Tag: television

The Watch List

It’s a thin television crop to stream right now. (For me and my wife. It’s always a matter of tastes and preferences, innit?) There’s not much that’s frothy out there. It’s mostly dark drama. Netflix and science fiction have been dominating our streams. This list doesn’t include documentaries and movies.

Watching:

Episodes (final season, Netflix (was originally on Showtime)

Hard Sun (Hulu)

Father Brown (Netflix)

Sneaky Pete (Amazon Prime)

Atlanta (Hulu)

Jessica Jones (Netflix)

The Oath (Crackle) (sorry, I’m a Sean Bean sucker)

Not watching (because we finished them)

Altered Carbon (Netflix)

Frankie and Grace (Netflix)

Imposters (Netflix)

The Detectorists (Acorn, but now offered on Netflix)

The Defenders (Netflix)

Vera (Acorn)

19-2 (Acorn) (The first episode of the second season, involving a school shooting, is one of the best pieces of television fiction I think I’ve ever watched, sharp, gritty, and human.)

QI (Britbox, series N & O, with Sandi)

Upstart Crow (Britbox)

The Brokenwood Mysteries (Acorn)

Inspector George Gently (Acorn)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Crackle, Netflix)

Tin Star (Amazon Prime)

Not watching (because we fell off the wagon)

Shameless (original UK offering) (Hulu)

This is Us (Hulu)

Longmire (Netflix)

The Walking Dead

Fear the Walking Dead

We’re still awaiting the return of:

Orphan Black

The Expanse

Dark Matter

Travelers

Raised by Wolves

Mr and Mrs Murder

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Game of Thrones

Alpha House

One Mississippi

Into the Badlands

The next Stranger Things

Mozart in the Jungle

If you know any television shows streaming that you want to suggest, I’m always interested. Cheers

 

 

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Backwards

Watching a television show, I saw that they got ready for work and school, came into the kitchen, got something to eat and drink, and then, after a few bites and gulps, realized they’re late, and ran out the door.

I thought, they didn’t brush their teeth. Then I realized, they must have brushed their teeth before coming into the kitchen.

I always ate breakfast first, and then brushed my teeth and got ready for work or school and left. I guess I’ve been doing it backwards all these years.

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Robert

Who played Pappy Boyington in the television show. He needed to remember. He wanted to say it was Robert somebody. Because he was looking for a dark-haired Robert, the first Robert to answer was Robert Blake, which he knew was incorrect. Blake played Baretta. Was he still alive? Wasn’t he also in the “Our Gang” movies, and wasn’t there he charged with murdering his wife, but acquitted? Then there was something else, with his children, or something, wasn’t there?

That didn’t answer his original question. He thought it was a Conrad, and the guy was also in television commercials for batteries. But wasn’t Robert Conrad in “Jake and the Fat Man?” No, no, that was WILLIAM Conrad, right? Sure, and wasn’t he also in “Cannon?”

Was William Conrad still alive?

By then, he was, he would guess, ninety-five percent certain that the actor in “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Wild, Wild West” television shows was Robert Conrad, but he remained uncertain about whether these three actors remained alive. It was an odd subject for his morning walk, and left him with so many questions requiring answers.

Well, not that many.

Now; who is William Katt? Didn’t he have a television show? Was he still alive?

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Today’s Theme Music

This was an interesting oddity that I found on the net.

Thirteen years old, I was just getting into groups like Cream. Cream was Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce. I knew who Glen Campbell was, of course; being in America in nineteen sixty nine, Campbell was difficult to avoid. He was well-accomplished, with well-known hit songs like “Gentle On My Mind,” “By the Time I Get To Phoenix,” and “Wichita Lineman.” By sixty-nine, he was hosting television shows.

This video is of Glen Campbell hosting a show and introducing Cream in nineteen sixty-nine. I never saw this video before today, and it’s definitely a ride on the wayback machine. Cream, so accustomed to playing stadiums with deafening levels of sound, seem strangely muted here. The contrast between their long-haired hippie appearance and Glen Campbell’s look is striking, and can easily be a metaphor for the difference in the America that was, and the America that was coming. Look at the set’s simple production, as well. It’s a far cry from “American Idol.”

Take a look to moderately far back in modern America, to nineteen sixty-nine, with Glen Campbell, and Cream.

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What I’m Watching

I’m not watching much.

Twenty seventeen has not started out great. I’ve seen ads for a television game show, ‘The Wall’, and think, surely this is going to be satirical science fiction. But no; it’s real.

Yes, it’s a lean time in television land, with reruns, award shows and sports dominating. That’s true even though I stream television through Acorn, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, Sling and others. Although I’ve cut the cable, as they now like to claim with marketing zeal, television is mostly an entertainment desert.

I’ve gone through ‘Sneaky Pete.’ I’m waiting for more of ‘The Americans’, ‘Orphan Black’, ‘Stranger than Fiction’, ‘The Expanse’, ‘Dark Matters’, ‘Goliath’ and ‘Travelers’. We worked through my wife’s mild infatuation with ‘Being Human’ and ‘The Librarians’. I’ve gone through all of the ‘WestWorld’, Ballers’ and ‘Cake Wars’. Nothing new and offbeat like ‘Miranda’, Gavin and Stacey’, ‘Pram Face’, or ‘Misfits’ is out there. No new ‘Foyle’s War’ ‘Happy Valley’ or ‘The Killing’. No Frankie and Grace. No Harry Bosch or ‘Justified’.  No Wire.

We’re left, basically, with ‘This Is Us’. It’s a good show, with interesting characters, storylines, and structures, well acted and produced. My one gripe is related to its location in Pittsburgh, PA. I lived in Pittsburgh until I was fifteen and visited there often after that. Mom and my sisters still live their with their families. The people on TIU just don’t have the brashness of voice and the unusual talking style I find in Pittsburgh. Pittsburghers don’t tend to talk in soft voices, awaiting their turns. They talk fast, and start talking all at once, which causes conversations to become louder and louder, and more chaotic. They also tend to end sentences with a rise, as though they’re asking a question instead of making a statement.

Well, maybe that was just at my house, with my friends and family.

On the movie side, I’ve seen just about anything that I want to see.

What about you? Anything out there you’re watching that you recommend to others?

Meanwhile, I’ll probably don my brown shirt and take up with Mal for a few days.

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Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, ARPANET. Without you, we would be lacking the Internet.

Some will whisper, this is an anniversary, not a birthday. Maybe they’ll make such a remark on the Internet.

Few realize how long people worked on ARPANET and its principles and processes and what its success actually represents. Like Philo Farnsworth and other inventors, their work is used but rarely remembered and celebrated. Most ARPANET and early Internet pioneers worked in teams. They’re remembered but no celebrated but they had some nifty ideas. Their accomplishments helped drive Internet development. Without them, we’d not have bloggers sharing opinions, dreams, hopes, frustrations and cat photos and videos, and complaining about government, politics, manners and movies. WordPress would probably be a lot smaller and less successful.

Where would Amazon and eBay be without the Internet? What would Facebook be without an Internet?

Seriously, take a moment to imagine a Facebook without an Internet and the web.

I need not add the rhetorical amendment asking where the rest of us would be and what we would be doing, but I kinda did.

Going back to my early Internet and computer learning reminds me minicomputers once roamed the electronic frontier. Remember the Burroughs Corporation?

Sure, some remember. Some also remember the Nash Rambler.

Such is the case with inventors, engineers and their work. Their ingenuity shapes our lives but we remember few of them. As always, the winners shape the marketing we refer to as history.

Ah, it’s all ancient history, way back, like a long time ago. Here we are, on the Internet, clicking, scrolling, and googling away the morning.

Happy New Year.

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Today’s Theme Music

I was doing things differently on Thursday night. That change in routine delivered me to television channel surfing.

Television channel surfing has changed during my lifetime. We didn’t really have channel surfing in the early days. Our home enjoyed four channels for a number of years. Rotary dials, and later push-buttons, controlled the channel selections and volumes. That met getting up to change the channel or turn the television up or down. Schedules were pretty fixed and everything was well-advertised. Little was controversial because most of it was being buried the way a killer hides a body. Surfing really exploded with development of cable television and the remote control.

Now I have remotes but no cable. My television comes to me via a Roku in the study (a.k.a. ‘The Snug’) and an Internet connected ‘smart’ television in another room. The rest is received over-the-airways.

OTA is growing in popularity. Stations showing old shows are growing with it. I watched the ‘Comet’ television station the other night along with ‘Me TV’. On one of them (I was surfing, remember), I came across ‘Barney Miller’ reruns and watched two episodes. It was cool seeing Hal, Ron, Abe and the others, people who have aged or passed on, and enjoy some of their skills and talents once again, along with the writing, directing and producing talents of all those people behind the scenes. The shows ignited a flood about fashion and bell bottoms, too.

You probably know where this is headed if you’ve read anything of me. The ‘Barney Miller’ theme song has lodged in my head like a deer tick in my calf. I must rid myself of it, and to do that, others must hear it. So, please, I beg you, men and women of the Internet, play this song and relieve me of my suffering.

To be fair, it’s not bad as theme music goes. Reminding me of old jazz, it begins with a slow, low bass line, and then the song builds in tempo as more instruments are layered in, becoming an upbeat tune by the end. Go ahead, take a listen.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

On some days — or maybe during some weeks — or months or years — okay, during some lives, things aren’t going great. They once motored smoothly along but then the engine of their success started burping foul odors, stumbling and hesitating, barely responding when we called for more power. Maybe even that’s a dream, that your life never found its mojo. You reach a point when you think, I wish there was something or some way for things to be made better, some magical force or power that can fix it all.

We’ve had many stories, myths, legends, movies, television shows and novels about one who can do such a thing. One such legend, about a genie in a bottle and an astronaut, made it to America’s small screens in the 1960s: ‘I Dream of Jeannie’. Hum it to yourself while you traverse your daily travails.

Maybe it’ll help. Maybe a genie will show up and offer you three wishes so you can change the world – or even just a moment.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I don’t know about you, because I actually don’t know you (I barely know myself), but I could use a rebuild every now and then. Take this gut. Please. Rebuild it. Put my twenty-five year old version back in there. Like a lot of things, I like my body as it used to be.

But c’est la vie, my friends. That’s life and we can’t get rebuilt.

Except that’s not how it was for Steve Austin. He was a man barely alive, and they rebuilt him. I wonder, though, you know, if you can rebuild him, did they rebuild all of him? Was this a ground up restoration or did they just pick and chose? I suspect the latter. They’re always talking about one of his eyes and his legs.

That’s what worries me about being rebuilt. I worry that I’ll ask, “Which of my parts should I replace?”

After softly clearing her throat, my consultant tells me, “Well, on your budget, you’re pretty limited.”

Of course I have a vision about how I want to be rebuilt. “What about Brad Pitt? Can I order anything out of the Brad Pitt catalog?”

“Yes.” My consultant clears her throat. Again. “You can afford anything out of his fingernail sections. Here, page through the website. It’s organized by body parts. So, just select limbs, and then click down to arms, hands, and fingers. See? Brad Pitt’s fingernails are quite reasonably priced. We can rebuild you with a couple of those.”

“A couple?”

“Yes, you can afford a thumb and a little finger.”

“From the same hand?”

“No.”

“What about my mid-section?”

Heavy laughter ensues. When it ends, my consultant tells me, “Oh, you can’t afford Brad Pitt’s mid-section.”

“I can take out a mortgage on my home.”

“That won’t be enough, I’m afraid.”

“How ’bout a bun?”

“Excuse me?”

“Can I get rebuilt with one of Brad Pitt’s buns? You know, his rear end? His ass, to be crass, his derriere, if you want posh.”

“Oh my gosh, excuse me. I spewed coffee when you said that! No, you can’t afford Brad Pitt’s buns, and don’t even think about anything off his face.”

“Not even an earlobe?”

“No.”

“Well, what can I get?”

“Here, let me show you our John Goodman collection.”

“John Goodman? From ‘Roseanne’?”

“Yes, I think you can afford his mid-section.”

“I don’t think that’s an improvement.”

“Are you sure? He is a star.”

So, anyway, I won’t be doing any rebuilding on this cyber Monday. I’m still saving for improvements I can afford. Meanwhile, here is the opening from ‘Six Million Dollar Man’. Oh, sure, they can rebuild Lee Majors. What’s he got that I haven’t got?

That was rhetorical; you don’t need to reply.

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