…to an ongoing online catalog of “Television Tropes & Idioms.” Current contents range from the Evil Twin to the “Invisible Main Character” and the “Brother Chuck” (named for Richie’s only-briefly-extant older brother on Happy Days).

The puppeteer, cartoon-voice legend, and artificial-heart inventor (really!) was, according to his estranged daughter April, “a very troubled and unhappy man.” One could hardly expect any less from the voice of Gargamel and Dick Dastardly.

Until there’s a new TV contract, there won’t be a pageant. Gay guys will have to snicker at America’s Next Top Model instead.

…my ongoing effort to get back to some of my dozen or so unfinished book ideas, I’m taking on yet another.

This would be a straightforward how-to title, for folks buying their first digital TV set. In the next few years, millions are expected to go through the same ordeal of tech-terminology and salesperson-doublespeak I recently faced (see a few entries below). If I can help just a few thousand consumers past this potential purchasing minefield, I can pay for my own recent DTV set.

Thus, I’m asking all loyal MISCmedia readers who’ve gone through this ordeal yourselves for advice on what should be in the book. As always, email your thoughts.

‘Twas a simply wonderful time at our MISCmedia.com tenth anniversary bash last night. Some 20 loyal readers crowded our comfy, well-lit new digs. Only one glass of wine was spilled (by me, on the kitchen floor). The thing started around 5:30, and didn’t conclude until seven hours later.

This site, I’m afraid, is showing its age. Up ’til now, every piece of HTML on it has been hand-coded by myself, whose programming skills are too rudimentary to even deserve the term “amateur.” The whole thing, some six megs’ worth of text pages with hundreds of archived photos, needs a complete redo. I hope to get at least started on it over the course of the next month.

I’m trying to place a tenth anniversary edition of Loser with a real publisher; or, barring that, to start a real publishing concern with real financing and real distribution. For now, the self-published second edition will remain for sale from this site.

Yesterday was also a birthday for me. One particular party guest (thank you Jen) exhorted me to pursue my dreams now, while there’s still time. In my brutal-despair mode earlier this year, I could only think of mere survival, and even that seemed a decreasingly likely ideal. Now that I’m no longer in that recursive mindset, I feel like I might actually be able to fulfill some of my larger dreams.

If I can only remember what they are.

Meanwhile in televisionland, my party guests got to see my aforementioned new flat LCD TV with full HDTV miraclevision.

As aforementioned, my cable system currently offers only six HD channels, all of which are local broadcast stations. They, in turn, only offer true HD transmission on selected programs. These include filmed prime-time network shows (but not taped programs such as news magazines and “reality” series) and the studio portions of local newscasts (KOMO also shoots its field footage in HD). KOMO’s Northwest Afternoon and KING’s Evening Magazine are also in HD. So are a few off-prime-time network series–Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien from NBC, The Young and the Restless from CBS.

The “killer apps” for HDTV, particularly among the male “early adopter” crowd, are movies and especially sports. Tonight’s first NBA Finals game looked simply exquisite in hi-def. I could see the sweat on the faces, the dimples on the ball. Unlike the regular-def digital cable channels such as ESPN Classic, in which in which fast camera pans and large crowd shots can get blurred due to signal compression, the HD picture remained as clear and sharp as if I’d been at the Alamodome myself.

I’m hooked, alas. Now I’ll have to get a progressive scan DVD player and a TiVo to keep my spectacular set properly fed. And I’ll have to pester my cable operator to add more HD channels. (The guy who installed my HD cable box said KCTS and KSTW would be added sometime this summer, along with ESPN, Discovery, and maybe a couple others.) (I can’t switch to satellite ’cause I’d lose CBC.)

…about media conglomerates getting ever-bigger? It’s working out to be a poor business strategy, at least as viewed by executives who only pay attention to The Almighty Stock Price.

Thus, Viacom’s thinking of spinning off CBS into a separate company. This comes just five years after Viacom (originally formed when CBS spun off its local cable systems and its pre-1972 rerun library) picked up CBS, which had been previously bought and spun off from Loew’s and Westinghouse.

The new CBS would include not just the eye-branded network and network-owned TV stations, but also the Infinity radio stations, the UPN mini-network, and the UPN-branded Viacom-owned TV stations (including KSTW here). Viacom would keep its cable channels (MTV, Spike, BET, et al.) and Simon & Schuster publishing.

Paramount Pictures would be severed, Solomon-baby-like. Viacom would keep the feature-film and DVD businesses; while CBS would get Paramount’s TV production and syndication arms (including all those old CBS shows). Among other results, this would mean TV Land (to remain part of Viacom) would have to pay CBS for most of the shows it airs.

American society and American discourse could still use more voices, more choices. There’s no guarantee that the split-up pieces of corporate media giants would behave any less corporately.

I finally got myself the HDTV-compatible TV I’d been thinkin’ about getting for some weeks now.

I would up getting it at one of the last TV stores still within the Seattle city limits. They had it as a floor-model clearance item. It was reduced from $2,000 or so when first introduced two years ago, to $1,350 or so at current online pricing, to a mere $699 plus tax.

The deep discount was partly prompted by a few minor flaws in the item–they no longer had the box or a printed manual, the plastic “door” over the back input ports is missing, and the remote control’s different from the one shown in the online manual.

But it’s a beautiful set. And it’s so lightweight, I could take it home on Metro, thus avoiding delivery costs, cab fares, or long waits to find someone with a vehicle to lend.

I don’t have HDTV reception yet, but even on standard broadcast and cable channels it looks splendid. DVDs look superb, especially of widescreen movies. The picture looks fab in bright daylight, from odd angles, and from 15 feet away (where I usually have my portable computer desk). The audio’s also lusciously crystal clear, even without external stereo speakers.

I can instantly switch from a widescreen to a normal viewing ratio, so Drew Barrymore doesn’t end up looking like Drew Carey. The regular 4×3 image is slightly smaller than that on my old 19-inch Magnavox from 1991; but it’s so bright and crisp it seems larger. (I can actually read the box-score type on ESPNews!)

Tiny flaw #1: I can definitely see the image flaws in my old off-air VHS tapes, in poorly-compressed digital imagery (such as the title screens on the Music Choice channels), and in my cable company’s reception of broadcast channels. (The company does offer seven broadcast HD channels; but for some reason it doesn’t offer KCTS in HD, nor any of the dozen or so made-for-cable HD channels.)

Tiny flaw #2: The set’s got four different types of input ports, but I haven’t yet figured how to use any of them to make the thang into a computer monitor.

Not a flaw but a wistful note: With my TV and my computer both equipped with LCDs, I’ve now moved completely beyond the CRT technology that’s powered video reception since the days of Philo T. Farnsworth. CRT television was first demonstrated in 1927; regularly scheduled telecasts began in 1936 in London, in 1939 in New York, and in 1948 in Seattle. (Similarly, when CDs replaced vinyl, they replaced an analog technology that dated back some 110 years to Thomas Edison himself.)

I feel like I’ve abandoned something of high importance to our cultural history. I’ll feel that way again if and when the FCC ever gets around to telling TV stations to go all-digital and shut off their analog signals.

(You can see this set in action if you come to my housewarming/birthday/website-tenth-anniversary party this Wednesday evening. Email me for address and other particulars.)

…to Don McGaffin, one of the most outspoken and well-spoken people to have worked in Seattle TV news back in its pre-helicopter era.

I’ve found, based on a relatively superficial product search, that HD-ready TV sets in my price range fall into two categories: gargantuan tube sets (weighing 120-150 lbs. or more), and teensy-weensy LCD sets. Do I want something that would overwhelm my apartment, or something I could only watch from two feet away or closer?

…to Thurl Ravenscroft, whose deep resonant voice was heard in Disneyland singing-robot-animal shows, old time radio, religious albums, Elvis records, the animated film The Brave Little Toaster (as Kirby the vacuum cleaner), the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas (singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”), and in commercials for over half a century as Tony the Tiger.

No brutal-despair stuff this time; just a more pedestrian advice request.

So far, I’ve carefully spent only tiny portions of my condo-sales proceeds. Most of that has gove to keep the aforementioned credit card people at bay. One chunk went to replace an aging computer. I’ve also attained a few practical wardrobe items and a half-dozen or so practical furnishing pieces for New MISC Towers.

But now I have a craving.

Despite my lifelong respect for the televisual medium, I’ve only owned two TV sets. The first was an old transistor-based Sony Trinitron, which I’d won in a KING-TV giveaway at Northgate Mall. It served my viewing needs from 1975 to 1991, when it finally ceased to function. Then came the 19″ Magnavox I still use today. (Comparitavely, I’ve had six VCRs since 1986.)

I promised myself a few years back that I’d not get another TV until (1) the Magnavox died, or (2) HDTV equipment became affordable. The latter is now almost the case, at least if I keep wtih old CRT technology. Of course, the only HD channels now on my current cable system are the ordinary broadcast channels. Presumably, that will increase (the more dominant cable company in Seattle has eight HD cable channels). HD DVDs will also, presumably, show up one of these years.

Because I believe in long-term hardware investments, if I were to get a set this year it’d have to be HD-ready. But I don’t really need to get one.

So please tell me what to do.

…of the digital media age just might be that onetime symbol of hidebound, bureaucratic broadcasting, the BBC.

Besides his enjoyable, scenery-chompin’ roles on the original Batman, the original Star Trek, The Edge of Night, and many other TV series, I’ll particularly remember him from my all-time favorite never-released-on-home-video movie, the Washington-filmed Ring of Fire.

According to the alt-media conventional wisdom, when TV and radio ratings decline, major-label CD sales slump, and major-studio movie ticket sales stagnate, it’s supposed to be a hopeful omen toward the impending demise of the “dinosaurs.” But when book sales show a similar slump, we’re all supposed to get outraged n’ frightful that those rubes out there in bad ol’ mainstream America aren’t consuming what’s good for ’em.

The truth lies elswhere.

High, low, and middlebrow content throughout the mechanical (print) and analog (broadcast) media have had to make room in the public “mindspace” for these newfangled digital media (Internet, DVDs, video games, et al.). It’ll all sort out eventually, leaving some investors (of time, energy, and/or money) into various of these media prosprous and others forlorn.

The first of the TV wingnuts has fallen. The erudite and formerly funny Dennis Miller, who morphed/whored himself into a Bill O’Reilly clone with a vocabulary, was axed by CNBC (along with the career celebrity-fluffer Tina Brown). Now maybe we can get a little less heat and a little more light with our warmed-over news analysis. Of course, that’s just my opinion, etc. etc.