Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
My Obnoxious Column
Monday
January 19, 2004
I owe a great big thank you to Neal Boling for suggesting to me that I try the
Bright House DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Bright House is my cable company (formerly known as Time Warner here in the Tampa market), and they offer the service as a competition to TiVo. Now I had been toying with the idea of getting TiVo for some time (thanks to the many recommendations I'd heard about it), but the DVR seemed too good to pass up. No contracts or commitments, no $300 box to buy, no phone lines tied up. I just traded in my old cable box for a new, slightly larger digital box. And, for about $9 or so more per month, I now have the capacity to digitally record programming. Up to 40 hours worth, I believe. This, to me, is a godsend.
See, for the longest time I've had these premium movie channels, which are great and all. But the problem is that I'm busy and don't have time to find out what's playing on Thriller Max West at 2:30 AM on Thursday. So I miss out on things I might like to see, things I've paid to have the privilege to see. Ditto for situations where I flip to a movie that's 20 minutes in progress. At that point I've missed enough to where it would almost feel like a waste to jump in at that point (this has happened I think three times to me with the movie Super Troopers).
So on Friday, taking Neal's advice literally right away, I went out and got the DVR. And right away it paid dividends. This weekend I watched
Changing Lanes (not as good as I had heard),
About Schmidt (excellent film, much better than I'd heard), a one-hour
David Cross stand-up comedy routine from HBO, and
The Scorpion King (action-comedy with WWF/WWE superstar The Rock in a leading role). Tonight I finally watched
Punch-Drunk Love, which, sadly, disappointed me (though, to be fair, I hold
P.T. Anderson's work to an insanely high standard). Though it's likely that Punch Drunk Love will forever retain the record of being the only movie that I've actually been scheduled to go see on a date with two different girls with only to not end up seeing it with either one.
Also tonight, I used the wonderful "fast forward through commercials" feature to watch Fox's My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé in about 45 minutes. I waited till about 9:10 to go in and start watching, but actually caught up to real time in skipping the commercials and had to pause it and play a game of WWE Smackdown on the PS2 to let the commercials play out. Yes, it's safe to say that I love my DVR.
As for the show, it was surprisingly entertaining. I'm all reality-TVed out, but this one was funny as hell, since the rib was on the girl not knowing that the poor man's John Belushi (her "fiancé" who's actually an actor trying hard to screw up things as much as possible) is swerving her. They had to cast this show carefully; having a girl who'd be too forward would've caused problems, since she would've been telling him off the whole time. But she also needed to have at least some backbone and be willing to speak out on camera. Oh, and she needed to be drop-dead gorgeous, and have a family who would give her seven kinds of hell over the fiancé situation. Seems like a great job on all counts by Fox.
Last night, thanks to a tip from Scott Massey, I caught most of a very unusual episode of Celebrity Poker on Bravo. Mr. Show's David Cross won, but the casting was crazy in that Creed lead singer Scott Stapp was one of the gamblers. That got me thinking of Jeff Riley, who used to always talk about the World Series of Poker and about having Stapp and Creed. And for the two forces to be combined... hahaha, that was great. The championship finale game airs tomorrow night at 9 PM on Bravo. Here's hoping David Cross wins it all.
Here's a question to ponder: if you could cast any six people alive today in a game of Celebrity/Texas Hold 'em Poker (with at least two men and two women), who would you pick? And why? Without giving this a great deal of thought, here's my list. Note that I'm leaving out smartass answers (like "The Executive Meddler, so she can lose first and then somehow blame it on Kevin Pollak in the loser's room interview.")
1) Bill Clinton. Forget politics, I think he'd be a blast to have at any party or card game. Contrary to what stand-up comics would have you believe, you have to be very, very intelligent to be president of the United States of America. And just imagine the bluffing when it comes time to bet. If you can play the high-stakes b.s. political game in DC for eight years in the White House, you can likely win at cards.
2) Vaughn Weddle. My high school Physics teacher. A great guy, and probably the best Trivial Pursuit player I've ever met. Father Ryan High School really screwed up by running him out of there last year (I'm still mad about that). He'd be the "who is he?!?" contestant of the crew, but the crowd would be laughing at his jokes and he would play the game well.
3) Luis Guzman. Luis is included, if nothing else, so he could accuse Clinton of conspiring to conspire against him (if you've seen the movie Traffic, you know what I'm talking about). Plus I would then tape it on my DVR, edit it on my computer and put together a special Luis Guzman montage DVD especially for John Pouncey.
|  | | Brooke Burns can play at my table anytime. |
4) Mike Martz. The coach of the St. Louis Rams, wearing that "I'm smarter than you" smug look... all the way back to the loser's room. Decides to fold on an Ace-Jack before the flop because he wants to "win his way."
5) Brooke Burns. She's unbelievably gorgeous, very articulate... and maybe she can be convinced to play topless. It's worth giving her a spot at the table just on the outside chance that it could happen. Who's with me on that?
6) Meredith Vieira. She went from The View to hosting the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. There's a sexiness about her that's different, something unique that comes across on camera. And she sure looks much younger than 50.
If you care to send in your list, then e-mail it to me at LouPickney@hotmail.com. If there are any I feel are worth mentioning, I'll include them in a future posting.
After all my bitching yesterday about taking grief over the Colts, first thing at work today I heard was the business about Peyton Manning and the Colts. "Where's your Colts jersey now?" Patrick Brown asked me. Hey, at least my team made the playoffs and had a winning record (though since I do like the Bucs, I can't get all livid at Bucs fans when that happens like I do at, say, Dolphins fans who do similar things). Plus with Manning as the background picture on my computer, I heard about it all the more. But it's not as if I was going to change it to DeShaun Foster's picture or something...
Tomorrow: automobile deliberations, probably more rambling about sports (including an aside about the Larry Fitzgerald NFL ruling, which I've already updated on DraftKing.com), and a picture from Len Clark outside of 890 KBBI in cold, snowy, freezing cold Homer, Alaska (reminding me for the millionth time why I love living in Tampa).
|
