Good Seats

We had a bad experience at a game a few weeks ago and complained to the management about it. They called us several times to apologize and finally told me they had some upgraded seats for us to the Nationals game on June 1st. They sounded like they were in the section right behind the plate where you often see people waving from. I didn't get my hopes up though because I thought I would jinx it. So I didn't take a camera, didn't, set up the DVR, and didn't tell anybody about it in advance. Sure enough, right in the section you see on TV. I tried calling Mike and Lori but no luck. I used my Q to set up a recording of the game via the Slingbox but for reasons too lengthy to explain here, I had to set it to the SD broadcast on Cox 34 rather than the HD one on 734. There were monitors in our section so I could see that we were on TV with every pitch. Imagine my disappointment when I got home and turned on the recording only to find out that we were in the part that gets cropped out of the picture if you watch in SD. I got first picture above by taking a picture of our TV screen playing the mlb.tv feed. Took me a while to figure that out. We are on the right hand side of the picture. The tickets were $400 a piece! I doubt we'll ever get anything like that again... The second two were taken with my phone.

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More good stuff here.

Friedman is Right Again

Truth or Consequences

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American people about what would be the best — I mean really the best — energy policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country. I realize this is a fantasy, but play along with me for a minute. What would this mythical, totally imaginary, truth-telling candidate say?

For starters, he or she would explain that there is no short-term fix for gasoline prices. Prices are what they are as a result of rising global oil demand from India, China and a rapidly growing Middle East on top of our own increasing consumption, a shortage of “sweet” crude that is used for the diesel fuel that Europe is highly dependent upon and our own neglect of effective energy policy for 30 years.

Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.

I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.”

No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.”

But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion.

What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.”

But no politician dared to do so. When gasoline was $2 a gallon, the government never would have imposed a $2 tax. Now that it is $4 a gallon, the government should at least keep it there, since it is really having the right effect.

I was visiting my local Toyota dealer in Bethesda, Md., last week to trade in one hybrid car for another. There is now a two-month wait to buy a Prius, which gets close to 50 miles per gallon. The dealer told me I was lucky. My hybrid was going up in value every day, so I didn’t have to worry about waiting a while for my new car. But if it were not a hybrid, he said, he would deduct each day $200 from the trade-in price for every $1-a-barrel increase in the OPEC price of crude oil. When I saw the rows and rows of unsold S.U.V.’s parked in his lot, I understood why.

We need to make a structural shift in our energy economy. Ultimately, we need to move our entire fleet to plug-in electric cars. The only way to get from here to there is to start now with a price signal that will force the change.

Barack Obama had the courage to tell voters that the McCain-Clinton summer gas-giveaway plan was a fraud. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he took the next step and put the right plan before the American people? Wouldn’t that just be amazing?

That Was Me...

McCain wraps up weekend with baseball game

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Sen. John McCain completed a weekend break from campaigning by attending Sunday's baseball game between the New York Mets and Arizona Diamondbacks.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee watched from the owners' seats near the Diamondbacks' dugout, sitting between team owners Jeff Moorad and Ken Kendrick. McCain's wife, Cindy, also attended.

McCain waved when he was shown on the giant Chase Field video screen. He was greeted with subdued cheers, and a smattering of boos, from the crowd.

McCain sat for a while in the announcers' booth and spoke on the radio about baseball and campaigning.

"We've been traveling, giving speeches, raising money, doing the campaign — it's a great time," he told KTAR. "We've got a tough campaign, but you've got to love it and like it, otherwise it's too hard."

McCain spent Friday and Saturday at his home in Sedona. He heads to North Carolina on Monday.

With apologies to Dr. Seuss

And help from Maureen Dowd and Art Buchwald

Hillary Clinton will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don't care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Hillary Clinton will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don't care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Hillary Clinton
I don't care how.
Hillary Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion's tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Hillary Clinton
Don't you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Hillary!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don't care how you go.
Just get!
Hillary Clinton!
I don't care how.
Hillary Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Hillary WENT.

Speaking of Tom Hayden...

Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream

by Tom Hayden, The Nation

April 22, 2008

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.

It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.

At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew that she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the sixties. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an antiwar force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.

To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "Our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?"

She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge.)

All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

Obama's Neighbor

I am not a Bill Ayers fan. My opinion is not based on his politics, heck we were on the same side until he decided that violence was OK. Nor is it based on his alleged illegal activities. I am not happy about the bad press that this University of Illinois-Chicago professor is bringing to Barack Obama at the moment, but that is not really the reason either. Bill Ayers, at least when I knew him in Ann Arbor in 1969, was an arrogant jerk. I was part of a group of people that went from Ann Arbor to DC in January of '69 to attend the "counter-inauguration" protest during the first inauguration of Richard M. Nixon. I am not sure how I got hooked up with it, I really didn't have any friends that were all that political, but somehow I found myself in a car heading to DC. I don't think Ayers was in our car but he was the leader, more of less, of the Ann Arbor contingent. He tended to boss people around and there was a clear split between Ayers and the rest of us lowly nobodies. I saw some interesting things on that trip. I saw The Fugs playing in a tent. I saw some folks identified as Yippies who seemed to be specializing in making woo-woo-woo Indian style noises to unnerve the horses that the (huge number of) mounted police were on. I attended a "teach-in" where the point being made was that Sirhan Sirhan (who had killed Bobby Kennedy less than a year earlier) was some sort of hero. I saw folks who would throw rocks at the cops from behind the lines and then run away while the police attacked the nonviolent kids up front.

And I mostly remember a night when I couldn't sleep. The Ann Arbor group was sleeping in a hall that belonged to a church. I vaguely remember eating uncooked Spam that night. Anyway, as I tried to sleep I found that a heated argument, one that went on for what seemed like hours, prevented me from resting. It seems that a commitment had been made that the church would be cleaned up in the morning and that somehow the task had fallen to our future Weatherman. He was not about to help clean the f-ing church. And so he stated far into the night.

Fun fact: neither Ayers nor The Dude (Jeffrey Lebowski) actually contributed to the Port Huron Statement, but Tom Hayden did.

In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC

ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos seemed to be playing a game of gotcha at last night's candidates' debate.

By Tom Shales, Washington Post

Thursday, April 17, 2008

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

Gibson sat there peering down at the candidates over glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking prosecutorial and at times portraying himself as a spokesman for the working class. Blunderingly he addressed an early question, about whether each would be willing to serve as the other's running mate, "to both of you," which is simple ineptitude or bad manners. It was his job to indicate which candidate should answer first. When, understandably, both waited politely for the other to talk, Gibson said snidely, "Don't all speak at once."

For that matter, the running-mate question that Gibson made such a big deal over was decidedly not a big deal -- especially since Wolf Blitzer asked it during a previous debate televised and produced by CNN.

The boyish Stephanopoulos, who has done wonders with the network's Sunday morning hour, "This Week" (as, indeed, has Gibson with the nightly "World News"), looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy. He came up with such tired tripe as a charge that Obama once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist. That was "40 years ago, when I was 8 years old," Obama said with exasperation.

Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition. The tactic has been to "take one statement and beat it to death," he said.

No sooner was that said than Gibson brought up, yet again, the controversial ravings of the pastor at a church attended by Obama. "Charlie, I've discussed this," he said, and indeed he has, ad infinitum. If he tried to avoid repeating himself when clarifying his position, the networks would accuse him of changing his story, or changing his tune, or some other baloney.

This is precisely what has happened with widely reported comments that Obama made about working-class people "clinging" to religion and guns during these times of cynicism about their federal government.

"It's not the first time I made a misstatement that was mangled up, and it won't be the last," said Obama, with refreshing candor. But candor is dangerous in a national campaign, what with network newsniks waiting for mistakes or foul-ups like dogs panting for treats after performing a trick. The networks' trick is covering an election with as little emphasis on issues as possible, then blaming everyone else for failing to focus on "the issues."

Some news may have come out of the debate (ABC News will pretend it did a great job on today's edition of its soppy, soap-operatic "Good Morning America"). Asked point-blank if she thought Obama could defeat presumptive Republican contender John McCain in the general election, Clinton said, "Yes, yes, yes," in apparent contrast to previous remarks in which she reportedly told other Democrats that Obama could never win. And in turn, Obama said that Clinton could "absolutely" win against McCain.

To this observer, ABC's coverage seemed slanted against Obama. The director cut several times to reaction shots of such Clinton supporters as her daughter, Chelsea, who sat in the audience at the Kimmel Theater in Philly's National Constitution Center. Obama supporters did not get equal screen time, giving the impression that there weren't any in the hall. The director also clumsily chose to pan the audience at the very start of the debate, when the candidates made their opening statements, so Obama and Clinton were barely seen before the first commercial break.

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates -- or was he really patting himself on the back? -- for "what I think has been a fascinating debate." He's entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

Shales joined The Washington Post as a writer in the Style section in 1972, was named chief television critic in July 1977, and was appointed TV Editor in June 1979. The Washington Post Writers Group has syndicated his column since 1979.

Amazon price protection

When I was adding the link for the new mower in the previous post I saw that the manufacturer's website had the same mower for $50 less. To verify what I had paid for it on Amazon, I checked there, and yes I had paid $50 more, but now Amazon had it for the same lower price. I could not find anything by navigating the Amazon web site but I googled "Amazon price protection" and found that indeed Amazon will refund the difference if the price goes down within 30 days. A simple phone call got me a $50 refund.

Mowers and craigslist

I got tired of struggling with my old mower, which is not really designed for the grass I have, and decided to buy an electric, finally picked a cordless. I ordered it from Amazon last Friday, opting for free shipping. Supposedly it would ship on 4/16 and take 5-6 business days to arrive. Then I saw that it had shipped yesterday and would arrive tomorrow. Where would it go? Had to unload the old one in a hurry.

9:45 am Post ad for mower on craigslist
10:00 am Notice that it is there
10:21 am Receive call from prospective buyer
1:30 pm Receive call from a second prospective buyer who says he will be here in early evening
5:42 pm Second caller says he is on his way (coming from Maricopa)
6:20 pm Buyer arrives from Maricopa, inspects, buys (full price less $5)
7:00 pm Cancel craigslist ad
10:15 pm While googling for a picture of the old mower for this post, find link to my (now-cancelled) craigslist ad

This is not an April Fool's joke

According to today's Arizona Republic, McDonald's has lost their franchise at Chase Field and will be replaced by Fatburger. While I rarely bought McDonald's food at the ballpark and would not mind trying Fatburger, which I never been to, I did enjoy the occasional McFlurry, a sundae of soft serve ice cream and M&Ms. Fatburger shows no equivalent item on the menu on their website, although they do have what look like pretty good milk shakes.

Not Wanted

What do Royce Clayton, Mike Myers, Reggie Sanders, Jeff Cirillo, Bob Wickman, Damian Miller, Shawn Green, Kelly Stinnett and Russ Ortiz all have in common?

They are all former Diamondbacks who are "unsigned" free agents. Nobody wants Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Kenny Lofton and a host of others either, although some of these folks will end up somewhere eventually.

What can go wrong in the 're-do'? Only everything

By CARL HIAASEN (Miami Herald)

Ten most-asked questions about a possible re-do of the Florida Democratic Primary.

1. This whole thing is just a gag, right? Somebody's lame idea of a joke?

If only it were.

Acting with unfathomable haste and stupidity, the National Democratic Party stripped Florida of its convention delegates when the state decided to move up the date of its presidential primary.

About 1.7 million loyal Democrats showed up on Jan. 29 and voted anyway, though they were basically tinkling into the wind.

As fate would have it, the race between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama is now so tight that Florida's delegates could be crucial in deciding the nominee. That's why some party leaders wanted to ''re-do'' the primary by mail, a long-shot idea that terrifies supporters of both candidates.

2. Does anyone in their right mind believe that Florida could conduct postal balloting without a major screw-up or scandal?

Heavens, no! The whole country is keenly aware that our state is a sump hole of incompetence and corruption.

Submitting fraudulent hand-written ballots has always been a favored method of rigging elections here, and there's no reason to think the tradition wouldn't continue.

3. Why not just seat Florida's 211 delegates based on the results of the Jan. 29 vote?

That would be a windfall for Clinton, who easily won the balloting here that day. However, Democratic voters had been told far in advance that the primary wouldn't mean anything, and there's no telling how many didn't bother to go to the polls.

Lots of Obama supporters would be seriously ticked off to hear that January's so-called straw vote was now going to stand as the real deal. It's like Major League Baseball waiting until midseason and then declaring that spring training games will count in the final standings.

4. So why doesn't the party schedule a second presidential primary in which Florida Democrats go back to their polling places and re-vote?

Holding a full, nonpretend primary would be expensive and, inevitably, chaotic.

In almost every election since the 2000 fiasco that sank Al Gore, one or more Florida counties have experienced serious problems with new voting machines. Due to the high risk of either equipment malfunction or citizen malfunction, these tricky devices should be avoided whenever possible.

Hence, the controversial push for a secret vote-by-mail.

5. Exactly how would that work?

Ballots would be sent to all registered Democrats about three weeks before the June 3 deadline.

(If you've moved since registering to vote, a note would be mailed to the forwarding address asking you to go update your information so that you may obtain a new primary ballot. This wouldn't be the least bit inconvenient or time-consuming, unless you happened to have a day job).

Under one proposal, the state Democratic Party would pay elections officials 10 cents per name to validate the signatures on completed ballots. Presumably the price would be higher if the signature belonged to a dead person or a fugitive.

6. Isn't there any sort of plan to protect against fraud and ballot-stuffing?

One suggestion was to appoint a supervisory panel of ''respected and knowledgeable leaders.'' In Florida such a committee would fit easily inside a phone booth.

7. If a new primary is held, how can I be sure my primary vote would count?

Pack up and move to Pennsylvania, fast.

Just kidding! By now, most Floridians know the election-day drill: For every ballot that doesn't get counted, another ballot will accidentally be counted twice.

So it pretty much evens out.

8. After what happened here in 2000, why would the Democratic leadership jeopardize its chances to win back the White House by putting Florida in such a pivotal position?

That would be a good question for Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party. Another good question for Dean is: When are you going to stop acting like an addled hamster and do something smart?

9. If another primary were approved, is it true that the Democratic candidates would be allowed to campaign and advertise throughout Florida?

Tragically, yes. After months of peace and quiet, the Sunshine State finally would be invaded full-bore by the Obama and Clinton forces.

Remember back when Rudy Giuliani was the only one hanging around? Heck, we hardly knew he was here.

Those were the days . . .

10. What's the worst that can happen if Florida insists on holding a new Democratic primary?

You mean, besides paralyzing the nomination process, turning the presidential campaign into a legal mud bath and embarrassing ourselves again before the whole nation?

Not a thing!
=============================

Hiaasen discusses Florida politics on the Colbert Report

He didn't talk like this on Sports Center

Keith Olbermann has something to say to Hillary Clinton.

Mad Men, iTunes and Californication

I guess that the main point of this is to plug the series Mad Men. One of the few good things about watching awards shows is that occasionally you hear about something obscure that you hadn't come across before. On this year's Golden Globes, yeah the one without anything but reading the names of the nominees and winners due the writers' strike, there was a show that was nominated and maybe won something that just sounded different. First it was on AMC. AMC used to be cool but now it just blows, more or less. A long time ago it occupied the niche that TCM -- Turner Classic Movies -- does today. Good old movies without commercials. Somewhere along the line AMC got off the tracks. They introduced commercials and they started really abusing the notion of what a "classic" was. I had not watched anything there in a long time. So when I heard that they had an original series I first wondered why "American Movie Classics" has its own TV series, much like I wonder why TV Land has started showing movies. But when it got the mention on the Golden Globes we decided to try it. What a great show! It is set in 1960 in a Manhattan ad agency. Handsomely photographed, full of scotch and cigarettes and bad hairdos. It is the kind of series that you would expect to see on HBO or Showtime. Highly recommended.

But the second point is how technology can save you. Mad Men is actually doing a rerun through its more or less serialized episodes. They are on during the wee hours of Sunday night-Monday morning. Having found them at that time -- and not knowing whether they were on three other times during the week -- I set up an all-episodes-this-channel-this-timeslot recording, which snagged the first 7 episodes but then fell flat when those morons back east changed their clocks around. I missed this Monday's episode. In the old world we would have just resolved to see it some day and skipped on to the next episode after adjusting the recording time, but iTunes came to the rescue. Two bucks and a quick download and I had it, letterboxed and all. I think the picture quality was actually better than the analog cable it normally comes in on.

This emboldened me to resolve another issue that had been bugging me. We managed to miss the season ending episode of Californication. This is another relatively obscure yet highly entertaining show, this one more or less of a sitcom starring David Duchovny as a once promising writer whose career has stalled. He lives in Venice Beach and splits his time between drinking, womanizing and trying to get his family back together. Another two bucks and we had it. The final episode was a shocker and great television. The show has been renewed for a second season starting this summer. If you don't get Showtime the whole season can be had on iTunes for about $22.

Elmore at the Movies

I like this one

From Russian TV (in English)

Six for Six

Congratulations, John.

Rogue Columnist

Jon Talton was until about a year ago a columnist for the Arizona Republic. He lived in Willo and also writes mystery novels, one of which I reviewed here. He has moved to Seattle and writes occasional columns for the Seattle Times. He has a blog called Rogue Columnist which is often worth reading, as he writes about urban issues, Phoenix and Seattle in particular, and also has insights into the national political scene. I have added a link section in the margin to the right.