Big Pickles

Amusingly, the toilet on the International Space Station really did break down. It's fixed now.

Twitter ties it all together.

Labels: science, tv

There used to be this guy named Richard who worked at our office and liked to talk about TVs. In fact, it got to the point where he wouldn't even bother introducing the topic, because everyone already knew what he was going to talk about. He would just walk into your office and start saying something like, "You know, I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that 32 inches is just too small..."

I'm going to be channeling Richard in this blog post. If TVs aren't your thing, you know what to do.

Simply put, the Sony KD-34XBR960 is the Holy Grail of cathode ray tube (CRT) high definition televisions. I acquired it yesterday.

Sony started manufacturing this television in 2003, and quit about three years later, when the entire industry abandoned CRT technology in favor of flat panel form factors like plasma and LCD. However, most critics agree that the new flat panels still do not measure up to the best CRTs in terms of picture quality. Sure, they're coming closer, and since CRT development has been abandoned, it's probably only a matter of time. But for now, CRT is king. According to CNET:

The bottom line: This is the reference standard for picture quality among direct-view HDTVs and happens to be a great value.

Since 2004, the KD-34XBR960 has been my white whale. I watched it drop in price from its initial list of $2200 to half that when it was finally taken off the market. I watched it go for $1000 on eBay and craigslist over the years. I watched as the official KD-34XBR960 thread at AVS Forums grew to over 6000 posts. And now it's mine. For just $400 from a nice guy on craigslist, including the matching stand.

I hardly know what to do with myself anymore.

Labels: tech, tv

Now that the Olympics are over I can get back to Mad Men. This is an awesome show.

Ever since I started watching this show I've been meaning to look up the exchange rate between 1960 dollars and current dollars. I estimated it at about 10 based on clues in the show, but that felt a bit high. Turns out it's more like 7. (That's not counting any adjustment for the difference in buying power of $1 in Manhattan vs. suburban middle America, of course.)

Anyway, they talk about money a lot on this show, so you need to have some feel for how much things cost and how much people are earning. I'm sure someone else has already done this somewhere, and when I find it I'll post a link, but until then:

Don Draper makes $35,000 a year, which would be $245,000 to us. He once got a $2500 ($17,500) bonus and tried to use it to take his beatnik mistress to Paris, but she declined. So he gives her the money, tells her to buy a car, and never speaks to her again. When he makes partner he starts making as much as $45,000, or $315,000 in today's dollars. When his long lost brother tracks him down, Don gives him $5000 to leave town and never contact him again. That's $35,000 to us, and more than Pete Campbell makes in a year.

Pete Campbell starts the show making $75 a week. That's $525 to us or $27,300 a year. Not nearly enough to afford the $32,000 ($224,000) apartment his wife Trudy insists on buying. Oh, but the Realtor says they can get it for $30,000 ($210,000) so that will help. Good thing Trudy's parents can front the down payment. Pete and Trudy got a "chip & dip" for their wedding valued at $22 ($154) which he was able to exchange for a .22 rifle.

Harry Crane makes $200 ($1400) a week, and is dismayed to find out that his coworker Ken Cosgrove makes $300 ($2100). That's $72,800 and $109,200 a year to us. Luckily, Harry finds a way to impress his bosses and earn a $25/week raise ($81,900).

Peggy Olson starts out making $35 a week. That's $12,740 a year to us, and even Don is surprised to hear how little she makes. He makes it sound like she's asking a lot when she requests a $5/week raise for taking on the duties of a junior copywriter, but he probably would have given her more. Even with her raise, she's making the equivalent of $14,560 annually. No wonder she was upset when someone swiped $3 ($21) from her locker.

Don's wife, Betty has to call a tow truck when her car breaks down. He informs her that he has the part she needs in the truck, and he can fix the car on the spot for $9 ($63). That's a little more than the $4 ($28) she has in her wallet, but she manages to get by on her charm, as she always has. Later on, their son Bobby breaks the hi-fi. Betty informs Don that it will cost $18 ($126) to have it repaired, or just $9 ($63) if they want to haul it down to the shop themselves. Don doesn't.

Anyway, if you think you might want to start watching Mad Men, you should probably practice multiplying by 7 in your head. Or have a calculator handy.

Labels: tv

So I'm watching an episode of Sesame Street yesterday for the first time in years (we just replaced our TiVo, and pickings were slim) and I happened to see Tina Fey and her Bookaneers in a segment that was irresistibly cute. Then Brian Williams did a short where he says "Squid squid squid squid squid squid."



Was Sesame Street always this clever or was I just too young to appreciate it? Anyway, I know YouTube is full of classic Sesame Street clips from the 80s, but they don't have everything. Muppet Wiki to the rescue. They document everything involving Muppets, which includes every episode of Sesame Street.

Check out episode 1575, where Mr. Rogers visits Big Bird but no one believes him, just like with Snuffy. Classic.

Labels: tv, wiki

What do Fonzie, Captian Jean-Luc Picard, and George Michael Bluth have in common? They are all figments of Tommy Westphall's imagination.

Tommy Westphall was an autistic child in the TV show St. Elsewhere. In the final episode of that series, it was revealed that Tommy had dreamt the entire run of the show. That means that any other shows that had crossovers with St. Elsewhere were also part of Tommy's dream, and so on. When you consider all the connections, it soon becomes clear that almost all of TV must have originated in Tommy's mind.

For example, characters from St. Elsewhere once visited the bar on Cheers. Cheers spun off Frasier. In Fraiser, Niles and Daphne read Caroline in the City's comic strip. CITC's Annie was hit on by Friends' Chandler. In Friends, Phoebe's twin sister Ursula is also a waitress in Mad About You. Paul from that show leased his old apartment to Kramer on Seinfeld. So all these characters exist in the same fictional sphere.

But a few connections really make things blow up. In Mad About You, Paul did a documentary narrated by The Dick Van Dyke Show's Alan Brady. And from there you can get all the way back to I Love Lucy and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and a ton of other shows in between. It helps that some shows are crossover whores, like The X-Files (15), The Drew Carey Show (8), and Hi Honey, I'm Home, which racked up 17 crossovers in its 13 episodes on the air.

You can totally play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with this, and to me it's even more impressive because they are all fictional connections. Can you connect Peter Petrelli with Larry Appleton? Or The Cosby Show's Heathcliff Huxtable with Cosby's Hilton Lucas? Or the US and UK versions of The Office? I could play with this all day.

ETA: Ok, I just thought of a bunch of problems with this thing. What happens when one show treats another show as a TV show, instead of a reality? For example. Paul Buchman from Mad About You leases his old apartment to Kramer from Seinfeld. But George and Susan from Seinfeld are shown watching Mad About You on television one evening. How can that be? To George Costanza, Paul Buchman is not a character on a TV show, he's the real person who Kramer leased his apartment from.

If you think about it, this kind of continuity error happens anytime anyone in this multiverse treats any of the others as TV shows. There are several other examples on Seinfeld alone. Kramer gets a job on Murphy Brown. George talks to George Wendt (Norm from Cheers) and Corbin Bernsen (Arnie Becker from L.A. Law) backstage at The Tonight Show. None of this should be possible because to the Seinfeld gang, Murphy Brown should be a real reporter, Cheers a real bar, and Becker a real lawyer.

Labels: tv

Did you see this video during combined PH/RS meeting yesterday?

Melissa did. She wasn't sure if it was a church-wide thing or if it was done on a local level, but she told me that she won't soon forget hearing the voices of Chris Parnell and Amy Poehler in the chapel.

They also showed this FedEx commercial.

Labels: church, tv

My kids love Word Girl.

First they found her on the Internet.

Then they found her in 5-minute shorts at the end of their PBS cartoons.

Then they discovered that she's getting her own full-length show this fall.

Then I found her on the Internet.

It's a vicious cycle.

NYT on Word Girl

Jim Lehrer Interviews Word Girl

Labels: fun, kids, tv

Have I mentioned that they know how to do TV in Japan? (Of course, I'm only seeing the highlights. For all I know their typical daytime lineup makes ours look like the Renaissance.)

Anyway, believe me when I tell you that you will enjoy this video of a secretary taking care of some routine paperwork.

Labels: japan, tv, video

I tell you, they know how to do TV in Japan. Why don't we have any reality shows called "Ninja Warrior?" I would watch that.

This guy is only the second to complete an obstacle course that can only be called insane. Five hundred others have tried and failed.

Labels: japan, tv

Foldedspace has collected many of your favorite classic Sesame Street clips on YouTube into one convenient location.

Note: If you try and click on the "La la la" song, you will find that the video has been removed. Never fear, someone else posted it here.

I haven't tested the rest of the links recently, but let me know if any others are broken.

Labels: fun, tv, video

Well, Christmas break is over so it's time to get back to blogging. These first few days of work have been particularly busy ones, but hopefully things will die down once the year gets underway.

For the first post of 2007, I give you fifty great TV commercials from the 80s.

I still quote from No. 1 regularly.

The 80s commercial I quoted most in high school isn't in this list though. You can find it here. It's the second one. "Pardon me, guys." Never gets old.

Labels: fun, tv, video

Melissa will be getting a call from Dwight today.

Labels: audio, fun, tv