End of Silence

It appears that Howard Stern will return to the Austin airwaves on July 19th when Infinity puts him on in nine markets, some of which include those from which Clear Channel dropped him.

It looks like he’s going to be on 104.3 FM, which seems kind of odd given that it’s a hip-hop format, but the other local Infinity-owned stations aren’t really much more compatible. I enjoy a little Howard now and then. He was on the air here around the time that the film version of Private Parts came out. It’ll be a good counterbalance to my current morning drive diversion. I wonder how Mr. Dudley feels about Mr. Stern’s return?

On another local radio note, The Bloody Tears will be on Eklektikos tomorrow just after noon. I used to play with a lot of the guys in that band before I hung up my sticks to become Dad™.

I’m sure that I’m not the first one to say or think this in the last 24 hours, but where’re the calls for a constitutional amendment to keep famous musicians/actors from marrying? Haven’t J-Lo, Britney Spears, Elizabeth Taylor, Drew Barrymore, Nicolas Cage and their ilk done much more to cheapen and destroy marriage than any same-sex couple in the last 10 years?

Oddly, neither J-Lo nor same-sex marriages seem to have affected my own. Hmmm…

No, not college basketball, my T.V. viewing schedule. There’s all kinds of things I should be doing other than watching T.V., but how can I not where there’s so much good stuff on?

It all starts March 3rd with Kingdom Hospital. The first time I saw the preview, I thought it looked an awful lot like Lars Von Trier’s Riget. A trip to the official site confirms that it’s basically a remake. I wonder if King saw it before or after his own stay in the hospital? I saw it in ’94 or ’95 at Dobie. They ran it as two three hour films on consecutive nights. The original was intriguing. King’s stories are hit or miss in feature films and he hasn’t had much luck with T.V. other than Salem’s Lot. Even though I generally liked the books, I was less than impressed with It and The Stand. The Langoliers was absolutely horrible. Still, I’ll give it a chance.

The next night is Tripping the Rift (gratuitous Flash warning) on Scifi channel. This idea has been bouncing around the Internet for several years and it’s finally got a home. If the show is anywhere near as funny as the short (which I still have somewhere on my hard drive), it’ll be a must-see.

Lastly, the new season of The Sopranos starts on March 7th. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to shell out the dough to reinstate HBO or wait for the DVDs and hope I don’t hear/read any spoilers. Three debuts in one week. Yikes.

All this in addition to my current staples of The Osbournes, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Real World/Road Rules Inferno, Airline, Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, King of the Hill, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Yes, I’m brave enough to admit that I watch these shows. What’s your guilty pleasure?

C’mon people. It’s just a partially exposed breast. Do we really need to devote an entire Nightline episode to this? European people have been seeing at least that much skin on T.V. for years. You didn’t have any problem with the farting horse from Budweiser or this classic sentence courtesy of the Cialis commercial:

Although a rare occurrence, men who experience an erection for more than 4 hours (priapism) should seek immediate medical attention.

For those clamoring about their kids being corrupted, mine were in bed or getting ready for bed. What were yours doing up?

As for the apologies, give me a break. It was obviously intentional. Janet has an album coming out (first single was released this week because it was “leaked” on the Internet) after a several year hiatus. Would she wear some elaborate sun ring on her nipple if she didn’t expect that it was going to be exposed? What I want to know is whether she was wearing something on the other nipple. Whatever fine the FCC comes up with will be worth the publicity. Congratulations for falling for it.

As far as I’m concerned, Ms. Jackson can expose her breast on network T.V. anytime she wants. I think it promotes a much better image of women than the other Budweiser commercial featuring the referee who gets plenty of practice dealing with screaming tirades from his henpecking wife.

Cory Doctorow has a great post on BoingBoing about the sad state of music downloads in response to someone else who recommends that we choose the lesser of two evils. I voiced sentiments similar to Cory’s something similar a while back. I still refuse to use one of these services unless they offer in a format that I can use on any player that I choose. Once I buy it, I want the right to decide what to do with it. If I do something bad with it, come get me, but don’t give me a choice that’s worse than what I had before. Until someone finally comes up with a reasonable solution, I’m holding on to my cash.