Archive for the 'Television' category

Live From CES For The Next Three Days

Jan 06 2009 Published by under Gadgets, Technology, Television

I’m leaving for Vegas in the AM to spend several glorious days in Las Vegas at the annual gadget porn fest known as the Consumer Electronics Showcase. I’ll spend about 72 hours wandering through giant exhibit halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center looking for the few truly remarkable new gadgets amidst the sea of cell phone cases, flash drives, digital photo frames, and Wii accessories.

Before my first trip to CES, I had a concept in my head that no event could ever actually live up to. CES, to me, was nerdvana. It was like a car show featuring nothing but concept vehicles – and all of them were cool. Unfortunately, the reality is the show is like the world’s largest Eatser Egg hunt. You have these enormous rooms full of iPod docks, bling kits, and batteries, and tucked into this cavern of a room is one or two truly interesting technologies.

In a way, it’s sort of sad. I imagine the one guy who has come up with a revolutionary idea, scraped together enough cash to rent a 10×10 booth space, and ends up surrounded by 10 booths full of junk nobody will buy that will end up in a dollar store in Topeka. His dream of being discovered and becoming a billionaire is lost in a sea of cheap Chinese imports.

It’s probably fitting that the event is held in Las Vegas – given that city’s tendency to quash dreams, take fortunes and create hollow alcoholics and strippers. This paean to consumerism could only fit in a city based on squandering cash on the great gamble.

Perhaps I’m jaded on Sin City. I have ended up on some sort of Hell’s Holiday vacation plan that takes me there three or four times a year. Spending that much time in Vegas is like spending that much time at Disneyland. Pretty soon your going to run into a ride that’s out of order, or maybe a chunk of the Peter Pan flight will fall on your head as you careen over Neverland. One way or another, you’ll see the rather sketchy workmanship that holds it all together.

Vegas is like that. Eventually you stop seeing the carefree celebration and you see nothing but desparate people, clad in a trashy wardrobe of sequins with hair bigger than the skies of Texas. Vegas becomes a cavalcade of the beat and weary fresh off the front lines of their life.

The upside to this trip to perdition, and the quest for that one cool gadget that makes the trip through hell worthwhile, is that there are, occasionally, some truly incredible things on display – technologies that make life more enjoyable.

My favorite from last year is the 3D TV. My understanding is this year will see even more of these. They’re difficult to describe, but they offer some cool functionality. Imagine, if you will, two people playing a head to head game on the Xbox360. Watching the game from behind them, the screen is a mess of color and imagery. If you’re one of the gamers, wearing the special 3D glasses, the game not only occupies the whole screen (as opposed to split screen games today) but also stands out away from the TV. You have depth and width not possible on even the best 2D TV.

Over the next few days, I’ll bring you the best of the Easter eggs I find. If I stumble upon the guy with the billion dollar idea, I’ll give him your best.

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A New Endeavor

Jan 08 2008 Published by under Bloggers, Broadband Policy, Cable, Debates, Gadgets, Legislation, Self-Promotion, Technology, Television, The FCC, The Internet

Between work, travel, the holidays, the caucuses and primaries, and another project I’ve been trying to launch, I just haven’t had a lot of time to write, but I wanted to share a new endeavor I’ve undertaken. NCTA (the day job) has launched a new telecom policy blog at CableTechTalk.com.

CableTechTalk will give the industry a voice in the ongoing discussion and debate over telecom policy discussions. Debate over the direction of our nation’s telecom laws increasingly takes place online. This blog seeks to be an active player in that conversation, but it won’t be one-sided. Far from a typical press release and talking points blog, CableTechTalk will invite people with whom we disagree to engage in cross posted debates on the issues – sharing both sides of the argument and letting readers draw their own conclusion.

The blog also gives us the opportunity to share developments in the gadgets that attach to and leverage our voice, video and data platform. This week we’re in Las Vegas looking at the new tech toys on display at CES. We’re looking at the new TVs and set-top boxes, personal entertainment devices, gaming and broadband applications, and all the other things that make life fun.

If you get a chance, I hope you’ll take a look.

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Not For Those Without An Iron Constitution

Oct 03 2007 Published by under Celebrities, Craziness, Democrats, Politics, Pop Culture, Television

This may make you blow chow.

Trying to shout over Whoopi [Goldberg] and her other gabbing [The View] co-hosts and excited audience members, Barbara [Walters] turned to Guest [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and said she has heard Whoopi say before that she’d “do Paul Newman.”

“And I think she’d like to do your husband as well,” Walters deadpanned in that quintessential accent that made her the subject of late-night lampooning over the decades.

Of course, Whoopi being Whoopi, she couldn’t let that one go, which is where the speaker begins blushing.

Yes, Whoopi implicitly acknowledged, she’d like to do Mr. Pelosi – but she might take his wife while she’s at it. “I would do her as well. But we should wait on that because you’re still in office, I don’t want to cause a problem.”

Oh… My… God… I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit…

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The New TV Season: My Bets For The Dead Pool

Oct 01 2007 Published by under Programming, Television

Well, it’s that time again. Time for TV execs, with only one week of ratings are already eyeing shows for mid-October executions. The good folks over at Brilliant But Cancelled have not yet started their “Death Watch“, but it should be firing up any moment now (unless they fund a better way to make a living – perhaps whoring themselves out for candy bars and spare change).

I don’t have anywhere near the patience to closely follow every new show from week to week and report on their current chances of a DNR order. I have, however, watched a pant-load of television – mostly on DVR – this week and have a few early favorites (which will likely get cancelled) and a few shows I think will die quickly (that most likely will live on forever).

So, in no particular order, here are my guesses as to what gets cancelled, and what shows will make TV history.

Chuck – Monday, 8/7, NBC – The pilot was pretty good, if a little slow. The premise is weak (watching a web video embedded with top secret government information will dump those secrets straight to your brain), for no other reason that encoding for web video is so bad you’d end up brain fried or (more likely) the video would be so large there’s no way it could be sent, downloaded, or viewed in the time it happens in the show. Perhaps if they had the new wideband cable modem.

The secret agent that protects Chuck is hot, but that’s about all this show has working for it. I’m hoping the pace picks up a bit for the second episode tonight, but I don’t have faith.

My guess: Chuck gets stale pretty quickly. Viewer numbers will decline accordingly. My guess is this one’s gone by the new year.

Reaper – Tuesdays. 9/8, CW – For those who don’t spend a lot of time watching the CW (ok, that’s most of you), and for those who didn’t even know there was a fifth broadcast network, you really should give Reaper a chance. The pilot was directed by Kevin Smith of Clerks fame, and was really quite good. It suffered from some of the slowness of Chuck, but not near the level. I attribute the slowness to the setup for the show (which involves a premise even flimsier than Chuck’s, but it’s supposed to be.).

On the morning of his 21st birthday, Sam discovers that his parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born. On the big 2-1, he is forced to become a bounty hunter for the horned one (played by Ray Wise, best known as Dr. Alec Holland from Swamp Thing… ok, maybe not best known, but I loved that movie). Hell is overcrowded and the evil doers are escaping. Sam’s job is to capture them and drop them at the DMV (hell on Earth).

I wasn’t terribly happy with the casting of the man in red, but what are you going to do. Sam comes across the way Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother would adapt to being Satan’s henchman. It’s really quite amusing. His best friend Sock (played by Tyler Labine) comes across like a guy trying hard to be Jack Black. My wife found it annoying, but I liked him.

My guess: I’m hoping for good things from Reaper. I suspect they’ll keep it on simply because the CW has no viewers anyway, so why not be daring.

Dirty Sexy Money – Wednesdays, 10/9, ABC – Peter Krause (Six Feet Under, Sports Night) returns to TV as Nick George, the lawyer for a mega-wealthy family (think the Hiltons, but with guys) who have more money than brains. Nick’s dad had been the family lawyer until his plane crashed. Nick, never a fan of surrendering dad time to the Darlings, has been pursuing a life as a legal advocate for the underserved.

Unlike Chuck and Reaper, the premise on this one seems perfectly plausible. Somewhere in America you know there is a Nick George – called at all hours of the night to fix the legal messes of the society set. Hell, Britney’s just quit for nuttiness not to far removed from the pilot’s. Nick is asked to transfer title to a yacht won by one of the Darling boys in a poker game, only to discover on arriving at the dock the kid is being arrested for human trafficking because said yacht was full of illegal aliens.

Perhaps the best part of the show, however, is the ringtones that announce the family’s calls. Juliet Darling (Samaire Armstrong), the Paris Hilton-esque airhead that wants to pursue acting, rings in to the sound of Rich Girl by Hall and Oates. Brian Darling, the abusive minister who is having an affair, rings to a chorus of Hallelujahs!

My guess: The show is darker than a lot of your typical TV fare. It’s more dramedy than comedy, and more cynical. I hope it stays on because it has a lot of potential, but it may have trouble finding an audience. I think it would have been better as an HBO series.

Journeyman – Mondays, 10/9, NBC – Journeyman’s pilot was sort of hard to follow. The show jumped around without any explanation in (I assume) an effort to make the viewer as disoriented as the poor guy that suddenly starts jumping through time. It was a strange tactic given that TV viewers usually watch as a way of escaping feelings of confusion and overwhelming stress. Mrs. Quip couldn’t watch it. She started to, but the jerking around couldn’t hold her attention. Maybe the second episode will be better. They should hope so, or they’ll end up bleeding audience pretty quickly.

The premise should seem pretty familiar. It’s basically Quantum Leap, but without the annoying sidekick, the cheesy special effects, and the temporary displacement of whoever he jumps into. Like Sam Beckett, Kevin McKidd (who plays the title character) bounces back to the past to correct historical flaws that would have a negative impact on the Earth of today. Unlike Beckett, it’s not a one-time, one-place bounce. McKidd’s character jumps completely at random – sometimes from moving vehicles. He’s also discovered that his ex (for whom he still carries a torch) is a fellow time traveler, and not dead as he had believed.

My guess: This is a show that could have a good following if it doesn’t cause epileptic fits in the viewing audience. The bouncing through time makes for a tough program to watch for those of us with adult onset ADD.

The Big Bang Theory – Mondays, 8:30/7:30, CBS – The bog bore theory. Seriously, if everyone thought nerds were funny, they wouldn’t be nerds. The script is dry, the acting is poor. If you want to catch this one, you’d better do it quick. I suspect another comedy will be tucked in between How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men before you’re done loosening the belt at Thanksgiving.

Back To You – Wednesdays, 8/7, Fox – Kelsey Grammar’s return to TV alongside Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond proves two things. First, Patricia was definitely not the funny one on ELR. Second, Kelsey Grammar’s as a blowhard pompous jackass has gotten stale. He’s trying to be Frasier the anchorman. It’s really a bit tiring.

My guess: People liked Frasier, so maybe they’ll like this, but I don’t see.

Big Shots – Thursdays, 10/9, ABC – Christopher Titus is a great comedian. I’ve always liked his stand up and was a fan of his Fox show Titus. I think the string has ended, though. I’m not sure if it’s his fault or the rest of the cast, but I found this show to be just awful. Think of the rich kid you went to high school with. You know th guy. He was loved by everyone, and had everything he wanted, but always came across to you like a used car salesman. This is a show full of those guys. They’re CEOs of major companies now, and live a life of cocktails and women. It’s great for them, but watching it is painful.

My guess: I can’t imagine this show having any staying power. I’d put money on a November/December exit.

Moonlight – Fridays, 9/8, CBS – Beginning to build Occult Fridays as a staple of their lineup, CBS adds the Vampire Detective show Moonlight to the time slot following Ghost Whisperer. If the premises of Chuck and Reaper leave you shaking your head in disbelief, wait until you hear this one. The main difference is the former two are comedies, this one is a drama.

Mick St. John (sounds like a porn star name, huh?) is a private detective who also happens to be a vampire. His mission is to hunt down the bad guys, while keeping the vampire’s a secret. In the pilot, a young reporter – on that Mick saved from his crazy ex-wife she-vampire years ago – begins writing articles about the vampires feeding on girls in LA. It seems a wannabe vampire is killing co-eds and the real vampires are catching the heat. Only by solving the crime can Mick keep the public from looking for vampires.

My guess: I love vampire flicks. I’ve always been fascinated by the myth. I loved vampire movies (pretty much all of them). There have been very few vampire flicks I have missed. That said, even I can’t watch this. Look for the sun to come up on moonlight around the fourth week.

So that’s the run down. There are a few unaired shows that I have my eye on. Pushing Daises, for instance, has the potential to be good and I’m even looking forward to Cavemen with a morbid sense of curiosity. I’m still looking for that gem, though. I’m still hunting for the diamond in the current lineup. Dirty Sexy Money and Reaper have been the two I’ve liked the best, but there’s always time for a new series to catch my eye.

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O.J and Oh, Britney. The Week In Celebrity Shame

Sep 17 2007 Published by under Cable, Celebrities, Craziness, Crime, Miscellany, Music, Pop Culture, Pop Music, Programming, Rap/Hip-Hop Music, Self-Promotion, Sex, Society, Stuff That Sucks, Television

It’s been a bad week to be sick. With so much celebrity embarrassment on parade, not having the energy to trash them is really troubling.

Let’s set the wayback machine for the VMAs last week. This show had it all – award winners trashing the network that hosts the awards, has-been rockers duking it out over whored out former TV stars, single moms trying to whore themselves out (but nobody was buying), and militant rappers getting peeved that the awards weren’t rigged for them to win. Your entertainment dollar was simply not going to go farther than the 2007 VMAs

Britney was supposed to warm up the audience, but left everyone feeling cold. Blame it on the hair, the lip-synching, the magic act that wasn’t, the drinking, the allergic reaction to eye drops (what?), or any of another 100 oft-repeated excuses for the train wreck we witnessed, the sad reality is we want to see a nubile 20 year-old in skin tight leather dancing like a tramp or tongue kissing Madonna (actually, skip that last part). The fact is, Brit is now a single mom who, with every public appearance, reminds us of the line from Sweet Home Alabama.

Look at you! You have a baby! In a bar!

Here’s some advice Brit. Put on some clothes, write/sing a grown-up song, and stop trying to convince us that you’re the hot little vixen of Baby One More Time. That ship has sailed. You were used up by a douchebag, and the only guy that still wants you is this loser.

Next up… Kid Rock and Tommy Lee. Even with Britney and Kanye melting down at the VMAs, this is probably the most pathetic story of the night. These two guys get into a brawl over a woman who, by her own admission, paid off a poker debt with sex. Yup. That girl is a class act that is worth fighting for. Go get her, guys.

Speaking of Kanye, I don’t think I could sum this one up any better than Joel McHale (host of The Soup). After recapping Kanye’s choice words about his perceived snub at the hands of MTV, McHale said, “Geez. 50 Cent didn’t whine that much when he got shot.” True dat!

In our last glimpse backward at the VMAs, perhaps the one shining moment in the telecast came when Justin Timberlake (surrounded by the vapid cast of The Hills) excoriated MTV for filling its programming with non-stop reality TV and begged them to actually play music occasionally. It seems Timberlake may be one of the few people who owes his soul to MTV, and at the same time feels bad because he’s old enough to remember that MTV used to stand for Music Television.

Finally, back in the present, let’s dip into the overflowing cup of comedy gold that is O.J. Simpson. The same week that his book (If I Did It) comes out, and the world may read his claim that he’s not a criminal (at least not a murderous one), he gets arrested for storming into a sports memorabilia show with armed accomplices and trying to steal pieces of his life. It’s not clear whether he actually owns any of what he tried to steal. And it’s not clear if he was armed, but a tape of the incident clearly demonstrates his anger and rage as he barks out instructions that no one is to be allowed to leave.

Wow, O.J., armed robbery and taking hostages. That’s a hell of a good way to prove you’re not a killer. Maybe next time you could sacrifice a small puppy on national TV and tell people your killing is limited only to the animal kingdom. By the way, aren’t you supposed to be out there trying to catch the real killer?

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