Tuesday, June 20, 2006

"Good evening. Tonight on 'It's The Mind'..."

Slow morning. In today's All TV column, I finally got around to that "House" finale-themed mailbag I was talking about last week. The delay was because I was waiting to talk to David Shore, who has some definitive answers on what was and wasn't real as well as some hints about where next season is going.

Since I spent most of last night watching the Yankees lose again, time for another open thread. As I mentioned in a post from back when this blog had, like, two readers, I have this weird deja vu thing happen where, whenever I turn to a particular movie on cable, it's always at the same part: "Karate Kid" is always at the scene where Daniel-san goes to pick up Elisabeth Shue for their Golf 'N Stuff date, or the first "Austin Powers" is always at the bit near the end where Austin and Liz Hurley are impersonating tourists to get into Dr. Evil's lair. I firmly believe that TNT only shows five or six "Law & Order" episodes on a continuous loop -- all of them, oddly enough, from the Carey Lowell years -- because those are the only ones I ever see when I surf past it. And for some reason, my iPod almost always spits out T-Rex's "20th Century Boy" at the same point in my workout, even though I have several hundred songs on shuffle each time.

So, two questions: 1)Does this sort of thing ever happen to any of you, and if so, how? and 2)Any statisticians or probability experts have a theory on this?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, speaking of Law & Order reruns, I swear I hit one of the Homicide crossovers every couple of weeks. And I also find the SVU with Joe Morton playing the victim's father a lot.

And I usually seem to come across the Temptations minisieries on VH1 right when they get to "Just My Imagination" and Eddie Kendricks quits.

More importantly, I need to get back to the "Which actors should be paired up?" discussion. I didn't notice it last season, but watching the season premiere of The Dead Zone, the actress who plays Stillson's finacee at times looks almost identical to Nicole De Boer, just with blonde hair. Now we understand why Johnny was so worried about her, not that it's healthy.

Anonymous said...

When I used to watch "The Real World" a few years ago, I kept trying to get into the season that was in Paris. I like to see every episode a show has, particularly with shows like that, and it was hard to try and catch all of the episodes from that season. No matter what time I tried to catch an episode to catch up, it was always the one where they debated the war in Iraq. It was so weird.

I've also seen almost every episode of "The West Wing," except perhaps the one where Josh crashes an SUV and they debate fuel economy standards or something like that. I wouldn't know for sure, because every time I try to watch the damn episode, I catch it when at least half of it is over. That's one more reason I need to buy the remaining seasons on DVD.

Heather K said...

I have noticed that my itunes 'random shuffle' gets really enamored of one song or one artist, so that it is always near the top of the list, and it isn't even the artist that has the most songs in the playlist.

However, I do seem to notice that I run into people that I know on the streets of the city I live in. I moved to Chicago less then a year ago, and I knew like 5 people when I moved--I maybe know like 50 now that I would recognize and wave and/or talk to on the street. It seems that every third time I head downtown or to Lincoln Park or out to some neighborhood for shopping, I see someone I know. Several times these have been people I haven't seen in years or people who are here on vacation or for a conference who didn't know I lived here.

This is especially weird because I am from Washington state originally and the vast majority of people I know are from that corner of the country and don't have much cause to end up over here. A friend of mine who moved here with me, does not seem to have similar abilities. I seem to draw people out of the woodwork and to me in the middle of a large city. Although, it is nice to see familiar faces, it is kind of weird.

Toby O'B said...

I would land on the foreign movie "Delicatessan" on IFC (or was it Sundance?) at the same point all the time - the girl walks downstairs into the spooky basement.

As for 'Law & Order', I always seemed to get the repeat about the family responsible for the faulty pacemakers (from the Ben Stone era).

And when I first started out doing the overnight shift, it always felt as though a Supertramp song was playing on the old rock n roll WNEW-FM at 5 am.

We're all stuck in the loop. And if it was the sitcom, that wouldn't be half bad a fate....

Anonymous said...

Happens to me too. I always come into "Dave" when he's doing his "I caught a fish that was THIS BIG" thing at the plant, Shawshank when they're up on the roof drinking the beers. The Buffy reruns always seem to be the episodes I don't like - Beer Bad, Inca Mummy Girl, Teacher's Pet. And yes, there are only 5 L&O episodes on TNT.

It's also true that TBS and TNT only show 10 movies.

Louis said...

I have almost 2,000 songs on my iPod, only a dozen or so of which are by Los Lobos, but if I set that thing on "shuffle," I can almost guarantee I'll hear a song by that group within my first 20 minutes of listening.

Channel surfing, it's all Carey Lowell L&O, all the time. Never -- much to my dismay -- Jill Hennessy.

Anonymous said...

Is that the scene in the Karate Kid where they have to push the car to get it going? Because that's the scene that I always catch too. Maybe Ted Turner edited out all the "violence" and all that is left to show on basic cable is a terrible and very short date movie.

Alan Sepinwall said...

That's the scene. Daniel and his mother show up to pick Shue up in their beater, and as her stuffy WASP parents watch them go, the car won't start.

Daniel said...

If I see the episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer goes to rock-n-roll fantasy camp one more time, I may scream.

Conversely, how come they NEVER seem to show the episode with the Germans buying up the power plant from Mr. Burns.

Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans!

Anonymous said...

I also always see Shawshank at the beer on the roof part. and I always catch the SVU where the kid dies in church.

Anonymous said...

>>If I see the episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer goes to rock-n-roll fantasy camp one more time, I may scream.<<

Ack, it was on tonight!!

Kim Cosmopolitan said...

I only ever see the episode of Buffy where she may or may not be a patient in a mental hospital, with her vampire-slaying as simply a schizophrenic hallucination. I have never seen any other Buffy episode, but have seen this one at least 5 or 6 times.

Jennette Fulda said...

Maybe you keep catching the same part of the movie because you always start flipping through channels right on the hour or half hour when something you've been watching has gone off. So those particular scenes always show up at the same time on the hour or half hour too.

I always think it's weird when I've thought about a particular episode of a show within the past couple days and then it appears on TV.