Here’s something that’s both interesting and annoying. Right now, Netflix.com is down, which affects not only the browsing of the site, but also the Xbox 360/PS3 playback. The only things available for me to watch are what I’ve already put in my Instant Watch queue, which I know now is just a lot of crap.
So now, I’m stuck here watching “Holly’s World” on E!. It is simply the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
That stuff on the board really means something, trust me. I'm a blogger.
With PhDs in Mathematics, Philosophy, Chemistry and Computer Science, Futurama had one of the nerdiest writer’s rooms in television, and also the funniest. How awesome is that? I found a lecture given by Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen and Jeff Westbrook and it’s very cool. Click. Allow me to synthesize the information for you, humans.
This is such an inside joke it only makes Stephen Hawkins shoot milk out of his nose. His crippled, crippled nose.
Zuh?
We needed a name for a movie theater and I came up with the ℵ0-plex. Which was a straightforward enough joke, but then we spent awhile composing a speech where Bender used a diagonalization argument to prove that even with a countably infinite number of screens, the ℵ0-plex still wouldn’t be big enough to show every Rocky movie ever made, or something like that. But we just couldn’t make it short enough to keep in the script.
So smart.
Is that an Eminem song I hear? Really? Way to tarnish the history of high-quality Call of Duty commercials and trailers with the most un-creative of music selections. This is one metal riff away from being that lame Section 8 commercial, or any other game that is trying to portray how hardcore it is by squeezing in some MTV music.
Remember that Gears of War ad with the song Mad World? It was slow, intense, and emotional. That’s how you make a commercial. Someone needs to consult me next time.
So, I’m sure you’ve all read the deets about Netflix’s arrival at Playstation International Airport in the coming months, and have already picked your side: For, Against, or Indiff. Even though I’ve already been using this service on the 360 for a long time now, I think this is great, but I’m really not down with having to get this Netflix disc, and leaving it in the tray to watch something. It just seems like yet another thing that the PS3 is making unnecessarily difficult (e.g. downloading demos, talking to friends online, sending/receiving messages, and so on…), and I can’t imagine that it will be easier to manufacture thousands of these discs to send out, rather than just making an integrated app.
I’m sure that there are people in the know out there that will be able to explain and/or defend this disc business, but hey, I’m just Joe Everyday Consumer, and I just don’t get it.
Imagine an iceberg. The tip of it is the only part that shows above water, and that part is all we are really concerned with. The rest is just cold, salty, frozen darkness that we don’t really care about. By the time we even realize it’s there, it’s already too late, and we are just a string quartet on the deck of the Titanic. That is what the show Californication is like.
The tip of the iceberg is the top three characters, Hank (David Duchovny/Mulder), his wife (Natascha McElhone/George Clooney’s wife in Solaris), and his agent (Evan Handler/The bald guy from Sex and the City). These three are magical together. Layered, connected, honest, disconnected, they keep the story running smoothly and interestingly, and are just enough to keep the whole thing afloat, even though everyone else in the show is doing everything in their power to sink the whole damned thing.
And that’s what lies below the surface: the rest of the cast. I’m not going to sugar coat it, everyone else is stupid. Hank’s daughter is one of those Hollywood characters that doesn’t exist in the real world, which is a twelve year old girl that plays guitar and sings in a rock band, and says things that even I, as a 27 year old man(ish), would never even think about saying. Then, there is the main female protagonist, and Hank Moody’s biggest mistake, that looks like the “Jesus Was Wrong” kid from Little Miss Sunshine, but has the acting skills of Andre the Giant with a vagina.
In the end, I love this show. The top three, especially David Duchovny’s character, are more than enough to carry the series, while the rest just kind of help move it along. Be warned, though, it is most definitely NOT a family show, and if you would feel uncomfortable watching Duchovny’s other very popular TV show (Red Shoe Diaries, duh) with your mom and dad, this one won’t be any better. It’s great, though, seriously.
Wife and I watched two television pilots tonight: HBO series Bored to Death (above) and ABC series Flash Forward.
Bored to Death stars Jason Schwartzman as a struggling writer who decides to become an amateur private detective via Craigslist. It’s set in New York, and feels like a bunch of First World people with First World problems (i.e. finding “happiness”). I’m a little put off by the inanity of the show, but it doesn’t take itself seriously enough to make me not want to watch it. That being said, I have a feeling that the show will mostly be a case-of-the-week affair with an overall story arch (a la Pushing Daisies). At this point, I’m expecting to let the season run its course and then watch it all at once.
Flash Forward stars a bunch of good looking people in a setting where the whole world blacks out for a couple minutes one day and witnesses a moment six months in the future. From there, it looks like people are dealing with what they saw and trying to find out why it happened. The fact that it’s a bunch of people facing the past reminds me of that other short-lived ABC series The Nine, and the tone (and especially the logo) smacks of that other shorter-lived ABC series Daybreak. In other words, I think this show isn’t really going to make it past a first season. Seems like ABC is trying to capitalize on their LOST fanbase but Flash Forward lacks the WTF moments that interested us in LOST in the first place. I plan on watching this one for a few more episodes before deciding what I’m going to do with it.
Not only does Section 8 have amazing gameplay, it also has just about the raddest commercial for any video game ever, complete with running action, jumping action, nü-metal, and punching. This one is shaping up to be a can’t-miss game.
I’m not one to read about new TV shows before they come out, but I just noticed that they’re remaking one of my favorite TV mini-series as a kid, V, into a full-on series starting this November. The main character is Juliet from LOST and the main alien is that prostitute from Firefly that looks like Tera Patrick. I’m guessing that instead of a Cold War mentality, the show will have a terrorism-esque spin to it.
I’m not sure if it’s necessary at all, and it really feels like somebody’s trying to make money off the credibility that Battlestar Galactica gained over four hard-earned seasons, but I’ll probably check it out. I have fond memories of the show, although I can’t say if it was actually any good because hey, I was a kid.
I decided to do something nice for my wife (I know crazy right?) and downloaded the first season of HBO’s True Blood for us to watch together. She had a bit of Twilight fever last year and I thought this would be good for her. We blew through the whole 12-hour season this weekend.
The show is set in a world where vampires “come out of the coffin” and try to live alongside humans, facing a whole lot of racially-and-mortally-charged prejudices. It’s set in Louisiana, which is a great setup for racial tension and very creepy trees. The show has quite a bit of twists and turns, a mouthful of cursewords, and lots of violence and angry glares. It doesn’t focus too much on romance so it feels a bit like a “guy’s show”, too. I mean, Battlestar Galactica had its fair share of romantic subplots, and there’s nary a woman on the planet that wouldn’t classify it as a “guy’s show”.
My wife and I were able to jump to conclusions in the plot a little faster than the show probably wanted, and I would have preferred to be more surprised with some plot elements. And the fangs are on the outside incisors, which annoys me because I’ve always thought they should be on the inside canines. Stupid, I know.
Season Two ends next month, at which time we plan on downloading the whole thing and having another marathon session. Buzz on the ‘net is that Season Two is much better.
This is why the video game world will never be taken seriously. I saw for the first time on today’s Attack of the Show, their shallow and unnecessary segment: Women of the Web. Apparently, periodically the show features a top-10 of girls that revolve around some inane theme such as today’s “tattooed girls,” which consisted mostly of MySpace pics of Suicide Girl types along with D list and below celebrities like Bif Naked and Kat Von D. Yuck.
Look, I generally like AOTS because the content is, for the most part, fresh and entertaining. It’s a show that I would like to watch with someone like my girlfriend without feeling like a juvenile 14 year-old. Lowest common denominator segments like these diminish the quality and credibility of the show, not to mention promote this nerd-culture objectification of women, and I’m sure they could fill this time with more interesting content.
Just please god don’t make it more Adam Sessler.
My girlfriend, Tyler, and myself are going to see the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade in LA tonight. You may remember them from the three season long sketch comedy show on Comedy Central in the late 90′s. I vaguely remember a few sketches from the show, but I remember it was really funny. Should be fun.
Wife and I have sat down and watched the first few episodes of that damn show everyone keeps talking about, 30 Rock. Immediately, I’m happy I did because now I know why it’s called “30 Rock” in the first place (maybe I’m an uncultured swine, but I didn’t know it was an address).
We’ll probably keep watching it. For now, I like it because it is quick and snappy, and it doesn’t tend to paint its characters in the best light, but it’s also not altogether mean. I also like that the episodes are short (22 mins) and the first two seasons are available on Netflix Instant Watch. I am definitely not ready to say that it’s the funniest show on TV right now (a title that Tyler has given it several times), but I remain optimistic.
What’s the deal with Nintendo’s advertising? It seems like every commercial I see for a Nintendo game has to do with intense competition and major trash-talking.
First, there is the one for Force Unleashed where the two nerds are calling each other out with Star Wars-related names while flailing their arms toward the TV. Then there is the DSi commercial where the two closets are playing with pictures of each other’s faces and hurling half-assed ugly jokes around. Finally, I just saw one for Punch Out!!! Wii where a defeated dad says that he’s going to make his son cry and wipe the floor with his tears. Yeah, Nintendo, child abuse is a great way to move units.
It’s weird to me that the advertising for such a family-centric console is all about beating each other down over working together. Few people know that the there is an extended version of the Animal Crossing commercial where the shells girl sleeps with the other girl’s boyfriend, and they get in a fight at the beach. It’s pretty sexy.
Here’s a shot I took of some in-game advertising at work in Battlefield: Bad Company. I’m not against advertising in games if there a reason for it, such as making the game cheaper/free, of which neither happen here.
Look, I bought your game for $60 (and re-bought it later for $18, but that was my fault), and I pay $50 a year for Xbox Live. I don’t need Jesse James’ stupid face gazing over me as I playing, especially if it does nothing for me but tell me some show I’m not going to watch exists.
I use Roxio’s CD/DVD burning software Toast for all my burning needs. Its latest version, Toast Titanium 10, has a bevy of new features, including encoding (so you can convert your DVDs into iPod/iPhone-friendly formats), although I’ve always used Visual Hub or iSquint for that job.
One feature that I may someday use is its built-in streamer app. Simply drag some video files into the app, and then log into a custom page (http://streamer.roxio.com/yourusername) with a pre-determined password and you’re browsing and streaming your video library instantly. You can even change the quality to make streaming a bit faster, which is a nice feature. The quality isn’t bad, especially for streamed video. This is The Spirit in the lowest quality possible (i.e. fastest stream):
If you want to watch lots of videos on your iPhone or web-friendly iPod Touch without taking up valuable HDD space, this may be your solution. If you couple this with music-streaming app Simplify Media, you could have a ton of media at your disposal without taking up any physical space. It’s funny to think that a few years ago doing something like this was a total pain in the ass, if not impossible. If I traveled a lot, I would seriously think about setting up an at-home server and have a huge streaming library for my iPhone (and about 10 external batteries/chargers).
Russ Crandall:
Tyler Miller:
Steve McKay:
Giang Cao:
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