Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

As the wife mentioned, we took in Echo Lounge”s Valentine”s Day burlesque show last night. And, as she also mentioned, the opening act was The Dexter Romweber Duo, the new incarnation of the Flat Duo Jets (Crow must have 50% ownership of the name).

If you”ve ever seen Dex, you understand his genius. If you haven”t, it”s a hard thing to explain. But Dex”s act (whether the Flat Duo Jets or just the Duo) consists of himself, his Sears Silvertone guitar, an amp and a drummer.

Thanks to Jack White, the world now understands what kind of noise can come from a boy with a guitar, but Dex has been doing it for 20 years. No effects pedals - not even a wah - are needed. Dex pulls an amazing sound out of his discount-store guitar, 15 feet of amp cord and a single-cone amp.

The Flat Duo Jets show at The Chimes circa 1986 (opening for Dash Rip Rock) still ranks as the single greatest show I”ve ever seen. Dexter has slowed down a bit in the 18 years since, but he still lives and breathes basic rockabilly/blues rock & roll.

Dex was hanging outside (in the rain) when the burlesque show ended, so I got to pay my respects as we headed out. I had a long conversation with him at a New Orleans show back in the day, but this time I just thanked him for a great show, shook his hand and told him to come back to Atlanta soon.

So all this chatter (between myself, TCL and That Yellow Bastard in my comments, mostly) about TiVos and my own DishDVRs got me motivated to fix my sickly Dish 501 unit, which lives in the bedroom at the new house.

The 501, which was my original DVR, has a problem with playback. You back a show up, it”ll play for a few seconds before the sound cuts out and the picture freezes. Annoying, to say the least. We watch 99% of our TV downstairs on the 721, so I”ve been living with it.

My 501 is more than three years old, and given my experience with 721s (No. 5 is still just seven months old), I think it”s had a good life.

But it was time to fix it. I figured the best route was to reformat the hard drive, which I had to do on 721s Nos 1 through 4. I couldn”t find instructions on how to force a reformat online, so I gave Dish customer service a call.

“No”, Mr. Customer Service Man said, you can”t force a reformat of the 501 like you can on the 721. He walked me through a number of reboots, resets, etc. to see if we could solve the problem. No chance.

So he tells me the unit”s going to have to be replaced, because the hard disk is bad. Of course, the 501 is way out of warranty, so I”m figuring I”ll continue to just live with it.

Then Mr. Customer Service Man says “Our Dish Network equipment plan would cover this. It”s $5.99 per month.”

I”m thinking, of course, he”s mocking me for not having the equipment plan and would recommend I get it after I buy a new DVR.

But no.

HE: “If you”d like to sign up for the equipment plan, we”ll send you out a new 501.”

ME: “So if I sign up for the plan, you”ll replace the receiver that broke before I signed up?”

HE: “Yep.”

ME: “Um, OK.”

He puts in my order for a new 501, signs me up for the $5.99 service plan and then informs me that because it will take three to five days for my new 501 to arrive, he”s going to credit me for the cost of my service for those days (because I don”t have a “working receiver”), which will amount to a credit of about $13.

I resisted the temptation to tell him I”ve had this problem with the 501 for six months, so how about a $400 credit?

After I hung up with the guy, I got online to see how much 501s are selling for these days. I can”t imagine anybody paying this much for the base-model DVR, but the street price is around $279 for a standalone box.

So two years from now, I will have paid $131 (including my $13 credit), gotten a fresh new 501, covered the proven-to-be-unreliable 721 for any problems, plus added replacement coverage on my two remotes and the satellite dish stuck on a pole in the backyard.

Come to think of it, 721 #5 hangs up for a few seconds whenever I start a frame-by-frame advance … might be time for a new one …

So I”ve got the Virginia/Tennessee primary stuff running on CNN tonight (no, TCL, I”m still not back in to politics; but I always love to see how bad HoDean does on election nights). And I figured this was as good a time as any to actually check out what kind of crap we”d have in store if Kerry were to beat Bush.

I went to Kerry”s website and tried to find out how much of my money he wants; what he plans to do with it and generally how much the ass-raping I would experience at the hands of President Kerry would hurt.

Frankly, Kerry scares me much less than John Edwards, who can”t go five minutes without saying “no child should ever go bed hungry” or some other damn socialist garbage.

It didn”t take me long to get bored, however, so I jumped over to Bush”s site to see how an un-hip Republican president puts together a website in the era of candidate Blogs, “meetups” and all that new, “hip” Democratic stuff.

GWB actually does a good job with his site in an area called “W Stuff”. He”s got screensavers, wallpapers, web buttons and the like. He”s even got news feed modules to drop in to your Blog (no, I”m not putting one here).

But the really cool thing is the George W. Bush Online Store. I”m not kidding.

About the coolest thing Kerry sells on his online store is the John Kerry toque:

But the Bush store rocks. They”ve got six separate product lines, each with an amazingly deep and interesting selection, plus a specific kids” section.

A sampling of merch:

There”s the standard Bush/Cheney 2004 store with bumper stickers and whatnot:

Bush/Cheney Car Flag

At the President Bush store, they”ve got a lot of W-specific stuff, including this damn-sharp GWB “43″ football jersey:

Then we get into the thematic stores. At Interstate W”04, there”s all kinds of merch with this Interstate-inspired logo:

But wait, there”s more …

W The President borrows its style and black & white motif from the New York fashion scene:

W The President tote bag

If you”re more of a Dude-Ranch type, I recommend the Farm Ranch collection. Borrowing from the John Deere and ropin”-and-ridin” genres, you can find things like this sterling-silver cowboy buckle there:

And, finally, there”s the Americana Collection. This is where you go for your faded, American Eagle type gear:

All together, there”s more than 100 items in the GWB store. Interestingly, the store has a very clear statement saying it”s operated by some company called the Spalding Group, and Bush-Cheney “04 gets no money from the merch sales.

So without a profit motive for the campaign, I”m not sure exactly the benefit of having such a robust store. It”s not like they sell the t-shirts for $3.50 to get them on the backs of every Americans or anything like that.

But it sure beats the Kerry Toque.

Well, I missed the live Taser attack last night. I was caught up in True Romance when 11:00 rolled around, and I must have quickly and incorrectly dismissed the timer-conflict window on the DVR (I grab The Daily Show at 11 each night).

But no fear. The Internet won”t let me down.

On the CBS Atlanta site, you can watch the video for yourself. In the typical restrained and very serious tone of local TV news, they called the report Prepare to be Stunned!

I liked how the reporter guy talked about all the precautions they took in the demonstration. He had EMTs standing by, was led to the floor by a couple of cops, had a nice gym mat to fall on and had his doctor clear him to do the demo.

Do they have to go through all that when they Taser an actual criminal?

It”s been a while since I opened up the old Search Bag and took at look at who”s finding The Wisdom. And now that the Janet Jackson Super Bowl searching has died down (and I didn”t even write about her tit!), here”s the latest batch of terms showing up:

• airport patdown attractive - Well, if you”re in to that kind of thing, I guess. Personally I don”t find much attractive about the airport patdowns nor the people doing said pats.

• apartments around LSU - Back in my LSU days (circa 1987), the apartments around campus were mostly shitholes. TCL, Lee Barbier, Stinky and myself shared a 4-bedroom place that went for $485 a month and we thought we were freaking Kings of the Campus. When I drive by that place (on Alvin Dark, if you”re interested) I think “man, what a dump.” And that was the nicest place I lived in college. The worst place I lived was probably the apartment Lee and I moved in to after the Big Apartment Coalition broke up (TCL got a girlfriend, Stinky left and stuck us with Chip the Momma”s Boy). My last semesters in college were spent with Dave at a place on Oxford Street which went for $165 a month. It was pretty much a slum, but it was full of like-minded poor college kids and our favorite basketball court was a quick walk across the cemetery. Dave”s brother had found the apartment a few years earlier, and it was handed down through friends and family. I think a friend of Dave”s still lives there. Nowadays they”re building super-fly apartments all around LSU. Hell, they even opened some livable dorms after we graduated.

• wine tasting liberal hippie - That reminds me of a great story from my pal Dave. Back in college, some friends of his “grew up” and decided they were wine lovers. They arranged a “wine tasting party” to which everyone was supposed to bring a nice bottle of wine for the group to taste and comment upon. Dave, hating this whole notion, went to Albertson”s and bought the cheapest bottle of red he could find. He also, however, found a really, really expensive bottle of French wine and took note of the label design. Then he went home and re-created the “fancy” label - going so far as to char the edges to give it that “old world” look. He took the old label off, put his new one on, went to the party and put the bottle down on the wine-tasting table. I think you may see where this is going … Of course these “wine connoisseurs” all raved about Dave”s rock-gut wine with the fancy label. Being that the party was arranged by his good friend”s girlfriend, he never spilled the beans about his gag. But I say well done!

•coffee grits radial angel - I”m sorry, I can”t help you.

Watching the Grammys last night, I couldn”t help - we were saving up the DVR delay for Celine & Justin - but catch a promo being run by the local CBS affiliate for their Monday night news.

It should be noted that the CBS station here in Atlanta is anything but the “news leader.” I”d imagine more Atlantans get their news from The Porch Press than from CBS 46.

So with February Sweeps kicking off and the nation watching the Grammys on CBS, I guess they decided to pull out all the stops.

Tonight at 11, CBS 46 will shoot one of its reporters with a Taser - live!

I think the “news” value they”re pitching is something about the equipment local law enforcement has available to it, but come on. This “story” is the Hail Mary pass of local news.
Fox 5, on the other hand, rolled out a real news story for Sweeps tonight at 6 - undercover video of a Rome (Ga.) police officer getting a private strip tease at a Latino bar while he was on duty. Now that”s news!

Of course, I”m grabbing the CBS Taser stunt on the DVR tonight, and maybe it”ll be amusing enough to write some more about.

But I want to offer our local TV news community the perfect Sweeps story idea - live undercover strip-club video. Couple the sex value of undercover stripper videos with the immediacy of live stunts like the Taser and you”ve got Ratings Gold.