Somebody Blinked

After an exciting stand-off that lasted all day some sort of face-saving agreement was reached all around and ABC was back on Cablevision in time for the first award. However, you would have missed two hours of pre-game excitement if you were relying on a Cablevision connection. So, there. We turned it on when we found out about it, mostly for my sister. She's a movie buff and makes sure to see each and every contender for the main Academy Awards. She fell asleep before the best supporting actor was announced. I don't blame her. I wasn't paying total attention, but it did seem like the show was a bit of a snoozer.  I did notice one thing. Was it my imagination or did the actors and actresses seem to be going for looking good instead of bizarre this year? If so, it's a nice trend, but I may not have seen enough to judge.

All in all the show we got here leading up to it all day - Will they or won't they? - was a lot more exciting than the actual program.

The War Continues

The war between Cablevision and ABC has gotten uglier. If you're accessing the web through Cablevision today this ad is EVERYWHERE.

Clicking it brings you here. If nothing else, this little contretemps is an advertising bonus for someone in the intertubes. That's got to be a good thing. Meanwhile, Cablevision is offering all on demand movies free of charge for today. Oh, wait, they just sent me another e-mail....

OK, back. They just wanted to keep us updated on where you can find the most online coverage of the Oscars in case you didn't run out and buy a digital antenna today. I say screw the Oscars. I'm never awake past a lot of "best short subject in a foreign language" stuff anyway. I want popcorn for this fight. It's more entertaining than the Oscars ever are.

The Monster In Our Living Rooms

Image by gbaku via Flickr

In the years just B.C. - Before Cable - every time we went to the movies there would be a short feature warning of the dangers of Pay TV. "The monster in your living room..." was the only line that I can remember. The movie industry was terrified that access to full length, uncut movies at home would empty the theaters. No one was yet envisioning VCRs, let alone DVD sales. Nor were they thinking about the time when a few companies would own everything - movie studios, television networks and theaters, so profits would all flow in the same direction no matter how the public was viewing Weekend at Bernie's.

So here we are, a few decades later, and everything has turned out just fine. Instead of three networks and a handful of local channels for free we get to pay a small fortune each month for a bazillion channels. We have options we never had before. Shopping channels, for instance. More of them seem to spawn every day. Now even agoraphobics can be shopaholics without killing trees for catalogs. It's a win/win/win.

Reception is much improved unless the cable goes out and that doesn't happen nearly as often as it did in the early days. If you like that sort of thing you can set up your TV and computer to mate in some Byzantine way. Even if I could figure that out, I would not do it. It's just giving them license to gang up on us. Who knows what they'd get up to while we're out working to support them? The only things is, if you have Cablevision and you have a yen to see the Oscars - or anything else on ABC channel 7 - you better start working on that hook-up now because as things stand it won't be on your TV.

Cablevision and ABC are having a big fight. ABC wants more money. Cablevision says "no". This sort of thing happens a lot now. There was a big argument about the Yankees network a few years ago. That was a bit galling to Yankee fans because before cable, sports teams didn't have networks and their games were televised on local channels. For free. More recently HGTV and the Food Network were embroiled in one of these fights and were pulled from Cablevision. It was resolved after a grueling few weeks and everyone was able to go back to redecorating their homes and cooking up gourmet meals.

Whenever one of these squabbles occur Cablevision airs its own ads explaining how it's unfair to their subscribers to have to pay these inflated rates for whichever channels are involved. As one of those subscribers, I'm willing to buy into that. In fact, I think we're paying way too much already, considering how often there's nothing worth watching on. (I should admit here that most of what we do watch is on cable channels, not broadcast TV, so it would seem that I do rather like it.) Anyway, what with Cablevision owning Newsday it's unlikely we'll have to read about any other point of view. That may sound like a conflict of interest, but, hey, if Cablevision hadn't bought Newsday, Rupert Murdoch was going to.

All I'm saying is that it appears that media has turned into a regular old clusterf*ck in so many ways. It kind of provides its own kind of entertainment - at a price.

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Thank you Bob Cesca, thank you John Cole

First I saw this by Bob Cesca which linked to this by John Cole. All I want to say is, yeah, what they said. And to thank them for saying it.

Blogger Jon Swift

Image via Wikipedia

"Sometimes there are no words" was the headline of the last ever post at Jon Swift's blog. It's a brief post in response to the loss of a son by a fellow blogger and commentor. And now, almost a year later the mother of Jon Swift - who was in fact Al Weisel - has posted in the comments section of her own son's blog to tell his friends and fans that he has died.

It turns out that Al Weisel was a professional writer, which probably comes as surprise to no one. His political satire was brilliant. He didn't ever post every day. His posts were mostly long and written perfectly. Usually there was one a week. Once in a while, two. But always worth checking for, back in the old days when you actually had to go to someone's site to find out if there was a new post.

I never knew him personally, of course, but I think he was probably a great guy. Even though his entire blog was impeccably done with a satirical persona his real humanity somehow made itself known. He kind of hung out with the little bloggers even though he'd earned himself a seat at the A-list table. Not only did he champion liberal linking policies, he'd take the time to leave comments on little blogs - like this one, for instance. If he was that generous to others in Blogtopia* he must have been one hell of a guy in real life.

My heart goes out to his mother and the rest of his family and real life friends. If so many people who never got to meet him feel his loss as we do, how devastating this must be to those closest to him.. He will be so very much missed.

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Google + Picnik=Yummy photo editing goodness for all

I saw it on Shelly's blog first. I was hoping for this day. Picnik had to get acquired. It was just a question of by whom. It's always had a Googlish attitude about itself, I thought. It does these impressive without letting on that it takes itself all that seriously. I love Picnik. It's incredibly handy to use from work where I don't have Photoshop. Actually, at work they think that the Adobe photo album thing that comes with most all PCs is Photoshop. For my rather simple needs there, Picnik does just fine. Sometimes I use it at home, too, where Photoshop is always available just because it's more fun and has such a pretty website.

Congratulations to both companies and their users. May this turn out to be a match made in Heaven.

Harold Ford Will Not Be NY's Senator

Image via Wikipedia

Well, just in the last couple of days we've learned who will not be New York's next governor and now we know who will not be the next Senator as well. Harold Ford has decided that it's not such a good idea to run a primary challenge for the nomination. I don't really know what in the world Gillibrand has done wrong that Democrats should be mounting challenges instead of supporting her. I admit I'd never heard of her before she was appointed to the seat but she seems just fine.Harold Ford, on the other hand, I'm not so sure. But then, who is?

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