NBC and the Olympics

• I haven't been watching the Olympics coverage on TV. None of it. I appear to be the only person who is still bitter and angry about how horrible the coverage of the last Olympics was... You know, how many commercials they showed, how they would string you along, telling you that a particular event was going to be televised next, only to show an hour of crap before getting to the event that everyone wants to watch. I'm sick of it. I would rather not watch any of it, and just follow the results in the news.
  
  Here's someone who agrees with me: NBC has ruined the Olympics [russellbeattie.com]. From the post:

  "While trying to watch coverage tonight with my six year old son before his bedtime, we were bombarded with commercials EVERY 5 MINUTES. I timed it on my watch..."
  
  "NBC focuses on the same handful of athletes over and over again despite the 400+ in Beijing from the US alone. Yes, it's great Phelps is awesome. We fucking get it, now shut the fuck up about it already. And the general ignorance of the commentators about other countries, the lack of any coverage of those countries, combined with the mindless US-only coverage is insane."

  NBC can take their Olympics coverage and shove it right up their asses.


• The Big Picture has some incredible pictures during the fencing competition [boston.com] at the Olympics. I used to fence sabre in college, so these pictures are especially interesting to me because they remind me of a forgotten era of my life.

Car Soccer

My favorite TV show these days is Top Gear [bbc.co.uk], which I probably have mentioned several times. It's a show for car enthusiasts, where they never stop amazing viewers with the crazy shit they think to do with cars.

Someone recently pointed me out to some segments that I missed. They actually put together a soccer match, where they used cars to kick the ball around:



Later, they did the same thing with VW Foxs vs. Toyota Aygos [youtube.com].

Those are incredible! Especially where they spin the cars out to hit the ball with the back end of the car. They look like they would have been a ton of fun to shoot.

Top Gear

The show Top Gear [topgear.com] on the BBC has quickly become one of my favorite shows, and is indeed the only show I watch on a regular basis anymore. It's a show where new cars are reviewed and compared, where crazy car stunts are performed, and where cars are raced to show relative performance. But the best part is how funny the hosts are.


Now that it has been announced [thecelebritycafe.com] that Adam Corolla is going to be one of the hosts for the American version of the show, I can't help but think that the new one is going to be totally bastardized. I think that Corolla is a really funny guy, but I just can't see how it's going to be as funny.


In the British show, one of the things I love is how they will race a car against anything -- people on skis, people in jet-powered kayaks, bobsleds, you-name-it. It's incredible. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to make a great show -- whether it be turning a regular car into a ridiculously huge radio-controlled toy, and then try to jump it over camper trailers... or race huge RVs. I hope that they will be able to maintain the same amount of fun in the American version.

Picture of Top Gear host Richard Hammond with Bugatti Veyron from Garrette's Flickr Photostream [flickr.com].

Picture of Top Gear set from smin's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Weekend Mechanics, Part 2

Being a weekend mechanics has just given me a great idea for a TV show.

All you would have to do is take a couple of people with wildly-overpriced educations, hand them tools and watch them attempt to fix stuff on their cars.

Having a show where you are guaranteed to see someone get hit in the face with brake fluid, etc every episode would just be pure comedy gold.

It would even be funnier if they had contestants with actual technical achievements in their career. You know:

"The next contestant has a PhD in Astro-Physics. He was the first person to identify an extra-solar planet and pioneered new techniques in radio telescope interferometry. Now let's watch as he tries to figure out how to use a wrench..."

Do I Really Need Cable?

I'm getting to the point where I am serious contemplating canceling our cable TV service. It's just getting harder and harder for me to justify the expense of it every month. Our cable bill is wildly out of proportion to the amount of entertainment we get from it.

I've been debating about bailing on the two network shows that I watch anyway. The other two shows that I have been following that I really am excited about are The Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica. I already watch The Sopranos on DVD, because we don't have HBO. And there is no reason that I couldn't watch Battlestar Galactica the same way.

I used to justify the cable bill with the sports that I watched. But over the past year, I really haven't watched any. The basketball team of the city that I live in is in the finals, and I have yet to see a minute of any of the post-season. I used to be way into the NHL (before they crappified the way overtime was run), but I didn't watch any of that this year, either. I saw about an hour of the Federer vs. Nadal French Open final. And I watch every Formula One race -- but is that really enough?

TV shows have been pissing me off. NBC has been doing weird things with the scheduling of their shows (running them 1 or however minutes over the hour), so I'm glad that they are down in 4th place now. You deserve it, you assholes. And every show is so formulaic or contrived.

Big-assed TVs

Over the weekend, Heimlich and I went to a party at a friend's house. They had recently added an addition onto their house, and the whole thing was basically every American guy's dream.

They had a HUGE living room, with surround sound speakers built into the walls. The focus point, of course, was a 50" flat screen TV. Facing the TV was plenty of seating, including one of those suede couches that sucks you in, and makes you want to fall asleep. Off the living room was an enormous deck. The deck also had speakers that were hooked up to the TV, so that you could keep track of The Game while hanging out outside. And the deck had a nook for the largest grill I have ever seen.

I mean, really, if you told the average guy to design a house in the suburbs from scratch, this would be it.

Here's the funny thing... The whole thing put the idea in Heimlich's mind that we should look at larger TVs. I don't really think that we need one (or the new entertainment center and PVR that we would have to get along with it), but we're probably the only couple that we know in which the woman is the one pushing for a larger TV.

Kill Me Now...

There are a bunch of TV shows that I watch on DVD only -- meaning that I wait until they are out on DVD, and then I rent or borrow them. There are a myriad of reasons why I do this. With the episodes on DVD, you don't have to watch commercial breaks... If there is a cliffhanger, you don't have to wait for a month to see the next episode... Plus, I can watch TV shows that come on channels that I don't get (like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, which are on HBO).

And I miss a lot of shows, because I never watch shows in real-time and they might be up against another show that I need to record. For instance, I was debating about watching The Office this season, but it is up against Smallville, which is Heimlich's favorite show.

And then there are plenty of shows (like Firefly), which I never watched when they were being broadcast, because I didn't know about them, or they didn't sound interesting at the time.

Consequently, I am WAAAAY behind the curve with a bunch of shows. I finally was able to start watching Season 6 of The Sopranos on DVD. In one of the first episodes of the season, Tony Soprano (the main character) gets shot and falls into a coma. And while he is in the hospital, the doctors tell his wife that he can probably hear them, so they should keep talking to him and play his favorite CDs for him.

That that point, Heimlich and I shared a little chuckle... Because I can't think of many things more horrifying than being forced to listen to music that Heimlich picks out for me, and not being able to communicate that I HATE HATE HATE Sting and all of his crappy music -- and that his very existence is like an insult to me.

If I'm stuck in a coma, I'm going to want to hear Zeppelin, Floyd, and the Stones. But, of course, I don't really listen to CDs, so my pitiful collection wouldn't help anyone figure out what I listen to. And I don't think that anyone would be able to figure out the MP3 player I use now. And Heimlich thinks that all of my music just sounds like untalented jerk-offs wailing away on guitars (which I can't really argue with)...