Category: TV

Chewing the fat

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Coming clean on Soaprah? Photo © Harpo Studios Inc. | George Burns
Coming clean on Soaprah? Photo © Harpo Studios Inc. | George Burns

If you had any nagging doubts about the purpose underlying the pending mea culpa from the One Ball To Rule Them All on Soaprah, doubt no more.

Ms. Winfrey has issued a breathless bit of PR announcing that her two-and-a-half-hour chat with Ol’ Whatsisface will be aired over not one, but two evenings, this coming Thursday and Friday.

Having chatted up more than a few people over my 35 years in the news biz I can assure you that no interview is worth running in its entirety, especially when the person asking the questions has zero understanding of the matter at hand.

Were I to sit down for an interview with Paul Krugman, for example, at least 90 minutes of our chat would be devoted to me saying, “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” That sort of thing hardly makes for must-see TV. So I presume there will be more heavily perfumed fat in this chat than there is on Soaprah’s ass.

A colleague suggested via email that this “is the big moment we’ve talked about for a decade.” I replied, “No, actually, the moment I had been waiting for was seeing The One Ball To Rule Them All sitting in a courtroom, answering to another sort of inquisitor altogether. This is all Kabuki for Kash. It has less to do with justice than with illustrating the value of a white skin and a fat wallet. Had he been a brother shoplifting a 40 from 7-Eleven he’d have been doing pushups in the prison exercise yard a long time ago.”

Another colleague, the estimable Charles Pelkey, has proposed that he and I live-update the sucker as in the good old days. I had planned to take the high road and ignore the whole tawdry affair, but I’ll confess there is a certain appeal to the idea of throwing gobbets of rotten fruit, sacks of cat shit and bons mots as the tumbrel rumbles by.

Any interest out there in DogLand? Sound off in comments.

How does this make you feel?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

Guess who’s going on Oprah?

I really should avoid redistributing shit like this, but it sure beats trying to write your own comedy while recovering from the Masque of the Red Death. As the NYVelocity crowd noted via Twitter, “Oh fer chrissakes there’s another Toto outrun by reality.”

Joe Lindsey has tweeted a call for questions to be posed to TCWSNBN, and some of the offerings are worth a look. If you are of the Twitterati, look for hashtag #questionsforlance. Hell, kick in a few yourselves. Everybody dance.

Rouleurs and Stooges and ’cross, oh my!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Edward R. Furrow
Never give a mad dog an open mic'.

Friend of the site Larry T., commenting over at VeloNoise, directed me to a witty review of cyclo-cross commentary American style by his pals at Rouleur magazine.

Naturally, I was inspired to bang out my own take on things.

Maybe it’s that I’ve spent too many years working alone from a home office, but I find myself less tolerant of racket in my advanced geezerhood. And that’s what I find most homegrown cycling commentary to be.

No disrespect intended to Dave Towle, Richard Fries or Brad Sohner, who had a more restrained delivery than his two comrades. It takes ’nads to put yourself out there, mic’d up and on camera, and then crank up the old P.T. Barnum for a few hours (“Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry!”). I’d just like to see them dial down the theatricality a click or two or three. That sort of bombast is hard on an iMac’s speakers.

There’s plenty of drama inherent in the racing. No need to slather on more. It’s like watching someone take a can of Krylon to a Moots.

Meanwhile, my fellow geezers are mixing it up at the 2012 masters cyclo-cross worlds in Louisville, and all the usual suspects are serving up the whup-ass from a muddy 55-gallon drum. It would be fun to be there.

But it would be even more fun to be there in 2013, when Eva Bandman Park hosts the UCI Cyclo-cross Elite World Championships. Hell, if I can get there I might be doing some hollering my own bad self. “One to go! Onetogo onetogo onetogo!”

Fox in the video henhouse

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Abbey Normal Road, from Matt Groening.
Abbey Normal Road, from Matt Groening.

Bwah ha ha ha ha, as those crazy kids say today. In an Associated Press article noting that revenue from commercials is falling short of keeping TV moguls in private jets, Botoxed girlfriends and Tuscan villas, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch warns that the viewing audience should expect to pay more for satellite and cable service.

“Good programming is expensive,” bleats Murdoch.

How the hell would he know? Looking for “good programming” on TV in general, and Fox in particular, is like looking for virgins in a Nevada brothel. One may turn up now and then, but she won’t last long.

And yes, “The Simpsons” is the exception that proves the rule.

Murdoch and his News Corporation are frantically hunting new revenue streams, dreaming of the day when Fox News, the Times of London and The New York Post can join The Wall Street Journal in walling off all or part of their content, reserving it for paying customers only.

Yeah, good luck with that. While people may be willing to pony up for entertainment, news is another breed of dog altogether. Notes Alan B. Mutter, a media consultant and blogger, in a New York Times story: “One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs. They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”

Stupor Sunday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Another month, another gray, chilly morning. February differs from January just how, exactly? Oh, yeah — it’s shorter.

No Yanks atop the podium at the frozen crit the Dutch called ‘cross worlds, though homegirl Katie Compton got the bronze in the women’s race.  The men’s race looked like a Belgian team time trial. Memo to UCI: If there’s no mud on your skinsuit and shoes at the finish line, it is not cyclo-cross.

Thirty-six and windy here in Bibleburg, yet my man Dr. Schenkenstein is already out and about, logging miles. At some point he’s bound to turn up on my stoop, wearing everything he owns and calling me a pussy because I like to ease gradually into my Sundays, like a fat man getting into a hot bath. God doesn’t even get up until noon, so I try not to incur His wrath by starting a ride any earlier than 10 a.m. With everything that’s going on in the world I figure He needs all the sleep He can get.

I understand there’s some lesser sporting event taking place today in Tampa. Alas, lacking cable or satellite we will be denied the dubious pleasure of play, commercial, play, commercial, play, commercial. Talk about your ad infinitum. We get ABC, CBS, PBS and suddenly a couple other off-brand digital channels after scoring a flat-panel TV for a joint solstice present. No NBC. And anyway, it’s wrong to watch TV in daylight hours, unless cyclo-cross — real cyclo-cross, with mud, weather and lots of running — is on.