Morgan Spurlock’s show on FX, 30 Days, started its new season at the beginning of June. I’ve been recording them on my DVR and finally watched the first two during a lazy Father’s Day on the couch. The first episode features Spurlock returning to West Virginia, his home state, to spend 30 days as a coal miner. If you’re not familiar with the show, the idea is that someone with a particular point of view spends 30 days living a an opposing point of view to see how the other side lives. Spurlock typically subjects himself to the treatment at least one or two episodes each season and uses others to fill out the rest of the shows. Former NFL Cornerback, Ray Crockett, is featured in last week’s episode.

During the episode, there are a couple of shots of Spurlock clearly sporting an Alamo Drafthouse Badass Cinema t-shirt. Hooray for plugging everyone’s favorite Austin theater chain. You can pick up your very own Badass Cinema shirt at the Alamo Drafthouse store, but the version with Pam Grier that Spurlock wears in the show in apparently out-of-print. I tried finding a photo of it on Alamo’s Flickr page, but didn’t have any luck. As always though, somebody on Flickr has my back.

Photo via Gudrun on Flickr

Show World is no longer a weekly section in the local daily. Quietly and with no announcement that came to my attention, the little tabloid disappeared from the Sunday edition. The Life section contained an abbreviated television page that highlighted certain programs for the week to come and showed the evening schedule only, and only for yesterday. We’re now going to have to go out of our way to make sure not to miss such recent gems as Daredevil: el hombre sin miedo (”the man without fear”) or The Atomic Fireman (a Cantinflas item).

There is now an on-line listing, which does show the Spanish-language stations but doesn’t show their non-cable or non-broadband numbers. It’s going to be a big nuisance to boot up the computer just to make sure not to overlook those American movies dubbed into Spanish with a certain verve. Most are action movies, but there are movies of other kinds, including a Herbie movie recently. Other occasional Sunday favorites are enjoyed in their original language; among them are charro movies and society comedies from the golden age, as well as any and every Cantinflas movie that appears on the schedule.

Television came into my life late and has been a presence only sporadically. I think it’s been almost a decade that we’ve been enjoying our first color TV, a great change, although it boasts the 13-inch screen that the old black-and-white model did, and brings in only those channels that a rabbit-eared antenna can capture.

I don’t think we’ll be buying a converter box before next February, when, without one, ordinary television reception for people like me will disappear. That’s when television itself will probably disappear from my life. I’m not late about everything and I still remember all the DOS commands, but I don’t have a cell-phone. Yet.

VH1’s latest reality show is called The Pickup Artist. From their description, it’s about “eight lovable losers who’ll be tutored on how talk to and romance women”. They’ll be learning from a guy named “Mystery”. Try to hold your laughter. It gets better once “Mystery” actually appears. He looks like a goth Bob Schneider.

Why am I even talking about this show?

Well, my friends, it’s set in Austin. It looks like they’re living in a sweet pad out on Lake Travis. There are several shots of downtown and the first episode takes place at a club called The Foundation, which I guess is where Element used to be?

I don’t think I’d recommend watching it, but if you want to be able to watch a show and say, “I know where that is!” then be my guest.

Anybody know if they’ve completed filming? I’m guessing that most shows finish filming before they air.

Update Oh yeah, you can also view a preview for free on iTunes.

I missed this last week in the SXSW frenzy, but apparently Ted Nugent taped an episode of Texas Monthly Talks this morning down at the KLRU studios on the UT campus. Did anybody see him?

That’ll be interesting. Evan Smith, the show’s host and editor of Texas Monthly, is sure to ask him about his governor’s ball performance earlier this year.

I did a quick check of the schedule for that show on KLRU and it doesn’t look like it’ll air until at least early May. I’ll definitely have to make a note to watch for that one.

The Austin Movie Show has been picked up by its first affiliate! KVIA which is an affiliate of the new CW network will start syndicating the Austin Movie Show in El Paso, Las Cruces, New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. While it is the first small step, we hope this will snowball into more affiliates and much bigger things. Our last live show will be this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. on Time Warner cable channel 16. After that, the show will still air at the same time for us Austinites, but will no longer be live since we have to tape early in the week to get to send the tape out. If you know anyone in the syndicated markets, the show will air at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoons on the affiliate.

In related news, The Movie Musketeers will be at the Alamo on South Lamar for the 7:45 p.m. showing of Mike Judge’s new film, “Idiocracy”. If you’re so inclined, go check out the film and then come talk to us to give your opinion on camera after the movie. It’s fun, painless and doctor approved. Don’t be shy!

For its 60th issue, Austin Daze continues to score great interviews. In addition to talking to director Kevin Smith, the Daze folks conducted a Q and A with “Austin City Limits’” producer Terry Lickona (pdf), in which he reveals that Van Morrison, the Raconteurs and Cat Power will all be taping segments during or after the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

We also find from Lickona out which shows caused the most tension for the ACL staff, including a taping featuring a certain someone who’s become famous for on-stage meltdowns:

The show we did just a couple of years ago with Ryan Adams was kind of a weird experience because he was having some kind of temper tantrum that night. He couldn’t get his guitar in tune and he kept blaming the guitar tech for not doing it right. After every song he would hand his guitar back to this guy and then he would go sit there on the corner of the stage and wouldn’t say anything. And the audience is sitting there saying, “What’s up with him? What’s his problem?” And finally, at the end of the show he was
so pissed off he took his guitar–I don’t know what kind of guitar it was or how expensive it was–but he just took it and smashed it to bits on the stage and handed it to the first person in the
audience and walked straight out the door, out of the building and was gone. Nobody saw him
for the rest of the night.

While watching a Project Runway Season 3 sneak peek they showed a few people who completely missed the boat and sent the judges into WTF?!-laden tizzies. And you’ll never guess what flash of lime satin and black lace graced my screen!
Stephen McMillan Moser! Beloved scribe of After A Fashion! Horrors!
I’m sorry they didn’t pick you Stephen, but you’re still awesome. I love you!

I’m embarrassed that my first post on Austin Metroblogging is about something so cheesy as Rock Star: Supernova, but there is an Austin connection. Patrice Pike is one of the contestants, she of Sister Seven fame and Austin residence. If you can put up with the tired rock star jargon (”right on, right on, my brother”), Dave Navarro in general for more than five minutes, and what appears to be a wig on Gilby Clarke, then its an entertaining show. There are some good performances.

I thought Patrice put in one of the stronger performances last week, but there is some strong competition. That crazy South African girl, Dilana, seems to fit well with Tommy Lee and gang. If I was Patrice, I’m not sure I’d want to win. That would involve touring with Supernova and probably signing an indentured servant-type contract with the producers. I’d just want to stick around long enough to develop some national name recognition. She has an excellent chance of going far into the competition.

Last night we spent the 4th indoors at a friend’s house where much good food was had. When 9:30 rolled around, we turned on the News 8 Austin coverage of the symphony and the fireworks. The 30 minutes that followed had the entire room doing a Mystery Science Theater 3000 type commentary and finding it hard to believe that this was a professional television station. I work on a cable access show where everyone is a volunteer, and we’ve never had a show that looked that bad. The camera work was atrocious. Horribly chosen shots, bad framing, jerky zooms, etc. The worst offender was a long shot of the city with the fireworks going off overhead that was completely blurry and out of focus. In fact it seemed to get worse each time they cut back to it. This really begged the question as to who was directing the show, and why would they even cut to this shot, much less linger on it for what seemed like an excruciatingly long period of time. Several times. Luckily we all had a good time reveling in the comedy of how bad it was. Our best guess is that they since it was a holiday the people with training must have been off, and they must have let a bunch of new untrained interns run the show.

Austin Now, a program on KLRU, is airing a documentary about the persistent charges of misuse of force by the Austin Police Department and the on-going political battle over who really controls APD and speaks for the officers this Friday, May 26th at noon and 8pm and again on Sunday at 4:30pm.

This should be especially interesting in the light of this past week’s announcement that Chief Stan Knee is resigning to go work in Afghanistan.

Thanks to April for the tip!