A satellite that brings people cable television (confusing, isn’t it?) has gone rogue, drifting off its course, which mean some cable subscribers could lose their signals in the days ahead.
Apparently it’s not as bad as it sounds, it will really only affect a handful of customers of some company in Europe. But because we’re part of the media, and need to sell ads ourselves: CRAZY SATELLITE THREATENS TO DESTROY CABLE TV AS WE KNOW IT!!!
Technology is advancing faster and faster these days. In my relatively short lifetime, we’ve gone from UHF/VHF to cable/satellite to digital cable to high-def to Internet TV. The next big step is nearly here. No, I’m not talking about smell-o-vision, as Looney Tunes predicted would happen in the “future” in the 1990s. I’m talking about 3-D television.
We’re already seeing it in movie theaters, and a handful of people actually care about it. It’s like TV companies are following the cues of the movie industry. They do widescreen, we do widescreen (decades later), they do digital projection resulting in a sharper image, we do high-def.
When we heard a bit over a year ago that 3-D movies were coming to theaters near us, we all laughed, picturing the blue and red glasses. We were wrong, instead its glasses that look just as bad but are the same color. And it’s ready to make its way into our homes. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: A new dimension of crappy
There is a good chance many of you don’t know this, but I am a gourmet chef. I taught myself, and I believe it is now time for me to have my own cooking show. Of course, the world is saturated with cooking shows (both the how-to and the pseudo-dramatic types), so I have used my creativity and come up with a new angle.
The show will be called The Drunken Chef. Every week, I put back a few on camera, then show you how you can make a great sauce with getting sauced. Here’s how it would go:
“Hello there, and welcome to The Drunken Chef. I am your host, Bryan. I prefer you call me by my first name because we’re all friends here, and I kind of think of this as a bar. You don’t call people Mr. So-and-so at a bar, not even your boss. Anyway, as you have no doubt noticed, during my introduction, I have downed three shots of liquor. Now, today I am using Jim Beam bourbon, because it’s not horrible and it’s less than $40 for a handle. Can’t say that about Jack, can you? Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Break the fast with the hair of the dog
When I was a kid–wait, where are you going? Stop it. I promise this isn’t some sort of “I remember when” story, despite how the lead sentence sounds. Can we start over again?
When I was a kid, I knew on weekends I could always find my dad watching golf on television. He would eat his lunch, a bologna and cheese sandwich with potato chips mixed in, and sit for hours watching. I tried in earnest several times to watch it with my dad, but my interest always wained.
You see, golf on TV is really, really boring, and this is coming from someone who sits through entire baseball games.
Sure, you can follow along if you know where everyone is and who is leading in the tournament, but the coverage is forced to skip around from one hole to the next after a single shot. This is because nearly every hole has action going on (that’s what she said) and it takes so long for golfers to walk to their next shot. The result is something along the lines of picking up a book, reading page 1, then skipping to page 56, then going to 32, then to page 2 and so on. There’s not much of a story told unless you unscramble it yourself. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Quiet on the tee, please
You may have noticed, but right now, it’s not really a good time to be a celebrity. That is of course if you like being alive. David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (not to mention Billy Mays and some actors who hadn’t worked in 20 years, but let’s stick with the big ones).
Celebrities seem to be kicking the oxygen habit left and right, and this is generally a bad career move. Some can take this as a strange coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences (ever notice how Tuesday always follows Monday? Why is that?). Clearly, there is something behind all the celebrity deaths, and I think I know just what it is.
We have too many damn famous people and its time to cull the herd. You see, media moves faster today than it did in a month just 10 years ago, and the entertainment industry tries its best to keep up. This means that we get tired of people faster and faster. After all, you can only watch someone’s star rise so far before you’re ready to see it come crashing back to Earth in a crazy, often drug-fueled, plunge. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Some people don’t need their 15 minutes
Here at SG, there are few things we don’t find humor in–recent tragedies, rape, the Boston Red Sox–and add to that list assault. Nope, assault is just not funny in the least.
In Israel, a former television star got really upset with executives who shot down his best chance for a big time comeback. He was so upset about it that he hired some thugs to rough them up. Two men and a woman ended up getting beaten up. His lawyer (notice how we’re not making jokes about a story about Jews involving the media and lawyers) of course is denying that anything like that happened.
Why are we telling you all this?
His name is Dudu Topaz. Yes, Dudu. Israel had a huge ratings getter with a first name of Dudu.
Dudu.
Hi folks. Welcome to 2009, and brand new year for news you will miss. As you may have noticed if you are reading this on Friday, You Missed It is now being published late Friday afternoons, as opposed to early Friday afternoons. If you hadn’t heard about that change until now, um, well, odds are you missed it.
Digital get-down
Did you know that television is changing over to a digital format next month? You probably did, and you are probably still really confused about it. Don’t worry, Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are trying to get the switch over date pushed back. Why? Because, among other things, the federal coupon program ran out of money a couple months ago. By the way, gang, you only need a digital converter if you get your television by bunny ear antenna–that’s it. If you have cable or satellite, you don’t need to worry. You’re welcome.
Charges of corruption and excessively-voweled last name
Today, the Illinois House of Representatives voted to impeach Gov. Rod “The Bod” Blagojevich. Some going to far as to say he had stolen the trust of the people. After the the 114-1 vote with three lawmakers not voting, the measure now heads to the state senate. Why was there one vote against impeachment and three non-votes? Blagojevich promised them all “something really f@$*ing nice. No f%&$ing kidding around.”
The Whopper Virgins will decide
Is the recession getting you down? Did you blow way too much on bar tabs and presents during the holidays? There is a meal in sight for you, for the low, low price of 10 friends. Yes, in this economy, even the value of a friendship can be worth less than something on the dollar menu. For what I assume is a limited time, Burger King will give you a Whopper if you de-friend 10 friends using their new app available on their website whoppersacrifice.com. Just to make things tougher, there’s no way delete the friends and not have it show up in the News Feed, so everyone will know you would rather 1/10 of a Whopper than their friendship. Ouch.
Every year, Americans do what we do best: sit around a table to observe a once-meaningful holiday because we’d look funny if we didn’t.
Me: Hey, Ted from Accounting. Big four day weekend, eh?
Ted from Accounting: Yep, gonna eat turkey with the family and watch some football. You?
Me: Oh, I’m going to Aruba for the long weekend to collect orgasms.
TfA: Well, that makes too much sense. Freak.
Thanksgiving, like every other U.S.-observed holiday, has auspicious, yet bullsh-t, origins. But if you boil that bathwater past the paper headdresses, you find a story that doesn’t matter anymore today: a group of proto-Americans are starving to death, yet finally scrape up enough farming to survive … until winter starts in earnest.
They’re thankful for managing with what they’ve got to enjoy each others’ presence, which ironically helps spread the cholera.
We don’t have that problem anymore. Even if we catch childhood leukemia, we still get an awesome last wish. (That’s only because Leonard Nimoy can’t catch leukemia from his Make-A-Wish cancer kid.) And we don’t really enjoy each others’ company. If it weren’t for Thanksgiving, entire families would never see each other except to marry or bury someone.
And we definitely aren’t just scraping by. Outside of a certain percentage of poor people, the modern Thanksgiving is a modern festival of consumer distractions. The table is full of food that will go uneaten, and those who attempt to finish it off will slip into a gluttony coma on the leather sofa. This happens while everyone watches a parade full of cartoon characters selling toys, the latests must-see TV stars and the pirate of plastic productions, Santa himself. Then there’s football, which features players goosed up on the latest pharmaceuticals beating Vegas odds so the owner can sell more ball caps to guys trying to find cool new ways to cover up bald spots.
Even the idea of a feast in today’s America is ridiculous. The idea of a feast is to celebrate having plenty when you normally have little. Seen those obesity numbers lately?
So, with all that in mind, here’s my list of the things that I am thankful for this year: Continue reading Take it from Snee: I’m thankful
On Saturday night, I found myself sipping a mixed drink and searching through the channels for something to watch. Finally, I came across my old standby for late night entertainment: Cheaters.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, people contact the show because they have suspicions that their lover is cheating on them. If the case is sexy enough, Cheaters goes in with all the investigative furvor it can muster. Hidden cameras, night vision, stake outs and research are all employed and compiled until, surprisingly enough, it turns out the lover is indeed cheating. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Infidelities, screaming or not
A Las Vegas television news reporter was fired from his job because he and his girlfriend went on Craigslist looking for another dude to join them in the bedroom. Wait a second, it’s Las Vegas–isn’t that what you usually have to do to get the job?
This is what I love about local television stations–anything can happen. No area is safe, even mine. And when something does happen-it always makes for great ratings, guaranteed.
