regarding recording television

Upcoming Recordings - 12/16 - 12/20

The 76th Academy Awards are being held at the end of February. Sometimes I’m good about seeing the short films that are nominated and sometimes I’m not. Actually, that may be a lie. Most of the time I’m not very good about seeing the nominated shorts. But I did make it to MoMA one year to see a series of nominated shorts that included SPEED FOR THESPIANS. I remember liking it quite a bit. The short is a well-directed look at three characters performing a play on a public bus. It airs Tuesday night at 8pm on Sundance.

I’ve never been much of one to watch the History Channel. The art of warfare isn’t something I think about too much and an interest in Roman times can only be explored so much since there were no video cameras around to capture the explosion of Vesuvius and the ruin of Pompeii. But all the talk during the past few weeks about the Wright Brothers has put me in a bit of a mood to catch INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS II (Wednesday, 5pm – History Channel). I recently returned to New York for Columbus, OH and I can’t say I was too impressed with Port Columbus International Airport. I had no real problems there. The pick-up and drop-off sections were quickly accessible and easy to navigate. I liked the automatic boarding pass issuing machine (have you seen these little things? They’re like baby ATM’s and they make it so that if you have no baggage to check, you don’t have to wait in line or even bother to just walk straight to your gate…why are they there again?). Security seemed to do a somewhat thorough job. No, I guess my major complaint about Port Columbus was that the section of the airport where my flight departed had just one hot food option. And I was there in the morning so they only had breakfast sandwiches. And the breakfast sandwiches were gross. And the entire area was too dark. I imagine the show on the History Channel will not be covering any of this information at all.

My History Channel recording will continue on Thursday at 1pm when MODERN MARVELS – digi-tech airs. I’ve never seen an episode of “Modern Marvels” but this one looks at the PDA, HDTV, the PVR and more. I’m not expecting much, but this sort of shows should be able to find good talking heads for interview subjects. If not, I’ll be quite disappointed.

Thursday night is the time to check out Trio’s POP CULTURE ROUND UP YEAR END SPECIAL: WHITE NOISE (10pm). Talk about opportunities for brilliant talking head interview subjects! I want to see Johnny Fairplay talking about Paris Hilton! I want to watch one of those little turtles from “Finding Nemo” rave about what a great live show The Darkness puts on! I dream of returning from fast forwarding a commercial to find Adam Brody talking about his favorite media blogs!

Of course, that year-end pop culture wrap-up is against LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN AN AGE OF TERRORISM (PBS 10pm in NYC). Aaargh! More chances for talking heads! When did I become such a non-fiction freak? I’m glad my dvr has two tuners.

And to prove that I do flip to ESPN and ESPN2 every now and again, I’ll mention that on Wednesday I’m recording PUTT-PUTT CHAMPIONSHIPS at 12:30pm (ESPN2). It seems like they air a few times during the week. I’m not sure if there’s just one episode or five. I figure 30 minutes of miniature gold should be enough to satisfy my non-baseball sports intake for a week. Recording THE 2003 NFL FLAG FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP (Saturday 4pm – ESPN) should send my sports watching for the week to an all time high.