Like, Love and Don't Like

This week, I like The Three Stooges. The Stooges have always been around and I can remember watching episodes with my grandfather in Camden when I was younger. It seems that the rights to the old episodes frequently bounce from one cable company to the next. AMC apparently has the rights at the moment and have been showing a lot of episodes lately. I’ve had to program the DRV to catch the airings (in HD!) because they’re shown at random hours. The Stooges are funny. They relied more on physical comedy than today’s snarky-smart material. Julie hates the Stooges, which is fine because I like to watch the old episodes by myself anyway.

Check out the Stooges’ Wikipedia page when you get a chance. Their story is actually a pretty sad tale. The episodes you see on TV are actually referred to as “shorts”. My uneducated assumption is that these shorts were shown prior to full feature movies in theaters, back when going to the movie theater was a lot more common than today. A varied combination of the Stooges made over 100 of these shorts. Their careers were most successful prior to the dawn of TV. As TV grew in popularity, the need for shorts declined. The avenue that made the Stooges famous ultimately vanished altogether but the boys took to performing live shows and the syndication of their shorts on TV actually created demand for their own TV appearances. I won’t spoil it for you – go check out that link!

This week, I love the upgrade to our DVR. Yep, only a few months after I blasted the quality and functions of our DVR, Charter snuck in late one recent night and performed a major upgrade. The menu and guide graphics received a much-needed makeover. We no longer have to rewind the player up a few seconds after fast-forwarding through commercials – it performs that step automatically now, just like our TiVo! Best of all, if we stop watching a recorded program, we can now resume watching later at the same stopping point. We previously had to restart at the beginning of the program and fast forward to the stopping point. Charter has made some other changes that are to tiny to go into detail about but nonetheless, we now have a respectable DVR.

Funny thing is…Charter never announced the upgrade and has not sent any emails or literature about the new design and function. So, “kudos” on the upgrade but yet another “thumbs down” on the customer service.

This week, I don’t like SEC media days. The SEC media days, held annually in Hoover, do not directly affect me or my daily routine. My disdain stems from a fan’s viewpoint. Why do we need this event? It’s more of a tease than it is informative. All the head football coaches and a few player representatives from each team share the same recycled speeches packed with the usual clichés. I guess if you’re looking for a silver lining, you could view SEC media days as a sign that college football season is just around the corner. I’m really looking forward to this season. Of course I anxious to see how well Auburn performs this year but there’s so much more that interests me. The season starts with a unique game between Boise State and Virginia Tech. The careers of two head coaches at prominent SEC schools are on life support (Les Miles and Mark Richt). And Coach Tommy Tuberville is going to be coaching ‘em up at Texas Tech. I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds. And SEC Media days serve as filler while we wait. I’m sure it was designed to help break up the monotony of the off season, but it only adds to the wait, it seems.