PMSimon.com

Can't remember any dreams from last night.

Woo-hoo!

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Yes, in case you're trying to get into AllAccess.com, it's down die to the L.A. power outage. The main office has lost power and the servers are out as well. E-mail at that address is out, too, so use perry@pmsimon.com to get me, not that I can do much.

And if the site's still down in an hour or so, I'll post some Talk Topics here so you radio guys won't go through withdrawal.

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Power back, servers fixed. Go there for your radio news and topic needs. Stay here for random useless junk. As per usual.

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Before I forget, is anyone else mourning the death of the Fox Sunday night lineup?

Let's face it, "The Simpsons" ran out of material a long time ago. Last year, I recorded most of the second half of the season on my DVR, and only got around to watching last week- ugh. The show's become a parade of stunt casting for no reason other than they can get the individuals to do the show, with plots that seem like a bad parody of the classic episodes of years past. Last night, the episode was about- stop me if you've heard this one- a dissatisfied Marge walking out on the family and finding fleeting fulfillment with a dashing third party. Yeah, not dissimilar to the bowling episode from the early days, except this one was entirely not funny. The funny moments are getting fewer. I used to think, well, it's still funnier than most sitcoms on the air these days. Now, I'm not sure about that, as bad as other sitcoms may be.

And bad sitcoms are plentiful, but Fox unveiled what may be the worst last night, "The War at Home." Let's see, unappealing cast? Check. Stilted, joke-free script? Check. Cloying, obviously fake laugh track? Check. Lame gimmick? Breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the camera- check. But that understates the depths to which this show sank- there was, no lie, absolutely nothing funny in this show. The hurricane was funnier. Michael Rappaport can't act- in this thing, he's an Al Bundy type, a conservative, whining, bigoted father and husband- and the rest of the cast is worse. The phony audience is amped to 11 by jokes that amount to "I think my son is gay." Seriously, that's all there is. I lasted halfway through the debut and gave up. It makes "According to Jim" seem like "The Office." Now, I've seen a lot of busted pilots over the years, but you cannot possibly tell me that there were no better sitcoms in the pipeline at Fox. There's at least one better one at UPN that was once a Fox property- "Everybody Hates Chris." Fox passed on that and put "The War At Home" on the air. Their programming executives are either blind or... well, let's be charitable and assume they're visually and auditorily impaired.

"Family Guy" is the funniest show in the lineup, which doesn't mean much in light of the rest of the lineup, but it IS still funny. This week's episode was a lesser one with a lame "plot" that degenerated into an extended James Woods joke, but that's not what you're watching for when you watch the show- you're watching for the ridiculous flashbacks, digressions, parodies, and "I can't believe they're getting away with that" moments, and there were some decent ones this week, including a "Star Trek: TNG" parody replete with Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Michael Dorn providing the voices. And Stewie turns out to be a pimp (blink and you missed it). But I laughed, which is more than I can say for "American Dad," which, well, ain't "Family Guy," even if it's Seth MacFarlane's own "Family Guy" self-rip-off. They forgot the humor and characterization part. And Stan Smith ain't Peter Griffin.

There's one more season of "King of the Hill" coming, which should redeem Fox Sundays for at least a while, but it's disappointing to think that I don't even care to watch "The Simpsons" anymore. In fact, screw it, I'm taking it off the recording list. It was fun while it lasted. Too bad they didn't know when to pull the plug... or hire better writers.

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Was there a game tonight? I didn't notice.

(Urgh.)

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Nice running game.

McNabb's suddenly a pocket QB? That's not gonna work.

Whatever. It's week 1. You want to win, but there are 15 games to go. And it's the NFC, right?

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I was going to write something profound, but "Rock Star: INXS" got in the way.

Oh, I'm not watching it. But as I was sitting here trying to put the profundity in just the right words, Fran put the TV in in the living room, and from it presently is coming an ungodly sound, the sound of what sounds like a lounge singer mangling "Paint it, Black." And now, I can't think.

Oh, geez, someone's croaking out that Seal song. "Kiss From a Rose."

How am I supposed to work with that going on? How am I supposed to have any faith in the future of humanity when "Rock Star: INXS" is permitted to exist?

Now Brooke Burke just asked the audience "is anybody else totally sad that this is the last performance show?" Totally.

It's erasing my thoughts about the hurricane, about the football game (a good thing, that is) and the Senate grandstanding over John Roberts and pretty much everything else. Sucked it right out of my head.

I was supposed to be at Dodger Stadium right this minute, but I told myself no, I have too much work. And now THIS happens. J.D., Marty, Mig, or Suzie- who will it be? I. Don't. Care. Pick one and disappear, please.

Solution: earplugs. But it's too late to salvage this evening.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, kids.

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This is gonna be a long afternoon/evening.

My primary computer crashed while I was at lunch. Still not working. And it has everything I need on it- e-mail, work files, everything.

You don't want to talk to me right now.

Unless you'll give me a top-of-the-line Mac. For free.

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This much is certain:

1. Computers wait until the worst possible moment to break down. I was facing two days of extra work- a ton of deadline-intensive extra work- when the latest disaster struck.

2. Computers break down for no apparent reason. I left for lunch yesterday, came back, found the screen frozen, whammo.

3. Tech support is useless. Every time- EVERY TIME- I call Dell with a problem, the India tech support people reading from the Big Book of Computer Lies tell me that the first and only solution to every problem, whether it's a hard drive crash, software corruption, whatever, is to reformat the hard drive and lose all data. Since I happen to know that this is unnecessary in many if not most cases, I have to tell them "no way in Hell." Then I proceed to tell THEM how to do it. They are useless. Compare the methods:

Me: Use the Recovery Console in Windows to run a deep chkdsk, create a new user profile, transfer the old settings, reboot, there you are, most programs and all data still there.

Them: Reformat the hard drive, reinstall Windows, reinstall all programs. Data gone forever, sorry.

That I'm here today writing this is testament to the fact that my method worked. Theirs would, too, if I didn't mind losing thousands of files and e-mail and having to reinstall dozens of programs. That's not to say that my method's perfect- I spent most of today doing things like painstakingly removing and reinstalling Norton Anti-Virus (I know, I know, but it was preinstalled) and reconstructing the old Outlook e-mail file and reentering a zillion passwords that went bye-bye when Windows went goofy. But I have everything back in working order, mostly, sort of. Windows Media Center's acting weird, but it always acts weird.

4. Dell sucks. Dell blows. Dell bites. Jeff Jarvis is right. If I wasn't pretty much an expert level user, this box would be an expensive doorstop.

5. Next time, Mac. And I say that as someone who had to fix countless Macs as a tech geek on a movie lot- they break, they malfunction. They don't, as Mac Kool-Aid drinkers insist, "just work, always." But OS X beats the hell out of Windows XP. There, I said it. So I'll have to go out and buy all new software, pay full price to replace Photoshop and Office... aah, who am I kidding? I'll probably buy another PC.

But if I fall for another fabulous cheap price and great financing from Dell, slap me until I come to my senses.

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Been up since 4, I'm exhausted. Tune in tomorrow for more coherent commentary.

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A sports talk show host was talking about raising money for Hurricane Katrina victims, and he started to say how this was the worst disaster since... the worst since... no, it was WORSE than 9/11, because, you know, when you compare all the devastation to, er, New York....

Advice to him and everyone else tempted to comment on stuff that's way beyond the scope of their expertise: sometimes it's better to shut up.

You can't compare 9/11 and Katrina. In fact, that's the problem with the government's response, isn't it? That FEMA and Homeland Security are geared towards helping in a terrorist attack situation and took their eyes off the natural disaster ball? Two different things, each devastating in their own ways- the 'cane affected a larger territory and more families' material possessions and lifestyles and jobs, while 9/11 was a group of men's deliberate murder of thousands of innocent people to get attention, and it affected everyone in a profound but different manner. Two different things. The common bond is that they both hurt. Do we have to determine which one is "worse"?

But a sports guy, I suppose, will look at things that way, the same way he tries to decide who's the best quarterback or which team is better. And guys who routinely muse on whether the 1967 Packers would beat the 2004 Patriots- in other words, comparisons that could never happen AND require additional context, like changes in athleticism, equipment, opponents, and travel- might look at everything that way.

You are not required to have an "opinion" on everything. That will only get you in trouble. Stick to what you know, what you're qualified to discuss. (That goes double to Cindy Sheehan, who is eminently (and sadly) qualified to discuss the pain of losing a son in a war, but is truly unqualified to talk about much else, especially in light of her comment demanding Bush pull troops out of "occupied New Orleans." I can only imagine her followers wincing at that one. Or maybe not) This isn't sports. This isn't "who would win in a fight, Rocky or Rambo?" Don't, as cliche-users might say, go there.

I, on the other hand, am completely qualified to talk about everything.

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