Shit on Nine

Now, as a general rule, I can't stand watching Channen nine. I find their flagship current affairs show more offensive than... oh, I don't know; nothing else really offends me that much. Their news (and I'm talking about the "parochial, yeah we're parochial" Adelaide variety) sets a benchmark as a basic minimum (sub)standard of news reporting that some regional stations would have trouble dropping to. Everyone on the network I think must have a big injection of smug when they're employed. They're just so bloody smug. Ray, Jamie and that ocker carpenter bloke, and Catriona... sheesh! And their website doesn't even come up properly in Firefox, because all their visitors are no doubt paying through the nose for broadband with Telstra and all use IE because, bless 'em, they just don't realise they have a choice so it doesn't matter. I'm glad that at last they're having to work a bit harder to get the ratings they've had in recent years. (I mean, ice skating with people from other TV shows? Maybe in the USA, where they actually have winter and ice and shit but they'd have done better in Australia to have a different media personality come on TV each week and punch Normie Rowe in the face.) But I just found out from Bruce that Penn & Teller's Bullshit is airing on Tuesday nights at 10.30 (not that any network screens their fucking shows on time these days. Is this just to screw with people setting their VCR/PVRs?). Of course, Penn & Teller aren't really well known in Australia so probably nobody will watch it and it'll just disappear from screens, which is standard policy for channel nine if a show isn't pulling its weight, rating-wise. Still, even a couple of eps is better than none. And we've still got Penn podcasts on pennradio.com. Teller's radio show is slightly less, umm... audible. While I'm on the subject. I saw Penn & Teller at Sadler's Wells theatre in London ten years ago. I saw Penn the next day in Greenwich and asked him for his autograph (thing to do when you're young and impressed by tall, famous magician/bass players). The pen didn't work (good pun there somewhere) and then when we got it working, it was just this scrawly bit of scribble because he didn't really have anything to lean the bit of paper on. I think it was an ATM receipt or some paper stock of equal quality. I don't think I still have it. I probably found it in a few days later, looked at it and thought "What's this ATM receipt with a bit of scribble on it doing in my wallet?" Still, if you ever needed to forge Penn Jillette's signature, just scribble on a scrap of paper with a not-really-working pen and you're pretty much there.