Living with a build-your-own DVR (2006)

Back in elementary school, I remember entertaining myself by mentally recounting the complete prime time schedule. Tuning out tedious teaching, I finally recalled exactly what aired opposite Fantasy Island.

Bored elementary kids certainly aren’t doing that today. With countless cable channels, it's impossible to remember what's on TV. Or watch it all.

Multiply that by TV scheduling that produces time-slot matchups like "Grey's Anatomy vs. CSI” and it’s clear catching your favorite shows requires effort, like programming the VCR. Alas, challenging VCR programming has spawned approximately 10,839,276.005 punchlines since the machines became popular in the 1980’s. Punchlines that generated laughs, because who hasn’t tried taping the Oscars, only to wind up with a basketball game? Or the other way around.

To insure seeing every single slam-dunk or soap-opera sizzler, many folks have switched to more user-friendly DVR's—digital video recorders, like the TiVo. The drawback: price, including the subscription service that makes most DVR’s functional. For example, TiVo’s web site sells a DVR capable of recording 80 hours of programming for 100 bucks. A one-year service agreement adds 15-plus bucks a month. For that many smackeroos, it would be cheaper to hire underemployed actors to recreate the episodes of Medium you missed.

Yet, if you're a cheapskate and/or the kind of person who finds fixing computers fun, you can build your own DVR, which doesn’t require a subscription. My husband built ours during Christmas 2005, using computer components lying around the house. I affectionately call it Frankenivo, after the monster Dr. Frankenstein cobbled together from spare parts, then cinematically brought to life with electricity.

What my geeky sweetie built was technically a MythTV. He did it by stripping down his old computer, installing the Linux operating system, putting it in a black box that fit in our entertainment center, then muttering incantations from several thick computer programming books.

Meet Mr. Duke (2005)

Many men dream of going out with a supermodel. A long-legged, blond-haired, jaw-dropping, traffic-stopping, stare-inducing, beauty who won the genetic lottery.

I go out with a 120 lb. supermodel everyday, and frankly sometimes it's a little much. Cars slow down, people stare-- and it's not me they are checking out.

What kind of dog is that?? is something we hear almost every time we leave the house. The question implies that looks like that don't come from random dog sex, but from hundreds of years of expensive dog breeding.

Sometimes I think people ask that question not because of their curiosity about his canine heritage, but because they want us to stop so that they can admire him, hands on. Everyone wants to stroke his blond hair and run their hands along his long, lean back and graceful fawn-colored ears. It's the same desire for luxury that makes you stroke cashmere sweaters and caress Italian sports cars.

My dog is one of the most beautiful animals in the city of Austin, and his only pedigree is the 55 dollar bill of sale from the Humane Society of Williamson County. Three years after we got him, he's still on the flier for the shelter, and I know there aren't two dogs like him in the world.

What does he look like? My sweetie is shaped like a German Shepard, but twice the size. He looks like Rin Tin Tin. He looks like a Belgian Malinois, but only in the right light. He has the looks and size of an Anatolian Shepard, except the ears are all wrong. He might be part Akita..and some people even think he looks like a wolf.

Alas, like many of the truly beautiful, he could care less about the attention of the masses. People stop to pet him, and he walks off in mid stroke, They stop watering their lawns to admire him, and he marks their bushes. He could care less about his public. Adulation from the great unwashed means nothing to him.

I can't imagine if we had actually paid to have something this beautiful in our lives. I know that if, on purpose, we had purchased a, well, whatever he is, we would spend a lot of time explaining why we had made this highly impractical choice. His coat is better suited to a professional sled dog than to his real life role as a sofa based, bark-a-lounger. He sheds so much we wonder why he isn't going bald.

As benefits a dog of his many advantages, he gives a lot back to the community. Every time someone asks where we got him, we proudly answer
"He's a Humane Society of Williamson County rescue dog!" The usual response is a slack-jawed: "I didn't know that you could get dogs like that at a shelter!"

So, if you are considering adding a pet to the family in the near future, try the shelter route. You just might end up with a stunner like ours. True love might be blind, but outer beauty never hurts.

The dog in the top, right-hand corner is Mr. Duke!

Al Franken in Austin: A Broadcast from Out of the Past (2005)

Cameraphone pic of Al Franken and Paul Sicard!

    
When my husband was the only person in town to win tickets* to the live broadcast of the Al Franken Show, I was so excited. I would get to hear, and see, the latest advances in talk radio!

Air America has gotten acres of ink for their “progressive views.” Yet, in his first live Air America broadcast from Austin the Al Franken Show seemed hopelessly mired in the past, much like the unwitting victims on the TV show What Not to Wear.

The broadcast exposed outdated and outmoded concepts lurking in our collective ideological closet. Perhaps it was a show from a time when muckraking journalism attempted to shine light on standard business practices. Maybe it was a broadcast from the days when unions were gaining strength to protect the common worker. The show could have even been from the Roosevelt era, which brought dignity in retirement with Social Security. Everyone knows that those concerns are now passé.

Broadcasting with co-host Katherine Lanpher from the depression-era State Theater, Franken might have as well have been getting his news from teletype machines and carrier pigeons.

From the funeral-home-style paper fans advertising Air America to a faux advertisement from the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau—asserting that Dallas has now been assassination free for 30, no 40 (!) years-- and imploring people to “put the top down and drive thru Dealey Plaza,” it seemed like a transmission from long before the Internet.

…Men are from the Hot Wheels aisle, women are from the Barbie aisle. (2005)

Getting a Valentine's gift for your significant other can be as tricky as making a tactical error on The Apprentice. One mistake and you'll be painfully backpedaling for weeks. Thus the question lurks in the minds of men everywhere--what do women want for Valentine's?

As the big day creeps ever nearer, the holiday advertising becomes as inescapable as kudzu. Some advertising features sex, and some features romance. And it all seems to be aimed at men doing the purchasing. For Valentine's is about the myth of men pursuing, not the woman's art of being caught.

But why is it that men are the ones doing the buying? Shouldn't love be a two way street? Not a chance buddy, not a chance. And the toys we played with as children are partially responsible.

One painfully popular guide to male/female relationships is, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Perhaps a more accurate title might be, Men are from the Hot Wheels Aisle, Women are from the Barbie Aisle.

Let's start with a look at how boys are indoctrinated into the world of "Me Macho Tarzan, You Decorative Jane." The "boy aisle" at the local discount retailer is filled with rows of crushing, maiming, crashing, shooting and body-slamming things. With all of this relentless activity, is it any wonder that a sensitive man is as difficult to find as half-price Godiva?

Meanwhile, back in Barbieland, girls are indoctrinated into cleaning, cooking, grooming, and caring for others. With that in mind it's hard to consider the Easy Bake Oven and Snack Center as anything other than a tool of capitalistic sex-role indoctrination. Or, as Barbie might say during a political uprising, "Never mind the barricade, girlfriends; lets just make more cupcakes!"

Don’t Fall in Love with a Dead Man (2004) ..a look at the movie "School of Rock"

This actually appeared on the now-dead website BlueEar.com on June 28, 2004. Yes, the Internets existed back then.


They say you always remember your first love. And sometimes, you run into him in the most unlikely places. I just saw mine on DVD, in Richard Linklatter’s School of Rock. My first love was the Ramones, whose music is featured in the film.

I suspect that for me, like for a lot of other people, music, specifically the Ramones was important because it was a promise we weren’t alone in the world. Growing up in a small town outside of Houston in the mid 80’s, punk was over, the Sex Pistols had come and gone, and Phil Collins and Aerosmith were kings of the FM wasteland.

Yet for the incorrigible misfits of my tribe-- and a few music critics in mythical New York-- there was an alternative to radio dreck. In this land of misfit toys, Joey Ramone was our spiritual leader, and Rock ‘N’ Roll High School was our Citizen Kane.

Despite the Ramones macabre lyrics about electroshock therapy “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” (I really want a shock treatment) and child abuse “Beat on the Brat” (Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat, oh yeah…)- their songs were infectious—and subversive, even though we didn’t know the term. You don’t learn words like subversive in detention.

Hearing “Bonzo goes to Bitberg,”—about Ronald Regan’s controversial decision in to lay a wreath on the tomb of a German soldier (1985), made me realize someone else would understand my homemade Regan dart board. The Ramones was a promise that I could escape suburbia, republicans and the Christian right.

I saw the Ramones play in clubs in high school and college, but I only got close enough to touch my idol once. Last time I saw Joey, he was playing in a Christmas Concert in NYC with Ronnie Spector—ex wife of producer Phil Spector. (Phil Spector produced the Ramones album End of the Century, and, in an oft-repeated rumor, Spector allegedly pulled a gun on one Ramone during a session. One suspects that Ms. Spector and Mr. Ramone had much to discuss. )

Joey walked in during the opening band, all tall and gangly in an overcoat, yet no one in the room seemed to notice. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was like Elvis slipping in unannounced. When Joey stopped and stood behind my boyfriend and I, I swear that my heart skipped a few beats and I got a little lightheaded-- just as if I had been sniffing the glue the Ramones made famous on one of their first albums. I could have turned around and touched him, but I didn’t. I could have babbled something about how much he meant to me, but I didn’t. After all, if he wanted to be Joey Ramone in public, he would have dressed up as Joey Ramone before venturing into the lower east side. After all, half the other guys there were dressed as Joey Ramone, circa 1976--all converse and leather jackets and long hair. He soon disappeared with his valise and companion.

When Joey later appeared on stage, in Ramones drag with the trademark wig and round glasses, the bill included “Merry Christmas, (i Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” and “Danny Says”—the closest things to love songs in the Ramones repertoire. Standing there, I kept closing my eyes, shuttling back and fourth in time between the past and the present, between Texas and New York City, from the place I wanted to escape from, to the place I had escaped to.

While I am sure that Richard Linklatter’s experience was different than mine, we should treasure this little love note from Linklatter to the Ramones. Sure, Linklatter might tell you that the movie is a valentine to the Gods of Rock—Hendrix, Plant, Pink Floyd. But I can see the truth. The movie is all about the punk ethos, getting by with three cords, an attitude and a plan. And that’s all about the Ramones.

So girls, be careful whom you give your heart to. Most of the good ones are taken. Elvis and Joey have gone to that great sound check in the sky. You can’t fall in love with a dead man, it’s a relationship that will always leave you unfilled. If he’s dead, chances are that he’ll never come stand behind you and do things to your breathing. That’s a thrill that every girl should experience.

***

Anna Hanks, Austin, Texas, USA

REVIEW: School of Rock, by Richard Linklater, 2003
School of Rock is the 2003 film featuring Jack Black as a failed heavy metal guitarist. To pay the rent, Black connives his way into substitute-teaching at a posh private school. Rather than teaching the kids math and history, he teaches them music—and the concept of sticking it to the man.