Watching the Inauguration

On Tuesday mornings, if I don't have court or an out of the office meeting in the morning, I like to go to the gym before work. This past Tuesday, I went a half hour early so that I could get to the office before 8:30 am and watch the inauguration.

In years past, I had picked up a couple of portable TVs -- a tiny pocket one that barely picked up a color picture, and a slightly larger LCD one that has inputs for cable and RCA jacks. I had intended to bring the latter to work; but when I plugged in its AC adaptor the night before to test it, I heard a hissing sound, smelled burning plastic, and saw smoke billowing from the adaptor. (It was like the pre-credits sequence in MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, minus the cool music.) I tossed the adaptor and decided to use the tiny TV.

Alas, when I got to work and started the TV up, the picture punked out about five minutes in. (Since the TV will be utterly useless, not just functionally useless, once we go to all digital broadcasting, I tossed the TV into our office building's electronics recycling bin.)

CNN.com came to the rescue. I watched the inauguration on my computer monitor. (Since I was unable to work on the monitor and watch at the same time, I took the chance to file piles of paper around my desk.)

Even though we've had the ability to broadcast live TV over the Internet for a decade, it still amazes some people. One of my co-workers looked into my office, shook his head in amazement, and wondered aloud why we have TV anymore.

Spidey Helps Obama; Obama Helps Spidey

My comics retailer, COMICS INK of Culver City, was good enough to save me a copy of this past week's issue of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which reportedly sold out the day it was released. That's because it included a backup story in which Spidey, covering the inauguration as news photog Peter Parker, springs into action and foils a (really stupid) plot by his old enemy The Chameleon. The story obviously plays off of Obama's comments during the campaign that his favorite super-hero is Spider-Man.

As an old fan of Spidey's habit of trash-talking villains, I must admit I laughed out loud at his quip as he smashed Chameleon in the chops: "Ya hear that, Chameleon? The President-Elect here just appointed me . . . secretary of shuttin' you up!"