Update: Shame-Faced Podcast

And the Keenan media empire continues to expand.

If you’ve visited Shame-Faced, this site’s spin-off blog, you know that Rosemarie and I are slowly making our way through classic books and movies we’ve somehow missed. We’re pleased to announce the first installment of the Shame-Faced podcast.

Think of it as Chapter One: In Which We Are Introduced. We lay out the parameters of the project and talk a little about where we hope to take it.

The twenty-two minute, 8MB show can be direct downloaded here. It should be available on iTunes shortly, and at other podcast sites in the coming days.

And if you haven’t visited Shame-Faced, what are you waiting for?

TV: Tuesday Ratings Report

5:45PM – 8:30PM Baseball: Phillies at Mets, Sportsnet New York

I only turn on baseball when I finish work for the day. I find the game’s pastoral rhythms relaxing.

But there will be no relaxing today. The Mets, down 6-2 and then 8-5, rally to send the game to the tenth inning. Eleventh. Twelfth ...

8:30PM – 9PM American Idol, Fox

Full disclosure: This entry in my ratings diary is inaccurate, because I keep flipping back to the Mets game. (Thirteenth, fourteenth ...) I make sure to catch the recap of all six songs in the closing minutes because really, that’s all you need.

More full disclosure: I actually pick up the phone and vote for Taylor Hicks.

Still more full disclosure: I would have voted for Taylor even if he hadn’t been the better – well, more interesting singer. I, too, started going gray early. I will say I work the look better than he does, and I don’t have an army of stylists helping me. Or hurting me: one of those stylists gave him that crushed velvet smoking jacket.

9PM – 9:30PM Baseball: Phillies at Mets, Sportsnet New York

And the Mets play on, finally winning 9-8 in the sixteenth. It’s their longest game in eleven years.

9:30 – 11PM Stephen King’s Desperation, ABC (DVR)

The worst cologne ever. As made-for-TV horror flicks go, though, it’s not bad. Ron Perlman gives good villain as the possessed sheriff of an isolated Nevada town where all the slot machines pay off – in blood! I’ll watch the second half later. That Mets game tired me out.

Miscellaneous: Links

Slate kicks off pulp fiction week. It’s one of those high-celebrates-low salutes to the beach read that you only see in the early days of summer, when rich and poor jostle each other in the security line at the airport. Example: Man Booker prize winner John Banville sings the praises of the Parker novels that Donald E. Westlake wrote as Richard Stark. The articles will be somewhat patronizing, and I’ll read them all anyway.