New Antenna

Above, the new antenna mounted on the wall (with the white coaxial cable) and the old
one sitting a couple of feet above (left, top) the television set. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Since my old television digital antenna appears to have crapped out, I picked up a One For All Suburbs Line Pro ultra-thin antenna. I was watching the "Godzilla Marathon" last weekend on Comet TV when it died.

It is rated to be able to receive on-air television broadcast signals at a 50-mile range, which is more than enough as the broadcasting towers are about 10 miles away (or less).

It received signals for 19 stations when I programmed the television set. That's more than enough for me. So far, so good!

I absolutely refuse to pay a satellite company over $100 a month for channels loaded with commercials and uninteresting (to me) programming. I don't watch television that much anyway. There is an old satellite dish mounted in back of the house. If there is something I do want to see on a pay channel, I can always check into a hotel in Gallup that has free satellite service.

I remember when we first got cable service in Hawthorne, California through Jack Barry Cable back around 1982. The service was around $25/month and it included HBO and Cinemax. Ages ago, when companies were promoting cable service (it was called "pay TV"), one of the selling points was "no commercials". Well, that didn't last long and channels are now loaded with commercials. American Movie Classics (AMC) was one such channel ruined by commercials. 

"The Atomic Cafe" On DVD

Back in the early 1980s, my parents had a limited subscription movie channel called OnTV. Around about that time, our neighborhood in the county area of Hawthorne, California was wired for cable television. The cable company with the contract for our area was Jack Barry Cable.

Since I had a good job in insurance claims, I signed up for cable. Two of the channels I subscribed to were HBO and its sister channel, Cinemax.

These were the days when there were things on HBO and Cinemax worth watching. Around 1982 or 1983, Cinemax began showing The Atomic Cafe (1982), described as a "comic horror film" about the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Atomic Cafe contained a lot of archival footage of explosions of both the A-Bomb and H-Bomb as well life in the United States during those years, propaganda films, some familiar politicians (in their somewhat younger years) and news reports of the era. The movie begins with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is presented in a dark humor fashion that is both hilarious and horrifying.

I taped the movie with my VHS recorder (I still have the tape), but my current VHS player is disconnected and will remain so until I get my entertainment center moved (it is heavy oak). I saw The Atomic Cafe for sale at Amazon.com and decided to buy it.

I just screened it and the movie hasn't lost any of its punch. It is well worth getting.

My grade: A.