Category: Brooklyn

On television:
Science Channel show “Hot Rocks: Geology of Civilization”: imagine Ringo Starr pronouncing the phrase
“domesticated cereals”: the first thing I thought of was Captain Crunch going legit?

Embattled PBS news show “The Journal Editorial Report” ended its run today to move to Fox Network. The right say that PBS affiliates either are not running the show or are putting it in late night time slots. The left points to the alleged unethical push for the show by ex CPB Chair Kenneth Tomlinson. I think that its always refreshing to check out different perspectives, for the same reason it isn’t redundant to read both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

But what does this country want? TV is no longer just a dozen or less broadcast channels; it is now hundreds of channels. Do we get diversity of opinion on each and every network, or do we get it by offering a diversity of channels, each with well-defined points of view?

Thursday night’s “ER” was actually interesting – Neela and Gallant get married. Aww. How nice. I like watching the tv characters I like take actual steps in their tv lives. Hopefully nothing bad happens to Gallant once he’s back in the army…

The Oprah Winfrey visiting Dave Letterman episode was curiously interesting. The hype got too much, I thought, but I did end up watching it. I liked how Dave tried to make a sincere conversation, and Oprah seemed pleased about that. Although, honestly, one wonders about what the heck was really going on with their “feud.” Was it really the whole Oprah-Uma thing, or Dave refusing to go on Oprah’s show (or his wanting to be on her show, but she didn’t invite him or his wanting her on his show, but her refusing? I don’t know). Slate’s Dana Stevens discusses the whole thing in an interesting manner. She also notes what really makes Dave such a curiously fascinating character – and no less so with Oprah:

It would have made for far better television if Dave and Oprah had discussed their obvious temperamental differences and how these affect their approach to their craft. Where she sees her show as a “mission” (a word she used in last night’s interview), mingling feel-good philanthropy with a near-pathological messiah complex, he is a deeply cynical, almost nihilistic figure, whose air of cold detachment only grows as he mires himself deeper and deeper in the world of show-business artifice. In fact, this abyss inside Letterman—the fact that, as he said almost proudly last night, he “isn’t close to anyone”—is the only thing that still makes him interesting to watch.

Oprah takes her save-the-world thing way seriously; Dave is bemused by it. That was certainly a fascinating part of the interview. And, to take it further, compare Dave to his late night rival – the big difference with Dave Letterman and Jay Leno – Dave obviously doesn’t care; the good interviews he does come when he’s interested in his guest (otherwise, it’s just a dumb interview with a dumb guest), whereas Jay kisses ass far too much for my comfort (and his jokes, while funny, don’t take the weird quirk direction Dave does). I’m not saying Jay Leno is bad or unworthy (the guy lasted as long as he did – he knows what he’s doing) – I just prefer Dave over Jay, but can see why most people prefer Jay. Dave is harder to swallow; Jay isn’t. But, if you get Dave, the payoff’s quite interesting. Oh well. At least it was nice to see Oprah on late night (well, she was obviously doing it to promote “The Color of Purple” musical that she’s promoting, but she knows how to be a showman (showwoman?) and to mix business and show business properly).

Newsday’s Verne Gay likes the new Nightline. He has a point – it’s live, which makes it more interesting (Ted Koppel has taped Nightline for quite awhile, so it wasn’t nearly as spontaneous as it used to be) and sticks with news. So, he feels it’s a respectable start. Ok, sure, there’s always room to grow. I’ll give the new Nightline that much of a benefit of a doubt. I just wished the transition would have been a bit more smoother, that’s all.

Oh, and by the way – the news media and on-line providing the audio recordings of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on the abortion law case this week was really fascinating stuff. And, I got to love those courtroom drawings they showed on tv to go with the audio – they were hardly caricatures, but they seemed to capture what it must have been like during the oral arguments. They may never allow cameras in the Supreme Court to show its inner workings, but it remains very interesting stuff.

Some TV shows:

Commander in Chief: timely discussion about the death penalty with the Virgina commutation of a death sentence. In reality, the U.S. President doesn’t have the power to commute a state crime such as murder, only federal ones.

Amazing Race, Family Edition: I’m finding it hard to follow what is going on. With 4 teams remaining going into the home stretch, you still have to keep track of 16 people, which is a lot more than you normally have at this stage of the race. Also, keeping track of the host Phil, who showed up at the end of the episode someplace in Arizona. Two teams ran themselves rugged to the mat only to be told by Phil that they had not reached the pit stop. It’s like, to be continued, here’s the next clue, see you at the end of the next episode. The groans….

Just one more thing — to the people who keep coming up with the slogan backdrops, like the one today for “Plan for Victory” — you are freaking out the public. What’s the next one, “War is Peace“?

Congratulations on renewing your domain, FC; may we continue enjoying the website!

The passing of Stan Berenstain, the co-creator of the Berenstain bears.

The new Nightline: well, it’s only been a few days. Cynthia McFadden from the Times Square studio; Martin Bashir did a story on deaf high school football players (very nice story from the Brit who did far too many Michael Jackson documentaries for my comfort); and Terry Moran from Iraq (doing a nice job so far as I can tell). ABC ditched the old Nightline theme song (boo! How can they do that and still call this show Nightline?) and I don’t really like McFadden. She’s a better anchor for Nightline than, say, George Stephanopolous, but she doesn’t give me a Nightline kind of feeling, even when, last night, she tried to interview the Roman Catholic priests about the Vatican’s policies on homosexual priests (McFadden’s no Koppel). I actually get a better feeling from Bashir (well, working on that; his interviews of Michael Jackson still haunt me – and not in a good way) and Moran (I’ve seen him enough to accept him, but I’ve yet to feel an air of proper authority or confidence in him). I do not like the multi-story format – too much to cover in a short period of time. Pick one or two – not three.

Oh, and last night brought back one Nightline veteran John Donvan (thank goodness! and what happened to the rest of Koppel’s crew?) – he did a story on the pro-life Christians who are praying, in front of the Supreme Court, that the justices will go their way. I miss the old veterans (heck, even Chris Bury, who had to put up with a lot in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster). And, I don’t like too much change too soon. Check out David Bianculli’s review in the Daily News; he pretty much voiced my concerns:

The trio of stories, while commendable in subject, were less so in scope. McFadden’s piece, the one most typical of a classic “Nightline” report, had her questioning priests on opposite sides of the debate about gay clergy. The interview, handled live, could have gone somewhere, but never got the chance. After five minutes, with the gay priest from Albany champing to respond to his colleague’s charge that homosexuality was “a disorder,” McFadden shut down the discussion.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “that’s going to have to be the last word for tonight.”

I’m sorry, too. I would have loved to hear his response. [….]

Dividing the “Nightline” turf by half, rather than thirds, would be a better compromise, if the new regime is insistent on picking up the pace. The correspondents shouldn’t mind waiting their turn, if the resulting rotation provides time for deeper, better reports.

Lock down the camera, and slow down the segments, and the new version of “Nightline” (at 11:35 p.m.) will deserve to retain its time slot – and stand a better chance of building on that proud journalistic tradition.

Hmm. Will ABC News listen to the critics and make adjustments accordingly?

And, speaking further about TV – last night’s “House, M.D.” – has to be the best episode of the season so far. All of Dr. House’s insane mistakes catch up on him (sooner or later, no one was going to tolerate his habit of not personally seeing patients and blackmailing colleagues to save lives); series continuity: we learn that Dr. Chase’s dad did pass away, and it may explain why Chase has been a strange one the last several months (and that House did honor Chase Sr.’s request that Chase not know Chase Sr. was dying of lung cancer) (and, if the timing of the flashbacks are correct, Chase’s mental instability – due to grief of losing an estranged father and issues of faith and things like that – came in the middle of House’s being pissed with him for giving in to Vogler, the ex-hospital CEO/antagonist – making Chase one seriously stressed m.d.); Dr. Foreman’s clueless (does he not realize that he’s the one turning into House, not Chase?); and Dr. Cameron’s really dim (didn’t she realize everyone would know she slept with Chase?); and Dr. Wilson and Dr. House really need real lives (playing with their quarters for a little paper clip field goal kicking with their thumbs – ok, I’m not describing the scene adequately, but it was a very funny scene). I like it when “House” gets into a wacky storyline arc – it can get hairy, but everyone gets a bit of character development, for better or worse.

I renewed the domain name for this blog today, as it was going to run out tomorrow for another two years on register.com . They are not the cheapest, but I did get to talk to a human in a reasonable amount of time as I had forgotten the password for the account. I also got four nag phone calls from them to renew, which was in one sense good because I was putting it off, but on principle, I don’t give out credit card numbers to people that call me.

In other news, there is talk about allowing single letter domain names. As of now, all single letter and number domains are reserved, except i, q, x, and z, which were grandfathered. I like to use a@b.com in forms that randomly ask for an email address when I’m not interested in junk mail.

Saw in Metro NY (the free morning newspaper) about Fotolia, a stock photo website that lets you buy and sell digital photos. The Fotolia currency is a “credit”, which is equal to US$1. You can exchange them for PayPal dollars for a 2% ($1 min) commission. Photos can go for $1 upwards, or you can give exclusive rights. Sounds fascinating.

Had a double Thanksgiving this weekend – Thursday at P’s parent’s house, and on Saturday, I cooked at my mom’s house. P’s mom, as a former housekeeper, did the complete Martha Stewart deal, including a perfectly rosted turkey, mushroom sausage stuffing with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, pumpkin pie — you get the picture. On Saturday, I pulled off my godmother’s baked ham recipe that my mom was given, and a big tray of lasagna. Good eats for at least a few more days.

I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday, but instead we had to swap our Time Warner cable box. This was the second Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 that broke on us. Web reviews had mentioned that the DVR had quite a return rate — had heat problems, hard drive problems and an underpowered CPU. I asked if they had anything else, and they upgraded us to an 8300. Hopefully this one will be better. It doesn’t have the heat problems, and it does change channels faster. Also, it has keyword search of the listings, which is fantastic for finding things.

The box came up with several new channels, including the ImaginAsian channel, which seems to go head-to-head with the AZN (nee International) channel, and the chinese channels were not scrambled. However, the free In-Demand channels didn’t work. We’re up to 1014 channels!

Another interesting Chinese cooking show on Discovery Living: Kylie Kwong, a chef who is a 5th generation Australian Chinese. She looks like a thirty-something version of my aunt from Trinidad, and her accent is just as thick. Usually, I’m pretty good at figuring out Commonwealth English, but at some points I had to turn on the closed captioning to figure out what she was saying – definately a sheila. But the food was quite nice — if we ever make it to Sydney, we’ll have to check out her restaurant.

This past Friday night, I should mention, had a fascinating Charlie Rose interview of Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit and Law and Economics fame. Such a great interview!

The new “Nightline” is coming…

Saw “Rent” yesterday. I thought it was a pretty good musical movie. The fact that it had the original cast (or most of them anyway) was great too – beautiful voices and very attractive cast. And, yeah, some of the cast is looking a little long in the tooth to still play characters in their twenties, and it’s not a perfect movie (no plot, as one person said – but it’s a musical, and musicals are always going to be weak in plot). I liked the NY Times review by A.O. Scott best:

In other words, “Rent” is occasionally silly, often melodramatic and never subtle. Every song swells toward bombast, and every theme, musical or narrative, is underlined almost to the point of illegibility. [“Rent” creator Jonathan] Larson’s attempt to force the marriage of rock and Broadway often sends the worst of both genres into noisy collision, as if Meat Loaf and Andrew Lloyd Webber were reworking “Exile on Main Street.” Certainly, the musical traditions of the show’s native ground – home to the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, Sonic Youth and so on – are hardly audible in its tunes. But to raise such objections – or to chide “Rent” for its childish politics or its simplistic and instantly obsolete vision of the New York demimonde – is to think like a them.

Yes, Bohemia is dead. Its funeral rites are pronounced by Mr. Larson’s best song (“La Vie Boheme,” quoted earlier), a wondrously nonsensical catalog of tastes, ideas and attitudes ranging from microbrewed beers to Kurosawa movies, with a toast along the way to “Sontag and to Sondheim and to everything taboo.” But the passage of time, which has left almost nothing taboo, has also inoculated “Rent” against the disdain of hipsters who might find it woefully unsophisticated. Its idea of Bohemia is not realistic, but romantic, even utopian. Openhearted to a fault, it stakes its integrity on the faith that even in millennial New York, some things – friendship, compassion, grief, pleasure, beauty – are more important than money or real estate.

It never hurts to be reminded. Precisely because some of the specific concerns of “Rent” have become dated, the truth at its heart is clearer than ever. It is undeniably sentimental, but its sentimentality might serve as a balm to those of us, in New York and elsewhere, who sometimes find ourselves living in the long, tuneless sequel. Who would ever want to see a show called “Mortgage”?

Nice points. Although, I do wonder if the Red State folks may stomach “Rent,” but it’s been around almost 10 years, so what can one really say? Just sit back and enjoy the visuals and the music.

The passing of Pat Morita, a.k.a. Mr. Miyagi of “Karate Kid” and Arnold of “Happy Days.” Fascinating obituary by Associated Press, noting:

For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and TV series such as “The Odd Couple” and “Green Acres.” His first breakthrough came with “Happy Days,” and he followed with his own brief series, “Mr. T and Tina.”

“The Karate Kid,” led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994’s “The Next Karate Kid,” paired him with a young Hilary Swank.

Morita was prolific outside of the “Karate Kid” series as well, appearing in “Honeymoon in Vegas,” “Spy Hard,” “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” and “The Center of the World.” He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie “Mulan” in 1998.

Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

“One day I was an invalid,” he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. “The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece.”

After the war, Morita’s family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.

Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.

“Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did,” he commented. “If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. “

I linked to the Cnn.com’s version of the AP article, which also included a fascinating video clip of Pat Morita.

The passing of Hugh Sidey, the Time magazine writer/Presidential historian.

Newsweek has a cover article on Charles Darwin, the man behind the theory of evolution. Fascinating article. Almost made me want to pick up my old copy of “Origin of Species” from college to recapture that feeling of “wow, what is this Victorian era guy saying?” (the operative word behing “almost”).

Law.com still won’t take a break this holiday (good for them) – posting this article on Justice O’Connor’s speech on judicial independence, and on the ABA and studies on appellate judges.

Today’s NY Times editorial – great thoughts:

We often find it hard to be as thankful as we should be these days. For so many Americans, it is no longer a question of having too little or having enough. It’s the difference between having too much and having way, way too much.

It is too easy to forget, amid this abundance, that all across America a different kind of Great Depression is still going on. The old stories would have been told very differently – if they were told at all – if they had been tales of growing up poor in the midst of wealth. There was no shame in the collective poverty of the Great Depression. There is no shame in the poverty Americans suffer today. The shame adheres to those who do nothing to change it.

Perhaps it isn’t necessary to have gone hungry in order to be thankful for eating well. In a land of economic entitlement, gratitude may be almost too old-fashioned to sustain for more than this one day. But then there is something to be said for an old-fashioned holiday like this one. For a moment, we grasp how rich we are, how close we feel to the ones around us, and we give thanks before it all seems merely normal again.

Be thankful for what you have; health, family, etc. Wish for peace on earth.

Before anything, tonight’s Lost was really messed up. Even more than the “someone’s going to die” teaser episode last week, this week Ana Lucida is just turning out to be such a totally despicable person — and everybody knows it, and they have to spend the forseeable future with her on the island. Geez.

Ted Koppel’s last night on Nightline focused not on self-congratulations, but on Tuesdays with Morrie, a reprise of a three episode series three years ago about a Brandeis sociology professor dealing with his own process of death by Lou Gehrig’s disease. To paraphrase, the distance between life and death is not a chasm, but a bridge over a little brook – not far at all. I plan on getting the book.

Today’s Nightline post-Koppel was on Thanksgiving traditions. The most amusing were the turducken and the canned cranberry. Also, there was a focus on Norman Rockwell’s series of paintings depicting Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, including the archtypical Thanksgiving scene. The pictures are somewhat dated, but they are still part of this country’s mythology of political faith, and surely what we ought to be thankful for. Have a good Thanksgiving, folks.