• Clan: McTiVo - Hot Off The Presses - Politics, Schmolitics

    Tammy Duckworth To Speak At Convention, Illinois Delegation Will Be At Least A Little Less Corrupt #DNC2012 #IL08 #uppers #nerdland

    After seeing a lot of tweets yesterday about Up with Chris Hayes and the Melissa Perry-Harris Show, I finally watched both shows (or most of Up and all of MPH) via TiVo. I’ve never watched political wonk shows before (comedy shows like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher shouldn’t count, but they do), and it was fun! They’re shown Saturday and Sunday mornings and seem to have an enthusiastic fan base that hang out on Twitter under hashtags #uppers and #nerdland respectively. A lot of dumb sex-link spambots and anti-factists hang out too, so I quickly learned who was reality-based and…

  • Clan: McTiVo - SciFi/Fantasy

    Bob Anderson Dead: Sword-Master, Darth Vader Fighter Dies At 89 – The Huffington Post

    Highlander fans mourn, too; Mr Anderson was associated with the movie and television franchises (at least at first). My HL friends will be sad to see this. Sorry, everyone – Bob was not immortal after all. LONDON — Olympic fencer and movie sword master Bob Anderson appeared in some of film’s most famous dueling scenes – though few viewers knew it. Anderson, who has died at age 89, donned Darth Vader’s black helmet and fought light saber battles in two of the three original “Star Wars” films, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” Link: Bob Anderson Dead:…

  • Clan: McTiVo - Mini-Posts

    GO SEE THE MUPPET MOVIE. IT IS HI-LARIOUS. #MuppetsMadeMeCryForHappy

    We’re still humming the theme song… but there are some new surprises and twists, so it was NOT predictable other than a big damn happy ending. Which made me tear up, as I was a big Muppet Show fan back in the day. When it was announced on Tuesday that US TV broadcaster NBC has commissioned a script for a new series of the Muppets, the reaction among critics, commentators and tweeters was, frankly, remarkable. It is rare that a four-decades old franchise can announce a return to TV and prompt such unabashed enthusiasm as well as a total lack…

  • Clan: McTiVo

    Annoying: VH1’s show viewer’s repeated adds, Twitter app, bling

    I’m currently watching an older series of VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab,” and aside from the “can’t look away from this trainwreck aspect,” there are several annoyances. Repeat commercials. Sometimes the same spot is repeated 4 times in a row. I started out watching last night using Firefox, and at one point the playback just stops on a black screen after several repeats. I’m now trying to watch using Google Chrome, just as an experiment. The Twitter app (login in the sidebar of VH1 pages) auto-posts the first time, saying “I’m watching and chatting about #[show name] – join the conversation at…

  • Clan: McTiVo - Home Improvement

    The Dearth of Blogging

    Who has time to blog? Not me, apparently. I think about potential blog posts all the time, but never at a time when I am both connected to the Internet and able to use it (two very different things, especially given my office’s policies). On the weekends, for months now, I’ve been shirking. Well, ya basta. I’m constantly reading news and blog posts about politics, and shaking my head with dismay at the sheer… blind arrogance exhibited by many Big Name Pundits on both sides. Truth be told, the folks on the conservative side, with a few shining exceptions, all…

  • Clan: McTiVo

    Making Light: Babylon 5 Rewatch

    Ooooh. A worthy topic, will enjoy following this. In the world of science fiction TV, Babylon 5 is generally considered the first of the modern* story-arc series. It’s a genuine departure from the “Wagon Train to the Stars” paradigm that Old Trek created. I don’t think we’d have had Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the Battlestar Galactica reboot without it and Deep Space Nine to convince the studios that genre audiences had long attention spans and an appetite for moral complexity. For me personally, Bab 5 was the the TV series of my mid-twenties. I watched it as I settled…

  • Clan: McTiVo - Religion - SciFi/Fantasy - The Life of Riley

    Resolutions Not Meant To Be Broken If I Can Help It And Not Force-Fed Chocolate

    Isn’t this a boring blog? Isn’t it? My life’s not really this boring, it’s just that I rarely take the time to write a full-bore flat-spin blog post anymore. I fall back on my old standbys, Google Reader (shared news) and my various Twitter accounts. I can’t catch up on blogging during the work week for going on 3 years, so every now and then I do a big “here’s what’s been going on” catchall. Yeah, boring. And I haven’t even really done a big London mixed-grill slap-up bang-up, either. The pictures are still on my hard drives – the…

  • Clan: McTiVo

    To Be TiVoed: Portlandia

    I never lived in Portland, but I might have. The 6-part IFC Original short-based comedy series PORTLANDIA, created, written by and starring Fred Armisen SNL and Carrie Brownstein vocalist/guitarist, WILD FLAG, Sleater-Kinney, premieres on IFC Friday, January 21, 2011 at 10:30 PM ET/PT. Each episodes character-based shorts draw viewers into “Portlandia,” the creators dreamy and absurd rendering of Portland, Oregon. via Portlandia – Series – On Air – IFC.com.

  • Clan: McTiVo

    Why #SGU Is Worth Watching And Worth Renewing

    It’s compelling drama, and the stories aren’t neatly tied up with a bow at the end of the hour. You really should be watching it if you like character-driven stories, that develop in surprising ways, that aren’t telegraphed in the first ten minutes. SGU follows a band of soldiers, scientists and civilians, who must fend for themselves as they are forced through a Stargate when their hidden base comes under attack. The desperate survivors emerge aboard an ancient ship, which is locked on an unknown course and unable to return to Earth. Faced with meeting the most basic needs of…