OT: What have we done to deserve this?

Count me in the I Love Ugly Betty camp. I've given up watching the reruns of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report to watch it. The writing is terrific and the acting is darn good. Love watching Vanessa Williams stew.

Donna in Virginia

SHE is a goddess!

I've never seen it, but no matter how bad it might be -- it HAS to be better than the endless stream of Humiliation TV shows out there. (That would be the so-called 'Reality' TV, which is all about humiliation for fun.)

"explorer" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I gave television another chance a few months back and watched one of those, or a part of. I will never understand the concept. While I know that sort of thing happens in real life, should it be regarded as fare for entertainment ? Commended it would seem ? Should it be a source of laughter ?

I think it is a reflection of today's society in many ways, it's alarming.

There was one that I will gladly watch over again - Get Smart. Now that was my idea of funny. :)

Rosemary

That was good!

Cheryl

And, a good many years ago, the American comedy "Soap" had many funny moments

That was a good one too. I also liked the very quirky "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and "Twin Peaks". I think the last things I "followed" were Murphy Browne and sort of spin off Love and War...

Love Mythbusters and adore Dirty Jobs. What a hoot!

Sara

A friend of mine just doesn't understand my attraction to those shows. Hunky guys, no talking down and lots of fun science.

Yup - it's actually pretty funny - a satire - but I think you have to get through it to get it - the first time can be trying. In 10 minutes you can't get the whole plot, characters, etc. It's definitely got a moral in there - but if you just get 10 min of annoying shallow characters at first it would be strange at best.

Ellice

OK - now I'm really laughing. You could actually sit and watch that total trash show ? Honestly. There was a piece on NPR here, might've been BBC, talking about the racism and what had erupted on the British version of Big Brother. Now that's a waste of airwaves with no redeeming anything - just my opinion - of course.

Ellice

Exactly. The movie industry in India is huge - IIRC - actually they produce more films than the US. And it is based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) hence the name Bollywood.

There are some really good Bollywood movies that are being shown here, at least on cable - and some really, really bad ones.

I really liked Monsoon Wedding - which is very realistic and shows a wedding in an upper class household in parallel with the lives of the working class people. Very interesting - if you're at all interested in the ins and outs of the rituals, celebrations around an Indian (hindu) wedding. Also, there is a film made in Toronto about 2 years ago called "Bollywood, Hollywood" - which is kind of a send-up, but good. The latest bad thing on cable is "Bride and Prejudice" or some such title - it's a modern version of Pride and Prejudice and I really recommend drinking while watching it - Ny Indian friends and I were hysterical at how bad but funny this was.

Ellice

All good points. But, I did forget - Talk Soup - a hilarious weekly recap that completely makes fun of the entertainment industry, and reality shows. I love the reality show clip of the week. It's on E, and I'm astounded that the show has managed to stay alive for a few years - though the host changes every so often.

Ellice

Is Mythbusters the one where they blow up a caravan at some point in each show? DD *LOVES* that show!

Sue

I don't know if they do it always. Blowing stuff up - what fun. I used to love doing that - for work - huge things. Very therapeutic.

ellice

Some poor car/truck/boat gets destroyed or something goes BOOM. Jamie want big boom!!!!

Cheryl

On 1/30/07 3:15 PM, "Cheryl Isaak" wrote:

LOL - I do really understand that. When we had been working about a year or two, a friend from grad school was getting married in Hampton Roads area of VA. It's pretty southern there - the Navy shipyards, and NASA Langley in the vicinity. So, he works at NASA Langley, and the wedding is full of really, really, really geekie colleagues - plus friends of both. This wedding even included "slam dancing" . So, all the geeks were doing the "what do you do where do you work" think - especially with XDH -and we'd explain how we knew Mark, etc. Finally, after getting tired of being kind of snubbed - a bunch of them were talking with us - and being kind of condescending to me - when xDH explained that I'd also gone to school with Mark - we were all in the same dept. At which point they looked at me and said "oh - so what do you do ?..." (these are all guys who do computational stuff, and I'm primarily an experimentalist) . To which I respond "I blow things up " . There is silence, and then they all laugh - hah, hah . Then DH - looking very serious "No, that's what she does - really BIG things - like the size of Saturn V rockets at least" . Suddenly they all looked really nervous, and kind of shuffled away. It was pretty funny.

Once, my instrumentation guy had miscalculated something in our firing/loading for a shock tube test. We were doing a test that I thought was stupid, as did my colleagues - but the sponsor had insisted and so we came up with a scheme that might work. Anyhow - the senior guy who ran the instrumentation section was out, and the younger guy - about my age, was going to handle this shot. So, I trust him. We do all this rigging and stuff to kluge together the experiment. Imagine a cube about 8'x10'x12' blocking the end of a large air gun (this is a shock tube). We completely blocked the muzzle end - as we wanted to put a certain type of load on the door end of the cube. It was attached on to the muzzle with a collar, and huge cables with turnbuckles (how I got my back injury at work) like 7/8" cables each at about 8000# tension. Up on a platform of railroad ties so it all matched up. Big day comes - my chief tech and I go out in the field parallel to the set-up - so we can see. Sirens, lights - warning. Then BOOM. Then, suddenly, pieces of the interior structural members (from inside the wall sandwich panels) are flying thru the air - right at us - we're running and laughing - despite nearly getting speared by some very sharp wreckage. When the dust clears - we head over - the "cube" is still there - kind of. We can't find the door. At all. Think like a submarine door. Finally - tech Bob and I are lying on the ground looking up - and there is the door - with the end wall it was in rolled around it and halfway down the side - like opening a sardine can. I couldn't stop laughing. I was hysterical. Really. The whole thing was a stupid thing - we'd tried to do the best. So, we go to call the sponsor - and one of the other engineers is talking to them - and the sponsor wants to know if I can get them some good sized samples - cored thru - like a foot square panel. One of the guys explains that I'm kind of "choked up" and that's why I'm not on the phone. Finally I take the phone and say "no - think twisted airplane wreckage - no big flat surfaces left" and burst out laughing again. It was exhilarating. Oh, the punch line - the instrumentation tech when calculating the charge to load the shock tube with forgot that we were completely blocking the muzzle

- so instead of a shock wave at a specific duration, it was more like 3 times the duration - which made a standing wave. What a hoot. Honestly - I laughed for days. There were tears running down my face at the site. And the high speed film from the interior - it's great - running along and then

- kablooie.

Don't get too excited about taxpayers dollars - it was just one of those things. But, everytime I see some of those pix - it cracks me up. It had been a very tedious relationship with the sponsor, and it just seemed like karma when this large thing just went kablooie. Especially the bits of fiberglass, and armor, and what all - raining down around us - as we ran for our lives. DH thinks I should just try to get a job with Mythbusters.

Ellice

I like a job with Mythbusters just hang out with Adam and Jamie....