Trock On!

I'm home with (maybe) the flu or (maybe) pneumonia or possibly dengue fever. I've had a fever of around 100F for over a week now. Today's the day I finally call the doctor. Not to be confused with The Doctor, which is what this post is really about.

While waiting for my doc's office to open, I've stumbled across a musical genre with which I was previously unfamiliar. It's called Trock. Short for Time Lord Rock. Basically, it's rock and roll about Doctor Who. Don't know who Doctor Who or Time Lords are? You prolly should. I mean, it's been on TV on and off since the early 60's! Turn on PBS or BBC America once in a while, Aina'? Better yet, go DVR a few eps, or check out some CDs from your local library and come back once you're caught up.

The currently biggest Trock band (and coiner of the term)is Chameleon Circuit. (For those who don't know, The Chameleon Circuit is that bit which allows a TARDIS [It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space... it's a time-travelling space ship thingie - seriously, why are you still reading this? Go! Watch!] to change its exterior appearance to blend in with the local landscape. The Doctor's chameleon circuit is usually broken, so his TARDIS almost always looks like a british police box, circa the 1950s - see at right) . A couple of videos may be appropriate at this point

Here's a vid of Chameleon Circuit's song "An Awful Lot of Running":



and another of their song "Exterminate Regenerate" about TheDoctor's ongoing battle with the Daleks [They're kind of cyborg killing machines on wheels (nice design, that)that go about shouting Exterminate! EXTERMINATE! The regenerate comes about because ... oh hell, just watch the show, why don't you?).



The band TheTimeLords has been doing Dr Who themed tunes for ages, but maybe a bit lacking on the originality?

Boy oh!

Man, I could suddenly want a burger. Oops! Little typo there. That should read, I want to BE a burger. And I must start watching Top Chef...

The End Flickr Set

Here's an interesting set of "TheEnd"s from various movies and TV shows. As always, I'm fascinated by this sort of collection. Click the pic to see the full set.

(Thanks to boingboing.net for putting me on to this, and thanks to DillPixels for putting up the set!)

A progression:

I've been thinking about how our entertainment influences our approach to life. It's something I've wondered about for years. Depending on when you were a child, your developmental years coincided with one of the following stages:


Stage 1: Live Broadcast Television:
I wasn’t home when my show aired, so I missed it.

Stage 2: Taped broadcast Television:
I wasn’t home when my show aired, so I missed it.
and I had to wait for it to come up in reruns.

Stage 3: Home storage of broadcast shows on magnetic media:
I wasn’t home when my show aired,
And I didn’t set my VCR to tape that episode of my show, so I missed it.
and I had to wait for it to come up in reruns, or buy a copy.

Stage 4: Home-storage of broadcast shows on electronic media:
I wasn’t home when my show aired,
And I didn’t set my VCR to tape that episode of my show,
And I didn’t set my DVR to save new episodes of my show, so I missed it.
and I had to wait for it to come up in reruns or buy a copy.

Stage 5:On-demand rebroadcast of shows (network website or on-demand):
I wasn’t home when my show aired,
And I didn’t set my VCR to tape that episode of my show,
And I didn’t set my DVR to save new episodes of my show,
And I didn’t get to the network website before they pulled the episode, so I missed it.
and I had to wait for it to come up in reruns

Stage 6:On-demand broadcast of shows:
I pulled up a show (any show) and watched it.

I grew up during stage 2. If I didn’t watch a show while it aired, there was only a slim chance I’d ever get to see it. This MUST have had a impact on my development as a child, though I'll leave it to professionals (and web surfers, which are almost like professionals) to figure that one out. We're now in Stage 5. How does it change a kid to be able to watch their favorite shows any time they want to? How will it change kids when any program they want can be shown to them at any time and location they desire? And the big question: will all of these effects we swamped out by the effect of living through a depression? Interesting times.

Holiday television listings

Looking for that favorite Holiday movie, but not sure when it's on? Or have a couple of hours to kill between shopping and decorating, and not sure what to watch? Well, if you're in the Milwaukee TV market, this list of holiday TV shows from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel should help you out. Now you'll know just when and where t catch A Christmas Story or Tom and Jerry's A Nutcracker Tale! Thanks to Middle Bro for forwarding the link to me!

Southridge Musical

TheGirl and a couple of her friends arranged to get one of their moms (not TheGirl's) to take them up to Southridge Mall after school yesterday. The attraction? Ashley Tisdale - the Disney-owned star of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" and "High School Musical". She's got a new album out and is touring the country singing a scant handful of songs at various local malls. Even though the concert was only about 10 minutes long, even though from their vantage point they could only see the singer/actress when she moved to a certain corner of the stage, even though the noise from 4000 screaming fans made communication impossible, and even though Ashley Tisdale can't sing any better than the rest of the recent Disney songstresses, the event was a huge hit with the girls. Two highlights: getting in position for the show ("we got to stand on the garbage cans!"), and going out for Hibachi afterward ("[friend's brother] got hit in the face with a piece of broccoli!" "there was a volcano!"). I'm glad she got to go. I still haven't gotten over missing Tiffany's appearance at Northridge way back when. And I've never wanted my daughter to suffer as I have. [grin]

(Click the title for the JSOnline story... if they haven't moved it on me again)

Oscar the WTF?!?

Once again, I'm probably the last to know about this but, in the off chance that I'm not, I thought I'd share. Oscar the grouch was originally yellow. Yes, yellow. Then, after the first episode of Sesame Street, he was suddenly orange. Only in Season 2 did he turn green. WTF? Why have I never heard this before? It takes some schmuck on a comment board to alert me to this fact? Where were all of you? Sheesh. If it weren't for the internet, I wouldn't know anything.

Pants-off Dance-off

The other night both The Wife and I were burnt out. For the first time in a long time, we both crashed in front of the TV. For me, that means flipping through TV shows that I haven't the attention span for. I slide fearlessly into those strange high number channels. For TW, it means sliding in and out of sleep as a strange progression of TV show moments intrude on her consciousness. This time, I hit one of the strangest shows I've seen in a while. It's on Fuse.TV, and it's called Pants-off Dance-off.

The premise is this: five guests are selected from the pool of applicants. Each of them is shown dancing a striptease in front of the music video of their choice, while snarky comments from the other contestants and other assorted distractions (including an amusingly disdainful host) keep things interesting. As the final items of clothing are removed, censored bars appear.

You might think that watching people stip to videos would be distracting enough. If you did, you'd be forgetting that these are real people with the whole real range of body types and dancing ability. When I watched, the most attractive of the contestants (the swedish model) danced like a trained bear, while the guy dressed like santa claus... well, to be honest, I had to switch the channel during that one, so I don't know how well he danced. But it had to be better than the swedish chick.

Viewers are encouraged to text in their votes, and then check the website to see who wins the contest. As an added bonus, the website promises the Full Monty without the censored bars. (On the site, the censored bars are removed, but a mosaic effect replaces it. What? Well, I had to go to the site so that my blog would be accurate! Sheesh!)

The show is a train wreck of a concept, the kind of thing that a college TV station might come up with, but be forbidden to air. But somehow, I couldn't stop watching. I think they put crack in it... or heroin. So check your cable listings, and give it a watch. The first one's free.

Shit. (HEROES SPOILERS!)

HEROES SPOILERS! (Highlight to read more easily)
Shit. So Nathan is Claire's Daddy. They must've only been kids. And worse luck for Uncle Peter, eh? There'd better not be any action with Claire until they come up with a reasonable alternative father. At least he's found out how to access his powers - makes sense that an empath would need to 'pull up' the person in order to access their power. And th eInvisible Jerk actually seems to be helping. Another shameless misdirection in the previews (Oh no, it's starting). Not! Maybe we should get Peter and Sylar together... he wouldn't need to kill people any more. Except I think he would anyway. What a nutjob! Oh and what's with Hiro (or was it Ando?) suddenly smelling cologne? There's some other invisible person going around? Or does Ando have the power to smell cologne. Helluva super duo - Samurai Clock Stop and the Sniffer. Say does anyone else think that maybe Hiro's clock control powers are an indication that he WILL be the one to stop Sylar (the watchmaker)? Seems to fit the general philosophy of the show. And Hiro's family runs the company?!? Wow. Wonder if Dad or Sis have any powers (besides the power to completely ignore Ando). Huh. How long is it till next week?

Simpson's Clip

I'd never come across this vid before. It's Homer singing along to "It's the End of the World as We Know It", except his lyrics are a bit off. A much needed laugh today. Enjoy!


PS: As best I can tell, Homer is saying:

Le-o-nard whatsisname
Herman munster motorcade
Birthday party Cheetohs
Poker sticks and lemonade
You symbiotic stupid jerk
That’s right, Flanders
I am talking ‘bout you