Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Nothing New Here

Today's dearth of postings is brought to you by the brilliant folks at Road Runner Cable. In case you've forgotten, let me tell you how this works.

You notice your Internet Connection is plodding along at about the speed of a tortoise on Valium. You call Road Runner Cable and ask if the problem is on your end or their end. A person there assures you they've had zero complaints from others so it must be on your end. This person suggests all sorts of things to remedy the problem and, like Charlie Brown taking a running start at that football Lucy's holding, you start trying to fix it. This means crawling under desks to rehook cables, then getting up to check (if at all) they've affected your computer's connectivity. They usually have no effect at all so you have to crawl back under the desk to rehook, then crawl back out to check, then crawl back under the desk to rehook...

And so it goes for hours, up and down, back and forth, with your knees feeling like they belong on that hooker who hangs outside the 99-Cent Store and charges accordingly. You do this, knowing damn well that nothing you do is going to fix the problem...and it's almost comforting when, after you do everything you can do, it doesn't fix the problem. At various points throughout this process, you call back the Time-Warner tech support people on the special phone number they gave you...and that's a waste of time too because their phones are broken. Honest to God, the number I was given by the service folks at the company that supplies my Internet and my telephone service gets you to a voice that says "Press 1 to speak to a service representative" and then when you press 1, you get that jarring phone-off-the-hook alarm sound that means you've connected to nothing.

Finally, you call back the regular tech support line and you do manage to reach someone there. That's the person who tells you, "Oh, we've had many reports of that. The problem is on our end and our technicians have been working on it all day. They expect to have it fixed sometime between this evening and the 25th century." Which means that all your hooking and rehooking and rebooting and crawling under desks has been an utter waste of time.

So that's why my website is slow and my e-mail is slower. And the worst part is not that I feel for this at all but that six months from now, I'll fall for it again.

I'll be back when things speed up around here.

• Posted at 3:59 PM · LINK

Dead Comics Society

A lot of people list Bill Hicks among the great stand-up comedians of all time...and if that name isn't familiar to you, it's probably because he died way too young — in 1994 at the age of 33. It may also be because he didn't get a lot of television exposure when he was around.

One place he wasn't seen was on Late Show with David Letterman on October 9, 1993. Hicks taped what would have been his twelfth appearance with Dave for that telecast...a rambling rant on topics including Easter, pro-lifers, smoking and some celebrities he wanted to kill. You didn't see it, even if you were watching that night. The entire routine was edited out of the show before broadcast and replaced with a routine by another comedian. The whole incident from Hicks's point of view was summarized in this article by John Lahr. As you'll note, there was some question as to whether the decision to clip the spot was made by CBS Standards and Practices or if it was decided by the folks running the Letterman show...which would basically mean Dave.

Like I said, you didn't see it...but you can on Friday. Already taped (Letterman tapes his Friday shows on Monday) is an episode with Mary Hicks, Bill's mother, as a guest...and they run the once-excised routine. Perhaps we'll hear more about who made the decision to cut it.

• Posted at 2:06 AM · LINK