Musicologist, Barbeque God and Good Friend Terry McVey has been recognized by the Missouri Bar for “outstanding legal service.” Terry was presented with a Pro Bono Publico Award (no connection to Irish rock singer) for outstanding pro bono service to indigent or low-income persons in need of legal assistance. These awards are presented to three persons a year–one each from St. Louis and Kansas City and outstate Missouri. This is the first time the award has been given to an attorney in the Bootheel.
Transmitter for Sale
When I first started working at the radio station (1972), we were required to take transmitter readings every 15 minutes. Keeping the transmitter on was the number one –and obvious– priority. And I guess that’s still true for radio stations today. No transmitter…no radio. But not for TV.
On Monday we noticed we were not receiving the local ABC affiliate. Just static. We watch very little network TV these days but still try to catch Peter Jennings and we’re hanging in for the final season of NYPD Blue. So I called the TV station and asked the lady who answered the phone what was going on.
“One of our transmitter tubes went out over the weekend but you can get us on the cable,” she explained.
“I don’t have cable,” I infomed her.
“So, how do you watch us?”
“I have an antenna.”
“Oh. Well, we should have the transmitter working again by the end of the week.”
This struck me as something of a revelation. The TV station wasn’t concerned that their trasmitter was down. The “signal” (content) was getting out via cable. I wanted to ask her about the rural viewers that don’t have cable but there aren’t enough of us to pose a problem.
I started wondering what does the local TV station add to the content mix? Their local newscast. Local weather. Bunch of local commercials. It just feels like those local affiliates are becoming less important every day.
All of this reminded me of ABC Now, the network’s effort to deliver content by non-traditional means. How much would I pay to be able to download World News Tonight directly from the network? Or NYPD Blue? I’m already doing this with XM and it works just fine, thank you.
In conclusion, I guess I’m no more concerned about the TV station transmitter being dark than they are.
William Gibson on why OBL and W need each other
“OBL today is probably a very satisfied, very optimistic man, and if he can skew the last-minute dynamic of the election in Bush’s favor, he’ll have cause to be all the more satisfied.
And that’s the danger, that some crucial percentage of our dimmer, more reactive voters will flash back to 9-11 and the Bush of the bullhorn, the Bush buffeted with the heartbroken grit of Ground Zero, and vote for that — childishly imagining that such a vote runs counter to the wishes and the needs of OBL, the bearded stickman, the cave-dwelling spider, our new Old Man of the Mountains. Player of the long game.”
Scariest Halloween Costumes
“The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib. Your child will be the hit of the neighborhood costume parade in this recreation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal’s most indelible image. As an added bonus this easy-to-make costume will remind everyone on your child’s trick-or-treat route of our national shame! Simply roll a cone from a sheet of 24″x38″ black cardstock, making sure to cut out a hole for the face. Drape with two yards of black felt, and add leftover wires from your last lamp-rewiring project. Voila! So easy, so quick, and so terrifying!” [TheStranger.com via Boing Boing]
What do George Bush and Dick Cheney dream about ?
What do George Bush and Dick Cheney dream about when they’re deep in REM sleep? James Wolcott wonders:
“Suppose there had been no Iraqi insurgency, no al-Sadr popping out from behind the curtain or Saddam loyalists prepped for guerrilla war, no car bombings or beheadings or roadside explosives. Or an insurgency so feeble and scattered it was swiftly squashed and swept up. Just imagine how different things would have been over the last year, how different they would be now.”
Love it or leave it
That was a popular “establishment” slogan back in the sixties, aimed at those protesting the war in Vietnam. The idea being expressed was, if you didn’t support the war in Southeast Asia (it was a lot more than Vietnam), you should leave America. (We lost that war against Communism but gained a new trading partner.) The notion that if you don’t agree with the current administration’s foreign policy you’re un-American and should leave, was as lame then as it is now. But that’s not my point here.
I’ll be 57 next March. White male. Married. Two Golden Retreivers. Our house is paid off (Barb has a spare in Florida) and we have money in the bank. This country has been “berry, berry good to me.”
And for the the first time in my life, I’m not completely convinced America is the best country in the world. It might be. I hope it is. But I’m no longer positive. I haven’t traveled much so I don’t know much about other countries. But Canada seems like a good country. Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand. They all seem like pretty nice places. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thinking about leaving. I like it here. But I’m sad to think we might not be the best country in the world. Maybe we never were, but it was nice to think it was true. I’d like to think so again.
Pattern Recognition, the movie?
“Peter Weir wants to direct it, there’s an option deal in place, and Weir has a contract with Warner to…well, not to go ahead and shoot it, but to go forward toward that end. Toward which he’s hired a screenwriter — whose name I’ve forgotten (which is actually a good sign with regard to Weir’s choice) — and has gone to London, Tokyo and Moscow to look at locations.”
— From William Gibson’s blog
Old TV, New TV.
A friend who had seen Jon Stewart savage the Crossfire weenies called to tell me about it and I remember thinking, “Crap. I missed it.” Then, I remember thinking, “I’ll be able to find it on the Net.” And I did. Jeff Jarvis calls it “the future of TV”:
“In old TV, a moment like this came, and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don’t need to worry about watching it live–live is so yesterday–because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch, and they’ll record it and distribute it.” [C|Net story]
Friday Night Lights
Hard not to come away thinking of Hoosiers. Billy Bob did a very credible job but he’s no Gene Hackman or Dennis Hopper. Still, I can’t recall a better movie about high school football. I think I’d be a little embarrassed if I were from Odessa. All of the beautiful, aerial views of desolate, empty desert must have been to help us understand that “football is all they have” in small, West Texas towns. My favorite line (this probably isn’t verbatim) was: The future is getting ready to start in a few minutes. “Forever’s about to happen in just a few minutes.” Sound track was great. And the movie was shot in what I’ve come to think of as the “Saving Private Ryan” effect. Very effective. [IMDB]