Now the Great Gazoo will never get back to his home planet.

Broadstripe (formerly Millennium, formerly Summit, formerly Seacom), the “little” cable company with a big image problem, has finally added a bunch more hi-def channels. They’re all versions of brands you know and love—TNT, TBS, A&E, History Channel, National Geographic, Lifetime Movie Network, and (for a little extra) Showtime.

So far, so good. We get TNT’s NBA playoffs (including, alas, the Lucking Fakers) and TBS’s baseball games (no longer exclusively starring the Braves) in their full-res, widescreen glory. The same goes for some movies, recent off-network reruns (Lawn Order: Assorted Flavors), and “reality” faves such as Ax Men (northwest Oregon never looked so beautifully foreboding).

But, and this is something Broadstripe can do nothing about, sometimes these channels aren’t showing HD material. (This is usually when they’re simulcasting the same shows as their famous parent channels.) That would only be a minor annoyance, except these channels then ruin this material by altering it into that fake-widescreen stretch-O-vision. Sometimes, even movies that were originally made in widescreen will get cropped and then stretched into unviewability. And you can’t “squeeze” it back into its proper proportions; you can only search out these shows on the channels’ regular standard-def incarnations.

The worst offender: Lifetime Movie Network, whose shelves of moldering ’80s-’90s made-for-TV victimization-and-revenge tales are almost all stretched out like digital Silly Putty comics.

After last night’s televised debacle (the debacle part being mostly the doing of the televisors), one question remains (out of all the many questions left unasked): Were messers Gibson and Stephanopoulos playing devil’s advocate, or are they really sniveling GOP sycophants?

Saturday just happened to be the first warm day of the year; a perfect setting for the already much-documented Dalai Lama show in the pro football stadium, where he talked about compassion and coexistence for all people.

(No, I see absolutely no cynical irony in that. American football is a game of confrontation, but it’s also a game of cooperation.)

His message, and the other messages at the Seeds of Compassion confab, have been both simple and deep. I’ll probably have more to say about them later this week.

Later that evening, I found myself at the Georgetown Art Attack gallery crawl. Saw some lovely informal paintings at Georgetown Tile curated by my ol’ pal Anne Grgich; then caught some great buys at the Fantagraphics bookstore’s scratch-and-dent sale.

Sunday brought us the last day of the last bowling alley north of the Ship Canal, Ballard’s totally beloved Sunset Lanes.

It was also the day of what just might have been the last pro basketball game in Seattle. Maybe. If we don’t do something about it.

Even after a deliberately thrown season, the finale was sold out. Fans booed the home team’s owner Clay Bennett, and cheered the opposing team’s owner (Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, who opposes Bennett’s desired team move to Oklahoma City). You saw little to none of this on Fox Sports Net; under terms of its contract with the team, FSN’s announcers said almost nothing about Bennett’s threats or the real importance of Sunday’s game.

Also Sunday evening, and this takes the whole entry full circle, CNN held what it called a “Compassion Forum,” in which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (appearing separately) discussed their religious and/or spiritual foundations. Of course, because they are rival applicants for a really big job, some pundits just had to compare and contrast who’s really the most faith-based.

• Attended the monthly Seattle Webloggers’ Meetup at Ralph’s Grocery and Deli. Yes, I’ve gone faithfully to these schmooze-and-tip-sharing confabs, and my site still looks this ugly. (Now that my big Web startup co-venture is, for the time, off again, I can resume my long and vague plans to revamp relaunch this site.)
• Watched part of the DVD first-season box set of NBC’s Saturday Night, soon to be retitled Saturday Night Live. I was 18 and newly on my own when the show debuted—the perfect target audience for sophomoric humor.Other reviewers have noted that the show took a few episodes to jell into its now-famous sketch format, with the still-famous original cast of Second City/National Lampoon alums. But I have a different impression, that Lorne Michaels’s basic concept and aesthetic were fully formed at the debut.

  From episode one, he was juxtaposing New York export culture (TV shows and commercials) with New York local culture (particularly off-Broadway revues). For one of the world’s biggest media companies, Michaels simulated a small, funky, fringe-theater experience. Broadway theater set designer Eugene Lee divided the huge Studio 8H into a series of intimate, textured living rooms and offices; they looked like places where Gleason and Carney could have cavorted. Bob Pook’s cute sketch title cards and Edie Baskin’s hand-colored cast photos furthere the notion that this was no Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. This would be a different type of TV, a show viewers could trust to speak their language, even when that language became a stream of catch phrases.

  This affect spread to the musical guests. In the show’s launch, they were almost always mellow singer-songwriters and aging R&B legends. Michaels clearly didn’t know what to do with ABBA (who were cast over his dead body by network bosses) and Elvis Costello. He preferred nice music by people with genuine Sixties-generation cred.

  Even the Muppets’ ongoing “Dregs and Vestiges” skits were really about the decline of the previous decade’s dreams. Ugly monster characters exchanged shticks about sex, drugs, and decay, on a planet whose good years were long past.

  This was the setting, the picture frame for SNL’s comedy, a brand of comedy that was simultaneously brutal and gentle, experimental and commercial.

  In time, of course, the commercial side would become ascendant. When Michaels returned to the show in 1986 after six seasons away, he re-created it as an “Industry” show, one where celebrities would be worshipped even as they were mocked.

…another 7 daze since I last posted. Excuses: Got none. (Except that a startup entrepreneurial venture I’d been involved with this past year seems to have gone “on hold.”)

In the nooze recently:

• That novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker I told you about late last year? Somebody used one as the focus of a bomb scare at the Olympia state capitol. Unfunny.
• As you may have heard, the Clinton campaign’s “3 a.m.” TV commercial was assembled from purchased stock footage. The little girl in the footage is now grown up, she lives here in WashState, and, yep, she’s an Obama supporter.
• That most recent, well-funded save-the-Sonics drive heads toward a not-really-that-drastic deadline. While the plan for minimal KeyArena improvements (mostly a food court and new concourses; not that many new seats) would rely on private funding for half its cost, the would-be new owners want the state to chip in $75 million. It’d take some pushing n’ cajoling to get that request thru the Legislature’s current regular session, scheduled to wrap up darn soon. Some Legislative leaders, such as House Speaker Frank Chopp, have built their public images around the idea that they don’t cave in to such big-money demands, at least not right away. But Gov. Gregoire can still call a one-day special session to pass the funding (in my opinion, a reasonable investment for a reasonable reward). The hard part’s still persuading Clay Bennett to sell and persuading league boss David Stern to stop being Bennett’s toady.
• It’s a big night for all lovers of classic Tacoma power pop, as the Ventures get into the R n’ R Hall o’ Fame.
• The Sunday Times/P-I cut its total opinion pages (which, by contract, are alloted 50/50 to each paper) from six pages to four. When the joint Sunday edition launched, 24 and a half years ago, each paper got six pages to express its “editorial voice.”
• Boeing boosters blame McCain for that big Air Force tanker contract going to Airbus. So much for a GOP revival in this state this year.

…couple-O-daze for yr. o’b’d’n’t web-scribe. I did a marathon temp gig in exotic Renton. (It’s now ended.) I was there, methodically shoving pieces of paper through a machine, when my Evening Magazine segment aired. (They’d promised they’d tell me when it would run; damn.) You may be able to see it at this link.

Other things have happened as well.

• Wednesday started locally with P-I political writer Joel Connelly grousing that John McCain’s been getting a free ride from the mainstream media. The day ended with the NY Times regurgitating rumors that McCain allegedly had an affair, eight years ago, with a woman far younger than he, who worked as a lobbyist for telecom firms and broadcasters—including for Bud Paxson, of the “family friendly” Pax (now Ion) network. (Pax, you may recall, in 2004 was the chief TV conduit for the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the guys who were paid big bucks to tell lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.)Personally, I don’t care about his past affairs, just as I didn’t care about those of Bill Clinton (whose impeachment McCain supported). But I do care about the other half of the NYT allegations, that he’d bestowed legislative favors upon Paxson and other friends-of-friends whilst promoting himself as Mr. Let’s-Clean-Up-Government.
• In good, potentially great news, the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board decided to pursue saving Ballard’s beloved Manning’s/Denny’s building! And somebody’s already proposed a scheme to save the building, as a restaurant, while building complementary-looking housing on its parking lot.
• Discover U, the longstanding for-profit offerer of reasonably priced self-help classes and group events, has suddenly shut its doors. Now, where will Seattleites learn how to cleanse their colons, find love at any age, or start an eBay business?
• HD DVD, RIP.

…I’m skipping the morning-headlines thang on days when there’s not much interesting to pass on. Today, we’ve got a few items:

• Certain Pokemon valentine cards were recalled, after some of the heart-shaped lollipops attached to them contained metal fragments. Looks like Team Rocket has finally won a battle.
• Could the world’s oceans soon become beyond saving?
• Real headline: “State patrol to drivers: 911 not a traffic hotline.”
• Evergreeners: Not all as passive as the old stereotype.
• The state’s new plan for replacing those four obsolete ferries? Replace them with three new, smaller boats.
• Your help is needed in a one-time census of Puget Sound octopi.
• Sleazy corporate lawyers want access to a car-crash victim’s old MySpace page.
• A Starbucks barista plans to donate a kidney to a loyal customer. Let’s hope this doesn’t get into the next employee manual.

…rolls along, even into primary states. Elsewhere:

• Ron Sims would really like all King County agencies to solve socio-economic inequality. (Hey you: Stop scoffing. What if they could really do it?)
• A Seattle swimwear designer’s creations are featured in the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; as are the (fully costumed) Seafair Pirates.
• Please: If you must steal porn, use BitTorrent, not armed robbery.
• Jones Soda becomes the official fizzy drink of Alaska Airlines.
• Old nudist magazines used to sport such wholesome titles as Sunshine & Health. Now, some doctors claim a lack of Vitamin D-bearing rays really could weaken us.
• Gay-bashing attacks on Capitol Hill—on the rise.
• State GOP boss Luke Esser: Playing favorites or just incompetent?
• More fun news from my ol’ hometown: America’s first tribal TV station, streaming online.
• And the TV/movie-biz writers’ strike is over. Now Leno can go back to having other people to blame for his lameness.

…there’s gonna be a segment about folks trying to save the Ballard Denny’s/Manning’s building, and why it should be saved.

…in Saudi Arabia arrested an American woman for sitting with a man at a Starbucks. (One of the news items about the incident included a pic of the chain’s Arab-world logo, in which the mascot mermaid is completely missing.)

NOW WE KNOW why David Letterman rattled off so many Mitt Romney jokes this past week—he wasn’t gonna get to tell ’em much longer.

One Shai Sachs has written several pieces on MyDD.com pondering what a progressive cable-TV channel might look like, and how it might be funded.

It’s an intriguing idea, pregnant with possibilities.

Let’s imagine one now.

Not just a little volunteer show on an access channel, but a whole 24/7 venture with a professional staff and everything.

There’s no shortage of potential material to fill such a channel. There are plenty of writers, pundits, and documentary filmmakers available to be tapped. There are plenty of national and international stories that could provide compelling viewing/listening, but are mostly or wholly ignored in today’s mainstream media.

ProgTV could also have arts/culture/entertainment segments, emphasizing “our” priorities in those realms (indie films, non-double-platinum musicians, live theater, literature, etc.)

There could be oral-history interviews, viewer-submitted video shorts (a la Current TV), unedited speeches (a la C-SPAN), funny fake news (a la Jon Stewart), funny real news (a la Keith Olbermann), historical docs, educational shows for all age groups, etc. etc. etc.

Ms. Sachs warns, rightly in my opinion, that any ProgTV shouldn’t try to replicate PBS, or adhere to outmoded institutional “objective journalism.” That, she says, is what got the “liberal” media so suckered into becoming BushCo’s mouthpieces in 2002-03.

I may have more ideas about this later on.

…Rudy Giuliani to kick around anymore. In other nooze:

• It’s a June trial date for the case of Seattle v. Sonics. That way there won’t be any distractions in the way like, say, playoffs…
• The state will stop the hideous practice of shipping inmates to out-of-state private prisons, far from families and appeal attorneys.
• When an independent entrepreneur deliberately bilks folks who pay into doomed investment schemes, he’s called a criminal. When, oh let’s say, banks and mortgage companies do it…
• “29 reforms.” Remember this number. It’s the number of changes a task force sez the city needs to make to bring more accountability to the Seattle Police.
• For now, Costco won’t get to buy beer and wine direct from their makers. A court said the chain has to still buy thru wholesalers in this state.
• Patty Murray hearts Hillary Clinton.
• Did you know Panasonic made TV sets in Vancouver USA? (Emphasis on the past tense.)

The TV this morn has lots of lovely snow footage from Tacoma, Lynnwood, and Issaquah. But here in the heart-O-Seattle, we’ve got some white-dusted rooftops and icy roads but little more. Alas.

…for Evening Magazine went lovely yesterday morning. We shot at a variety of locations, including the freshly re-closed (alas) Andy’s Diner and the under-destruction Rainier Cold Storage building.

Elsewhere in recent days:

• Blood bank bias. Say that five times fast.
• The next local company to potentially get bought out: Getty Images.
• Today’s AT&T: Wannabe Internet censors.
• Washington Mutual used to call itself “The Friend of the Family.” We didn’t know “the family” meant its own top execs.
• Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren: One more year, then it’s quits.
• With all the hoopla concerning oil spills and sludge, one can forget that diesel watercraft pollute the air too.
• This is the dawning of the age of asparagus.
• More Catholic boy-abuse claims are made, this time dating back to the 1950s.
• A research study by two “nonprofit journailsm organizations” concludes: Bush lied. A lot.