I was up a lot earlier than I expected, like at three. Let's say lots of PeptoBismol was involved, and when I dragged awake this morning after less than six hours sleep, I had James make me a grilled cheese sandwich which I had with yogurt to try to balance out the bacteria in my digestive tract. Phooey. Right now it's zombie time.

We drove downtown to very little traffic and again parted in front of the Hilton. This time I was headed for the Hilton itself, for a panel on telecommuting. This was very much the same as last year, although this time I was feeling a bit left out, as most of the people attending the panel seem to be system administrators or have something to do with IT.

From there I walked back to the Sheraton for what was billed as the final Torchwood panel. This one did not include James Marsters, who was actually a guest of the Buffy track rather than the Brit Track. Once again, it was a real corker despite all the hijinks of the previous two. And thankfully, there were no snogging requests.

Someone actually asked the question I was curious about: yes, the set is that large. (No real teradactyls, however!) The Hub set is actually right next to the TARDIS set, so they walk through the latter on the way to the former. And, yes, in answer to the usual question, they both want to direct, and to another inevitable question, Gareth David-Lloyd (which was, by the way, miswritten on his banner in the Hall of Fame; it says "David Gareth-Lloyd"—good work, DragonCon!; of course posters are misspelled and miswritten all over the convention) started out wanting to act by watching Christopher Lee Dracula movies when he was a boy. His dream is to work with Gary Oldman. ::cough:: This was stated in a lot ruder fashion, though! ::cough::

They relieved our fears a bit about the new season of Torchwood. Sadly, it is only five episodes, although they will be longer in length than the previous ones, and in England will be shown all in one week, but on BBC1. However, the rumors that we heard about the series being made more suitable for young children appears to be still a rumor. [Whew!] The entire five-part sequence will be called "Children of the Earth."

Someone asked, "Is there something about Torchwood that no one has told us about before that you can tell us?" Gareth got wide eyed and breathless, and exclaimed, "Yes, John Barrowman is gay!" This got quite a laugh, but not as much as when a gentleman introduced himself as a recent Torchwood convert who had never seen Doctor Who, but who was a big Star Trek fan. He asked, "What's unique about Torchwood to keep me watching?" After the flip answer "It's not Star Trek," Gareth intoned, "For the sex," and did a spot-on imitation of William Shatner as Kirk uttering standard Trek phrases "sexed up" to Mr. Spock. By this time everyone was laughing uncontrollably.


"And now for something completely different," I left the Sheraton for the upper level in the Marriott (and I had to hunt around for the rooms as the map was rather unhelpful). These meeting rooms were toward the Hyatt side of the Marriott on the opposite side of a little atrium area with a clear ceiling, and I had not been in them before (they may be rooms that were part of the remodeling last year). This panel was "The Man With the Hat," about Indiana Jones, which put me at a little bit of a disadvantage because, of course, they were discussing the new film, which we never saw (but it's coming out on October 14; should look quite nice on our television).

There were dissenting opinions on the new film, which seemed to boil down that people appeared to like many aspects of the movie, but not the movie as a whole. Most of them did complain about a scene which I have heard about previously, in which Indy takes refuge in a refrigerator and therefore survives an atomic blast. According to one of the panelists, this was originally a sequence from the original script for Back to the Future, in which Marty had to go to a nuclear test site to be sent back to the future and he takes refuge in a refrigerator. Steven Spielberg just recycled it for Crystal Skull. Some folks thought it stayed close to the spirit of the original three films, others said it failed. Most said they liked Shia LaBoeuf (sp?) as the young man who turns out to be Indy's son, but they didn't want him inheriting "the Hat" as the lead.

It was a fun panel, and one of the attendees had a great item he showed everyone at the end of the panel: it was a reproduction of Henry Jones Sr's grail diary. It was reproduced from the prop in Last Crusade and in addition contains little inserts like tickets to his lectures, family photos, Indy's and his dad's diplomas, telegrams, and all sorts of clever little things. Too cool.

I took a bathroom break, then joined James in the room next door to where the Indy panel had been held. I had been really conflicted during this hour, since there were three panels I was really interested in, but I ended up here. The panel was quite crowded, all attendees with the same question: "What Happened to the Sci-Fi Channel?" The answer seemed to boil down to "They sold out to make money." First we got wrestling and now we have goofy horror movies and—ye gods! more freakin' reality series! One of the panelists read a list of upcoming and approved projects for the fall, which included reality series and some other things, all of which I have mercifully forgotten because they sound so insanely stupid as if they were created by Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

Of course, we both remember before the Sci-Fi Channel began and some representatives came to one of the conventions hoping to get input from fans. They were really clueless about science fiction and SF fans. At one point, we asked them if they might air Quark and they told us they understood science-fiction fans didn't like humor! Uh...duh. Their idea of SF was monster movies.

Every day DragonCon publishes a little one-sheet, different-color-each-day update called "The Daily Dragon." It has short interviews with program participants on one side and program changes on the other. On Friday I had spied something scheduled for Sunday at 4 called "Why We Love (and Hate) Disney" on the Animation track. This sounded intriguing, so I went, not certain if it was just going to be a general bitch/praise session or something a little more structured. I can't say I was happy with it. The moderators were a young woman and a young man. The latter was nice and seemed to know a bit more, but the young woman was, frankly, dense and supercilious. The first thing she said was something to the effect of I know you probably all have opinions about what is good or bad about Disney, like we do, but nobody's really interested in hearing from you about that. She then said they were going to trace the history of Disney milestones from the past to the present, and looked like she had printed a couple of pages from the internet as her research and that was about it. She was talking about the milestones and didn't even know the correct dates of them, like the opening year of Disneyland, or what network Disney programming was first on, stated the name of films incorrectly, etc. Why say you are going to discuss these things and not know your material, or at least do your research?

Needless to say, I'm sorry I attended.

After that bad taste in my mouth, I decided I needed a laugh and joined the line of folks upstairs waiting for Dean Haglund's improv show. Haglund always puts on a hysterically funny show, and tonight was no exception. He was improvising an episode of The X-Files. A gentleman from the audience who worked as a bartender at the Macaroni Grill provided sound effects as Dean began his episode with the tale of a bartender at the Macaroni Grill who is attacked by a mysterious entity. The next scene took place in an autopsy room where two members of the audience provided words while Dean dissected the body of the bartender, which still had its heart, kidneys, and liver, but was missing its kitten, and then mutated into a cat with the appearance of Abraham Lincoln who spits earwax that kills. Next came the news conference, where Dean, as a Danish doctor of childcare (profession provided by an audience member) answered questions from the audience with the audience member providing his arms. Finally a couple from the audience played Mulder and Scully interrogating Dean as his X-Files/Lone Gunmen character, Langly. People in the audience had provided statements written on slips of paper, and every so often Dean, "Mulder" or "Scully" would have to stop and pick one of these slips of paper and read whatever was written on them.

Finally Dean said, "Scully, wait! There is something Mulder has to ask you," and "Mulder" got down on one knee and proposed to "Scully"! He had purposely picked these two out of the audience having been alerted that the gentleman wanted to do this, so it led to a big "awwwww" factor at the end.

Oh, yeah, she said "Yes"! :-)

We left, or at least I left, with a headache from laughing so hard. It was truly as crazy as it sounded.

I had only to walk to the room next door for the convention's second ARTC performance, these being five short, funny SF-oriented skits including a new installment of "Rory Rammer, Space Marshal"! "YAYYYYYYYYYY!" as we are instructed to yell before and after "Rory." This time Rory and his cadet sidekick Skip Sagan investigated a mystery involving an atomic graveyard. Also performed were "The National Endowment for Space Art" (a very snarky poke at our modern lack of space exploration), "The Time Board," "Haunter Hunters" (which sounds a whole lot like a Sci-Fi Channel reality program ::cough::), and an adaptation of a John Ringo short story set in David Weber's "Honor Harrington" universe, "A Ship Named Francis," with Daniel Taylor giving a marvelous performance as a gloomy chaplain on a spacecraft full of sad sacks. (As the line from 1776 goes: "That man would depress a hyena.")

This was the end of our day, but as we threaded our way upstairs we saw some delightful costumes which I snapped a couple of photos of, including a darling little toddler in a Batman outfit. And then it was off home, where we decided to have some "real food" (soup in my case) while we watched a little television before bed.

Labels: conventions, radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:46:00 PM

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In the April issue (with the backyard "water feature" cover) of Atlanta Life Magazine, pp. 56-58. Click on the magazine to begin.

Labels: magazines, radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 2:16:00 PM

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XM-Sirius Merger Approved by DOJ

Just tell me we'll be able to keep the good channels on XM and not get stuck with the rotten ones on Sirius.

Labels: radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:14:00 AM

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Rhode Island Radio and TV Personality Salty Brine profiled on PM Magazine.

Cool, even shots of Jeff and Salty's Shack, and Salty saying "Brush your teeth and say your prayers," his Shack signoff.

What, no "No School Foster Glocester"? LOL.

Labels: memories, radio, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 3:11:00 PM

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I hadn't had a "day off" in about a month, so I crammed a lot into today. It opened with sleeping late (thank God, I haven't had more than six hours sleep in days) and continued with listening to two funny Jack Benny radio shows. One featured Bob Hope, and he played in a spoof of his own Road to Bali with bandleader Bob Crosby (Bing's brother) playing Bing. I was surprised at how much Bob sounded like Bing when he sang. Sometimes brothers don't sound like one another at all. (Jack played the octopus who was guarding the treasure. Of course!)

Stops:
• Books-a-Million. I got a book about dogs from the remainder stack. I suppose we need another dog book like we need spilled birdseed, but this was published in England, and instead of just being about breeds and dog care, has a quite sizable section about dogs in history, dog shows, extinct breeds, etc.
• Petco. I was checking out with Pidgie's fruit-flavored pellets and the cashier had a baby parrotlet clinging to her shirt. He was making cross noises; turns out he is being hand-fed and was begging for his lunch! He sat on my finger for about a minute, still complaining; weighs no more than a few feathers and smaller than Pidgie.
• JoAnn. Needed a frame for a small fall photo of an old gristmill. Found a cross-stitch kit with an oak-acorn motif on clearance. I can substitute fall colors for the green oak leaves. JoAnn has had, since Valentine's Day in its dollar bins, small six-tube kits of glitter in appropriate colors. I have bought the Valentine's Day kit, the Easter kit, the summer kit (mostly blues), and now an Independence Day kit. I'm wondering if they will have a fall kit; pretty certain a Hallowe'en kit and Christmas kit are upcoming. I'd love a fall kit: dark yellow, orange, orangy-red, copper, gold, purple.
• Linens'n'Things and Bed, Bath and Beyond. I bought an extender pole that comes with a squeegee, a lightbulb changer, a floodlight changer, and a lambswool duster. Even my extendible Swiffer duster won't reach the peak of the ceiling in the living room and I don't want cobwebs.
• Wally-World. The usual: soup, tortillas, yogurt...zzzz.
• Borders. Bought a book called Penny From Heaven, a 1950s set novel about a girl with a large Italian family on her father's side. Usually I avoid books with Italian-American families like the proverbial plague: they're either Mafia-obsessed or don't sound like real Italian families. This one, though...perfect. Already finished it.
• Hobby Lobby. Some nice Independence Day things. Tick. VG.

And home to read. After supper we went to Borders in Buckhead by a circuituous route to avoid the Chastain Park concert and the bar crowd. Bruster's for dessert, and now it's bedtime.

Labels: books, decorating, food, pets, radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:59:00 PM

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If getting up at 6 isn't depressing enough this morning, I get greeted with a nauseatingly cheery e-mail from Sirius announcing their merger with XM. (I'd heard rumors about this last year but I was praying they were just rumors and would not come to fruition.) I left Sirius almost a year ago to get away from their suck-ass service and now it looks like I'll be stuck with them again unless they really mean what they say and actually DO intend to give us the best of both services.

So what will we get from SiriuX (Xirius?)?

Will we still get a single traffic report for our city with XM's mostly competent reporters and reports, or will we get stuck with Sirius' abominable two-city share and bumbling reporting (like telling us a collision is in the left lane eastbound rather than in the right lane westbound—big difference when you're stuck in the westbound mess!—or completely ignoring an accident although it's so bad that traffic has been totally stopped for a helicopter landing so that someone can be medevac'd to the nearest hospital, or just recently, listening to the traffic "reporter" spend the entire report musing about how the cold weather tomorrow will affect traffic then rather than giving us the skinny on the traffic issues taking place now)?

Will we still get good channels like Escape (beautiful music) and Sonic Theatre (book readings and radio plays) and Cinemagic (movie music) (none of which Sirius has) and separate channels for 1950s and 1960s music and for Standards and for 1940s music like XM has or will we get none of the first three and Sirius' mixed 50s/60s (which includes only rock music) and mixed Standards/40s channel (Sirius apparently being under the belief that Standards and 1940s music are the same thing)?

And if we do luck out and get a separate 1940s channel, will we get Sirius' hideously restrictive playlist that just plays the most well-known 1940s music rather than all 1940s music like XM does—you know, "Take the 'A' Train" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "Sentimental Journey" are not the only 1940s songs that exist—not to mention the cool retro news XM gives us at 12 p.m./ 4 p.m. and the top ten music list for a certain 1940s year we get at 2 p.m.)?

Will we keep Take 5 (a rather entertaining women's channel) or will it be dumped in favor of the Oprah channel (yawn—what's next, the Dr. Phil channel)? Will we get to keep the two Canadian comedy channels, which have some hysterically funny British and Canadian comedians?

Will we get XM's New Age channel, which actually plays some Windham Hill and Narada frequently or do we get stuck with the lugibrious strains of the funereal New Age Music that's on Sirius?

Will we get four good, separate channel Christmas stations at Christmastime (not to mention Radio Hanukkah?) like XM has or will we get Sirius' Christmas abortions which take over regular channels and play mostly modern Christmas stuff like NSync and Barenaked Ladies—and the same playlist over and over and over every six hours (how many times can you play Josh Grogan singing "Believe" anyway; isn't every two hours a bit much)? I really enjoyed XM's Holiday Traditions in December! They had a playlist, too, but you usually didn't hear a repeat song for a couple of days, not every six hours. And you got good singers like Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Andy Williams, Amy Grant, Johnny Mathis, etc., not inspid boy bands and anorexic girl singers. And XM's Classical Christmas station was fabulous—lots of standard carols, not just "church music," by the Cincinnati and Boston Pops and the Philadelphia Symphony.

(Sirius' playlists suck out the nose. When we go out on weekends James is either playing Classic Vinyl or the 60s channel and it's the same damn songs, over and over. If I hear Janis Joplin croak out "Me and Bobby McGee" one more time, I'm going to hurl. It's almost as bad as "The Christmas Shoes.")

Will we get Sirius' ridiculous specialty channels like the Rolling Stone channel and Elvis channel and two (count 'em) Howard Stern channels? (I know that just because I don't care for Stern that there aren't people who like him, but two channels? What can Howard Stern possibly say that would be worth two channels? I wouldn't have even listened to Don Adams talk for 24 hours on two different channels. Might we at least get "The Jerry Doyle Show" back, f' god's sake? In a sea of rabid liberals and rabid conservatives, Jerry most of the time seemed like the voice of sanity.

I have a Roady XT with 30 channel preset capability. All but two of those channels are programmed. With Sirius I only had an 18 channel preset capability and I was hard pressed to fill all of those! The only thing I missed when I left Sirius was the Discovery Channel station, and then all they seemed to play when I was driving home from work was the stupid Wedding Story program. Who wants to listen to a bunch of women buying overpriced dresses?

Sigh...when you find something good, it always goes away.

Labels: news, radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:00:00 AM

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Here's an archive of old shows.

Labels: radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 2:53:00 PM

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I'm continuing to enjoy my "XM experience." Station preferences have wobbled a bit and the presets changed accordingly. My RoadyXT unit has 30 presets: three directories, A, B, and C and then buttons 1 through 0.

A1 is reserved for the Atlanta traffic/weather. I think their traffic is more accurate than Sirius and between that and the Georgia Navigator map online, I usually manage well. You can tell the traffic announcers aren't local, though: they mispronounce the funniest things, like "Doraville" and "Chamblee" and frequently stick the "L" into "DeKalb."

A2 is for old-time radio, which (surprisingly) I don't listen to all that much during commutes because by the time I get into the car I'm joining a story in progress, and with things like mysteries and Suspense and The Shadow, you miss the setup. However, I do turn to it when traffic comes to a standstill, to occupy my mind which is already home doing things. :-) I enjoy Gunsmoke, Frontier Gentleman, Dragnet, and Casey, Crime Photographer (and of course, The Shadow!), but am not crazy about The Great Gildersleeve and will change the channel if Abbott and Costello come on (although I liked them in the movies). Will always stop for Fibber McGee and Molly and Jack Benny!

(Gunsmoke on the radio is a whole different animal than the television series, which did tackle ethics and issues like mob violence, but the radio series is grittier and many of the shows don't have happy endings.)

A3 is set for their standards channel. They play too much Frank Sinatra for my taste (yeah, I know, it is called "Frank's Place," but really...). I think when Sirius had a separate Standards channel it had a better selection, but this isn't bad. I'd still like more Bing Crosby and Perry Como (and how about some Jerry Vale and Al Martino and Connie Francis?). A4 is "Watercolors," basically what Sirius calls "Jazz Cafe," smooth jazz. I usually put this on to chill out.

A5 is "Escape," the beautiful music channel. When I first got XM, "Sunny" was the beautiful music channel and "Escape" played contemporary easy listening artists, like Sarah McLachlan and Enya, plus people and bands like the Eagles, Peabo Bryson, etc. Then "Sunny," which is Clear Channel programmed, got commercials and basically the two switched formats. "Escape" now plays pieces reminiscent of the old WLKW station up in Providence, mostly instrumentals, good stuff like Percy Faith and Henry Mancini and Mantovani and someone named Frank Chaksfield, plus vocals from Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, John Denver, Barry Manilow, and Neil Diamond. It's a good chill-out channel. The announcer even has a low soothing voice like the one on WLKW used to. (The only "clinker" I've found on "Escape" is Vincent somebody's arrangement of the Airport love theme with what sounds like big popping bubbles in it. He should have his fingers whacked with a hot ruler for cruelty to listeners.) "Sunny" has now dropped down to B2.

If XM does the same thing as Sirius does and has Christmas music take over one of their regular channels in December, I hope it's "Escape" and they play the same sorts of things WLKW used to: mmm...Johnny Mathis, Nana Mouskuri, the Golddiggers, Percy Faith...

A6 is the 40s channel (a.k.a. "The Savoy Express"). I think it has a much wider variety of Forties music than the old standalone Sirius channel did. Sirius used to play all the 40s hit standards—"Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "String of Pearls," "Take the A Train," "Sentimental Journey," etc.—and not much else. XM playes those and more and even some novelty songs, including Phil Harris singing about a "thing" he brought home that nobody else likes. Several times a day, the 40s channel also has news broadcasts from that day from a year in 1940; always cool to listen to. On June 6, they interrupted the music for bulletins about D-Day at the same time listeners would have heard it back in 1944 (and the previous evening they played FDR's speech about the landing, again at the same time it would have happened).

A7 is "Audio Visions," the New Age channel. Although I occasionally find them playing what sounds like heavy breathing filtered through a didgeridoo, they also feature George Winston and other Windham Hill artists.

A8, 9, and 10 are all the comedy channels. I love listening to "Laugh Attack," which is a Canadian channel; have heard some very funny Canadian and British artists on it.

B1 is "Cinemagic," the movie soundtrack channel (Sirius has a Broadway tracks channel, but not a movie music channel). They do something I think is cool: they usually play several different cuts from each film and between the cuts will have bits of dialog.

B3 and 4 are for the other two jazz channels, traditional and modern. B5 is music from Broadway and B6 marks "Fine Tuning." XM's description for this channel is "eclectic/free form." Almost anything that isn't categorized elsewhere is here. Main attraction: they play Celtic music, including the Chieftains.

B7 and 8 are two of the three classical stations, one philharmonic selections and the other more devoted to "pops." B9 is the 60s channel, which includes some guy named Terry who tries to emulate the old 60s DJs, and B10 the 50s channel.

C1: Weather Channel
C2: XM Public Radio, which seems to be mostly Bob Edwards. They do run "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" on Saturdays.
C3: Fox News
C4: CNN
C5: BBC World Service

I had C6 reserved for a Southeastern news/talk channel that never materialized and C7 is "Take Five," the women's talk and lifestyle channel, which is occasionally fun to listen to. C8 is the special concert channel, C9 "Sonic Theatre" which is books on tape along with dramatizations and "new-time" radio series like Harry Nile, Twilight Zone stories, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

C10 is the emergency channel, appropriately numbered "247." I put it where I could find it in a hurry.

Since the Southeastern channel never made it and it's really silly to keep the special concert channel bookmarked (since it is only "on" at specific times and the channel number is 200, easy to remember), I'm probably going to re-arrange the last tier and mark a couple of channels for James instead so he can have something to play when we take my car and he drives.: the "Deep Tracks" classic rock channel and "Top Tracks" for early classic rock. (Yeah, our music tastes diverge wildly at many points. <g>)

I can honestly say the only two things I miss about Sirius are the Discovery Channel station (wish there was a similar XM channel) and Cousin Brucie on Saturday night on the 60s channel. I sure don't miss their lousy traffic reports!

Wish list: Dedicated Celtic and Irish/Scots music channel and Discovery-type channel (National Geographic maybe?). And I know it's silly, but I wish they had a year-round Christmas music channel like Live365 does online. Sometimes when you're depressed or when it's rainy, dark and/or 40 degrees you just need Christmas music, even if it's June...

Labels: radio

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:40:00 AM

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