Having no cable or satellite or any of those fancy fandangled TV watchin' luxuries, my options are limited.

So with expectations low, I began flipping around the channels.

So imagine my glee when I come across some footage of Sam and Dave getting down to "Soul Man."
What's this?

Oh, there's Otis Redding.

Yes! This is a soul music documentary.

It didn't take long to realize that the focus of the program was Memphis' Stax Records.

I love you KEET. I proclaimed I would — now, for the first time ever, even after countless guilt-trip pledge drives, donate to public television.

So I watched as Atlantic stole the Stax catalog out from under them, one of the founders was asked to leave, Issac Hayes (RIP) stepped on the scene and the plate was set for the rise of Stax in the '70s, starting with Wattstax.

And then, with no warning or credit or "Next time on..." the show just ended. Some country fiddlers popped up on the screen followed by a promo for Masterpiece Theater or something like that.

What?

Where'd Black Moses go?

What happened to Rufus Thomas?

Why is there a dude with a cowboy hat playing banjo in front of me when just saw the Bar-Kays play "Son of Shaft?" There were no cowboy hats or banjos at Stax.

So I began to panic.

This is just some technical goof, Stax will be back in a minute. Some overnight intern at KEET must have bumped into some button that changed feeds or something TV-ish like that.

But no, Stax never came back.

Before too long a documentary about some Iranian poet started and I officially gave up hope.
That $5 check I had written out to KEET to a soundtrack of Booker T and the MGs was instantly torn up.

How are you going to just stop a show with no explanation?

It was like some unseen person came into my room and grabbed my remote and changed it. Hey, I was watching that.

Today, Thursday, I tell everyone of my harrowing public television experience and come to find out it probably had something to do with PBS' coverage of the Republican National Convention.

So.

Let the Stax doc finish. You're telling me more people would want to watch a bunch of professors from England talk about some ancient Iranian poet than Mavis Staples sing "Respect Yourself?"

Please.

Shame on you KEET — there's $5 you won't be getting.

The Fat Guys and Jeff had a good time, capped off on Saturday night with the performance of Sizzla, a reggae God of massive proportions — according to the skinny genius.

Overall, final impressions are that the festival was exceedingly well-run this year, that the music and sound were excellent, and the vibe in general was pleasant. Good job to People Productions for putting on this event.

As someone being previously uninspired by reggae music in general (James), I feel like I now have an appreciation for it. My tastes run more toward early Ska, but there is much to be appreciated in current reggae catalogues. My biggest surprise was how close reggae is to soul.

A slideshow will be posted shortly to the Times-Standard homepage, with photos taken by Jeff. Check it out and come back here to let us know what you think.

But we have managed to capture video and photos of the festival, a couple of which I show you now. My favorite so far? Beres Hammond — a little bit of a throwback to old school ska, rude boy days.

I've told Chris and Jeff — and even a couple of passer-by party-goers — so far that reggae is not my thing, so i have to bear repeated questions of, "Do you even think this is cool?" So far, I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music and atmosphere. This is a very well-ordered temporary community.

Singer Natalie Paapaa's vocals were the perfect addition to make our kick off at Reggae Rising a positive one.

Rocking second act of the day. We'll be back with more soon.

Beyond that, we have our tent set up, the first beers have been drained and we hear the call of reggae music up over the hill. We're fixin' to go get some pictures, and some video, which we will post in the early evening. Check back for a vicarious reggae experience.

And the staff has been very accommodating. Smiles everywhere dozens of people making sure everyone has what they need. Maybe they should have reggae festivals all the time and people would probably get a long a lot better in the world. And no, we haven't smoked any weed.

This is the inventory for the big reggae excursion. It's a low-budget affair — everything is when you work at a newspaper — but the three travelers are well-prepared for a fun weekend in the post-apocalyptic universe of reggae rising.

We're about half an hour from setting out down U.S. Highway 101. We'll check back in once we arrive . Stay tuned!

The big secret? I generally don't even like reggae, beyond Bob Marley's greatest hits. I'm hoping this weekend will provide me with ample reason to convert to enthusiastic fandom.

And to help inform our coverage, and play engineer over the weekend, we've brought along the Times-Standard's IT guru and resident reggae scholar Jeffrey Soderberg. He's already burnt me four discs worth of study materials.

So ... check back in later for extensive coverage from the Times-Standard, the Fat Guys and the skinny genius (Jeff).

21: A lesson on how to lose a bunch of money in a short amount of time because you think you’re smarter than you really are.

Faulk: Watching this movie, one could believe it’s easy to count cards in a game of Black Jack. So easy, in fact, that it would be worth a try with that handful of cash meant to pay for the baby’s formula. Or the PG&E bill. Or the gas bill.

Then reality hits home — I’m not that smart. Watching these savants as they count the cards, numbers flickering in their eyes like overzealous slot machines, I remember why I never applied to MIT, or Harvard Medical School. And why it was that I chose to be an English major. Numbers scare me.

But this movie on the other hand was a pleasant surprise. It was not something I looked forward to, and it was a flick I caught only because other movies I want to see more have yet to come out. But it was damn enjoyable, with great performances all around.

Come to think of it, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a bad movie with Keven Spacey. That guy rules.
Rating: XL

Durant: I got nothin’. You know why” Because I’m having to write about half of the stories you’re enjoying in this issue of Northern Lights. The ones with two paragraphs and a huge picture. Yeah, those are mine.
Because other than my handful of solid writers, no one else is picking anything up.

So if you think you can write and want an assignment for a NL story, let me know at northernlights@times-standard.com and we’ll start contract negotiations.

Faulk: Walking out of the theater after seeing this, I had the itch to go out and make another movie. If Jack Black and Mos Def can do it, why can’t I?

The trailer presents this as a laugh-out-loud comedy. While there were comedic moments, and a general sense of silliness pervaded the whole thing, overall it was a much more serious film about the real value of art, both to the individual and the community.

Hat’s off especially to Jack Black here. He is the kind of actor that can easily become a caricature of himself, one locked into roles that fit people’s conception of him.

While his character in this movie is not too far of a departure from the normal Jack Black role, there are moments of seriousness that I think may help him break into more serious roles.

Rating: XL

And on the radio?

The Bank Job: Another movie about bankrobbing by people with funny accents.

Faulk: Count me as a movie critic fully in support of movies about robbing banks, but given what I’d read by other critics about this movie, I left the theater thoroughly disappointed.

It was just another remake of so many other “bank job” movies. It was funny at times, and it had elements that made it a kind of political thriller, but overall there was nothing original in this movie to recommend it above so many others of this abused genre.

Other critics said it was “well-cast and crisply directed,” according to RottenTomatoes.com. I can’t disagree, but never once in the two-hour-long movie did I get the old tingle up the spine telling me this was a fine piece of cinema. Instead, my left leg went numb and I knew I was either having a stroke or this movie froze the blood in my veins with boring and recycled material.

Rating: Large, but only barely

Horton Hears a Who: Why Jim Carrey is only good in movies written by Dr. Suess.

Faulk: I’m a mid-level Dr. Suess fan.

I’d read and re-read (I am a father, after all) “Green Eggs and Ham,” “Hop on Pop,” “The Cat in the Hat,” “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

But “Horton Hears a Who” was one I missed in the shuffle of brightly colored books lining my kids’ bookshelf.

Not having the experience of the book, I was able to go into the movie theater with an open mind. The typical frustration I have with movies adapted from the book would be a non-factor.

This was a great kids’ movie. My three-year-old, a child often overwhelmed by tension and conflict in movies, only had a short moment of panic when he cried out in one scene — “When is this movie going to be over with??!!”

He got past those initial fears and walked out excited and tripping over his own tongue to say how much he loved Horton and all the Whos.

It was good for kids and it was good for adults — but it wasn’t so good for Jim Carrey. The man, once on top of the world with all his wacky bodily distortions, has been typecast as a freak suitable only for the twisted imagination of Dr. Suess.

Not that we needed any further proof, but the horror that was the movie “23” proves that Carrey is good only in animated films, or while on cocaine.

Rating: XL

Boob Tube Reviews

HBO’s John Adams Part I: A multi-part series on HBO covering ... uh ... the brewing of John Adams beer. What? The other Adams? The vice president of George Washington, and second president of United States? Oh.

Faulk: Paul Giametti can do no wrong. He’s even managed to make American history — the ultimate in forgettable high school curriculi — interesting.

And this new miniseries goes on to prove that HBO’s dung doesn’t reek. They make it seems like everyone else in television is bathing with electronics.

Rating: XL

DVDs

Rendition: A two-hour long exposition on why terrorism sucks, and how it’s made us all suck.

Faulk: A great movie that was exceedingly hard to watch.

While not getting overly political, this movie makes you realize how far this country has come since the Sept. 11 attacks. Yes, the story line is fictional. And yes, none of the characters are real. But things of this nature are happening, and the president of the United States is even now fighting hard to preserve this country’s right to act as the villains in this movie are acting.

And that’s a hard thing to swallow.

Rating: XL

Jericho Season 1: I don’t know enough about it yet to write a summary, There’s some bombs and some people and things are happening.

Durant: So with “The Sopranos” done and I’m all caught up with “The Wire” until season five comes out on DVD and I’m lost with “Lost” and “Entourage” gets repetitive and so on and so forth, I needed to find a new TV show on DVD to watch.

My man, no not MY man but you know like My friend, Marshall said I had to check out “Jericho.”

Now I’ve heard of the show and was intrigued when I first saw the previews on TV and was even more intrigued when I heard the show was cancelled and the fans demanded it be returned and CBS obliged, kind of like Fox with “Family Guy.”

So I rented it from Fig’s and watched the first four episodes of the first season right off the bat.

Initial reaction is cautionary.

First, I can really do without the cheesy music during the sentimental parts and the closing scenes.

Second, I get the feeling the execs at CBS watched the success of ABC’s “Lost” and said to their stable of writers, "Give us something like ‘Lost’ but different.” It’s got the mysterious circumstances that only come out trickle by trickle per episode all the while developing the characters.

Third, Sometimes great ideas get squashed by network TV.

That being said, I’m going to finish out the season.

There’s something there. I mean there’s got to be if the fans were able to circumvent the “experts” at the networks.

So I’ll let you all know what I think at season’s end, which for me will probably be tomorrow.

(Sorry to come through with a review only halfway through a season, but I only wrote it because I was on death's doorstep all week with some sort of flu. I survive the plague of ‘08 up here but one day in Sacramento and I return with the monkey pox, bird flu and platypus itis all rolled into one)

Listen to the Fat Guys radio segment, as recorded for KSLG, here

Not that Reilly did a bad job, but Ferell being Ferell could have crammed just a few more laughs into this stuffed sardine can of comedy.

It was funny, exhaustingly funny.

One of those comdies that never lets up so by the end of it you think you'll never laugh again, or at least for a half hour or something.

Taking on the formulaic rock star bioi-pic, especially "Walk the Line," "Walk Hard" started off right away with the scene between Dewey and his borther, Nate Cox. "Nothing horrible is going to happen today."

It was also fun catching all the cameos, like Jack White, Jack Black, Jason Scwartzman, Malcolm in the Middle, the Apple guy from the commercials, the Temptations etc. etc.

The back up band was great, Chris Parnell, Matt Besser (who, by the way, looks exactly like Johnny Cash) and Tim Meadows.

Meadows should be the new spokesperson for D.A.R.E., "Seriously, you don't want any part of this."

It was funny, but I was glad to see it end when it did. And when it did end, I felt a little twinge in my heart for Dewey Cox, it was a Beautiful Ride.

Rating: XL

It was poop.

One major problem, beyond the sheriff who looked like a college kid, is that Alien remains the bad guy, but Predator kind of becomes this tweener, where he's not quite bad and not quite good. He only kills humans if they get in the way of him trying to kill the aliens. The Predator, a not-so-bad guy? Now that's just silly.

Rating: S

"Hi Chris"

I recently started a game called Fire Emblem for the Wii. Now I'm not much into role playing video games, I never have been other than a little here and a little there when I was a kid, you know? So I started playing Fire Emblem a little, was mildly etertained and kept going. Now it's three weeks later and I owe the rental place about four times as much as the game costs, my kids have gone to school, I think, in the same clothes for days, there's three dozen empty "Beefy Ravioli" cans stacked up like an Aztec step pyramid in my living room and I can't feel my ass cheeks any more.

I have a problem.

My name is Chris, and I play video games.

"Hi Chris"

Alvin, Simon and Theodore gravely disappointed this former Chipmunks junky. Not because they betrayed the OG version, but because now I lack the lack of critical thinking skills. Ah, the loss of childhood innocence.

My main crtitique, I suppose, is that computers had to be used — or back in the day, old fashioned animation — to make the chipmunks talk. Surely some combination of tongue splitting, genetic engineering, and corporal conditioning could have taught three real live chipmunks to sing for all they were worth. Instead, we're left with that digital blur that leaves so little to the imagination.

Rating: Doesn't even qualify for a small.

I saw this Will Smith vehicle with — and at the urging of — The Wife. We both walked out of the theater partially entertained, and partially undertained. The Wife, at least, had the pleasure of admiring the Fresh Prince's newly collagen-filled muscles; and while I'm at least 52 percent sure the biceps were not CG, I just couldn't be jealous of a guy who used to tour with "Jazzy Jeff."

What it had: Will Smith on steroids like Linda Blair in "Terminator"; the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grand daughter of Rin Tin Tin in her first starring role; unoriginal Zombies; Will Smith, mouthing the dialogue to "Shrek" and welling up with manly "I'm the last man standing" kinds of tears; and a heart-rending, but tragically missplaced, copter crash that kills some folks viewers just don't want dead.

What it lacked: Explanation of some necessary Zombie science — were they, like, evolving? Were they becoming more intelligent over time? Were they becoming more resistant to sun light? I definitely need to know loads more about the lanky, pale-faced and shirtless Zombies that wander the streets of New York City like a methamphetamine epidemic.