Mr. North Goes to New York

Okay, New Yorkers, what do you think?

Of all the Chicago radio hosts, Mike North fits in best with what I perceive s the New York mentality. He is purposely in-your-face, he is armed with arguments honed from the bar rails of Chicago, and he is fearless, as shown in his now infamous press conference appearance with Pat Riley.

On the other hand, if you ask around, nobody here likes him. Somehow, some way, he just keeps upping the ante on his radio career, now playing a two day gig in Don Imus' old slot on WFAN in New York. Nobody likes him, but he gravitated to the number one slot on the Score. Nobody likes him, but he gets on TV on a regular basis and has been bringing in some high profile radio lately, thanks to Jesse Jackson and Ozzie Guillen's potty mouth.

Yesterday, I listened to the Score, where his old partner Dan Jiggetts is filling in, pulling in clips from Mike's New York adventure. This morning, I went for the straight stream off of WFAN's web page. What I hear is a Chicago guy going out of his way to step on New York's toes. He is attacking their conventions and beliefs, and not apologizing for it. In an interview last week he said outright that he knows he's not the right guy for the job in New York because he is SUCH a Chicago guy.

By the way, this is not the way Mike North acts 100% of the time on the air. He is on some sort of caffeinated tear. Yes, he often says things just to incite, even in Chicago, yes, he is bombastic, but in the end, after all the production, he is a real guy. Any person on the radio eventually reveals what they are beneath, many of them displaying ugly ego's and tastelessness in the constant conversations.

Chicago's sports radio hosts have all set their own tones, and most of them, all but one, have shown themselves at one time or another to be snobs. I have no respect or time for someone that thinks they are better than their listeners. Mike North doesn't talk down to anyone.

That why I like him, and that must be why he continues to prosper.

DVR Tragedies

I'm fairly new to the whole DVR/Tivo thing. In fact, I still usually just call it Tivo, and don't much care if it isn't or if that's the wrong thing to say. So what? If you say Tivo, everyone knows you mean recordable TV, right? Yeah, so everyone should get it.

We've had ours now for about a year, and have slowly let it change the way we watch anything. For instance, more than not I will wait for a show to be over or at least several minutes running to start watching it, and be able to scan thru the ads. I've also found that some shows I just let run and inhale like any other television, instead of being bothered to FF thru the ads. Our unit has a glitch that makes speeding thru them a pain sometimes anyways, going into loops so it seems like you are FF-ing forever.

What it's great for is getting the two of us together to watch the stuff we like, but lately, especially Mondays, there are so many programs on at one time that even with DVR getting two stations at a time and two different time zones to choose and record from, we have problems.

So tonight I actually had to go downstairs and watch the Cubs game because the unit had to turn to a station to start recording our late run of programs. I can't help but laugh at myself about that. This has to be some milestone.

Thank God You're Here - and you don't suck.

Thank God You'reHere - Fill-in programming that doesn't suck

It's once again that time of the television season where we are getting fill-in programming,and luckily it can't all be Deal or No Deal. The first one I've actually checked out is Thank God You're Here.

Thank God You're Here is a mix of What's My Line, and SNL. They write skits, with several actors playing pre-written plots, and drop in an actor who is sworn in before the show as to having seen no script, scene, or costume until they are given them, to wing their own part. Guided Improv, with name actors and celebrities that are either going to make you laugh or stub out what is left of their usually dwindling careers.

They have some near top-shelf names, Jason Alexander for one, and a lot of other character actors and celebrities, mostly B(or C)-list, who you know when you see them. It's hosted by David Alan Grier with Dave Foley as a mock judge ala Drew Carey. He gives lightly weighted comments and picks the best each night to win a token trophy, which I am sure goes up next to the Emmies and Oscars these actors don't have.

To hear the premise, this show sounds like a train wreck, but for the first four episodes it works. Most of these people are really funny, and it shows through. The Malcom in the Middle Dad, Bryan Cranston, was especially good. The skit in the photo on the right, with Harland Williams was one of the best, though I barely recognize the guy. and there have been other standouts too. Even Shannon Elizabeth managed to get some laughs. The supporting cast that they work the skit with is very good and the scenes are wide open for someone to improv through.

I'd love to see this showed ramped up a little bit, say, bring in a spoiler each week, one of the acknowledged pro's at improv, Wayne Brady, Ryan Stiles, or their other cohorts from "What'sMy Line," the change-up could do both sides good.

Bullfighting - Sometimes the Bull Wins

I know almost nothing about Bullfighting, outside of the depiction in childhood cartoons and the occasional clip that appears on TV. This is surely because of what it is and that in general it is purged from the mainstream. The cruelty of it is shielded from the general public and not allowed to be glorified either.

Still, though I knew about it in general, I did not realize that sometimes the Bull wins. There is video of one Bull victory, but yesterday another incident occurred that can have the Bulls chalking up another mark. I don't mean to be insensitive, especially because this time, they got a teenager. Apparently, this 14 year old left Spain to fight Bulls in Mexico at his young age, and nearly got himself killed.

Public outcry has amped up even more, and I wonder, are the animal rights activists cheering for the Bull? It says in the article that the teenager had earned the right through several victories over his two years of bullfighting to cut the ears off of a defeated bull. WTF? Like I said, I knew little to nothing about the sport, but there can be nothing right about this teenager getting "carried several yards with a Bull's horn in his thorax and his lungs punctured." All reports that I have read seem optimistic about his recovery. Does the bull get his ears?

Okay, that was mean. Sorry. It should be his father's ears. Apparently, the Darwin Awards theory missed his father by allowing him to reproduce, to his son's misfortune.

The Dresden Files - Season review

Harry Potter doesn't wholly appeal to me. It's come around a little later in my life, and though the child in me wants to like it because of the fantastic worlds and magic-themed stories, I just can't help but look at these kids and think that very soon they will be shaving and making bad "coming of age" movies, then playing secondary characters on second-tier sitcoms. Of course, that's a whole different avenue and I'm not here to put down the Harry Potter kid. I'm here to talk about Harry Dresden.

I found a new way of looking at the Sci-Fi channel that has me watching more than a few hours of their porgramming lately, a nostalgic theme. I see the movies they usually offer and am reminded of my afternoons as a youngster, tuning into WFLD ch. 32 in Chicago for the Saturday Afternoon Sc--Fi Block, Godzilla, Gamara, and Kung-Fu. The Sci-FI Updates to that Genre are bearable, but make me realize that I'm tired of that formula.

I got pulled into the Dresden Files pretty easily. Despite being disappointed by most series I saw on the Sci-Fi Channel, I decided to check it out one night. Saving it to the DVR and figuring ti would be better to watch sometime than what I end up scanning through some other times. Now I have it on automatic recording and have developed an opinion about the series itself.

It's fun. I like the constantly grungy Dresden and still appreciate the weekly hot female they bring in along with the other supporting characters. It's not high mission television, it is just good entertainment. It remminds me more of "The Night Stalker," than the actual remake of the Night Stalker, which I could not get into, and it isn't so deeply plotted that you have to get the season on DVD to follow the plotlines. There are some plot strings throughout the series, but mostly you get one story per episode, with the big three, beginning, middle, and ending.

Last Sunday night was the Season Finale. I'm not really sure about the status of this show for next year, but Sci-Fi channel being what it is, they will be airing this season's episodes quite often I am sure, and probably bring it back. They should.

Most Internet buzz I have found so far is about the books, which are of course lauded as superior, but I don't know about that yet. Fans of a book series seem to usually hate the video adaptations, but if the books are so much better, I am checking them out. One things the television series does is bring some orignality to the old cop show formula. Harry's recurring partner in crime-solving, Murphy, is a Police Detective that keeps landing cases that need Harry's special abilities. Slowly she keeps finding out about the world of magic and Harry's place in it, something against the rules of what serves as Harry's governing board, the High Council. This is one of the plot strings and so far Murphy is the only female that Harry is involved with that is recurring.

The tone of the show is just a notch below camp, not taking itself too seriously but not being overly melo-dramatic or throwing out dialogue that just makes you groan with incredulity. It's nice to have something like this that doesn't make you have to deal with Charmed or Buffy and their luggage.

Take Down Imus - Check ...Next?

It was an inglorious process, anybody celebrating the fall of Don Imus has missed the point as mush as he does himself. How it went from a stupid, insensitive comment on an obscure cable show to the nightly, news scrolling, cross platform beating that it was has been well chronicled, even I jumped in a little bit, because I didn't think that dragging his comments out into the public eye was good for anyone.

Am I glad he got fired? I'm indifferent.

He was less than a blip on my own radar, coming into my zone only slightly before the public put him in their cross-hairs. There are much worse people saying worse things out there, but he definitely had no business saying what he did. I'm glad those girls got to show the country they were not what he called them, and I'm glad that has been called to national attention.

Now I see some media people trying to throw others under the bus with them. One is Jay Mariotti(wiki), writer, Chicago loudmouth, and sometimes "Around the Horn" guest/host. I'm really not sure if he is on television anymore, because I definitley don't seek him out. He has a tired act in Chicago, acting like the Rosie O'Donnell of the Midwest by picking fights with everyone. There is a hater web-site that carefully chronicles Jay's misploits. What I did catch, was his Sun-Times column where he tries to lump Chicago radio personality Mike North of Chicago's sportstalk station, 670 the Score, in with Imus and the recently exiled Pacman Jones and Chris Henry. It is an undisguised hatchet-job on North, who didn't ask for or deserve it, but he can take the shots.

Speaking of which, he took another shot in the tribune from Ed Sherman for his Friday morning interview with Jesse Jackson, who wanted to grab one last bit of spotlight before he goes home to wait for the next 'national crisis' he needs to speak about. I nearly changed the station hearing that he was coming on, because I'm tired of the 'Jesse Jackson Show', but I'm glad I listened to most of it.

The interview is available online at the Score's web site if anyone else wants to hear it now, but this is what I took away from it. Jesse came on, I guess he insisted on doing the interview face to face with North, and wanted to talk about how he had helped rid the country of another evil man, and helped the cause of equality, and North made him work for it.

Very quickly, Mike North switched from the topic of Don Imus to that of the Duke Lacrosse Team, and tried to hold Jackson accountable for his condemnation of the accused boys now that they have been cleared. Jackson tried to wiggle of the hook, but North made it stick for a while. Mike North is not Mike Wallace, but he held up for some time.

In the end, we did get some of Jesse's personal agenda over the air, but I have to admit, that once he gets past his sensationalized sound bites, Jesse has valid things to say, if not original. He admitted that he actually felt sorry for Imus, who is now national media roadkill, but never admitted much of what he said about the Duke boys, though it is on videotape.

As for North, he came away even better in my eyes, because rough edges and all, he remained true to the image he portrays, which I really think is actual, and did whatever he could to pin down one of the most slippery politicians of his generation. I don't hold it against him that he didn't quite nail him down.

SMODCAST - Hanging out with Kevin Smith

SMODCAST

I've fallen behind the times, near critically. There has to be a juncture in which a person realizes that he or she is so detached from anything that is current that they give up and content themselves with the way of life they had grown comfortable with. You really don't have to change with the times if you don't want to, to put it in programming terms, going about your business is backward compatible. Sure you can pay your bills online and get just about everything else, but how many people still make sure they mail everything off?

My Dad, now gone, refused to use answering machines, or own a cell phone. How many people are there like that walking around that you don't even give a single thought to? Cell phones themselves are a cultural divide, now compounded with texting, camera phones, and MP3 players. At some point, everyone comes around a little, but it wasn't too long ago that the phone in my grandparents house was so important that we turned down the television and all sat in hushed silence as Grandpa answered.

All this just to say that I just recently discovered Podcasts. Yea yea yea, I know, but I have always and still do listen to a lot of talk radio, sports talk radio. I like music just fine, but after a while the songs start repeating, no matter what station you listen to, and none of them play the off the chart stuff I like. I started listening to Podcasts because I get tired of Sports talk radio too, or at least certain hosts that only grate on my nerves, adn sometimes you can't get good radio reception out here in the sticks.

The first Podcast I've found I can just sit back and listen to, often entertained and rarely annoyed, is Smodcast, with Kevin Smith and Scot Mosier. Everyone knows who Kevin Smith is, Scot Mosier is in his movies too, but I'm not sure who he is. I'm just not enough of a fan I guess, but listening to these two guys talk, I don't think it will bother either one of them for me to write that.

It's not a crazy zoo atmosphere, it's just the two of them talking, and they are funny a lot of the time. Just Kevin Smith's sheer openness helps things along, but he is a little too obsessed with homosexuality sometimes. Every Smodcast, at this point there are 9, at some point covers some homo-erotic episode or comparison, and though there's nothing wrong with that, it gets tedious.

Don Imus and his circus - One Last Time

The media bubble is nearly at his fullest around the ignorance of Don Imus. He has channeled some pathetic, humbled, spirit to make his continuing watered down apologies, once again missing the point.

"I'm not thinking it's a racial insult that's being uttered at somebody at the time. It's in the process of trying to rap and be funny." he said. But he added, "I wish I hadn't said it. I'm sorry I said it."

He has been suspended for two weeks and made a slew of new statements, looking and sounding very defeated. He put himself in the Dunce chair for Al Sharpton. After years of making fun of buffoons in the media, he is one. Am I the only on that sees the justice in this, despite being annoyed with it?

The only way that he really goes away is if people stop listening to him. I have met one person that listens to Don Imus, a hospital patient transplanted from the east coast that had him on MSNBC every morning. I liked the patient but never found enough interesting to listen to or watch Don Imus. So why have I wrote about him three times? Because of the media circus it has turned into, and as I said originally, before, just his viewers knew what he said, now the whole country knows. If I was a parent, I would be asking every media outlet why it is okay for them to REPEAT his comments over and over. Hold him accountable, and move on.

The Usual Suspects Gather Up for Imus' head

Nobody can sniff a headline for Jesse Jackson, even if he isn't as quick as he used to be. The Reverend Jackson is planning a protest against Don Imus and his ignorance in Chicago now. The Rev. Al Sharpton has also stepped up, Imus will be on Sharpton's radio program, letting the whole region be a bug on the wall.

Imus' apology misses the point for me, he still doesn't get it.

"Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it,"

- Don Imus on his radio show," courtesy CNN.com

Sorry Don, to me it's not that they don't deserve it, nobody deserves it. If you can't find a better way to have fun with a subject(s), move to the next topic.

Worse to me is the bandying about that has come in response to him. Does Jesse Jackson have a strategic protest plan laid out in his office, a council that comes in the minute that race gets into a headline? Being from the Chicago area, I'm tired of him jumping on every bandwagon he can find. I'm not black, but I was offended. Now, I'm just irritated with the what was probably inevitable media blow-up around the simple, stupid, wrong comment.

Don Imus Makes A Stupid Comment - Why Do we Have to Keep Hearing It?

Don Imus Makes A Stupid Comment - Why Do we Have to Keep Hearing It?

On the radio this week, radio and sort-of-television morning personality Don Imus made a stupid, sexist, racist, insensitive comment. I won't repeat it because then I am just feeding the machine, even more than writing this column. If you haven't heard it,or read the transcript, a quick search at all the regular media outlets will get it for you. He crossed the line, even with someone like me that completely disdains political correctness. If I'd been listening to him, I might have just shaken my head and changed the station, thinking that once again I should have known better than to listen to him.

That's what everyone should do when they hear something like that coming out of the mouth of people that they allow to clutter their morning sounds. Turn him off, tune him out. More radio disc jockeys get run off for poor ratings than for poor taste. And when he says something like this, though Imus is surely far past being a shock jock in these days, he has achieved the same results.

Now there is buzz about him, ESPN is running a full segment of the clip on Sportscenter, which means that not only did he say it, it is echoing through the halls of todays media. As I said, it is everywhere on the web, it is all over the major news outlets, why is it okay to repeat something that was so offensive in the first place? They cloak it in self-righteousness, yet repeat the offending phrases for millions more to hear.

How about handling it like this, "In other news, if you feel like hearing an ignorant old man display just how little he cares what anyone else thinks is offensive, tune in to Don Imus, but seriously, don't waste your time." Instead, Rutgers head coach Vivian Stringer has lashed back and surely soon the usual suspects will step up to a podium somewhere to get their own names attached to the outrage. Or maybe just start an equally ignorant, low rung rumor to counter.

What he's saying is the kind of ignorant prattle you can get down at the dumpy tavern on the corner or at the drill press in your local sweat shop, and it should be left there.

What makes it okay for ESPN to replay it so many times?