television Archives - Page 34 of 43

As soon as I write that I’m not watching the Olympics…

Here’s a question for you all: how much of a home team fan should a member of the media be?

My niece (wife’s brother’s daughter) has been staying at our house for much of the last three weeks. She is really into horses; she even owns one. So when she wanted to watch TV, and they had show horses jumping over barriers, we ended up viewing that. Which led to watching some other activities. Sunday morning, live, I got to watch Andy Murray of the UK beat Roger Federer of Switzerland, one of the greatest tennis players in the world, in straight sets, four weeks to the day after Federer beat Murray at Wimbledon, at the same venue. I was fist-pumping so much that my daughter demanded that I stop.

Then Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night, we were up until 10 or 11 pm, watching various events. This was partially a function of being on vacation, with no chance to record the programs. (And no real desire to; one cannot watch old sports events.)

Jaquandor asked a series of Olympic-related questions, and I started answering them at his blog, when, suddenly, I realized it was going on too long for his reply box, but was just the right length for a blog post. Thanks, guy.

What are your favorite events?

Tennis, volleyball. Although I watched a lot of track (dashes and hurdles) and got into them.

What events do you just not get?

I still find synchronized swimming exceedingly funny. I GET it, but there is a move afoot in the competition to get rid of the excessive makeup, which currently makes it seem more like theater and less like athletics, when it clearly is more the latter.

What events would you include or exclude?

Include baseball and/or softball. I’m disinclined to exclude anything, even if I personally don’t care about it.

Granting that providing tape-delayed coverage is a necessary evil given the distances in time zones…

I don’t grant that. In an Internet world, I found out way too much. Even NBC reported on a couple stories, including Michael Phelps’ record-breaking medal, aware that everyone knew anyway. Lots of people in the US were finding ways to watch it on the BBC.

I think there needs to be tape delays in 2014 (Russia) and 2018 (South Korea) but there should be only enough so that American audiences don’t have to watch the Games at 4 a.m. Eastern. For the 2016 games in Rio, the time zone is only one hour off US Eastern time, and this should allow for more live coverage.

What could NBC be doing better with its coverage?

Obviously, the coverage of the individual sports tend to be all over the place, quality-wise. There are ALWAYS sports announcers who make observations about how much an athlete “wants it,” or otherwise read his or her mind.

Mary Carillo did a series of quite interesting series of stories about the UK, including, of all things, the institution of Greenwich Mean Time.

But the infotainment folks of the TODAY show irritate me. Al and Matt wrestling; new anchor Savannah being a gal pal in the Olympic village; Al playing cricket; anything involving Ryan Seacrest and Jenna Bush. (Read Ken Levine’s satiric take on how Seacrest got his NBC contract.) One Saturday morning, two people were telling us the Facebook or Twitter conversation about the Olympics was heavy in Maryland and Virginia, opining that this was the case because an athlete is from one of those states; I had to shut it off.

Here’s a question for you all: how much of home team fans should the media be? On the TODAY show, US hurdler Lolo Jones tearfully complained about a New York Times article critical of her two days before her finals, where she finished a close fourth.

How weird is it watching Olympics without Jim McKay on the teevee?

I loved Jim McKay. But Bob Costas is fine.

Do professional athletes in sports like basketball make for better, or lesser, competition?

Who is an amateur athlete anymore? Many college basketball players in the US, are 1-and-done, attending college for a year, maybe two, then make themselves eligible for the NBA draft. Track stars get stipends or appearance fees, or something that allows them to travel over the country.

And the pros in tennis start as teenagers. The pool of amateurs would be exceedingly small. Moreover, the Williams sisters, and the Bryan twins seemed to love representing the US, as did many of the other athletes, especially from the smaller nations.

How big a problem IS doping, and what’s the future of the very notion of ‘performance-enhancing’ medicine?

I really felt sorry for that young female swimmer from China who, a number of people suggested, had cheated because of her incredible time, though she was cleared a day later. To the question, there will always be athletes looking to get an edge and folks who have to keep their ears to the ground to try to stop it.

There’s a bigger problem, though. The weird thing about the Olympics is that the rules are largely determined by the governing body of that particular sports. No sport should be so designed that throwing a match should be advantageous to that team, as was happening in badminton.

July Rambling: the God particle, and Key’s defense of slavery

Rod Serling, Mike Wallace, Roger & Chaz Ebert, Banana Splits, Golden Girls, Cookie Monster, 1904 Olympics

Cognitive Deficit: How Budget Cuts Could Prevent Scientific Breakthroughs
“The Higgs boson isn’t just one missed opportunity – it represents how much the U.S. stands to lose if we don’t give our scientists the support they need. The Congress of the early ’90s might have pulled the plug on a $10 billion particle accelerator, but it’s hard to imagine today’s Congress even contemplating such a project when attempts to fund basics like unemployment insurance and infrastructure repair result in partisan gridlock.”
Also:
We’re ALL Immigrants, Higgs is Our Common Ancestor.
Why the boson is like Justin Bieber.

Remembering when Francis Scott Key, the man who penned “The Star-Spangled Banner,” defended slavery in court.
Key “had a much narrower conception of freedom of speech. He argued that the antislavery publications could be suppressed in the name of public safety since they might incite violent rebellion. He defended a narrower conception of American citizenship — that it was reserved for the native-born and whites only… White men did have a constitutional right to own property in people…” Applicable discussion for today.

US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) calls out the sheer lunacy of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) when she and four Republican colleagues accuse Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin of being circuitously connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The deplorable 1904 Olympics.

Jim Stanek, Disabled Veteran Says United Airlines Staff Kicked His Service Dog, Asked If He Was ‘Retarded’

Kevin Marshall collected the musings of Alan Ilagan, who recently served on the jury for a locally prominent murder trial.

Lynneguist’s mom died, and what you can do in honor of that.

The girl I met in Rome in World War II named Miss Mountain of Flowers.

Roger Ebert loves his wife Chaz. Wednesday, July 18, was the 20th anniversary of their marriage.

Wynton Marsalis on America’s Musical Classics. What They Are and Why We Need to Share Them with Our Kids.

The two Londons.

I got an invitation from Glassdoor. At my request, here’s Gordon’s post about it.

If you like classic television, check out Kliph Nesteroff’s Classic Television Showbiz.

Rod Serling in an interview with Mike Wallace just before the The Twilight Zone’s first broadcast.

Steve Bissette writes on Facebook: “I always thought Bob Marley HAD to have seen or heard the BANANA SPLITS theme. Compare Bob’s “Buffalo Soldiers” riff; —c’mon, don’tcha think so, mon?”

This is funny if you’ve watched too much Dora the Explorer.

Cookie Monster connects with his inner Carly Rae Jepsen.

The Superfriends/Golden Girls mashup.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) on the Senate floor, eulogizing his late writing partner, Tom Davis.

A JED eye chart.

How to write 99 3/4 in Roman numerals.

That classic La maquina de escribbir.

When you write yourself into a corner.

FROM THE OTHER BLOGS

Change in credit card rules?

The new poll tax: voter ID.

Agreeing with Ronald Reagan – hey, it happens.

The Ridin’, Tom Paxton Blues.

GOOGLE ALERTS

In this short video, presented by Applied Transformation, Inc., Roger Green talks with Ivan Misner about Misner’s view on business networking and whether or not it has a place in formal education.

Roger Green, founder of Edinburgh-based Spotless Commercial Cleaning, has stepped down as chief executive after 24 years.

Roger currently serves as Vice President, Strategy, Policy Marketing & Communications for the HealthEast Care System in Saint Paul.

Salvation Army Honors Roger Green with Rare Citation.

Listen to 11 Even by Roger Green: My first full-length solo album after leaving the Czars, features Marc Dalio on drums, Eric Thorin on bass, Eric Moon on Piano.

(Limo picture c 2012 Mark Klonfas. Cat picture c 2012 Alexandria Green)

My first television interview caused a scandal

When I was five years old, I appeared on a local (Binghamton, NY) kids’ TV show.

Regarding the wake/funeral I was telling you about recently:

My friend Karen was the youngest of four children. I knew her youngest sibling, who was four years our senior, but the others, who were six and eight years older, not so well.

I get to the wake and decide to reintroduce myself to one of her sisters, at which point she says, “I remember YOU” and launches into this story.

When I was five years old, I appeared on a local (Binghamton, NY) kids’ TV show hosted by a guy named Bill Parker, who was portraying a cowboy or space captain or police officer; he played them all, at some point for Channel 12, WNBF-TV (now WBNG). And I guess I had mentioned this at school because all my friends were watching the live show.

Parker asked at some point what really made me really mad. I said, “When Karen Durkot snaps my suspenders!” At which point, the Durkot household received a boatload of telephone calls. “Did you hear what Roger Green just said on TV about Karen?”

And when Karen’s sister is introduced to my wife a short time after I spoke to her, she tells her this story, almost verbatim.

Here’s the kicker: I have zero recollection of this incident. I was on Parker’s shows, definitely TV Ranch Club, and probably Len Hathaway’s Admiral Appleby show two or three times, probably a function of the fact that my grandfather, McKinley Green, was a janitor at the TV/radio station. And I don’t specifically remember ever wearing suspenders.

So when I tell Karen that I don’t recall this incident, she mockingly notes my multiple appearances on television – “media maven” – as the reason for letting this piece of HER family lore slip from my memory.

Shafted into Soaps: Richard Roundtree is 70

Richard Roundtree turns 70 today.

In 1990, I was a Census enumerator, which meant I wold go door to door to count people. I used to watch the noon news, then started viewing whatever was after it. There was a soap opera featuring Richard Roundtree. Yes, Shaft himself! It was called Generations, and I ended up watching it at 12:30 pm until it died in 1991. (It had started in 1989). It was the first soap, reportedly, where about half the cast was black. Roundtree played Dr. Daniel Reubens, implicated for a crime he did not commit.

I never actually saw any of the Shaft movies, though I did see an episode or two of the short-lived (1973-1974) TV series based on them, but I was intrigued that this semi-famous movie actor was in this daytime TV show I had never heard of. The bad thing about watching it is that, eventually, I started watching Days of Our Lives at 1, and got sucked into that until some over-the-top plot line drove me away. Subsequently, I started watching Another World at 2, and I viewed it until two weeks before the end in 1999, when I got married and went on my honeymoon. But I’ve read the synopses.

My grandmother and great-aunt used to watch the CBS soaps (Guiding Light, Edge of Night, Secret Storm, and others) when I was a kid, and I’d see them quite a bit, especially the latter two (on at 3:30-4:30). As you probably know, lots of actors moved from the soap to prime time TV. I saw Henry Simmons on AW and then he spent the last 6 years on N.Y.P.D. Blue. AW’s Amy Carlson was on Third Watch, then the 4th Law & Order show.

Anyway, Richard Roundtree, who developed breast cancer in 1993 and had a double mastectomy and chemotherapy, is still a working actor. I remember him well in his guest appearance on the television series The Closer as the retired Marine colonel who was the father of a sniper.

He turns 70 today, and I wish him well, and forgive him for being my gateway drug to soap operas, an addiction I’ve now overcome.

Nora Ephron, Andy Griffith, and the sense of loss

Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about the deceased than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late.

I was looking at the situation all wrong. When Nora Ephron died last week, I was thinking about her top movie moments rather than her life. I was evaluating her films: liked Sleepless in Seattle, but You’ve Got Mail, not so much. Enjoyed Heartburn. Julie and Julia: Julia-yes, Julie-eh. Silkwood I enjoyed, but I wouldn’t even watch Bewitched.

Then I read John Blumenthal’s piece on how Nora Ephron took pity on him “as a lowly peon at Esquire magazine. Then she found me a job.” Or Dick Cavett’s Vamping With Nora, when a guest failed to appear on his talk show, and they had to fill 20 minutes. Plus some other pieces I didn’t cite. Or listening to Diane Sawyer talking about her friend on ABC News; I had no idea before she read the story that they even knew each other, but I could just tell, by her delivery.

And it reminded me of going to funerals of people I knew, or, more likely, people I didn’t know but attended the service because I knew a family member. Almost inevitably, I would get to know more about them than I could have possibly imagined. Parts of their interesting lives to which I was not privy until it was too late. And I feel sad, sad in a way I could not have possibly imagined. These people are losing this AMAZING person. I’d SO feel their pain, their sense of loss.

Oddly, with all the things I read about Nora Ephron, I was feeling the same way. I wish I HAD attended dinner parties with her, as someone had suggested because I’m now convinced she would have been wise and witty and entertaining. And so, I’m surprisingly sad that, at the age of 71, Nora Ephron has died of leukemia.

Mayberry

Whereas, my feeling about Andy Griffith, who died on July 3, was more immediate. My father and Andy were born in the same year, 1926. More than once, I wish my dad were more patient with me, liked Sheriff Andy Taylor was with his son Opie (Ron Howard). Not that he couldn’t be stern – the episode I remember the best is the one in which Opie kills a mother bird with his slingshot and is forced to become her babies’ surrogate mother. And Sheriff Andy believed in due process of the law.

For reasons I cannot clearly explain, I was a big fan of Matlock, with Griffith as a cornpone, but savvy lawyer in a light blue seersucker suit. I enjoyed his performance in the movie Waitress. But perhaps his greatest role was in the movie A Face in the Crowd, as Gordon noted.

Though beloved in his home state of North Carolina, I recall that Griffith took some heat for his support for an Obamacare proposal.

Read Mark Evanier’s remembrance, and check out these interviews with Andy Griffith.