Secrets of the City

Blah Blah Blah-ler blogger christina offers a comprehensive list of her weekly TV-watching habits. Not only does she watch TV every day but Sunday (even on date night!); she TiVos additional shows for future viewing. The woman gets excited about her shows; she claims at least three of them are her favorite.

How much TV are we really watching? What are we watching? Should we be concerned? Entertainment or brain rot?

[Note: christina brings up a good point about Mad Men, too. How do we feel about Don Draper's infidelities? Is it wrong to like them, even want them? How can this be good?]

City Pages points out that the long-awaited Marriage between Jim and Pam on last night’s The Office was a spoof on the popular video of a Minnesota couple’s dance-mad wedding.

The New York Times is not very impressed with Andrew Zimmern’s new show, “Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World”: So what does he explore in Cuba, the subject of his first episode? Cigars, old American cars, boxing and baseball, rumba and salsa, a May Day parade, and Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s honeymoon suite at the Hotel Nacional. If this is the fringe, then “The Godfather: Part II” was science fiction.

Stuff about Mpls republishes a number of commercials featuring sports celebrities:

• Joe Mauer Sports Center commercial
• Gilles Meloche pizza commercial
• Jesse Ventura Chicago-Lake Liquors commercial
• Mad Dog Vachon Chi-Lake Liquors commerical

Do you have any old favorties?

So says a survey conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, as highlighted in the Huffington Post last week.

According to the survey “… over 50% of those surveyed ’strongly agree’ with the statement, ‘I have no idea what all of the excitement about “Mad Men” is all about, but I’m terrified that if I admit it I’ll look like an idiot, like I did with “30 Rock.”‘

I don’t think the Minneapolis-St. Paul advertising industry, ca. 1963, had quite yet matured to the levels of Madison Ave. and Sterling Cooper. That would happen later in the ’60s decade on into the ’70s when “boutique” agencies became a hot commodity in creative circles.

Jesse Ventura looks like he’s going to have a new show on cable. What is it going to be about? Cospiracy theories, apparently: Jesse Ventura, a man who has lived a dangerous life, is about to explore mysteries behind the most compelling modern-day conspiracy theories … Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces.”

It sounds a little like Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate, but a feature on America’s Most Wanted, alled 15 Seconds of Shame, apparently works: Six days after his criminal case was aired on “America’s Most Wanted,” a Rochester man walked into the Olmsted County Jail this morning and gave himself up.

What had he done that he needed to be ashamed about? Oh: According to the criminal complaint against Patrick, he met a woman at a bar last Nov. 28 and she asked him for a ride home. When she tried to get out of the car, he grabbed her by the hair, choked her and punched her. After she jumped out of the moving car, he stopped it and kicked her before she could flee to the nearby Olmsted Medical Center.

South 12th documents the transition to all-digital cable. In the meanwhile, the PiPress prints a story that might as well be called Max Sparber is as confused as most 80-year-olds about why his teevee isn’t working anymore.

How has everybody’s experience with the transition been? How do people feel about all-digital in the Twin Cities? Did Don Shelby look better before or after?

KARE11 reports: KARE-TV announced today that veteran anchor and reporter Rick Kupchella will leave the station in June to pursue his own outside media content interests. Kupchella has been part of the KARE news team for 20 years.

Love is all around: The first three-seasons of Mary Tyler Moore on Hulu.