Good weekend except for the part where I woke from the nap because my wife was screaming.

Well, not screaming, but an outburst of compounded fury and frustration. The first thing I thought: Birch barfed on the good rug. He’d barfed in the spare room earlier that day, but it was just to bring up a piece of undigested “digestible” pseudo-rawhide. I went downstairs with a quickness, as they say, and discovered that the TV had not recorded the Indian Wells semi-final, as it had been commanded to do.

Let me tell you about this.

Hulu said they were going to get the Tennis Channel in January. I dumped DirecTV, which was $XXX.XX, to get Hulu, which, with Disney+, and no-ads, was twenty dollars less. As it happened, or rather as it did not, Hulu did not get the Tennis Channel. It got T2, which is Tennis Channel Lite, ad-supported. It carried some of Indian Hills. The rest was carried by ESPN - sorry, ESPN +. I arranged for the DVR (which, mind you, does not exist, really. You don’t record the show. It exists, and the “DVR” calls it up from the mainframe, somewhere) to record everything.

Last week we discovered that it was not, in fact, recording anything. I went into the support chat to complain, and upon investigation the chat agent said it was a “known issue” and the support team would get right on that. He apologized and gave me ten dollars off my bill.

A little DDGing (not googling anymore, duckduckgoing) revealed that the final match were not on ESPN+, or T2, but the Tennis Channel, and Tennis Channel Plus. I could not get the Tennis Channel, because it only is available now on the streaming services connected to big providers, like DirecTV, Comcast, Infinity, etc I assume that’s because they’re like old-style cable companies who pay the channel out of subscriber revenue. Hulu, Tubi, Pluto, Fubr, Tifu, YouTube, etc., are different, and run the ad-supported version. Which doesn’t have what I want.

Well. That meant Tennis Channel Plus. Except that a Feb 2024 website describing the service listed its downsides, among which was no on-demand programming. Which meant she couldn’t get the matches she’d missed. The app on the TV, however, said it had on-demand matches. What to believe? It cost $120 for a year, and there were no monthly options.

HEY WAIT - a DDG search revealed the existence of something called Tennis TV! I loaded that app on the TV - something that required visiting the AppleTV app store, double-clicking my phone to verify purchase, being told that it had not worked, due to an error. Three times I did this. Third time: charm.

Created an account with my wife’s credentials. It told me to verify the email.

I could not, as she had gone to take a nap, which meant the whole process timed out. Fine. Let’s go to the chat support box on the Hulu website, explain the whole situation, how they’d promised Tennis Channel, but delivered a substandard alternative. I was civil but forceful. The representative refunded my entire month and threw in another free week for the bad DVR performance.

That’s a win. Good. Now I have some cash to throw on the Tennis Channel Plus option, if we must.

When she woke we did it again, she verified the email, the TV screen displayed a code and said she should enter it on a browser on another device. She did this. Now I could see what the Tennis TV Premium charged.

16.99. In pounds.

Huh. Well, it obviously had all the matches, so I pressed purchase. I was asked to verify the purchase of $16.99. In dollars. Oh whatever. I verified by double-tapping the button on the right side of my phone. It failed. I went through the process again. Error box: you have already subscribed to this channel. Then a box that said the purchase was successful.

She was now able to watch Tennis. But first, dinner. A delicious hamburger. Afterwards she put away the laundry, and then went to her office to answer some emails - whereupon I unplugged her computer, marched her downstairs, duct-taped her to the sofa and Ludovico’d her eyes so she had no choice but to WATCH TENNIS BECAUSE SHE WOKE ME UP AFTER 12 MINUTES OF NAPPING.

UPDATE: TennisTV does not have any of the women's matches because that's WTA and they don't have a deal with WRA

(hell hath no fury etc)

As I said on Twitter: streaming TV is a box of broken toys.

Our new Monday feature! The Gazettes provide a look at the commercial vernacular from 90 years ago. Sometimes they look forward, and just as often as not they reach back decades for a familiar look.

Are any of these brands still around? We'll find out.

There's a website, but . . . you be the judge. Looks like a Japanese commerce site using the brand and slapping the logo on made-to-order stuff. The text is identical to this site.

The print is horrid, so I won’t subject you to much.

There’s not a lot here, although it’s an interesting movie. It’s about an unscrupulous lawyer who’s trying to . . . kill his wife? Himself? As one imdb reviewer said, “This is a quirky film which is both hard-boiled and pretentious, raw and artsy.” That’s about it.

It’s not about a judge. There is a judge, of course; he narrates the opening sequence, talking about the strange case of a shady brilliant lawyer. There is also a judge in the courtroom sequence. But it is not a film about a judge. You can’t even say that the attorney is acting like a judge.

Here he is.

Why, Mister Dillon, it’s Doc!

Yes, Milburne Stone. The TV Doc, not the radio one.

Here’s what sets it apart: the score. They chose the experimental, modern style of the day: wordless choral music. It reminds me of Monty Python Holy-Grail animation music.

Then there’s this: a master class in fumbling the element of surprise.

Odd how this style, and type of soundtrack, didn't catch on.

Oh . . . one more thing.

Have fun? Great! Still getting reports of comments outages. I'm seeing them. I've done all I can. I am considering alternatives.

Anyway, Monday! Here we go again. More of the same, and everything's different.

Oh, sorry - one more thing! I wasn't kidding, was I? It's back, every dang week. I wish we could do more music, but such are the ruthless world of copyright these days.