Shark Tank is a television show that helps needy entrepreneurs get funding for their projects. Folks like Mary Beth Lugo pitch their ideas to the Shark team, made up of Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful), Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, and Kevin Harrington. Mary Beth and her husband, CDR John Lugo, invented KaZAM, a bike that teaches balance to young children…
The British Heart Foundation ‘pumped’ out a TV advert last year that featured Vinnie Jones, playing the part of a gangster; who demonstrates a CPR procedure that assists some one who has stopped breathing through a heart attack “we need a body~ and here’s one I made earlier“! A humorous clip, which has had startling results since it was shown on main line TV. Vinnie Jones’ hard and fast Hands-only CPR (funny short film) (full .. .Sharon Thorneywork a 42 year old mother of three children, witnessed Terrence Holly a 72 year old, collapse to the floor suffering a massive heart attack.
Her action saved his life, which was all due to the British Heart Foundation, the Bee Gees, and Vinnie Jones cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Mother-of-three saves grandfather’s life by singing ‘Stayin’ Alive’ while giving him CPR on a bus “Hands only, you only kiss the missus on the lips.“ No problem Vinnie mate, anything you say…
Below this post, TEXTA discusses television and its wide reach. If you are brave, do go read what Dana Adiva has to say about herself on MTV’s True Life: I’m Too Beautiful. And then contrast it with Angela Zatopek from Ready for Love.
Sun Tzu (pronounced Sun Zway, I think) said “all Warfare is Deception.” I like Sun Tzu, or at least I like the idea of Sun Tzu – I mean, anyone that’s been dead for millennia and is still selling books is all right with me- I am a right proper Capitalist American Pig after all). I’m not very smart, so I often have a hard time understanding his work (especially when I read it in original Chinese – mostly because I don’t read Chinese). As I sit here with my saintly bride and beloved children, watching “The Voice” – a perrenial family favorite – that good ol’ Sun Tzu quotation popped into my head. Only it went something like this “All Television is Deception” – Hmmm, I guess I have to explain that now… if I can.
I have a theory – the purpose of All (American) Television is to deceive the (American) public – to make us look somewhere else, to distract us.
Frankly, in my opinion, Uncle Joe won somewhere in the early 70′s. (Holy Crap you say – where’s this guy going with this?).
Stalin knew that the only way to defeat America was to change the American Spirit – to change American Values.
How do you do that!? Think about it. In the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s the only media games in town were radio and moving pictures, and movies were the future. Uncle Joey knew the power of propaganda, he’d been using it effectively for decades. Add to that a gentle, constant, deliberate increasing liberalization of education; Joey knew the power of re-education, he’d been using it effectively for decades. … I’ll talk more about education in another post (oh, wait that was my last one…)
And, it worked. The Values of Americans are now different. We’re more worried about watching the ‘reality’ that is beamed into our lives at all hours – reality in the form of survivors, singers, home improvers, swamp people, preppers, lobstermen, storm-chasers fashionistas, and on and on and on – literally several thousand channels of choices to take America’s minds off of and our eyes away from what’s going on around us.
I call it the Grand Coliseum, in reference to the way the Romans, near the end of their Empire’s days built the Coliseum to present grand entertainments, in the form of men and animals killing each other (sound familiar? – The Walking Dead or a hundred other various graphic, destructive and highly addictive ways to keep your eyes on the T.V. and mind off of what’s going on around you…) Those grand entertainments were designed to keep the mob focused on anything other than the fact that the borders were crumbling, the Vandals were at the gates there were not two roman coins to rub together in the treasury…
Gotta go, the final live eliminations are happening on “The Voice”
… Boy, I hope the Swon Brothers win! The Voice’s first duo winners! – can you imagine! How exciting.
Hey, you guys catch Jewel and Matt Ross as June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash in “Ring of Fire?” Sure, it was on Lifetime (Television for Women®), but Jewel rocked it. You probably wonder who showed ol’ John-boy all his licks. Search no further, my friend:
The teevee movie was based in John Carter Cash’s Anchored in Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash.
‘Tis Friday the 19th and that means that Sons of Guns is back with season four. And today’s episode brought a WWII PIAT, a Russian cannon and a M36 tank:
The show — which centers on Red Jacket Firearms, a custom gun-making company in Louisiana — is set to return at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Friday, April 19.
Stephanie Ford, Will Hayden, Charlie, Kris, and Flem from Sons of Guns.
Will Hayden, his daughter Stephanie, Joe, Kris,Charlie, Flem and the rest of Red Jacket staff are returning for season four, which will see the crew handling major firepower, including a rare handheld WWII PIAT, a Russian cannon and a M36 tank.
Meanwhile, Vince, a former employee, resurfaces, and his reappearance as a possible competitor could spell trouble for Red Jacket. The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive look at the premiere.
Sons of Guns and other shows including History’s Top Shot and National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers came under scrutiny in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December.
A similarly themed series on Discovery, American Guns, was canceled months earlier, mostly because of its ratings performance.
Do we really have to talk about Newtown? Can we not have a day go by without mentioning this tragedy? Tens of thousands of people die each year in car accidents, why not exploit this?
Someone put together a Walking Dead Google Map indicating places around Georgia where the show was filmed. I kinda had a hankering for Herschel’s Farm, as the kind of place to retire to in a coupla decades.
Hershel Greene’s Farm father of Maggie & Beth
It is located in (real life) in Senoia, Georgia for those of you wondering.
Language and cultural walnut that you are, you were probably wondering where to find My Splendid Life (or 灿烂人生 as it is known to the Taiwanese locals) on the web. Fear not! We got your back:
Splendid Life, 灿烂人生 , Jerry Yan and Chen Yan Fei
Qing Tian’s (Yedda Chen) lost her father in a accident. Her entire wealth was taken by her stepmother. She than found a job at a restaurant where she met Yu Hao (Jerry Yan). Yu Hao’s grandmother, the owner of the company becomes a fond of Qing Tian.
Wanting to inspire Yu Hao who is not motivated to run the business, the grandmother announced Qing Tian as the heir of her wealth. Yu Hao & Qing Tian then got into a fierce competition. Meanwhile, the two starts to discover more merits of each other.
Ah, a lite frothy series. Kind of like Walking Dead minus the zombies. And the guns. And…
Jeremy Irons, Libertarian?
The Showtime channel has a show called the Borgias, created by Neil Jordan, about the murderous House of Borgia (Borges) living high-on-the-hog in Renaissance Italy. It has quite the cast:
Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI with François Arnaud as Cesare, Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia, David Oakes as Juan and Aidan Alexander as Gioffre Borgia. Colm Feore also stars as Cardinal della Rovere.
And recently its star, Jeremy Irons (who you may remember from the Mission and Reversal of Fortune) sounded off about do-gooders in politics. Especially one New York mayor.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known to you and me as Charlie Chaplin, passed away in 1977. He does have a granddaughter named Oona Chaplin (also curiously the great-granddaughter of Eugene O’Neill) who grew up in Spain:
Oona Chaplin, named after her maternal grandmother Oona O’Neill, is the daughter of British-American actress Geraldine Chaplin and Chilean cinematographer Patricio Castilla. Born in Madrid, she spent her childhood mostly in Spain, Switzerland and Cuba, but also travelled often because of her mother’s film career. She started dancing ballet,salsa and flamenco at an early age
Talisa gave up her life of nobility to become a healer on the battlefields. When she meets Robb Stark, the two quickly fall in love and secretly wed, making her the Queen of the North. So much for ditching nobility! Playing Robb’s new wife is Spanish actress Oona Chaplin, who just happens to be the granddaughter of famed comic and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.
I wonder if Oona has viewed Brian Hann’s or Morace Park’s Charlie Chaplin in Zepped, a seven minute 1917 propaganda film.
I don’t watch the Duck Dynasty show on television, but I do find Uncle Si’s Army picture during the Vietnam era to be quite different from his current look:
Uncle Si from the Duck Dynasty.
They have pictures of the others, Willie, Alan, Korie, Lisa, Jase, Missy, Kay, Phil, and Jep, at the link. Back before they growled with that hillbilly millionaire snarl.
I don’t find any of the late night shows funny. But if I was absolutely forced into watching one of them, I’d pick Jay Leno. At least the guy pokes fun at both sides, albeit unequally. But now, NBC is discussing his retirement. Oh well. . .
Annet Mahendru (Nina the secretary) in the Americans
Where actors and actresses grew up and learned their craft (for some reason) interests me. It is often not obvious.
Take Annet Mahendru, who plays Nina the Russian secretary, from the show The Americans. She has a perfect Russian accent. But this German language wiki lists her as from Afghanistan.
Her bio lists German and Russian as her languages. And she is proficient in French and conversational in Farsi and Hindi. For a linguist, this is a veritable fruit salad of everything, including pineapple, kiwis, and plantains. But I don’t see any pure Afghani languages listed in her bio. No Pashtu or Dari. Maybe Farsi, if her family lived close to the Iranian border. (Farsi and Dari are very similar.)
Her IMDB bio notes that she speaks six languages. (But which one is her language of birth?) It also mentions that she dances Bharata Natyam and is a brown belt in Karate. Bharata Natyam is a dance originating in India. And her last name could be Indian. I give up. You win, Annet.
I always cringe when I hear imams or middle-eastern “leaders” saying the West is a corrupting force upon their youth. Part of my cringe comes from the fact that an open-society engenders certain negative aspects, like drugs. But having a closed society goes against our establishment. And when I see an Arabic girl, like Salwa Amin, from the MTV show Buckwild, arrested for drugs, I know this will get play over there:
Salwa Amin, Arabic girl on MTV’s Buckwild
The “Buckwild” star who was busted in a drug raid was cowering in a shed when the you-know-what hit the fan, and cops allegedly hauled in a bunch of drugs and money … TMZ has learned.
The Police Chief in Summersville, West Virginia tells us officers arrested Salwa Amin and 2 other men after an extensive day of surveillance.
According to the chief, his drug task force got a tip that a “shipment” would be delivered to the home in Nicholas County sometime on Sunday.
The chief says they observed a lot of foot traffic coming in and out of the house — and says the people were only staying for very brief periods of time … so they immediately obtained a search warrant, and then launched the raid.
Salwa, Shawn L. Booker and Jason D. Jones — who owns the home — were found hiding in a shed in the backyard, according to the chief.
Amin could also be an Indian name. Let’s hope this stays out of the foreign press.
A helicopter crashed while filming an “untitled military reality show.” (I got this info through the comments on Yahoo. The article is very unhelpful.) Another comment lists the pilot’s name as David Gibbs and the airframe as a Bell 206B helicopter. The crash occurred in Acton, California and the production company is listed as Bongo Productions. RIP to all involved.
So I wanted to do a show about a husband and a wife and their children who don’t know and how it affects the kids. We always conceived of The Americans as a show about a marriage, more than espionage, that shows how, even under the craziest circumstances, the marriage still looks and feels like any other marriage. — The Americans’ creator Joe Weisberg on Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, played by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell.
