Monday Afternoon Liveblog

Miscellaneous TV

By B-Side | Monday, May 1, 2006 | 11:59 am | 15 Comments

catwatchingtv

You know the deal: Monday afternoon, kind of bored, watching TV. What better way to pass the time than with a liveblog?

Starting after the jump…12:05 PM
In honor of all the exciting immigration rallies today, I decide to hit up the news channels. First stop: CNN. A reporter named Juan Carlos Lopez describes the scene in Washington. I wish I could listen to what he’s saying, but I’m entirely too distracted by his Kermit The Frog voice. Note to CNN: don’t hire reporters that sound like Muppets.

12:08
Juan Carlos notes that he can hear babies crying because he’s in a park. Man, this is hard hitting journalism!

12:10
MSNBC. On this day of massive political activism, what’s MSNBC covering? Why, a wacky photo of some German dude who’s the World Champion Freestyle Beard of 2005. Funny, I thought that was Teri Hatcher. Rimshot!

12:13
Oh god. It’s not just a photo. Alison Stewart gets Phil Olsen on the phone, a.k.a. the founder of Beard Team USA. “How do you menfolk get your beards all twisted up like that?” Get this woman a Pulitzer!

beard050106
I hope I look this sexy 30 years from now.

12:20
Twenty minutes in, and Alison Stewart’s sidekick mentions that hey, a big topic in the news today is immigration. Oh really? I didn’t realize. I thought it was the tragic state of American Beard competitions.

12:22
Time to check out Fox News. Sadly, there’s only a lame Verizon commercial on. Oh good. It’s over. Okay, the news is on. Apparently I’m watching a show called Studio B. The big topic of the day: Rush Limbaugh arrested! Does anyone still care about Rush Limbaugh? It’s not 1994 still, is it?

12:26
You know what? There’s only one place that can provide news that speaks to ME, a twentysomething youth floating in the informational morass that is cable TV. That’s right, Current TV. What, pray tell, does this network have to say about the immigration rallies? Uh… not much. That’s because Current is doing a scathing piece on… bikini-clad meter maids in Australia. Yes, I’ll let that soak in for a moment.

current050106

12:34
All this channel surfing is making me hungry. Time for lunch.

1:51
Back from lunch. Well, actually, I got back about twenty minutes ago. I’ve since been sipping an iced tea and catching up with what’s happening on the Internets. Not much. Now it’s back to TV. Giada De Laurentiis is mixing some squishy sounding dish on the Food Network. Oh, it’s a lentil loaf. I never thought about it before, but if Giada were any sort of food, she’d definitely be a lentil loaf.

1:53
Giada has just announced that she’s adding her mother’s secret ingredient to the dish: tomato. Isn’t it sort of impossible for tomato to be a secret ingredient? Kind of obvious. I can just imagine eating at her house. “Hey, what’s this sweet, red ingredient on top of your lentil loaf?” IT’S A SECRET!

1:58
Giada says that portabella mushrooms are the largest of the cultivated mushrooms. Much in the same way that Giada’s head is the largest of the cultivated heads. Parallelism!

1:59
Uh oh. Giada just tried her lentil loaf, and it did NOT go over well. Looks like another Giada disaster. I gotta do a photo recap of this…

2:56
One internet shortage later, I can finally get back to liveblogging. Or at least I’ll try. My office has a tendency to overheat, which often leaves me drowsy and useless. Why don’t I turn the AC on? You don’t want to know. Let’s just say — politics. Back to TV. Let’s see… Ah, NFL Europe. It’s the Berlin Thunder at Rhein Fire. The showdown we’ve all been waiting for!

3:00
Passing through the channels, I find TV1 and Amen. Honestly, the most underrated TV theme song of all time. Oh shit! 227 is on now. I swear, I can’t get away from this show.

3:02
USA has a movie on called Foreigner 2: Black Dawn. For a moment, I think this is going to be some wonderful reunion between Lou Gramm and ’80s supergroup Foreigner, but alas, it’s just some dumb movie with Steven Seagal. What’s worse is that USA has decided to cram this widescreen pic into the regular TV size; so everyone is all narrow and squished. If there’s anything worse than Steven Seagal, it’s Steven Seagal at an unnatural aspect ratio.

3:07
What the hell? Martha Stewart is wearing the most bizarre balloon hat I’ve ever seen. Granted, Martha wearing any sort of balloon hat would be amusing, but this is just too ridiculous. And oh god… She’s fitted her audience with balloon hats too. The only thing that could make this scene any more ridiculous would be if Rosie Perez were to walk out. One second later: Rosie Perez walks out. I guarantee it will take only 5 seconds before Rosie’s laugh pops all the balloons.

martha1050106

martha2050106

3:38
This liveblog started off so promisingly — but between the internet outages and various other things landing on my desk, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be. So until next time…

About

15 Comments

  1. 1
    MTV4ME
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 12:11 pm

    This is why I don’t watch the news…what a joke.

  2. 2
    RealityTV4Me
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 12:25 pm

    It’s a good thing you don’t have a day job so you can keep those of us chained to our desks entertained from 9 – 5. I find myself checking out the site numerous times throughout the day.

  3. 3
    BigMax
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 12:26 pm

    Some of CNN.com’s latest news:

    Diner finds piece of finger on his burger

    Bush imposter steals the show

    SUV drivers steal $8,100 in gas

    Random drug tests, no guns for Limbaugh

    There are a couple of real news stories, but what a pathetic joke.

    Fox is also covering the finger burger story, the Limbaugh story and the sordid saga of Anna Nicole and the Geezer. Strangely, however, it is also reporting on Bolivia’s nationalization of the natural gas industry and Puerto Rico’s government shutdown.

  4. 4
    mikefenn
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 12:30 pm

    I want a job where I can sit around and watch tv all day.

  5. 5
    Leah3t
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 1:10 pm

    i’m surprised there weren’t any stories in which children were harmed in horrible ways. CnN loves that.

  6. 6
    jash
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    you want a job watching tv all day? i think its called BEING UNEMPLOYED.

  7. 7
    BigMax
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 1:25 pm

    I’m amazed Fox didn’t have a missing white women story…

  8. 8
    jumpedcut
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 1:50 pm

    There actually is a job out there where you get paid to watch tv.
    It’s a master control operator at a tv station. I had this job for about 2 years, and I had the fun times of watching all the great programming sent down to us from CBS. Yes, we just got to sit and watch tv – but we also had to watch the commercials (which you are responsible for airing), and to actually monitor the crappy shows you are watching to make sure they are going out correctly.

    The worst part of the job was having to work master control on the overnight shift, where I was responsible for putting the programs and commercials in from 10:45 PM to 4 AM. Our great programming would include Martha Stewart, Extra Weekend Edition, a few infomercials, and a movie. The movie was the most exciting part of the night, only because the station had rights to air crappy movies. Sometimes we even ran a few “Ernest” movies. Sadly, I got a different job at another station, this one lets me sit in front of a computer all day and look at Tvgasm.

  9. 9
    fycin
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 7:32 pm

    i had a job where you just watch TV, at an ad research company. actually I still have it but I’m “on hiatus.” you watch only what you’re assigned to watch though, which sucks and it’s at night. But you either log airings of commercials during primetime or write trivia questions for the website or log and write product placement questions. Easiest job I’ve ever had. If you live in NYC or LA, I highly recommend it. The annoying part was getting assigned to TLC over and over and over. There are only so many episodes of Clean Sweep and Overhaulin’ one can watch before wanting to kill oneself.

  10. 10
    Firecat
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 8:08 pm

    lol….I think we watched the same things. Although, I continued and watched “The Peoples court”….this mother was suing her step-son for $2000 dollars. He was victim of a “nigerian ebay scam”….he sold his mini bike to some dude in nigeria for 400 bucks…he was sent a check for 2200, and he wired 1800 of his step-moms money back! LOL

  11. 11
    mikefenn
    Posted May 1, 2006 at 9:25 pm

    Okay, I definitely need to research and find one of these jobs. Well, I’ve got the BEING UNEMPLOYED part down. But the whole, college graduate thing kinda makes it even more pathetic.

    That, and the fact that I still use words like “kinda”.

  12. 12
    AbbyAnn
    Posted May 2, 2006 at 10:21 am

    BigMax (#3), although the story of Anna Nichole and the geezer is sordid and soap-opera on a personal level, the news is a Supreme Court ruling about the jurisdiction of bankruptcy courts, which is a legitimate legal news topic (albeit a dry one that no one would care about if it didn’t involve the personalities angle.) Still, Supreme Court decisions are real stories.

  13. 13
    Tracie
    Posted May 2, 2006 at 11:02 am

    I love the first picture you started blogging with, B-Side. My cat likes to watch TV, too.

    Someday, I hope to be one of those housewives so I can occasionally sneak in some daytime TV time.

  14. 14
    Leah3t
    Posted May 2, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    yeah but the supreme court cranks out tons of decisions. and CNN only ever cares about the ones that involve sex or crazy violence.

  15. 15
    juxtapoeser
    Posted May 9, 2006 at 6:34 pm

    Where was the Live Blog for the 8th????

    B-Side…these posts make my Mondays!!

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Human Verification: In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.