Tag: tv/Archives

Pass the Gavel

Democracy is the peaceful passing of power, as exemplified by this Jimmy Kimmel clip:

And what’s with Boehner’s Big Gavel?

Broadcast Tower: Free Climb

Forget paragliding and BASE-jumping, if you seek aerial thrills, try repairing a transmission antenna, “Broadcast Tower Repairman’s Free Climb Captured on Video:”

“Stairway to Heaven (Climbing Towers)”

Pubcasting Act

President Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act, November 7, 1967

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “Independent producers” and “independent production” are mentioned sixteen times, including, “a substantial amount shall be distributed to independent producers and production entities…”

Some of my other favorite phrases:

The Congress hereby finds and declares that —

It is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes;

Expansion and development of public telecommunications and of diversity of its programming depend on freedom, imagination, and initiative on both local and national levels;

It is in the public interest to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities;

The Corporation is authorized to —

Facilitate the full development of public telecommunications in which programs of high quality, diversity, creativity, excellence, and innovation.
—Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, as amended

More…

Sesame Style Feist

The eye-easy and sonorous Feist effectively communicates sequential integers to kids; from the back-alleys of Sesame St — the show just turned 40yo:

Sesame Street: Feist sings 1,2,3,4

and here’s a Google Doodles‘s homage to S.St‘s 40th anniversary:

More classic S.St vids at Some Velvet Blogspot, including Stevie Wonder, Richard Pryor, and R.E.M. w/ “Fuzzy, Happy Monsters.”

via Ben- Comma Q.

Die, Sweet Roadrunner

Be careful what you wish for— From Seth MacFarlane’s (Family Guy creator) Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, “Die, Sweet Roadrunner, Die:”

Patrick McGoohan

Rest in peace, Patrick McGoohan, aka Danger Man, aka Secret Agent, aka The Prisoner (videos)— from episode The Chimes of Big Ben, “I Am Not a Number” (0:50 mp3):

Fiest-y Angel

Feist sings like an angel on A Colbert Christmas, for this heavenly auto-prayer answering message:

True Blood

Gonna miss our weekly sips of True Blood. But this exceptional HBO episodic love-story, vampires-live, Louisiana lunacy returns next summer. Alan Ball, the creator of another HBO great, Six Feet Under, based this TV series on the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris.

The show intro is as good as TV gets; “True Blood- Opening Credits” (music: “Bad Things” by Jace Everett):

Insane in Juarez

“Juarez Insanity,” a TV story by Scott Carrier and videographer Lisa Miller, aired on PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly series. Scott and Lisa spent time with José Antonio Galván, a born-again preacher in Juárez, Mexico, who cares for homeless drug-addicted, mentally ill street people with no place to live but El Pastor’s shelter (Albergue Para Discapacitaros Mentales) out in the desert just south of the U.S. border.

I’ve got 110 patients, my “childs,” that are my childs, not my patients, my childs, and this is a mental institution, especially for the person of the streets. For the people who they lay down on the streets like trash, nobody wants them except Jesus Christ and your server, his servant.

Photo © Julián Cardona

SarahV TV- TDS

Sarah Vowell’s on The Daily Show this Tuesday night: . The day before Michelle Obama and Robert De Niro and after Tim Robbins. She keeps good company.

The Wordy Shipmates, her new book/audiobook, “revisits America’s Puritan roots:”

Geo Beach- Daily Show guest tonight

Geo Beach, host of History Channel’s “Tougher in Alaska,” and indie radio producer, is guest on tonite’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Tough in AK

Long-time radio producer and Alaskan luminary, Geo Beach is hosting a History channel TV series titled Tougher in Alaska. Makes sense cuz da Beach boy is tough and in AK. Starts this Thurs, May 8- 10pm ET.

Video, photos, and a Geo bio (“logger, firefighter and medic, and commercial fisherman”) at the series site.

Hulu

Had to check out Hulu.com after reading about it. It’s kind of like YouTube Pro. Given that they’re doing limited commercials and putting things on there that people actually want to watch without being hunched over the screen, the TV industry might avoid the RIAA’s fate. The video quality is pretty good. At full-screen, I could sit back six feet and it looked fine. Want to watch Saturday Night Live clips or full-length The Simpsons or whole movies like “The Big Lebowski” or “The Usual Suspects.” Hulu is “joint venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp [Fox]:”

Hulu offers U.S. consumers a vast selection of premium video content, on demand, free and ad-supported: full episodes of TV shows, both current and classic, full-length movies, thousands of clips, and much more.

There’s also short films, like from the Sundance series The Art of Seduction, “Not Pretty, Really:”

John Adams

John and Abagail Adams played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Nuff said, no? Parts 1 & 2 of the HBO 7-week mini-series “John Adams” rocked, rolled, tarred, feathered, cannon fired, and created a nation. “He United the States of America.” Based on the David McCullough 900-pager, “John Adams (HBO) full-length trailer”:

Becoming a Trombone

A trombone takes fire, ice, wood, and greased steel balls to become a musical instrument. Filmed at the S.E. Shires company, from Discovery’s Science Channel series, “How It’s Made – Trombones:”

South Park Studio

If Hearing Voices was a South Park character, built with SP Studio:

via Puddles of Thought.

Creature Comforts

Transom’s Guests right now are folk from TV’s Creature Comforts:
The CBS series Creature Comforts comes from Nick Park’s Aardman Animations Ltd., who also gave us Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit. The concept puts audio from real-life interviews into the mouths of animated animals.

For a personal glimpse into the CC process, Bob and Kathy Olkowski’s daughter Lu documented their transformation into insects, from Studio 360 “Bee-ing There” (7:36 mp3):

Writers Strike Back

The Hollyweird writer’s strike pits the wits of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) against the pens the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Well, online at least, the WGA pens have the AMPTP pinned. AMPTP.org never got around to registering AMPTP.com, but WGA did. Sez Deadline Hollywood Daily of this “satirisite”:

It looks almost identical, too, down to those Did You Know? factlets. (Example: Six out of 10 non-Judd Apatow movies never recoup their original investment… “Writer” comes from the Latin ritem meaning “unhygienic and doughy.”) This is what clearly happens when writers have way too much free time on their hands.

From the AMPTP.com home page:

We are heartbroken to report that despite our best efforts, including sending them a muffin basket, making them a mix CD, and standing outside their window with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel songs, our talks with the WGA have broken down.

While we’re not going to point fingers or assign blame, we do feel justified in saying that they are entirely at fault.

Why does the WGA hate freedom and democracy so much?

Munster Beat!

We’ve blogged Martinibomb and The Coconut Monkeyrocket before. Here they both are at Oddio Overplay with the Halloween happy “Munster Beat!” (3:17 mp3):

Jimmy Rogers

Too down home for words, Jimmie Rodgers sings “Waiting On A Train”:

via some velvet blog.