Too late to write anything of substance, so here's someone's clips from 1983 TV, including Madame, plus a tiny bit of a Phillies-Mets game (just Harry Kalas giving the score) and some IDs from Columbus and Cleveland:
Random crap, just the way I like it. I need to go back and dub some of my old VHS tapes to digital. I bet I have some great old commercials and IDs on there.
At the corner of Crenshaw and Lomita in Torrance today, and, seemingly, every day for the past several weeks:
He's advertising a branch of the Mr. Pickle's deli chain from Northern California, taking a step into the Southern California market. It is not the worst job one could have, but it isn't good.
It was a busier than normal Friday. I probably forgot to do something important. But after the debt ceiling votes and the launch of the new Chicago all-News station and Nnamdi (!) and Pence and Vince Young, my head was pretty much exploding. I was barely able to get the weekly Nerdist wrapup done. And now I'm fried.
Interesting times, though, in every sense of that term. Let's hope for the best. And now, I'll go collapse on the couch.
Rather than repeat the same whining about my deadline I posted over at Google+, I'll just repost the video that went along with it, from WWWW Detroit in 1970:
I need another vacation.
Oh, I just don't have the energy. Here:
"Mule Skinner Blues," by the Fendermen. One of the truly demented hits of the era. But the odd syncopation and insane laughter are just the setup for the very end, when they add:
"Cha cha cha!"
It comes out of nowhere. It's totally inappropriate. It doesn't fit the rest of the song. And it's genius.
I always assumed that this version of the song begat the Levi's commercial of my youth:
Got the "good morning." Got the goofy laugh. All it needs is one thing:
Cha cha cha.
Everything is better with cha cha cha.
I humbly apologize for posting this installment of Eddie Pepitone's "Puddin'" video series. It is far too easy to make me laugh, it appears. Behold:
Gets me every time.
I'm tired. Watch this:
That was an early '80s commercial (how 'bout that hair?) for Marineland, which, as I've noted, was in this neighborhood. It's now this:
The Terranea resort, home to the annual D conference and our annual birthday dinners (they offer quite a deal). Nice place, and definitely a step or a hundred up from the old theme park. Although there's something to be said for killer whales.
Way busy today.
Thoughts:
Please, Lord, no Brett Favre in Philadelphia. We do not need nor want that. No. Stop it.
I need another vacation. I won't be getting one for the foreseeable future, but I need one.
I do not care about "Entourage." Unless, that is, they end it by having Vince, Ari, Turtle, Drama, and E all living under a freeway overpass, destitute. Or in prison. That, I'll watch.
That's all. Good night.
Oh, yeah. I should post something here.
But not much happened today. Ran some errands and worked. Watched half of an awful movie on TV which doesn't even deserve a mention but was about as poorly written, acted, and directed as anything I've seen. And now, I'm done with the day.
So I'm gonna go now. Talk to you tomorrow.
It's computer stuff day!
I've been trying the free version of Spotify, and I like it. Anything that lets me listen to morose hipster Americana folkie stuff like the Avett Brothers and Bon Iver over and over and over without paying is okay by me. So far, it's taking whatever obscurities I throw at it and has most of it. Not bad.
I'm a little perturbed by Carbonite, though. It's one of the few programs that doesn't work properly in OS X Lion. You would think they'd have taken the time to address this while the OS was still in developers' hands before the formal launch. I now have a choice: Upgrade the OS and lose the backup, or wait. I'll wait, but I'm not happy that Carbonite, which I pay for, wasn't on the ball. Not good.
Anyway, that's enough whining. Here's some musical whining to fit my mood:
What kind of day was it? Let's see... 3 am solo duty on the news with no lead story in sight, garbage men came early and I had to run up the street with bags of trash to catch the truck before it left the neighborhood, a long hot (no A/C) round trip to Santa Monica to fill out paperwork, no ideas for a column (still; bye bye, deadline)...
...and my in-laws' cat passed away. Seriously, that is a truly sad thing. Clyde was cool, even if he did have sort of a Hitler mustache. Losing a beloved pet is really hard. And I did like Clyde, even if he tended to leave a lot of hair all over my clothes whenever I visited. He'll be missed.
And now, it's time to go to sleep, column unwritten, interviews still waiting to be written, several phone calls and emails to return. This is not ideal, but one has to prioritize. I'll go with sleep first. The other stuff will have to wait a few hours.
Well, Comic-Con is getting underway and I'm not there. It's only about a hundred miles down the road, and because of my emploument I SHOULD be there, but I'm not, because... well, i'm not. Ah, well, whatever. Can't help that. In honor of the festivities, here's a vintage Fleischer Superman cartoon from 1942, with the Man of Steel, in uncharacteristically violent, destructive fashion, sabotaging the Yokohama Navy Yard and rescuing Lois Lane. Plus unfortunate stereotypes typical of the age and war situation!:
Speaking of which, I hope "Captain America" is like this.
This wasn't one of the better days.
Part of it was like this:
I'm going to go sleep the rest of it off. Maybe my jaw will stop aching at some point between now and the morning,
Noted with practically no comment, from last Friday's Twins-Royals game at Target Field:
Well, sure.
Travel day today. Got up at 4 central, flew back here, and have been trying to catch up with work ever since.
I'll have to take another day off here. Talk to you tomorrow, maybe.
The panel I had to moderate at the Conclave today went okay. That was because the panelists were all great. All I had to do was ask questions and get out of the way. I can do that. And did.
Other than that, the most remarkable thing about the day was lunch, specifically that the food served was possibly the worst pizza I'd eaten since I was a child... no, Domino's is about as bad, but this was barely pizza. I really should have stopped after one bite and walked across the street to the Costco for a two-buck slice. Seriously, ugh.
Back to L.A. tomorrow, into the teeth of Carmageddon, which, apparently, has resulted in the smoothest traffic ever. Maybe they should take down freeway overpasses every weekend.
Here's a word of advice. Don't do this:
Yes, this happened, Friday night at the Twins-Royals game in Minneapolis. A guy proposed on the huge video board that looms over Target Field. (She said yes, apparently, although they took the camera off of them real fast) And in light of the fact that, in America, more people than ever have the right to marry (at least in some states), I can only relate to you the story that I and many others can tell you.
It was a long time ago, and I was at a Phillies game with the woman who would ultimately marry me. Someone at that game did a jumbotron proposal, and at that moment, Fran leaned over and said this:
"If you even THINK of proposing to me like that, I will kill you."
But she had nothing to worry about, since I never considered that option. And I've heard many other people tell me that their spouses told them the same thing. Proposing at a ballpark is about as unromantic a setting as one can imagine. Putting it on the big video board is just asking for this:
Of course, that one was staged. But it's what everyone WANTS to see, the goofy guy's clumsy proposal shot down. Just avoid the "creative proposal," okay? Pick a nice place like, oh, I don't know, a fancy restaurant or a pretty park or some landmark. Trust me on this.
I have never been as engulfed by work as today. Yesterday's severe headache resulted in today's backlog, then in a major email crash (dear Microsoft: In re: Entourage in Office 2008 for Mac: You suck). I only recovered from the latter a few minutes ago. I'm still miles behind on the column and everything else.
So, I'm going to go to sleep now. Everything is overdue, but everything can wait. I'm human. I can't pull all-nighters every night.
Got to Minneapiolis. Instantly got severe headache. Several Benadryls later... I'm out of it.
Actual convention tomorrow. The headache better be gone by then.
Gotta pack and prepare. Here, watch a little video about my next stop:
The land of Pearson's Salted Nut Roll. More tomorrow.
This is the promotion running at the Chevron station near where I live.
I live in the Los Angeles area. The Giants are, er, not in the Los Angeles area. You might be aware of the hostilities between the teams and their fan bases, which occasionally turns quite violent.
As amusing as this is, Chevron would be well advised to change this one out.
No time tonight, either.
Hey, my Nerdist cohort Matt Mira got written up in the Huntsville Times in Alabama for his yeoman work tweeting and blogging from the final shuttle launch -- go read it here. Kid done great.
Time off is over. Bleaugh.
Here's some old TV circa 1954, Jack Barry with "Juvenile Jury," a panel of kids answering questions sent in by the audience. Plus, live ads with the "Scotch Girl" for Scotch Tape and an opening question about a boy wearing a kilt:
Oh, those kids say the darndest things (and wander across the stage while some guy playing your friendly neighborhood grocer tries to do a live spot). How about that sign off: "Tape it easy!" And you complain about product placement nowadays.
I could write something here, but I'm too tired.
Here, I wrote something over at the other place wrapping up the week. Read it. It involves pickles and bananas and other phallic advertising costumes. You like that stuff. I got a few hours of "vacation" left, so... see you later.
I can't tell you what kind of day today was.
Okay, it was hot. And I spent a lot of it on the 405 in traffic. But that's about all of it.
Otherwise, nah, I'll shut up and go back to what's left of my week off. Sometimes, it's best to do nothing.
I'm supposed to be on vacation.
So let me vacate.
It was my birthday today. I celebrated by getting a haircut, filling Fran's car with gas, running errands, doing some work, and Fran taking me out to a spectacularly good dinner over at Terranea. That and thanking a lot of people on Facebook for their best wishes and my sister and Fran's sister for their gifts.
Yes, it was a good day. Exactly how I prefer to spend my birthday. More tomorrow, but for now, I'm content.
For the 4th, someone's video of the Macy's fireworks:
Best part is mom's "You're missing this! Everything at one time!" It doesn't get much more New York than that.
Today was a very nice milestone in our lives. I won't be specific here, but it's a good, encouraging thing, and what better way to commemorate something good than in the cheesiest possible manner?:
Okay, we didn't go listen to Kool and the Gang. We went and ate mass quantities of Southern food, which isn't necessarily health food but, well, it's a celebration. I'll run it off tomorrow.
Day 1 of a Week Off:
Nothing.
Okay, not technically nothing. I ran, we picked up a few things, I realized my good eyeglasses were missing, we watched some TV. That's pretty much it. Basically, nothing.
Tomorrow? More nothing. Because that's what a Week Off is all about.
(No, it's not really a "vacation." Vacation means vacating)
Once upon a time, 40 years ago, New Jersey didn't have its own TV stations, at least none that actually paid attention to the state. That's why the state started its own network, first with stations down south in Camden and Trenton, then to the north in New Brunswick and Montclair. It was called Jerseyvision then; I remember my dad coming home from the NJEA Teachers' Convention in Atlantic City with a bumper sticker and brochure about the brand new operation just starting up. When channel 50 went on the air, it was the first UHF channel that came in without tons of snow at our house, and we watched it. There was the news with people like Kent Manahan and Diane Betzendahl (later Allen), and they did a great series with Jean Shepherd, "Shepherd's Pie," with some unforgettable bits about the state he really did dislike (there was an ode to the closed drive-in theater, and a bit musing about lawn ornaments like the Mexican stereotype with the burro, wondering whether there were Mexicans with lawn New Jerseyans standing next to the New Jersey native conveyance, the Dodge Dart).
But as time went on, the renamed New Jersey Network seemed to have less and less reason to exist. Cable added local news. New Jersey 101.5 came along to provide a commercial, independent source for news and talk about the state. The Internet has all sorts of New Jersey news, from the Star Ledger-Trenton Times' NJ.com to Montclair's hyperlocal Baristanet. And having the state spend money on a TV network the objectivity of which could be questioned due to its reliance on allocation of public funds from the legislature became untenable. So Governor Christie shut it down last night, handing the TV operation to WNET and selling off the radio stations, which cover very little of the state and seemed especially redundant and pointless, between WNYC in New York and WHYY in Philadelphia. And it's over.
This is how it ended:
Kind of an anti-climax, but you can't blame them for being too bummed to do better. And the fact that the acting director was the one to hog the last minute instead of letting the staff say its goodbyes shows how much ego played a role in that operation. Still, it's not great that people lost their jobs, but, well, the money ran out. And if it couldn't stand on its own, as many public broadcasters manage to do, it didn't make sense to prop it up; there just weren't many viewers or listeners. At one time, it served a purpose and produced some quality programming. That makes its understandable demise a little sad. But just a little.
