Dodgers and Cable

As of today, I am okay with what's going on with the Dodgers on tv. We have lucked out, for now, with having Time Warner Cable since they are the only ones carrying the brand-new Dodger channel. If you have read my blog on this subject before, you know that the Dodgers are one of two reasons we finally caved in and got cable tv. (The other was the Oregon Ducks football team.) 

I have no idea what will happen in the future with the Comcast/Time Warner merger. I am not optimistic. But, for now, I enjoy tuning in to spring training games (and remember fondly our trip to watch some of those spring training games a few years ago).

CBS Children's Film Festival

For some reason, the other day I remembered a movie I had seen on tv as a kid called Skinny and Fatty. Nowadays it is so easy to find out all kinds of information with a quick internet search. Up popped The CBS Children's Film Festival with Kukla, Fran and Ollie. This site here has a list of all the movies shown on Saturdays from 1967-1971. I know that I watched many of the films, all from countries all over the world (Including The Red Balloon, the most famous one), but the one that stuck in my head all these years is Skinny and Fatty which is on youtube in its entirety here.

This 45-minute show tugged at my heartstrings as a child when the new boy, a wealthy heavyset kid nicknamed Fatty arrives at school and a poor boy, Komatsu befriends him (and betrays him). The themes of bullying, being new, being different (and not being able to climb the pole) speak to all school children, and rewatching this movie recently brought it all home to me again.

New Year's Revolution

You might be enjoying the commercials where the guy is talking to four kids who say the darndest things. In the most recent ad (seen here) the kid says that his new year's revolution [sic] is to eat more jelly beans.

I'm not big into resolutions anymore. Maybe I never was, but on my walk this morning I was thinking that I am so over taking pictures of food. The food is going to have to be awfully special for me to take photos of it. I think I will now go back through my 2012 photos and remove all those food pictures.

Cost of Cable

One of the question we had about getting cable last year was asking Time Warner Cable what our cost would be after our introductory price ended a year later. They said, "We don't know." That mystified me, but we had decided that we wanted to watch sports, and we already had internet and phone with TW, so we'd take it one year at a time.

An internet search could not answer the question either, but now I have some information direct from TW. We got this letter in the mail a few days ago:

"We hope you've been enjoying your special monthly promotional rate. Currently you pay a total of $108.97 per month, which includes your promotion and any additional services and equipment you've orders. As this promotion is set to end soon, your next bill would reflect the current standard rate of $175. 46 per month.

As a thank you for your continued business, we'd like to extend you another special offer on your services.

When your promotional rate comes to an end on November 13, 2013, you'll keep enjoying the services you love for a total of $125.47 per month - that's still a savings of $49.99 per month off of the standard rate. Your new monthly price includes a promotion that will expire on October 11, 2014."

There you have it, folks. If you were wondering the true cost, here it is. Of course, this does not include taxes, which means that our current bill is closer to $120/month, not $109.

Screen-Free Week

I am way behind (or way ahead) of the official screen-free week, but I have decided to unplug from the internet for the next week. No internet means no blogging, no Facebook, no trolling mindlessly from site to site, no Words with Friends. So, when I come back, I hope to have a few more books read to report. Perhaps I will even unplug from the television, that other screen.

Take this opportunity to check out all the other fun blogs that I follow. See you in a week!

Pedestal Sinks

I know that we justified our cable subscription because we wanted to watch sporting events (Oregon Ducks Football, the Dodgers), but I also knew that I would spend a little too much time watching HGTV. And now that the summer days are still stretching out before us, it's way too easy to watch a few shows in a row.

Now that I've confessed, I have to say that even though these kinds of cute pedestal sinks appear in renovations, I would not choose one for my house. Although my sink top is not cluttered, I do like to keep a few things on it for easy access (like toothbrushes and paste and hand soap).

Summer List

I come from a family of list-makers. My family of origin as well as my created family (is that what you call it?).  For the summer I created a list of things I want to do for fun. Recently I have checked a number of them off of my list, but I still have more fun just waiting for me. Perhaps next weekend I'll check off a few more? If I finish the list before school starts, I will just have to add more to it.

Thursday Food Truck Night at the Pomona Fairplex
Kogi BBQ
Go to a Quakes Game
Beach
Movie at the Laemmle
Hike
Have a Game of Thrones Season One Marathon
Art Museum
Write a Poem or a Song or Both
More Crayon Art

This weekend we did manage to watch the 10 episodes of Game of Thrones Season One. Well, we watched 8 of the 10 and we'll finish it up tonight. One can rent an entire tv season from Video Paradiso at one time, and if you rent it on Wednesday, you get $2 off. You get to keep the set for 7 days before the fines start, so we are in good shape.

I'm liking the HBO series, as I thought I would, although I think I liked Pillars of the Earth (book and tv miniseries) more.

Borgen

In time for your summer viewing pleasure - Borgen. This political drama focuses on a (fictional) first woman prime minister of Denmark. Although it is in its third season, the first one is being run on KCET on Friday nights. You can watch the first episodes on Linktv.org to catch up and then start watching on tv. Here is a link to a Salon article about the merits of this series. And for one of my readers, it has subtitles, so, Judy, you can keep up with your Danish.

Throwback Thursday

After our great concert on Tuesday, I had a little lunchtime party with the Vista string students yesterday. They brought their lunches, I provided cupcakes. For entertainment I thought I would play them a few short videos, and these Bugs Bunny clips take me back to my childhood. The kids had never seen these classic cartoons, and they laughed good and hard at all the right spots. Plus, they heard some great classical music....

You can see The Rabbit of Seville here.

You can see What's Opera Doc? here.

Superbowl

My friend Kim sure knows how to throw a Superbowl party. This was her spread, and there were only three of us there! While I didn't really care who won, I was rooting for the Ravens as well as a good game, and I got both of my wishes.

My favorite commercial? The TIDE ad. Watch here if you missed it!

Throwback Thursday

Last Thursday's blog post about the Flowbee commercial reminded me of another set of ads we really liked (for their silliness) during our grad school days in Madison, Wisconsin. Youtube has one of the Pizza Pit ads that we liked in the winter which you can see here. The children singing are way out of tune, but I like the little car.

I wish that I could see the Pizza Pit ad which featured Barbie and Ken dolls where you could see people holding the dolls by their ankles, and where Ken dialed the phone by smashing his face into the numbers.

Flowbee Anyone?

The other night when my folks were here along with C and B, something triggered my memory of a product we used to see advertised during our grad school days in the 1980s. Knowing that so much is now on the internet, I looked on youtube for a Flowbee commercial and found one plus a number of parodies. I played this commercial for my family, and we had a good chuckle about "This revolutionary  home haircutting system [that] cuts your hair evenly into the recessed blades and trims it precisely. The results are a refreshing vacuum haircut." Yes. A Vacuum Haircut. Attach these blades to a vacuum cleaner, drag it over your head, and voila! 

Apparently you can still buy this item. Just go flowbee.com and you are on your way!

Year-End Entertainment Round-Up

I feel as though I should make some sort of "the year that was" post for this New Year's Eve. Since we went to see The Hobbit last night, I thought I would look back on the movies, tv, and books that entertained me this year.

First of all, Home Performance Matters, the company that did our house's energy retrofit, invited all its clients and staff and their families to see The Hobbit at the Laemmle all together last night. We started out with hot drinks and cookies on the Plaza (it was cold!), and then we trooped into theater 4 (the big one), nearly filling all 250 seats.

I agree with all the reviews I heard - too long, too much gore, but also great cgi, costumes, good acting, and fun for Tolkien fans. I can't believe there will be two more movies to finish this book.

The Hobbit brings our movies-in-the-theater number to 8 for this year. That number seems high and low. High, because we used to see about 2 movies in the theater every year before the Laemmle came to Claremont, but low compared to past years at the Laemmle. We need to remedy that.

As for television, we watched through 4 full series thanks mostly to the public library. We are waiting to watch more of Treme, Downton Abbey and The Good Wife.

This year I read 43 books. Two books were the second go-round, two were audio books, and I gave seven of them stars. That number is a little lower for me than usual, but some of the books were quite long.

Here's to a new year of stories!

Untethered Technology

Yes, we are dependent upon our internet connections like most of the world, but when we headed to Death Valley, we knew that we would have to cut the cord. Our cell phones don't work there, we knew the wi-fi would be limited (nearly nonexistent, actually), and the room had no tv. I don't think there were many radio stations, but we didn't check.

That was fine. We like being unplugged for a few days so we can relax and enjoy our surroundings and each other's company.

However, we did use technology for our entertainment. First of all I put an audio copy of John Grisham's Calico Joe on my iPod so we could listen during our drive. When that novel ran out, we caught up on NPR podcasts of Most Emailed Stories, and I listened to my newest favorite album recently purchased on iTunes.

We also had some DVDs of the tv show we are working on - The Good Wife - which we watched on the laptop. This was especially helpful when it got dark early. Although we also had that old technology of ink on paper which is bound together into a book, it is hard for me to read for more than an hour at a stretch, although I did finish the Oliver Sacks book during the vacation.

How ESPN Drew Us Over to the Dark Side

We finally succumbed. Apparently ESPN does not read my blog and therefore did not respond to my request to allow people without cable or Dish to subscribe to their channels independently. As of yesterday, we are now cabled up. Of course, it took a little while for us to make our choice between DirecTV and Time Warner, but since we already have internet and phone through TW, it doesn't cost too much more to add tv, so we are giving it a go.

We had a few initial problems with the box (no playback of recorded shows and disappearing audio), but after unplugging the box and rebooting it twice, we seem to be on a roll. Now my only complaint with TW is that they decided to start charging a rental fee for the internet modem (remember when we all rented our phones from Ma Bell?). We will buy our own and remove that $5 a month charge.

On the plus side, now we can watch more of our favorite sports teams, our main reason for taking the plunge, but I will try not to let HGTV take up all of my free time....First real game we'll enjoy....Ducks v Stanford tonight!

Goodbye Today, Hello This Morning

Since our early marriage we have tuned into NBC's Today Show while eating breakfast, starting our days off with Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel.

We stayed steady through the changes in the hosts, but then I noticed my frustration when they started showing more and more what I call "trash" stories - pure sensationalism, little content. I would change the channel to see what else was on, and I ended up with CBS.

Now I start the day with Charlie Rose and Gayle King.

Charlie Weaver and the Monkey

A few nights ago we were watching Pawn Stars, and it made me think about two old toys we have in the cellar.  (Yes, we have a real cellar here in So. Cal, although you have to access it from outside.) H's grandfather had given them to him, and we were keeping them safe in a box.

While watching people bring in their stuff on the show, many said that they were wanting to sell because the items were just taking up storage space. It got me thinking about these little guys - Charlie Weaver and The Monkey. 

Of course, we thought it would be fun to see what they might be worth, and after a gander through eBay, it was pretty clear that the condition of these antiques rendered them sentimentally valuable. They have seen better days, and they don't have their original boxes.

I believe that the purpose of having these guys is for our own enjoyment, and we can hardly enjoy them when they are hiding in a box, so yesterday morning I pulled them out of hiding and placed them in H's newly decorated study (replacing all of L's Breyer Horses) where we can look at them all we want.

Treme - Season 2

Thanks to the LA County Library (and inter-library loan), we just finished watching the second season of Treme, the HBO show about the life of musicians (and a few others) in post-Katrina New Orleans. I love this show. I love the music, I love the characters, I love the slow pace (which is never boring, for some reason). It is not for children, and some of the content is gritty (although the worst parts are implied and off-screen), but even in the worst of times, I feel uplifted by the spirit of the place.

Now, thanks to Kris and her loaning us her DVDs, we are about to embark on the second season of Downton Abbey.

Sacred and Profane

Last week we finished the last of all 86 episodes of The Sopranos.  The final episode caused a great deal of discussion at our house and included some web searches for the meaning of the ending.  It was great. We will miss Tony and the gang (although, by the end, there weren't so many of them left....).

To fill the void, we have now started the most popular Downton Abbey, the PBS series which has just finished its second season. I'm afraid that we are going to run through this one pretty quickly since there are only 7 episodes per season.   Those Brits.  They only had 6 episodes total (3 each season) of the fabulous Masterpiece Mystery Sherlock series.  We want more!

Schiller!

So, you know that one of our Carleton classmates, Bob Daily, writes for Desperate Housewives.  I blogged about our visit to the set of the show at Universal Studios this past January.

Word has slipped that Schiller will appear on the final episode of the ABC comi-drama, airing this coming Sunday.  Most of you will ask yourselves, who the heck is Schiller, what does he have to do with Carleton, and why should I even care?

I could spend quite a few paragraphs of the details of Schiller, or you could read about the importance of the bust of this German poet at this Carlwiki page.  I will give you a brief summary here.

It is a long tradition that a small statue of Schiller is to be held in secret by some Carl (or Carls) and must be shown at very public events.  Schiller appears at homecoming games, convocations, and other local events, but he has also been known to appear with Bill Clinton at Carleton's 2000 commencement, at the end of the Colbert Report, and at a taping of A Prairie Home Companion.

Also appearing in the final episode, Bob will have a cameo appearance as Moving Man #2 (it would appear that Marc Cherry is Moving Man #1).

For us Carls, this is considered pretty extremely exciting news.  For the rest of you, I promise to return to Life in Claremont  tomorrow.