We apologize for the delay in this week’s TMQ Watch. Allergies or a cold or something are still kicking our butts. It is our profound hope that, when science perfects the uploading of consciousness to machines, they choose not to emulate the human sinuses.
(Drainage!)
(On the other hand, are the sinuses necessary to fully emulate human consciousness? Is consciousness itself a chaotic system, with a sensitive dependance on initial conditions? Would leaving the sinuses out of the emulation change the nature of the emulation?)
(Worth noting before the jump: this week’s TMQ, and by implication, this week’s TMQ Watch, may contain possible spoilers for “Breaking Bad”, “Under the Dome”, and “The Bridge”.)
CSN Houston is run by a four member board. Two members represent Comcast/NBCU, one represents the Astros, and one represents the Houston Rockets (who are also carried on CSN Houston).
The board has to agree unanimously on any carriage agreement or retransmission deal.
Comcast SportsNet Houston, the cable network that carries the Astros games – the cable network that recorded a 0.0 Nielsen rating for last Sunday’s Astros game – is in a nasty dispute with various affiliates and with the Astros. According to the HouChron, CSN hasn’t paid rights fees to the Astros for the past five months three months. (Edited to add 9/29: I swear the article said “five months” when I read it Saturday morning, but everyone says “three months” now. I’m not sure if the HouChron got it wrong and corrected it, or if I misread the article originally.) The affiliates are unhappy because they believe “structural issues” are keeping CSN from expanding.
While I was digging out the Bergrin posts, I stumbled across this old post about Hot Wheels, Legos, and imaginative play. The discussion of Legos, and their emphasis on pre-packaged sets tied to pop culture events, reminded me of something I saw over the weekend: LEGO Lone Ranger sets. I kind of like the Constitution Train Chase but I don’t like it $100 worth (or $81.40 worth, for that matter): I look forward to seeing these sets being blown out at Wal-Mart for $10 or less. (Heck, I might even go $20 for the train.)
Ken Norton, former heavyweight champion of the world and the man who broke Ali’s jaw.
Richard C. Sarafian, film and television director, perhaps most famous for Vanishing Point.
(He also directed the “Living Doll” episode of the original “Twilight Zone”; there’s a funny story in the LAT obit about that, which I won’t spoil here.)
Ellie Rucker has also passed away. This means little to anyone who didn’t live in Austin during the 1980s and early 1990s, but Ms. Rucker was the Statesman “consumer columnist”. This meant, in the pre-Internet/pre-Google days, that she answered questions from readers such as “Where can I find beeswax?”, ran handy household tips, and sometimes even mediated disputes between customers and businesses.
I always liked Ms. Rucker’s column, as did many of my friends. When she retired and was replaced by another writer, we continued to refer to that column as “Not Ellie Rucker”, in her honor.
(You’ll note that I didn’t link to Ms. Rucker’s actual obit. That’s not by choice; of course, the Statesman wants you to pay to read it.)
Football season again. Soon, the air will chill. Soon, the Christmas decorations will start appearing in stores. Soon, Gregg Easterbrook will be writing about TV shows and the blur offense.
Oh, wait. Did we say “soon”? We mean “now”. After El Jumpo…
The NYT suggests that Spartans was under appreciated on its first release, but has grown on film buffs since then. I wasn’t allowed to see it during the first run, but I bought the DVD and watched it a couple of years ago. In my opinion, it is a pretty good, but not great, Vietnam war film. I certainly liked it much better than Platoon.
We were trying to come up with a clever introduction to the return of Tuesday Morning Quarterback (and, thus, the TMQ Watch) but we couldn’t. On the other hand, we were also suffering from a bad case of 70s nostalgia (brought about by many things, but exacerbated by the death of Bert Lance). So we thought we’d throw some vintage music your way before cracking open this week’s TMQ after the jump. Oddly enough, it turns out to be fitting for reasons we’ll see later on…
Do you remember the “Bait Car” incident? In brief, an LA County sheriff’s detective swore under oath that he’d read a suspect his rights; that testimony was contradicted by video taken of the arrest for the “Bait Car” TV series.
Meanwhile, in the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, Bruce Malkenhorst used to be the city manager. He resigned (and was later convicted of misappropriating public funds). As city manager, he took home $911,000 a year; his pension was the largest in California, more than $500,000 a year.
At least it was until the California pension board cut it back to $115,000 a year, stating that some of his salary was improperly obtained.
Last night after the SDC, we went over to the home of our anonymous friends to watch movies. (Hi, anonymous friends! Thanks for hosting! Especially since you were a bit tired! Hope you enjoy the Shaq Soda!)
Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say about these episodes: they are classics, and I was kind of distracted (for reasons I’ll probably talk about in the near future). But I bring this up because Lawrence’s original desire was to watch “Trilogy of Terror“. I don’t remember seeing this, or even hearing much about it, when it first aired, but apparently it is one of those things – like those TZ episodes – that people really really remember from their childhood. Especially the last segment, with Karen Black fighting off the evil doll: I get the impression that was nightmare fuel for a lot of kids in the 1970s.
It is odd what sticks with you. As I said, I don’t recall “Trilogy”, and my parents weren’t big on letting me watch “scary” stuff (though I do remember watching part of the first “Godfather” on TV with my dad, and that had big violence warnings all over it). There’s one episode of what I think was “Night Gallery” that sticks out for me: I only remember part of it, but it also involved an evil doll that killed the kindly (?) grandfather by setting the house on fire.
(I wonder what would have happened if my parents had let me watch this crap when I was a kid. Would I have grown up to be a rich and famous science fiction writer with groupies and a cocaine habit? Maybe my parents had the right idea.)
Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that “Trilogy” isn’t on NetFlix. But you can watch the entire movie for free on YouTube.
You can also get a “special edition” DVD of “Trilogy of Terror” from Amazon: it looks like the “special edition” includes commentary by William F. Nolan (a noted writer himself, who did two of the three screenplays that make up “Trilogy”) and Karen Black, along with a “featurette” about Matheson.
(Did you know Karen Black blames this movie for “forcing her to accept many roles in B-grade horror films”? Yeah, neither did I.)
(You can also watch “Trilogy of Terror II” on YouTube, but I don’t have a strong opinion about whether you should. One the one hand, it has the same creepy Zuni fetish doll from the first movie, plus rats. On the other hand, it lacks Karen Black and Richard Matheson. You make the call.)
I’m trying to find some appropriate links. I’m not sure this one shows Myers or the rest of the band well, but it is from the right era as well as being one of my favorite Devo songs. Plus, does anyone remember “Fridays”?
And now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like:
Also, a shoutout to my homeboys at Popehat:
Hey! @nytimes! Richard Matheson died two days ago. Where’s the obituary? “All the news that’s fit to print” indeed.
. I kind of like the 
but I don’t like it $100 worth (or $81.40 worth, for that matter): I look forward to seeing these sets being blown out at Wal-Mart for $10 or less. (Heck, I might even go $20 for the train.)
from Amazon: it looks like the “special edition” includes commentary by