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Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Tuesday, August 3. All times are Eastern. Advertisement Top Pick Obama: In Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union (HBO, 9 p.m.): This new docuseries kicks off its three-night run on HBO tonight. Here’s Saloni Gajjar on Peter Kunhardt’s latest: “ In Pursuit Of A More Perfect Union follows President Barack Obama’s personal and political journey, combining his speeches, interviews, and previously unseen footage and photos with conversations with his colleagues, friends, and critics. The docuseries showcases how his spiritual formation was inspired by a generation of Black leaders and Obama’s own hopes for a more inclusive nation.” Throwback Tuesday The Goonies (Peacock): As Keith Phipps wrote in his 2010 review of The Goonies on Blu-ray , “Some cults form around films unrecognized in their times. Others develop out of nostalgia. Goonies belongs to the latter camp. See it …

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“I really hope I’ve changed a lot since the last time we did this documentary.” That’s a pretty revealing comment from Ricky Martin , arriving near the beginning of the premiere episode of Behind The Music , the new reboot of the VH1 documentary series which, for the better part of two decades, performed a deep dive into the histories and private lives of notable stars from pop music’s past and present. Streaming on Paramount+, the newly revived hourlong program kicks off with two episodes, one on Martin and one about LL Cool J , with a third installment, on Huey Lewis And The News , coming next week. Martin’s comment is telling because it could well double for the culture at large’s retort to the return of this series: Namely, that pop culture has changed quite a bit since the heyday of Behind The Music , and what once felt like exclusive, real-world drama now comes across as simply unnecessary. Advertisement It also highlights the recycled …

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Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Monday, August 2. All times are Eastern. Advertisement Top pick Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump (HBO, 9 p.m.): This new HBO documentary series follows the hilarious, heartwarming people who run a local independent news station in Nevada. Based in the desert town of Pahrump (population 37,000), the privately-owned KPVM now plans to expand to Las Vegas with aims to be accessible to 2.6 million more people. The six half-hour episodes chronicle the owners and employees of the news station and their scrappy, hard-working attitude to empower the small community. Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump will premiere with two episodes, with two new installments airing every Monday through August 16. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of Catch And Kill: The Podcast Tapes serve as two of the co-executive producers. Regular coverage The Bachelorette (ABC, 8 p.m.) Wild cards Jack Irish (Acorn TV, …

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Back Issue That Time We Gave You Five Advertisement Hosts Josh Gwynn and Tracy Clayton are back to give their shade-throwing two cents on great (and not-so-great) moments in African American pop-culture history. For the second-season opener, they do an amusing deep dive on how people greet each other, specifically with their hands. Of course, this was brought on by the still-in-progress pandemic (or “damndemic,” as they call it), which made them wonder if giving friends, loved ones, or just strangers on the street some skin can still be a thing. They discuss the origins of various hand greetings, including the high five, and the pair debate who first came up with the gesture. (Both origin stories are sports-related, with Clayton telling how two members of the University of Louisville Cardinals men’s basketball team did it in the ’70s and Gwynn countering with the story of how two L.A. Dodgers awkwardly created it in the same decade.) Later on, Gwynn talks to …

Continue Reading about Best podcasts this week: Trixie and Katya, Back Issue, and Prime Mates

Home Video Hell Home Video Hell is where filmic outcasts—straight-to-video, straight-to-VOD, or barely released—spend eternity. The condemned: Dawn Of The Beast (2021) Advertisement The plot: This is a barebones production of a movie in which Bigfoot and the Wendigo come together for a showdown. That is the whole reason for this movie to exist, and yet somehow the filmmakers decided not to call their movie Bigfoot V Wendigo: Dawn Of The Beast . It’s like they learned nothing from Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice : You put the title fight right there in the front, and then “Dawn Of” whatever nonsense you want in the subtitle. “The Beast” doesn’t gets its dawn, any more than “Justice” did in that DC superhero film, so the least they could do is let everyone know the purpose of this thing. Still, for those who decide to forge ahead with watching the film, the plot is remarkably awkward for such a seemingly simple premise. After an opening sequence …

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In the 1980s, Radio Shack parent Tandy Corp. released a graphical user interface called DeskMate that shipped with its TRS-80 and Tandy personal computers. It made its PCs easier to use and competed with Windows. Let’s take a look back. Discover the DeskMate Difference In the early 1980s, IBM PC compatible computers were not very user-friendly. To use MS-DOS , you needed to memorize typed commands that didn’t immediately make sense if you weren’t already used to them. Meanwhile, computers like the Apple Macintosh made computing as easy as point-and-click with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and a mouse. Since the debut of the TRS-80 Model I in 1977, Tandy marketed most of its PCs toward a mainstream consumer audience—one that might stop by a neighborhood Radio Shack retail store. Sure, there were business machines too, but Radio Shack sold huge numbers of its home PCs like the Color Computer series and the Tandy 1000 . To make its home computers easier to use, Tandy …

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