Category Archives: Entertainment

All things movie, video and music….

Entertainment

Liquid Schwartz!

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the introduction of Mountain Dew Throwback — a tip o’ the hat to the good ol’ days, when sugar was king, and HFCS was unheard of. Unfortunately, Throwback was a passing thing, a limited time deal. 🙁

This week, however, the clouds have parted, and the light of pure natural sugar goodness has once again beamed down upon me. The Shell station just outside the office somehow “found” a bunch of 12-packs of the stuff, and my dear Darla happened to be there at the right time. This photo is of the six boxes of Phydeaux Juice in the trunk of her Pacifica.

It’s gonna be a good weekend!

Entertainment, Geek-Speak

Death a Medium

We recently changed our landline phone number, and have been getting a boatload of calls for the previous number possessor. Some have been obvious credit card calls, some are obviously calling from an outdated cold call list. Despite having registered with the federal Do Not Call list, we continue to get these. Not the end of the world.

Today, I received a call from the local paper, looking for the folks we aren’t. Once we were all squared away that we weren’t them, the person on the other end of the phone said she could talk with me, and began to give me a breathless spiel about the local paper, subscription rates, and left me an opening when she asked if I’d noticed how the cost of the paper at the newsstand had been increasing. I told we don’t get or read the paper.

To hear the disappointment in her voice, you woulda thought I had just killed a puppy.

Quietly, resigned to the fact that I was not likely to be a sales target, she slowly gave me the number for the paper’s customer service line, just in case I changed my mind. In reality, I’m not likely to. See, we get a local paper for our part of the metro. It comes for free in the mail, talks about things that are within five miles of my home, and is targeted to the world I spend more than half my time within. The city paper can’t do that — they need to appeal to a much broader regional area for their “local” news, as well as covering national events. If our little area gets part of a full page in all that, I’d be surprised.

The world is a changing, and printed newspapers are suffering for it, but that’s the way it goes. I think those that have blended their print and online options are probably the most likely to survive in a digital world. If not… well… it’ll be Attack of the Show and Gizmodo for me.

Entertainment

The Clock Is Ticking

High-power analog television has but a week of life left in the States. And with analog on the ropes, and most of the locals already gone, I’ve been watching for some things I couldn’t have seen otherwise.

One thing that really surprises me is just how often there are openings going on. With casual checking, I’ve found stations coming in from somewhere almost every other day. And Tu Canal from Mexico is in about every third day on channel 2. With us having stations on channel 2, 4 and 5, I had no idea any of this was going on. It’s been fun to see, but come Friday, the domestic stations will be gone, leaving me with Canada, Mexico and Cuba as the likely analog stations I’ll still see from time to time.

I’m still not quite sure how I’ll figure out when there’s domestic E-skip taking place that I could leverage for DTV. An exercise for the writer, I guess. 🙂

Tonight, the airwaves held a surprise. Since the mass shutdown on June 12th, I’ve seen plenty of activity on channels 2, 3 and 4. Tonight though, I got a quick glimpse on channel 6 of KOCT-TV from Carlsbad NM. Tu Canal had been in for an hour or two, so I knew things were hopping down that direction, but to see the MUF climb up to channel 6 was pretty cool. I’ve only seen anything that high here once before. A few years ago, we had some kind of opening — probably Es — that allowed us to watch a bunch of stuff from up around Rapid City SD. This was nowhere near as long lived.

However, my huzzahs go to KOCT — they identified with a long duration slide that allowed me plenty of time to catch it at its peak. Many of nightlight stations seem to identify pretty rarely — probably like they did in real life at twice an hour. I’ve had a channel 2 from somewhere in New England in twice over the last week with Norm from This Old House talking about DTV and have yet to see an id on the station. That’ll make ya happy. 🙁

In any case, with one week of domestics left, I’ll be paying attention as I can, and seeing if I can get anything new in the log. Once Friday rolls by, I’ll put my list of stations up. Hopefully, our local channel 5 will go off the air, and I’ll find some station(s) still on before they shutdown too.

Entertainment

Digital Transition

Last night, the transition from analog to all-digital television began. Becky and I watched it until the gory end. We watched our PBS station on channel 9 drop off, and within a couple of minutes, all the locals (except channel 5) disappear. Channel 5 appears to be acting as a “night light” station, broadcasting DTV transition information. I have no idea how long that’ll last.

However, there were still a lot of stations on the air. Some were broadcasting DTV transition info, and others were still transmitting regular programming. With the St. Louis stations out of the way, I was able to see some stations that I ordinarily couldn’t have because of the locals. It was nice to see some of those before they disappeared.

It’s been my theory that once the US analog stations were gone, it would clear the path to seeing analog stations from both Mexico and Canada with greater ease. I could have been more right. Within a few minutes of the local channel 2 switching their analog signal off, I started seeing XEPM out of Mexico (near Las Cruces). Cool.

I stayed up until about 2.15am, spinning the antenna, looking for fresh signals.

This morning, there were still quite a few analog stations up and running, much to my surprise. And this morning, I was treated to another opening, this time to the Atlantic coast — Charleston, Daytona Beach and Charlotte. Once again, if the locals had been on, I would never have seen any of it. For all I know, signals have always been like this, I just couldn’t see ’em. I even saw some signals from Canada this morning.

Tonight — in theory, the last night of analog broadcasting — almost every station is gone. I’ve seen a few signals from Mexico, and a couple of locals, but most of the analog signals are gone. However, there’s still one stubborn station, WSIL, sitting on channel 3, running normal broadcasting. I’m a little surprised at that, and am wondering when they’ll turn out the lights.

Transition has been fun, and if the signals from Mexico and Canada have been any indication, there could some real fun to come!

Entertainment

Analog Swan Song

When I got back to the Deauxmayne today, I got some lunch going, and took a peek at the TV. Ever since the digital transition dates have been announced (and extended), I’ve been looking for long haul analog signals that I just won’t be as likely to see after the cutover date.

Today, I was rewarded with a few moments of viewing from KTVK, Channel 3 in Phoenix. That’s quite a long haul from here, and is a station I’ve only seen once before. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get set up with the camera before they slid into the mists of the background noise, but there was no doubt about what I was seeing… perhaps the last analog Es propagation for a long while.

However, there’s some good news in all the hullabaloo about transition here in the States. The Canadian and Mexican transition dates are still some ways out, and with the lower VHF channels all cleared out, that should make for some easier pickings down the road. That should make for some interesting viewing!

Entertainment

Throwback

Have you tried the new Mountain Dew or Pepsi Throwback products? I was never really a Pepsi drinker when I was growing up, but I had my share of Mountain Dew. This new “throwback” version replaces HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) with real sugar. Real sugar!

Siobhan tried it, and told me it didn’t taste like Mountain Dew. I told her that it did, it really, really did!

Now, if only the Coke folks will take notice, and do the same thing. I’m pretty sure they’d take over the world if “old” Coke hit the shelves once again.

Entertainment

Sleevefacing

Anniversary GiftI know there’s all kinds of new things out there that I’ve never heard of. Having just been the recipient of a meaningful (to me) piece of vinyl — Carl Douglas‘ 1974 release of Kung Fu Fighting and Other Great Love Songs — I was intrigued by a site that I stumbled upon through a listing showing some neat trick photography with books and magazines over at Toxel. The stumbled-upon site is called Sleeveface.

Essentially, this is a site dedicated to taking a phonograph album cover and manually replacing your face or body part with the stuff from the cover. It’s a hoot. So much of a hoot that the site author has now released a book of sleevefaces. There’s even an entertaining training video, showing how to sleeveface.

I am intrigued, and that’s usually bad….. 🙂

Entertainment

Bonnaroo

For the better part of a year now, I’ve been lucky enough to be part of a Yahoo mailing list group that some of my high school classmates put together. It’s a great conversation, covering politics, genealogy, and “where are they now.” And when it gets tough — one of them has been caught up in the Hurricane Ike mess — it seems like they are there to help each other.

It’s been kinda cool, as most of them and I weren’t all that close in school — I was a bit of a basketcase, and really introverted — and now we’re sorta rediscovering each other again. Really slick.

One of the guys from my old homeroom, Glen Wood, has just had a piece of his writing published in Memoir magazine, and the piece can be found here. It’s a great peek into Glen’s musical tastes, along with a little self-discovery along the way. I can remember Glen having a pretty healthy appetite for music in the late 1970s and early 1980s — I think I remember buying his LP copy of Talking Heads Fear of Music as his musical tastes changed — and this great bit of writing captures Glen’s view on music nowadays.

Take a peek, and enjoy!

Entertainment

A Little Rock History, Fun and Silliness

Back in the 70s, a Dutch group named Focus had a flash in the pan hit called “Hocus Pocus”. Who knew the Dutch could yodel? Well, Thijs Van Leer showed us that the Dutch can yodel, whistle and flaut with the best of them. Enjoy the video, and then scroll down for more fun and games.

So, having this little ditty embedded in your mind… Through the magic of YouTube, some twisted, sick individual decided that you could only improve on Dutch yodeling by speeding it up. Again, enjoy the video, and then scroll down.

And with that in mind, someone decided that the magic yodeling could also be served by a little slowness. Here, in at its molasses-induced best.

In this last video, you can actually see Thijs Van Leer’s eyeballs trying their best to achieve escape velocity! 🙂

Entertainment, Space

All That’s Left Is “B”

When I was growing up, I was an avid science fiction reader, and voraciously chewed up just about anything I could get my hands on. And as part of that, we all knew about the ABC’s of science fiction: Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke. This morning, I caught the news that Arthur C. Clarke had died, leaving only Bradbury from the ABC’s.

I always enjoyed Clarke’s work, and have been reading his work since I was a kid. In my opinion, he had a better grasp of the science end of science fiction than almost any of his contemporaries. His writing went beyond just the science though; for me, he could spin quite a yarn. Just read the first part of Chapter Seven of The Songs of Distant Earth. If that description of the end of our solar system doesn’t touch you, I don’t know what will.

Happy trails, Arthur C. Clarke. Enjoy what’s next.