Category: Television

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Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Looking Back At This Blog – ‘The Major’s Life Blog’ marks its 3RD anniversary in existence this week going back to the ancient history days of Myspace. (They seem so long ago.) The blog has developed and evolved greatly over the past 3 years, and although it’s not nearly as popular as it once was back in its hectic heyday (2008) it is still very relevant. It keeps me accountable to those of you within my church family that love and care for me on this fantastic journey. I’m celebrating my second chance at Life, so what better way to do so than to share it with those of you who are rooting for me to succeed. God is using me and this blog to minister to the world. Based on personal feedback over the past 3 years lives are being saved out there because of this blog’s existence. The Truth is I am not saving lives. This blog is not saving lives. God is saving lives. He is my Almighty Leader, and I am just one of His millions of Disciples here on His land – His creation. My words are really His words when I minister His Good News. I take no credit at all. It is all because of Jesus.

Looking Ahead At Summer Television – The 2009-2010 television season officially comes to a close tomorrow night (the 26TH of May), and then summer reruns and new and returning series take over from there. I always look forward to Summer television. Three of my favourite broadcast network prime time shows air solely in the summer – “America’s Got Talent” (returning June 01ST), “Hell’s Kitchen” (returning June 01ST), and “Big Brother” (returning July 08TH). Summertime is a fun time to watch my favourite shows as well as catch-up on those that I missed during the regular season but managed to preserve on DVR. I’ve got some CBS sitcom marathons to watch soon !

Looking Out At 40,000 Feet – On a recent flight aboard a Boeing 777 from Miami to Dallas cruising altitude was at 40,000 feet. That’s probably the highest above the Earth that I have ever been in my entire lifetime. Although it appears to be peaceful and quiet outside at 40,000 feet – 7½ miles above sea level – the weather is harsh, fierce, and unlike anything we’ve ever seen here on earth. Oh sure the sun is out and shining brightly against a crystal clear deep blue sky with all of the clouds way down below, but air temperatures are about -60°F to -80°F. That’s a full 130° to 150° colder outside than it is inside the cabin. Oh yeah let’s not forget about those ferocious winds that are blowing up to 250 MPH. That outrageously cold air from the outside is essentially cooked by the engines of the jet aircraft, and then it is cooled back down by the air conditioners so that it feels comfortable to our human skin. How dry is that cooked then cooled air that touches our skin ?  It’s as dry as it can possibly be – there’s only a trace amount of water in that air. It’s less than 2% water, so that explains why we’re always thirsty inflight and our skin seems to dry up. It doesn’t really explain though why some of us (me included) have to take Dramamine in order not to get sick inflight and embarrass ourselves. Well that’s because the barometric pressure inflight is much lower than we’re used to – unless of course you live on a mountaintop that’s at least 7,500 feet above sea level. You crave oxygen ?  Well there’s much less of it inflight. Happy Flying This Summer !

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Animals Blogging Computers History Internet Life Music News People Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

Exactly 17 years ago yesterday morning on the 21ST of May of 1993 in the heart of Melbourne Florida ‘Captain Airwaves’ was officially born. He was my original pseudonym in cyberspace. Of course back in 1993 nobody knew what the World Wide Web was all about. After all Al Gore had just invented it, and he hadn’t yet explained it. Back then the most popular form of modern communications between personal computers across the free nation was via the telephone dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). Mine debuted real early on that morning 17 years ago, and it was named after my lovable childhood cat (still alive at the time) – Fluffy. She was a Manx, and the name of my first creation in cyberspace – ‘MANx CAT BBS’. That first bulletin board system lasted a little over four years, and it eventually spawned a spinoff site on the emerging web at the time – ‘MANx On The Net’. That web site eventually morphed into the ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ hit music web site that survived and thrived for the better part of a decade during the late-1990s into the new millenium. It faded several years ago, but it inspired this personal blog that continues today.

‘Captain Airwaves’ was actually the pseudonym of the late great John Carmody – the famed daily television columnist of “The Washington Post” newspaper from 1977 to 1998. During my high school years in the early-1980s he inspired me to get in to the entertainment business somehow someway. The bulletin board, the web site, and the blog was as close as I got to that dream. I adopted the ‘Captain Airwaves’ pseudonym for the BBS, and then after a couple of years my followers at the time (known affectionately as ‘MANxsters’) promoted me to ‘Major’, so I became ‘Major Airwaves’. When the web site hit it big I took on the ‘Major Hitwaves’ name and persona to more accurately reflect my role at the time as a deejay on the web. Nowadays I’m still ‘Major Hitwaves’, but I’m more commonly known as simply ‘The Major’.

17 years ago this past week I was unemployed, living off of my savings, and having way too good of a time with all of my friends and neighbours in the Melbourne area. The 1400 block of South Oak Street rocked back then, and ‘Captain Airwaves’ was crankin’ out the hits from his second floor studio efficiency – and all up and down the U.S. 1 and the A1A.

Here’s one of those hits of the time – an obscure track that was a local smash on the radio and in the nightclubs of Melbourne. It’s His Boy Elroy – and a track about them “Chains”. As are most of the songs that I feature here on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ it’s one of the greatest songs ever made according to me.

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Blogging Computers Driving Internet People Television Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

I.  April 20TH 2004 – April 19TH 2010 – If you follow me on Twitter then you probably already know by now that I made a somewhat radical (some would even state shocking) upgrade to my technological life. I replaced my often ridiculed 6-year-old antique cell phone with a brand new modern one. Here’s the most fascinating aspect of it all. I unknowingly did this almost exactly 6 years to the date that I bought that antique cell phone. My T-Mobile service agreement that was given to me upon leaving the store yesterday afternoon showed my original 1-year contract period (from my original phone) for the 20TH of April in 2004 through the 19TH of April in 2005. I thought that it was a misprint until I came home and looked at my old credit card statement from April of 2004 that shows me buying that antique cell phone exactly 6 years ago today. So there’s something quite special about the 20TH of April that makes me want to go out and buy a brand new cell phone. Here’s hoping that I buy my next modern new cell phone before the 20TH of April in 2016 !

II.  Hablo Inglés, ¿ Como ? – I found this rather fascinating. It was a question on a recent episode of “Are You Smarter Than A 5TH Grader ?” It’s the most spoken languages in the world by number of native speakers. Arabic is in 5TH place – followed by Hindi in 4TH place. The TOP 3 are fairly obvious with Chinese at # 1 (one billion people who understand each other) – and Spanish and English virtually tied for 2ND place. But there are evidentally a tad more Spanish speakers than English speakers, so Spanish is at # 2 and English is the 3RD most spoken language here on the Planet Earth. I wonder if there are more English-speaking people that can speak Spanish as a second language, or if there are more Spanish-speaking people that can speak English as a second language. I’m guessing that those two numbers are fairly similar as well.

III.  Road Trip ! – My self-imposed ‘Vacation Of The Month Club’ kicks into high gear this upcoming weekend. I’ll be visiting a large chunk of southeastern Florida that I’ve never seen before during my 22 years of living here in Homestead. It’ll be roughly a 400-mile road trip as far west as the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee – and as far north as Fort Pierce Beach along scenic Florida State Road A1A. This week is a rare two-blog-post week. I’ll have your ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ in just about 48 hours from now, and then I’ll have no new blog posts until next week’s ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Be sure to follow me on Twitter. Now that I’ve got a 5 megapixel camera with my brand new cell phone I can take some cool pictures of my adventures on the road and then upload them instantly to Twitter and this blog. I’ll try not to get too carried away with the taking of pictures on my new toy.

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Blogging History Life Music News People Politics Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

During the Summer of 1987 United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was reelected for a 3RD term in a landslide majority, U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan urged Soviet Union Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’ (in Berlin West Germany), Earth’s population reached 5 billion people, over 30 million people watched “The Cosby Show” every Thursday night on NBC-TV, Guns N’ Roses released their debut album “Appetite For Destruction”, and 20-year-old A1C Chris M. Day was loving the London England nightlife with friends and seeing lots of pop concerts featuring Duran Duran, Genesis, and Madonna.

On the radio young Australian pop-rockers Pseudo Echo enjoyed the limelight with their biggest International smash ever. It’s their Summer of 1987 remake of the Summer of 1980 Lipps Inc. Disco smash “Funkytown” which was featured last night on the ‘Disco Party’.

This concludes another week of blogging for me. Sundays and Mondays are my days off on here, but the tweets just keep on coming. You can follow me on Twitter at majorhitwaves. I’ll be back LIVE on Tuesday night with another edition of my ‘Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. Have a great weekend everyone !