supply crisis of the week” format is getting old, and their only encounter with aliens was a CGI thing that got tossed out the ‘gate after they stuffed it into a garbage can – not exactly inspiring.
Stargate: Universe has the problem of many shows…TOO MANY CHARACTERS.
Don’t care about a one of them any more than I did Battlestar — too many stories, none told well.
Well, I’ll probably regeret this since S:U is the only TV show I watch right now and I watch it with the Cosmic Wife, but here is my opinion of the show:
It’s pace is glacial. And the glaciers are melting. It’s not just that nothing happens, it’s that nothing takes FOREVER to happen. And then you get to more nothing.
I really do think that the show’s production team was told to do the show on the smallest possible budget. I just can’t come up with any other reason for the stories they’ve come up with so far, all of which are filmed in the least interesting settings imaginable. Interminable shots in the desert. Interminable shots in the tiny area of the ship they are able to get to. Interminable shots in contemporary earth settings. With modern computer graphics capability I can’t understand why they can’t tell stories that have some remotely interesting setting. So I have to conclude that even the cost of a green screen or two is too much for the budget.
The ship commander is an idiot. They try to play him as some sort of thoughtful, Picard type who agonizes over the burden of command. I don’t wanna see that! I wanna see a commander COMMAND! Make a damn decision! A party lost in deep space needs a LEADER, not a vote-taker. LEAD!
The whole thing with the communication stones is completely implausible, both in terms of technical capability and in terms of plot elements. I’m sure the average wife is going to plop into bed with the daily “rent a body” of the main character. Sure she will. And geebus! Talk about ethically challenged! What kind of selfish narcissist would take someone else’s body and go have sex with it? Even if the implausible plot device were remotely feasible, the FIRST rule the military would put in place is “Don’t have sex in someone else’s body.” DUH!
And then there are the characters… Some of them have some redeeming qualities. The first show or two I thought “Math boy” was pretty clever. Now, not so much. The Senator’s daughter is alternately portrayed as a strong willed, principled woman, and a teenage slut. And what’s the deal with the violence-prone army grunt? Geez, throw him out an airlock already!
Anyway, I’m still watching it, but I can’t say it is doing much to improve my opinion of television in the 21st century.
So far i’ve been intrigued by SGU – mostly to see what it’ll morph into. Huge fan of SG-1 and slightly lesser degree of SG-A. Although I thought SG-1 went downhill a bit when Anderson got the promotion to General.
we’ll see.
Monday Night Football lost me after Cosell, and Meredith left.
In the good old days when Dandy Don got Howard to sing, “Once I had an old blue dog…made that possum walk that log…” well…
That was good sports broadcasting!
I loved Gifford, and Al Michaels…and even though Pam couldn’t stand to listen to John Madden in his early days as a sportscaster, she finally learned to love him…even though she doesn’t know a field goal from a forfeit.
I watch occasionally. But I’ve lost my interest in NFL football. I just watch all the guys that get paid to play on Saturday.
I never developed a real interest in college sports. Not even when I was in college. I like to see LSU do well, and I pay attention to CU, CSU and UNC a bit. But I’m not really a fan of any college team.
If you’re interested in some good TV I have two suggestions: John and Adams. I’ve said it before, but it is probably the best TV production I’ve ever seen…
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