adrian is rad

watch Teen Jeopardy. It’s easy.

I think I missed one clue in today’s Double Jeopardy round.

You can get more channels without any extra cost. 3 channels from one PBS affiliate! Two from the ABC affiliate!

But here’s the thing, on the secondary channels, they show the stuff that’s not good enough to put on the main channel. Given what’s on the main channel is crap, this stuff is a few levels up on the crap ladder.

The strangest alternative-Super-Bowl TV ever had to have been Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. Did anyone see this?

There have been Bud Bowls and Celebrity Death Matches, but putting a bunch of puppies (and kitties, for the half-time show) on a small field-looking play area and filming them? That’s absurd.

Also, we missed at least one or two plays of the actual Super Bowl watching it.

[Yes, I’m consciously stealing the title.]

Lucerne (Safeway’s house brand) now has a green tea light yogurt. It’s really good. I’ve been enjoying it frequently. The mango green tea is also good, but I’d give the peach green tea flavor a skip.

Fight Quest is a pretty fascinating show. I caught a couple episodes of it today. Two guys travel to different regions of the globe to learn regional martial arts styles. They have 5 days of intense training and then they have to fight a skilled fighter of the style. I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating; maybe it’s seeing these guys push themselves to the limit.

From 9-10pm tonight on the Home Shopping Network is none other than “Infinite Comfort Mattress”. Can you imagine missing that? You’d be kicking yourself for months!

I saw letterman last night, the first one back since they renegotiated with the television writers. Dave’s got a strike beard, which looks pretty funny on him.

It was pretty standard letterman–better than the average (e.g. Leno) but overall only marginally entertaining. Robin Williams was on and was a manic maniac as usual. Lupe Fiasco performed a song that got me a bit intrigued as to his solo stuff–maybe it’s alright.

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

I’m leaving this afternoon for a week (or 9 days) in Japan with my friends Jesse and andyl. After I get back, I’ll have exactly one more month in Taiwan.

I didn’t get photos of either of these so descriptions will have to do.

1. In a market in Hong Kong where haggling is pretty common, a sign for hats.

$20
No bargain.

2. On a big ad for computers on the side of a building in Taipei:

Performance up to 20%

How a few letters can make all the difference.

So your Elsafe hotel safe doesn’t want to lock. It keeps saying that it’s “open” when it’s closed? The batteries probably need to be replaced.

Here is the instruction manual if you want to read more. Replacing the batteries is pretty simple.

It was coming down to the last days of that 7-11 Kwik-E-Mart promotion I’d talked about and I was down in Mountain View anyway, so I decided to make a run over.

It was pretty cool.

I got a pink donut:

(I could have gotten about 400:)

and a squishee.

I’m a bit of a sucker for totally stupid promotions. It was kind of cool.

7-11 has transformed eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts as a promotion for the new Simpsons movie, even including Simpsons foods like the pink donut and squishees.

Luckily one of the 11 is near me, so I’ll stop by in the next month. I’m excited!

This Thursday’s My Name is Earl is going to be the TELEVISION EVENT OF THE CENTURY: Laugh N Sniff. You buy this week’s TV Guide which has a special card in it and at certain points in the show you scratch so you can smell what’s going on in the show! It’s like Smell O Vision! For the masses!

I have purchased my copy of this week’s TV Guide; I’m not missing this opportunity.

Conan’s coming to San Francisco April 30-May 4. Here’s where you can get tickets. I asked for May 4.

Check it!. The presitigous Stanford Daily published an article I wrote about indie music on TV. KZSU is trying to get a regular column in the paper.

It’s marginally interesting.

(It’s an expansion of this post.)

From the same people that brought you that spectacular bouncy-balls-in-San-Francisco Bravia ad (which, incidentally, first alerted me to the amazing Jose Gonzalez) comes another amazing commercial. It’s basically a building demolition/ fireworks display, except done with paint.

The commercial is pretty great by itself, but go ahead and watch the making of as well. The actually did all of that (as they actually dropped a quarter of a million bouncy balls down the hills and streets of San Francisco). There’s something really cool about doing something that would be a little cheesy with computer graphics instead with real materials, people and dollars (or pounds, as the case may be). The Brits seem to have the corner on that market, starting with that ridiculous Honda ad a few years back.

Apparently the O.C. is over. I’m not sad. I hadn’t ever followed it or really cared about it other than for the music. Articles have been written on the effect the O.C. had on music buying habits related to small time bands. I’d heard so-and-so was going to be on the show here and there, but today I read down down the list of songs (or this one if you’d prefer) on the show and it’s really an amazing list in a way. I mean there are some really pretty small time bands in there, and many bands (and even songs) that I’ve put on my online mixtapes. The shear volume of music is quite amazing. There are 12 songs in some of these episodes.

Anyway, the other conclusion that I have from this is that it might be very very expensive to put out the DVDs of this show. It sort of depends. In the past a different license was needed to get the music for the broadcast as opposed to the DVD, but now, as far as I know, the contract usually covers both.

Now it seems quite common for indie bands to be well-represented in TV shows and, for that, I thank you, the O.C. For that and for the excuse to call my town, the MP.

Somehow I missed this: Pitchfork publishes a weekly list of bands and artists on TV that week.

For example, this week’s:

Monday, January 22:

ABC: “Jimmy Kimmel Live”: Nas (rerun)
CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Nellie McKay with the Brooklyn Philharmonic
CBS: “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”: Lady Sovereign (rerun)

Tuesday, January 23:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: the Shins [1]
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: Cheap Trick (rerun)

Thursday, January 25:

CBS: “Late Show With David Letterman”: Gwen Stefani (rerun)
NBC: “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”: New York Dolls (rerun)

Friday, January 26:

NBC: “Last Call With Carson Daly”: Young Jeezy (rerun)

Saturday, January 27:

NBC: “Saturday Night Live”: Ludacris (rerun)

Monday, January 29:

MTV2: “Subterranean”: the Shins

Now you can totally be up on that stuff. Set your Tivos!

[Update:] [1] Did anyone else catch this? Did you see Gibbard playing with them? That man’s everywhere!

This sketch, from last year, is meant to be funny, and it is, but it’s also a good song.

My roommate’s pretty dang smart. Incidentally, TV skipping commercials automagically is just about the best thing EVER.

Maybe it was growing up during the early 90’s but for some reason I still tune in to Saturday Night Live every week. For a few years, I’d watch up until Weekend Update and then switch it off: during most of the Falon-Fey years it was certainly the funniest thing of the night. Since Fallon and then Fey left, even that hasn’t been all that funny recently.

But tonight I was surprised. The show was actually funny throughout. I laughed out loud during a number of sketches. Maybe it was Alec Baldwin (who hosted) who was great. Or maybe Tina Fey wrote some sketches (she cameo-ed on the show). And it probably wasn’t hurt by cameos by, Tina Fey, Tracey Morgan, Steve Martin, Martin Short (who appeared for about 22 seconds), Paul McCartney (similarly, 22 seconds), and Tony Bennett.

Anyway, funny stuff tonight. Maybe it’ll happen again next week…or again in six or seven years.

Friday Night Lights just had Beulah (”Score from Augusta” I think) as background music. That’s pretty obscure.

(And they used Explosions in the Sky later as well.)

Here’s a clip of the Times are a Changin cast performing “Like a Rolling Stone” (the greatest song of all time) on the View.

I couldn’t make it all the way through. Can you?

Ouch. Ouch!

It takes talent to produce something that horrible.

(via stereogum)

One of my roommates: “What else is there to do besides watch TV? I mean, if we weren’t supposed supposed to watch it all day long it wouldn’t work all day long, would it?”

Most of you are probably not near a Sonic so you don’t see the commercials. Heck, the closest one to me is 45 miles away so I probably am at the edge of Sonic commercial range.

There’s a series of funny ones with two guys in a car (for example). One they’ve been running is for the breakfast burrito and I find it pretty funny.

It goes like this: two guys are sitting in a car eating the breakfast burritos. They’re talking along about how full it’s going to make them.

Guy 1: It’s so filling it’s like a feast for breakfast. A breakfeast!!

Guy 2 (not impressed with the new word coinage): uh huh

Guy 1 (again and with weight as if it’s profound): a breakfeast!

Guy 2 (still unimpressed): Uh yeah sure, man.

Brilliant! I am mostly amused by two things: the stupidity of the conversation and the similarity that it bears to many conversations I’ve had.

I hope it shows up on youtube so I can share it with you.

As Drag City notes, Will Oldham’s Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy will be playing on Conan tonigth, September 19.

Currently two different network stations (the Fox-affliliate and the CBS-affiliate) are showing two entirely different versions (different shots, different commentators) of the SF Giants v Oakland Raiders game, in which two dreadful teams try not to embarrass themselves.

[Update:] Of course I mean the 49ers v Raiders. Also, they’re replaying the entire game on a third distinct station.

[Another Update:] Seriously, what’s the deal with this game? It’s being replayed on a fourth station.

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I’d like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

My friend Andy emailed me today:

You probably already knew this, but Ken Jennings blogs? And he’s a good writer!@

I know that you’re obsessively weird about him, but I thought I’d let
you know, in the off-chance you didn’t.

[links added by me]

Thanks, I didn’t know, Andy! Agreed on the good writing part. I like the post about the giant foam version of his head that he got. Good stuff.

The other day I was surprised to find out that no only has Rick Sebak put some of his programs on DVD, but that Netflix carries some of them. Rick has made documentaries for many years. Originally they were all for WQED, one of Pittsburgh’s PBS affiliates (now it’s only PBS affiliate) and they were about Pittsburgh. A program about downtown Pittsburgh; another about the churches and places of worship in Pittsburgh (just about always shown on Christmas and Easter), another about the renowned Kennywood; a couple about things that used to be around and one specifically about things that are still there. I watched all of them, taped most of them off of TV during one of their pledge drives. When I first moved to the city they were a way to get into the culture pretty quickly. Later I just loved watching them. I remember when I first heard that he was going to do national programs and I was happy. Now I pop on the TV occasionally to see “Sandwhiches that you will Love” or the one about roadside attractions. They’re infectious. I want to go to the places that Rick shows and talk to the people he talks to.

I haven’t seen some of the newer programs, both the national ones and the Pittsburgh ones. I put Things We’ve Made into my queue and watched it on Friday.

This movie is probably mostly of interest to Pittsburghers or ex-Pittsburghs, but there is quite a lot of manufacturing processes shown, so geeky mechanical engineers or the like might also like it. One of the coolest parts is when they’re showing the Glenshaw Glass Company plant in which they made millions (billions) of beer bottles and how the machines cut up the molten glass into measured blobs and then pushed it into molds and out popped a bottle.

There’s still steel made in the Pittsburgh area—they visited the Clairton US Steel plant. I’d love to go there and take photographs. There’s this one shot in the movie where they’re in a semi-open area and there are these two giant cauldrons of molten steel being poured out and in the background there are the machine operators and a sign saying “House of Pain.” My goodness that could be an amazing photograph.

There were also quirky little things in there, like when they’re talking about All-Clad which is made in Canonsburg, really close to where I grew up and they’re talking about taking some of the new products to this restaurant and this chef to test. Well, that place, the Classroom in McMurray, is where I took my first girlfriend before the Homecoming dance and where my family at dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1999. I realize it’s just a local Pittsburgh movie, but given that it’s a movie out on DVD and that I got from Netflix it has enough separation that it seems weird to see this place on the screen.

I’m keeping track of the World Cup scores on my handy pull out sheet from a Spanish-language newspaper out here:

I was somewhat ambivalent towards it until this weekend’s USA-Italy game, now I want to watch Thursday’s USA-Ghana game to see if the boys can get into the second round. (Italy also needs to beat the Czechs.) I was pretty sad to discover the game would be on ESPN, not ABC, like Saturday’s game, and I didn’t really want to go out at 6:30am looking for a bar or something that was showing the game. Well I was looking through the TV listings today and saw that one of the Spanish-language chanels was showing one of today’s Copa Mundial games. I investigated further and—what do you know!—I can watch Ghana vs. Estados Unidos on Thursday morning on broadcast TV!

Shove off ESPN! Viva Copa Mundial!

I just saw a commercial for America’s Got Talent, some Simon Cowell reality TV talent show. Whatever, right?

Well, I noticed that one of the judges is—you guessed it—David Hasselhoff. So let me get this straight: they’ve having David Hasselhoff judge people as to whether they have talent or not?

Uh, is he going to be kicking himself off of the show?

Conan’s in Chicago this week. Guests include Dave Chapelle, Common, Wilco and others.

I’ve said before that I’m a fan of Going Tribal on the Discovery Channel. It’s a documentary series where a guy, Bruce Perry, goes to live with a tribe somewhere around the world for about a month and they edit it down to an hour. Definitely more “reality” than “show.”

Here’s the current schedule. Discovery Channel tends to air each episodes multiple times.

One thing I noticed in Mexico is that they call coke “coca” and diet coke is “coca light.” In Germany, you want to ask for a “kola.” In America “coke.”

What do people call it in other localities?

Sigur Ros, who put out the excellent Takk last year are on Conan O’Brien tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re received.

This is probably too late for most of you.

9-10am: Live with Regis and Kathy Lee
10-10:30am: Family Feud
10:30-11am: Brady Bunch
11am-noon: The Price is Right
noon-12:30: the news (or lunch)
12:30-1pm: Doogie Howser, MD
1pm-1:30pm: the Wonder Years

Man, good thing I’m not such a loser now.

I saw the first part of Country Boys on PBS last night. It’s a documentary mini-series following two boys growing up in Floyd County, Kentucky, a very poor area of the Appalachians. Chris lives in a trailer in a “holler” and has trouble getting his work done at school, often missing school to take care of his alcoholic father. Cody is in a Christian metal band and has a girlfriend he talks about marrying.

I found it really interesting. It’s easy for people to make fun of people like this, but this is life. This is how a lot of people live their lives. Growing up in probably the biggest city in the Appalachians, I wasn’t far from people who lived in similar situations, but we still made fun of people from West Viriginia. I think in some ways these people are more America than a big city like San Francisco.

The challenge of watching a program like this is not simply not passing judgement, but trying to understand them. Or you could just say they’re a Red Stater, that they should be kept in the mountains or made a separate country called “Jesusland,” laugh your cynical laugh and go on feeling superior. Wait, which group is supposed to be the “open-minded” ones?

You can watch the first episode online and the next two episodes are tonight and tomorrow, I believe.

NPR has a nice recorded interview/ performance with my favorite Swedish crooner, Jens Lekman.

Iron & Wine and Calexico were pretty good on the Late Late Show last night., I was pretty tired by the time they came on, though.

In other news, I think I write too much about music.

Set your tivos! Iron & Wine and Calexico are playing on the Late Late Show tonight.

(via who else but stereogum)

Actually tomorrow on PBS!

The movie is Yesterday.

PBS is showing it (without commercials, like PBS does) tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9pm. It doesn’t even come out on DVD until next Tuesday!

It’s a good movie about a woman with AIDs in the rural Zululand area of South Africa. It’s the first isiZulu feature-length movie.

After the “Cog” Honda commercial, I thought the brits had the upper hand in the CGI-free commercial realm, but now I’m convinced.

Sony Europe recently filmed a commercial on the streets of San Francisco which involved dropping 250,000 rubber balls down Filbert and Leavenworth streets. You can gorgeous commercial or you can watch various videos about the making of the video.

If you’re curious about the music, it’s a cover of the song “Heartbeats,” by Jose Gonzalez, originally by Swedish duo The Knife.

Patbird just changed domains on his blog and even though he didn’t take any of my suggestions for a blog name, (what’s wrong with nastydonkeyporn.com I ask you??), he’s got a new domain name. Nevermind that I didn’t know of his blog before, but, I present to you urbansaddle.com. Patbird is really rockin’ out over there. I read just about all of the posts so far last night.

Here are my favorites:

• In this post a link to a set of two TV commercials, both in their original versions and their redone-Pittsburgh-backyard-camcorder versions. Very funny stuff.
• Andy went to the Mountain Goats at the Warhol Museum on Friday. Pat couldn’t go to his first Mountain Goats show there because it was sold out, but he went to the Uptown Theater in Little Washinton and writes about it here.
• Pat writes about running into and talking to a Pittsburgh mayoral candidate on the street.

I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog there, Pat. I’ll also put it on my blogroll over on the right side there at some point.

Another thing that I’ve been meaning to add to the links on the right is largeheartedboy.com. He writes a lot about music and books. His daily “shorties” are just links to about 10-15 articles or blog posts. I usually find a couple interesting articles in there everyday. Some of his longer articles are pretty good too.

a couple quality “reality” shows that I picked up recently:

• Stranded A British guy gets dropped off in an undisclosed location without food or money or contact to that outside world (besides the camera crew, I guess). He figures out where he is and learns about the town. It reminds me of that guy on one of the network news casts whose idea is that everyone has (or is) an interesting story, so he’d go to random towns, open the phone book and start calling people. An the Everyday American always had an interesting story. Similarly, the Everyday Town has interesting things.
• Going Tribal A British guy goes to a remote tribe somewhere in the world and makes contact, often with a guide, with the hope of learning about and living with them. It’s tremendously interesting. Today’s episode he went to the occasionally canibalistic Kombai tribe who sleep in totally sweet treehouses. And this guy really tries to live in the traditions of the tribe. He ate maggots, went hunting, had his nose pierce (horizontal bar through the septum), and even tried (but didn’t end up going through with because he almost fainted) a vaguely described penis inversion thing that the tribe does for unknown reasons.

Overall some really interesting stuff to learn about our world.

Now that Lance Armstrong is riding for Team Discovery Channel, he’s doing a series of commercials for the various tv channels they own, including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and the Travel (or as I call it Poker) Channel.

These commercials are called Welcome to the Family, Lance and are viewable online here, I saw the Discovery Channel one which has the guys from American Chopper and Lance and I laughed a lot. I’d recommend it. The Animal Planet one with the crazy crocodile guy and the Travel Channel one with the guys from the World Series of Poker are both pretty funny as well.

You sort of have to know the people in each spot for it to be funny.

the local public access TV channel is on right now with kareoke! it’s awesome. this guy in a stupid hat is singing YMCA out of tune. it is really stupid.

he’s not even doing the hand signals.

Tonight at 10pm is the premier of the show 30 Days on FX. It’s by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who did Supersize Me. In Supersize Me, he took 30 days to live the all-American fast food diet. Each episode of this show, he’ll follow himself or someone else living another experience for 30 days. For example, oie episode is about an evangelical Christian living in America’s largest Muslim community in Michigan for 30 days.

This is like a short documentary more than a standard reality TV show with its share of schadenfreude.

After day two of the three day point total final of Jeopardy’s Ultimate Tournament of Champions, we have:

It’s not looking good for Ken. He looked embarrassed at the end of the day yesterday. He slammed down his buzzer after the Double Jeopardy round. He’s never been up against competition like this before.

I have no doubt that he can win still, but he’ll have to go on a tear. Pull yourself together Ken!

Ken Jennings, Jeopardy all-time champion, game show all time champion, and my hero, lost on Jeopardy! in November after 74 straight wins. A sad day, for sure.

But never fear! You will be able to see him again! The Jeopardy Ultimate Tournament of Champion top contestants will face Ken for a three day show down May 23-25. Get ready!

I saw the premier of the american adaptation of the Office the other day. Quite good. I’ll have to check out the rest of the episodes.

Dis jaggoff on sa’urday night live jus did a picksburg accent n’ at! Dat is sumpin dat I nevr thought I’d see. Right der in one of dem sketches! Did yunz guys see dat?

Problem was, he was drinkin a bud, not an arn, and hes sez steeelers not stillers. But he did talk plenny bout Cowhr.

[Update: Check ‘is aht. An article in da Picksburg Post Garzette jus ’bout dat sketch!]