Sammie, Spectrum, rocking the planet
Notes and quotes while wondering what TV programs used to be aired in the days long ago — you know, before March Madness.
Seriously, were there any great programs we missed?
Nah!
I KNOW you’re eager to know what’s going on at my place.
Well, maybe not, but I’m going to tell you anyway because my cat, Sammie, apparently has decided that there’s more to life than eating, sleeping, finding the litter box and draping herself across my throat when I’m trying to use the computer.
Sammie has gone high-tech.
Any cat can knock over a few items on a nightstand, or accidentally flip on a light switch.
But how about becoming savvy enough to find all the correct buttons and tones on my iPhone to make outgoing calls?
That’s a different league.
Apologies to my pal Stuart Smith in Kansas City, who no doubt heard that ring tone at 4 a.m.
Sammie probably missed a number as she was dialing out for a salmon pizza.
Maybe Sammie should work for Spectrum.
WHOA!
Now that the idea is floating out there, how could Sammie be handling the Spectrum circus any worse than the telecom giant’s regional office in Denver?
Look, Spectrum, we get it that we’re at the end of the line — both figuratively and literally.
If you’d simply told all former Time Warner customers that, sorry, but you’ll be among the very last switched over to our equipment ...
We’d have understood.
I guarantee that folks around here would have been pretty patient, especially if you’d thrown in a month’s free service for our wait.
But ... no!
You imply that we’re going to love all these fantastic deals we see online, or hear about from your panting service reps over the phone.
What you forgot to mention was that absolutely NONE of these services is available to us.
Yet.
So we can’t change services on the phone, and we have no recourse except to go out and personally bombard those poor employees at the office on West Kathleen Avenue.
Hey, Spectrum, I could lease you a cat who can shape things up!
FINALLY...
Will the first Press Pop Music Poll ever end?
The event has long since finished, and yet Doug Weir of Hayden has emailed to call my personal picks (and yours) “appalling.”
But besides ripping our collective tastes in music, Doug notes we advertised the poll as being for “rock music” — which we absolutely did not.
He wondered why all the top 10 songs were not bona-fide rock?
Well, Doug, here is the exact wording from The Press of Feb. 19, when we announced voting guidelines:
“Send a list of 10 songs, ranked from No. 1 to No. 10, from any pop-related genre, that have been released since the start of the ‘Rock and Roll Era,’ or basically 60 years ago (1957).”
Doug, brother, maybe you loathe all music except true rock. Fair enough, but we put the poll together in terms of “popular” songs from any genre.
And besides, one of your top 10 (“Light My Fire”) was on our eventual list of 40 at No. 38.
Two more of your picks, “Free Bird” and “Born to Be Wild” (No. 41) would have made our list if we’d stretched it to 50.
Besides ... snooze and snore music?
“Johnny B. Goode?”
“Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” from The Boss?
“House of the Rising Sun?”
What about “Hound Dog,” for heaven’s sake?
Try sleeping through that.
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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve at [email protected].