T.V. Or Not T.V.?

I just did something that feels pretty radical - I called and "down gauged" my cable TV as a cost-cutting measure. I went down to Basic Cable, which will give me about 25 channels. I'll have the local networks, PBS, TCM, the Food Channel and a few others. I won't have CNN, MSNBC, History, Disney, Spike, E!, A&E, Weather and many others. I'm thinking of this as an experiment. Most of the stuff I watch on the channels I won't have anymore is available on-line, at cnn.com, weather.com, etc. I actually like the idea of watching less television, at least in theory, so I'll see how it goes. I can always re-enlist, so to speak, if I really miss the extra channels, but I hope that doesn't happen. It make take a while to get used to, but my guess is that in the long run, watching less television will end up being a good thing for me, and not just financially. I'll let you know how it goes.

I Love The Burj Dubai

All week this week on Good Morning America they're featuring things that are "big", both man-made and natural, and when I heard the promos I wondered if they would be talking about the Burj Dubai. This morning they did, and I'm in heaven (so to speak.)

The Burj Dubai is the world's tallest building, with approximately 160 floors. I say approximately because it's not finished yet, and the developers haven't said what the final height will be. It just keeps getting taller and taller. I first heard about the Burj Dubai when I read an article about it in the December, 2007 issue of Wired magazine. The article focused on the structural engineer who designed the building, and specifically the engineering solutions necessary for "supertall" buildings, or those that have 150 stories or more. It was written for a non-technical audience and I was fascinated to learn about a building that will be roughly equivalent in height to the Sears Tower standing on top of the Hancock building. Wanting to learn more, I typed Burj Dubai into google and the rest is history.

Seeing the building in person was one of the highlights of my trip to Dubai last year. Because it's not open yet, I didn't have to make the decision about whether or not to go up to the observation deck, which I think will be on the 120th floor or so. It would be a once in a lifetime view, that's for sure, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about being that high up off the ground. Just standing at ground level and looking up was amazing. According to the Wired article, even in the best of times it's hard for developers to rent/sell all the available space in a large building when it first opens, and Dubai is currently feeling the effects of the worldwide economic downturn, so who knows how long it will be before this amazing building is fully occupied. However long it takes, I'll be watching.

You can check out the official Burj Dubai website here.

WTF Headline Of The Day

Guy With Sword Interrupts Neighbor's Porn

Cool Inventions

Have you ever heard of "disemvoweling"? Well, neither had I, but I found it today in a list of Time magazine's 50 best inventions of 2008. Disemvoweling is what moderators do to obnoxious posts and comments on blogs or online forums. Rather than deleting the offensive post altogether, which could be considered obsessive censorship, moderators simply remove the vowels from all the words in the post. With only the consonants left, the post is still mostly readable, but a lot less obnoxious. What a concept.

There were all kinds of cool inventions on the list, including Smog-Eating Cement, Einstein's Fridge, the Orbital Internet and Facebook for Spies. Check it out here.

Almost Spring...

As I'm writing this it's 61 degrees here in Chicagoland and it feels pretty good. Even though Spring is officially a couple of weeks away, it's so nice to be able to have my windows open and fill my house with fresh air. I actually went outside without a coat today, which I haven't done since last October.

I was also surprised to see that this is the week-end that we "spring forward" our clocks for daylight savings time - it kind of snuck up on me. It really has been a cold and dreary winter in the Windy City so it's nice to be able to anticipate the warmer weather and the longer days. I always say that people who live in Los Angeles and other warmer climates don't appreciate Spring the way we do. You can't really savor that first warm, sunny day until you've lived through a Chicago winter. Just a few more weeks and it will be time to plant my tomatoes ...

A Pop Culture Phenomenon

Who knew that "The Bachelor" would rise from the dead. I'm talking about the show, which has exploded this season with ratings that are making it one of the top 10 shows this week. Oh, the trauma and the drama! The actual bachelor himself, Jason, is definitely not rising from the dead, at least in terms of his reputation within the world of people who care about what happens on reality television.

For once the show really did have a shocking finale, with Jason proposing to Melissa, then breaking up with her and taking up with Molly in the space of about 10 minutes on the After The Final Rose show, known as the ATFR in bachelor-speak. ATFR 1 was actually filmed about 6 weeks ago, ATFR 2 was filmed last Friday, they were all in New Zealand last November, but never mind all that. The logistics of how it all played out are less interesting to me than the fact that The Bachelor is once again front page news, and poor Jason is the bad boy du jour in the blogosphere and on entertainment websites and talk shows. And he really is front page news - he and Molly are on the cover of the People magazine that comes out Friday, with a cover headline that screams "The Bachelor Betrayal!" Oh my.

So how about it, Jason? What's it like to be famous? How about you, Molly? Is this what you signed up for when you agreed to go on The Bachelor? Probably not. The show's ratings have been pretty low for the last few seasons, and it was definitely "under the radar" in terms of pop culture relevance. Reality shows are so inexpensive to produce, compared with "scripted" programs, that the network can make a profit even if not that many people are watching. Certainly it's been many years since someone from the show has been on the cover of People. I think it's safe to say that Molly, Melissa and all the rest of the "girls" never expected to have their dating lives dissected publicly from The View to Bonnie Hunt to Jay Leno to Jimmy Kimmel.

As for Jason, as I've said before, fame is a fickle lover and he got dumped big time this week. He was so popular and appealing when the show started and now? Not so much, and like Nadya before him, the more he tries to explain himself on the talk show circuit the worse he's making himself look. It can't be fun for him, but it's sure entertaining for me.

The Magic Of Macy's?

We live in a consumer society - so much so that prior to the current economic debacle, consumer spending represented something like 70% of the U.S. economy. What that translates to is that going shopping and buying stuff on a regular basis was almost a patriotic duty. Unless all of us are hitting the malls on a regular basis, buying more and more stuff that we don't need and won't use, the economy will crater, and that's pretty much what we're seeing now. I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and will probably be writing about it frequently on this blog, but what's on my mind today is a really stupid commercial I saw this morning.

It started with several clips from movies and TV shows that mention Macy's department store, and it turns out there are a lot of them. Miracle on 34th Street was just the beginning. (Historical note: Most, if not all, of the clips are referring to the flagship Macy's store in New York City. Here in Chicagoland, Macy's is the department store formerly known as Marshall Field's.)

The voice-over says something about how Macy's is part of our lives, and then comes the tagline: "the magic of Macy's." What? The magic of Macy's??? The more I think about it the more it annoys me. Seriously - what part of a department store is "magical"? Is it the thrill and the joy of being able to walk in the door and breathe the air? The exquisite fun of handing over some money to buy another product? As Americans, we're continuously bombarded with messages from advertisers, all designed to convince us to buy something, and regardless of the overt message, the covert message is the same: Buying the product equals finding happiness. In a consumer society like ours it's almost impossible to resist the never-ending exhortations to buy, buy, buy, but for what it's worth, I'm trying to.

Memories of The Jumeirah Sceirah

Yesterday while channel surfing, I came across a program on the Travel Channel called Extreme Waterparks. I only saw the last 15 minutes but I loved it because it brought back such great memories of my visit to the Wild Wadi waterpark in Dubai. In particular, I'm proud to say that I survived a terrifyingly fast slide down the "Jumeirah Sceirah," a 33-metres high waterslide that is described as the tallest and fastest speed slide outside of North America.

According to the program, the Summit Plummet at Disney World in Florida is the world's tallest water slide at 120 feet high. The Jumeriah Sceirah, at 33 metres/108 feet, has to be a close second. I had never been to any kind of waterpark before so I had no idea what to expect as my friends and I were climbing up, up, up the stairs to get to the launching platform for the slide. Just waiting at the top of the stairs is pretty cool because you have a bird's eye view of all of Dubai, including the downtown skyline and the iconic Burj Dubai. Then you're at the front of the line and there's no place to go except down.

And down the slide you go. It's just you and the water, sliding very fast down a slick aerodynamic tube. It's over almost before you know it, but those few seconds between the platform at the top of the slide and the splashdown pool at the bottom, were among the most exhilarating of my life. The Travel Channel program only covered waterparks in the U.S. and Canada, so they didn't show the Jumeirah Sceirah, but it didn't matter. Just thinking about waterslides brought back memories of one of the best trips of my life.