God, can TV in my house get any more boring or pointless? (Home Improvement shows)

It’s bad enough that the WB cancelled Angel, which was a halfway decent show, but did my wife have to fall in love with all those crappy “We’ll redecorate your house in 2 days and $1,000” shows?

Tonight it has been nothing but “Clean Sweep”, “Trading Places”, and other assundry chick-shows. The friggin shows are everywhere (what the hell happened to TLC anyway? Can’t they do better than this? Why not re-run Connections ad-naseuem like they did in the good ol’ days?) and they are getting more ridiculous as time goes by. What’s next: “Mystery Car Detailing”? “The Joys of Carpet Shampooing”? “Wipe my Baby’s Bum”?

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMMIT!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

What? You don’t get ESPN? ESPN2? ESPN Classic? TNT, TCM, A&E, BRAVO, SciFi?

Yeah, the TV gets them, but my wife gets the remote. It’s just unfair! :wink:

Ah, for the good ol’ days of Bob Vila and Norm “why use a tack hammer when you have a pneumatic tack assault rifle?” Abram.

I loved those guys.

I heard a rumor that someone has made another television and that it can be tuned to a different channel than the one your wife has…

Fortunately for me, I wasn’t married when those shows were on or else I’d have to pit them too:

“Honey, look at this cabinet they’re making. Can you spend this weekend making one just like it?”

Too close to the baby’s room. Rule #1: Don’t wake the sleeping baby. :wink:

Damn straight. Why can’t they make a show where they just leave everything exactly the way it is? I’d watch that!

Well, no I wouldn’t actually, but I’d feel better knowing it was on.

There’s an answer to this. It lives on The Discovery Channel and is called Monster House.

See, they do the home renovation stuff, so your wife’ll get her redecorating fix, but they do insane things like put a giant football helmet on the house or a giant tiki head in the living room.

While I completely agree with this rule, I hear that they have earphones for TVs now. And I might just get some for my husband, as he likes to watch TV while I’m asleep in the next room. Rule #1 in the Bodoni household: Don’t wake Lynn. I’m crankier than any baby with colic, and I have more power to make everyone else miserable, too. But Bill is slightly deaf and getting deafer, and doesn’t realize that he’s turned the TV up so loud.

Why’d they cancel it, anyway?

The answer to this, at least in this town is to call Comcast (if your service is through those bastards), and tell them that you want to reduce your cable service to the absolute minimum.

They’ll take a while to do it, really. I think it was 6 months from the time I told them to until they actually did it, but I was getting billed correctly and I’d confirmed with them at least twice that I really did want them to do this. But once they do it, it’s amazing (and yes, I used to be a Trading Spaces watcher…now I can’t believe I was that into it). No TLC, no redecorating shows…none of it.

Of course I also don’t get the weather channel, but I guess that’s what weather.com is for.

We’ve got Knology. Gave up Comcast as it was too expensive. With Knology, for a mere $99/month we get:

  1. Digital Cable with ~400 channels (most are PPV’s of course, but a good 200 are music/TV stations).
  2. Local and long distance telephone service, including 300 free long-distance minutes a month ($.07/minute beyond that).
  3. Cable Internet service.
  4. 1 free PPV movie a month, plus a free HBO package for 6 months.
  5. This price is guaranteed for 2 years.

I teach an Adult Ed evening class for the local Community College-the topic: residential repair and remodeling. For years I’ve dreamed of putting a show together where I’d work with everyday Janes and Joes, on projects such as replacing a kitchen faucet, putting in new windows, or adding electrical receptacles. Nothing scripted, it would be shown as it happens, along with the anticipated problems and awshits. No lovely shop with $20K worth of woodworking tools. Talk about reality TV-I just haven’t figured out how to get it off the ground. :frowning:

Saw Clean Sweep this weekend for the first time. What got me was that the head people explaining what they were doing were explaining it to their own staff. The home owners were off somewhere else. The head carpenter was explaining crown molding to his two carpenter helpers. They’re carpenters! They know what the fuck crown molding is!!

“If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy…”

Can’t your wife trade off with you on the shows? Mr. Kalhoun and I are opposite ends of the spectrum on a lot of programs. So he gets to watch the big Daytona race, and then I get to watch transsexuals get their surgery. Then maybe we’ll find something we’re both interested in. Then we rotate custody of the remote again.

You actually do have a right to watch some programs you want to watch. Grow a pair, Girly-man!

Been done, it’s called “Help Around the House”. The host is a guy named Henry Harrison, pretty cool show. The guy reminds me of somebody’s grandfather, he’s always really patient with the homeowners.

Pebs

Actually, I worded the OP pretty badly. It’s not my wife that I’m complaining about, it’s the asinine shows. Usually she has excellent tastes that are sympatico with mine, except for this fling with these dumb programs. I have never seen a more boring and sleep-inducing premise than these things, and after watching a few, I have the idea that a few of them cheat on their own rules… especially “While You Were Out.”

he he he.

you’re hooked on them already and you don’t even know it yet!

hee hee!