My Sick Mind

I love cable TV. With all my heart and soul. I love paying for TV. I think it's great that I can get a bill in the mail for things I don't use, like Lifetime, Telemundo and The Hallmark channel. I am, however, oddly attracted to strange channels like Weatherscan. I can get radar, weather conditions and a forecast without having to wait for The Weather Channel's "Local on the 8's." Imagine my surprise when I flipped on the TV and it was gone, along with the MLB Network and ESPN News. Perplexed, I called Comcast to find out why the screen said "Access denied." The phone rep told me that they were part of their Digital Preferred package, and I only had Digital Standard. I wondered why I've had the MLB Network since its inception and I've had Weatherscan since I bought the digital converter box a year and a half ago. They seemed like odd channels to have as part of a "preferred" package, and as far as I was concerned, they were just ...

Our local Comcast sports channel runs a pre and post-game show during every Eagles game. Last night I saw a promo for the show. In addition to the usual cast - Ike Reese, Ray Didinger, Vaughn Hebron and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (that's a topic for another day) ... the voice-over added "and the lovely Kathy Romano." There's no doubt that she is lovely. It's TV, so it's part of the reason she got the job. She does this thing called "Roaming With Romano" where she ... um ... roams around and talks to fans (guys) who probably shove each other out of the way for a shot to get close to her. That's not the point. The point is the "lovely" introduction. Is it sexist to introduce a woman as lovely if you aren't going to say something about the men on the show? Hebron is a nice looking guy, why don't they describe him as handsome? We (the societal we) feel compelled to describe women in a physical sense but men don...

The summer Olympics start later this week, I think. I’m wondering if the Olympics aren’t just as irrelevant as beauty pageants. After all, it isn’t like the athletes of the world never get together. Plus, the sham of the USA basketball team is so ridiculous that it has gone from “Dream Team” (remember them?) to just a bunch of guys. I find it difficult to summon up a lot of Olympic Pride for LeBron James and the other billionaires. So it turns out that Morgan Freeman’s car crash companion was his girlfriend and now that the cat’s out of the bag (so to speak) he’s admitted that he and his wife are divorcing. Ain’t that always the way? You’re out gallivanting with one of your wife’s friends and you flip your car over a few times. Let that be a lesson to you: If you’re gonna cheat, use public transportation. I got that Garmin nüvi thing in the mail yesterday. What an awesome little piece of technology this thing is. It comes pre-loaded with points of interest with everything from ATMs ...

I'm feeling overly cynical today. Go figure. It's a short trip from my general cynical mode to the "overly" mode, so you'll forgive me if I seem a bit put off. First, it was Major League baseball and their unusual rules, combined with the magic of cable TV to start me off for the night. I returned at 7:15 from a pleasurable bike ride to flip on the start of the Phillies-Mets game that I was told was on ESPN2 - in Hi-Definition - for which I pay a premium. But the game wasn't on ESPN2. Instead, it was on Regular-Def Comcast channel 8 in a fuzzy square screen that, if I wanted, I would have kept my old TV. I'm guessing that Major League Baseball or Comcast (equally spawns of Satan) have some rule involving the broadcast of a game in a local city, which means we here in the greater Philadelphia area have to slum-it with the fuzzy TV picture while the rest of the country gets the Hi-Def. That makes good nonsense. Meanwhile, I'm paying for the Hi-Definiti...

I'm glad you asked. I believe that, in a few short years, Sandra Bullock will have won a "Best Actress" Academy Award and will be an established star in Hollywood. I also think that the cellular phone is a fad and will soon be replaced by cups and string. We did a lot of work today. We chased the American Greetings people off of their own web site and later, they abandoned the video version of that stupid card from its spot on YouTube. Myself and others received page hits from their headquarters in Cleveland and e-mail from their PR people who tried to spin the card as some sort of comic satire. Once it was discovered that a video version was posted on YouTube by "blmountain" (clever) some noise erupted and it disappeared, like the Monster from the Tar Pits . Nice going. A doctor removed two moles from President Bush's face on Friday . They were expected to be benign. If they're looking for a malignancy, they should check the Vice President's office...

Just so you’ll know, we are losers here in the greater Philadelphia area. We are reminded on a daily basis by newspapers, television and radio that the losing has reached epic proportions. Never mind that property values are sky-high, the weather has been unseasonably warm and we live in an exciting part of the country where there is an abundance of art, history and entertainment - we are losers. Our sports teams lose, and we lose with them. We are losers by association, or so we are told. The whining has also reached epic proportions, as the “woe is me” refrain has become as old and tired as the losing. The football team that two years ago was near the top of the world is now being subjected to cries of “fire the coach” and “get a new quarterback”. In true chicken or egg fashion, I don’t know whether the fans begat the media or vice versa. Whatever the answer, the local sports media is feeding the frenzy by enabling the loser mentality. This past Sunday on our local Comcast Sp...