Jerzei Collie's journal

I turned on Boomer's KiwiSDR feed for AM 690 this afternoon. Hearing Deep Purple's "Black Night" reminded me of the metal cover Leo did.

I re-scanned my HDTV last night and saw a station south of Pueblo is available locally. A year or two ago, the owners of KSPK channel 28 in Walsenburg purchased two translators in Pueblo and Colorado Springs which used to broadcast the Trinity Broadcast Network. KSPK airs the minor network AMGTV along with regional college sports. I got an error when I tried to tune it in on my HDHomeRun app, and my TV originally couldn't get a signal strong enough to be viewable. (This station is low-power and technically broadcasts on VHF channel 11.) I finally got a clear picture after hooking up an antenna amplifier.

I turned on channel 57-4 today and saw AntennaTV was broadcasting! I set up my DVR to record Johnny Carson's shows. Looking at the schedule for next year, I didn't see the 90-minute (1970s) weekend episodes listed. Hopefully those can be brought back another time. It's nice to have two classic TV channels next to each other (Laff on 57-3 and AntennaTV on 57-4.)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My sleep schedule is still a little wacky, but it's getting closer to normal. I slept for about 5 hours Wednesday morning, then took a 2.5-hour nap in the early evening.

Either my TV or the TV remote is acting up. I thought the remote just needed new batteries, but it still didn't work after replacing them. Pressing the power/volume buttons on the TV itself didn't work, either. My TV is a cheap brand that's been discontinued, and the remote programming codes for the brand don't work with my DirecTV remote. I hope I don't have to replace the TV anytime soon. It's still in good shape despite the remote issue.

EDIT: The remote will work if I hold it around a foot away from the TV. Of course, that kind of defeats the purpose of having a remote.

A political discussion at work brought up memories of an old comedy song. Some co-workers were talking about political candidates Doug Lamborn and Robert Blaha. The news director said shortening the latter's name to Bob Blaha reminded her of the song "Rappin' Duke" by Shawn Brown. She said she imagined Blaha's name being sung in place of the "daa-haa daa-haa" chorus



A few others and I thought of "Bob Loblaw," Scott Baio's attorney character from Arrested Development:



After a while, I remembered I had heard "Rappin' Duke" on the 1980s TV lip-sync competition show Puttin' On The Hits.

I won't answer phones at KRCC on Friday since I have a Toastmasters meeting then. I wanted to sign up for shifts next Tuesday, but they were all filled.

I just viewed former MSNBC Live host Cenk Uygur's video from The Young Turks explaining why he left MSNBC and the events which led up to it. Uygur cited ratings which showed MSNBC Live beat the Fox News show which aired against it. Uygur said network officials told him people in Washington, DC "didn't like his tone" when he criticized politicians.

NBC in general has a long track record of hiring people for being different, then ordering them to stop being different (Howard Stern, the casts of Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brien and Keith Olbermann.) This trend increased when General Electric bought RCA (NBC's former parent company,) and again when Comcast bought 51% of NBC/Universal. The excuse usually given is "People outside of California and New York won't get it," as if they picture the other 48 states as one giant corn field.

With the U.S. economy in the condition it's in, and with politicians trying to hold services and funding hostage to secure a budget deal, it's the job of news commentators to speak out against anything that negatively affects their viewers, whether the management/advertisers/politicians like it or not. This is why I'm glad the Internet offers alternative viewpoints from all sides. Some of them don't have the viewer numbers of the big networks, but they also don't have a group of suits telling them what to say and think.

EDIT: About that last sentence: Whenever someone hates a show (particularly a political news/talk show,) the weakest excuse anyone can give is "They only have, like, 3 viewers"or "Their ratings are sinking." Quantity and quality are not always mutual. TV shows like Arrested Development got poor ratings, but most of the people who did watch it over its three-season run (including myself) enjoyed it. Internet streams, public access cable TV shows and community radio stations are doing what larger media companies hardly ever do anymore: giving a voice to people whose views are either not heard or are drowned out by the opposition. If I like a show or agree with a certain viewpoint, why should it matter how many or how few people share that view? I'd love to start my own stream, but I know I wouldn't have enough fresh material to fill even a half-hour per day.

I watched the Larry King Live interview on CNN tonight with the Imam who wants to build an interfaith community center two blocks from Ground Zero, along with reactions from others on Anderson Cooper 360. Somehow, I think I got a different feed of the interview than some of the folks who commented on it. I read several comments on the CNN site saying "he should make it an interfaith center instead of a mosque," even though the Imam had already stated that's what the building would be.

To be honest, the panelists calling the plan insensitive came off as very insensitive themselves. One of them (a woman whose husband was a firefighter killed on 9/11) kept cutting off the others who tried to give an opposing view and even suggested the Imam "build it in the Middle East."

The jaw-dropping moment of the night, however, came from a man who objected to being called a bigot. He then suggested the interfaith center should have a Christian church on the top floor ("because Christians built this great nation,") a Jewish synagogue below that and the Muslims on a lower floor. I thought for a moment I had switched over to "TV Land" and was watching Archie Bunker. Of course, this person whined that he was being "attacked" when another panelist questioned this so-called logic.

Bill Hicks was right. Some people need to "squeegee their third eye" and not blindly form an opinion without hearing both sides. Perhaps more people need to study this chart which explains things rationally:


I finished writing my Toastmasters speech after watch these programs. I'll go over it tomorrow morning and make an outline on note cards.

I saw an ad on TV earlier for a colon-cleansing pill called Colon Flow. Hearing the name reminded me of the parody commercial for Colon Blow cereal from Saturday Night Live in the late-1980s.

Colon Flow:


Colon Blow (Not viewable worldwide):

I hope a good night's sleep tonight will help my voice heal. A lack of sleep (due to my cold symptoms keeping me awake the past few nights) tends to weaken it. If I don't hear at least a partial improvement by Tuesday, I'll ask my dad to call an ear, nose and throat specialist. One of KRCC's listeners, who spoke through the aid of an electronic speech device, urged me to be checked for throat cancer since that's how her voice became damaged. It definitely wouldn't hurt to check for that, so I'll see if any ENTs will accept my health discount plan. I don't smoke, but I do spend a little time around co-workers who do.

Another LJ user had posted the lyrics to "Over The Rainbow" from The Wizard Of Oz in a recent entry. I was reminded of Mandy Patinkin performing this song on Late Night With David Letterman in 1987 or 1988.

There was another meeting tonight for the C.S. Tweetup group. This meeting was held at Champps restaurant in Briargate. Meteorologist Matt Meister from KRDO-TV did a live weather report from the restaurant and even interviewed one of the participants.

(EDIT: Video and pictures removed by request.)