Saturday, August 7, 2004

In Case You've Been Wondering...

Hey, remember those "Billy Bass" gizmos? You know...there's a stuffed fish mounted on a wall plaque and when you get near it, it comes to life and starts singing to you. How do those work?

• Posted at 10:29 PM · LINK

TiVo Marches On

Quietly and over the objections of the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Football League, the F.C.C. has approved "TiVoToGo," a new service that all us TiVo users will soon be putting to good use. Here's the TiVo press release but I can summarize it for you: "TiVoToGo" is a way to interface your TiVo and your computer so that you can record a show on the TiVo and then transfer it to your computer's hard disk. The "To Go" part of the name comes from the assumption that the main usage of this service will be when you move a show to your laptop and then take your laptop on vacation or to your place of work...and you watch the show there. If your computer has a DVD burner, you might also transfer the show to a DVD.

There's some sort of security key feature that's supposed to limit your ability to transfer the shows over the Internet but it sounds very easy to defeat. For that matter, it's pretty simple to just record a TV show to your harddisk without a TiVo and send it to as many people as you wish. Someone is going to have to face reality here. We will soon see websites where if you miss last night's Letterman or yesterday's General Hospital, you'll be able to log in and download it. I'm guessing the networks are already quietly preparing to open their own web services for this purpose. Just another way broadcast television will be changing.

• Posted at 9:55 PM · LINK

Correction

Vince Waldron corrects me on something: Amazon only has to charge sales tax in some states, and ours (California) is not one of them. Unless you live in Kansas, North Dakota, or Washington, The Complete Far Side should cost $91.80 if you order it from them with their free "Super Saver Shipping," which in my experience always comes sooner than they predict. If you order the book from Costco, the $79.99 book becomes $97.26 with shipping and California sales tax. So here once again is the link to buy it from Amazon.

To thank Vince for his catch, I will again plug his "Totally Looped" improv show, which has a performance this coming Thursday evening in Hollywood. A team of talented vocal magicians will again do live, unprepared dubbing of film clips they've not seen before. I have no reason to think they will not be at least as funny as they were the last time I went when, as I describe here, they were pretty darned funny.

• Posted at 5:04 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Let me preface this by emphasizing that I do not believe that any one poll is an inarguable, accurate reflection of the electorate...and that even if one is, a lot can change between now and Election Day.

That said, polls can also have an impact on the election and I think this one [WARNING: PDF file] will. It has generally poor news for Bush, showing Kerry equal or ahead in most categories. There are a number of those out but they can be dismissed as "biased," which always seems to me like a silly charge to level against a poll from a major news organization. They might be inept and inaccurate, but I don't think they're ever intentionally skewed.

But this is a Fox News Poll. Kind of hard to dismiss that as biased against Bush-Cheney. A lot of folks will pounce on this to justify the claim that the Republican ticket is in free fall.

I don't know that it is. But there's an old saying in politics that even when you're ahead, you should always run as if you're five points back. And if everyone starts saying the Bush campaign is five points back, they'll have to run as if they're ten down...which means throwing everything they can think of at the opposition.

We all knew this election was going to get dirty. I think we're all going to be stunned at how dirty it will get. And how soon.

• Posted at 1:35 PM · LINK

Heavyweight Cartoons

One of those "must-buy" books for fans of clever cartooning is The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson...a two-volume, 1,272 page extravaganza that contains over 4,300 single-panel comics. About a fourth of them did not appear in those paperback Far Side collections that we all enjoyed way back when.

The set came out a little less than a year ago with a $135 sticker price which was quickly discounted to around a hundred dollars. It's now down to $91.80 at Amazon (click here to buy it there) but that may not be the best price you can get. It's now eighty dollars at Costco. At least, that's the mail order price to which you'll also need to add a $9.85 shipping and handling fee, bringing it close to the Amazon price. (Both stores will also hit you up for sales tax.) But if you're visiting a Costco and they have it there for eighty bucks, you may want to grab one. If you can lift it.

Actually, it's the perfect Costco purchase. Eighteen pounds of Gary Larson cartoons will go just fine with your 40 lb. vat of Smucker's Apricot Preserves and your hot-tub-sized drum of Kirkland-brand Hydrogen Peroxide. I'm always afraid when I go into that store and see them giving flu shots. I figure that's got to be, like, a 30-gallon flu shot.

• Posted at 2:20 AM · LINK

Happy Freberg Day!

As a gift to him, I won't mention the date...but a certain amount of years ago on this day, a kid named Stanley Freberg was born in Pasadena, California. The son of a Baptist minister, he went into a different line of work (entertainment) but somehow managed to retain his father's moral balance. Stan got into radio, got into cartoon voice work, got into early television. Bob Clampett's Time for Beany, starring Freberg and his frequent partner Daws Butler, may have been the first truly "hip" TV show. Then he started making some of the best comedy records ever made and became the nation's foremost maker of funny advertising and did a lot of other things in TV, movies, radio and more records. As I wrote here, I discovered Freberg when I was a small lad and the impact was enormous. He not only taught me about writing comedy but about looking at the world with a healthy skepticism. That's half the lesson. The other half is that when you encounter something that outrages you, you try to channel that outrage into something constructive...in his case, a lifetime of smart, snappy satire.

I don't think there's anyone who has ever encountered the work of Stan Freberg who doesn't join me in wishing him...(DA-DA-DA-DAH!*) a happy birthday.

*French horns.

• Posted at 12:38 AM · LINK

August 8, 2004 • Current • August 6, 2004