The Doctor is out: Sci-Fi Channel destroys my yearly PBS prank

Right now UNC-TV, the public broadcasting network here in North Carolina, is having their annual "Festival" fundraising campaign. This is when they do stuff like run marathon showings of EastEnders, bring "Mama Dip" into the studio for live demonstrations on how to fry chicken and bake biscuits, and interrupt Sesame Street every little while so they can break back to the studio where Muppets are begging for money.

Okay, it's soooo easy to make fun of, but I like PBS. It's something well worth funding. There've been a lot of good programs on it like Voices of North Carolina featuring Popcorn Sutton and other locals. But none of that has stopped me from playing a prank on them every year for the past decade or so...

Here's how it goes: I start off by calling the UNC-TV pledge line, and I try to time it so that they've got the camera running in the studio. That way I've a chance of seeing the look on the face of whichever poor volunteer that I end up calling. And when they pick up it runs something like this:

UNC-TV Volunteer: Hi! Thanks for calling UNC-TV during our annual Festival fundraiser. How can I help you today?

Me: Uhhh yeah hi. I'm calling because I'd like to make a pledge.

UNC-TV Volunteer: That's wonderful! And we thank you so much for taking the time to support our broadcasting sir. We sincerely appreciate your generosity.

Me: Thank you, thank you very much!

UNC-TV Volunteer: And how much would you like to pledge this evening sir?

Me: I want to pledge ten thousand dollars.

UNC-TV Volunteer: (usually looking stunned) Ten thousand?! Sir that's very generous of you!

Me: But there's one condition.

UNC Volunteer: Sir ummm... what?

Me: I'll pledge the ten thousand dollars if PBS brings back Doctor Who.

That's usually where the line goes "click". One time I did catch the young lady who'd answered my call cracking up laughing in the phone bank area.

Well, I had a good run, but it looks like I'll finally be hanging up my annual "I'll give PBS ten thousand dollars if they bring back Doctor Who" gag, because starting this coming month the Sci-Fi Channel really will be bringing the show back to America! So it would make no sense to keep harassing those poor souls at UNC-TV with this prank.

But, I had a lot of fun with it over the years. The very first time I did it after we were married I really gave Lisa a good scare with it when I said "ten thousand dollars". Now it's maybe time to retire it. But it's something that I wanted to make note of here, and sort of "memorialize" it :-)

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"Hotter than a pistol!" Autistic player's story still stuns

In case you haven't heard by now, the breakout sports star of the past week or so has been Jason McElwain of Greece Athena High School in Rochester, New York. In spite of his autism, McElwain (or "J-Mac" as he's known on campus) has been the manager of Greece Athena's basketball team for the past few years, doing everything that was expected of him but never actually playing a game. That changed in the final game of the season, when the team's coach put J-Mac in a jersey and then into the game with four minutes left to play. What happened then is the stuff of legend: McElwain shot twice, missed those, but then made six three-point baskets! He then scored a two-pointer, ending the game (after playing less than four minutes) with 20 points. Here's a link to the story that CBS did on McElwain including video of him playing in the game and sinking all those baskets. Afte the game and he was talking to reporters he said a lot of times that he was "hotter than a pistol!" Amazing story for someone who seems to be a super sweet person.

(And if I were Greece Athena's coach, the first thing I would have done after the game is flagellate myself in the locker room for all those times that the team barely lost while having McElwain right there willing and able to play.)

Now it looks like J-Mac's story is going to be made into a movie. Bunches of studios are trying to get the rights to the tale. Let's hope that it ends with McElwain getting drafted by the NBA for a multi-million dollar contract :-)

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And now Dennis Weaver has left us

Over the weekend we lost Don Knotts and Darren McGavin. Now it comes out earlie today that Dennis Weaver died over the weekend also. He was Chester in Gunsmoke and had the title role in the 70's TV series McCloud. But what I'll always remember him for was the first time I saw Weaver in a role, way back one night when this movie ran on television about a salesman in a car being terrorized on the road by a sinister tractor-trailer. I must have been about 5 or 6 when I saw that and didn't know until years later that what I'd been watching was Duel, an ABC "movie of the week" that first aired in 1971 and was directed by some new filmmaker named Steven Spielberg. Good movie to catch sometime, and Dennis Weaver was really great in it. Hate to see him go, and I hope we're done with great actors dying for awhile because we've lost far too many legends in the past few days.

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Getting the REAL box for The Simpsons Season 6 DVD set

It's not as creepy as that plastic-faced "king" in the Burger King commercials, but it's still somewhat disturbing to have the Season 6 DVD set of The Simpsons packaged inside a Homer Simpson head...

I got this for Christmas (and bought the Season 7 set the next day, which they give you the option to buy it in either a Marge-head in the same style as the Homer one, or a real box). Inside the Season 6... thing... there was this offer:

Simply mail in this offer sheet and two bucks or so for shipping/handling and 20th Century Fox sends a true box that you can put Season 6 in and have it match up with all the other seasons on your shelf. So that's what I did last month and it arrived a few days ago...

It came in a thick cardboard envelope, that was so big it barely fit inside our mailbox. Opening the envelope, and this is what you get:

I wasn't liking the looks of this. I mean, a box that truly fits in with the rest shouldn't come flat and un-inflated like that:

The instructions that show you how to "build" your Season 6 box. You'd better read these instructions and follow 'em, and pray you don't mess up, 'cuz then you'll be all out of chances to have a perfect Season 6 box, unless you buy another hideous Homer head and mail away another offer.

Here it is, the finished product:

And here you see why this box really doesn't "jibe" with the others. The actual DVD holder drops into the box through the top, where on the Season 7 and all other it's a nice "slipcase" from the sides:

If this had been a real quality box, Fox would have made one that replaced EVERYTHING about the packaging, not just the exterior. But I guess that could be considered a "character" thing: when the kids ask someday how come Season 6 isn't packaged like the rest, I can just whip out Homer's severed head and tell them how Fox botched the marketing on this one.

It does look pretty nice though, a lot more appealing than the "head" case. I really dig the artwork on this box too.

Anyway, if anyone was wondering what this thing actually looks like, and was wondering whether its worth mailing away for, there it is. I'd say it's definitely a thing to get if you like consistency in your collection. Plus it's a heckuva lot easier to store on the shelf.

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The Bowie knife my Dad made

My Dad has been working on a Bowie knife lately. The other week he finished it. I thought it'd be neat to post some pictures of it, show off some of his handiwork:

And here's the beginning of my own, the first one that I've worked on in a while:It'll look a lot better once it's ground and polished. The handle isn't done yet either.

I might post more pics of what comes out of his shop sometime, including his Damascus steel and "railroad-spike" knives.

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Darren McGavin 1922-2006

Within hours of losing Don Knotts, another great actor left this earthly realm: Darren McGavin. Which has a tinge of irony to it because in 1976 McGavin and Knotts starred together in Disney's No Deposit, No Return:From Kolchak: The Night Stalker, detective Mike Hammer, later on he had a memorable appearance in an episode of The X-Files, to many, many roles over the years, McGavin did it all.

But what he'll forever be best known for, at least to people of my generation, will be playing Ralphie's dad in 1983's A Christmas Story...

"It's a major award!"

And Kolchak was a pretty darned good character too!

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Don Knotts 1924 - 2006

Well, what can be said that hasn't been said already. The man was a comic genius. And even though Knotts was from West Virginia, his character of Deputy Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show will always be one of North Carolina's favorite sons.

One of the best roles he had was this really nervous corporal in No Time for Sergeants (in which he appeared with future co-star Andy Griffith). It was like an early prototype character of Barney Fife. He also did quite a few movies for Disney and later on appeared for a few seasons on Three's Company.

Two things made the last few seasons of The Andy Griffith Show somewhat less stellar than the earlier ones: going from black-and-white to color, and losing Don Knotts after the fifth season. When the producers made the transition to color, it seriously affected the quality of the comedy. It was like they thought that since the show was getting "upgraded" that it should also become more sophisticated and "up-to-date". In the process they forgot that it was Mayberry's timeless charm that made so many people tune in. Of all the episodes that were made, I don't think any of the color ones are in my top ten list of favorites. And all of my favorites have Barney in them.

Because as Barney Fife, Don Knotts was the heart and soul of The Andy Griffith Show. He was the source of so much of the comedy and after he left, the producers tried to "farm out" the place he had to other characters, and it just didn't have the same charisma that Knotts brought to the show. Probably the best episodes that stick out in my mind that feature Barney are "The Loaded Goat" (maybe one of the funniest TV episodes ever), "Barney's Sidecar", and the one about Aunt Bea's pickles, that had Barney stopping every out-of-town car (including one from Nova Scotia) and giving them a free jar of Bea's "kerosene cucumbers". Classic, classic stuff.

Well, I don't know what else to say, but I'll close this post out with a little song from The Andy Griffith Show (sung to the tune of "My Darling Clementine)...

"Oh my Barney, Oh my Barney
Had a jail and couldn't lock it
Had one bullet for his pistol
Had to keep it in his pocket"

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America, the ports, and Napoleonic France

Remember those six American ports that Dubai is set to take over?

Well, it ain't six ports at all.

It's twenty-two ports.

This makes a lot more sense if you start thinking of America as being post-revolutionary France, with Napoleon Bonaparte running things. Being so overstretched in our "empire" we are now selling off some of our holdings to fund it all, like when France sold the U.S. the Louisiana territory. Sorta makes Iraq our own version of Borodino when you think about it.

Actually, I think Napoleon was a somewhat more honorable man than those in charge over here are. At least he never sold France itself out piecemeal to whatever foreign interests could pay the price. Napoleon certainly wouldn't commit national self-flagellation by signing over control of Bordeaux and Marseilles to a British company.

Y'know, the real reason he came to power in the first place is because all the higher-ranked officers started losing it all from the neck-up on la guillotine. Makes you wonder if this country isn't ripe for some drastic leadership change, and see what talent might have the chance to rise to the occasion.

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About the story that USED to be here

After some reconsideration, I decided to pull the article about the Mohammed cartoon. No, nobody threatened me or anything like that (which would have only made me keep it up even more). It's because I'm in the process of "switching over" my more political/op-ed stuff to a separate blog, and keep The Knight Shift for my more "happy/upbeat" material. That's not to say that there won't be "heavy" stuff in this space though. But I do want to keep my various interests in proper perspective, instead of "mushing them" all together. Maybe when I have the new blog up and running, I'll repost the cartoon and my associated commentary there. In the meantime, I'll do my best to keep the more caustic stuff from infecting this space.

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So y'all went looking for Taylor Hicks and found me :-)

According to the stats, about 85% of this blog's new visitors lately are coming in from search engines after they've entered "Taylor Hicks", "Under the Radar", "Hell of a Day", "MP3" and other terms related to Hicks. This blog has suddenly become a magnet for fans of Taylor Hicks to come and find stuff and maybe congregate around. Can't help but feel might proud at that, hope that I can do my share of spreading the good word out about our man Taylor Hicks!

So what y'all think I should do: maybe create a big graphic banner with Taylor all over it for the top of the screen while AI is running? Gimme some ideas, I won't mind turning this place into a Taylor Shrine :-)

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The boys rocked tonight's Idol

We watched the girls last night on American Idol and tonight's show and between the two, we felt most entertained by the guys tonight. Last night it was Paris Bennett and Mandisa that I was still thinking about this morning. Tonight... ooh-boy. So many good performances. Being a Carolina boy I might be biased when I say that Chris Daughtry and Bucky Covington did well. Gedeon McKinney and Jose "Sway" Penala definitely have moves in their acts. Elliot Yamin was said to have one of the best voices heard in this or any competition. But I gotta give it up most of all for Taylor Hicks, coming in at the very end (for the next two hours you can vote 1-866-IDOLS-12 for him), taking "Levon" by Elton John and totally making it his own with that unique personality and flair of his. Simon shocked everyone (especially Hicks's dad) when he said that he was wrong about his original assessment of Hicks at the audition. 'Twas two hours well spent, we thought. Hope Hicks and some of the others make the cute come tomorrow night's show.

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NOW he threatens to veto something: Bush wants foreign control of American ports

Why in the name of Valhalla is our President Bush hot to sign away control of several American ports to a foreign company run by the United Arab Emirates? He's even threatening a veto if legislators try to block the transaction... which would be the very first time that he's used the veto since he took office in 2001.

He didn't veto McCain-Feingold, and he does nothing about our borders being flooded with illegals and who-knows-what-else... but he's willing to go on record as saying that he'll finally use veto to open up an American vulnerability to a foreign power.

It makes no sense, but you can read all about it here.

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An American original passes away: Bill Moran re-discovered centuries-lost secret

Of all the sad news that I've had to pass along in this space lately - and there's been more than its fair share - this is by far the most heartbreaking...
Word reached me earlier this afternoon that Bill Moran, the "Master of the Forge" and knifemaker extroardinaire who over thirty years ago re-discovered the long-lost secret of how to make Damascus steel, died last week at the age of 80.

This is so depressing a thing to report that it literally hurts doing so.

Hanging in my Dad's knife-shop is a photo of three men standing together, each smoking a pipe: Dad, legendary knifemaker George Herron, and Bill Moran. It's hung there for a few years now, like a good luck charm: may good fortune smile on Dad's forge as it has on these two gentlemen.

It was through Dad that I knew Bill Moran. When Dad asked me if I wanted to go down to Troy one Sunday to the community college where Moran was teaching a class on blade forging, I immediately said yes. I'll never forget the first time I met him, the way he smiled and had that twinkle in his eye. So help me, Moran had one of the friendliest smiles I've ever seen from anyone. Most of our family came to know him too. He always took time to talk to anyone who was interested in the fine art of knifemaking, and share whatever knowledge and wisdom - and his was considerable - that he happened to have.

So far as American legends go, God broke the mold with Bill Moran. I like to believe that he would have made his mark anyway with his prowess on the anvil. But what he'll forever be remembered for was when in 1973 he made the first Damascus steel blade to be produced in hundreds of years.

Damascus steel is multi-layered steel. You would recognize it immediately if you saw it, with its beautiful patterns and whorls of color. My Dad recently made a Damascus knife that, after the steel had been folded and re-folded, has four-hundred-and-five layers of steel compressed into one thin blade. It was a high artform in the Middle Ages, but over the centuries the secret of how to produce it had been lost. Moran found out how to do it again, and he shared his newfound knowledge with his fellow knifemakers. The result since then has been some of the most beautiful blades to ever be made... and Moran made the best of them.

This was a guy who was good at his trade, and just had a plain good heart to him. And now he's gone. But I believe that Bill is in a far better place now, and has been happily reunited with the wife he loved so dearly. Part of me likes to believe that he's now turning his legendary intellect and skill toward making more knives, with the finest forge that Heaven can provide.

Well, I could go on, but that would just be adding to what a lot of other people have already said about Bill. There's some really good write-ups about him that I've found: The Washington Post and The Frederick News-Post have articles about him, and the News-Post also a special essay about Moran written by friend Pat Jamgochian that expresses who Moran was far better than anything I could do here. Moran was co-founder of the American Bladesmith Society, and it has set up a special memorial page for people's remembrances and photos of Bill. There's also a tribute to him at Never Yet Melted.

Sorry to see him go. The best words that come to my mind about Bill Moran are the same ones that Thomas Jefferson used to describe Benjamin Franklin: "No one can replace him."

EDIT 11:06 PM EST: Cutting Commentary has a collection of links to stories about Bill Moran and more photos of his handiwork.

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Rep. Ron Paul on "The End of Dollar Hegemony"

A little over a month ago I wrote here about how the value of the American dollar was being underwritten by how it is used on the global oil trade. Countries such as Iran and now, as of last week Syria, are beginning to make the transition from the dollar as the standard unit of exchange to the euro, which may dramatically increase the euro's value while significantly decreasing that of American currency.

Now Ron Paul, member of the House of Representatives (and one of the few in government today that I feel is worthy of being addressed as "Honorable") weighs in on this, with very much the same perspective. In "The End of Dollar Hegemony" Rep. Paul outlines the history of the American dollar as a tool for diplomacy and effecting foreign policy over the past century, and how there is now the threat of this being undermined by (a) a long-standing disastrous policy of fiat currency and artifically inflating what value the dollar already had, and (b) the growing disuse of the "petro-dollar" as the currency of international oil markets. A very sober read for anyone who's paying attention to this sort of thing.

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Government quashes independent dairy farmers

I'm posting this because as a former independent dairy farmer, this is an issue that I've some passion for and I think it matters to most Americans more than they probably realize. It's about how the government - at the urging of bigtime agricultural co-ops - is putting the squeeze on independent dairy producers, forcing them to adhere to needless and overly burdensome regulations that have nothing to do with the quality of the milk they produce. Here's the story from the Chicago Tribune...

He sells milk for half the price you pay. The feds want to stop him. Why?

By Andrew Martin

Tribune national correspondent

Published February 19, 2006

YUMA, Ariz. -- Hein Hettinga is a dairy farmer but he doesn't spend his days milking cows.

Rather, Hettinga keeps a cell phone pressed to his ear to keep tabs on his empire of 15 dairy farms stretching from California to west Texas, including five massive farms in the desert east of Yuma.

But what distinguishes Hettinga from other large-scale dairy farmers is that he also bottles the milk from his Arizona farms and trucks it to stores in Arizona and Southern California. At one of them, Sam's Club in Yuma, two gallons of Hettinga's whole milk sell for $3.99.

That's the same price as a single gallon of whole milk in Chicago, which is second only to New Orleans in the cost of milk.

By controlling all stages of production, Hettinga says he can produce milk so efficiently that he and his customers can make a hefty profit at dirt-cheap prices. Such vertical integration, as it is known, is increasingly popular in agriculture as farmers and processors try to find ways to eliminate costs and increase revenues.

In the highly politicized world of dairy, efficiency could carry a price. Major dairy cooperatives and milk processors successfully persuaded federal regulators to write new rules that would prohibit the business practices that Hettinga has so successfully put in place.

Under the proposed regulations, Hettinga could continue to process his own milk only if he agrees to participate in a federally regulated pool of milk revenues, which would essentially require him to pay his competitors to stay in business. A bill that would have a similar effect is working its way through Congress.

Hettinga, an outspoken 64-year-old who emigrated from Holland to California at age 7, said the pending regulations were an effort by dairy heavyweights such as Dean Foods and the Dairy Farmers of America, the nation's largest dairy cooperative, to monopolize the milk business.

"Basically, I'm a pebble in the shoe of DFA and Dean Foods," he said. "The only reason I'm a success is they are a milk monopoly and they have raised the price too high. The consumer is getting ripped off."

Both Dean and the Dairy Farmers of America, or DFA, declined to comment for this article...

You know, if most of the small-time farmers in this country ever decided to hold a general strike, they would bring not just this nation, but a lot of the rest of the rest of the world to its knees. Just something to think about. Farmers are some of the most looked-down upon people in a society, but they are also the only ones that are really feeding that society either. It would be in our best interests to not throw up obstacles against them, ya know.

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"Red Riding Rashomon": We get Hoodwinked

It snowed at a pretty good clip for most of the day, which made the outside look really beautiful... while it lasted. When we got to the theater it had started getting too warm and what snow had stuck to the ground soon melted. It was gone entirely by the time we came out of seeing Hoodwinked.This was a far better movie than I was expecting when we first went in. The animation style is different than what you'd come to expect if you've only had a steady diet of Shrek and Monsters, Inc. over the past few years, but don't let that deter you: what Hoodwinked may lack in technique it more than makes up for with wit and cleverness. Remember Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon? Well, Hoodwinked is practically the exact same story... but instead of being a murder it's the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood! I didn't readily recognize most of the voices until the credits rolled, but there's a really good crew doing the vocal talent in Hoodwinked: Glenn Close as Granny, James Belushi as the Woodsman (who's not really a woodsman, but you'll have to find out for yourself), Patrick Warburton as the Wolf (who isn't a big bad wolf either... which was the point I realized just how demented this movie really is), Anne Hathaway as Red Riding Hood, rapper Xzibit (the dude from MTV's Pimp My Ride) as Chief Grizzly, and in the first role I've seen him do in years, David Ogden Stiers as Nicky Flippers. This movie has plenty going for it, for both kiddies and the "grown-ups". Think of this as being "Shrek meets The Usual Suspects". Definitely recommended.

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Got a fix for some Taylor Hicks? Lookee here!!

EDIT 08:01 PM EST: Looks like Blogger is finally working again. I had to republish the index though and doing so made the original Taylor Hicks post (and its unique URL) disappear, meaning I had to repost this again (which is what the post you're looking at right now is). Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused someone...

But anyhoo, if yer like me, and especially after the way he faced his fate this week on American Idol (playing his harmonica as he walked toward the judges) you probably can't get enough of Taylor Hicks right now. This is the first guy who, if he won on Idol, I would be there to buy his CD on the first day it's out. Yeah I've always liked Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard, but Hicks just flat-out astounds me with his talent and charm. The music is in this guy, you know what I mean? Well, someone saw my last post about him and sent me a terrific rendition of "Georgia On My Mind" by Hicks, and it's definitely going on my MP3 player now. It's moved me enough that I plan on getting Hicks's first CD, now being sold at an independent music store in Birmingham, Alabama, even though there's currently a two-week wait for shipped orders. Here it is, Taylor Hicks's Under The Radar:

But if you want your Taylor Hicks now now NOW, yer in luck: WBHM, an NPR station in Birmingham has an audio interview with Hicks and they've got three tracks from Under The Radar online as MP3 files! You know what to do: right-click and save (or do whatever the heck it is that you Mac users do) and save these bad boys to your hard drive ASAP!"Hell of a Day"

"Heart and Soul"

"Soul Thing"

Enjoy!! :-)

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