Dancing with Hines Ward

I never watched an episode of Dancing with the Stars in my life until now... only to watch Hines Ward. The Pittsburgh Steeler is light on his feet, and is fun to watch. I enjoy seeing HIM enjoy himself so much.
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As for the rest of the show, I could write a book on how to improve it. It drags out too long....I'm not giving up that much of my life to watch hours of the show stretched over two nights. Just dance and vote. Period. Skip all the tears and BS.
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Also the tension gets to you after a while. Tension you say? Yeah. Like is gravity going to fail and send Kirstie Alley spinning off the planet?
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Or how about all the boobs? Really. I know you men enjoy it, but I get sick of looking at boobs spilling out all over the place wondering if they are going to stay put or will they have a "wardrobe" malfunction?
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Doubt I'll be watching much more. But I will watch the two minutes of Hines Ward. He is a class act.

Move On... Nothing Else to See Here

I never liked his comedy show. Dumbed down and sexed up. I never liked his so called "acting," and I certainly don't care about his bizarre personal life. Charlie Sheen will sooner or later implode and the hungry news cycle will eat up every blessed piece of flesh and then spit him out when the next freak show comes along.

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That said, I love his father. I pretended he was the real president practically the whole time Bush was in office. It was my escape. The West Wing. Brilliantly written, compelling characters, and Martin Sheen embodied the President of my dreams.

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Man Versus Machine

I know I'm a geek. Looking forward to watching a computer compete against two human beings on Jeopardy Monday night.

America's Next Top Model

ANN won ANTM! How exciting for her!She was just so gawky and awkward in person, who could believe the beautiful pictures that girl could deliver.

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People who know me may be suprised that I even watch that show. But there's something about it-- the creativity involved with the photo shoots for one thing--which makes for some great pictures. Even some of the pretty homely looking girls that start out end up with a decent portfolio. I love the photography.

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Sometimes it looks easy. Like hell...just give me hair and make up and designer clothes...I could do THAT. But then you start to appreciate the pressure they are under and the work that goes into it.

Lisa from House.... with George Costanza

Wow. I saw the face.... thought of Lisa from House, but much younger. Saw the credits. Yup. That's her.

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The Seinfeld episode was the one with Jerry not getting a massage from his massage therapist girlfriend. Lisa played George's love interest. That was 1993.

The Sunday Morning Muse, June 7, 2009

Musing about a lot of things this week. David Carradine in a closet hanging by a rope in Thailand. Dead. Suicide? Accidental death? Homicide? His body is on it's way back to the States last I heard, and a forensic pathologist will attempt to find answers to the mystery surrounding his death.

A lot can be learned nowadays from scientific evidence. You see it dramatized so often on TV Crime shows, that it seems almost commonplace. The last moments of someone's life no longer left to speculation, but pieced together with tiny shreds of evidence, and blobs of DNA that tell their story to those who know how to investigate them.

I remember my dad watching Kung Fu on TV in the early 70's. I was just a kid, and I don't remember too much, but I do remember that the show was just so different from the Sitcoms and other dramas that were on at the time. They were...lessons.

Yeah, I know that actors play parts. He wasn't Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin Monk. David Carradine, according to Wikipedia, had "Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian and Cherokee ancestry."
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But to me he'll always be Kung Fu.
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Wikipedia

Part of the appeal of the series was undoubtedly the emphasis laid, via the flashbacks, on the mental and spiritual power that Caine had gained from his rigorous training. In these flashbacks, Master Po calls his young student "Grasshopper" in reference to a scene in the pilot episode:

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

Remembering Murphy Brown's Controversy

Reading the Entertainment listings for TV shows in production for the coming season I couldn't help but cringe at some of the lame ideas out there. How about this one? 16 & Pregnant. I'll pass on that one. Let's exploit children and call it entertainment.

Remember the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown flare up back in the early 1990's? TV was pretty tame back then. Seems almost stupid now that this got so much attention:

Wikipedia

In the show's 1991–1992 season, Murphy became pregnant, but chose not to marry her baby's father. This story line made the show a subject of political controversy during the 1992 American presidential campaign. On May 19, 1992, then Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech, he criticized the Murphy Brown character for ignoring the importance of fathers and birthing a child alone.

Farrah's Story

As I watched Farrah's Story, it was hard to hold back the tears. I admire her strength and courage in fighting her cancer, and appreciate what it took to share the intimate details of her battles. My father died 11 years ago, almost to the day, from his own war with cancer. Three years of his life was spent on that horrible roller coaster of ups and downs with tests results, good days and bad days, mental highs and lows...

If you haven't had a loved one go through this, Farrah's Story is reality at it's worst. No sugar coating. You see the pain, the nausea, the ugliness of this horrible disease, like you are right there with her. It brought back memories for me of the first time I had to wheel my dad into a hospital in a wheel chair. It is a strange feeling. My dad, the strong carpenter, the guy who could fix anything, could not fix this. He did everything he was told to do--surgery, radiation, chemo, then even more chemo. And in this unfair world, despite all of the efforts, all of the hope, all of the advancements in medicine so far, nothing could be done.

Just a day after he died, an envelope arrived in the mail. It was from Cancer Treatment Centers of America. I'm sure you have seen their television commercials with testimonials from cancer survivors who contacted them after all else failed and got results. Dad never told anyone he wrote to them for information. I felt pleased that he never really gave up, even in those last, very difficult days.

Farrah is still alive. They say she is sedated, but it was hoped she would be lucid enough to see the Television show last night. She should be proud of her work. I wish her peace.

400 Years of the Telescope

If you are home Friday night, don't miss the PBS Special 400 Years of the Telescope.

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(from the Post Gazette) - Watch the Video Trailer Here.

Since Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) first turned his primitive spyglass on the heavens in 1609, it has moved the Earth from the center of the universe. A new PBS documentary, "400 Years of the Telescope: A Journey of Science, Technology and Thought," is poised to shed light on the telescope's contribution to our understanding of the cosmos. It will be broadcast at 10 p.m. Friday on WQED-TV.The film is part of the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 that commemorates the anniversary of Galileo's first use of the telescope for astronomical purposes in 1609. Subsequent telescopic observations disproved the widely held belief that Earth was the center of the universe; rather, our planet is one of eight major bodies that orbit the sun with a congregation of other objects that include minor planets, asteroids and comets.

Stewart versus Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Why is it that the news I get on the frigging Comedy Network is actually closer to
reality than anything I see anywhere else?

Muppet News Flash

A Word from Sam the Eagle

Go Ahead and Laugh, It's FRIDAY

Big Bang Theory- Talk Nerdy to Me

I don't want to wait till Monday Night. I need a dose of Sheldon. He makes me laugh.

The Market was Down 450 Points Today

Treasury Secretary: CLAMPETT WITHDRAWAL TRIGGERS MARKET COLLAPSE. MR. DRYSDALE ON SUICIDE WATCH

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said yesterday that the collapse of financial markets worldwide occurred as a result of the withdrawal of the Clampett fortune from the Beverly Hills Commerce Bank in Beverly Hills, California.
The withdrawal sent shock waves throughout the global economy, sending Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy and triggering the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.


(Every once in a while, the Carbolic Smog Ball comes through with a good laugh. I sure need one. Click on their link for the full story.)

How DO You Pronounce Beijing?

So, I'm lying on the couch watching the Nightly News on NBC. Brian Williams said..."reporting LIVE here in BAY-JING.."

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What? Did he just screw up? I waited.... damn. He just said it again. Did someone change the pronounciation of Bay ZHEENG?

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I flipped around. Charlie Gibson said Zheeng. (oops... that's CHARLES Gibson, to you. He is anchoring the news. When he is not, he is plain old Charlie. Just like they tried Katherine Couric on for size....then went back to Katie, but I digress as usual.)

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So I googled. And found this. Brian Williams is right, it's BAY JING. Imagine that. The place used to be Peking. Then in 1949 it became Beijing, and we've pronounced it wrong all this time.

Not me of course, I'm much too young.

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Remembering the Sopranos...

I really miss Paulie Walnuts. This episode was one of the best. Pine Barrens.

My Life as a Low Attention Voter. . .

It was so nice taking a vacation from the news broadcasts last week that I decided to do it again. (reference: Sunday Morning Muse, July 13, 2008.)

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So here is another week of my life as a "low attention voter." This is what "filtered" into this busy brain of mine.... just by random chance, as I went along this week:

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Barack Obama went to Iraq and still thinks we can get out of there but I don't know if he really meant 16 months. 2010?

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Barack Obama was in Germany as part of his overseas tour and McCain was in Germantown, Ohio eating Bratwurst. I don't know why.

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McCain still mentions Czechoslovakia, but it doesn't exist anymore. You'd think he would get it right by now, because this happened before. Someone should tell him.

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McCain met with the Dalai Lama. But the Dalai won't endorse him. Oh well.... maybe in the next life.
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No one is picking VP's yet.

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Arnold doesn't want drilling off of Calli-fornya.

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Gas prices are going down... a tiny bit.

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I don't really care about the Olympics, but I understand the smog in China is dreadful and they are trying to do something about it. Weird stuff..... seeding clouds? What is that anyway?

It sounds like something out of the X-files.

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I heard the X-files movie sucks, and that's too bad. I liked the show a lot when it was on Television.

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Well, you are up to date, but only if you happen to be a low attention voter this week too!

Hand Me The Frigging Broom

. . . It's Sweeps Week. That's the time of year when TV hype goes to an all new level. Networks air programs with all kinds of sex and violence and controversial topics. And they hype "new" programs, of which I can name none at the moment. (I'm smugly proud of that. I would gladly watch any PBS series, even the one about deciphering Maya Code, than watch any of the new shows on the other major networks.)

Even the reruns are bad. Everybody Loves Raymond last night just happened to be the one about Ray "holding out" on sex with Debra, because he wanted to have "the power." Yeah, that's emmy-winning TV. Lots of Debra in nightie scenes. The picture above is from the one where she decided to dress more sexy-- another comedy writing high.

Even the News programs get involved in the hype. I'm sure we'll hear more stories about the dangers of plastic water bottles or how school lunches are killing your children. I learned a new word yesterday. "Anticipointment." That's when you see a promo for a news story, like three times, and you sit through the whole excruciating hour of news, and the story finally comes on and its a big NOTHING. Similiar to the winter stories --- "how much snow are we getting this weekend? Will it set a record? Are the salt trucks ready? Do you need to stand in line and buy bread? And then..... the weather chick comes on and basically says we may get an inch. In the Snow Belt.

Your Mama Won't Like Me- Suzi Quatro

Most people remember her has Leather Tuscadero from Happy Days.
Cool Stuff.My 1983 hair cut looked like that.