What Not to Wear
 

Calling the cable company to request a channel actually works.

My mother pestered her local cable company to add OLN so she could get live coverage of the TdF. They logged every request she made and added the channel. They told her that they heavily weight requests because they figure every request represents 10,000 viewers who would watch the channel but don't care enough to call.

BBC America is well-worth a call.

Even(sometimes checks out East Enders on lazy Saturday afternoons)Odds

Survivor
 

I haven't seen the Beeb's WNTW yet, but even the US version is OK. The hosts are annoying rather than catty, but the advice is pretty damn good.

I'm dying to see the Beeb's version, but we don't get BBC America on our cable program, and when I told the Mr. to figure out how to get it he refused unless he got center ice hockey too, and if he gets that I'll never watch the TV again anyway.

Actually on the weekend I saw a Makeover Story on TLC. NOT a good show, since they sort of race through it and there is no explanation of much of anything being done. But, anyhow, the women they did on the one I watched were a mother daughter getting done for their St. Patrick's day party, and the improvement was HUGE. It was brave to take them on, because these women had been hit with the fugly stick bigtime. (The daughter actually came out looking sort of attractive, mainly because she was thin and, if she didn't touch it, they got her hair to stop looking like most of it had fallen out.) They both seriously looked like hags out of a Gustave Dore engraving of outcast London.

Survivor
 

Originally posted by Barely Legal GASP! You :eek: could be right! My Tivo hates me! It didn't want me to see the winner as punishment for recording Mr. Personality and not watching it yet. So there it sits on the hard drive - day after day after day...

Restaurant tipping
 

Bilmore, truer words have never been spoken. I have often tried to articulate this very thing, but have never quite gotten it down to the pithy 2 sentences you just wrote. Bravo!

Do you mind if I needlepoint that onto a pillow?**



*doing them really inconvenient "favors" or imposing on you in any variety of unseemly ways

**And give it to my mother for Mother's Day? (Actually, I should give it to myself for Mother's Day -- to remind myself how to stand up to my mother...)

Survivor
 

I have a solution. Dump the silly cable, get a dish and a couple of receivers and tell the hubby that he can get NHL Center Ice (which I must say rules). The race for the Cup is almost over so there are a few months before you have to actually order Center Ice anyway. Dish Network can give you 150 channels (including BBC America) plus like 10 movie channels, and extra receiver and local channels for $65. I do not work for Dish Network.

New Donald Trump Reality Show
 

NBC announced its new fall lineup. On the schedule: "The Apprentice," where contestants compete for a job as The Donald's personal assistant.

I'm expecting an extremely high T&A/ambitious bimbo quotient a la "Joe Millionaire." Except instead of winning a cute, vacuous young poor guy to play with, you get a stumpy, repulsive grabby-fingered late-middle-aged rich guy to serve.

Survivor
 

I second that. Center Ice rocks. You get pretty much all the games and Don Cherry! Although the first time I saw Hockey Night in Canada I started crying at the Canadian Tire commercial because I got really really homesick. But I doubt you will have this reaction. (And you will probably want to kill yourself after the CBC's first ten plugs for the "Shania[Celine - insert other worthless Canadian celebrity here] Comes Home!" special.)

survivor and 90210
 

My life changed after purchasing a TiVo. Now I don't have to re-program the VCR if the day or time of a program changes or runs longer. There's also no such thing as forgetting to hit the "record" button before leaving the house. I can make a Wishlist with my favorite actors and TiVo records whatever is available. Life with TiVo is very good.

Just my $0.02 worth. :boots:

survivor and 90210
 

I've been kinda annoyed at the inflexibility of TiVo lately. Bachelor has been running from 9:00-10:06 or some such nonsense, meaning that TiVo refuses to record both Bachelor and Law & Order, which requires us to be fully caught up with Bachelor by 10:00 so that we can a) manually switch the TiVo to start recording Law & Order, and b) run upstairs to watch the end of Bachelor. I suppose I could record Bachelor on the upstairs VCR too, but I'm so averse to doing that now.

Just a nit-pick. If all programmers switch to non-standard start times, it'll make TiVo less useful.

Oh, and to whomever posted the long Reservoir Dogs quite, it wasn't Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) who wouldn't tip, it was Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi). Am wondering where Em found such a fairly faithful (though someone omitted lots of cuss-words) transcription that has the wrong characters delivering the lines?

str8

Survivor
 

What? You don't have dual tuner? It's the ONLY way to go. Otherwise, you can't watch a show and record something else. Plus, same thing with the Osbornes, I used to get 10 minutes of some other crap beforehand and miss the end. But Tivo lets you alter start and stop time in increments. But you totally have to get dual tuner - man it's the only way to fly.

Question
 

Your tivo does all this? My tivo only...oh wait. They all do the same damn thing.

On an unrelated note, here's a general question (or two):

Why do people feed pigeons? What needs to happen in your life for you to want to get up, go out and buy bird feed and/or bread for the sole purpose of feeding it to the flying, disease-infested rats with beaks that inhabit and shit all over our fine city? Are you an idiot? Do you feed the rats and roaches that visit your apartment? They aren't birds. Canaries are birds. Doves are birds. Eagles, hawks, ostriches and penguins are birds. Pigeons are vermin. In fact, we should buy about 100,000 hawks, build some nests and have them eradicate the pigeon population.

TM

survivor and 90210
 

http://www.hundland.com/scripts/ReservoirDogs.txt


Ummm. I think maybe your recollection is off. Like you said, it seems like if they went to all that trouble, they would get the characters right. I don't remember either way, but the Madonna, "like a virgin" discussion in there is pretty funny too.

Keanu on the Matrix . . .
 

If it were someone other than Keanu Reeves speaking, I would think the following quote from Keanu from a Yahoo article should be ascribed to editorial error, but given who it is, I can see him writing this quote himself:

"There really wasn't any distinction, per say, between the two [Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions]. It wasn't like doing a checkoff play."

Like Keanu would make it through 5 minutes of a Russian play.

Woah.

Mmmm(maybe I should take it to the timmy board)Burger

Pigeons
 

OH TM, you're my hero. I lived in a brand new housing development and the pigeons came to visit. One at a time at first, until they found out that there was free food (people took their kids to feed the damn things). 2 of them decided to roost in several of our houses and proceeded to shit all over the sides of the house. Husband threatened to shoot them, but I reminded him that stray bullets could kill an innocent bird. Suddenly there were tons of the damn things and we couldn't get rid of them. So we moved.

Pigeons
 

One hyphenated word: Barbed-wire!! If they can't land, they can't roost and then they will find somewhere else to shit. I hate any creature that doesn't have the decency to flush or bury its own shit. Not that I would ever intentionally kill, maim or hurt anything -- I am, after all, an animal lover. I just prefer the ones that don't shit on me or my car.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Why does everyone and the NYT think she is such a horrible bitch? She gets knocked up by some guy who has walked all over her for years, which is sad, not bitchy, and then she has the kid, which is her choice. Then Nate marries her and she is insecure about how much he loves her and why he married her which is precisely justfiable since he married her only bc he knocked her up. Yeah, going to see Brenda fora massage was kind of stalky and psycho, but that was fueled by her insecurity. Shouldnt we pity this woman more than anything? She is a little hardcore on the crunchy granola thing and overprotective of the baby, but isnt that a symption of being a first time mother? Like her intentions are good? I dont get it.

Question
 

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul's
The little old bird woman comes
In her own special way to the people she call,
"Come, buy my bags full of crumbs
Come feed the little birds,
Show them you care
And you'll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry
Their nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
Feed the birds," that's what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it,
You know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

Though her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she's calling to you
"Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag"

Though her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she's calling to you
"Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag"

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Fuck. Nate married Lisa?

I've been HBO-less this 6FU season; was waiting for reruns to catch up.

Pigeons
 

No. No way was I going to ugly up my house with bird poker things for the sake of those damn birds. I, too am a friend of the animals and tried numerous passive/aggressive methods to rid myself of these horrible creatures - hose, long pole, noises. I even used to wake them up to shoo them away, hoping they would get tired of me bothering them in their sleep. No way - freeloaders to the end. New owner paid a guy to trap them and cart them away - but many many remain. It's only a matter of time. I'm with TM, stop feeding the damn things.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

sorry, didnt think that something that happened like nine episodes (or even three episodes) was spoiler material. just spend the ten bucks a month and get HBO.

survivor and 90210
 

It was Mr. Pink in the movie. I think what happened was, the script that was posted is in its original form and they found out while shooting that Mr. Pink (who complains about his name being Mr. Pink later in the movie) and Steve Buscemi were a better fit for these lines, so they just switched it.

Thurgreed(at least, that would make sense)Marshall

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

It's the self-righteous manner, particularly when coupled with the fact that the situation she's in is her responsibility as much as or more than anyone else's, and she keeps whining like she deserves better but it's everyone else's fault that she doesn't get it. It's just manipulative.

And, IMO, the self-righteous thing frequently goes along with the crunchy-granola thing, and thus both annoy me doubly. And Lili Taylor annoys me, too, though I have no clue if it is her or just that she gets typecast as frumpy, crunchy, self-righteous, victimy types.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Thanks for the financial advice, but it's not the money, it's finding the half day to waste waiting for the guy to come with the stupid box and its own remote, so that I can add it to my collection of remotes.

And WTF is with Comcast, saying you have to have the box to get HBO when every other channel comes directly into the cable-ready TV? Is it 1979? Do I really have to have some ugly ass black plastic LED display thing sitting in my living room in order to see Nate ruin his precious life?

This is especially silly considering that we were getting HBO as part of our cable package for 2 years without a box (yes, we were paying for it). In fact, I would pay more not to have the stupid box and rental remote.

Fucking cable fascists. I know, I know, get a dish.

Cable vs. Dish
 

OK, so is this whole "if it rains the dish fritzes out" thing true? Are there reception issues with a dish? Or is that just cable-company BS?

What if you don't own your apartment? Anyone ever have trouble getting a landlord to mount one on the building (no one in our building has a dish now)?

edited to change re: line to something accurate

Survivor
 

You can watch something on regular tv while your tivo is recording a different show if you put the tivo on "standby". You don't have to have a dual tuner.

Survivor
 

Yeah, but when the shows overlap (like you were complaining about BL) then you can record simultaneously.

Cable v. Dish
 

No. No. Yes. I have watched the DirecTV during a very bad snow storm when the cable was out at the neighbors. Bad lightning and truly horrid storms will cause a problem, but 99 percent of the time - no problem. Digital cable states that the picture quality is as good as Digital satellite, but that's simply not true. We had the dish, then we moved got digital cable on the ruse that it was as good (from ATT now Comcast) and cancelled in a month after we purchased another dish.

Hi speed Internet and Dish?
 

Aside from my being too lazy, er, busy, to research the issue, one reason we've been slow to switch from Comcast is that we have a cable modem, and so the TV/Internet package is pretty competitively priced. Do any of the satellite services offer hi speed internet?

I'm also not so crazy about having a dish on the side of my house, for aesthetic reasons.

Attn: Everyone who's badmouthing pigeons
 

I'm telling Mike Tyson what you've been saying. He's not going to be happy.

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/030409.html

Oh, and in my random-CD-buying moment of the weekend, I was at a big mall in Orange County and went into Sam Goody (while the fiancee was buying mother's day presents). Sam Goody's are not what one would traditionally call "good," in the sense that they don't "have a wide selection," nor do they "stock good music." So how random was it that among the Lisa Loebs and Kenny Logginses was the unheralded classic "Shakespeare my Butt" by "Lowest of the Low," the best Toronto band to ever record two great albums and then disappear. I'd thought it was out of print, but apparently not. Bizarre, and lucky for me. Anyone else have any great 1-or-2 album unknown wonders from their hometown they care to share?

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Where does the NYT take a position on Lisa? I'd be interested to read what they (or anyone else, really... I love that show!) have to say about it.

I think Lisa is a goner. She was starting to grow on me, actually.

Hi speed Internet and Dish?
 

I don't know about anyone else, but you can't see the dish on my house. I generally do not notice them on other houses either and I know that other people must have them. In other words, it seems like most times they can be mounted out of sight. Normally it takes tornado-warning weather to mess with reception. I love the dish but YMMV.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Lili Taylor (Lisa) is credited as guest star. Rachel Griffiths (Brenda) and all the other regulars are just credited. The only question on Lisa is whether the funeral takes place at Fisher & Diaz.

Blonde/blue?
 

Bridge of Love,

What's with the signature line? Is this Match.com?

;)

Survivor
 

Actually that wasn't me complaining about the overlap. I'm happy with Standby -- I'm not sophisticated enough to figure out a dual tuner. And only ass-y shows like Bachelor run for 70 minutes.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Yesterday's Style section had lili taylor in the "evening out with" column. they kept calling her crabby. i really just felt sorry for her more than anything, she must have been in such pain just to be loved bc she was mother of kid.

spoiler




and I think she is definitley toast bc of all of the foreshadowing before her trip- "I dont want Maya to see me leave", the brekaing up of the cell phone convo "I am losing you Lisa" and I think there was more. But it doesnt seem right that she would kill herself bc of the kid. But I think she took the knapsack with her to put in some heavy weights to drown herself. And the Dr Pepper was the, fuck this health food shit, I am dying anyway, celebration. I just wonder how they will make it fit with her character.

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Possible 6FU spoilers:
















Rachel Griffiths got a guest star credit in several episodes where she had only a minor role (actually, I think it was "with Rachel Griffiths," but whatever). In the latest episode (which I had to complete before going back to the office for a late night, I was so interested to find out what happened to Lisa), Lisa was only in it for a 15-second dream sequence. Lili Taylor usually gets a regular credit. I imagine this is all some sort of union credit thing or just some custom the producers stick to.

I am more intrigued by the continuing dive into depression of Ruth and the Rico/Vanessa/her sister storylines. I can't get a good feel for whether Rico is just a controlling maniac or a prudent guy. Looks like the trust is somewhere in the middle. Did he cheat on her, or vice versa, in the past? Hasn't she always been kind of passive/aggressive about him not making enough money or something?

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

After scanning through these reviews, I've realized that the only TV I watch is: (1) sports, mainly baseball, football and the World Series of Poker (on ESPN2 and the Travele Channel - phenomenal), and (2) reruns, consisting of Seinfeld, Simpsons and NewsRadio.

Prime Time TV doesn't exist for me.

And I still contend that watching sports doesn't count as "watching TV". So when the GF calls and says, "Are you sitting around watching TV?" I say "No, I'm watching the Sox play the Mariners"...

final word on subtotal/total tipping?
 

what is the final word?

subtotal?
total?

good debate

final word on subtotal/total tipping?
 

My final word (which is likely completely at odds with any consensus final word) is:

Tip what the service is worth, irrespective of the price of the meal. (Why should a waitron lucky enough to get a job at Mortons get paid lots more to carry a plate and three glasses than does a waitron at Lucky's House of Pancakes and Sushi?)

Lisa from Six Feet Under
 

Where is Brenda's super sexy incestuous brother Billy credited? (I need his real name to put him on the laminated list)