When I was fifteen, some punishment was handed down that I could not watch TV for a while... maybe a month? That helped me realize that TV is really not worth watching, and I stuck with the no TV thing from ages 15-22. My college roommate and I had a tiny TV with an antenna that only got PBS. I much preferred to use the computer and listen to music anyway. Then I moved in with Jaime, and ever since then, we've had cable. TV slowly crept back into my life, as did watching live sports. I now watch maybe ten shows as well as NFL, Tennis, and NBA Playoffs.

I think I've convinced Jaime that there are enough alternate ways to watch TV shows (netflix, DVDs, internet), and we are going to see how it goes in the new house with no cable. Theoretically we should still be able to get all the networks and a PBS station with an HDTV antenna. That way Stephen can still watch PBS Kids in the morning and I can still watch the Redskins lose on a weekly basis. It will be really nice to minimize the number of commercials we see; they are so bad!

We've started the very beginning stages of packing up our stuff, even though we can't move any of it for over a month. Jaime's mom runs the mail room in Jaime's office, so she gives us all the used boxes of copy paper (about 2-4 boxes per day). These are the sturdy cardboard boxes with a little cardboard top that slides on. No tape required. We close on a Tuesday, so I'm going to bring a carload or two of stuff over every night from Tues to Thurs. Then on Friday we can hopefully get a little U Haul trailer and bring over all of the medium-sized stuff like dressers, TV stands, cribs, bookshelves, and maybe the guest bed. Then the plan is to have some movers bring the biggest items on Saturday. I had already decided that I'm never going to move the piano again and we were going to hire someone to do it, and since I'm going to hire someone to move the piano, I might as well get them to grab the couches, our bed, the elliptical trainer, etc.

A goal of mine for the new house is to not amass too much stuff for it. We have set aside the largest bedroom as the boys' playroom, so hopefully we can keep most of their stuff in there. The reason that a staged house looks so nice is because there is the least amount of stuff possible in the house. I don't want it to look like a staged house, but somewhere in between a normal house and a staged house. [By the way, I'm not so sure Jaime shares this goal with me, so we'll see what happens.]

• Seinfeld debuted as The Seinfeld Chronicles and was not expected to do well. After that first episode aired, the first order from NBC was a whopping four episodes.
• Kramer originally wore clothes from the 1960s to give the impression that he couldn't afford new ones, not to make him look retro. Then, in the mid-90's, retro clothing from the 60s and 70s became popular.
• George's clothes were intentionally tailored one size too small to make him look geeky.
• Danny DeVito was considered for the role of George.
• The real life Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame--Al Yeganeh--was so mad at Jerry Seinfeld that he refused to accept Jerry's apology when he went to the International Soup Kitchen to personally make amends.
• The M*A*S*H theme song is called "Suicide Is Painless." The lyrics were written by Mike Altman, the fourteen-year-old son of Robert Altman, the movie's director.
• Actor Gary Burghoff has a deformed hand, so his character Radar O'Reilly's left hand was always either in his pocket or behind something. Occasionally a glimpse of his misshapen fingers could be seen.
• The outdoor set of M*A*S*H, near Malibu, California, was destroyed by a brush fire at the end of the 1982 production season, so the show writers wrote the fire into the script.
• Anson Williams, who played teenager Potsie on Happy Days, was twenty-five in 1974, his first year on the show. When the show went off the air nine years later, the youthful Potsie was still played by the thirty-four-year-old actor.
• "Jumping the shark" refers to the moment when a TV show has run out of new ideas and resorts to absurd storylines. The expression comes from a crazy 1977 episode of Happy Days, where Fonzi dons swim trunks with his leather jacket and does a water ski jump over a penned-in shark.
• During the first season and a half of Happy Days, Richie had an older brother Chuck. He was dropped from the show with no explanation. "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome" is now the expression for a character that mysteriously disappears from a TV show.
• The characters on The Simpsons are named for members of creator Matt Groening's family. His parents are Homer and Marge, his sister's names are Lisa and Maggie. The name Bart is an anagram for "brat."
• The actors who do the voices on The Simpsons are paid $400,000 per episode.

• I Love Lucy was a takeoff on a radio show that Lucille Ball was doing called My Favorite Husband.
• Lucy was a registered communist due to her socialist grandfather.
• William Frawley was a notorioius drinker and was contractually bound to complete sobriety during I Love Lucy's production.
• Redd Foxx's given name was John Elroy Sanford. His brother's name was Fred Sanford, which he used for the sitcom Sanford and Son. He was called Redd because of his reddish hair and complexion.
• Redd Foxx's mother was half-Seminole.
• Redd Foxx began his comedy career introducing strippers in the 1950's.
• When Redd Foxx died of a heart attack during a rehearsal break on the TV show The Royal Family, the cast members thought he was doing the "I'm coming, Elizabeth!" fake heart attack shtick that he was famous for.
• Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," in any episode of Star Trek.
• Lloyd Bridges and Jack Lord both turned down an offer to play the part of Kirk.
• The Star Trek theme song has lyrics.
• The kids' bathroom on The Brady Bunch had no toilet.
• For the first couple of seasons, Barbara Eden had to hide her navel on I Dream of Jeannie, for fear of being censored. It does briefly slip out a few times on some episodes.
• The first toilet flush heard on TV came from Archie Bunker's upstairs bathroom.
• Good, girl? All of the Lassie dogs were male.
• There were seven Lassie movies before Lassie began airing on CBS for seventeen seasons.
• Contrary to popular myth, Lassie never saved Timmy from falling down a well.

• The term "television" was first coined at the 1900 Paris World's Fair. At the time, they were referring to still images being transmitted through electrical wires.
• General Electric introduced the first American TV set in 1928.
• The first remote control was called Lazy Bones. It was sold by Zenith in 1950 and it was connected to the set by a long wire.
• The first show nationally televised in color was the 1954 New Year's Day Tournament of Roses Parade on NBC.
• The first color TV was introduced in 1951, but it took fifteen years before all network broadcasting in the US was transmitted in color.
• In 1967, the U.S. Congress mandated PBS. It began broadcasting in 1970.
• Home Box Office (HBO), the first pay cable network, went on the air in 1972.
• The industry claims that for the sharpest picture, people should sit at a distance of between four and eight times the height of the TV screen.
• Of all the TV comedy and drama series in history, Gunsmoke aired the most episodes (over 600).
• Actor Carroll Spinney has been playing Big Bird since 1969.
• None of the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show was in the original pilot, not even Dick Van Dyke himself. The show's creator--Carl Reiner--played the lead. Johnny Carson almost ended up with the lead before Dick Van Dyke was picked.
• George Carlin was the first guest host of Saturday Night Live, in 1975. Janis Ian was the first musical guest.

There is an extremely persistent rumor (among people who don't watch Sesame Street) that Cookie Monster has been renamed "Veggie Monster" in an attempt to teach children about eating healthy. Another version of the rumor states that Cookie Monster is going to be removed from the show entirely. This rumor is so persistent that there has actually been a backlash against the supposed renaming of the beloved puppet character. People see it as an example of politically correctness gone awry.

Here the rumor is addressed on snopes.com. This explanation includes the official response from PBS regarding the rumors and the large volume of mail they received as a result.

On the episode of Sesame Street that aired today, Chris (the main human character on the show in recent years) convinced Cookie Monster to eat some vegetables by pretending they were cookies. After Cookie ate all of his vegetables, they had this hilarious tongue-in-cheek conversation:

Cookie: But remember, me not "Veggie Monster." Me still Cookie Monster!
Chris: Right, right.
Cookie: Just for record.
Chris: Okay, Cookie.
Cookie: Me have reputation to think of.
Chris: Okay, okay.

The human characters (Luis, Maria, Chris, Gordon, etc.) on Sesame Street seem like the nicest, coolest people on earth. I want to hang out with them and have milk and cookies.

Stephen is trying to reverse the routine. He throws a fit when we try to feed him his meals. I can picture him saying "but my snacks taste so much better!" Well, needless to say, I am quite sick of this. I'm not feeding him any snacks this morning, and my third attempt to give him "breakfast" was a complete failure. So, it looks like I'm going to try to put him down for a nap without him having eaten anything this morning. I'm prepared to deal with the ramifications (short nap, no nap, whatever).

I'm in an anti-TV mode again. I'm quite displeased that everything is back on, all at once. There is nothing truly worth watching except Sesame Street. The first Dexter this season was awful. The writers were just scrambling like Oh no! What have we done?!? We've killed off half the main characters and there's no show left. I'm so sick of that show hitting the reset button every season. HBO has a new show about organized crime in New Jersey. Really? "Hey guys, remember the Sopranos? That was good, right?" I have found that I only like reality contest shows for the first half of the season. This includes The Amazing Race and Hell's Kitchen. Once it starts getting down to the nitty gritty and you have to listen to the same annoying group of whiners, I lose interest.

Edit: Fourth time's a charm, apparently. He just ate a decent breakfast. Nap time!

We alternate between getting very frustrated with Stephen and feeling sorry for him. He doesn't understand much about the world, but he still thinks he should be able to explore whatever he wants. He views his parents as bullies (or dictators) that tell him what to do at every turn. It's literally getting to the point that every single thing he desires gets a "no" from his parents.

He can climb on the couch easily, which is fine, but he immediately does all the wrong things. Within three seconds of getting on the couch, he tugs on the curtains, knocks the lamp over, or pulls keys off of my wife's laptop. This results in him trying to climb onto the couch for an hour straight while I put him back on the floor and he cries. This is becoming the routine. In fact, as I type this, my wife is cleaning up a bit. While she takes Stephen's toys (or things he perceives as toys, such as my monopod) to the shelf, he is just sobbing and trying to rip everything back off the shelves. He is so clueless that he thinks cleaning up is some sort of personal attack on him.

Lots of good things are developing too. He can follow simple commands (like "dance" or "go get the ball") and understands a lot of words. He can play with the dogs and even throw their ball and play a horrible version of fetch. He carries around his kiddie laptop and plays with it a lot more. He can watch TV for five minutes at a time.

The new season of PBS Kids starts today. The new series this year is "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!" with Martin Short as the voice of the Cat. (By the way, did you know Martin Short is 60?) It seems like it might be good. When referring to children's programming, "good" means that it's not supremely annoying. Seems like it has good songs and good voices.

We have had literally perfect weather every day of this extended weekend. We've been to the playground with Stephen, Jaime went fishing yesterday, and we've been enjoying a lot of extra long walks with the dogs. I missed the dry, crisp air. The hot weather started late this year, but it was an extremely hot summer.

I installed safety latches to prevent Stephen from getting in the cabinets under the sink/counter. Those things are great. When the doors don't open, Stephen doesn't have anyone to blame. He doesn't get angry and throw himself on the ground. He just tries two times and then moves on.

We have lived here for nearly six years (moved-in date was August 18, 2004). Last night at 1am, we lost power for the first time since I've lived here--the very first time, and it was for no longer than five seconds. Not bad, not bad. Have no idea why though. It was precisely at 1am, so maybe it was a scheduled "reboot."

The computer that I "restored" for my father was acting up yesterday. Sucks. Kept freezing when he was in gmail with Google Chrome (figures). On top of that, it only boots up 20% of the time, haha. Hopefully we can solve the problem even though the computer is 500mi away.

I leave the TV on public television from 8am until Stephen goes down for a nap. I'm not much of a TV guy, so it has never bothered me for a second, but for the next two weeks, Wimbledon and the World Cup are on in the AM. Oh well. Stephen enjoys his educational programming a little more each day. Today one of the characters on Sid the Science Kid was imitating a dog and Stephen was laughing.

There is one thing we have no shortage of in this area, and that is PBS stations and sub-stations. We are close enough to the metropolitan area that we get MPT, Maryland Public Television. This is the station that I watch with Stephen in the morning. Then there is WETA, a powerhouse of public television and radio (not to be confused with our flagship NPR station, WAMU at American University). WETA has lots of spin-off channels such as "WETA Kids," which plays the PBS morning kids shows all day, every day. There is also "WETA create," which has a lot of home improvement or craft-type shows.

One day while cruising the massive block of HD WETA channels, I discovered that The Joy of Painting was sometimes on "WETA create." I popped it into my DVR and have been letting Bob Ross soothe me to sleep from time to time. When I was a kid, my favorite part of staying home from school was watching The Joy of Painting at 2pm on PBS. I mean, I liked Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff too, but Bob Ross has always drawn me in.

What I never understood as a child is that Bob Ross was able to make paintings so quickly because of the wet-on-wet technique. When he starts a taping of a show, the canvas is already completely covered with white paint that is still wet. When most people use oil paint, they a) start with a dry white canvas and b) paint one layer at a time and allow it to dry for weeks or months before they paint the next layer (the last layer applied is the immediate foreground). I of course never knew any of that when I was a child; I was just drawn to the paintings and the demeanor of the host.

I finally got some videos off our camera last night, and I'm a little behind. Later today I will post the video of Stephen's birthday party. I have a few others to upload also.

I'm getting back into a non-tv phase. This is a good thing--a very good thing. I used to watch cartoons all morning with Stephen, and then leave it on ESPN's endless loop of Sports Center all day. There is no reason to watch ESPN at all anymore since football is over. Without Merril Hoge, there is no analysis worth watching. Merril Hoge is the best post-game analysis personality, in any sport, on any channel. You have to ignore the fact that nearly all of his predictions are wrong; that is not his thing. I love all of his little "inside the play" replays.

I should just cancel all of my DVR recordings (PBS' Nature, FRONTLINE, Nova) and stop downloading documentary specials. I don't watch any of them. I just watch 60 Minutes every week. That's it. I'm listening to more music as a result, and writing more blog entries. (It's not all good, however. I spend a lot of time on link sites).

The verdict is that I really like Linux Ubuntu. If something goes wrong or does not work "out of the box," things get very difficult, very fast. For instance, my Logitech webcam was working in every program except Skype, but after searching a lot of forums, I found that the webcam works in Skype when I load it by typing "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype" instead of just typing "skype." It was a pain to figure out, but now that I know, it's not a big deal. It would be much harder if I wasn't running GNOME. This old laptop doesn't even have enough power to run Skype video chat in Windows XP, so I don't actually have any other options.

Speaking of that, I spent about a hundred bucks last night to repair/upgrade this laptop (Dell laptop from 2004). This old battery lasts 7 minutes when unplugged, and the keyboard is kind of destroyed, so I spent about 50 bucks buying replacements for both of those. Hopefully replacing the keyboard is as easy as it looks. I also spent 49 bucks on 2gigabytes of memory. I'd like to extend the life of this laptop for at least a few more years. Running linux is already helping me turn this little pony into a fast horse, and upgrading the memory should make everything run smoothly even though I like to keep lots of software open (and 10+ tabs in my web browser).

Now that my photos site is all debugged and displaying properly, I have no excuse not to finish it. Still need to finish my little bio/profile/about page, and I'm going through several years of photographs, finding a few of the best ones to add. That is where they have been/will be some photos on here recently from a few years ago.

The 40th anniversary of Sesame Street was so widely publicized that it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing about it. Google even changed their logo for a whole week leading up to the anniversary date. Apparently the staff celebrated the anniversary with a custom cake from Carlo's Bakery of Cake Boss fame. The episode featured no other cakes (they typically feature 2 or 3 custom cakes per episode) as it was an extremely large cake. For inspiration, the staff of Carlo's Bakery visited the Sesame Street set, complete with active puppets. Then they delivered the cake with the entire staff present: watch here.

I have watched a fair amount of Sesame Street in the past four months, and as an adult, I certainly have a different perspective. I can't help but notice how expertly the puppets are manipulated. They are extremely lifelike and I wonder every day how they do it. These are excellent puppeteers to say the least. Sometimes it seems that it would take more than two people to run one of these puppets, especially when there are facial expressions and arm movement involved (for instance, Elmo squishes up his face and goes cross-eyed when he is about to sneeze). Murray is a large orange puppet that goes out on the streets and performs human-like tasks, like playing a real drum set or breaking a board with a karate chop. When Buddy and his crew visited the set of Sesame Street, I was hoping for some "behind the scenes" footage of the puppets being operated, but there was none. Searching around on the internet did not reveal much, but here is a pretty good one:

I really couldn't find much more footage than that. There is some behind the scenes footage of the Kobe Bryant sketch, which I just recently saw, but it's of a different nature. More like getting a chance to interview Kobe Bryant, and they didn't care about the Sesame Street aspect of it.

Also, here is a funny parody called Preschool Musical.