Cord Cutting

A cable sales rep called the other day offering me a deal on service.

"Do you have cable now?"

"No. I go with over-the-air. I get HD plus a lot of local digital channels that weren't on basic Prism from CenturyLink."

I use a Mohu Leaf, and I'm fortunate to live in a good location--major networks plus Decades, Heroes and Icons, Me TV, My TV, Cozi, Bounce Laff, Escape, Univision, Telemundo, Get, Antenna, this, Retro, Grit, Escape, QVC, ION, NASA, PBS, Create.

I really don't want for stuff not to watch. There are as many things to flip past as I ever had. Sometimes the weather affects reception, but then that happened back when I had Dish TV.

"But, do you have a way to record programs?"

"Yeah I have an over-the-air DVR."  It's a Tablo. It's fabulous and plays through Apple TV,  an Amazon Fire Stick or on a tablet if I ever need television, say, in the laundry room.

I have to wait for a few cable programs to show up on streaming services, but otherwise I do OK.

I guess a DVR was the best arrow in the quiver. The sales rep and I said our goodbyes.

I suppose all this might be affected by loss of net neutrality if it comes to that, but at the moment I'm not missing cable about one year out. I've built my own à la carte and the wheels don't even wobble.

At the moment, I'm streaming musical performances from Pluto TV's Live Music channel via Apple TV. You don't even get that on MTV anymore do you?

Upgrading to the new version of Apple TV's one of the best moves I've made since cutting the cord. It allows providers to offer their own apps, making it a little less of a closed environment than Apple TV used to be.

I've found a pretty good set of alternatives even for surfing mindlessly.  Pluto's one of the best. There's a lot to be said for MST3K any time. 
Besides that, the news junkie in me is fed by a variety of sources, some on Pluto TV like the new Chedder--CNBC for Millennials but I like it too--and others. CBSN is available on just about every device, and I supplement it with UK's Sky News feed and a few others plus podcasts of the Rachael Maddow show, a day late, but still handy.

And there are free streaming services beyond Netflix and Hulu. Shout Factory, Tubi TV, Popcorn TV, Crackle they have a few commercials and a lot of niche selections the premium services aren't bothering with.

 As I said, way, way more than I need, but it's not the having, it's the getting for the geek in me.

New Who

I've been so busy of late, I haven't had time to be excited about the new season of Doctor Who. It's kind of interesting how the phenomena has transformed. 

Took a year for Season 1 to air in the U.S. I can remember visiting the official site one day to discover the TARDIS materializing on White House lawn. 

Now we get the Christmas specials on Christmas night, and a new season is here almost as quickly as it airs in the UK. That's the force of demand and technology, I suppose. 

The lack of anticipation almost makes U.S. viewers take it for granted. 

Seeing the first U.S.-lensed scenes evidenced in the trailer helps with my excitement. Let the countdown begin.

Addendum
And what should arrive in my RSS feed this afternoon but an interview with lead writer Steven Moffat on the evolution of the series. Read it

New Who Wallpaper

Blogosphering

OK, I'm kinda back. Stewart Sternberg, whose The Ravening everyone should already have on pre-order, gigged me a bit a while back about repurposing Twitter tweets, but I've been a little swamped of late, and I did want to preserve some of those thoughts.

Hopefully I'll be back to the blogosphere full steam soon and fresh with ideas and energy. I've just been busy with school, work, and well that's about it, but that's been plenty.

For those of you who still have me in your RSS feed, let me get a few things on record on things nerd. I've managed to keep up with a few things in spite of the swamping.

Iron Man 2: liked it but the critics aren't really 100 percent wrong.

V: Like it, glad it survived, sorry it had to be between it and FlashForward which I liked marginally better.

Lost: Looking forward to the finale. Is The Source the same thing that's in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or that box Mike Hammer had in Kiss Me Deadly?

Inception: Looks interesting and I like Christopher Nolan.

Reading: The Outside Man by Richard North Patterson.

Next Up: I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond. Wish me well.

Miss Daisy is hanging in.

I'm Becoming a Fan of the Dollhouse

I know the future of Fox's Dollhouse is iffy, but I became a full-fledged fan with the revelations in the recent episode "Man On The Street," penned by creator Joss Whedon. I watched on Hulu since it unfortunately aired opposite the Battlestar finale. Friday night really is sci-fi night.

To me, Dollhouse's ongoing mythology has always been the most intriguing part, and certainly the most original element of the series, shining brighter than some of the hour-long stories that have sent programmable heroine Echo (Eliza Dushku) into somewhat familiar perils.

In one installment she was assigned to pose as the fiance of a hunter who tried to make her his prey. In another she was part of a heist team that wound up trapped in the vault they were pillaging, but those contained stories are really side dishes.

Revelations in "Man On The Street" suggest a much more twisty plot ahead for Echo, a college student whose personality was wiped in order to make her one of the "dolls" --human robots of the shadowy title organization that provides wealthy clients with hot escorts, body guards or backup singers, all customized by science-fictiony techniques that print new personalities and capabilities on the empty human vessels.

Some series might stop with just that premise, but Dollhouse stirs the pot with Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar's Helo), one of those rogue, obessive FBI agents, working outside channels in pursuit of answers in a closed case tied to what many superiors believe is an urban myth.

Just as he did with the seemingly cheesy premise of Buffy, Whedon has crafted a unique and offbeat episodic serial. It's not given to the heavy breathing the premise might suggest, especially with the dual motives that seem to be simmering in Dollhouse franchise manager Adelle (Olivia Williams), who's flanked by Laurence Dominic (Homicide's Reed Diamond at his most sinister) and Echo's "handler," the earnest and ethical Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix). It's actually quite a well-rounded ensemble. Especially when nerdy imprint-wrangler Topher (Fran Kranz) is thrown in.

Top all that with generous doses of kung fu, and you've got an entertaining mixture.

Here's hoping the show gets the cable back-up deals needed to survive. It's TV-in-the-den-worthy viewing, for sure.

Summer Fear Itself

Wayne reminded me that I'd missed the first episode of Fear Itself by mentioning in an e-mail that he'd taped it from NBC Thursday night.

Fortunately we're in the era of Hulu and other online resources. I logged on this afternoon and got caught up on episode one, "The Sacrifice," penned by series producer Mick Garris, the man behind Masters of Horror and Masters of Science Fiction.

A tale of crime and terror
I found myself really liking the tale of criminals on the run who wind up in a remote, primitive compound with Rachel Miner--who has quite a bit of horror cred with Penny Dreadful and the non-supernatural but chilling Bully. She and similarly lovely sisters clad in polygamist sect fashions, take in the broken down criminals and then the chills build. The nutshell synopsis may seem familiar, but there are twists, makeup effects and performances along with a dark and gritty feel.

Support your local horror show
Need I remind in this era of brainless reality TV, any worthy genre programming is worthy of sampling? If more episodes maintain the quality of this first installment, which is nigh as sharp as Masters of Horror without it's most gruesome details, a summer of chills may await.

Andy's Whistler Is Gone

I've probably mentioned how much I love "The Andy Griffith Show." I'm old enough to remember watching it "new" on Monday nights, and my grandmother and I were frequent re-run watchers.

I was sad to read this a.m. that Earl Hagen whose name is familiar to all those read credits. He wrote not just the Andy theme, "The Fishin' Hole," but many other TV themes and "Harlem Nocturne" as well, the quintessential tune for private-eye voice overs used to such good effect in Stacy Keach's Mike Hammer.

Read the CNN obit here.

Listen to a few bars of Harlem Nocturne here.

Del Toro will direct "The Hobbit"

The word up at the Wired blog is that Guillermo del Toro who directed Hellboy, The Orphanage and Pan's Labyrinth and other cool flicks is going to be a the helm of The Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson's production company.

That sounds like a good combination to me, and it's nice to hear the film is back on track after legal wrangling between New Line Cinema and Jackson.

In celebration Wired posts an old Leonard Nimoy performance of the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Though I know many J.R.R. Tolkien fans disavow it, I've always been fond of the Rankin and Bass animated version of The Hobbit and in particular the main title theme sung by folk great Glen Yarbrough.

Lost in Space and in Hulu

Hulu.com, the NBC/Fox venture to bring tons of free shows to the web, has been talked about for a while and I discovered last weekend it's live. That was about the last time I was really productive in off hours come to think of it.

I've watched the occasional episode of Lost while sitting at my computer, The Office on Netflix, or NBC.com, but I haven't made the transition to really watching a lot of web TV. The web connection's in the office not the den, and I'd have a guy come out or string a wire in the attic myself or figure out one of those wireless hubs. Anyway...

Hulu with it's friendly interface and limited commercial interruptions makes for pretty good office-swivel-chair viewing for me. Is it the tilting point? Perhaps. Slate suggested recently it may be the future of television and the edge of new social networking. Viewers will be able to collectively vote on the best episode of The Simpsons ever and things of that nature.

It's certainly like we've always heard TV would be some day. A menu of the programs we want, all on demand.

For the genre fan
There are many choices for the science fiction fan and some for the horror fan, as well as those who want to catch up the brilliant satire of American Dad and The Simpsons.

My favorite offering is Lost in Space. I was a Lost in Space kid. When it went into syndication and started airing on our local TV station when I was in first grade, I counted the days until its kickoff and watched every afternoon without much of a discerning eye.

I was a kid so the later, garishly colored and hopelessly goofy episodes didn't really bother me, and in those days generally they seemed to air shows in kind of random order. I was a little surprised one afternoon when something that seemed like a news show came on in the Lost in Space time slot. After a few second it became apparent it was the first episode, introduced in documentary fashion.

Hulu offers the slightly more serious and somber Season 1 including the first full pilot w/out the robot or Dr. Smith. That was later recut to introduce a then-sinister Dr. Smith, foreign agent and stowaway on the Jupiter 2.

If you're not nostalgic, there's still much to be found. Battlestar Gallactica episodes -- new, classic and '80--are available.

There's also Sci Fi's Invisible Man, he of the quicksilver rage; the new and just slightly underrated Bionic Woman featuring the co-star of BBC's stupendous Jekyll as Jamie Sommers; Flash Gordon; The Pretender; I Spy; Chuck and many others.

There are also interesting things to check out. I haven't watched yet, but in addition to Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is included, and the episodes on Hulu include a Harlan Ellison-penned installment "The Price of Doom." The producers must have changed his original because it's credited to Cordwainer Bird.

Mystery fans can also find much to enjoy including the unbelievable first season of Murder One and on the horror front there's the old Night Gallery though it's not the best package of shows you could hope for from that series that frequently adapted tales from the pulps including Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model."

If you have a speedy web connection check it out.

I just thought it was funny - Sarah Silverman on Kimmel With Damon

I didn't catch it live on Jimmy Kimmel, but a friend pointed me to it online, and I just thought it was funny. It's bleeped but beware the language and see if you LOL. Frankly I thought Matt Damon's knowing smile was great.

The Sad State of Sci Fi Affairs

I guess it's a sign of audience transition as much as anything, but it's a little sad and a little perplexing to read about ABC's Masters of Science Fiction, an anthology series narrated by Steven Hawking and based on great works of SF.

When I first saw it spotlighted in TV Guide, I assumed it was on The Sci Fi Channel or somewhere on cable.

Apparently the series was developed with an eye toward low-cost Saturday material for ABC. That it was developed at all goes against the current tide, I guess.

Not many people watched the first installment with Sam Waterston from Law and Order, though I've watched both episodes that have aired.

Last Saturday's featured Terry O'Quinn, Locke of Lost as a scientist dealing with an alien mummy that's demanding world peace. It was probably his presence that doubled the ratings between episodes one and two, but apparently only four of six--if that many--episodes will be seen on the network.

Both episodes so far have been cerebral tales, tied to limited sets. You can see the budget showing.

In tone, they remind me a lot of the modern Outer Limits, but any thoughtful and diverse programming is welcome and worthy.

Heinlein's ahead
A Robert Heinlein story is next, and Harlan Ellison is behind the fourth episode, if it turns up. Check it out, and join me in waiting for the DVD which will hopefully bring all six episodes to the forefront.

(No rights to image implied.)

The ear thing and Sopranos spoilers

So I'm sitting in an airport terminal this morning with my fingers in my ears, stamping my feet and humming "I don't hear you!"

Christine was beside me doing the same thing.

An old guy next to us was looking at us strangely. (By old guy I mean at least 10 years older than me.)

Why was this going on?

Because we spent most of the night on a red eye or in airline terminals, we didn't get to watch The Sopranos finale live and CNN WOULD NOT SHUT UP with spoilers. It wasn't like changing a channel was an option.

First, American Morning or whatever they call their morning show, was on, blasting through the terminal, where we really needed to listen for a flight to be called.

We got through that with the finger in the ear trick, then apparently the staff or the airport gods switched the channel over to CNN Headline News for the Robin and Company discussion. I can't really blame Robin she was off. It was a sub on her show that was spewing spoilers

Again we had to do the ears.

It is seriously time for the news channels to reconsider how television shows are covered.

CNN and FOX News are broadcast all over public places, in hotel lobbies, terminals, department stores. They're not passive. It's one thing when it's Paris live, all the time.

However, when you're talking about a show scheduled for numerous rebroadcasts, spoiler alert does not cut it if there's not an easy way for people to look away.

Fortunately I did manage to avoid hearing anything other than "Fans were disappointed..." and "When Phil Leotardo..."

With your index fingers, you can turn spoilers into teasers. Finally we made it home and relaxed to watch the show, and, you know, make it safe to live with open eyes and ears.

And for those who thought the finale was a bust:

(Spoiler warning)
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It wasn't. The show wrapped up with more red herrings than a shelf full of Christie novels, riffing on the very thing for which the show's always been attacked.

That's brilliant.

But whatever did happen to that guy who was a Russian Green Beret?

The King Must Die - Or Why I'm Worried About Tony Soprano

Since the episode early in The Sopranos when Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano talked about failed attempts at college before his segue into organized crime, or waste disposal as the case may be, I've felt he was a Shakespearean character.

Now that the series endgame is going full throttle, if that's true, I don't think things look good for T.

On message boards, and in living rooms, viewers are rooting for Tony to take down rival boss Phil Leotardo.

Dramatically a showdown would certainly satisfy. Phil's just mean, after all. But I'm afraid like Macbeth and Lear, Tony's going to have go down one way or another either by the sword or under the wheels of justice. There is that lingering gun violation after all.

His psychiatrist's determination that he's a sociopath would also seem to further charge the tragic flaw notion, and the fact that he's drained the show's heavily symbolic swimming pool does not make for a sunny outlook either.

I just don't think Tony can live happily ever after, but the show's writers are always full of twists and surprises.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens next.

Lost: Interruptions

One of the most interesting things about watching the fabulous "Lost" finale-- "Through the Looking Glass" --last night was that the local weatherman seemed to have learned a valuable lesson.

I wish I had the citation, but a while back now, Christine read an article in The New York Times Magazine, I believe, noting that local TV stations have invested heavily in their weather radar systems and love opportunities to trot them out.

That of course leads to overwrought reporting. "Get in your back yard and dig, dig for your lives!" the weatherman's given to shout on cloudy days. "A storm cellar is your only hope when the orange and green Rorshack pattern reaches our area! Go now!"

So anyway, couple of weeks ago an episode of "Lost" called "The Brig" was the offering of the evening. Unfortunately it got cloudy around the time the show was set to begin.

The weatherman came on the air right around the end of the re-run of the previous week's episode and started talking about where it might begin to rain next.

He put up video of what the station's parking lot had looked like minutes earlier. I'm not sure why. Basically you could see a few branches waving in the breeze.

Lost hope
As the top of the hour neared, Christine asked me to stop suggesting so loudly that the weatherman was overweight and that his parents might not have been legally wed.

As minutes ticked by it became apparent he had no plans to shut up in time for us to find out how things were going with Locke.

I finally gave up and bought the episode the next day from iTunes. I'm easy going except when I'm not.

So anyway, flash forward ;-) and last night, minutes until the finale was to start, thunderstorms started rolling through our area.

Miracles
Miraculously, there was a crawl across the bottom of the screen, and a tiny little weather map, but no interruption.

The show began and played on without a hitch. Then at a commercial break! the weatherman came on and said: "Don't worry you won't miss any of `Lost' but I thought you'd like to know there's a Queen Mother of a thunderheadabout to hit Smithburg."

They gave up commercial air time. Apparently some people didn't reserve their remarks for their living rooms.

And the station listened. Democracy in action.

They finally figured out interrupting a vastly popular serial drama--known for its surprises and plot twists--with trivialities is not a way to win the hearts and minds of the viewership.

And that was danged near as cool as Hurley driving the VW microbus to the rescue!