Tag Archives: television

Revamped Wasteland

Since cord cutting, I’ve been doing a lot more finagling with my digital over the air antennae. Stream to watch TV as I often do, the nature of the beast still leaves viewers vulnerable to blank screens.

Wonder if the cable system goes down? More likely, when comes the inevitable next instance of Las Vegas area OTA stations unwilling to pay higher re-transmission fees to cable or satellite providers? Continue reading Revamped Wasteland

Notorious Fame

Received one of the more laughable proposals off the web no filter could’ve deterred. Were I Ace Face, were I younger, image conscious, immodest, okay, vastly superficial, thought myself capable of converting into a “brand,” sure, I’d have succumbed.

Instead I rather muse about our current easy accessibility to undeserved celebrity. Continue reading Notorious Fame

News Beast

Return us to the old days of reportage. Before Fox News obliterated the line between reporting and commentary, a boundary separated them. Something about adhering to genuine ethics. Another worthwhile bit of character we’ve misplaced during our digital age.

Aware that other cultures seldom bothered with such clear-cut distinctions, Americans were once assured, perhaps smugly and righteously so, that dislike the news presented, disagree with whatever and however the editorial page disturbed, the latter never colored the former. While opinions could waver between highly principled and batshit crazy, who, what, where, when, and how weren’t massaged to inflect some political, social, ideological, or theocratic point of view.

News Corp publications skewed the old emphasis. Fox News eradicated it. Continue reading News Beast

Sinister Sojourns


    Isn’t the best part about movie remakes comparing them against the original? Or given that today’s moviemakers take such license, the “source material.” Title and characters remain unchanged but the newer efforts detour and slalom moments after the premise has been established.

    Recently the 2010 remake of And Soon the Darkness lent me an opportunity to see how far storytelling has advanced. My interest in both films stems from a distinctly modern actress, Amber Heard. She’d been a bunny on NBC’s short-lived Playboy Club. Maybe that program would still be in production if Frank Ballinger from M Squad, and Crime Story‘s Mike Torello and Ray Luca (all characters from TV series also set in early 1960s Chicago) had run tabs there.

    Heard filled out her bunny costume and shook her tail nicer than I remembered happening inside the actual clubs themselves. Of course today I have much greater appreciation of such nuances. Continue reading Sinister Sojourns