Beep… boop… beep… boop

Friday, January 16, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far

Finally watched the first two episodes of series seven of THE BEST TV SHOW ON … TV!!!

Yeah, Jack Bauer is back.

I don’t watch a huge amount of TV, although part of me wishes I did as I tend to miss out on some of the conversations over lunch in the office, but if I’m honest I get bored quiet quickly with most shows.

A good example would be Masterchef, I quite enjoy the idea but OH MY GOD, it’s a 15-20 minute programme that’s spun out to fill 30 minutes with tedious and repetitive…. no, I must stop. I can feel my blood pressure rising.

Ohhh which, whilst I remember, is doing fine thanks. Two pills every morning and I’m back down to normal levels.

I wonder if Jack ever has his blood pressure taken?

24 is a simple enough concept. Jack Bauer is a counter terrorist agent in the USA, and each series takes place in a single 24 hour timeframe. There are usually terrorists, agents, double agents, deadly weapons, life threatening situations and a the usual round of bluff and double bluff.

The first series was startling in it’s approach. Lots of fast cuts, short snappy dialogue and multi-layered plots. Frequently you’d be shown something just to keep you guessing, a suspicious look here, a hastily hidden file there. It was engrossing, entertaining and, of course, completely over the top and largely nonsense.

I’m a great believer in the suspension of disbelief for these such things. Be it a TV show or a movie, I’ll happily ignore gaping plot holes, and completely dismiss any notion that what I’m being shown is anything but the truth. It’s a good way to unwind and 24 moves swiftly enough that I can’t guess what’s going on and so it retains my interest.

Anyway, I’ve talked about all of this before so, I guess, I just wanted to say that Jack’s back and I’m a happy bunny!!

On TV food

Saturday, January 3, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

No, I’m not making an appearance…

I don’t watch a huge amount of TV. I tend to prefer movies and sport but I do watch the odd series, mostly American TV. Things like 24, Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes… I fell away from Lost and Desperate Housewives, and lost interest in The Sopranos when they changed the time slot (this was before we had Sky+). I’ll happily watch 30mins of something entertaining to fill the time, but my boredom threshold is quite low and I’m soon hankering for something else.

So it won’t come as a surprise that, beyond the initial intrigue, I don’t really care who is in the Celebrity Big Brother house. Tommy Sheridan is enough to make me turn off the news, so I don’t see CBB getting much of my viewing time.

I’m also less than interested in who the new Dr.Who will be, despite the fact BBC News think it worthy of a slot. However it does mean that I know there can only be 12 incarnations of the rubbishness that is Dr.Who, and the next one will be number 11 so… soon we’ll be done with them and their crappy special effects and cheesy story lines.

Ohh that was a bit harsh. Oh well.

One thing I don’t watch much of, despite having several channels of them to choose from, is documentaries. So perhaps that will be my get out, instead of watching yet another repeat of Frasier (which, to be fair, still make me laugh), I’ll turn over and watch something from the documentary channels.

Or, you know, The Simpsons.

An open letter

Friday, January 11, 2008 ~ 13 comments so far

Dear sitcom writers,

I’m getting a little fedup watching endless repeats of Friends and Frasier, and whilst Everybody Loves Raymond has some funny moments it’s a little sub-standard. Of course I’m quite content to fill my time with QI, and the like but ultimately I miss watching a good sitcom. I’ve tried most, few are palatable.

I’ll happily admit that I’m quite a fussy TV watcher (which is why I’m currently trying out things like The Wire) easily ditching bog-standard TV fare for a good (or bad) movie or live sport, after which you lose me to gaming, books or other non-TV activities. You seem to be aware you are losing this battle but you aren’t really putting up much of a fight, are you?

Yes, I know those writer people are on strike, but this has been going on for a while now. Lost, Desperate Housewives filled the void for a while but lack longevity, and Heroes is a completely different kettle of fish so don’t even start me on that.

I quite like a good sitcom, and their popularity suggests that others do as well (mind you, that also suggests that Coronation Street has some value.. hmmm) so, when you get a moment, could you please resurrect the concept and write a decent one, please!

Yours hopefully,

Gordon McLean

(And to my readers, ARE there any reasonable sitcoms out there? Am I missing out?)

Recently I have…

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 ~ 6 comments so far

… laughed until I cried at the way Louise’s cousin tells stories. She is hilarious.

… bought some new music. More on that in another post though, but it’s been a while. I can always tell when I’m need a new ‘fix’ because I invariably start listening to old favourites on a regular basis.

… been enjoying the chorizo and black pudding tapas that Louise made. Recipe may follow if she can remember what she put in it.

… been cursing Sky+. I had recorded the European Grand Prix and settled down on Sunday evening to watch it (whilst flicking back and forth to the Open golf). What a race! 5 laps to go and Alonso is harassing Massa to try and take the lead when up pops a message on-screen. “End of Recorded Programme”. WTF?! OK, there were some delays because of the rain but I thought Sky+ could handle programmes that ran over their alloted time. Feckers.

… been loving the BBC and Peter Alliss. Like Murray Walker, he will be sadly missed when he decides to hang up the microphone. One choice phrase from Sunday, describing the impact of the championship on local businesses and of their return to normality: “The local newspaper shop will cancel the order for 9000 papers and go back to the usual order of 10 copies of the Dundee Courier and a copy of Men Only for the vicar.”

… sent away two race applications, both a little late so I might not get a place. One 5K in Hamilton in a couple of weeks time, the other a 10K in Cumbernauld in September.

… enjoyed the professionally quashed double-take I received whilst getting fitted for my kilt for my friends wedding. When I asked when the kilt would be ready to pick up, the salesman said he would just phone “Ehh.. Mr. Humphrey I guess… or is it Mr. Beattie, it doesn’t say”. To which I replied “Well yes, either of them would do”. He twitched slightly before glossing over it. Well done Mr. Salesman.

… spent most of the last two days alone. Well not alone but as good as, for “she who must be obeyed” has had her nose stuck in some book or other. Apparently joking about “just reading the last chapter” is verbotin.

… been writing up some posts for my other blog but struggling to finish them for some reason, just can’t quite pull the threads together properly.

… “enjoyed” a hill session on Sunday morning. Apparently some of our jogScotland coaches have sadistic tendencies! I thought they were all nice and fluffy but no, give them a whistle and soon you are sprinting up hills, repeatedly, until all the oxygen on the planet disappears and your legs go all wobbly. Jim, the coach who took us, said that we’d look back on it and realise we’d enjoyed it, everyone laughed. Dammit though, he’s right.

Backlogged

Thursday, January 11, 2007 ~ 8 comments so far

Louise hasn’t been too well the past couple of days, some sort of chest infection which has given her a fairly… hacking cough. Seems to be shifting though. It has caused an additional problem though, namely that she’s filling up the Sky+ box so she’s got stuff to watch during the day. Now, this wasn’t a problem in the past because we had a DVD writer downstairs, alas that is no longer the case and so the box is getting rather full.

Unfortunately most of the stuff that is ‘needing watched’ is waiting on me to watch it. Which, normally, would be fine as I’d just hog the TV for a few hours and send Louise off to get the housework done, iron my shirts, and wash the car (to which she’d probably tell me to fuck off and go watch TV in the bedroom).

Trouble is I really can’t be bothered at the moment.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big watcher of TV, and have a tendency to lose interest in things easily. The Sopranos lasted 4 seasons until I missed two episodes and I’ve not been back since, Desperate Housewives never even made it to the 2nd series. We don’t watch any soaps in our house. Mind you I’d happily spend most of my day watching Frasier re-runs, or watch Nigella ohh and ahhh her way around her kitchen.. but maybe that’s a slightly different thing..

Anyway, regardless of what we have recorded it seems like, honestly, a bit of a waste of time to sit around and watch TV at the moment. I’d much rather do something else, almost anything else really, than spend more than an hour or so in front of the gogglebox. I was thinking about it the other day and, on average (now I’m back at work) I watch around 2.5 hours TV a day. Sometimes less, sometimes more (usually if there is football on) but, on an average day I don’t really watch that much. News in the morning for about 15 minutes, then an hour or so at night around dinner. Sometimes I’ll watch something else later on but not very often.

Makes you wonder why I recently bought a nice new, big, LCD TV. Well, that’s easy. Movies. Well, that was the plan. We are thinking of starting a ‘movie night’.. a little like ‘date night’ I guess but without the nervous anticipation, sheen of sweat and nausea of wondering if, and when, the first kiss would arrive.

So I don’t watch that much TV.

Unless, of course, Girls of the Playboy Mansion* is on.. THEN the TV is MINE! ALL MINE!!!

(if you think Celebrity Big Brother is bizarre, try and catch this… )

Dreich

Monday, May 15, 2006 ~ No comments yet

It’s all gone a bit ‘yeuch’ hasn’t it. What happened to the summer, was that it?! Probably.

In saying that, I don’t mind this kind of weather so much. It’s not raining hard enough to soak you, more a steady constant dripping, and as it’s warm enough to not need a jumper it was actually quite a pleasant walk to work this morning. Or at least it would have been if I was able to walk properly.

It seems the gardening extertions on Saturday have taken their toll on my hamstrings as they are tighter than a gnats chuff (or some other euphemism). I’m fine once I get going but as it only takes about two minutes to walk from the station to my office, no sooner have my legs started to approach normal functionality than I’ve arrived. I even wandered round the block at lunchtime just to keep them active. Might have a hot bath this evening…

Aside from that, and some rather juicy gossip at work which I can’t mention here (but it’s positively DRIPPING it’s so juicy), there ain’t much else to say. The news is wholly boring, and… wait.. how could I have forgotten!

BIG BROTHER STARTS ON THURSDAY!!!

What? Ohh don’t give me that look.

I promise I won’t blog about it any more than before as, and this is the same every year no matter how hard I try, I’ll start watching it for the first few weeks then I’ll get bored. Then, with about four weeks to go, I’ll get back into it (fitting it in alongside the World Cup of course) and THEN I’ll bore you all stupid. You have been warned!

Live TV

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 ~ No comments yet

Lyle links to an article that states:

Most TV viewing in households with personal video recorders such as Sky+ is still live and “traditional scheduled TV will be around for a long time yet”, according to new research.

We’ve had Sky+ for over a year now, and having finally switched my viewing habits to incorporate it’s features I wouldn’t go back if you paid me. The ability to pause a programme is worth it’s weight in gold, and with the recent addition of a “remind me” function for some programmes it’s a matter of two button pushes to record a future programme (the “remind me” function appears during trailers, hit red then “record” and Sky+ will take care of it for you). The series link is also invaluable as it figures out when the next episode of a series is on, and automatically sets it to record (even if it shift times).

So what you end up with, fairly quickly, is a set of pre-recorded programmes that YOU chose from the available channels. Your own little TV station.

That’s not to say we don’t watch ‘live’ TV anymore, but I think that depends on your viewing habits in general. I hardly watch any ‘live’ TV other than sports and news whereas my better half will watch TV of an evening and channel surf to find something to watch. The only stuff we record, typically, is stuff we’d both watch. So I don’t think watching ‘live’ TV is going to go away but I would expect to see a long-term shift. Whether or not the TV companies are looking that far ahead is disputable, especially as they still seem concerned about whether adverts will still be viable in the future.

After all, would you CHOOSE to watch adverts?

Our usage of Sky+ is governed, for the meantime, by the capacity of our current box. If it was larger I’d be much more prone to recording things “just in case” and wouldn’t mind them lying around on the machine until I had time to watch them. With that in mind, it would mean recording, say, Frasier every night, and skipping the adverts every time. The bigger the capacity, the less the chance I’d watch ‘live’ TV (including sports), and the fewer adverts I’d see.

What the TV companies need to do is come up with a viable alternative that suits ME. Add in the complication of downloads (particularly of US shows) and the whole picture becomes much more usage focussed. Power to the people (consumer)?