Tag Television

And . . .

Michael 3 Comments

There’s a new darling of the entertainment world out there.  +  That’s it, just   +  .

+  can mean different things to different people. To a chemist it means that’s a cation, the positively charged ion, the opposite of an anion, that one that travels to the cathode, which an electrician will recognize as the opposite of the anode, the anode being the positively charged electrode possibly symbolized on a schematic as  +  .  A mathematician, not to be confused with an arithmetist, recognizes  +  as an means of identifying any real number greater than zero. An accountant hopes not to find  +  preceding the number on the bottom line of IRS Form 1040 which would indicate outstanding tax due. A doctor ordering blood knows it is important to include  +  after a patient’s blood type if the patient’s blood has the Rh Factor antigen present. A musician sees  +  and knows to raise the fifth note of a major chord by a half tone. (It sounds weird on paper but not so bad in the ear.) Back when you were an itty bitty youngster, even in the age of “new math,” you learned that  +  symbolizes addition, the one of the four basic food groups of math. Just kidding. I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Addition is one of the four basic arithmetical operations of mathematics, the combination of multiple numbers to determine a total or sum value. You know, 2 + 2 = 4.

The “experts” who upsell premium video content have latched on to an old hook that marketers have used for a while. Skip the words, symbols sell. If a picture is worth a thousand words then  +   is worth at least $4.99. That’s how much extra you’ll shell out for discovery+. That’s a bargain in the plus world now crowded with Apple TV+, BET+, Disney+, ESPN+, and Paramount+ .  It’s such a hot commodity even free channels are “adding” it to their names like Documentaries +, Halloween +, and the succinctly named Free TV+ and Free Movies+ channels.

I’m being a bit unfair calling  +  the “new” darling. The French pay TV service Canal+ began broadcasting in 1984. Not television but still screen based (although often much smaller), Google+ was available on line and on phones from 2011-2019. In the non electronic world  +  has occupied a spot in brand names for everything from clothes (Missen+Main) to soap (Etta + Billie) to window treatments (allen + roth). It wasn’t until FX+ was released in 2018 that  +  began a surge in the television industry. (FX+ was shut down when Disney purchased the network the following year.) Oh there were a handful of PLUS appendices but that little  +  kept itself tucked away. Until now. Expect to see more [Fillintheblank]+ not unlike how many cable/streaming services released [Pickyourfavoritechannel]Go in the 2010s. Expect to see  +  more frequently on the smaller screens again also. Apple News+ coming up on its two year launch anniversary. After a slow start subscriptions hit an all time high in the 2020 second quarter.

You might say  +  is multiplying. (A mathematician wouldn’t but there probably aren’t many of them reading this anyway so go ahead and say it!)

PLUS

I’ll Have What He’s Having

Michael 3 Comments
The Academy Awards are behind us and the Oscar hoopla has pretty much faded away. I have a few more old Oscar nominees to watch. I’m still used to the awards being presented in March and February being the time to relish in the performances. Is it just me or do actors tend to speak better when reading somebody else’s lines as scripted than when they try to go their own way on the award stage? Anyway, I prefer the movie actor to the award show actor and often the movie world to real realty. Ironic, no?
 
Something that hit me this year watching my usual overdose level of film history is how much out there in movie land we can really use in real people land. Television land also has some pretty nifty gadgetry that we mere mortals could benefit from. Take for instance in 1966 just asking “Yo computer, how much longer till we get to the Romulan border?” and sure enough some snarky female voice speaks back “the. border. is. one. hundred. forty. light. years. away. and. will. be. reached. in. twenty. eight. and. one. half. minutes. if. you. don’t. stop. for. take. out. on. the. way.” Did Gene Roddenberry know Siri and Alexa were coming? If we’ve been able to harness computer power to become our personal assistants, why not some other seemingly outlandish inventions.
 
For example:
Movie people must have dishes that dry and put themselves away. I’ve seen dozens of movies this month with people eating and drinking and even in some instances washing dishes. But nobody ever dries them or puts them away. The only Oscar nominated movie I recall seeing somebody with towel in hand, drying dishes was Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. She didn’t do a really great job of drying and didn’t put them away but she was a millionaire socialite so I guess just the attempt at drying part was something special. They all have self-cleaning carpets also.
 
TelephoneThis one we sort of had but then technology took it away and we need it back – a phone you can pick up the reciever and just say who you want and somebody gets them for you. You need to go back to the 1930s for this invention. Everybody from cops to robbers to femme fatales to innocent bystanders could go to any phone and say “Get me John Smith” and sure enough, an operator would find John Smith, and the right John Smith. Progress took this away quickly (The Front Page). By the 1940s people were dailing their own numbers (Going My Way), by the 50s were getting wrong numbers (Anatomy of a Murder), by the 60s they were tearing pages out of phone books (In the Heat of the Night), and eventually we’ve worked our way to a time when there are no phone books and if you ask your computer assistant for John Snith’s number, unless John Smith is among you personal contacts, the answer will be, “I’m sorry I don’t have enough information.”
 
Cars run on no gas. Imagine not just driving for days, week, even months without filling up, but driving hard, fast, and often in multiple countries and never visiting a fuel station. Racing movies aside, nobody ever stops to fill up. The French Connection wouldn’t have stood a chance for Best movie if Popeye Doyle ran out of gas on 86th Street. The only movies I recall seeing somebody at a gas pump are High Sierra and National Lampoon’s Vacation and neither were Oscar nominees in any category. (I should note that in Vacation, Chevy Chase is seen wiping and putting away dishes but I believe they hadn’t been washed yet, so…)
 
Since I brought up non-nominees there are some things in almost every movie I’d like to see happen. 
 
Airplanes with aisles wide enough to walk down two abreast (with a refreshment cart even) and seats with more legroom than in my living room. Sticking with the travel theme, cruise ships with cabins bigger than my living room. Entire blocks unoccupied in front of the building I want to enter so I can just pull up and park – and never having to parallel park (nobody parallel parks in the movies), and airport parking lots that never charge for parking. Formal wear for casinos. Subways never overcrowded and always on time unless being hijacked. And those telephones that when they are set to vibrate you still know a call is incoming even if you are 3 rooms away. 
 
And – a hot tub time machine. Hey Alexa, let’s kick some past!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Free free, free free free!

Michael 2 Comments

I have been meaning to give you a kidney transplant update and thought today would have been a good day for that but something more important came up. Ahem, attention. To all responsible in some way for the pricing of goods and services, “free” means “not costing or charging anything.” Again, thanks go to Misters Merriam and Webster and yes I am still trying to figure out who is who.

Why am I on to this again? Because I have that kind of time, and that kind of time has finally pushed me over the edge. It’s late in winter, or early in spring, and neither is giving any ground. I’m sick of being either inside or out only for dialysis, doctors, or church. Obviously church people and doctor people are really nice folks but I really can use some time outdoors. (Dialysis people tend to be nice too but I am a little less disposed to calling anybody stuffing needles the size of bucatini into my arm pleasant people to be around.) If it’s not way too cold for a brisk walk (winter’s doing) the wind is blowing a gazillion miles an hour (spring’s contribution) or they are both huffing and puffing, threatening to blow my hovel down. So, I spend most of my time not spent at dialysis, doctors, or church, spent inside with the television on for company. I figured I really needed company when one day while talking to my plants I, with much deserved huffiness, turned on a heel, stalked out of the room, and slammed the bedroom door when they gave me the silent treatment. Collectively! The nerve of them! After all I’ve given them – water, sunshine, more water, a little fertilizer now and then. I mean really, who do…. umm ….

So I’m back to too much time in front of the TV and there are only so many movies you can sit and watch that eventually you have to resort to commercial channels and they include commercials. And the ones that play early in the morning or late at night are what you expect when the ad rates are significant less than the Super Bowl pregame show. They are the As Seen On TV ads.

Like me, maybe you are not too young to recall those early “Not Sold In Stores” television commercials. They were really things you would not find in any store. A knife that cuts through steel toed boots. Lithuanian language records. Combination fishing rod/compass. Unique products that even if you knew you’d never need, want, or use like a clothes iron that plugged into your car’s cigarette lighter, you were going to watch that commercial all the way through – just in case. Who knew, by the time they got to the end maybe you decided that you really did need a hand cranked camp stove that could boil water and provide the upper body workout your exercise routine was lacking. And their premiums were real premiums. Not a commercial ended before the announcer excitedly added, “And if you order now, we’ll include an ice crusher absolutely free!”

FreeToday’s late night answer to the famous towel that can hold 12 times its weight is neither not available in any store nor likely to have you waiting for the commercial’s end for any reason other than that your program is that much closer to returning. And there are no more premiums. Where did all the ice crushers go? No, now if you “order now!” what do you get? Another one of whatever they are trying to get rid of. If I don’t need one battery powered ear wax vacuum I certainly don’t need two, especially not for “free! just pay an extra fee.”

I particularly resent the copywriter who puts “free shipping,” “we’ll send you a second absolutely free,” and ” “just pay a separate fee” all in the same ad. At least if there was a shipping charge for the first I could talk myself into understanding the “separate fee” for the second, but when the first is going out with “free shipping” what first fee is there that we’re not being told about?

Okay, so now that I have gotten that out of my system perhaps the next time around I’ll update you on my kidneys. I promise, it will be free.

 

Disbelievable!

Michael 2 Comments

The suspension of disbelief, so Aristotle says, is that theatrical principle which allows the audience to accept fiction as reality and fully experience the moments. I’ve always thought it should be the suspension of belief because what’s so hard about not not believing. Fiction by definition is that which is not real (though not necessarily unreal, at least as of the mid-1960s), or as Lawrence Block so well put it, “telling lies for fun and profit.” But I guess if you’re willing to shell out the money to have someone lie to you, whether at a play or through a novel, you’ve already surrendered at least some of your beliefs. To give up disbelief is the willingness not to stand up in the middle of Act III shouting “Oh come on now!”

Of course the author has some responsibility to make it not absurdly unbelievable except perhaps in a good farce. I thought of this while watching television the other night. It was a new age television drama that is supposed to reflect life itself. But I’ve seen this particular problem is lesser dramas, comedies, and even movies of the theatrical release type. That is the vibrating cell phone.

I am willing to disbelieve when our hero shoots it out with 5 or 6 bad guys all outfitter with automatic weapons against his pistol compact enough to slip into his tuxedo breast pocket. I can disbelieve with the best of them that someday man will fly faster than the speed of light. It even doesn’t stretch my discredibility that a fresh faced girl from Kansas can move to New York and beat out the actresses who have trained since they were 4 for the lead in the new Broadway musical winning a recording contract, and a Tony, in the process.

CellPhoneBuzzingBut I cannot disbelieve close to enough that everybody on TV and in the movies can hear their phones on vibrate from 2 rooms away. Seriously.

Seriously, is it only the programs I watch and the movies I go to that even the actors take the notice when we are instructed to mute our pagers, phones, and other electronic devices?

Maybe in the movies I can see the director being paranoid that if he or she were to call for a real ringtone too many audience members would reach for their phones and miss whatever nuance is playing out in the screen as we watch the character carefully traverse the rooms to the buzzing handset. I guess on the television shows a ringing phone would distract us to the point of missing the next commercial. Although I might be tempted to go looking for my phone thinking a) nobody in the show has a phone on them and b) holy crap, where did my phone get to?!

So I’m willing to not disbelieve in ghosts that run roughshod over New York, to take on non-unfaith that mild mannered bartenders double as CIA operatives, and to really buy that a computer can inhabit the body and soul of a foreign exchange student. But…

If anybody out there is working on a screenplay, please keep in mind that the suspension of disbelief goes only so far. And it stops at the end of my cell phone.

Bzzzzz bzzzzz

 

 

 

Hi Mom

Michael 5 Comments

Are you going to watch the reboot of Roseanne? That was the seemingly innocent question asked on Facebook last week. Among the “if nothing else is on,” “can’t wait,” and “yes, yes, yes,” was an “ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!” If the all caps weren’t dramatic enough, the multiple exclamation marks made me pause and consider that the writer’s negativity was not aimed toward the creative aspect of the production or the wisdom of rebooting a 30 year old story line.

A closer review of the comments confirmed my suspicions. The particular commenter expanded on her cyber outburst declaring that when once Ms. Barr has been a bastion of progressive thought, no woman should have to be subjected to her new conservative rantings. Word has it that in the new series, Roseanne supports some of the current administration’s efforts and this will be a point of disagreement between her and Jackie, her sister. This apparently displeased the young commenter.

In 1988 when Roseanne debuted, the show was hailed as groundbreaking. A family centric comedy with strong female characters took on the topics of the period. Typical for working class 30-somethings, Dan and Roseanne had to fight the system for any edge they could muster. It was entertaining but was it groundbreaking?

JeanHagen

Jean Hagen, America’s first TV mom

American TV has always featured strong females and story lines that reflected contemporary family values and struggles. Jean Hagen, Donna Reed, Marjorie Lord, Lucille Ball, Barbara Billingsley, and Mary Tyler Moore played strong characters dealing with the issues of their time and were some of our favorite mothers.

As strong women portraying strong women they had strong opinions. What was paramount in the 1950s wasn’t in the 1980s and isn’t now. Things change. Once upon a time in polite society we kept political and religious convictions in our hearts. Perhaps that too is changing. Today, if there isn’t a political overtone to something, some people make certain to inject one. Occasionally without spending much time in the thinking portion of the thought process.

If you ask me will I be watching the Roseanne reboot I’d have to say I don’t know yet. I liked the show when it first aired but over 7 years I became disenchanted with it. Not because I disagreed with the premise that anybody could win a lottery but because to me it wasn’t funny anymore. If I watch it on Tuesday I’ll be looking to see how entertaining it is and does it amuse me. It won’t be because either Roseanne or Jackie agrees or disagrees with my political view.

I personally don’t turn to an entertainment medium for input into my political opinion. I’d rather use news sources for that but what do I know. I’m old. Maybe that’s the latest thing so we can watch TV, play with our phones, and decide who we’re going to vote for in the next election all at the same time. Still, I require my entertainment to be just entertaining.

Although, now that I think about it, a show where real people get their political convictions from fictional characters might be pretty hilarious. I wonder who I send that pitch to.

 

Pantsing Around

Michael 6 Comments

The last couple of days here have been the cold, rainy, dreary, generally not the kind of weather you want to go outside in unless you have to type of days you find when fall really turns into prep days for winter. So I’ve been practicing sitting around and relaxing since most of my days include “don’t go outside unless you have to” on the to do list.

Mostly I’ll read, write, or puzzle something out to bide my time on those inside days. Every so often I’ll turn on the television and see what I might have missed in prime time over the past few years by watching whatever new has hit the late afternoon/early evening syndication runs. I’ve discovered that I’m much too overdressed to be properly relaxed. Apparently the All-American male cannot relax with pants on. I missed that somewhere along the way.

In every sitcom on television today, there is a male character who barely crosses the threshold of his house before taking his pants off. These males range from youngster at the cusp of teendom, to teenager, to young adult, to middle aged parent, to grandfather. They are from struggling, middle class, well to do, and outright rich families from New York across America to California, of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Their only common denominators are male-ism and being pantsless at home.

This concerns me. I never ran across this behavior in my personal experiences. I have often been in what I would otherwise consider a relaxing situation and I have always kept my pants on. I have observed other men from my own, older, and younger generations, and have never seen any of them kicked back on the sofa in boxers or briefs. Yet our television role models are dropping trou before they clear the front door. And not just in solitude. They do it and stay that way in front of wives, mothers, siblings, offspring, and on several occasions, delivery persons.

Don’t say that they’re only sitcom males and I shouldn’t be taking them seriously. Sitcoms are America. We may want to think that the hour long dramas are where Americans are really at but they aren’t. The dramas may be what we want to believe us to be. We want to be that deep, that inclusive, that concerned with the environment, current causes, and family. But we aren’t. As much as we want to be the Pearsons, deep down we know we’re really the Hecks.

Clearly I’ve been doing it wrong for a lifetime. And I’m afraid that as I’ve gotten this far in my life I’m too old to change and will continue relaxing with all of my clothes on. I know, I’m bucking convention here but I can’t see myself any other way. And I sincerely hope it doesn’t offend any of you to know that as I’m typing this, I’m wearing pants.

 

Euphemistically Yours

Michael 2 Comments

I was going to write a light, breezy post about something humorous that happened to me. But all of that changed when I saw what was on my coffee table. Let me start in the middle. (The beginning would make this just WAAAAYYYYYYYY too long.) A couple of weeks ago I bought a new television. Sometime over the weekend I read the instruction manual. At least I got around to it eventually. Actually I didn’t get around to it. It somehow ended up on the table instead of the recycling bin and as I was walking it over to said bin it fell out of my hands and broke open. And that’s when I started reading.

At first I wasn’t sure I was really reading it. I thought that maybe I was having a dream but one of those dreams that is so lifelike that you wake up thinking that you really did just have lunch with Aunt Ella even though she died 12 years ago and even more that you don’t have an Aunt Ella. Now that’s a dream. But I thought that maybe that’s exactly what I was having because no company on Earth could actually put into writing what I was reading right there in black and white.

About halfway through the “IMPORTANT NOTICES” was, in bold letters, “End of Life Directives.” This is why I at first thought that I was having and/or had had a dream. And probably a bad dream. To someone who spent 40 years in health care, “End of Life” has a very specific meaning. Usually, no, always, end of life means someone’s life has ended. Died. Checked out. Kicked the bucket. 86’d on out of here. Gone. Never to return. Dead.

On top of it, I’ve spent the last few years in and out of hospitals where the first thing anybody asks (after “are you bleeding?”) is, “Do you have a living will or advance directives?” And just last week the dialysis clinic social worker brought to me a stack of papers to be signed for this year and at the top of the stack was a pre-formatted form labeled “End of Life Directives.”

So you can see why when I saw that associated with an Open Box Internet Special yet still over-priced television set I thought I was hallucinating. Or at the very least way past my bedtime. We have enough things that are challenged, sufficient opportunities, plenty of stuff that is deprived, depressed or disadvantaged, that we don’t need to borrow an actual sentiment to be euphemistic for something that really doesn’t need to be spoken of gently.

Exactly what is this “end of life” that the manufacturers of electronic components are afraid to call a spade? Apparently, as I learned upon further reading, it’s when the TV has reached the end of its usefulness to me and the manufacturer wants to make me aware that there are environmentally responsible means of disposal that are at my umm, disposal.

I know it’s terribly politically incorrect to call a shovel a shovel but hasn’t the need to call everything anything but whatever thing it is gone too far now? We can’t even put in an instruction manual that this thing you just bought might break, fail, quit, or stop working. We have to speak gently so that if you actually paid full price for the item you won’t file an wrongful breakdown suit against the manufacturer. Bull shit. It will break and when it does either recycle it or throw it away. Those are your choices. Directives or not.

But if I should happen to outlive the newest electronic member of my family I will be certain to dispose of it in a responsible and thoughtful manner. I’ll hold a respectful gathering of its friends, we’ll have a non-denominational service with a few of the other appliances offering their thoughts and best wishes for the survivors and afterwards some light refreshments and fellowship. We will then gently load the life-challenged inanimate object into the back of my pre-hybrid automobile, drive several times around the county looking for a recycling center that accepts electronics, pay $1 per pound or $45 per dropoff whichever is less, and then hightail it back home. In air-conditioned comfort.

California will be proud.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

I’ll See That

Michael Leave a comment

Now that the airspace during our favorite television shows have been returned to consumer advertisers I can return to hating to see a commercial come on simply because it’s annoying. Given that I spent a fair amount of money on my daughter’s degree in advertising and that hopefully it will be remembered fondly when she someday selects my nursing home, I should probably be more grateful that businesses are still advertising. But that hasn’t yet stopped me from uploading a couple dozen posts that rant on about ads.

My favorite ad annoyances are fine print on television commercials and pictures of things that don’t quite look like what is being sold. Apparently in an effort to make my annoyance easier to manage, advertisers combine the two topics onto one image allowing me to create a multi-tasked rant. Yes, small print that actually says the picture is not quite what is being sold.

In a TV commercial for a mattress sale I noticed the disclaimer in small white font that said, “Mattress photographs are for illustration purposes only.” What does that mean? I hope it’s not their way of saying look at this pretty mattress and look at this great price, and if you just come into the store we will be happy to show you what mattress you really get for this price.

matressad

Car makers have been good about adding fine print to their ads for years. It’s often only a half a shade darker than the background making it effectively illegible even if it wasn’t sized smaller than a well-proportioned dust mite. In addition to disclaimers that models shown may be of a different model year than the current, that some equipment is optional, and that dealers set the actual prices, I spotted one that actually said the one pictured is nice but is roughly $13,000 more than the big numbers that you can read.

carad

I suppose those who are responsible for the fine print (aka corporate lawyers) can argue that we should be happy that they are encouraging their clients to be forthright and truthful in their advertising. But I’m willing to bet that when they submit their bills to their clients that they make sure the total due is in a pretty good sized font.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Sing Sing Sing Along

Michael Leave a comment

I was sorting through some old CDs and ran across an interesting one. A collection of TV Theme songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I figured it stopped there because there just weren’t that many later shows that had their own themes. That’s changing. And I think that’s for the better.

There are many shows from the early days of TV that had theme songs recognizable still today – and by many who never saw the show associated with the music. Put ten people in a room and play them the theme from I Love Lucy or The Andy Griffith Show and at least 9 will be humming along. Make it The Beverly Hillbillies or Gilligan’s Island and those same nine will be singing along and probably joined by the tenth. Don’t forget the cop shows and other dramas. You might not be able to name the show but you know when you are hearing the themes from The Rockford Files, Hill Street Blues, or Rawhide (yes, the song that kept the Blues Brothers from death by flying bottles in the cowboy bar started as a TV show theme song).

Then it became fashionable to exclude the theme. Maybe composers wanted too much for a custom song that possibly may be forever be associated with a flop as well as it could be hit. Perhaps it wasn’t worth the time and money to pay for a song “off the shelf.”  More likely, it was 30 seconds that could be sold for advertising rather than use as a background to run opening credits against.

Still shows looked for some identity and found it in one or two chords. Check out the “themes” for Lost, Two Broke Girls, or the entire Law and Order franchise. Fortunately somebody saw the folly in this. Television is supposed to be entertaining and that pleasure is enhanced by a catchy tune. (I’m sure somebody somewhere sometime did research on that. If not, feel free to attribute it to me if you’re ever in a spot that needs justification for pleasure enhancement.) We’re now getting to hear some real music with our TV again. Shows like Orange is the New Black, Mike and Molly, and Modern Family have real songs again even if some are borrowed from other genre.

And once again when we’re trying to come up with contemporary trivia to occupy non-drinking time at the bar we have TV themes returning to the mix. We may have to update our references though. The most popular theme song nobody knows by its real name will soon, if not already, no longer be “Suicide is Painless” but “History is Everything.” Extra points if you can sing all three verses and the bridge.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Power to the Person

Michael Leave a comment

A few posts ago I mentioned that my aging television set was aging erratically and rapidly. (See Saying What You Mean (May 16, 2016).) Actually the point of the post was the silly stuff people say when presented with being asked to review a good or service lending credence to the maxim, “It takes a professional reviewer to write a professional review.” Or at least it should. Little did I know that the gods who protect amateur reviewers would direct their wrath upon me.

What was a mere annoyance two weeks ago is now becoming a quest to make it to the annual Back to School Sale season that will undoubtedly feature that most necessary of college necessities, to wit a large screen high definition television. Those gods are probably doubly directive given that I’ve not too long ago also poked fun that those very Back to School Sales selections for whose premature appearance I now anxiously await (as evidenced in What I Did on My Summer Vacation (July 21, 2014) and Have I Got a Deal for You (August 13, 2015) respectively).

Back to the TV. As I then explained (apparently much too briefly) in mid-May how my set was taking remote control to new heights by turning itself on and off at will (or any average joe who happens to be around (sorry, I couldn’t resist)) I must append that by saying that it has wrestled control completely now not letting me even interject my will (or joe) by use of the remote control to turn it on and off at my will (or… no, not again). That’s right. I actually have to use the power button to apply or remove power. It’s downright archaic I tell you!

All this walking across the room to work that button by hand is downright exhausting! Fortunately I should only have to wait another month for this year’s sale of the century for electronics. I just hope that somewhere in the milieu of smart watches, tablets, and streaming media devices somebody actually has enough over stocked TVs to put on sale. Stay tuned. Details coming soon.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?