Television Archive

There's a really interesting profile of Roger Ebert in Esquire.

It has been nearly four years since Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw and his ability to speak. Now television's most famous movie critic is rarely seen and never heard, but his words have never stopped.

* * *

Roger Ebert can't remember the last thing he ate. He can't remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn't happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory -- it wasn't as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz's ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren't they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.

Ebert's lasts almost certainly took place in a hospital. That much he can guess. His last food was probably nothing special, except that it was: hot soup in a brown plastic bowl; maybe some oatmeal; perhaps a saltine or some canned peaches. His last drink? Water, most likely, but maybe juice, again slurped out of plastic with the tinfoil lid peeled back. The last thing he said? Ebert thinks about it for a few moments, and then his eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he looks out into space in case the answer is floating in the air somewhere. It isn't. He looks surprised that he can't remember. He knows the last words Studs Terkel's wife, Ida, muttered when she was wheeled into the operating room ("Louis, what have you gotten me into now?"), but Ebert doesn't know what his own last words were. He thinks he probably said goodbye to Chaz before one of his own trips into the operating room, perhaps when he had parts of his salivary glands taken out -- but that can't be right. He was back on TV after that operation. Whenever it was, the moment wasn't cinematic. His last words weren't recorded. There was just his voice, and then there wasn't.

Like many of my generation, I grew up watching Ebert argue with Gene Siskel over whether a movie deserved a thumbs up or down on At the Movies. After Siskel passed away, I didn't watch the show much anymore. I wasn't a huge fan of his replacement.

I would hear about Ebert here and there, but it wasn't until I heard a story on All Things Considered about this company from Scotland that was reproducing his voice from old recordings so he could speak that I heard anything about his health issues.

I find what has happened to him both sad and uplifting. I wish him all the best. Clearly he's getting along just fine despite what must be an almost intolerable situation. It's certainly nightmarish to contemplate it happening.

More info:

My new favorite cooking show is Eric Ripert's Avec Eric. Ripert is the chef at Le Bernadin in NYC. His show is a combination travel log and cooking show. Typically, in the first half of the show, he travels to the culinary centers of the world, Tuscany, Provence and Northern California, for example. Then he returns to his kitchen filled with inspiration from his journey to create exquisitely simple dishes.

There are samples on You Tube, of course, but if you want to watch whole episodes they are available on the Avec Eric website.

Here he yukking it up with Jimmy Fallon:

It's really beyond the pale how bad NBC is at covering Alpine Skiing at the Vancouver Olympics. The latest joke the Men's Giant Slalom. NBC only bothered to show 4 of the runs in the first round (each skier gets two runs): Carlo Janko, who finished in first, Aksel Lund Svindal, third, American Ted Ligety, in eigth place, and Bode Miller, who caught a tip and didn't finish. They failed to show Romeo Baumann, second, Massimiliano Blardone, fourth, Marcel Hirsher, fifth, Benjamin Raish, sixth, Cyprien Richard, seveth or any other skiers.

They showed all of three skiers on the second run. Three? Three is all we get? Bode crashed out so they didn't have to show him again, but why not show Ligety? Why not show the first run of the eventual silver medalist, Kjetil Jansrud of Norway? Other Americans? Anyone? Bueller? It's on tape delay, so they can program it anyway they want. They show qualifying for freestyle skiing, yet they won't show the meat and potatoes Alpine events. What gives?

They must really, really suck or not care.

Every two years, I get psyched for the Olympics and every two years, I come away severely bothered by the television coverage. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is no exception.

I've written about this before, and in some ways it gets tired to complain about the coverage, but what else can I do?

First off, not much of anything is live on NBC. There is some programming on CNBC like hockey that will be carried in real time, but all the major events will be tape delay, at least on the west coast. In the days of the DVR, this doesn't matter as much as it used to. However, watching on delay not only takes away much of the drama inherent in sports competition where you will never know what will happen and replaces it with a paradigm where one has to avoid any possible coverage that is in real time from online services to the ESPN crawl lest the results are revealed before the event is broadcast.

For both the Men's and Women's Downhill, I was unable to keep from seeing the results before I saw the event on TV, which is just fucking horrible. The Alpine events are the centerpiece of the Olympics and downhill skiing is the crown jewel of the event. Yet the coverage on NBC is simply a joke. And knowing the results beforehand just makes it a sad joke.

For the men's event, NBC deigned to show 6 runs. America's Steven Nyman and Bode Miller, Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, Switzerland's Diider Cuche and Didier Defago and Canada's Rob Dixon. Count 'em. That's six runs. They probably wouldn't even have shown Defago except that he happened to win the event. And Dixon probably only made an appearance because of a spectacular crash. That's six competitors out of a field of 64. It's just unacceptable.

The women's event was only slightly better. NBC showed the runs of America's Lindsay Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Stacey Cook, Austria's Elisabeth Goergl, Germany's Maria Reisch, Sweden's Ana Paerson, Switerzland's Dominique Gisen, Italy's Daniela Merighetti, and France's Marion Rolland. The final four on that list all crashed out including Rolland who somehow caught an edge out of the starter's house and keeled over before she even got started.

The men's and women's course were totally different but equally exciting. The men skied the famous Dave Murray Downhill while the women were on a special course created on Franz's Run (I've skied both and they are incredibly fun). The women's run on Franz, a whippy labyrinth of a piste, subjects the skiers to several massive jumps including the infamous "Hot Air" at the bottom where many competitors, including Paerson, Gisen and Merighetti, crashed spectacularly.

The entire competition is available online sans commentary, which makes it quite boring. And you can see the full results for the men's and women's downhill on nbcolympics.com.

There's no good reason why more of this incredible competition should not be shown on TV. It's just inexcusable, especially when you consider the wall-to-wall coverage of curling on CNBC. Curling? It's like watching the ice melt. (Any event where the inclusion of pizza and beer does not dramatically impact the results is not a sport and certainly should not be in the Olympics.)

Started watching Burn Notice last night. The show is on the USA Network, so you know it's not going to win any awards for writing or photography. It's not really sophisticated or even intelligent TV, but it is fun. Really fun.

The main character, Michael Weston, is an ex-CIA officer trying find out who issued his 'burn notice" and why he was blacklisted so that he can put his life back together. Weston's voiceover narration explaining the minutiae of spycraft is easily the most interesting part of the show.

And it's hard not to want to watch anything that features the legendary Bruce Campbell. The show is set in Miami and it wouldn't be hard to believe that the Chamber of Commerce is flipping the bill for production with all the bump shots of the glass skyscapers, palm tree lined beaches and art deco hotels, but that's part of the pleasure of Burn Notice.

(from Gawker.tv) For those who are going through Mad Men withdrawal.

Since Mad Men finished its third season, our Sunday nights have felt barren. Until the AMC advertising drama returns, we'll be meditating on Don Draper's philosophical lessons, such as: "Change is neither good or bad. It simply is."

This Frontline documentary on the credit card and banking industries is disturbing on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start.

I know I'm not my credit company's best customer, and that's fine with me. Not only do I never carry a balance, I make several payments a month, because I want to hold their credit for as little time as possible to limit whatever penalties from fees and interest might accrue in case something happens and I don't make my payment.

But for people who have balances, either from circumstance or conspicuous consumption, the system is really stacked against them. The penalties are harshest for those least able to pay, which makes sense in terms of bank profits, but not in terms of anything else.

What they don't want is customers like me who pay in full or people who don't pay at all. So people get wrapped up in a debt straightjacket and can't get out, which is exactly what banks want. Those are their best customers, namely people who can't pay off their balances but continue to pay.

Meanwhile, even though the economy is crashing around us, banks couldn't care less as long as profits continue to rise. The regulators won't or can't do anything to change the system because, as Dick Durbin said earlier this year, the banks own Congress.

Until our system of legalized bribery that is the campaign finance mess gets fixed, we will never solve this problem. When elected officials worry more about where their next fundraising dollar is coming from rather than doing the right thing for the American people, we're all screwed.

You can watch the entire program online at the PBS website.

...are really boring. Can't believe I have to listen to these jokers for the entire Giro. Where are Phil. Paul and Bob when you need them? Give me Al Trautwig. Give me Al Michaels. Give me anybody but these guys. I'd even take Craig Hummer.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to have the Giro on US television, but we've got to be able to do better than Schlanger and Gogulski.

Hold your hats, but the Giro D'Italia is coming to American TVs for first time in it's 100 years. It's going to be on Universal Sports.

So what's the occasion? One word: Lance. Lance Armstrong is back and riding the Giro for the first time. Can he win? I wouldn't put it past him. He has an iron will and you have to know that his training has been insanely intense. However, he's coming off a broken collarbone, he hasn't raced a grand tour in a couple of years and doesn't have that many race miles under his belt. More likely, he'll be helping his teammate Levi Leipheimer win the race. Only one American, Andy Hampsten in 1988, has won the Giro, so it'll be good to get another yank in the winners circle.The competition is going to be fierce. This is the 100th version of the race, so the Italians will be extra-motivated to keep the title at home. Should be an incredibly exciting race. Defending champ Alberto Contador, Armstrong's teammate on Team Astana, will not be riding. Instead his preparing for his return to the Tour de France in July.

The Universal Sports announcers are rather dull. I'll take Phil, Paul or Bob any day, but it will be a pleasant change to have commentary in English. Last year, in order to watch the event live, I signed up for the Italian Sports Channel RAI. For three weeks I watched the cyclists suffer through the Italian peninsula while commentators babeled in Italian I couldn't understand. I was happy to watch it, and the animation of the Italian announcers was impressive. It would have been nice to understand what they were saying.

The three week Giro kicks off with a team time trial on Saturday on Lido di Venezia. Coverage starts at 5:30am PST, so set your DVRs.

If you don't have a TV (or don't have cable) or just want to follow the event online, the best place to track news of the Giro, as always, is Steephilll.tv

I just finished watching Frontline's documentary about the current state of the global climate crises, Heat°. As always, Frontline is able to frame the problems we are facing in a very stark and dramatic fashion.

This movie really highlights some of the structural road blocks to making meaningful change in the United States of America and the world. Entrenched interests are so deep and have so much money and influence that they are able to thwart any efforts to head the USA in the right direction. I'm specifically referring to Detroit automakers who are recalcitrant about fuel economy, corn growers who demand ethanol subsidies, coal states like West Virginia and Wyoming, and most importantly, oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP & Shell who steadfastly refuse to invest in alternative energy.

If we can't shift the current paradigm where the economic interests of the few greatly outweigh the environmental needs of many, we're in a lot of trouble. Sadly, It's going to take a disaster of a massive scale to release politicians from the perceived obligations and allow them to opportunity to make the right decisions. That's the regressive, backwards history of this country. Whether they allow themselves to make the right decisions is still up for open debate.

If you don't have access to PBS, you can watch the movie online.

I've never been much of an athlete. I enjoy sports: skiing, surfing, cycling, what have you, but my athletic aspirations have been of the vicarious sort. I'm ok with that. But as someone who's ok with that, I want my coverage to be excellent. Nowhere is this more true that with the Olympics.

My feeling is that Olympic coverage has gone in the tank since NBC took over from ABC. ABC just seemed to do everything just right. Their commentators were not only experts in the sports they covered, but incredibly well spoken and interesting. NBC, well, not so much. ABC had a nice balance between coverage of the events themselves and dramatic athlete profiles that would engage the viewer and build that all important empathy between audience and performer. NBC, not so much. In the beginning, NBC had way too many of these things, probably in a vain effort to appeal to female viewers. There was serious backlash. Now they have too few.

Then you need a personality who can frame the games in a larger context. Someone like Dick Schapp. This year NBC has got Mary Carillo. Sure, I like Mary. She's okay. Serviceable, but not really that interesting But why Mary Carillo? Why not Jimmy Roberts? Where the fuck is Jimmy Roberts? Jimmy Roberts is a poet. We need more commentator's like Jimmy Roberts.

Then there's the coverage itself, which, to be honest, has gotten better over the years. For this Olympics there's almost too much. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am. But it's too much of stuff that's not interesting. Synchronized Diving was on for hours yesterday. Does anyone really care about that "sport"? Blessedly, there's a DVR to take care of that problem, which is huge improvement for me personally this time around.

NBC also has a wealth of coverage online, both archived and live, which is fantastic. However a lot of the events I have seen online has had no commentary. I like really like cycling—more than the average cycling fan even, but I can't watch 6 and half hours of a racing online with no commentary. It's like watching paint dry. Then NBC has this terrible habit of including the result in the title of the video, such as "Kristen Armstrong takes gold in Women's Time Trial", which sort of sucks the drama out of watching. Note to NBC, please name the events with the name of the event and not the result. Pretty please.

Of course, in my fantasy world, I would have so much more control. I might not like the announcers that NBC puts up, so I'd want to listen to the commentators from Australia or the UK or Canada. Sometimes I want more information than NBC provides, so I want detailed history of a world record progression. Or maybe I want to see the event in the past Olympics or at the Olympic Trials or the European Championships. And It would be nice to control the replays, although I really can with my DVR, so this isn't such a big deal any more. What would be cool is to control the camera angles. There might be a dozen cameras (or more) at a particular venue. Why should director control the one camera that we see at any given time. Maybe I'd prefer a different angle.

There's my quadrennial gripe about the coverage in a nutshell. It seems to be getting better at every Olympiad, which is positive, and maybe in a decade or so, some of the Olympic dreams I have will come to fruition.

I discovered the documentary about Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team, The Road to Paris, while I was reading Bob Roll's Tour de France Companion. I had never heard of it. I went immediately to Netflix to order the DVD, but they didn't have it. I was bummed. Then I tried You Tube and found the entire thing, split conveniently into 11 8 minute and 41 second vignettes. I love the internet.

Over the next couple of days, I watched all the episodes. The movie follows Lance Armstrong's US Postal Service for 27 days of training before the Tour de France. You get insights into both how a major cycling team functions on the inside, how they prepare for races, not just the Tour de France, but the entire European season, who does what on the team. You are privy to the internal machinations and the thought process behind training for the Tour. Finally you actually see Lance training in the rain and the snow and you get a sense of the amount of dedication it takes to win. It's truly amazing to see.

Listening to Johann Bruyneel discuss what it takes to win the Tour, trust in the team, how difficult it is to wear and defend the Yellow Jersey and why it's important not to have until absolutely necessary—all the demands, the media, the drug testing, etc, wears on the riders has given me new understanding for cycling and the Tour.

Here's the first episode:

It's a little hard to find the next episode once you've finished one, so here they all are:

1 Epiosde 1
2 Epiosde 2
3 Epiosde 3
4 Epiosde 4
5 Epiosde 5
6 Epiosde 6
7 Epiosde 7
8 Epiosde 8
9 Epiosde 9
10 Epiosde 10
11 Epiosde 11

Congratulations to Carlos Sastre for taking the 2008 Tour title. Congrats to all the riders really. It was a fantastic Tour—the best in recent memory. Over 3 weeks of racing and almost every day was exciting. From the first stage in Brittany with Alejandro Valverde winning in an uphill sprint through the Massif Central, the Pyrenees, the Alps and all the way the Champs Elysees in Paris. The race did not disappoint.

Up until Sastre blew everyone away on Alp d'Huez, 6 riders were within a minute of the lead (Evans, F. Schleck, Kohl, Menchov & Vandevelde). The racing and attacking was fierce. And here in the States, the coverage by Versus was unprecedented in terms of the length, often going on air before the start of the start so we were actual able to see for the first time how breakaways are formed, established and nurtured. (My only complaint about Versus was Craig Hummer. Nice guy, but not a great commentator. What happened to Al Trautwig?)

In all, there were seven men in Yellow, including 2 from Luxembourg and even a Frenchman for day. The 4 Americans and the two American teams in the race acquitted themselves well. Christian Vandevelde exceeded all expectations finishing 5th and announcing himself as one of the top contenders in the peloton. Team Columbia took 5 stage victories—4 alone to British sprinter Mark Cavenidish and held at times early in the race, the Yellow, Green and Polka-Dot Jerseys. I would have liked to see George Hincapie do better. He almost won a stage in the Alps, but lost some time on the last climb and couldn't quite make it up on the descent.

One of the best shows on TV is about to start up again, and would you beleive, it's on AMC. Mad Men is hands down the best photographed television show on the air right now. The quality of the cinematography along with top notch set direction and costume design allows you to seamlessly enter the advertising world of the 1950s where all is not what it seems to be on the surface.

Don Draper is one of the most compelling characters ever created for the small screen. He rules this world of petty office politics, shady dealings, guilt-free adultery and consequence free behavior writ large (smoking, drinking, fucking, etc.). On the surface his life seems perfect. He's rich, well-respected, good-looking, has a beautiful wife and family with a large house in suburbs, but underneath there's trouble. His home life is unsatisfying. He sends his wife to therapy. Every ad job is potential bombshell that could torpedo his career if he can't wow his clients. He has colleagues who are trying to undermine him and steal his job and his office. And he's not who he says he is.

Anyway, the show is great, you should check it out. The first season should be on DVD and the second season starts this Sunday.

Top Gear is arguably one of the best shows on television. You don't even have to really like cars. You just have to appreciate the British sense of humor. Here's a description of the show from the website:

Top Gear takes extraordinary and ordinary cars to the limit and beyond to find out if they're as good as their manufacturers claim. Full of extreme stunts, challenges, and weekly features, Top Gear is exciting and has no boring stats and impenetrable conversations about camshafts and tire pressures. But it is the sharp wit of hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May that makes it more than just a motor show.

The great thing about the show is that the 3 hosts Clarkson, Hammond and May all pull no punches when it comes to skewering the cars (and each other). It's really good fun. I recommend checking out some of the episodes on You Tube, particularly the Peel P50. Then set your TiVo or DVR to record it.

The show airs on BBC America and you can find many older episodes on You Tube Including these favorites:

• Peel P50
• £10,000 Supercar Challenge
• The Atom

One of big complaints about my Comcast DVR is that if you set a recording, the DVR will stop at the scheduled time, not when the broadcast of the event actually stops. At first I would record programs after the event. Then I realized that I could modify the settings so that the DVR would continue to record for up to two hours after the event, which is usually more than you could need. It pisses me off that I still have to do this and I think Comcast needs to figure out a way to continue recording until the event ends. Period end of story. The DVR will be an inferior product until they can figure that out.

So. Wimbledon. I wasn't about to wake up at 5am like I used to do, and I was going to be out all day, so I scheduled a recording and I set it to finish an hour after the scheduled end. I thought that would be more than enough. Shit, the event was scheduled for 6 hours. How could that not be enough?

I looked into the Giro coverage on Versus and decided their "weekend only" coverage wasn't going to be enough for me, so I called Comcast and ordered the Italian RAI TV channel which is covering the race every day. It's live coverage, but it hardly matters since I have to DVR it anyway. And the announcers, well, they all speak Italian. While very passionate and interesting to listen to, they are less than instructive. Again, no matter, I'm watching for the racing. Though I will miss the insightful commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin, I'm happy to have some Giro to come home to every night for the next three weeks.

I've been watching the Tour de France for years, first on ESPN and now on OLN/Versus, but I've never seen the Giro d'Italia, the first of the season's 3 grand tours (Giro, TdF, Veulta d'Espana) that take place over 3 weeks. That will end this weekend, when Versus will start broadcasting the Giro's first stage this coming Saturday.

What's the best thing about my DVR, you ask? Well, I can now watch PTI when I come home. I don't know why ESPN only broadcasts the show in the middle of the day on the Left Coast, but it doesn't matter anymore. They can show the program in the middle of the fucking night for all I care, because I just record it and watch it when I get home (zipping through all the commercials, of course). Kornheiser and Wilbon yuck it up and keep me up to date on the sports world at the same time. Perfect.

What else do I have on my DVR, you ask? Besides the random movie here and there, here's what I got:

Is this worse than the Dennis Miller era? You bet. Is ESPN going to do anything about it? Don't count on it. Will I continue to watch Monday Night Football? Most likely...

The trio of announcers that ESPN has calling MNF, the corner stone of broadcasting our national sport (sorry, baseball, time to wake up and smell reality), is a nothing but a pure joke. The show is really in shambles. I like Mike Tirico. What's not to like? But he screams golf. Tony Kornheiser is a buffoon. Joe Theismann? He was a couragous, undersized, overachieving quarterback, but as a broadcaster, he needs to be euthanized. Sad to say, but this group worse than ESPN's previous crew for Sunday Night Football of Mike Patrick, the aforementioned QB and the waste of space Paul MacGuire.These guys make the NFL Network crew of Bryant Gumble and Chris Collingworth look like Jackson and Fouts.

Now why am I even bothering with this tirade? Because I care about football and I care about broadcasting. ABC, the former home of MNF, the home of the classiest most intelligent announcers (with some notable exceptions), should be the home of all major sporting events.They never should have given up MNF to ESPN. Never.

Ironically last year's MNF team, Al Michaels and John Madden, probably the best in the history of football, were lured away from ABC and now rule Sunday Night Football. ABC's loss of Al Michaels is really a loss for America. Even if Michaels ends up back in the NBC monopolized Olympics where he belongs, the Oympics belongs on ABC which takes sport seriously and not on that touchy bullshit tape delay crap that NBC spoon feeds us every other year.

*Da-Da-Da-Da! Duh-nuh-Nuh-nuh-Nuh-nuh!

I love Nature. I think it's one of the best and most worthwhile shows on television and continues to be a shining example of the reasons why we need to keep supporting public broadcasting.

Their latest effort, Penguins of the Antarctic is truly spectacular. If you dig penguins, and you'd have to some kind of backwards freak not to, you'll love this show. The Emporers from "March of the Penguins" are there, but so are the Adélies, the Kings, The Gentoos, the Macaronis and the chinstraps. The photography is brilliant and hopefully you can catch it while your local PBS station is still showing it. If not, or you're unlucky enough to live in London, Sydney or Samoa, you can catch some videos on the Nature website.

I finally broke down and bought an HDTV. I bought a Samsung. I bought it because I got such a good deal, I couldn't pass it up. I've been debating about whether to spend the money to buy a new TV since last December when I found out the DVR I bought wouldn't work with my old analog TV. I've had this 27" RCA, an old beater with no AV inputs since I moved back to California in 1998. It works, but the interference with the RF modulator (required for the DVD player) and the cable and the wireless modem was causing the screen to flicker intermittently which was annoying as all hell.

I should have bought a TV a long time ago. The problem was and is that there are so many options and new technology, Plasma, LCD, HDTV, and the TVs are so expensive that the whole process of shopping for one gave me a headache. I would go to Fry's or Good Guys or Costco and look at the sets and be barely unable to tell them apart.

Finally, one of my co-workers came into my cube excited because the TV he was looking to buy was on sale Best Buy. We talked about it. He explained why he was buying that TV. Sounded pretty convincing. I found an even cheaper offer online at Amazon, printed out the page, took it with me to Best Buy and they matched the price. Not bad.

The Samsung is 40" but it seems twice as big as my old TV. It looks far bigger in my living room (sitting next to old TV) than it did in the store (sitting next to much larger TVs). It only weighs about half as much which means I can pick it up without threat of a hernia. Then there's the picture. Some good, some bad.

When watching the handful of HDTV channels that are available, it is amazing. There are about 15 or so. ESPN. Discovery, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, HBO and so forth. Maybe only about ten. They all look fantastic. If you watch a DVD, it's amazing. The picture is crystal clear. However, if you're watching a regular, non-HD channel, it sucks. The picture is soft. Logos and fonts are heavily pixellated. It just looks bad.

Does anyone know what the problem is? Is there some setting I need to change to when I'm watching non-HD programming on my new TV or is this something I'm stuck with until all channels go HD?

Has anyone seen Morgan Spurlock's (Super Size Me) Show on F/X called 30 Days? Interesting show.

In the first episode "Minimun Wage", Spurlock and his wife try to survive on 30 days working for 5 dollars and 15 cents an hour.

I've completely given up on the Americanized version of The Office. I tried to watch it again last night, and I couldn't get through but a few minutes. They got they painful part right. I was cringing the whole time. It's just not funny. Not at all. It's just impossible to watch.

I have been investing my TV time with a far better endeavor, watching the HBO series, The Wire. I hadn't even heard of the The Wire until a friend from my ski house lent me the DVDs for the first two season. I've watched the first season. Now I'm hooked.

The Wire is a crime drama focused around a homicide cop in Baltimore, Jimmy McNulty. He's a hard nosed, hard drinking divorcee who would be something of a cliché were it not for the fact that he's willing to buck to system in order to get police work done. And in The Wire, that system is broken.

There are elements of corruption, cronyism and incompetence that you see in other cop dramas, but what underlies The Wire is careerism that drives criminal and legal decision making and forms the subtext of the series. Sergeants want to be Lieutenants. Lieutenants want to be majors. Majors want to be commissioners. The Commissioner wants to move into politics. The lawyers want to become judges. Judges want to be reelected. I can't remember seeing this as the focus of any other series on TV. Not Hill Street Blues. Not NYPD Blue. Not anything that I can remember. McNulty is constantly swimming upstream against a sea of decisions made by cops, commissioners, lawyers and judges who want to move up the latter rather than right for justice. This conflict makes for great drama.

The cast of The Wire has no major stars, but the acting is exquisite. I wonder how HBO can routinely fashion ensemble casts of such high quality. It makes me believe that there is a seam of great acting talent out there that most of us are just simply not aware of. You certainly don't see much of it on over the air television. Or it could be the dearth of great writers, on which HBO seems to have a minor monopoly, makes good actors look bad. I haven't really thought about it enough to make up my mind.

I love watching shows on DVD. I don't have HBO and probably won't have it anytime in the near or distant future, so it's convenient for me to be to rent or borrow the DVDs and watch them at my leisure. Beyond that, the ability to watch show after show with no commercials or waiting is the way all TV should be viewed. Then I can sit back and really enjoy this cinematic creation that the magicians at HBO have pulled out their the hat.

At 9:30 tonight NBC is premiering The Office, a remake of a BBC series of the same name. I'm skeptical that it's going to be any good. I'd go as far as to say it's probably going to suck. I'm going watch it mostly out of curiosity.

I like Steve Carell, of Daily Show fame, who's playing the boss. His deadpan humor is right on. If the show fails, it won't be because of him. It will be because of the nature of the show and the poor translation of humor from across the Atlantic.

I'm a huge fan of the original English series. Ricky Gervais, who co-wrote the show and stars as the clueless boss David Brent is, as my buddy John would say, sublime. He's like watching a car wreck. You don't know what he's going to do or say next, you just know it's going to be awful and you can't stop looking. It's the fine line between humor and revulsion that makes the Office work. It's for exactly this reason that I doubt the Americanized version will. The show is far too subtle for an American audience.

There's also no laugh track in the original series, and I'm told that NBC has left it out of the remake as well. How this will go over will be interesting. My feeling is that most people won't know when to laugh, partly because they've never had to know and partly because they just won't get it.

NBC has cautiously ordered only 6 episodes for the American The Office. Hopefully, I'll be wrong, the show will great, critics will love it and there will be enough groundswell of support from the fans of the original that NBC will have a keeper to replace the whole in their lineup left by Seinfeld, Frazier & Friends. One of the sad things about the original BBC series is that it only lasted 2 seasons and 12 shows. If the NBC series is a success, we might see office hijinks for years to come.

I channel surfing last night and I came across this show on KTEH (one of three PBS stations here in the Bay Area) that was showing something called Alone in the Wilderness. I watched for a few seconds as Dick Proenneke built a log cabin by hand and I was hooked in for the whole hour or so left in the program. Proenneke was 51 when he grew weary of the workaday life, packed it all in and moved to Alaska. He build a cabin on Upper Twin Lakes with a few basic tools and 40 bucks worth of material (mostly for the roof) and lived there for 30 years by himself.

The video is narrated by Dick, who must have filmed the whole thing himself, since he was up there alone only occasionally visited by seaplanes with rudimentary supplies. He builds just about everything he needs using the most basic of hand tools. He fashions intricate latches and hinges for his front door. He constructs a bear proof storage shed for dried meat. He builds a stone fireplace just before the onset of winter. He lines his roof and builds an underground refrigerator from insulating moss, he carves spoons and bowls out of wood, and much more that this. He is amazing as example of self-reliance.

Through his eyes, we see the seasonal changes in the high country. Bears come out of hibernation. Lake ices breaks and is carried away down the river. Plants and flowers bloom. Then the reverse happens in as the weather turns cold, ice forms over the lake, animals go into hiding.

His calm, matter of fact narration style is reassuring. He makes everything seem so easy, as if anyone could take off into the wilderness and carve out a life worth living. The exact opposite is true and the ease and mastery with which Proenneke carries out his self-assigned tasks is enough to leave someone like me feeling quite
inadequate.

Still, I'm fascinated and I'm going to find and read his book. Check your local PBS station to see if the documentary is playing in your area.

My lost TV remote never did show up (I'm convinced the cats have conspired to hide it away) so I buckled and bought a universal remote. It came in the mail yesterday, and now I will never again have to get up off my ass to change the channel. Ain't technology lovely?

An old friend of mine from elementary school, Evan Arnold, has been making appearances on The West Wing, which is pretty cool. Evan has been a struggling actor for years. He did some commercials when he was younger. I went with him to a couple of auditions and I can remember seeing all these kids that ended up with the gigs and became somewhat famous. This is a long time ago, mind you, and my memory is shot, but I can vividly recall seeing Jason Hervey at one audition for a Bubblicious ad and then seeing him in that commercial. Evan went for a lot of gigs like that and mostly came up empty.

Then he scored an appearance on The Facts of Life and landed a somewhat recurring role on Growing Pains as Ritchie the garbage boy, which was big. The show spun off into Just The Ten Of Us, Evan joined that cast, but the show bombed after one season.

I would continue to see him here and there in various commercials, which was just so strange. I mean, I was in the fucking cub scouts with this kid and now he's in a beer commercial. That's just too bizarre.

I knew he'd done some things but it was shocking when I saw the list of his credits on IMDB. He's been busy. He was in fucking Spiderman. How did I not know that? It was a small part, but he's in the movie. And I've seen it. And I don't remember seeing him. I'm going to have a take another look.

Evan has always been a wild man. I haven't talked to him a while. He's married now, but I doubt he's calmed down much. My favorite all-time Evan story happened when we were in junior high. My brother Brian, Evan and I had gone to UCLA to play tennis. Evan's brother John picked us up in his old beat-up brown Celica. We were driving off campus when we passed a cyclist on the inside. Evan decided it would be smart to lean out the driver side window, flip the guy off and scream, "HEY FUCK YOU!!!" at the top of his lungs. Remember, this is a 13 year old punk kid. So we make a left and head down towards Sunset Blvd where we inconveniently ran into a red light. The cyclist came up to the driver side window and said something like, if you're going to flip someone off, make sure you have a green light. At which point John, desperately trying to cover for his asinine little brother, said, he wasn't flipping you off, he was flipping me off. Whatever. I don't think the cyclist bought it. We laughed about it all the way home.

It's a silly story, but it still makes me laugh more than 20 years later. That's the genius of Evan. He was always able to make everyone around him laugh.

I love The West Wing. The reasons I love The West Wing is that the writing is so smart, the acting is so sharp and the cast preforms well as an ensemble. The show also deals with a myriad of issues, albeit most of them from a progressive point of view, that other media outlets completely ignore. Here's one for example.

Last night I was watching the Bravo The West Wing and there was this episode from Season II called The Midterms which had the quintessential Jen Bartlet monologue.

The president of the United States was about to address a gathering of radio talk show hosts in the White House. As the president entered the hall, they all stood and applauded. All, that is, except one — a woman with strikingly blond hair, wearing a bright green suit. At first, her presence rattled the president. He lost his train of thought several times before he finally spoke directly to the sitting talk show host.

"Excuse me, doctor," the president said to her. "It's good to have you here. Are you an M.D.?"

"A Ph.D.," she retorted smartly.

"In psychology?" he pursued.

"No, sir," she said.

"Theology?"

"No."

"Social work?"

"I have a Ph.D. in English literature," she replied.

"I'm asking," continued the president, "because on your show people call in for advice and you go by the title 'doctor,' and I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology, or health care."

"I don't believe they are confused. No, sir," she responded.

"Good," said the president, raising his voice sarcastically. "I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination."

"I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President," she replied haughtily. "The Bible does."

"Yes, it does!" he shouted.

"Leviticus 18:22."

"Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?"

"While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it OK to call the police?"

"Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?"

"Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side?"

"Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?"

"Think about those questions, would you? One last thing. While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the ignorant tight-ass club, in this building when the president stands, nobody sits."

If you're interested, you can hear the interaction here.

This dialogue gets to the point of what I have been saying for a long time, namely that Christians, especially the bible-thumping, holier-than-thou types, tend to cherry pick from the bible and the teachings of Jesus what is important to them and them preach about it as if it is some sort of natural truth, which it clearly is not. Does "homosexuality is abomination" trump "love thy neighbor as thyself". I don't think so, but so many Americans don't agree with me. One of the many problems with organized religion is that it has an agenda. And that agenda doesn't take into account the needs of the people, or modern society, it only takes into account the needs of perpetuating the status quo of the church, temple or mosque.

Did you happen to catch the PBS documentary Extreme Oil? The 3 part piece investigates the extreme lengths the oil industry has to go find ever more elusive sources of petroleum. It's frightening. If ever you wanted politicians to take up the flag of alternative fuels, now is the time.

Last night I saw Episode Two, called "The Oil Curse", which detailed, amongst other things, how Texaco's drilling for oil in the Amazon region of Ecuador has polluted the countryside, destroyed the lives and livelihood of indigenous people and raised cancer rates to absurd levels.

The people of Ecuador are fighting back with a multli-billion law suit that will, thanks to a recent ruling in the US courts, be enforceable in the United States. Who knows whether or not they will win. The case has already been delayed for 10 years by (now) Chevron Texaco’s legal team.

According to the documentary, the case has already affected the way major oil companies do business. Hopefully a favorable ruling will move them even further in the direction of environmental protection. However any decision in the case could be years off, not to mention the possibility of appeals.

Episode Three, "The Wilderness" is about drilling in Alaska and Canada and should prove to be equally depressing.

Has anyone out there caught any of the coverage on HDTV that NBC keeps pumping? I wonder if it has been any good. I don't even know how many people have Hi-Def TVs. I suspect the numbers are tiny which makes me curious why NBC is putting so much emphasis on it. Still, I want to know what it's like, because it's, like, you know, cutting edge and all.

I don't really think poker is a sport, but that's not going to stop me from being glued to the TV tonight when ESPN debuts the 2004 World Series of Poker with back-to-back episodes starting at 6pm PST. I watch poker for the drama, for the players, the personalities, and for the psychology. It's still as fascinating to me for all those reasons as it was when I when I first started watching it on TV here and there years ago.

My only wish about the programming is that it would be live. It should be live. It could be live. It sucks that you can go online and find out the winner. It takes much of the drama out of the event. There's not doubt about it, tape delay sucks.

I just witnessed something that was as absurd piece of television as I have ever seen. Crossfire on CNN just had a show where the topic of debate was Michael Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. This movie has been the source of huge controversy when it was thrust into the limelight after winning the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, so it's natural that Crossfire would eventually get around to it.

The problem is that neither of the hosts, James Carville or Tucker Carlson, had seen the film. And only one of the guests Arianna Huffington, of all people, had seen the film and was there to support it. The other guest, Melanie Morgan, a conservative talk show host (is there another kind) from KGO in the Bay Area, took the position that no one should see the film, even though she hasn't seen it, which seems rather indefensible on a number of fronts.

I can understand why conservative pundits want to attack this film. Because even if Moore's assertion's don't have any veracity, and I'm not judging one way or the other, it works against their man in the White House. But while doing so, they risk at great damage to themselves coming up against first amendment arguments in the Constitution they hold so dear, and rightly so.

If you're not already watching, stop what you're doing and turn on the Food Network. Flay, Puck, Sakai, Morimoto and Batali. You will not be disappointed. I guarantee it. Go watch. Stop reading. I mean it

I recently have been watching the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel and the World Series of Poker on ESPN, and I have an admission to make. I never would have expected it, but I am totally enraptured watching poker on television.

Some would think this is about as exciting as watching television fishing, but it's a whole different kettle of fish.

There is litterally a ton of money on the line. In the WSOP last year there were over 800 contestants who antied up 10 grand each for a seat at the table. First prize is $2.5 million, a winner's share bigger than the Kentucky Derby, Wimbledon, Indianapolis 500 or any other competition on Earth. That's 2,500,000 dollars. For poker. Each of contests on the WPT has a slightly smaller purse, but the winners generally take home more than 500 grand which isn't exactly chump change.

There are also these great personalities. You have Johnny Chan who was made famous in the film Rounders (Edward Norton and Matt Damon) as the perfect player. He won back to back WSOP in 1987 and 1988. You have Scotty Nguyen who was born in Saigon during the war and is now the highest roller in the world. You have Phil Ivey, the Tiger Woods of Poker. There's David Ulliot from England, the so-called "Devil Fish". There's Phil Hellmuth Jr., the youngest player to win the world title and poker's bad boy. And there are tons of other interesting characters from all over the world. There are players from Denmark, Lebanon, Russia, Switzerland and every other place in between. You have guys you hate and want to see lose and guys you love and want to see to win.

I just saw the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee on ESPN2 and I was struck by a couple of things that I thought I needed to share with y'all.

One is that there is probably not a single contestant among the 16 year old and under entrants in the bee who would score higher on the verbal section of the GRE than I just did.

Two is that there is high ratio of kids in the bee who will be thrown in lockers, tossed into garbage cans and otherwise humiliated during high school to those who will actually enjoy the secondary educational experience.

Three is that despite some incredibly challenging words in the competition such as pococurante (the winning word), lebhaft, voussoir, yamamai, guichet, rhathymia, peirastic and symphily (all of which, interestingly, show up as misspelled in MS Word), the contestants would have an easier time spelling these words than each other's last names.

Congrats to Sai Gunturi, the 2003 National Spelling Bee champ.

If want to see a slice of Samoan life, look no further than MTV.
Surf Girls, now showing on MTV every Monday 10:30pm eastern features hot surf babes (wouldn't want to see that?) traveling the South Pacific (that's where I am) in search of the perfect wave.

I saw some of the these wandering around the streets in Apia when they made their forays in town to decompress. I have to tell, it's quite shocking to see Americans models running amok in Samoa after you've been here for half a year.

Sadly, MTV has yet to arrive on the shores of this Pacific paradise. Check out the show and let me know how it is.

Here's the blurb from the website:

"Who needs the boys of summer when you’ve got the Surf Girls of MTV? Fourteen babes with boards trek across the globe to compete for a highly-coveted wildcard into the World Championship Tour of surfing and a spot in a pro contest. Find out who will catch a wave to surfing glory in Surf Girls, where the sun is almost as hot as the ladies."

It never fails. Easter rolls around and I think about one of my favorite Simpon's episodes.

This is setup: The Simpsons doze off during the Rev. Lovejoy's sermon and dream they are Bible characters.

The sign on the chruch this day reads: "Christ Dyed Eggs For Your Sins."

Homer dreams about the Garden of Eden. Bart imagines David vs. Golaith.

But the best dream is Lisa Simpson's reverie about the Exodus from Egypt featuring Millhouse as Moses. Here is a snippet of the dialogue from the end of the dream:

Last night was a great night. I went to a friend's house and made sushi and sashimi. We then devoured our creations as we got pleasantly inebriated, first with gin & cranberry and then on wine, and watched 3 or 4 episodes of the Iron Chef, possibly the best television show ever conceived by mankind. Chaiman Kaga is, indeed, a mad genius.

For those of who are familiar with this program, you know what I am talking about. For those of you who are not, all I can say is, get the Food Network and get watching. You surely won't regret it.

The premise behind Iron Chef is that a insanely wealthy and eccentric gourmet (portrayed by Chaiman Kaga Takeshi) lives in his castle with a army of fine chefs. He delights in staging food battles between his honored Iron Chefs and premiere chefs of the culinary world.