Category: TV

R.I.P., Jim Lehrer

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

It’s -30- for Jim Lehrer, co-founder of “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS.

Lehrer started out as a print guy, and maybe that’s why I liked him. He worked for papers in Dallas, where he covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and then shifted to TV, where he and Robert MacNeil were all over the Watergate hearings. He went on to moderate a dozen presidential debates.

MacNeil praised Lehrer for his “very direct manner of interviewing” and his “extraordinary ability to listen.”

“You know the hardest thing to do on TV is listen,” he added.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to watch, especially given the motley crew of talking heads that fills screens these days. Unlike the bulk of them, Jim Lehrer will be missed. You can read his obit in The New York Times here.

R.I.P., Terry Jones

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

One of our family jokes is, “’Ee’s not the Messiah, ’ee’s a very naughty boy!”

That was only one of the innumerable killer lines delivered over the years by Terry Jones, who died at home Tuesday. He was 77, and had suffered from primary progressive aphasia, a cruel disease that stripped him of his marvelous powers of communication.

As a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Jones generally wrote with Michael Palin, co-directed “Holy Grail” and “Meaning of Life” with Terry Gilliam, and flew solo as director for “Life of Brian,” which gave us that family gag we use so often.

Condolences, peace, and egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, or Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provençale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and with a fried egg on top, and spam, to Jones, his family, the surviving Pythons (“Two down*, four to go,” notes John Cleese), and their friends and fans.

* Cleese forgot to count the Seventh Python, Neil Innes. No spam for him.

Super, heroes

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
“Just one more thing. …”
Photo hijacked from the Internet. So impeach me already.

So this is impeachment.

With just two counts at the moment — basically, being a dick and punking Congress — it feels a lot like a cop catching one of the FBI’s Most Wanted driving a stolen Brinks truck full of automatic weapons, fentanyl, and dead teenagers, and then warning the guy about a busted taillight and waving him on before getting back to his donut.

I’m not sure this is gonna be must-see TV for a viewing audience grown fat on “Watchmen,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” It’s more like Mickey Mouse.

And anyway, seriously, fuck a bunch of Batman. I think a lot of us would settle for Columbo right about now.

Channel surfing

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
TV or not TV? In this case, it’s definitely TV.

Any of yis care to weigh in with a recommendation for a new TV that’s not insane?

I’m hunting one for the mom-in-law, who needs it for the new digs. Nothing huge, probably a 43-incher or under, and preferably a model with easily navigated menus and a remote that doesn’t look like the dashboard of the Millennium Falcon. Just your basic Ralph Spoilsport model, a personal remote-controlled, picture-sized color TV, with matching brass knobs, the kind where you reach above the bar and press the button right there under the handy laminated imitation-masonite Wild West gun rack with the look of real wood, for the channel of your choice.

We’re dealing with the elderly and feeble-minded here, which is to say me, a guy who hasn’t set up a new TV in the better part of quite some time.

Thanks for the insurrection, and now back to our morning concert of afternoon showtime favorites — the Magic Bowl movement from Symphony in C Minus by Johann Amadeus Matetsky.

Keep on the sunny side

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
We’ll go honky-tonkin’ ’round this town.

Anyone besides Charlie Pierce and me digging the latest Ken Burns documentary, “Country Music,” on PBS?

I’ve watched the first three episodes and my toes have been tapping throughout.

I didn’t grow up on country music, though the old man was from Florida by way of Louisiana and mom was out of Iowa. They were into crooners like Frank Sinatra and big bands like Glenn Miller and His Orchestra.

Country got me as a hippie, of all things, when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Flying Burrito Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and other alt-country groups were ascendant.

Those dudes get their due in Episode 6, and I can’t wait. Yeeeeeeehawwww, etc.