Public Wasteland

The new prime time television season is nearly upon us. Not a day too soon, either. We’re running out of movies from Wal-mart’s five buck bin. We can’t complain about our “movie season,” though. Among the favorites have been sports themed flicks like Rudy, Bagger Vance, and Tin Cup. There’ve been a few romantic comedies, While You Were Sleeping, Someone Like You, and Two Weeks Notice. That’s two Sandra Bullocks and an Ashley Judd (Mrs. Dario Franchitti to you racing fans). It isn’t all light stuff. Flags of Our Fathers and Amistad were thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable.

We spend a bit more by buying rather than renting, in theory, anyway. We never incur a late fee, and we do pretty much stick to that $5 bin (Flags of our Fathers was and exception). The big advantage is that we don’t have to plan ahead. After cruising the on-line DirecTV guide in the early evening, and finding it barren of anything interesting, Jeannie or I will pick something from our small backlog of unwatched DVDs.

Actually, we look forward to the fall television season with some trepidation. It’s gone to pot, we think. I don’t mean a lack of quality. We can't say that with any certainty. The new problem is that you can’t count on the schedule. You can settle into a favorite on Thursday night, only to find it's been moved to Wednesday, or it's been put on a three-week hiatus. PBS isn't immune from such shenanigans. We get some subsidiary channel to San Jose, I think, and that seems to be in turn a poor sibling of the channel in San Francisco. Anyway, this three-times-removed Monterey channel is either raising money or putting on junk. You can bet if it’s worth watching, it will be worth interrupting for interminable pitches by exceedingly boring people in front of phone banks. How is that better than the advertising of commercial television?

Today I was reminded of this PBS wasteland when my mother called to tell me there was to be an episode of American Masters called Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends. The special hour and a half film includes not only part of Bennett’s 2005 Monterey Jazz Festival performance, but it’s executive producer, a fellow named Clint Eastwood, spends some time at the ivories accompanying the singer. We occasionally stop in at Clint’s Mission Ranch in Carmel, and more than once he’s dropped in to spend some time at the piano bar. He hasn’t yet pushed aside regular pianist Gennady Loktionov (who helped composer Eastwood with arrangements for the film Million Dollar Baby), but he has tooted a trumpet a couple of times. Anyway, that sounded good, so I went to listings. No way, of course. It’s on every place but here. Nor could I find it scheduled on another night. Do you get the idea we haven’t become “members?”