If you really want to stay indoors on this last holiday of the summer, cable TV is offering the traditional lineup of marathons to keep you occupied.
Among the best shows on cable is Travel Channel's "No Reservations," which is far more than a travel show, or a food show, but offers Anthony Bourdain's personal – and well-written – take on the places he visits, the food he eats and the world in general.
Travel Channel starts airing reruns of the show at 11 a.m. and the marathon runs into the wee hours of Tuesday.
What you want to invest a marathon's worth of viewing in depends on your tastes in TV.
So here's a list of various marathons that may interest you:
- "One Tree Hill" airs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on SOAPnet.
- Kyra Sedgwick's "The Closer" runs from noon to 8 p.m. Monday on TNT.
- TCM has its entire "Moguls and Movie Stars" documentary mini-series on the history of America's film business from 11:45 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- MTV has a "Jersey Shores" marathon from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- BBC America goes wall to wall with "Top Gear," from 7 a.m. until 4 a.m. Tuesday.
- Also starting at 7, History Channel went all "American Pickers," running until 7 tonight. There's a new episode at 8.
It's an actual holiday: Today is supposed to honor American workers, although it's mostly a chance to mark the end of the summer season.
In the spirit of Labor Day, this former member of the Newspaper Guild (who is the son of a member of the Steelworkers' Union and the grandson of a member of the United Mineworkers) offers you a History Channel look at how the day came to be:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
