Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

Deadwood is back

Deadwood is back for a great, obscene, profane, violent new season on HBO. The show is sometimes called Shakespeare in the Mud, and it produces some of the most incredible dialog ever heard on TV (read transcripts here, but be unoffended by really foul language if you do). My new favorite line from the first episode, spoken by "Calamity" Jane and already plastered around the web: "Every day takes figurin' out all over again how to fuckin' live." Yeah.

The Daily Show is parody

Not everybody knows The Daily Show is fooling around. When Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was interviewed for The Daily Show recently, he took it seriously. So he was kinda confused when Jason Jones from The Daily Show asked, among other things, whether he was "The Gay Governor".

Actual TV dialog

Two women contestants on "The Amazing Race" last Tuesday night:

"Son of a bitch! I just peed my pants!"
"Me too!"
"Thank you Jesus!"

24 Hours of TV were watched

I hope you were able to join us, and if not, please enjoy reading about it there.

24 Hours of TV is now

Please join us.

Eve of 24 Hours of TV

24 Hours of TV starts tomorrow at high noon PST. The prep work continues: last night I unearthed the coffee table that will serve as our control center. Tonight B1-66er drops by to survey our channel choices, and I'll set up the iMac that we'll use as a webcam. Tomorrow the final preparations will include the all-important grocery run.

We're gonna have some fun watching random TV all night, and we hope you can join in. Watch here for frequent updates starting tomorrow. We'll tentatively be hanging out in AIM chatroom TV24HR.

24 Hours of TV update #1

Some folks have asked why the rules of 24 Hours of TV require us to change the channel every 15 minutes. It's because 24 hours of actual TV programming would not be weird or interesting enough to sustain us. By changing the show every 15 minutes, and by making the change random, we add strangeness that will enhance any mundane programming with the spice of surreality.

24 Hours of TV

I like media, entertainment, and especially information. I like the web, and I like television. But I really like TV when it's somehow odd, weird, or edgy.

When I turn on the TV, DirecTV offers me hundreds of program choices. As I look at the listings I'm intrigued by the potential for strangeness, badness, and camp, but I never make the time to actually watch. So I had a really stupid idea: plant myself in front of the TV for awhile. Switch channels frequently and randomly, often enough that I would never see a complete show, because that wouldn't be strange enough. Write about it as my mind drips away.

So, in about two weeks Mark "the Red" and I will execute 24 Hours of TV (24HTV). And even though watching TV is a passive experience, 24HTV is not. We'll be live-blogging and chatting. And we're happy to have you play along, by reading the blogs, chatting, or performing your own simultaneous 24HTV.

Here's how it's going to work:

1. 24 Hours of TV (24HTV) runs from noon to noon PST, Sat., 25 Feb 2006 to Sun., 26 Feb 2006. We must be in the room with the TV for at least 55 minutes of every hour.

2. We will change the channel every 15 minutes, on the quarter hour. This is designed to enhance weirdness and to prevent viewing complete programs.

3. To determine the new channel, we'll use any means to select a new channel number. Acceptable means include 10-sided dice, playing cards, software, and currency serial numbers. For example, because we'll be watching DirecTV (3-digit channel numbers), we'll pick three playing cards. Aces are one, 10s and face cards are zero. We'll broadcast our channel changes, along with other chatter, in AIM chatroom TV24HR; you can follow our changes, or pick your own.

4. If the newly selected channel is not actually broadcasting, we'll "round up" to the next higher channel, repeating until we find a broadcast.

5. A key principle of 24HTV is that we never get to choose what we're watching. If we don't like a show, we're stuck with it for 15 minutes. If we like what we're watching, you have to leave it behind anyway. And no fair using technology to help: no DVR features (pause/rewind), no DVDs, no Internet, no videogames, no VCRs. We're keepin' it real.

So, we're on for Feb. 25th. That should give us plenty of time to stock up on caffeine and Chee-tos.

When TV goes off the rails

I love when mainstream network prime time TV shows go insane. Lost, a show about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island, has crossed that line this year. The show, now in its second season, has gone through three distinct phases: (1) when it started, it hinted at weird business on the island, including polar bears and dinosaurs. Then, (2) it got agonizingly slow with new revelations, taking (for example) several months of TV time to reveal what was going on with a strange door that seemed to lead into the ground. And finally, this year (3) the show has crossed into multiple levels of wonderfully reckless bizarreness that I won't spoil for you here in case you haven't caught it yet (the first season is on DVD, and both seasons are available at the iTunes Music Store).

The king of insane TV was Twin Peaks, especially the first season. Yesterday I picked up the latest (and last) issue of Wrapped in Plastic, a magazine about Twin Peaks, David Lynch, and everything related. Wrapped in Plastic ran for an astonishing 75 issues over 13 years.

Fox Reality

Fox has launched the inevitable all-reality show channel, Fox Reality. The schedule shows lots of dating and cops & robbers shows, repeated many times. Yes, it looks like fun for the whole family. Fox Reality is channel 250 on DirecTV and is coming to Dish Network and various cable systems soon.