VICELAND, Bitches!!!!

Holy shit, what da fuq is this now?

H2, the History Channel’s red-headed stepchild on which UFOs, Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, and maneating snakes (FAKE maneating snakes, that is) have come to abound, will diez a merciful death in merely 10 days.

Now, I’m not at all saying that the sorts of programming referenced in the above paragraph are worthy of your time. Aside from comedic escapism, at least. I do freely admit to occasionally watching them and shouting at my TV regarding the respective idiocy and logical fallacies displayed therein.  I have an education grounded in scientific method.  And I like feeling superior.  So, on occasion, there IS some value to this drivel when I have a need to feel smart.  But by and large it really sucks that it gets as much airtime as it does and that the public at large sees it as real history.  Or real science.  Or real anything for that matter.

HOWEVER, H2 also has been a place for overflow of REAL historical, and even scientific documentaries, which in recent years the History Channel has forsaken in favor of old guys in pawn shops looking for old shit, old guys rooting around barns looking for old shit, and old guys trying to restore old shit that the aforementioned old guys had found in old barns or old pawn shops.

Did you know that the moons Pandora and Prometheus are shepherding moons, keeping those awesome rings of Saturn in order?  DID YOU?????  Probably not.  But I bet you know that these two douchebags found some random gas station sign in a barn somewhere in rural Kentucky, bought it for $30 from some guy not wearing shoes, and were able to restore it and sell it for $500.

On the day of this writing…in fact the exact moment of this writing…H2 has been featuring an all day Civil War documentary marathon of sorts. That was/is some good shit.  I mean who doesn’t love rows of dead rotting corpses from 150+ years ago….right????

I mean, it’s not worse than those two schlubs from American Pickers walking around with severed mannequin heads is it?

OK, maybe it is….but I digress…

To further my point, which I’ve kinda forgotten now, but I think it had something to do with the dying off of people wanting to actually learn about history or the physical sciences…..tomorrow, H1 (as it will be henceforth known here, because I’m tired of typing out History Channel….awww shit, just did it again anyway) has an all day lineup of the old guys/old shit routine.

How much old shit can a person tolerate???  The ONLY good thing about that show is Chumley, and they just dump on him at every opportunity.  One of these days someone’s gonna come in and pawn a Colt LE6920 converted to full auto, and after Chumley does the paperwork he’s gonna go postal.  Now THAT’S a damned show!!!!!

But again, I digress….

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H1 did premiere something new last night, Join or Die with Craig Ferguson, which I haven’t watched yet so no spoilers please (Yeah I know it’s not scripted drama, so spoilers are largely not something which would….HEY, SHUT UP!!!) and I do have high hopes for that. But 30 minutes a week? That still leaves a lot of time for old shit to be found, shown, talked about and restored.

And granted, promos currently running on H2 do claim that “your favorite H2 shows will be moving to the History Channel”….dammit!!!! H1!!!! Son of a bitch!!!!

But you just know “your favorite shows” is merely code for this guy…

And that Brad Meltzer fuckwit isn’t much better, though they do at least keep things ALMOST grounded in reality….usually.  But they also tend to spend an hour chasing shit around they could have figured out in 15 minutes, filling the other dead air with “hey look at that…it might be significant….wait, no it’s not”.  Hey, I like symbols and signs as much as the next guy, but sometimes hard research and legwork beats out wild speculation about a random stain, conspiracy theory and/or paint smear.

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So where is this all going?  What is to become of H2? (as if you’re even still reading at this point)

Rebranding, Baybee!!!!!  VICELAND!!!!

What the heck is that you ask? Well, after reading about it and watching the promo vids, I’m at a loss to be able to explain it fully. But it appears that this internet presence has bought themselves a TeeVee Channel…more or less.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4pCNJKGhQXM

So…backhanded compliment forthcoming….at least it looks better than Ancient Aliens.

In all honesty, some of it looks very interesting. Some of it looks rather fun(ny). Much of it looks just this side of brainless. Some of it looks completely idiotic. These guys seem to like it though.  And the channel owners themselves (incl. Spike Jonze apparently) seem to think it’s good stuff too, not surprisingly.

And admittedly, it does appear to have crime, weed, Henry Winkler, and what I think appears to some questionable sexual orientations.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So pretty much business as usual on my TV.

Fuck you, TV.

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I’ll probably give it a chance, as it’s already programmed in my remote as a favorite channel, thus I’ll have to surf by it whether I want to or not because I’m damn sure not going in and editing my favorite channels.

But I swear, if it ends up becoming just another outlet for more dumb shit I am NOT gonna watch it more than 5-6 hours a day.

You’ve been warned History Channel.

I mean H1.  OH DAMMIT!!!!!!

/Sits down, clicks remote, let’s see what’s on…grumble, grumble
//Yay, H2 Civil War docs still on…notices it’s same narrator as Ancient Aliens
///Bastards

////Later I’ll be looking for Uranus

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