30th June & 1st July, 2008

New concerts announced!
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July autograph signing event.
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Photo by Dan Chapman ©2001 Stanyan Entertainment Group

A Thought for Today

A bad temper finds the unemployment line soon enough.

TO BEGIN WITH

I watch too much television and I’ll bet you do too.

Every summer with reruns of reruns and few new programs network television makes it easier and easier to just say no to the tube. A possible strike by members of The Screen Actors Guild is looming and should it happen things could get even worse for the fall TV season. If The Bachelor, The Farmer Takes A Wife, My Red-Neck Wedding and The Bachelorette are to your liking get ready for wall-to-wall reality shows where payment to actors is unnecessary and producers never underestimate the stupidity of audiences willing to watch such drek.

No problem, for a good while there has been a lot more solid programming going on at cable channels than just about anything the networks have to offer. Recently, with nothing to do but nurse long in the mending broken bones, I gave my now a bit battered remote a healthy workout. In the process I discovered there is a little life on those hundred plus channels that cable and satellite proudly claim they provide.

Here’s a brief report on one channel surfer’s discoveries.

BEYOND CHANNEL 13

While NBC comes up empty handed again and again as far as any new ideas are concerned the folks at USA, one of NBC/Universal’s cable franchises, is brimming over with spunk and spontaneity. In addition to all those Law & Order marathons it runs with goods stolen from home base The USA Network is now the only place to find first-run “Law & Order SVU” episodes and a range of original dramas and sitcoms that include “Burn Notice,” “In Plain Sight,” “Monk,” “The Closer” and “Psych.” In the past several seasons USA has led the pack when it comes to producing and propagating successful new TV shows.

If you like tractors, you’ll love RFD. ‘Nuff said? Not quite, hillbillies and city Williams alike will find something of interest in the quirky programming here. Sure, there’s The Grand Ol’ Opry and Saturday Night Square Dancing and Campfire Cooking on RFD, but city slickers might be amazed at the good humor, music mix and the dexterity of the wild mustang taming cowboys who show up to provide just enough excitement to make this one of a kind channel one of a kind.

ANIMAL PLANET is just that. It programs anything and everything featuring critters that crawl, hop, skip, jump, swim and fly. Its’ top offerings include The Groomer, Meekrat Manor, Animal Precinct and Me Or The Dog. Don’t know about you but I’d rather watch The Planet’s Funniest Animals than endless repeats of the sophomoric America’s Funniest People any day.

SHOWTIME gets bolder and better with the British import The Tudors and originals like Dexter, featuring Michael Anthony Hall as the friendliest serial killer out and about.

“Anthony Michael Hall plays Dexter”

Showtime also offers Weeds a program that chronicles the travails of a drug-dealing mom played by the amazing Mary Louise Parker. If you want to hear Agent Mulder talk dirty there’s always Californication starring ex X Filer David Duchovney.

Those who claim the once cutting edge HBO no longer cuts the mustard need to take another look at this always very independent channel. The Sopranos may have dumped their last body and the family at Six Feet Under buried theirs but Entourage is still kicking ass and kicking up its heels at Home Box Office and Bill Pullman & company are due back any day now with all new chapters of Big Love, where polygamy is alive and well, funny and frightening. The wives are lovely to look at, delightful to know and the in-laws properly mean and menacing.

News junkies know cable does the best job of covering nearly all of the news. There’s the fair CNN and the unbalanced FOX. The irrepressible Keith Olbermann makes MSNBC a must. The nightly BBC AMERICA newscast is a good alternative to the pit news on the network seems to have collectively fallen into and it gives good mystery, Graham Norton and new takes on classics like Robin Hood are others in the BBC plus column.

RM 6/29/08

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ROD McKUEN CONCERTS

ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES

MONDAY 30 June

Florence Ballard o Glenda Farrell o Nancy Dussault o Rupert Graves o Susan Hayward o Lena Horne o David Horowitz o Cynthia Karpa o Martin Landau o Tony Musante o Buddy Rich o Ron Swoboda o Mike Tyson o June Valli o Dave Van Ronk

TUESDAY 1 July
CANADA DAY

Dan Ackroyd o Pamela Anderson o Karen Black o Genevieve Bujold o James M. Cain o Leslie Caron o Myron Cohen o Diana, Princess of Wales o Jamie Farr o Farley Granger o Deborah Harry o Olivia de Havilland o Hans Werner Henze o Charles Laughton o Carl Lewis o Jean Marsh o Alan Ruck o George Sand o Roberta Sherwood o Jean Stafford o Twyla Tharp o Liv Tyler o William Wyler

The ditch between experience and innocence is not so wide. Each has its outer edges and its other side.

Because pride seldom lets us beg forgiveness we must content ourselves with dying a little every time a door is closed.

THREE POEMS FROM SEA CYCLE

Had I not run
beyond the summer beach
I might have had to wonder
why the sea eats up the sand
but doesn’t touch the thunder.

FOURTEEN / HALF LIGHT

In the half-light
we saw the swimmers
coming from the darkness
carrying the boy’s body low,
as though its weight
was bending all of them
into the same submission.
As though the boy
was pulling them down now
the way the sea had pulled him
              to herself.
He was of course
just one more
lover of the grey-blue water.
A muscled boy who swam
a few yards farther out each day,
      but so young.

FIFTEEN / APPETITE

I know the sea eats up the men
who love her most,
the way a queen one day rejects the troops
who fought for her on battlefields
and fought with her in bedrooms.

I am not afraid.
I could go down gladly in a whirlpool
if I had ridden all day on a friendly wave.

-from Sea Cycle, 1969