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Bad News for the Bobcats

Creative Loafing Charlotte columnist Tara Servatius recently wrote this column about the uncertain future of the Charlotte Bobcats NBA franchise. As anyone that follows Charlotte sports knows, the Bobcats are having a difficult time simply generating interest in the Charlotte area, to say nothing of actually selling tickets or merchandise. The team has given free tickets to the homeless and slashed season ticket prices in attempts to fill the seats at the Bobcats Arena (I won’t call it the “Time Warner Cable Arena” until TWC pays me $1,000 per mention on this site). No matter what they do, Charlotteans just don’t seem to care.

Servatius’ column bears this out. In a recent study released by Public Policy Polling, 500 North Carolinians were asked which sporting event they would attend if they could get free tickets. Here are the results:

Sporting Event Percentage
Carolina Panthers 29%
UNC Basketball 28%
NASCAR 16%
Duke Basketball 13%
Carolina Hurricanes 10%
Charlotte Bobcats 5%

The numbers get even more amazing when you consider that 18% of overall respondents didn’t even know that North Carolina had an NHL team (this includes an incredible 6% of the people in the 919 (Raleigh) area code, where the Hurricanes play). So twice as many people said they’d go to a Hurricanes game than a Bobcats game, even though almost 20% of the overall respondents had no idea that there even was an NHL team nearby! That’s bad news for the Bobcats, folks!

Even worse, of the 5% that said that they’d prefer to go to a Bobcats game, only 1% were white. And no, that’s not a typo: of the 25 people that said they’d prefer a Bobcats game, 24.75 of those people were non-white. So when I say that white people “couldn’t care less” about the Charlotte Bobcats, it’s almost mathematically accurate. And here in the city of Charlotte – which is run by a bunch of white bankers – that ain’t good.

Continue reading “Bad News for the Bobcats”

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The Battle for Your Screen

Ever notice that more and more of the lower third of your TV screen is covered more and more often with some kind of promotional “bug” from the networks? Hold on to your hats, then: some networks are planning to sell that as ad space, according to this article over at trade journal site Broadcasting & Cable.

Thankfully, the issue is not as cut and dried as you might think. Although advertisers are itching to find new ways to sell advertising in a world where 20% of US homes have a DVR (and thus, presumably skip the commercials), it seems that most networks are wary of turning your favorite comedy or drama into a CNN-style hodge-podge of crawlers and obnoxicons. In fact, some TV insiders are against the practice in general, not because it’s “defaming the art of the filmmaker”, but because scientific study has shown that most people cannot process two thoughts at the same time while watching TV. In other words, people either watch the show and ignore the bug, or they watch the bug and ignore the show (either of which is not good for the networks). Also, many at the networks (TBS excepted, apparently) are wary of alienating their dwindling numbers.

All around, it’s some interesting reading. You should check it out.

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Mad Men: “The Benefactor”

Wow – Mad Men‘s getting dark again, isn’t it? It really is starting to live up to its tagline: “Where the truth lies”.

This episode begins with comedian “Jimmy Barrett” filming a commercial for Utz potato chips. Barrett – a pastiche of Don Rickles, Jackie Mason, and\or Gene Saks – has had a few drinks, and when Utz owners Mr and Mrs Schilling enter the room, Barrett launches a verbal assault on Mrs Schilling and her considerable girth. The Schillings are understandably offended, and Barrett is too drunk to care. A fiasco thus ensues for Sterling Cooper.

Unfortunately for the agency, Don is at the movies, looking for meaning (again)… this time in Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte. When he gets back to the office, the agency is in crisis mode. Don angrily fires Lois and vows to take matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile, two big things have happened: Arthur and Betty have more conversations at the stables, and Henry opens Ken’s paycheck and finds out that he makes $100 a week less than Ken. This causes Henry to call a friend at CBS to see if any jobs are available there. There aren’t, but his friend does mention that he desperately needs advertisers for an upcoming episode of The Defenders.  Why? The episode is about abortion, and none of his regular advertisers will touch it with a 10-foot pole. Henry thinks that he can sell the ad space to a Sterling Cooper client for pennies on the dollar, and comes up with a plan to sell it to his bosses. Most touching about this scene: the fact that Henry calls his wife for advice about his money situation, and that Jennifer actually gives him good advice. Henry and Jennifer are, more than any other couple on Mad Men, a “team”. They’re husband and wife in the “modern” sense, and it’s cute to see them together.

But then… everything gets dark. Don goes to meet Bobbie Barrett (Jimmy’s wife), to see what it will take to get Jimmy to apologize to Mrs Schilling:

Bobbie don’t play. She takes on Don at every turn, and at one point she suggests that Jimmy will apologize only if Don lets Jimmy have sex with Betty! Negotiations are at an impasse. Don offers to give her a ride home… when a hailstorm breaks out… and Bobbie kisses Don in the car! What happens next isn’t clear: several blogs have talked about how “Don slept with Bobbie”, but the official AMC recap only mentions the kiss. Personally, I’m not sure. I think he only kissed her, but I’m not sure about that.

At home, Sally asks Don if she can ride with Mom on Saturday. Don tells her no. Betty then gives Don his watch, which she’d taken to get repaired (and engraved as a special treat). Don looks at the engraving, says “Awww, Bets!” and kisses her.

Saturday rolls around, and Betty goes to the stables to ride. She, of course, runs in to Arthur. They have a long conversation, which ends with Arthur trying to kiss Betty. She refuses his advances, and in doing so looks absolutely beautiful. January Jones is one of those people that looks much better on TV than she does in real life. Which is a pity, because when she’s all dolled up as Betty Draper, she’s totally a modern day Grace Kelly:

Anyway, while Betty is at the stables, Don calls Bobbie to arrange a dinner between her and Jimmy, Don and Betty, and the Schillings. When Betty comes home, Don asks her how she feels about going to Lutece on Monday night. Betty is initially excited, but then she finds out that it’s a “business thing”. Betty asks if “this is one where I talk, or where I don’t talk?” Don gives her one of his trademark lines: “I need you to be shiny and bright. I need a better half.” She complains about the short notice and having nothing to wear. Don, seeing that she’s really complaining about not spending time with her husband, tells her that they’ll go alone sometime. He then calls her “Birdie” (for those of you keeping up with his nicknames). Hmmm..

Continue reading “Mad Men: “The Benefactor””

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“The Boss” to Bore Us

Bruce SpringsteenIt was announced today that the Super Bowl halftime show will be headlined by… Bruce Springsteen, who will bring his lame New Jersey-based rock to millions of people… people that will be taking bathroom or cigarette breaks, or hitting the buffet instead of watching yet another over-the-hill rock dinosaur.

Wake me up when that’s over!

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Spooks: Code 9

So yesterday, the missus and I enjoyed a lazy Sunday on the sofa. At one point, one of Lisa’s friends (who has had some health issues recently and was just in the hospital for a small ‘procedure’) called the house line. Lisa went outside to talk to her, so I turned off whatever it was that we were watching to catch the last few minutes of last Thursday’s Burn Notice. As luck would have it, Lisa wasn’t on the phone for very long, so she came back inside and got back on the sofa. After watching about 30 seconds of Burn Notice she declared it “garbage” and asked how I could watch crap like that.

Well, I don’t think Burn Notice is garbage, and I’m apparently not alone: it’s one of the highest-rated shows on basic cable. It’s funny, though, that Lisa would call it garbage… because just a couple of hours later I watched a show that is indeed garbage:

Actually, the show is called Spooks: Code 9 and it’s a spin-off of the BBC’s popular show Spooks. Sadly, however, while Spooks was an excellent show in its heyday, Spooks: Code 9 is a steaming pile of poo.

Here’s the plot: terrorists detonate a small nuclear bomb in London during the 2012 Olympics. The British government has been moved from London to Manchester, and much of southeast England has been quarantined. MI-5 (the version you know for the original show) has been dismantled and broken up into small “field offices”. So instead of one giant spy agency, there are now 10 or 12 “mini-MI-5s” in the UK.

The main problem with the show is that the cast is made up of nothing but beautiful twentysomethings. If you will, imagine the overall look and feel of Spooks (albeit on a much tighter budget), but with British versions of the cast of The Hills or Gossip Girl playing spies (if you’re actually British, imagine Spooks recast with the kids from Skins). While the acting is barely passable, the plots are inane, and the fact that every character has a “specialty” is hackneyed and contrived. The show lacks the cohones of Spooks. For example, we have no idea who set off the nuclear blast. While Spooks would have immediately blamed Al Qaeda, an IRA splinter group, or some other (mostly plausible) terrorist group, Spooks: Code 90210 apparently doesn’t want to offend anyone by assigning blame.

And it’s not just me thinking the show sucks. The Telegraph wondered if the nuclear bomb had killed everyone over 40 in London. The Times said that the show is “to Spooks what Torchwood is to Doctor Who” (i.e., not as good). It further called the plots “daft and unconvincing” and “too ludicrous to work as well as similar spin-offs”.

Don’t get me wrong. I could look at Ruta Gedmintas (who plays former police officer Rachel Harris on the show) all day long. But not in this crap. This is awful!

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R.I.P. Isaac Hayes

The jimcofer.com Death Watch 2008 continues: Isaac Hayes had died. From CNN.com:

Soul singer and arranger Isaac Hayes, who won Grammy awards and an Oscar for the theme from the 1971 action film “Shaft,” has died, sheriff’s officials in Memphis, Tennessee, reported Sunday.

Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.

Paramedics attempted to revive him and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m., the sheriff’s department said.

No foul play is suspected, the agency said in a written statement.

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Editing the Firefox Dictionary

One of my favorite features of Firefox is the built-in spellchecker. If you’re typing some text into a form (like posting on a message board or typing up an email on a web-based service), you’ll see a squiggly red line under any misspelled words. All you have to do is right-click the word and choose the correct spelling.

Unfortunately, the design of the context menu is such that it’s very easy to accidentally click “Add to Dictionary” when you try to correct a misspelled word. So you can accidentally add “teh” to your dictionary. What’s more, Firefox doesn’t have any way to edit the dictionary through the Firefox UI. So if you accidentally add “teh” to your dictionary, there’s no obvious way to remove it.

But there is, of course, a way… and here it is:

1) Close Firefox (you’ll probably want to open Task Manager and make sure that FIREFOX.EXE is no longer running, as it can take a few minutes to completely exit on your system).

2) Windows XP and Vista users should then click on Start > Run and type (or cut and paste) the following text into the “Run:” box:

%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

3) In the Windows Explorer window that opens, you should see at least one folder with a name like “43y0xpxd.default” (the exact name will vary). Double-click this folder to open it.

If you have more than one folder with such a name, then you have more than one Firefox profile on your system. Open each folder and look at the “Date Modified” attribute for the BOOKMARKS.HTML file, as this might help you figure out which profile is the “correct” one.

4) Look for a file called PERSDICT.DAT and open it with your favorite text editor (Notepad is installed by default in all flavors of Windows, but I prefer Notepad++).

5) Remove the word you accidentally added to the dictionary, making sure that each word is on its own line.

6) Save the file and exit the editor.

7) Restart Firefox.

8) Rejoice that “teh” is now marked as a misspelled word again!

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The Greatest Game Ever Played

1915 was a great year for tiny Cumberland College of Lebanon, Tennessee. In that year, Cumberland’s baseball team defeated the mighty Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets by a lopsided score of 22-0. To say that Tech’s pride was wounded would be an understatement. And the fact that Cumberland hired ringers for the game absolutely infuriated Georgia Tech football coach John Heisman, the man for whom the Heisman Trophy is named.

Cumberland was such a small school that it often couldn’t field a football team. In fact, football was dropped at Cumberland in 1906, resumed in 1912 and dropped again in 1915. Cumberland wasn’t even going to field a team at all in 1916, but Heisman absolutely refused to release the school from its contact to play Georgia Tech. If Cumberland didn’t play Tech that year, they’d have to pay a $3,000 penalty to Tech (which is almost $61,000 in today’s dollars). Heisman knew that Cumberland couldn’t afford to pay the penalty, and thus had to play Tech.

And so… on October 7, 1916 Cumberland College came to Atlanta… and John Heisman had revenge on his mind. And the result was the biggest ass-kicking in the history of American football:

Yes, you read the score correctly. Tech defeated Cumberland by a score of 222-0. Tech’s 222 points are the highest ever recorded in an American football game; the score also represents the largest margin of victory in any football game.

Here are some fun facts about the game:

– Tech had exactly zero passing yards in the game. In fact, Tech didn’t even attempt to pass the ball. On November 6, 1976, Tech would defeat Notre Dame by a score of 23-14… also without attempting a pass.

– On the other hand, maybe Tech didn’t need to throw the ball, as they ran up 978 rushing yards against Cumberland.

– Tech also had 440 yards on kick and punt returns.

– For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a mindboggling 1,418 yards of total offense for Georgia Tech. In a single game.

– In the 2007 NFL season, offenses averaged 325.24 yards per game. Thus, Tech’s offense in the Cumberland game equaled the average offensive output of 4.36 modern NFL games.

– Tech’s defense and special teams scored 12 of team’s 32 touchdowns in that game.

– Tech wasn’t perfect, however: they missed 2 extra point attempts. Still, going 30 for 32 in PATs in a single game is pretty good in my book!

– Neither team made a first down in the game: Cumberland either punted, committed a turnover or turned the ball over on downs on every possession, while Tech scored every time they got the ball.

– Cumberland ended the day with -28 yards on offense. Contrary to popular belief, Cumberland’s biggest gain was not a 2-yard loss… it was a 10 yard pass. Unfortunately for Cumberland, it was 4th and 22 at the time. Cumberland also turned the ball over 15 times, committing 6 interceptions and 9 fumbles.

– As if all this weren’t humiliating enough for poor Cumberland, both head coaches agreed to cut the second half short by 15 minutes (instead of not playing the fourth quarter, the coaches agreed to make the third and fourth quarters seven and a half minutes each). This is why Tech’s offensive output seemed to dip in the second half. Had a full game been played, the score might have ended up being 252-0!

Amazing, huh? Something I’ve always wanted to know about this game: what, exactly, do you as a head coach tell your team in the locker room at halftime when you’re down 126-0?

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Good News and Bad News

Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news from the world of TV Land today.

First, the good news: according to Robert Seidman over at tvbythenumbers.com, Mad Men will definitely be renewed by AMC, barring some unforeseen ratings disaster. And why would AMC renew an incredibly expensive show that can’t even crack the Basic Cable Top 20 Ratings?

Well, two reasons: first, Mad Men is a darling of the critics. If the show wins even a handful of the 16 Emmy Awards it was nominated for, it will be a triumph for AMC, which would then inherit prestige it could never otherwise have had… especially since Mad Men (along with FX’s Damages) are the first two basic cable shows to ever be nominated for the Best Drama award.

But more than that, Mad Men gets what I like to call “30 Rock Ratings”. You may have noticed that there is little (if any) talk about canceling Tina Fey’s comedy, even though the show pulls down mediocre overall numbers. Part of this is because NBC management loves the show. Another part of it is that “industry insiders” also love the show. But the main reason 30 Rock stays on the air is that the show attracts an insanely wealthy demographic. In fact, among households earning $100,000 or more per year, 30 Rock actually ranks as the #2 show in America. As you might guess, advertisers cream over numbers like these, and upscale brands like BMW and Sub-Zero will line up around the block to advertise on 30 Rock. Mad Men is in almost the same boat: although less than 2 million people watch Mad Men every week, around 40% of those people are in households that earn $100,000 or more per year. So trust me: my favorite show isn’t going away any time soon.

But it appears as though another of my favorite (new) shows is going away, and that’s where the bad news comes in: it looks like Swingtown will not be renewed. Although CBS has not made any announcements about the show’s future, actor Grant Show has already shaved off his “porno mustache” and taken a role on Private Practice. This frankly isn’t much of a surprise, given the show’s ever-dwindling numbers. But at least we’ll have closure: according to Swingtown executive producer Alan Poul “[t]he season ends with a cliffhanger, but it’s also a completely satisfying ending. So, if we go forward, there are many new things that are set up to explore. And if we don’t go forward, there’s no feeling that we’ve been left with something incomplete.”

Sure, I’ll be sad that Swingtown is gone. Although I initially watched the show for its titillating premise, I’ve grown to care about the characters in what amounts to a conventional drama with a few peccadilloes thrown in for fun. Perhaps the show was a bad fit for CBS. It’s not perverted enough for HBO these days, and doesn’t seem to fit in with what Showtime’s doing these days. Maybe it would have worked better on FX or USA?

In any case, I’ve watched a lot of British TV in the past couple of years. Most British shows have 6-8 episodes per season, with a maximum of 3-4 seasons. Unlike American shows, which tend to go on and on and on over the years (Prison Break, I’m looking at you), most British shows have 32 episodes or less to tell a story, complete with a beginning, middle and end. And that’s that. And it’s kind of refreshing in a way. Instead of “I used to like that show, but gave up on it after season 13”, most British shows just end, and viewers move on to something else. So as long as Swingtown has a nice ending, I’ll be happy.