Here's another of the many problems with TV: They don't know when to quit. (Sorry for the TV rant, these posts are a lot easier to write than the several I have in queue that need actual research to complete.)

Berta and I watched The Event last night on NBC. Actually, first we watched Chuck (which I enjoyed) during which we saw many commercials for The Event, which was described as something like "If 24 and Lost had a baby, it would be The Event." And you know how you can tell a show is going to be bad from the way they promote it? Yeah, like that.

First, the narrative style was completely disjointed. It jumped around way too much. I realize that if they want to get you to the point where the jet does/doesn't crash into something, they need to give you a lot of background first to understand it, but I believe there had to be a better way to do it. Unfortunately, Lost had some success with their flashback concept in their first season, and it seems like this was an attempt to mimick it in some way. A failed attempt.

What's sad about this is if it doesn't play well to the audience (and I can't see how people would like this), then this storytelling stylel be declared by the TV industry as a failure overall. This is unfortunate because The Event is simply an example of the technique used and poorly applied. The haphazard time and character jumping could be followed, but there wasn't and realy reason to do it other than to orient the action into a certain order. I think if you're going to present such a high-concept show as The Event, you could do better to lay the groundwork and trust the audience. But that's not something TV does...

This is the the real killer: This is another one of those "we're not going to tell you anything" shows. Or at least, they'll tell you stuff, but they'll leave enough out that you have to keep coming back for the next episode. For example, at the end of the pilot, a jet inexplicably disappears. Why? Tune in next time!

Also, what is it with TV and jets? Why are these shows tapping into the national subconscious fear of jets crashing into things? Can't anyone think of a more original way of killing off the president in these shows? I guess the writers can't.

So I guess my main question is whether I will watch again next week. Right now, the answer is "probably not". I'm anxious to reduce my TV watching significantly this fall -- but that's a topic for another post. This new show simply doesn't make the cut.

Do you do this at your home? Does everyone sit at the same seat around the dinner table every night? I wonder why that is.

Since we moved into this house, we've all seated ourselves at the kitchen table in the same seats. Part of the seating seems to be practicality - Berta sits closest to the kitchen, since she's most often the one making dinner and having to run back and forth to get things. Me sitting opposite her seems natural to that, and the kids on either side, with Abby (being the elder of 3 years) sitting on her preferred side; the side near the windows, not looking out them into the sun in the evening.

One of the things I was looking forward to when we moved in was the crafty positioning of our TV on a swing arm. Our kitchen is open to the family room, and with the TV mounted on the wall on this large swing arm, it would be possible to orient the TV for viewing at the kitchen table. Genius.

Of course, all of this fails since Berta faces the family room. Meaning, if you've been paying attention, that I am the only person facing away from the TV I've so carefully orchestrated the positioning of. Sure, sure, watching TV during family dinner time, blah blah... Dinner is not the only meal, not every dinner conversation is as riveting as all that, and sometimes it's just nice to veg out. I keep kidding about mounting a TV under the kitchen cabinets, but don't think I haven't priced them a couple of times already.

When I was growing up, we all had our own "assigned" seats too. My seat then would have been the equivalent of where Abby is now, come to think of it. It had easy access to the door, for running outside after dinner. At least, that was my logic for choosing that seat.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table writing this right now, in Riley's seat looking out the windows to the back yard, in full view of CNN on the family room TV. I think we might soon trade dinner seats.

I know that many people are looking forward to my telling of my vacation, especially about the part where I was dead, but as I was writing it last night (actually, dictating it to the computer, just like this entry) I had gotten 45 paragraphs in thought, "Gee, I ought to save this at some point," and at that very moment, my text editor decided to completely crash on me. So the end result is that you won't be hearing about my trip for a little while longer yet. Suffice to say that I have enough to say about it that I will definitely need to write about it.

In the meantime, allow me to complain about my satellite dish receiver. I've been a longtime Dish Network customer, and when we moved to the new house we renewed our subscription to the service and got all brand-new equipment. One of the weird things about the new equipment is that it's all rental. We previously owned our equipment, now we rent it for a small fee every month just like other people do from their cable companies. It's not a big deal, but if I think about it too much it really gets on my nerves. Fortunately, there is an upside.

Once about every two years, the satellite receiver dies. There's really no explanation for it, although they frequently blame it on electrical surges, which is nigh impossible considering how much surge suppression I put between the power line and the receiver. Whatever the cause, the receiver just starts behaving strangely and eventually won't let you watch TV anymore.

Our receiver was acting up a bit even before we left for vacation, I just didn't have the time to mess with it. Basically, it would turn on, run through a little diagnostic routine, and then turn off inexplicably. If you pushed the right combination of buttons at the right time, you could convince it to turn on and watch Spike TV, but that's all it would let you watch, and only for about three minutes before it would turn off again.

I called Dish Network support, and they put me through the usual reset procedure, unplug procedure, plug it into a different place procedure, unplug the satellite line from the receiver procedure, and a few other stupid little things before they agreed to send me a new receiver. Hence the benefit of renting the receiver: when something goes wrong with the one you have, they just send you a brand-new one.

Fortunately, in comparison to the last time this happened, we were smack in the middle of September, when all the new shows start coming on TV, and we were left without a TV receiver with which to watch any season premieres. This time, we get at least a week or two leeway before things get dicey.

The new satellite receiver arrived today, complete with a return authorization sticker and prepaid shipping. All I need to do now is replace the existing receiver with the new receiver, and ship the old one back to them. Assuming that I didn't abuse the old receiver, which I didn't, there should be no additional charge for the receiver and I should be able to watch TV as the new season soon starts.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has had this question, especially in this age of Tivos and DVRs: Where can I get a schedule of things that have happened?

It's interesting. I've completely given up on the printed TVGuide. Why pay money for a weekly throwaway schedule of TV shows that doesn't even cover well all 100+ channels of programming that I receive? I wouldn't, especially because I can get that information directly via my TV tuner or, if I'm desperate, through the internet. But the printed TV Guide has one advantage over these digital mediums - it keeps near-term historical information.

If I wanted to know what I missed on TV tonight now that it's 1am, I really can't think of a way to figure that out. I can only hope that my DVR recorded the programs that I wanted to watch. Since I don't have a Tivo, it's not quite smart enough to follow around the shows that I like if they change time slots or whatever. So it's of some small value to me to see the passed evening's, or even yesterday's or the day before's, schedule. And this isn't the only thing like this.

Another great example of data that expires and falls completely off the map is weather data. Abby has a homework assignment this month to keep track of temperatures and precipitation. Of course, if we have a really hectic weekend like we did recently, we don't think to record that information. Finding yesterday's temperature might not be impossible, but it is nowhere near as easy as what you might think.

Even RSS feeds that offer weather data somehow manage to expire the feed for yesterday's weather. So you have to subscribe already in order to have yesterday's feed data around. That seems kind of weird. If weather data is being offered in a blog-like syndication format, then shouldn't today's entry show the current weather, the forecast for later today, and the forecast for the rest of the week? Instead, they somehow manage to have separate entries for forecasts and no data for yesterday's weather. It's interesting to me that I fail to reason out why this is the case.

I wonder what other scheduled or time-sensitive data is lost when it expires. Surely there is a record of this stuff somewhere. I mean, they record the minutia of baseball stats with swiss-watch-precision. But why is it so hard to get to? It's like the people with the data are purposefully putting it away so that we can't use it, and that seems strange, considering how open they had been with it when it hadn't happened yet.

Frankly, this writer's strike and the lull between seasons is killing me. The fact that on-demand passive entertainment isn't flowing through my retinas to my brain at whatever hour I desire has got me clamoring for Hollywood hide. So what's a guy to do?

Well, there's always books. I'm not opposed to books, but I've found that sometimes I just want to sit and veg out in front of the boob tube. I've come to a few answers about what to watch while waiting for things to get back to normal, and maybe I'll survive.

Answer #1: Jericho -- I don't know what you guys think, but when this thing was on originally, it didn't get any of the play that it deserved. Since it got resurrected for a second season, three episodes have leaked their way out to download sites. Grab them. Then watch them on TV. Then figure out a way to get these folks paid without having to cater to network TV. IT would suck for it to really go off the air. Maybe it's already too late.

Answer #2: Stargate Atlantis -- I don't like putting this on here, because I'm not really sure where this show is going, but I've enjoyed the show while it's been running. Being that it's one of the few things that's still live on TV, that makes it worth checking into.

Answer #3: Law and Order -- The last couple of new episodes have been really good. The mixup of DAs and the new detective have been much better than previous combinations. After 18 seasons, it's interesting that they can still write these things.

What else? I've been watching crappy re-runs of Star Trek Voyager. I'm really desperate. And no, I don't see any recovery from restarts of shows like Lost. That show... Will it ever make sense? Now House, that's another matter...