The other day, we helped spread the rumor that the Tail o' the Pup, the hot dog stand shaped like a hot dog, may be forced to close soon. This article in the L.A. Times says that its owner is hoping to move it to a new location in Westwood Village. Good news if it happens.

TiVo is rolling out a new software upgrade that made it to one of my machines the other night. It simplifies some menus but the main new feature is something they call Overlap Protection. The message you receive with this doesn't explain it well so I did a little research and I think (note the italics for emphasis) I have it figured out.

First of all, you should know that when TiVo installs this software upgrade, it turns the Overlap Protection feature on. You can turn it off if you like. This is done in the Settings section and the control is on the Recording menu.

If the feature is turned off and you accidentally schedule recordings of two shows that overlap, one will not be recorded. If it's turned on and the shows overlap by six minutes or more, that will still be the case.

But if the shows overlap by five minutes or less, TiVo will record both and merely trim the beginning or ending of one. If you look at your To Do List, a clipped show will be marked with an asterisk.

How does TiVo decide which show to clip and which one to record in whole? If one show is a Season Pass and one is a one-time recording, then the one-time recording will be the one not clipped. If both shows are Season Passes, then the one with the higher priority number on your Season Pass List will be the one not clipped. If both shows are one-time recordings (i.e., neither show is a Season Pass), then the most recently-scheduled one will be the one not clipped. In any case, a TiVo Suggestion will have the lowest standing. It will probably not be recorded at all if there's an overlap but if it is, it will be the one clipped.

There. I think I have that right. Someone tell me if I don't.

In other TiVo News, it is now possible to do an online scheduling via the Yahoo TV Listings page. You'll need to have a Yahoo e-mail and also sign up for online scheduling over at the TiVo site. Once you do, it makes things very easy, especially if your TiVo is connected to the Internet so it can receive the data quickly. We like this a lot.

Lastly: TiVo has started a new promotion on its site where you can get a 40-hour TiVo for free if you sign up for a full year of TiVo service and pay a slightly higher subscription fee for the first year — $16.95 a month as opposed to $12.95. That comes to $203.40 for the box and Year One of its usage and then, I assume, they let you go down to the lower subscription price. The standard best deal for a 40-hour TiVo is $49.99 for the machine and then the first year is $155.40 –which equals $205.39. So it's not much of a savings, though it may be greater because I think you have to pay sales tax on the latter deal and don't on the new one. Still, you may not want to avail yourself of the "free machine" offer because a 40-hour TiVo may be too small for you. I bought an 80-hour TiVo for my office and a few years later, I took it in to these people and had its hard disk replaced with two that jointly give me 317 hours at Basic Quality or 142 at High Quality. I record most things at High Quality though I always have the fear that my TiVo is going to look at what I watch and tell me, "Sorry, you can't record a low quality show at High Quality."

Michael Hiltzik, who blogs for the L.A. Times, has a view of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I find interesting. It includes the prediction that Arnold will not stand for re-election; that he will find some excuse to go do other things. Having predicted that Schwarzenegger would not run in the first place, I'm not about to venture another Arnold projection. But you might want to read Hiltzik's take.

The taping of tonight's Late Night with Conan O'Brien was cancelled and a rerun will be on in place of the scheduled new episode. Could this mean that Mr. O'Brien's spouse is delivering their second baby?

Gee, I wish I knew some ways to be annoying when playing Monopoly.

In the spirit of "If you can't beat 'em…", comedian Lewis Black will be appearing this evening on The Weather Channel to try his hand at forecasting and to (perhaps) explain why he's spent years calling it "a worthless channel." This will allegedly occur shortly after 9PM Eastern time and again shortly after Midnight. I'm not sure if the later segment is a replay of the earlier material. Whatever it is, it was taped on Monday so Mr. Black's predictions will have a dubious legitimacy.

The trouble with these special elections is that they combine precincts so your polling place can wind up being quite some distance. Mine was and for some reason, I decided to walk to it. Went right through the ballot in about twelve seconds and I felt like I wanted to ask the workers there, "Hey, you got anything else I can vote on? I came a long way to get here."

Only early this morning did the two main weather models for Southern California finally come into agreement. Last night, the NAM was still forecasting a big Tuesday storm and the GFS was predicting minor rain chances through Friday. They finally split the difference and now foresee a big storm on Wednesday (though not as big as the NAM was anticipating) tapering off on Thursday.

Or at least, that's what the weather folks are saying at the moment. This is a cut-off low (i.e., "weatherman's woe") so any forecast has to be qualified with the reminder that these things are hard to gauge and that plans can change rapidly. Keep the umbrella handy.

Harper's Magazine has an interesting article up: A History of the Iraq War Told Entirely In Lies.

(For what it's worth, for reasons I'll explain at greater length here one of these days, I am not comfortable with the use of the word "lie" to describe any statement that eventually turns out to be untrue. "Lie" connotes deliberate deception and I suspect that some or all of the false assertions and reports fall into the slightly different categories of exaggeration, selective reporting, believing stuff that more competent people would have known was bogus, and encouraging others to tell you what you want to hear. None of this is wholly forgiveable, especially when it amounts to passing the buck to unnamed others who also will not be held accountable. But it's not all a matter of "lies.")

Also, over in The New Yorker, this article by Jane Mayer discusses CIA interrogation that turns into arguable murder.

Slate has up a little essay (with plenty of examples) by Chris Suellentrop on Calvin and Hobbes. A nice bit of commentary.

As I think I've mentioned, I have some interest in the science of weather forecasting and in observing how the folks who do it do it. We have a fascinating (to me) situation looming for Southern California for Tuesday into Wednesday. Here, the main method of figuring out if it's gonna rain or shine is by use of two computer models that track satellite data in various ways and project what's going to happen. One is the NAM and one is the GFS. NAM stands for "North American Mesoscale Model" and GFS stands for "Global Forecast System." Others are used but 95% of the time, those two tell the story.

Ordinarily, they are in rough agreement and as they get closer to the time period in question, they converge on one another. If the NAM says it's going to be 70 and the GFS says it's going to be 74, the forecast will generally be for 72…though sometimes, human beings look at the projections and decide that one or the other is the more accurate and will give it more weight. Usually, they're pretty close when you're looking 24-36 hours ahead.

Not this time. In a rare lack of convergence, the NAM is currently projecting a huge rain storm beginning late Tuesday and lasting into Wednesday with rainfall totals in the 1-2 inch category. That's a lot for Southern California this time of year and it would probably cause mudslides and flooding, especially in the burn areas of the mountains and outlying areas. On the other hand, the GFS is saying that the storm in question will turn into a cut-off low and remain off-shore for a few days, dumping most of its energy out there, spinning off small impulses. That would lead to a small (20-30%) chance from late Tuesday through about Friday afternoon.

To make matters more confusing, the two models have swapped points of view in the last few days. On Saturday, the GFS was projecting what the NAM now projects and vice-versa. Lately, instead of coming together, each is stubbornly sticking to its guns.

As of this moment, the National Weather Service is going with the GFS projection but cautioning other folks in the weather business that confidence is low and that a sudden change could be necessary. Let's see if they made the correct call. Despite the way we all wail and curse their profession when they're wrong, they're usually right.

Here are some snippets from various news stories I've read this morning. See if you can find a logical connect…

• "President Bush declares 'We do not torture.'"
• "Over White House opposition, the Senate has passed legislation banning torture."
• "With Vice President Dick Cheney as the point man, the administration is seeking an exemption for the CIA."
• "It was recently disclosed by the Washington Post that the CIA maintains a network of prisons in eastern Europe and Asia, where it holds terrorist suspects."
• "George W. Bush's administration ordered an internal inquiry into how classified data was leaked to The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group."
• "The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a challenge to the administration's handling of military tribunals for foreign terror suspects."
• "Bush has urged swift confirmation of his nominee Samuel Alito, an appeals court judge, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court."
• "In his lower court decisions, Alito has generally been deferential to government."

So let me see if I have this straight: We have to find out whoever it was who revealed that we do torture, but of course we don't torture but we still oppose legislation that says we can't torture…

Recently, I added a new section to this website entitled Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More.* It's all about great Los Angeles restaurants that ain't there no more…and I guess I should have made clear that I was talking about restaurants in which I'd dined. An awful lot of people have written me to suggest I include their favorite eateries and have named quite a few places I never went inside and in most cases, never heard of.

To the ones listed there, I may soon be adding Tail o' the Pup, the infamous hot dog stand in the shape of a big hot dog that's been seen in about two-thirds of the movies set in Los Angeles the last few decades. It used to be located near the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega and when the proprietor lost his lease, there was much wailing and protest…a lot of it, I suspect, from people who never cared about the Tail o' the Pup enough to stop by and buy a chili dog. But they somehow lamented its passing and the owner wasn't ready to give in, so he finally found new land a few blocks away, over on San Vicente Boulevard. A fancy hotel was erected on its former site and snippy critics haven't been able to resist comparing its restaurant unfavorably to the hot dog stand it displaced.

Rumor has it that the present location of Tail o' the Pup is now to be developed for some fancier building not shaped like a meat product, and that this may be it for the kitsch landmark. If I owned Universal City Walk or Hollywood and Highland or some other tourist mecca, I think I'd buy the thing and move it there, with or without the business inside it. But I own no such place to put it and I don't think it would fit in my yard.

I haven't eaten at Tail o' the Pup for about twenty years. If the rumors of its demise are true, I may try to get by there in the next month (which is how long my source says they'll remain open) and scarf down a frankfurter, just to say I was there. If you hear anything about it going or staying, let me know.

[*Update, years later: That section of my weblog was converted to a separate blog which is no longer online.]

Yours truly is quoted in this Associated Press article about why Jay Leno is increasing his lead over David Letterman in late night. I said what I said but I wish I'd said it a bit more eloquently.

I don't think Jay's show is "different every night." I think both shows have become more repetitive than I'd like. I just find Letterman has gotten a bit too predictable for me to watch it as often as I once did. I TiVo both programs, fast-forward through certain segments of both and enjoy Dave when he seems truly engaged in an interview, which lately is like one guest per week. I don't like at all that Jay so often delegates Act Two of his show — the comedy bit after the first commercial break — to others, and I can't stand the bits based on the utter stupidity of people on the street or in the audience. (I feel the same way about Letterman's use of stagehands and Rupert, the guy with the deli around the corner.)

But night after night, Leno comes out with a first-rate topical monologue and unlike Letterman, always seems happy to be there, happy to see his guests. I go back and forth but these days, I find myself watching more of Jay, less of Dave. What I should have told that reporter is that what I really wish is that those guys had more competition than each other.

Albert Brooks on his (and I guess, my) generation getting older. Thanks for the link, Bruce Reznick.