In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Gold Rush is yet another extremely popular cable show : Discovery Channel Struck gold on Friday Dec. 11 [2020] as two series, GOLD RUSH and GOLD RUSH: WHITE WATER, broke ratings and viewership records for the season. GOLD RUSH was the #1 program on ALL OF TELEVISION among Men, beating all broadcast networks, including CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX. On cable, GOLD RUSH and GOLD RUSH: WHITE WATER topped all networks among both Adults and Men. The development we're starting to see here, now a decade and more in process, is a completely new style of television entertainment that's eclipsed the sitcom of the 1950s and 60s. I suspect that the new genre has been so effective -- remember that people are now paying extra, directly, for these shows via cable subscriptions, when I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best were "free" -- that people have even become less nostalgic for the old ones. With good reason. This says mostly good things about the current state of our culture....

White House Press Secretaary Jen Psaki, an upper-class white woman with The Look, acknowledged the importance of the most-watched cable shows a few weeks ago, when, implying that white conservatives were somehow lagging behind in getting their vaccinations, she said, “We’ve run PSAs on the ‘Deadliest Catch,’ we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV,” Psaki added. “We’re looking for a range of ways to get directly connected to white conservative communities. . ." I found a 2014 piece in Variety that gives an indication of Deadliest Catch's continuing popularity: The show, which tells real-life stories aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during crab fishing season, averaged 3.02 million viewers in the 9 o’clock hour, according to Nielsen, its largest audience in five weeks. It finished close behind TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” (3.03 million) as the most popular cable series overall on the night. It’s in key demos, though, that “Deadliest Catch” is especi...

It's hard to tell which cable shows are highest rated, but amomg those is certainly The Curse of Oak Island , in which a bunch of white guys, under the guise of searching for hidden treasure, are actually starting to sponsor legitimate historical research in an area that's had little serious study. Nobody at this point, including the Lagina family, seems focused primarily on what treasure, if any, remains buried under the island. The question is increasingly what the heck went on there over a period of possibly 200+ years, because it's becoming plain that something did, and we know absolutely nothing about what it was. The 2020-21 season, shortened and handicapped by COVID restrictions, had the serendipitous effect of redirecting the searchers to what might be found on the surface in a shorter period and without heavy equipment. The result was to discover a heavily engineered road, probably reflecting military use, extending over some area of the island. Other naval and ...

Despite Tuesday's updated CDC guidance, this PSA from the California state health department continued to appear on Facebook yesterday. Although the CDC distinguishes between the vaxxed and unvaxxed, clearly this is unenforceable on a sidewalk or transit platform or in a public park. As a practical matter, unless an indoor restaurant strictly enforces the mask rule -- though they'd also have to ask for evidence of vaccination if they did -- masks have basically become optional. And it's worth noting that it was only on March 30, a mere month ago, that Dr Walensky, the head honcho of the entire US public health establishment, gave her weepy warning of impending COVID doom . Some Cassandra. But there are lurking questions that, so far, nobody seems to be asking, much less answering. California completely avoided the February-March third surge in COVID cases that was limited mainly to the US northeast. But vaccine became available to all states, with equally limited ...

The map above shows California's COVID status as of April 27, just two days ago. Most counties are now in the "orange" tier, and this covers nearly 90% of the state population. "Orange" restrictions are still stricter than in many other states, but they do allow most indoor activities at 50% capacity. What's remarkable is how quickly conditions have improved. The map at right is from just a month ago, March 30, with far fewer counties in the "orange" tier, most still "red" and three in "purple". Over the course of just a month, most of the state changed from "red" to "orange", with the three worst cases leaving "purple, while two more became "yellow". At this point, it appears that over the course of May, most of the state will move to "yellow", though this will still be more restrictive than other states like Florida or Arizona. But here's the continuing puzzle. I've alr...

There's been a stir about yesterday's updated CDC mask guidelines, but I think the takeaway is that they're largely semantic and at this point, without tattoos on people's foreheads showing their vaccine status, completely unenforceable, even by the most zealous Karens. With the chart above in mind, let's say an unvaccinated person decides to eat at an outdoor restaurant without a mask. Since there's no requirement that he wear a lanyard with his vaccine slip in a clear plastic holder, there's no way anyone can check if he's fully vaccinated or not and thus permitted to go maskless. Even it a Karen has her suspicions, if she confronts him in a huff, the unvax can simply huff back at her to mind her own business, and the other patrons more likely than not will shout her down as well. But the relaxation overall is pretty pusillanimous, and it's actually based on nothing new. At least in LA County, it was always OK to go jogging or bike riding without ...

The North American ordinariate began its life with several major disappointments, and it's never really recovered. It's now in a situation where the first generation of priests who came in with early groups has reached retirement age, but, as in the case of Fr Ousley, their replacements don't have equivalent background or experience. My regular correspondent from the old blog outlines the record as the ordinariate approaches ten years of age: We have frequently discussed the conspicuous failures among the Ordinariate communities: the small, struggling “continuing” groups which became small, struggling Catholic groups, the groups gathered as ordination opportunities for clergy who have subsequently retired or moved on to local diocesan posts or otherwise departed from the scene. But the apparently successful communities also reveal grave weaknesses. In ten years only eleven groups have achieved full parish status. Four of those were inherited from the Pastoral...