I need to whine

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t want to tell this to Mr. Rilch, because the show he’s on is really sucking the life out of him. My problem is not tragic, but that’s exactly why I don’t want to tell him of a small mishap: there’s nothing he can do, so why bother him.

Comedy Central is running all six episodes of Clerks: The Animated Series. I was planning to record them on the DVD burner, along with such Gary and Mike episodes that I currently only have on video, so I could have nice, clean copies of both series.

This evening, I had quite a menu planned. And as usual, I was going to record them without watching and play them back later. From 8 to 9:30 on Fox: That '70s Show, American Idol, Bernie Mac. At 10 on Comedy Central, South Park. From 2 to 3am on CC, Clerks followed by Gary and Mike.

I let the machine run from 8-10:40, only switching to CC at 9:55. Mr. Rilch came home at 11, turned on the symphonic music channel he likes on the cable, later went to bed.

I went downstairs at ten minutes to 2, and changed the channel back to CC. Or thought I did. In retrospect, I really should have turned the TV on to make sure.

Went downstairs just a little while ago to make sure everything recorded, and to excise commercials. Enabled Direct Navigator on hard drive. Black screen. Ooh, that doesn’t look good. But the first block of shows recorded beautifully.

Next segment. Black screen. :frowning: :frowning: :(.

I bet if I turn the volume up, I’ll hear classical.

No, I’m not hearing classical.

In fact, the screen’s not even the usual shade of black: it doesn’t seem that a signal was recorded at all.

Check “Info” with the remote. I said “Info”. INFO. What is wrong with this devil remote??? It won’t do ANYTHING! And changing the channel manually doesn’t work…

Turns out, somewhere along the line, one of us (I’ll never know which) had managed to turn off the cable signal.

So I have an hour of dead air…well, I had. I’ve erased it, obviously. But that still leaves me without the first episode of Clerks. Which I have never seen. And I have no idea if CC is going to run the series again. When I noticed it in the listings, the previous week had had a different late night schedule. They might not be going to do this again any time soon, or at all.

So I don’t want to tell Mr. Rilch, because he was looking forward to watching the whole series with me, and telling him that another tiny fragment of joy has been taken away will only heighten his despair. Deepen his despair, I mean. Joy has heights; despair has depths.

wah

2

Tell him that Comedy Central skipped the first episode, and encourage him to start a letter-writing campaign to protest this gross oversight on CC’s part. Having a pet project will improve his mood, and one day you can both look back on all this and laugh.

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3

Well, FWIW, they do run things like this again, eventually. It’s not like it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and now it’s gone forever…

Monty Python episodes are the same way. Sooner or later, some channel somewhere starts running a batch of them, and then you sit down and start taping.

Just tell Mr. Rilch, “I dunno what happened, it just didn’t Record… << shrug >>…” He doesn’t need to know all the grim details.

4

Yeah, that’s what I plan on doing. After I have the other five eps, I’ll casually mention that the first one didn’t record, oh well. But that’s only if they don’t cycle around, in which case I don’t have to say a word!

That is the primal beauty of these DVD burners: you can create a disk with shows in any order you want! It’s not once-and-done like with video.

Thanks for listening!

5

You can get the DVD of the Clerks series, totally uncensored and with bonus features, for what, 15 bucks?

6

Is it that cheap? I knew there was a disk set, but I thought it would be like $40. Bonus features, you say? Oh, well, forget this whole rant, then! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Reading over the OP, I realize now that I really wasn’t upset about some Comedy Central reruns. I was upset because Mr. Rilch was upset. Well, it turns out, he was sick, which was tainting his mood towards an admittedly unpleasant job. He took today off to recuperate, and tomorrow he should be able to soldier on.

And I will keep an eye out for that DVD set! That could be a birthday present to him, come to think of it!

7

This is Comedy Central we’re talking about, right?

No worries–they’ll run it again. and again. and again. and again…ad nauseum. You’ll see it broadcast so much, you’ll not want to watch the recording.