A little over a year ago, back in August 2011, being the monetarily careful cheapskate that I am, I purchased a new TCL wide screen HD television set from Amazon.com at a real bargain price. And being that same careful guy, I do not pay through the nose to some cable or satellite TV company when I can receive 12 channels (plus 5 or 6 Spanish Language channels) through my indoor electronic antenna which receives broadcasts directly from a mountain based relay just a few miles from where I live.
For the first few months all worked fine. Than one day the sound disappeared form Channel 18, which is a local channel from which I faithfully watched old daily reruns of great comedy shows, such as The Big Bank Theory, Two And A Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, M*A*S*H, and Seinfeld. Inquiring around, I discovered that others in the neighborhood were still receiving this channel with no problem.
This indicated that the problem lay , not with the transmitter, but within my own set. I figured that the frequency of that particular channel had drifted due to a malfunctioning part with my set's tuner.
So, being a resourceful individual as well as an old tightwad, I hooked up an ancient Analog-To-Digital converter I'd used back when TV reception went Digital and I was not ready yet to spend money to replace my old Analog set with a new Digital TV.
Well, this worked. All I had to do whenever I wished to view channel 18 was power up the converter and tune it to channel 18 while tuning the malfunctioning set to channel 3. In this age of remote control, that is not a major problem in any sense of the word.
However, a few days ago, as the years changed from 2012 to 2013, I was astounded to find that suddenly, mysteriously, the sound returned to channel 18... on my TV set. I no longer need the old converter. My TV set again now works just as it had when new.
Explain that if you can.
I, for one, cannot.
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WORD FOR TODAY
indigent
Adjective
Poor; needy.
Noun
A needy person.
Synonyms
poor - needy - destitute
Born: Jan. 5, 1914
Died Jun 16, 1959
Died Jun 16, 1959
George Reeves (born George Keefer Brewer) was an American actor best known for his role as Superman in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman.
His death at age 45 from a gunshot remains a polarizing issue. The official finding was suicide, but some believe he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting.
Born Jan. 5, 1931
Age: 81 years old
Age: 81 years old
Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career.
A veteran actor, Duvall has starred in some of the most acclaimed and popular films and TV shows of all time, among them The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, To Kill a Mockingbird, THX 1138, Joe Kidd, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, M*A*S*H, Network, True Grit, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Falling Down, Tender Mercies, The Natural and Lonesome Dove.
He began appearing in theater during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s in such works as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) (as Boo Radley) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963). He landed many of his most famous roles during the early 1970s with films like the blockbuster comedy M*A*S*H (1970) (as Major Frank Burns) and the lead in George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971), as well as Duvall's own favorite, Horton Foote's adaptation of William Faulkner's Tomorrow (1972), a project developed at The Actors Studio. This was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in films which were also commercial successes.
Since then Duvall has continued to act in both film and television with such productions as Tender Mercies (1983) (for which he won an Academy Award), The Natural (1984), Colors (1988), the television mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), Stalin (1992), The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996), A Family Thing (1996), The Apostle (1997) (which he also wrote and directed), A Civil Action (1998), Gods and Generals (2003), Broken Trail (2006) and Get Low (2010).
Born Jan. 5, 1946
Age: 66 years old
Age: 66 years old
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970. Her first major film role was as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but the films that shaped her early career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen beginning with Play It Again, Sam in 1972. Her next two films with Allen, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Keaton subsequently expanded her range to avoid becoming typecast as her Annie Hall persona. She became an accomplished dramatic performer, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and received Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981) and Marvin's Room (1996). Some of her popular later films include Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), The First Wives Club (1996), Something's Gotta Give (2003) and The Family Stone (2005). Keaton's films have earned a cumulative gross of over US$1.1 billion in North America.
Born: Jan. 5, 1917
Died Sep 10, 2007
Died Sep 10, 2007
Jane Wyman, born Sarah Jane Mayfield was an American singer, dancer, and film/television actress. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades. She received an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Johnny Belinda (1948), and later achieved renewed success in the 1980s as Angela Channing on Falcon Crest.
She was the first wife of Ronald Reagan; they married in 1940 and divorced in June 28, 1948; Reagan was still a Democrat and had not yet made his first run for public office.
In 1939, Wyman starred in Torchy Plays With Dynamite. In 1941, she appeared in You're in the Army Now, in which she and Regis Toomey had the longest screen kiss in cinema history: 3 minutes and 5 seconds, until Elena Undone beat it by eighteen seconds almost 70 years later, in 2010.
Wyman finally gained critical notice in the film noir The Lost Weekend (1945). She was nominated for the 1946 Academy Award for Best Actress for The Yearling (1946), and won two years later for her role as a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948). She worked with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock on Stage Fright (1950), Frank Capra on Here Comes the Groom (1951) and Michael Curtiz on The Story of Will Rogers (1952). She starred in The Glass Menagerie (1950), Just for You (1952), Let's Do It Again (1953), The Blue Veil (1951), the remake of Edna Ferber's So Big (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954) (Oscar nomination), Lucy Gallant (1955), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Miracle in the Rain (1956). She replaced the ailing Gene Tierney in Holiday for Lovers (1959), and next appeared in Pollyanna (1960), Bon Voyage! (1962), and her final big screen movie, How to Commit Marriage (1969).
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The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
--H. L. Mencken
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