dre in the morning

I stopped watching TV about three years ago. We dumped cable, cancelled the Netflix account and never upgraded to HD. And then Hulu came along. Which is awesome, except when Hulu starts buffering during Glee’s musical numbers (which seems to happen a lot).

Here’s some of the shows I watch:

This is where the Sean of the Dead guys got their start. Not to be missed. Reminds me of my previously life living in Hepburn House. Not that you care. Just watch it, okay?

More Sean of the Dead guys (well, Bernard, at least). Manny was Bilbo Bagshot in Spaced. Not as funny, but funny enough. Just give it a shot.

The return of Mal Reynolds. Actually, Nathan Fillion does a great job in this, and it’s got ex-X-Files guys behind the camera, so it looks and feels gorgeous. And it’s funny. I like funny.

This is such a hit, you probably already watch it. No? Why not? Everyone else does.

Yeah, I missed it first time around, so sue me. Has been referred to as The Royal Tenenbaums meets Cops. Or something like that. I like it. So sue me.

Are you kidding me? It’s Magnum, for chrissakes.

Ditto what I said about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Just watch it, they need the ratings. I used to love this show when it was called The Larry Sanders Show. Oh, wait a minute….

Groundbreaking HBO stuff from just before the web was born. Almost too true to life, as Garry Shandling ended up suing his ex-Playboy bunny girlfriend (who plays Hank’s assistant) in real life. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, Shandling ended up suing Bernie Brillstein. Or was it Brad Grey? Anyway, have you seen how old Shandling’s gotten? He’s in the new Iron Man.

It’s a pleasure seeing Phil Hartman still alive, still kicking in this great show. And have you seen Dave Foley lately? Whoa.

I used to have the biggest crush on Suzanne Pleshette when I was 8. I mean, who didn’t?

Remember when newspapers were cool? I do.

Hulu Wishlist:

Absolutely Fabulous – Why isn’t this on Hulu yet? Well, at least you can see it on youtube.
Monty Python – Again, some of it’s on youtube.
Northern Exposure – I think some of this available on iTunes. I won’t say where I got my copies.

Maybe Halloween is coming early this year?

Anyone who regularly trolls imageboards are familiar with Creepy Pasta: short snippets of stories (cut and pasted again and again) designed to seriously scare the ever-loving-bejesus out of you. They’re very popular, in fact, there’s a website (a very good one BTW) that collects them.

Which brings us to Candle Cove. This is one of those things you click on and wonder: is it real?

Candle Cove is the subject of an internet forum discussion about a locally-broadcast children’s show in Ashland, Ky. that ran back in the early 1970′s. There is some argument about whether it was 1971 or 1972.

Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in ‘71, not ‘72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news. Let me see what I remember.

It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn’t a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don’t remember the girl’s name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.

The discussion about the show goes back and fourth, and more details are revealed. Evidently, there is a character called the “skin taker,” a dirty skeleton wearing a brown top hat and cape, “sewn up crazily of children’s skin.” One poster asks the obvious, “Why did our parents allow us to watch that show?”

Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
I’m so relieved that other people remember this terrible show!
I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming. The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this. I woke up many times from that nightmare. I used to wet the bed when I had it.

Seriously, you should just read the whole thread.

Yahoo Answers claims the whole thing is fake. I’m not so sure. There’s a video snippet on YouTube, but be warned, some people insist all they see is several minutes of static.

Is Candle Cove real? I imagine somewhere, in someone’s head it is. I find it difficult to believe, but then again, every time I try to type the words “Candle Cove” I mess up, and type “candle cover” instead. It’s as if my fingers have a mind of their own. You give it a try.

Original Forum Posting

Candle Cove Revisted

The BBC reports Bob Dylan is in talks to become the voice of a new GPS system. File this under “too good to be true.”

Renowned for his raspy, nasally tones, the 68-year-old American gave his listeners a taste of what his directions might sound like.

“Left at the next street. No, right. You know what? Just go straight.”

He continued: “I probably shouldn’t do it because whichever way I go, I always end up at one place – on Lonely Avenue. Luckily I’m not totally alone. Ray Charles beat me there.” (bbc)

While this is the Best Idea Ever I can think of only one other person (besides myself) who would buy a Bob Dylan GPS. Unfortunately, I don’t think Robert Gruber owns an automobile.

Conrad Murray, Jackson personal physician proscribed the anesthetic, commonly used as an animal tranquilizer, for insomnia. Now it looks like Dr. Feelgood might be facing homicide charges.

There are reports that the coroner has concluded Jackson’s death was homicide.

The reports, carried by the Associated Press news agency quoting unnamed police sources, have not been confirmed.

But the BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani in Los Angeles says homicide includes manslaughter, and investigators have been trying to establish if there is a case for that charge.

Details of the Los Angeles County coroners’ findings were revealed when a search warrant affidavit was made public in Houston, Texas, where Dr Murray has offices. (bbc)

Murray recorded a youtube video earlier this month, claiming his innocence, and thanking his supporters. But a quick search only turned up this spoof.

Never heard of Propofol? Me neither. Evidently it’s a powerful hypnotic that’s used primarily as an anesthetic.

Propofol is unrelated to the barbiturates, and has largely replaced sodium thiopental (Pentothal) for induction of anesthesia as recovery from propofol is more rapid and ‘clear’ as compared to thiopental.

Propofol for intravenous administration is a white liquid; due to its appearance and amnestic effects, it is jocularly called “milk of amnesia” by medical professionals. Propofol is also commonly used in veterinary medicine.

According to a search warrant issued by Los Angeles County on July 17, 2009, Jackson’s personal physician administered 25 milligrams of propofol diluted with lidocaine shortly before his death.

One of propofol’s most frequent side effects is pain on injection, especially in smaller veins. This pain can be mitigated by pretreatment with lidocaine. (wikipedia)

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My favorite TV show, back when I used to watch TV (now I just watch Hulu, but “watching computer” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “watching TV”), was Connections, a show on TLC (back when that stood for the The Learning Channel, and they used to have actual educational shows).

Connections was a British export from Channel 4 hosted by James Burke, who also wrote the book Connections. The premise of the show was simple: everything that’s ever been thought or said or invented, especially ideas (which are called memes these days), are connected to one another. Mr. Burke would start out with ice cube trays and end up with the Saturn IV rocket. At least that’s how I remember it.

I was reminded of Connections by this fascinating article on Fiji Water in Mother Jones. You know, the stuff that comes in square bottles. Here’s an excerpt:

I sat down and sent out a few emails—filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. “It will just be a few minutes,” one of the clerks said.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. “We’re going to take you in for questioning about the emails you’ve been writing,” they said.

Pretty harrowing for the opening of a story on bottled water. Go ahead and read the whole thing. It’ll make you never want to drink Fiji water ever again.

Anyway, the piece quotes businesswoman Lynda Resnick, who owns Fiji. Resnick is quite the character, profiled here in The New Yorker. She’s not only a bottled water magnate, but she’s also single-handedly responsible for the explosion in popularity of the pomegranate. Yeah, you read that right.

And, to top it off, she not only started her own ad agency at 19, but she was the person who loaned Daniel Ellsberg her Xerox machine so he could run off a few copies of some important government papers.

The one Resnick quote from The New Yorker that stuck in my head was this:

She insists that being a great marketer is synonymous with being a great friend. “You don’t have to be a genius. You have to read the pop culture…You have to listen to conversations. You have to pay attention.”

The article prefaces this quote with the statement, “She collects people as avidly as she collects objets d’art, and she believes that her wide social network played a crucial role in (her) success.”

Frankly, after reading about Fiji, pomegranates, and The Franklin Mint (yeah, she owned that too), I was feeling a little depressed. Luckily, the web (like James Burke) is all about connections, and seeing a plug for a David Sedaris essay on The New Yorkers page, I clicked through for some patented Sedaris humor.

Mistake. Sedaris describes a trip to Australia, and a business woman there who relates this bit of corporate balloon juice:

Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove.

“Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter.

This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.

Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success.

I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you?”

This kind of philosophy probably fits right in with Resnick’s world view. And the really depressing part is it’s probably all too true. At least that’s been my experience with Corporate America.

So which two burners would you switch off? And why?

I’d like to think that guys like James Burke keep ‘em all on high, all the time. But I know that’s probably not true.

BRB, gotta go to Burger King.

IMPORTANT LINKS
I found the Fiji article on Metafilter, one of my all time favorite sites. The New Yorker piece was referenced in the comments on the original post.