Market Power

For political (or history) junkies, the entire C-Span video archive is online

You probably already have heard this, but on the off chance that you might not have, the entire video archive of C-Span is online.

Here is one with a sports angle:  a hearing about funding the construction of the new Yankee Stadium using federally tax-exempt bonds.

The Original Star Trek Now Online

Via Newmark's Door.  CBS has all of the original Star Trek episodes online here.

WGN Stands For...

Did you know:

Under the leadership of Col. Robert R. McCormick, The Chicago Tribune leases enough time on the Zenith Edgewater Beach Hotel station, WJAZ, to assure               program dominance. The Tribune obtains the call letters WGN (World's Greatest Newspaper) from Great Lakes skipper Carl D. Bradley.

That was on March 24th, 1924.  On June 1st of that year, the radio station known as WDAP became known as WGN.  You can hear WGN today from a good portion of the country at 720 on your radio dial.

RIP Dennis Weaver

Dennis Weaver of McCloud and Gunsmoke fame has passed.

The old television stars are dropping like meteors.

Can You Hear Us?

Heh.  Play the video attachment.

HT to King.

The Pythons

Monty Python is one of my favorite shows of all time.  I first watched it back in the 70's - on PBS.  It was the show that many parents didn't want their kids to watch even though I don't recall my parents ever telling me I couldn't watch it.  Still, there was something forbidden about it. Maybe it was the topless woman in the news shop.  Maybe it was the incessant talk of bums and sex.  Preteen boys like that kind of stuff, generally speaking.

I still watch it.  My Tivo is full of it.  It's insanely intelligent and offbeat.  And it's still hot.

Two decades and a pop culture eternity later, "Monty Python" should by all rights resemble a dead parrot. Passed on. No more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its maker. Resting in peace.

Instead, "Python" is hotter than a Spam souffle. That's Spam as in "Spamalot," the musical based on "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" that is packing houses on Broadway, beginning a national tour March 7, opening this fall in London and taking up a 10-year residence in Las Vegas next spring.

...Make an involuntary mental substitution, though, and you might be inclined to sing "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam" while deleting pitches for mortgages and online pharmaceuticals. That we still remember these "Python" gags, or that we might like to have our memories refreshed, is the excuse for the new six-installment series "Monty Python's Personal Best," making its debut Wednesday on PBS and continuing for the next two weeks, with two episodes each night. Then, beginning in April, PBS will air every half-hour of the original series, including two "lost German episodes."

My favorite Python sketches (an incomplete list and in no order):

1. Spam
2. Twit of the Year
3. Fish Slapping Dance
4. Knowhatimean? Nudge Nudge
5. The Gits
6. The Blancmange (I believe that's the first one I ever saw)
7. Dennis Moore
8. The Spanish Inquisition
9. The Bishop
10. Lemming of the BDA
11. Consfuse a Cat
12. Ministry of Silly Walks

The Trouble With Star Trek

I spent, oh, say, 30 seconds trying to think of something witty to add to it, but considering I haven't written anything witty in over a year of blogging, I couldn't.  So I present the top 10 things to get creeped out/hate about Star Trek.

Update:  I never could understand why the folks in the Federation got rid of money.  Did they get rid of voluntary exchange too?  Is the Federation just one big autarky party?  How in the heck do they get stuff done and who decides what is to get done?

HT to Prof Palmer.

This Show Stinks!

Don Boudreaux from Cafe Hayek had the exact same experience that I had Saturday morning:

But this morning Boomerang broadcast – and Thomas watched – this episode of a series from the early 1990s called "Captain Planet." It’s awful! For the first time ever I was tempted to prevent him from watching the t.v. show he chose to watch. I resisted the temptation. But overhearing the nonsense spewing from the television made my skin crawl, my head ache, my blood boil, my soul deflate.

From what I could tell, an evil businessman had commissioned the capture and killing of elephants.  As far as style and content, the show is what you expect to get when you cross PETA and rabid environmentalism with Pokemon.  Don gives this account:

A beautiful (if rather constipated-looking) Mother Nature gazes upon the earth and laments the destruction unleashed by we foolish humans. When she looks more closely she declares, horror-stricken, "It’s worse than I thought!"

The hellish industrial scenes are allegedly from the early 22^nd century. Later in the show, a young man is transported back in time to when grass was still green and gorillas still existed. He’s stunned to find how beautiful the world was before headless humanity ruined it.

Of course, this noble young man and some friends eventually encounter an evil business man – one complete with raspy voice, sinister laughs, and motivated only by pure evil.

I tried to change the channel to something else (something more enjoyable and real-life, like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes), but my 4-year old durable, Alex, got upset.  So I watched it with him and about tossed my breakfast an hour before I ate it.  The show was that bad.