Well kids, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been active on TiFaux but I’m taking the summer off so you should be hearing from me more often. But all that free time comes just when TV goes into hibernation. Hibernation in the summer! That’s crazy! Why does TV still abandon us in the summer? The kids are out of school with no homework to get in the way of prime time. It’s not like we all go on vacation like those lazy Europeans do. Pretty much nothing changes for most adults in the summer except we don’t get any quality TV.

So rather than catch up on the brilliant indie films I haven’t been watching (although you should all go out and buy a DVD of Hal Hartley’s latest masterpiece Fay Grim if you haven’t already) I’ve decided to turn to the Internets and see what the kids are watching there.

As usual, it’s a grim scene. When I first started writing about Internets video, Lonelygirl15 was still a cute, real-life girl who made funny videos in her bedroom. I hadn’t seen it in a while, but I watched the latest episode last night.

Now, not only is it an obviously scripted piece of junk, Bree is nowhere to be seen! This new guy is really actory, and they’re still going with all this nonsense about cults. If only we could go back to the days of Proving Science Wrong. This show should have ended as soon as it was outed as a fake. It would have been legendary. The stuff they’re doing now is like making a sequel to The Blair Witch Project…

A recent hit on the uTube (notice how I shortened the name? The kids are always doing stuff like that) is The 305, a cross between The 300 and The Office. It’s a fairly funny and pretty well-made piece, but it’s a little too much like guys screwing around in their basement. I didn’t finish it.

Another thing that’s so hot right now is Machinima; using video games to make videos. It’s smart because you don’t need actors or locations or props or anything. The most popular by far is Red vs. Blue which is about to reveal its 100th and final episode. One of my old roommates once watched something like 2 hours worth of this show on DVD in our living room. I watched 10 minutes of it and thought it was a clever short. Then I found out that it just kept going. Re-watching some of it now, I have to say it’s not my thing. Here are somebody’s idea of the “best” moments from the first season.

I recently bought an HD Plasma Display, replacing the venerable 27″ Panasonic old-fashioned tube television I’ve had for 7 years. It was a nice TV, with component inputs and even analog audio outputs, which is why I bought it in the first place. But as a person making a living from my knowledge of professional HD formats, I just couldn’t see coming home to a boring old low-res TV anymore. Plus, we have a television blog, and we have to watch a lot of TV. Why not watch it in HD?

If you want a really detailed and technical description of my decision to buy a lovely professional Panasonic model, you can read about it on my highly geeky personal blog. But on TiFaux, I want to talk about my actual experiences watching high definition TV.

First of all, if our experience is any indication, Time Warner Cable in Brooklyn is in trouble. Switching to HD turned our previously minor reception problems into major ones. Since we moved in we’ve had sporadic problems with Turner Classic Movies (and apparently MTV2 and Noggin—that weird cartoon channel that’s not Cartoon Network—but we never watch those channels) but when I got our new HD TiFaux (which doesn’t match the TiFaux logo anymore) plugged in, half of the HD channels were just gray screens. Sometimes they showed up for a day, but then they went away again. After a lot of calls, 6 visits from various flavors of cable guy, and some amazing acrobatics (seriously) we have consistent HD reception. I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens a lot more as people continue switching to HD cable. It’s going to add up to a lot of expense on Time Warner’s side.

If you’ve never met me, I hope your mental image involves a pompadour.

• I guess Mark Burnett will never give up. He’s working on some sort of martial arts reality show.
• A spoiler chat with E-Kristin including a bit about Lost and Harold Perrineau.
• Joey Fatone will host a copycat version of the Wayne Brady lyric-remembering contest.
• Rock and roll on TV this week includes Morrissey (hey! pompadours!) and Explosions in the Sky.
• Messy Peregrym from Heroes (shapeshifter Candice) will be the new lead on the CW’s Reaper.
• Zach Braff is launching his “I’m not a cad” (his word, not mine) tour.
• Battlestar’s big two-hour episode that will air in November will get its own DVD and 15 minutes of new footage.
• The Onion helps us with the Sopranos problem.
• An 18-year-old slaps Bill O’Reilly around.
• Dreamz from Survivor has been hit with a paternity suit.
• Studio 60 should have a neat conclusion. You hear that, David Chase?
• Bravo forced the top four from seasons one and two of Top Chef to participate in the pre-season three competition.
• Finally, Kathy Griffin does what we all want to do: profess our love for Anderson Cooper.