eclecticism

Watching the season finale of Lost last night was an exercise in frustration — not because of the show itself (we enjoy the frustration that comes from the many twists, turns, and unanswered questions of the show), but from the horrendous number of and length of commercial breaks. It felt like we were getting about a 1:1 ratio of show to commercial, so starting a little before the halfway point of the two-hour program, I started jotting down when we’d switch from show to commercial.

The end result: Over the final 72 minutes of the show…

• there were 48 minutes of show and 24 minutes of commercial, for a 2:1 show-to-commercial ratio (It was nice to know that it wasn’t actually 1:1, though it really did feel like it),
• there were 6 commercial breaks, averaging 4 minutes each,
  • most commercial breaks were four minutes,
  • the shortest commercial break was three minutes,
  • the longest commercial break was five minuets,
• there were 6 show segments, averaging 8 minutes each,
  • the shortest show segment was five minutes,
  • the longest show segment was eleven minutes.

Okay, so it’s not the most impressive set of statistics out there, but the continuing drive for more commercial time and less show time is ever more aggravating, and one of the big reasons I didn’t watch TV for close to a decade (and for most shows, still prefer to just wait ‘til they come out on DVD). That 2:1 ratio means that every hour of TV will actually have only 40 minutes of show.

For quick (and admittedly loose) comparisons with other well-known historical popular TV series, IMDB lists original Star Trek as 47 minutes, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager as 45 minutes, and Enterprise as 42 minutes. From the 60’s to the 80’s shows only lost about two minutes to advertisers, we held steady through the 90’s, but by 2001 had lost another three minutes, and in 2008 we’ve lost another two. Not only are we getting noticeably less show and more advertising, but the rate at which advertising takes over show time is increasing. Ick.

And then people wonder are surprised that I don’t watch more TV than I do? Heck, I’m often surprised that I watch as much as I do!

A few weeks ago, Prairie and I got our TV Converter Box Coupons from the government, so that we could happily continue to pump propaganda into our brains watch our favorite shows after the analog stations are turned off in February. I wandered down to the seventh circle of Hell Best Buy and picked up two of the converter boxes (the Insignia NS-DXA1). Rather than hooking both up right off the bat (tempting as that was, since I was a geek with new toys), I just hooked up the larger living room TV. This made sense, as it’s the one that has all the other fancy gadgets on it and requires me being home to successfully juggle five remotes — Prairie just sticks to the little one in our bedroom that only uses two remotes.

After a few weeks of using it…well, much as I like the idea of digital TV, the reality — at least as far as over-the-air broadcast goes — is definitely a bit of a mixed bag.

The box itself is fairly nice: simple to set up and use, with only a few minor caveats. For some reason, in addition to the blue ‘on’ light that’s quite standard for electronics, this also has a bright red ‘off’ light that looks oddly like there’s a Cylon staring at you when you’re not watching TV (incidentally, this is another reason we’ve not hooked one up in the bedroom yet). The on-screen guide doesn’t always seem to be accurate, though that may be the fault of the local broadcasters. Aside from that, I’m quite happy with it — the image quality is nice, and a noticeable step up from analog broadcasts, and the audio, while limited to standard 2-channel stereo (one of the requirements of the coupon-eligible boxes), seems good enough to my ears. The box also allows you to choose how it sends the video to your TV screen: letterboxed to preserve the widescreen aspect ratio; cropped to fill the square screen at the expense of information on the sides; or ‘squeezed’, where the widescreen image fills the square screen, making everyone look really really skinny. This is actually my preferred method when a show is broadcast widescreen, as my TV (a Sony Wega KV-27FS17) has an ‘anamorphic’ mode that ‘squishes’ the ‘squeezed’ signal into a 16:9 area, increasing the resolution and quality of the displayed image (geeky tech-speak for “it looks better this way”).

However, our one big issue is simply this: when analog TV signals dropped or had some form of interference, you got a little bit of snow or static, but you could still watch the show. When digital TV signals drop or hit interference…well, if you’re lucky, you’ll just get some ‘blocking’ in the image, like when a video DVD has a fingerprint. More often, though, the signal drops so far that first the audio, then the video cuts out entirely. This ends up being far more frustrating than the old analog issues, as it’s a total disruption of the signal. As interference seems to depend a lot on weather, Prairie and I have taken to watching TV on the little 13” TV in the bedroom that still gets analog signals on rainy nights rather than even trying to watch the big TV with the digital receiver. A crystal-clear signal is only good when you get that signal, after all!

I keep finding myself wishing they’d tweaked the digital transmission standard so that the video was the first thing to go with a bad signal, rather than the audio. If the video cut out but the audio was still going, you could still follow along pretty well while the video did its little dance of cubist surrealism, but when the audio craps out, it’s just frustrating (especially when watching, say, a show like Jeopardy).

I’ve heard that a good antenna could alleviate the problems, but when we’re living in a rental apartment, there’s not much we can do on that score. Good old-fashioned rabbit ears will have to do.

So, in the end, it’s a mixed bag. It’s great when it works, but when it doesn’t work, it’s a lot more frustrating than the “old-n-busted” system ever was.

Generally, I’m not a fan of car commercials (there are a few exceptions, but they tend to be few and far between). However, this one from Pontiac…

…is just all sorts of awesome.

Battlestar Galactica Last supper, originally uploaded by kidddrunkadelic14.

The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica approaches, and even though they almost lost me during season three (they went a bit too much into boring soap opera, with too little progress towards anything interesting), that season rebounded well and ended so strongly that I’m really looking forward to BSGs return.

I need to pick up the Razor DVD sometime soon, too, I still haven’t seen that.

This photo was originally published in an Entertainment Weekly sneak preview of the upcoming season of BSG. No major spoilers, but a few intriguing hints (and yes, the missing figure that should be apparent to any art student is intentional)….

I’m hoping that now that we’re just about a year away from the transition to all-digital TV broadcasting and the government’s TV Converter Program is up and running, we’ll finally start to get some information and reviews on the various TV converter boxes that are (or will be) available.

I just applied for my two coupons towards the boxes, and then started searching on some of the listed eligible converter boxes to see what they’re like. Unfortunately, much of what I found was brief little snippets from über-geek and audiophile sites with comments like this…

…one of the “digital switchover” converter boxes your stubborn granny can buy early next year with her $40 coupon from the government, in lieu of getting a new goddamn TV.

Okay, sure, that’s from Gizmodo. Still — not every geek out there works for Microsoft and has a gazillion expendable dollars…or sees the need to toss out a perfectly good (and, actually, very nice) TV set that works fine, aside from not having the ATSC tuner.

A Q-and-A from the Gothic Charm School (sort of a Goth Miss Manners):

The other thing that was recently brought to the Lady of the Manners’ attention is the fact that there’s apparently a gothy couple on The Amazing Race. (The Lady of the Manners had to have The Amazing Race explained to her. The Lady of the Manners watches TV by viewing complete seasons of shows on DVD, and so is somewhat behind on current pop culture and reality shows.) One reader (who asked not to be named) queried:

I don’t know if you watch reality television, but I have some questions about the self-styled “Gothic” team Kynt and Vyxsin from The Amazing Race. I get that they wear weird makeup and fishnet T-shirts, but they seem to be way too happy (not to mention wearing way too much pink) to really be Goths. Surely no self-respecting Goth would be this interested about running around in the scorching heat in Africa, grinning from ear-to-ear with hot pink hair! Can you settle once and for all on whether these two are the biggest posers since Gumby, or is hot pink as Goth as Hot Topic?

Oh dear oh dear. People aren’t really still clinging to the false notions that Goths can never be cheerful, or never wear pink? Good heavens, the Lady of the Manners thought those cliches were put to rest ages ago! Yes, Goths can, and frequently are, very happy and cheerful. Goth is about appreciating the off-kilter, the darkly humorous, the (as the sainted Lydia from Beetlejuice said) “strange and unusual”. Goth is not about maintaining a seamless facade of woe and gloom, and never has been. Goth is more about embracing a dark and decadent aesthetic while simultaneously being able to laugh at oneself for sitting around wearing black velvet and reading Dracula by candlelight.

As to the “wearing way too much pink” comment: hot pink has been a wonderful accent color for black Gothwear since the early days of Deathrock and Batcave. (The Lady of the Manners personally prefers cupcake pink, but to each their own.) Goth fashion, while predominately black-hued, frequently dabbles in other colors. The Lady of the Manners thinks that the hot pink and black color scheme that Kynt and Vyxsin have adopted is striking, and also makes them slightly more approachable than an all-black wardrobe would. Which is a very clever move on their part, since they will need every advantage they can get to go forth and win this race thing.

Prairie got me hooked on The Amazing Race last year, and we’ve been having a lot of fun watching this season. The season started with a lot of teams that we liked, and while we’ve been a bit frustrated that we’ve lost some good teams while others that we’d like to see go keep hanging on, we’re thrilled that ‘the hippies’ and ‘the goths’ are still part, and we’re really rooting for one of those two teams to win.

One of the things we’ve really noticed about both TK and Rachel and Kynt and Vyxsin is how markedly more mature their relationships are — with both teams, even when they’re behind, stuck somewhere, risking losing their spot, tired, hungry, or frustrated, they rarely if ever take it out on each other. They’ll express their frustration and anger, sure, but they don’t turn on each other and attack the other player. Even Kynt and Vyxsin’s ‘meltdown’ on last Sunday’s episode was worlds away from the regular abuse that Nate and Jennifer heap on each other in their good moments.

While sure, I’ll admit that part of the ‘drama’ of reality programming is the relationships (good and bad, but often bad) between the contestants, it’s been nice to see that at least two of the final five teams in this race actually treat each other like people should be treated — and it’s more than a little thrilling that it’s the two ‘counter-culture’ teams that have the best relationships.

Go weirdoes!

It’s only a top two, rather than a top ten or top three or any such thing (mostly because it’s so rare that commercials are actually fun that it’d be nearly impossible to get a list longer than two). However, here for your amusement are the top two commercials of this Christmas season, as chosen by Prairie and me.

In second place: the Staples Easy Button.

And…(the envelope, please)…in first place…(riiiiip): Verizon’s Pony!

Prairie can’t even think about the pony commercial without giggling, let alone watch it.

1. 1957: Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps, by Kees Boeke.

2. 1968: Cosmic Zoom, a Canadian animated short film inspired by Boeke’s book.

3. 1977: Powers of Ten, a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, inspired by the prior two pieces. This is the most commonly known version of this presentation.

4. 2004: The Simpsons parody version (10.3 Mb .mov file), as the couch gag for The Ziff Who Came to Dinner

All links via Kottke.

The original Sesame Street episodes are being released to DVD (Vol. 1, Vol. 2)…just don’t show ‘em to your kids.

According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

What?

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

I’ll freely admit to leaning to the left politically and socially, but this level of über-sensitive, overwrought ‘Political Correctness’ is absolutely ridiculous.

Were I ever to have kids (or spend some time babysitting any nieces or nephews — consider yourselves warned, Kev and Emily, Noah’s in trouble with me!), I’d be more than happy to give ‘em a full dose of Sesame Street and the Muppets both (that is, during one of the few times we plopped ‘em down in front of the TV instead of with a book or a game or outside play or other such things).

This world just gets weirder and weirder some days.

(via /.)

Prairie and I have been alternately amused and appalled at the never ending onslaught of prescription drug commercials. Actually, it would be more accurate to characterize us as appalled and amused: appalled when yet another one pops up (as we find the whole idea more than a little sleazy — medicines should be prescribed by doctors, not self-prescribed on the basis of a thirty-second overgeneralized list of symptoms), and amused at the seemingly endless list of ever more disturbing sounding side effects. With most of these, it doesn’t take long at all before we decide that we’d prefer to just live with whatever issue the drug is supposed to alleviate rather than risk the side effects.

Apparently (and thankfully), we’re not the only ones watching these ads with more than a little distaste. Consumer Reports is starting what’s intended to be a series of video/weblog posts analyzing these DTC (“direct-to-consumer”) ads.

The problem with such “direct-to-consumer,” or DTC, advertisements is that they may generate excessive demand because people go straight to their doctors asking for this or that specific medication. In a 2006 survey by our National Survey Research Center, 78 percent of doctors said that patients asked them at least occasionally to prescribe drugs they had seen advertised on television, and 67 percent said they sometimes did so. And don’t expect the ad barrage to let up. While Congress recently gave the FDA more authority to regulate ads, it rejected a measure that would have allowed the agency to place a moratorium on ads for new drugs that raise safety concerns. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world (the other is New Zealand) where such ads are legal.

The first entry of the series looks at an ad for a drug intended to treat RLS, or “restless leg syndrome.”

That condition may sound fanciful, but it’s a real problem. Something like 3 percent of Americans suffer from RLS, which is characterized by an uncontrollable impulse to keep moving your legs even when you are trying to go to sleep—which obviously could make sleep difficult.

Several years ago, doctors discovered that drugs that were originally developed to treat Parkinson’s disease could provide meaningful help to people who suffered from moderate to severe forms of this condition. But the drugs have serious side effects - one of the more bizarre involves a propensity for uncontrolled sexual or gambling impulses, as our video mentions. And while these medications may provide welcome relief to some RLS patients, the ads could leave anyone who ever suffered fidgetiness when trying to go to sleep to wonder whether he or she has RLS and should seek treatment.

Now, while Prairie and I are reasonably sure (though without any actual medical diagnosis) that there’s a chance that I have a mild case of RLS, in my case, it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with via a few relatively simple measures (a king-size bed, separate sets of sheets so I don’t yank hers off when I kick, and a guest bed for the really bad nights). Besides, the list of potential side effects in the ads themselves were enough to scare me away from even remotely considering the drugs to ‘treat’ RLS…and that was before I watched the Consumer Reports entry.

Kudos to Consumer Reports for starting this series. Hopefully it reaches beyond simply preaching to the choir.

I do have to admit to a little curiosity about what they might say about Panexa (acidachrome promanganate), though….

PANEXA is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion. For patients with coronary heart condition (CHC) or two separate feet (2SF), the dosage of PANEXA should be doubled to ensure that twice the number of pills are being consumed. PANEXA can also be utilized to decrease the risk of death caused by not taking PANEXA, being beaten to death by oscelots, or death relating from complications arising from seeing too much of the color lavender. Epileptic patients should take care to ensure tight, careful grips on containers of PANEXA, in order to secure their contents in the event of a seizure, caused by PANEXA or otherwise.

BCloud, here:

What do you think of Joss Whedon’s new upcoming TV show “Dollhouse”?

I know you’ve watched Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, liked all of them (as far I as can remember) and I thought it was “weird” that you didn’t mention the news.

Are on the skeptic type trying not get too excited about it, or do you think this could be Joss’ good chance to hit another cult series?

I’m definitely curious. As you pointed out, it’s no secret that I tend to count myself among the many Joss Whedon fans out there, so this news definitely caught my interest (especially as it involves Eliza, who I don’t at all mind keeping an eye on)…though at the time, I just tossed it into my ‘Eclinkticism’ sidebar.

Since there’s not much information out there right now, though, I’m pretty much leaving it to simple curiosity at the moment. Besides, what with work and school, I can’t even keep up with the TV shows I’d like to watch right now (Heroes, Pushing Daisies, The Amazing Race), let alone shows that aren’t even on the air yet!

Something cool I just ran across: Muppets for adults (and no, this isn’t Meet the Feebles…). Apparently the Jim Henson company is creating a new show featuring a homesexual couple: a pig and a bull.

The puppet sitcom centers around a homosexual couple - Bobby Vegan (a pig) and Samson Knight (a bull) – as they work to balance their careers, relationship, family and lives in Hollywood. Bobby is a struggling entertainer whose best days are probably behind him. He is a very outspoken individual, and occasionally finds himself in embarrassing situations due to reckless “self-medicating” to deal with stressful situations. Luckily, his understanding and supportive life-partner and soul mate Samson, who also happens to be Bobby’s manager, is there for every storm. These two puppets also have family issues to deal with, as the couple has a 13-year-old human foster son named Foster. There are also issues with Lena, an ex-wife; and Arturo, a limo driver and masseuse. Everyone in the show is a real person except for Bobby and Samson – those two are puppets.

Sounds to me like it could be a lot of fun. It’s on a cable channel I’ve never heard of (but then, I don’t have cable, so that’s no big surprise), but perhaps it’ll start turning up on the bittorrent networks once it starts broadcasting. Worth keeping an eye out for, at least.

Last week sometime, Prairie and I were flopped in bed, watching some silly sitcom before we faded out for the night. During one of the commercial breaks, we heard the following:

Of course milk comes from cows, but we know that cheese comes from people…

Prairie and I looked at each other with identical horrified and amused expressions, and then spent the next few minutes laughing until our sides ached and our eyes were tearing up. Cheese comes from people? We just couldn’t get past it, and every time we started to calm down, one or the other of us would say, “cheese comes from people!” and we’d start laughing all over again.

The worst part was, we were laughing so hard that we had no idea what the rest of the commercial was about, or who it was for, so since then, we’ve just been hoping to run across the “cheese comes from people” commercial again so that we’d have some idea what they were talking about. Prairie found it last night, and apparently it’s an ad for Kraft cheese…unfortunately, a horribly written ad. This one just slipped right past the editors before it went on the air!

Thankfully, we’re not the only ones amused by this.

Since I don’t have cable (and have no plans to get cable), I may have to fire up the ol’ BitTorrent downloader for a new HBO show coming out this fall called True Blood. I’ve never heard of it ‘till just a few minutes ago, but this blurb caught my eye…

…perhaps a new TV show called “True Blood” might be more to your liking. Starring Anna Paquin, and currently in production, it looks as if one of their characters is going to be outfitted in one of our denim [Utilikilts], according to writer/director Alan Ball (”Six Feet Under”, “American Beauty”, “Grace Under Fire”, etc). The show’s premise is that vampires have finally decided to come out of the proverbial closet, and become members of public society. This causes some consternation for bartender and mind-reader Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), since she can see what the vampires really think…

Anna Paquin, vampires, and Utilikilts in the same show? Sounds to me like it’ll at least be worth checking out an episode or three.

Old hotness: Battlestar Galactica.

New hotness: Heroes.