Another one jumps the shark

My one-time favorite cable channel is now, for the most part useless to me.

Whenever nothing else was going on, I could always turn VH1 Classic on in the background and listen/watch as they played video-centered shows all day long.

But that’s gradually been changing. They cancelled/disappeared their request show, started playing This Is Spinal Tap 108 times a month and then devoted a show to interviews from 60 Minutes. But then last night, while checking out their program schedule, in the hopes that they’d gone back to their roots for one night, I was astonished to see that after playing Spinal Tap, their feature movie for the night was Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters is one of the greatest movies of all time. But it has no connection to the world of music. Unless you count Huey Lewis suing Ray Parker Jr. for ripping off ‘I Want a New Drug.’

So now, it looks like if I want to watch bad music videos, I have to tune into VH1 Classic in the middle of the night. Or not go to work.

King Tom1 Comment

The Hulkster's New Job

Last night, as mostly everyone else in Columbus was watching something else, The Civee and I were watching the new American Gladiators, hosted by Hulk Hogan.

Overall, it was an interesting show. Hogan needs to learn some new metaphors and lighten up on the use of superlatives, but was very entertaining as the host and main interviewer. In fact, I would have liked to have heard more from Hogan instead of having him interview the contestants before and after each event.

My biggest complaint about the show was the disembodied voice of the play-by-play announcer. If they’re not going to have the Hulkster do play-by-play, they should bring back Mike Adamley and Larry Czonka from Gladiators classic, because the eerie unseen announcer is just horrible.

The new generation of gladiators is pretty much what you’d expect–bodybuilders with muscles growing out of their muscles. The show might be a bit more entertaining if, instead of having the contestants compete against the gladiators, you had contestants compete against out-of-work wrestlers. Joe the accountant should joust against Brutus the Barber Beefcake. And Ed the dog catcher should run the gauntlet against Tito Santana, the Honky Tonk Man and King Kong Bundy. Now that would pop some ratings.

The most impressive thing about last night’s show though was the women. I don’t mean the gladiators, but the actual contestants. When it came down to the eliminator, both men took more than three minutes to complete it, taking up a lot of time on the reverse treadmill. But the women put them to shame, with the winner taking off running and not stopping and even the loser beating the time of both men.

But still, the show needs more Hogan. And if this were a wrestling show, you wouldn’t be hearing me say that.

King Tom

Ooh-wee-ooh I look just like Conan O'Brien

Or should I say, he looks like me.

Last August, I went to Canada for a week. When I came back, I had a beard. Which I still have to this day:

The King

Okay, this picture was actually taken last week, but you get the idea.

So this morning, I fire up the DVR and start to watch the first new episode of Late Night With Conan O’Brien in a few months. Conan’s been away, on hiatus since the WGA strike started in November. I was quite surprised to see Conan O’Copycat’s new look:

Conan O'Copycat

It actually looks good with him. He looks somewhat rugged. While, in the picture up above, I look bloated. So score one for Conan. But just remember the first tall, gangly, somewhat pale guy to start the beard thing. That’s right, Abraham Lincoln:

Yes, I'm re-using this picture.

King Tom

Rivers Cuomo, Alone

I was in Borders yesterday and it took me forever to find a copy of Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.
It wasn’t under “C” for Cuomo, nor under “R” for Rivers. It wasn’t in the new releases section. But I finally located it in the “W” section (for Weezer). I paid for it, left the building, and sat in my car for a few minutes with the CD in the player as I read the liner notes, and I was content.
Continue reading “Rivers Cuomo, Alone” →

King Tom2 Comments

It's an Illusion, Michael

I was surprised to recently read that NBC is reviving Knight Rider as a made-for-tv movie, hopefully to be a stepping stone to a new TV series featuring a talking car.

For me, this is great news, as I was a huge fan of the show and one of my major complaints currently is that I can’t find any re-runs of the show on cable.

They’re making some changes to the show. KITT will be some type of Ford Mustang. The Hoff won’t be the star, but rather, the show will be based on the adventures of Michael Knight’s son. But the most surprising change is the voice of KITT, this man:

From two wheels to four wheels.

According to aintitcoolnews.com, Will Arnett will be the new voice of KITT. I’m a fan of Will Arnett. I think he’s been great in Arrested Development, Blades of Steel and his appearances on Late Night. But it’s just weird to think of him as KITT.

Then again, I’ve been wrong before about casting choices.

King Tom

Clean-up on Aisle One

Tonight, the Civee and I walked to the nearby Giant Eagle to get some things for tonight’s dinner (turkey burgers).

We were mostly done getting what we needed when I wanted to stop and get a bottle of Orangina (the best soft drink ever). I reached for a bottle, but it slipped out of my fingers and broke on the floor, spilling and shattering glass all over aisle 1.

The Civee went to go tell the store staff of the spill (and broken glass) as I stood by, letting people know of the broken glass and liquid on the floor (and when people in a grocery store are on a cell phone, they really aren’t paying attention to anything else). She came back, saying that the manager said they’ll send someone. We agreed to stand there until someone showed up, figuring it was our responsibility to do so.

The thing is, it took ten minutes for someone to show to clean it up. By this point, I had gone to the front to tell someone (as we thought they forgot about us). It was an ethical quandry for us–yes, the broken glass and spilled liquid was our responsibility, but how long were we supposed to wait there to let our fellow shoppers know to be careful?

And by the way, I did apologize for my clumsiness. Instead of signing my name on the receipt, I wrote ‘sorry ’bout the Orangina.’

King Tom

I've got a friend tonight

“Alone” comes out next week.

But Superfriend is here.

Worth the wait? For a weezer fan, yes. It may not make much sense outside of Songs from the Black Hole , but when you consider it’s all Rivers trying to sing two different parts and play the instruments to lay down a story and feel for his scrapped concept album, it’s pretty impressive.

It’s nice to have these pieces (the ones that we already have and the ones that we’ll get next week), but even with everything that Rivers has recorded, SFTBH was never really finished. Because of the band’s reception of his ideas, the release of Return of the Rentals and his own experiences at Harvard, Rivers took what he could from SFTBH and made one of the best albums ever, Pinkerton. Sadly, the rest, like Superfriend got dropped. Some of his dropped demos from all eras of Weezer are real good. Some aren’t. I’m just glad that Rivers (and the label) is now releasing Alone so that we finally get to hear what else there is.

Clips of the rest of Alone are right here.

Looks like someone got the tracklist right after all!

King Tom

The city that never stops talking about baseball

I moved to Columbus from the NY-NJ area almost eight years ago. While I like Columbus, there are some things I miss about my native land, to wit:

  • Good Chinese food
  • Edible Pizza
  • Restaurants open past 10 p.m.
  • The Yankees
  • Year-round baseball coverage in the media

That last one has hit home over the past few weeks. Here in Columbus, people are abuzz about the local college football team, but my level of interest in college football is nil.

While the baseball playing season has been over for more than a month, plenty has happened, epecially for the Yankees. They let Joe Torre walk and hired Joe Girardi. Alex Rodriguez left the Yankees then came back. The talk over the last week has been about which team the Twins would trade Johan Santana to. And this week, team executives met in Nashville for the winter meetings.

But it’s being ignored here.

Actually, Peter Abraham, a Yankees beat writer with an excellent blog, summed up the situation in NY last week:

Nobody talks football once the games are over. We know nothing much about 85 percent of the players and not even the best fan could name all of the GMs. But even a casual baseball fan can list four prospects his team could trade for Santana. Or has an opinion on A-Rod.

It must drive the NFL, NBA and NHL people nuts to flip on the radio at 4 p.m. on a late November day and hear nothing but talk about whether Minnesota will trade the lefty. But that is what makes our sport the best. It never goes out of season. They just stop the games for a few months.

Well, at least I have the Internet.

King Tom

Make some other type of small talk, please

At work, I’m responsible for dealing with a large piece of office equipment manufactured by a company that I won’t name, but their company name begins and ends with the same letter. Anyway, when there’s a problem with the machine, I call the company’s (let’s just call them Company X) support line.

A little more than a year ago, Company X outsourced their support staff to somewhere in the Caribbean. I don’t remember exactly where, although I was told once and I do remember that it’s one of the places mentioned in the worst song ever.

Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that Company X’s customer service reps are still working on conversational English. During lulls in the call (when they have to wait for their computers to pull up records or whatever) they will often engage in a line of small talk:

-How are you?
-How is the weather?

Every time I call, they ask these questions. And not wanting to be rude, I engage them in conversation, and will often ask these very same questions back to them. Except the answer to question number two is always “Oh, sunny and in the 80s.” Usually, I don’t mind. But I had to call this week, and when my answer to that question is “cloudy and damn cold,” the very last thing I want to hear back is “Oh, here, it’s sunny and in the 80s.”

Someone should tell Company X to change the script.

King Tom