Yo!
My fellow MySpace-icans..... It has recently come to my attention that the way I mentioned last week's blog title, "Britney's Millions," being connected to Richard Pryor, was a tad too discreet and the joke might not have hit as hard as I had hoped for those of you who haven't seen or at the time didn't think of Pryor's 1985 film "BREWSTER's Millions." Memory-jogging info about it can be found at IMDB; Wikipedia has some stuff about the novel on which it was based (as well as the four earlier film versions), and the movie itself is buyable at Amazon HERE. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.
Now that the explanation and promotions are out of the way, let's get this done. Violence and Video Games have been hand-in-hand throughout the entire history of the gaming industry. Whether players had to eat blue ghosts after consuming certain power pellets or avoiding barrels being thrown at you down a series of slopes by a wannabe King Kong that somehow got the name of a donkey, or picking up prostitutes and killing police officers on the fly or dealing out twenty-six hit combos right before tearing out the guy's spine through his mouth. But it's only during that magical holiday-time, once every four to five years, that the gamers of America inadvertently unleash their primal urges in their quest to get their hands on the latest, lean, mean fraggin' machine on their Christmas list. At any cost.
Seven years ago, the last generation of gaming began with the debut of Sega's last console, the Dreamcast, on September 9th, 1999. One year later, Sony's Playstation 2 was unleashed to the world. Another year later, Microsoft dipped their toe into the waters of "the biz" with their first Xbox, launching three days prior to Nintendo releasing their fourth console, the GameCube. Not one of those four launches suffered the, as Google's "console launch violence" results page puts it, marring of riots on the same level as the big, bad new supercomputer on the block: Sony's trinity-completing, bank-account-slaughtering PlayStation 3.
Last weekend saw the most massive, country-wide onslaught of video game street violence probably ever on record, and the PS3s weren't even out of their boxes yet. Retail outlets scattered across America, from California to North Carolina reported customers taking extreme measures left-and-right, just to keep their place in line as they waited in front of stores for hours, even days in advance of the launch. According to gjsentinel.com, there was an actual shooting before a sale had happened at a store in Connecticut, because the guy didn't want to give up his money and place in line, at gunpoint.
On the one hand, of course it's a good idea to get one of these units fresh from launch if possible, since they turn such a profit on eBay (upwards of $1,000-$3,000 for PS3, not counting the knuckleheads charging in the millions), but on the other hand, the obvious flip side, aside from the violence, is the whole having to wait outside in the freezing winter weather for so long, fork down so much money, and if you're not eBaying it, getting it home and booting it up, praying it doesn't glitch up and self-destruct internally thanks to shoddy manufacturing, like SOME sophomore console efforts. Remember, PS3 was delayed over a year because they fell short of working Blu-ray read lasers to put in the disc drives. Sure, if you're an eBayer, I guess the end justifies the means, but at what cost, and not just monetarily?
GAMERS OF AMERICA! At some point, you have to accept this new technology being so popular is only that way because it's gotten such a positive advertising and word-of-mouth push from the big manufacturing companies that everyone of course will want it. It's all in the advertising, or "plugging." But the instant some newer, fancier hardware comes out that claims to run circles around its predecessor, and DOES IT WELL, then of course that's the new thing to get and fight and almost kill over, hours before launching, yet only six years away from the $49.99 bargain bin at Value City. That's why you never have people rioting about PCs, because it's not make-once hardware, meaning there will be upgrade kits released eventually that can be installed yourself if done correctly.
Think about it: If Dell came out with a special computer, desktop or laptop, that was make-once, meaning it could never be upgraded, and promoted the crap out of it by filming a "behind tha' launch" special and got MTV, Spike or G4 to air it and plug it constantly, who knows what'll happen once the gates open? Well, other than MSN. Besides, what if Sony released the PS3 without a single ad, not a single promotion whatsoever? Last Friday comes and goes, and after the launch weekend happens, how many people do you think would've forked over $600 so willingly, not knowing what it could do, or what it may be able to someday do? More than that, would they have even made the system in the first place without a way to guarantee such an extreme need from the target consumers that no matter how much of a loss they take in manufacturing each console, they could make it back in nothing flat, without having to wait for the cost of the parts to die down? Why do you think Xbox 360's been out over a year without a single penny's worth of price drop? (still $399.99 for premium version, and $100 less for core system, 54 weeks strong) ...And don't give me that "no competition" speech, cause they could've brought down the price at least a month before PS3 and Wii (not a typo) launched and really took them down by now.
Sony gave this console so much of a push, and there was so much hype purposely orchestrated for it, what if--- and I'm not at all pointing the finger at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, the Sony corporation or brand as a whole, the networks, webmasters, board posters, retailers or fellow Bloggers, but I have to mention this conspiracy theory--- what if they pushed this so hard for a reason? They had to know that at some point there'd be so much hype built up that these gamers, so used to virtual violence, that as I said earlier, their baser, well-trained instincts broke out subconsciously, but without a controller in-hand? There was just so much of it, as you've probably heard by now, police had to break out tasers and paint ball guns, to keep the peace, way too much for a simple game console release.
My final MySpace Bottom Line is Microsoft, time to bring the cost down for 360 a little bit. Nintendo: Good launch yesterday, but I'm not sure repackaging old hardware with a new gimmicky look will work in the long run. It didn't work for the N-Gage QD, and I'm not sure it'll work for you. Sony: What the heck were you thinking? I'd love to go all out with what I really think of your latest business practices, but children could be reading! Quit blocking PSP homebrew, and maybe you'll pose a threat to the Nintendo DS. Keep pushing PS3's limited supply this hard, I'll pass on PlayStation 4. Consumers deserve better treatment than that for our money. And time. And lives.
.......................But that's just me.
Thanks for reading, Happy Thanksgiving and as The Simpsons' Krusty the Clown once put it, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Krazy Kwanzaa, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan. Love that Season One DVD. Anyway, be safe during the holidays, and I'll see you in 2007!
-Donn
Monday, November 20, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Entry 35: "Britney's Millions"
Yo!
Yeah, this week's blog title goes out to Richard Pryor. Had to do it. Okay, first off, a quick show of hands: Who out there DIDN'T see the Democratic takeover of Congress coming somehow? ...........Mmmm-hmm, I didn't think so. After everything that's happened with the massive war issues, Katrina, the string of closeted gay Republicans resigning every other day it seems, and even despite John Kerry's failed joke, we'll have a Democratic majority in Washington for the first time in what, ten, twelve years I think? Plus Donald Rumsfeld getting the boot less than two days after the election just had to add up to the best week ever to be a conservative. Overwhelmingly obvious sarcasm aside, I gotta keep sticking to my anti-politics rant rule I mentioned four entries ago. This week though, I have to say a few things about the worst thing to happen to music since William Hung: Kevin Federline.
Personally, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what Britney Spears saw in him from day one, really. Supposedly, the story goes that Britney first noticed K-Fed in some club near L.A., I think. I forgot the name; She made the first move (again, how does that happen?), and the rest is basically pop culture history, and simultaneously the single worst reality show ever. So as of last Wednesday, the divorce is final, the dust has relatively settled, and somewhere, Shar Jackson's laughing her head off knowing that even despite Kevin's $30,000/month alimony from Britney (I heard from Y! Answers, so it must be true), he's probably never going to get back up to the almost birdcage liner-caliber celebrity status he thought he had while he was married, and since he can't have that slight boost of a title anymore ("Mr. Britney"), his "rap career" (if you can even call it that) is basically permanently dead and he's now even more trapped in loserville than ever before. Seriously, who really bought into that retarded album anyway?
The next big thing on his plate is this wrestling match he set up last week pitting himself against John Cena on New Years Day's WWE Raw. With the whole drama surrounding the divorce still fresh, no less. Sure, some people will give K-Fed a little leeway if he fails to beat Cena, even knowing he won't have to be completely broke again at least for a good long time thanks to the alimony, and I'm sure eventually celebrity casting for Match Game 2015 will bring him about twelve and a half extra undeserved seconds of fame, but by then I'm sure we'll all care even less than we do now about his laughable existence. Which I'm pretty sure is mathematically impossible, by the way.
Bottom Line:
Pimped-out Cadillac Escalade: upwards of $90,000.
Various "Bling" jewelery: $12,000.
Crunk Juice: $23.49-$41.99/case, apparently.
The expression on K-Fed's face as Britney's text message requesting a divorce is received, caught on camera: Priceless.
Good riddance from the public eye, Fed-Ex. May you never pollute the radio or TV airwaves again anytime soon. Or period. .....But that's just me.
Later.
-D.
Yeah, this week's blog title goes out to Richard Pryor. Had to do it. Okay, first off, a quick show of hands: Who out there DIDN'T see the Democratic takeover of Congress coming somehow? ...........Mmmm-hmm, I didn't think so. After everything that's happened with the massive war issues, Katrina, the string of closeted gay Republicans resigning every other day it seems, and even despite John Kerry's failed joke, we'll have a Democratic majority in Washington for the first time in what, ten, twelve years I think? Plus Donald Rumsfeld getting the boot less than two days after the election just had to add up to the best week ever to be a conservative. Overwhelmingly obvious sarcasm aside, I gotta keep sticking to my anti-politics rant rule I mentioned four entries ago. This week though, I have to say a few things about the worst thing to happen to music since William Hung: Kevin Federline.
Personally, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what Britney Spears saw in him from day one, really. Supposedly, the story goes that Britney first noticed K-Fed in some club near L.A., I think. I forgot the name; She made the first move (again, how does that happen?), and the rest is basically pop culture history, and simultaneously the single worst reality show ever. So as of last Wednesday, the divorce is final, the dust has relatively settled, and somewhere, Shar Jackson's laughing her head off knowing that even despite Kevin's $30,000/month alimony from Britney (I heard from Y! Answers, so it must be true), he's probably never going to get back up to the almost birdcage liner-caliber celebrity status he thought he had while he was married, and since he can't have that slight boost of a title anymore ("Mr. Britney"), his "rap career" (if you can even call it that) is basically permanently dead and he's now even more trapped in loserville than ever before. Seriously, who really bought into that retarded album anyway?
The next big thing on his plate is this wrestling match he set up last week pitting himself against John Cena on New Years Day's WWE Raw. With the whole drama surrounding the divorce still fresh, no less. Sure, some people will give K-Fed a little leeway if he fails to beat Cena, even knowing he won't have to be completely broke again at least for a good long time thanks to the alimony, and I'm sure eventually celebrity casting for Match Game 2015 will bring him about twelve and a half extra undeserved seconds of fame, but by then I'm sure we'll all care even less than we do now about his laughable existence. Which I'm pretty sure is mathematically impossible, by the way.
Bottom Line:
Pimped-out Cadillac Escalade: upwards of $90,000.
Various "Bling" jewelery: $12,000.
Crunk Juice: $23.49-$41.99/case, apparently.
The expression on K-Fed's face as Britney's text message requesting a divorce is received, caught on camera: Priceless.
Good riddance from the public eye, Fed-Ex. May you never pollute the radio or TV airwaves again anytime soon. Or period. .....But that's just me.
Later.
-D.
Monday, November 6, 2006
Entry 34: "Borat to be Wild"
Yo!
It must be good to be Sacha Baron Cohen right now. Sure, Da Ali G Show is history, but isn't it interesting how much recognition and acclaim he's gotten for his character work running solo and in the movies now that he's done with HBO? I mean, the show ended back in 2004, the guy practically vanishes off the face of the earth for over two years, he makes an extremely politically, socially, psychologically and (insert fourth similar adverb here) insane movie which happens to be really, really, REALLY good, I hear, and now almost literally overnight, people can't seem to stop talking about him! I'll just chalk this up with the list of overrated pop culture "sensations," right behind the Saw trilogy and American Idol.... There we go.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, if you've already seen the Borat movie, I haven't seen the film yet. If I had, I'm sure I'd be spouting out praising comments on how brilliant Cohen is. Which I'm sure would be well-deserved. Nothing garners more positive acclaim from American moviegoers and film critics more than a British comedian posing as a Kazakhstani reporter, almost purposely getting himself involved in some of the most absurd situations imaginable. ......Briefly forgetting about Jackass 2, of course....... Which I haven't seen either--- ANYWAY, I'll just fast-forward this before I get lost in another rant.
Bottom Line: This Borat movie better be good. Especially considering all the recent promotion it's been getting. It opened in less than a thousand theaters nationwide, and it's actually doing better than Flushed Away and Santa Clause 3! It's also on track to officially gross more than the current champion of grossing the most moolah in its theatrical lifespan despite less than a thousand theaters covering opening weekend: Fahrenheit 9/11. It's got a MySpace page, for cryin' out loud!! Only the most talked about or biggest budgeted movies get their own "MySpaces"! ......Oh, and about several thousand airplane capacity's worth of people around the world, give or take a million or two. You can only see a commercial showing this guy's exposed rear in an extremely questionable sunbathing outfit so many times before stray thoughts of watching the Bravo channel for more masculine programs begin to infiltrate the mind, you know? I'm not doing the theatrical thing with this, because I've got way too hectic a work schedule to do that, at least this month. I guess I'll rent the DVD eventually. .......But not before Jackass 2. .......But that's just me.
I am to be seeing you at later.
-D.
It must be good to be Sacha Baron Cohen right now. Sure, Da Ali G Show is history, but isn't it interesting how much recognition and acclaim he's gotten for his character work running solo and in the movies now that he's done with HBO? I mean, the show ended back in 2004, the guy practically vanishes off the face of the earth for over two years, he makes an extremely politically, socially, psychologically and (insert fourth similar adverb here) insane movie which happens to be really, really, REALLY good, I hear, and now almost literally overnight, people can't seem to stop talking about him! I'll just chalk this up with the list of overrated pop culture "sensations," right behind the Saw trilogy and American Idol.... There we go.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, if you've already seen the Borat movie, I haven't seen the film yet. If I had, I'm sure I'd be spouting out praising comments on how brilliant Cohen is. Which I'm sure would be well-deserved. Nothing garners more positive acclaim from American moviegoers and film critics more than a British comedian posing as a Kazakhstani reporter, almost purposely getting himself involved in some of the most absurd situations imaginable. ......Briefly forgetting about Jackass 2, of course....... Which I haven't seen either--- ANYWAY, I'll just fast-forward this before I get lost in another rant.
Bottom Line: This Borat movie better be good. Especially considering all the recent promotion it's been getting. It opened in less than a thousand theaters nationwide, and it's actually doing better than Flushed Away and Santa Clause 3! It's also on track to officially gross more than the current champion of grossing the most moolah in its theatrical lifespan despite less than a thousand theaters covering opening weekend: Fahrenheit 9/11. It's got a MySpace page, for cryin' out loud!! Only the most talked about or biggest budgeted movies get their own "MySpaces"! ......Oh, and about several thousand airplane capacity's worth of people around the world, give or take a million or two. You can only see a commercial showing this guy's exposed rear in an extremely questionable sunbathing outfit so many times before stray thoughts of watching the Bravo channel for more masculine programs begin to infiltrate the mind, you know? I'm not doing the theatrical thing with this, because I've got way too hectic a work schedule to do that, at least this month. I guess I'll rent the DVD eventually. .......But not before Jackass 2. .......But that's just me.
I am to be seeing you at later.
-D.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Entry 33: "Come On, Be Sirius"
Yo!
Geez, this has to be, I think, the second-latest I've ever been with my weekly Blog posting in the six months I've been at this continuously. Getting to it, though, I don't actually have any major, interesting observances to comment on this week, so I'll just say a couple really brief things about the Sirius Satellite Radio free preview period.
For the uninformed, last Thursday and Friday... or was it Wednesday and Thursday; I forgot... Sirius ran a free preview period where anyone can get onto sirius.com and listen in to all their streamable online channels including all their commercial-free music channels and yes, both of Howard Stern's channels. Anyone who can do enough basic math to figure out how to put in any number lower than 1988 as their birth year so they can pose as being over 18 to hear Howard's uncensored stuff without their parents finding out, at least.
It's my understanding that this preview period did exactly what you'd think it would do: get loads more potential subscribers interested enough to fork down the $12.95/mo for a full subscription. Loooooooads more. Big move for Sirius right there, officially putting it in "free preview once a year or so" territory formerly dominated by certain digital cable TV channels, like HBO or Starz. .....I suppose. .......since a pay-radio service doesn't really fit into a category with premium movie channels without the common denominator of transmittable by satellite. Sorry guys, I'm kinda off-guard here. I kinda had a crazy weekend and I didn't have much of a chance to think about what I'd write about tonight.
...................................Uuuuuummmmmmm........ The WWE is having a super-interactive Pay-Per-View "Cyber Sunday" event. That's pretty big. ...but that happens next Sunday. ...................Did anything major happen in TV/movies/internet/music this past week...................? You know what, I'll open up the floor. I know I have plenty of readers here, since my hit counter just topped 800 page views this morning, so I'll just ask you guys to help me out this time. Any of you guys out there know of anything major worth fully blogging about this week.......? Please leave comments on this post with your suggestions and I'll keep checking back and posting stuff on it when I can this week. Just consider this one a "rolling post," I guess. You know, 'cause of the whole rolling off-and-on during the week, ongoing thing this week.
Back to business-as-usual next week, though. ....I'm sure. ...But that's just me (sorry, you know I had to somehow end with that sentence).
Later.
-D.
ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10/31/06 9:16am): Saw 3! Number one movie last weekend! I knew I was forgetting to mention something... Oh, and that Lionsgate franchise is coming out with the fourth film in as many years, next year. More info HERE. Other than that, anything else worth mentioning, people.....?
Geez, this has to be, I think, the second-latest I've ever been with my weekly Blog posting in the six months I've been at this continuously. Getting to it, though, I don't actually have any major, interesting observances to comment on this week, so I'll just say a couple really brief things about the Sirius Satellite Radio free preview period.
For the uninformed, last Thursday and Friday... or was it Wednesday and Thursday; I forgot... Sirius ran a free preview period where anyone can get onto sirius.com and listen in to all their streamable online channels including all their commercial-free music channels and yes, both of Howard Stern's channels. Anyone who can do enough basic math to figure out how to put in any number lower than 1988 as their birth year so they can pose as being over 18 to hear Howard's uncensored stuff without their parents finding out, at least.
It's my understanding that this preview period did exactly what you'd think it would do: get loads more potential subscribers interested enough to fork down the $12.95/mo for a full subscription. Loooooooads more. Big move for Sirius right there, officially putting it in "free preview once a year or so" territory formerly dominated by certain digital cable TV channels, like HBO or Starz. .....I suppose. .......since a pay-radio service doesn't really fit into a category with premium movie channels without the common denominator of transmittable by satellite. Sorry guys, I'm kinda off-guard here. I kinda had a crazy weekend and I didn't have much of a chance to think about what I'd write about tonight.
...................................Uuuuuummmmmmm........ The WWE is having a super-interactive Pay-Per-View "Cyber Sunday" event. That's pretty big. ...but that happens next Sunday. ...................Did anything major happen in TV/movies/internet/music this past week...................? You know what, I'll open up the floor. I know I have plenty of readers here, since my hit counter just topped 800 page views this morning, so I'll just ask you guys to help me out this time. Any of you guys out there know of anything major worth fully blogging about this week.......? Please leave comments on this post with your suggestions and I'll keep checking back and posting stuff on it when I can this week. Just consider this one a "rolling post," I guess. You know, 'cause of the whole rolling off-and-on during the week, ongoing thing this week.
Back to business-as-usual next week, though. ....I'm sure. ...But that's just me (sorry, you know I had to somehow end with that sentence).
Later.
-D.
ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10/31/06 9:16am): Saw 3! Number one movie last weekend! I knew I was forgetting to mention something... Oh, and that Lionsgate franchise is coming out with the fourth film in as many years, next year. More info HERE. Other than that, anything else worth mentioning, people.....?
Monday, October 23, 2006
Entry 32: "Where No Family Guy Has Gone Before"
Yo!
So I was surfing around on the web a few months back, when I noticed THIS interstitial airing on Cartoon Network's [adult swim] late-night animation block fairly regularly (this was probably January/February-ish). I, like most Family Guy fans, started to ask myself, "Why isn't there a real FG video game?" Then, I reminded myself of THIS gem Vivendi Universal came out with at the height of that show's popularity, and further said to myself, "It's not like there's no market for wacky adult cartoon-based platformers..." Come to find out, a few months later, word broke out about 2K Games putting the finishing touches on a real Family Guy video game (PS2, Xbox/Xbox 360 [if the Ninjas got the backwards compatibility for this right on an earlier update somehow], and PSP. The only current systems that have parental control blocks. Figures, since it's got an "M" mature rating). Immediately after which, [adult swim] managed to start their suuuuper-subtle gloat fest with "We called it first! [as] does it again!!!", what with getting enough ratings to get Comedy Central to put together new Futuramas in 2008, new Saved By The Bell in planning/scripting right now (seriously), and helping bring back Family Guy in the first place. And rightfully so, I might add. I mean, SBTB's been out of production for over ten years! I can't wait for the Pee-Wee's Playhouse reunion!
.....But this entry's not about [as], it's about the new Family Guy video game that was released last week. For all those doubters, I'm pleased to say that this game actually delivers exactly what you'd want in a FG game: nonstop hilarity, relatively easy pick-up-and-play game mechanics, triple-threat story lines ripped from the show, every single character ever featured on the show makes an appearance, every single voice is there from the show, and the famous non-sequitur "manatee gag" throwaway sequences translate perfectly as WarioWare-style mini games that pop in right where they should. Not only that, you're dealing with interactive versions of some of the funniest non-sequiturs in the show's history, from Stewie's infamous sexy parties and Peter forgetting how to sit in a chair, to the movie's Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller sequence. It's all here.
I rented the Xbox version from Blockbuster on Friday, and for a while, I actually forgot about Scarface being the #1 new game of the fall (I should be getting paid for all this promotion and linking, Amazon!!!!!!). Gameplay's divided among three types, played by three different Griffins: Peter does arcade-style beat-em-up action against everyone and anyone from the long armed guy who tickles "little people" to Mr. Herbert, the perverted old man who regularly lusts after Chris. Stewie takes out his famous ray gun and blasts through Bertram, his evil(er) arch-enemy's forces, primarily consisting of sperm brethren still inside Peter, and clones of some random kid with a pot on his head. Classic platforming. Brian attacks his missions Sam Fisher-style, but without the guns. Or the wrist computer. Or the triple-vision headgear thingy. Or the crazy-tight spy suit. Or any discernible tools whatsoever. Just straight stealth at its... um... stealthiest.
I haven't gotten 100% through the game yet, but it's definitely worth the buy. In fact, that's my Bottom Line right there. The new Family Guy video game gets five of five stars!!!!! Because I clearly couldn't think of a better topic for this week!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .........................uh... Sorry about that. Lost what little cool I had for a second there. Hang on... The Daily Show kicks a#%.... VH1 Celebreality sucks....... Vista looks like some serious stuff, but Microsoft had better fix the Beta glitches and drivers........ OK GO's "Here It Goes Again" is a really cool song and great video, I don't care what Yahoo Music's Top 100 list says........ Phew! There we go! Got it back. Anyway, Family Guy. Great game. I highly recommend it for fans who've seen the last three seasons because they'll get most of the references easiest. ........But that's just me. New episodes return to FOX on November 5. New [adult swim] encores begin this Sunday, the 29th. That is all.
See you next week.
-D.
ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10:04pm): I'm playing this game a little bit more tonight, and I just had to say that in the level where Peter's in drag, rampaging through the Indian Casino, one of the non-sequitur mini games actually has a random stick person drawn on a sheet of paper, and Peter does a voice over saying they couldn't afford another mini game, so just press a button. That's it. They keep the countdown clock, though. As if it takes all of ten seconds to push any random button on the controller. Gotta be the dumbest, easiest mini game in the whole darn thing. Other than that, I still say this is one of the best, funniest games I've ever played, at the very least, on current-gen consoles anyway. That's all.
POST-ADDENDUM ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10/27/06 11:27am): After double-checking last night's [as] schedule after the gag was rebroadcast, I found out that the Helen Keller Marco Polo gag wasn't from the movie, but rather from last season's "Peter's Got Woods", first aired 9/11/05, available on the Family Guy Season 4 Part 2 set. PreOrder-able/Buyable HERE. Felt I should clarify my mistake. THAT's all. Promise.
So I was surfing around on the web a few months back, when I noticed THIS interstitial airing on Cartoon Network's [adult swim] late-night animation block fairly regularly (this was probably January/February-ish). I, like most Family Guy fans, started to ask myself, "Why isn't there a real FG video game?" Then, I reminded myself of THIS gem Vivendi Universal came out with at the height of that show's popularity, and further said to myself, "It's not like there's no market for wacky adult cartoon-based platformers..." Come to find out, a few months later, word broke out about 2K Games putting the finishing touches on a real Family Guy video game (PS2, Xbox/Xbox 360 [if the Ninjas got the backwards compatibility for this right on an earlier update somehow], and PSP. The only current systems that have parental control blocks. Figures, since it's got an "M" mature rating). Immediately after which, [adult swim] managed to start their suuuuper-subtle gloat fest with "We called it first! [as] does it again!!!", what with getting enough ratings to get Comedy Central to put together new Futuramas in 2008, new Saved By The Bell in planning/scripting right now (seriously), and helping bring back Family Guy in the first place. And rightfully so, I might add. I mean, SBTB's been out of production for over ten years! I can't wait for the Pee-Wee's Playhouse reunion!
.....But this entry's not about [as], it's about the new Family Guy video game that was released last week. For all those doubters, I'm pleased to say that this game actually delivers exactly what you'd want in a FG game: nonstop hilarity, relatively easy pick-up-and-play game mechanics, triple-threat story lines ripped from the show, every single character ever featured on the show makes an appearance, every single voice is there from the show, and the famous non-sequitur "manatee gag" throwaway sequences translate perfectly as WarioWare-style mini games that pop in right where they should. Not only that, you're dealing with interactive versions of some of the funniest non-sequiturs in the show's history, from Stewie's infamous sexy parties and Peter forgetting how to sit in a chair, to the movie's Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller sequence. It's all here.
I rented the Xbox version from Blockbuster on Friday, and for a while, I actually forgot about Scarface being the #1 new game of the fall (I should be getting paid for all this promotion and linking, Amazon!!!!!!). Gameplay's divided among three types, played by three different Griffins: Peter does arcade-style beat-em-up action against everyone and anyone from the long armed guy who tickles "little people" to Mr. Herbert, the perverted old man who regularly lusts after Chris. Stewie takes out his famous ray gun and blasts through Bertram, his evil(er) arch-enemy's forces, primarily consisting of sperm brethren still inside Peter, and clones of some random kid with a pot on his head. Classic platforming. Brian attacks his missions Sam Fisher-style, but without the guns. Or the wrist computer. Or the triple-vision headgear thingy. Or the crazy-tight spy suit. Or any discernible tools whatsoever. Just straight stealth at its... um... stealthiest.
I haven't gotten 100% through the game yet, but it's definitely worth the buy. In fact, that's my Bottom Line right there. The new Family Guy video game gets five of five stars!!!!! Because I clearly couldn't think of a better topic for this week!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .........................uh... Sorry about that. Lost what little cool I had for a second there. Hang on... The Daily Show kicks a#%.... VH1 Celebreality sucks....... Vista looks like some serious stuff, but Microsoft had better fix the Beta glitches and drivers........ OK GO's "Here It Goes Again" is a really cool song and great video, I don't care what Yahoo Music's Top 100 list says........ Phew! There we go! Got it back. Anyway, Family Guy. Great game. I highly recommend it for fans who've seen the last three seasons because they'll get most of the references easiest. ........But that's just me. New episodes return to FOX on November 5. New [adult swim] encores begin this Sunday, the 29th. That is all.
See you next week.
-D.
ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10:04pm): I'm playing this game a little bit more tonight, and I just had to say that in the level where Peter's in drag, rampaging through the Indian Casino, one of the non-sequitur mini games actually has a random stick person drawn on a sheet of paper, and Peter does a voice over saying they couldn't afford another mini game, so just press a button. That's it. They keep the countdown clock, though. As if it takes all of ten seconds to push any random button on the controller. Gotta be the dumbest, easiest mini game in the whole darn thing. Other than that, I still say this is one of the best, funniest games I've ever played, at the very least, on current-gen consoles anyway. That's all.
POST-ADDENDUM ADDENDUM TO BLOG (10/27/06 11:27am): After double-checking last night's [as] schedule after the gag was rebroadcast, I found out that the Helen Keller Marco Polo gag wasn't from the movie, but rather from last season's "Peter's Got Woods", first aired 9/11/05, available on the Family Guy Season 4 Part 2 set. PreOrder-able/Buyable HERE. Felt I should clarify my mistake. THAT's all. Promise.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Entry 31: "Page-ing Mark Foley....."
Yo!
There's a reason why up until now, I've purposely tried to stray away from blog entries about hot-button political issues. Common sense, because most of said topics are way too subjective and the potential for offending people is quite large depending on the issue. ...But eventually everything comes to light. Just ask Lance Bass. Anyway, as you can tell from the title of this one, I had to post something about this week's #2 news tidbit right behind, as Pres. Bush would say, North Korea's "nook-ya-lur," weapons tests: Congressional House Representatives and emotionally scarred pages.
Right off the bat, I gotta say that Bill Maher (I think it was him) put it best on his HBO show "Real Time" a couple weeks back when he noted that there's a difference between pedophilia and regular... Ah, crap, the right word escapes me right now. Not real molestation, because he never actually did any of that (that we know of). But it sure as heck was premeditated. Verbal molestation........? I dunno. Anyway, these pages weren't "boys"; they were young men by age, and in the HIGHLY incriminating instant messenger records, you can tell these young men were actually writing back the right things and fueling everything. I'm still a teenager myself (interestingly, my 19th birthday is this coming Thursday, the 19th), and in my early teen years and even a little earlier than that I knew the difference between homo- and heterosexuality. Not just by looking up respective definitions, but by just being around other kids my own age and talking about all that stuff, since in SexEd, we kinda had no choice (your dollars at work, parents!). Oh, and television of course. The third parent.
Also, everyone knows that at this hormonally enraged period of life, teenagers are typically horny all the time anyway. So the young man answered honestly in those IMs with (former) Rep. Foley. There can't be any VIDEO chat records unfortunately, because if there were, we'd be able to prove conclusively by now what the teen was doing while these chats were taking place. Although, as people who pay attention to certain major celebrity cases can tell you, even blatantly incriminating video doesn't necessarily mean you're found guilty. R. Kelly had a tape he freakin' made HIMSELF and the charges were still dropped somehow. Love this legal system. Incidentally, that page could've just gotten through looking at hetero porn, and his boner hadn't gone down yet so when Foley asks if he's horny and the page replies, "a little", that doesn't necessarily mean he's gay, does it? Sure, it means he's brutally, embarassingly honest, but fruitier than Carmen Miranda's famous hat? Of course having said that, we can't ignore the possiblilty that the young men who responded like that weren't all "victims of honesty" (I guess), but legitimate homosexuals that hadn't quite come all the way out of the closet yet. They could've easily just stopped the chats right at the first offensive sentence, reported him at the beginning of this thing and left the page program on the spot but, like I said, they kept the conversations going. Willingly. ...From what I heard of the transcripts. We don't quite know either way publicly yet, and I'm personally not trying to cast judgment on this page, or any of the others that recently came forward, for being/not being homosexuals, 'cause it's obviously not my place. I'm just weighing both sides best as I can.
Foley, on the other hand, knew darn well what he was doing, knew the guy was under 18, and had to know there'd be some kind of paper trail behind him. And because of this scandal, and the fact that other pages are coming forward faster than Michael Jackson's underage "playmates", people are now beginning to call this another nail in the coffin of the current Republican power structure in Washington. In fact, even Fox News is saying that Foley's scandal could result in a Democrat, Tim Mahoney, winning the primary election next month, meaning Florida's 16th district will be Democratically represented in the House for the first time in its history, since its creation in 1973. The Bottom Line is, Foley's resignation two weeks ago and the no doubt forthcoming trial (Sorry, Foley, but using the "was molested as a teen myself" copout card won't work there) and further public ridicule can't just be the end of this. I'll bet eventually all the other Republicans in Washington who knew of this and started messing up their statements on this will start politically dying like flies. However more there happen to be. House Speaker Dennis Hastert seems to be first on the chopping block.... I can't wait to see how this mess turns out. .....But that's just me.
See ya next Monday.
-D.
There's a reason why up until now, I've purposely tried to stray away from blog entries about hot-button political issues. Common sense, because most of said topics are way too subjective and the potential for offending people is quite large depending on the issue. ...But eventually everything comes to light. Just ask Lance Bass. Anyway, as you can tell from the title of this one, I had to post something about this week's #2 news tidbit right behind, as Pres. Bush would say, North Korea's "nook-ya-lur," weapons tests: Congressional House Representatives and emotionally scarred pages.
Right off the bat, I gotta say that Bill Maher (I think it was him) put it best on his HBO show "Real Time" a couple weeks back when he noted that there's a difference between pedophilia and regular... Ah, crap, the right word escapes me right now. Not real molestation, because he never actually did any of that (that we know of). But it sure as heck was premeditated. Verbal molestation........? I dunno. Anyway, these pages weren't "boys"; they were young men by age, and in the HIGHLY incriminating instant messenger records, you can tell these young men were actually writing back the right things and fueling everything. I'm still a teenager myself (interestingly, my 19th birthday is this coming Thursday, the 19th), and in my early teen years and even a little earlier than that I knew the difference between homo- and heterosexuality. Not just by looking up respective definitions, but by just being around other kids my own age and talking about all that stuff, since in SexEd, we kinda had no choice (your dollars at work, parents!). Oh, and television of course. The third parent.
Also, everyone knows that at this hormonally enraged period of life, teenagers are typically horny all the time anyway. So the young man answered honestly in those IMs with (former) Rep. Foley. There can't be any VIDEO chat records unfortunately, because if there were, we'd be able to prove conclusively by now what the teen was doing while these chats were taking place. Although, as people who pay attention to certain major celebrity cases can tell you, even blatantly incriminating video doesn't necessarily mean you're found guilty. R. Kelly had a tape he freakin' made HIMSELF and the charges were still dropped somehow. Love this legal system. Incidentally, that page could've just gotten through looking at hetero porn, and his boner hadn't gone down yet so when Foley asks if he's horny and the page replies, "a little", that doesn't necessarily mean he's gay, does it? Sure, it means he's brutally, embarassingly honest, but fruitier than Carmen Miranda's famous hat? Of course having said that, we can't ignore the possiblilty that the young men who responded like that weren't all "victims of honesty" (I guess), but legitimate homosexuals that hadn't quite come all the way out of the closet yet. They could've easily just stopped the chats right at the first offensive sentence, reported him at the beginning of this thing and left the page program on the spot but, like I said, they kept the conversations going. Willingly. ...From what I heard of the transcripts. We don't quite know either way publicly yet, and I'm personally not trying to cast judgment on this page, or any of the others that recently came forward, for being/not being homosexuals, 'cause it's obviously not my place. I'm just weighing both sides best as I can.
Foley, on the other hand, knew darn well what he was doing, knew the guy was under 18, and had to know there'd be some kind of paper trail behind him. And because of this scandal, and the fact that other pages are coming forward faster than Michael Jackson's underage "playmates", people are now beginning to call this another nail in the coffin of the current Republican power structure in Washington. In fact, even Fox News is saying that Foley's scandal could result in a Democrat, Tim Mahoney, winning the primary election next month, meaning Florida's 16th district will be Democratically represented in the House for the first time in its history, since its creation in 1973. The Bottom Line is, Foley's resignation two weeks ago and the no doubt forthcoming trial (Sorry, Foley, but using the "was molested as a teen myself" copout card won't work there) and further public ridicule can't just be the end of this. I'll bet eventually all the other Republicans in Washington who knew of this and started messing up their statements on this will start politically dying like flies. However more there happen to be. House Speaker Dennis Hastert seems to be first on the chopping block.... I can't wait to see how this mess turns out. .....But that's just me.
See ya next Monday.
-D.
Monday, October 9, 2006
Entry 30: "Death of a Cartman"
Yo!
In case you missed it, the tenth season of Comedy Central's flagship series (other than their prestigious Stewart/Colbert "news" hour, of course) "South Park" premiered last Wednesday night, boasting simultaneously one of the wackiest, yet not-too-unrealistic, plot lines in recent memory, and one of the funniest uses of Warcraft machinima I've ever seen. Apparently, this episode deals with the emergence of a seemingly unstoppable World of Warcraft player who keeps killing people all over the place (in-game, obviously), ruining things seemingly forever, and even the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, are incapable of stopping him, since they can't just load up the master player list on the game server and simply delete his profile and account, neutralizing the threat on the spot, since A) that would be waaaaaay too convenient for them to do and ruin the plot, and B) Trey Parker and Matt Stone(the series' creators/main writers) know better than that. The resulting plot line has everyone's favorite racist, foul-mouthed, big boned festively plump fourth-grader, Eric Cartman, recruiting all his classmates to help take down the one geek to rule them all (wink-wink, J.R.R. Tolkien), or else it'd literally be the End of the World!!! ...............of Warcraft.
As I said, this is hands-down, very high (#2) in my top five machinimas ever, right behind "Red vs. Blue," of course. Mainly because of the surrealness of watching these Warcraft characters getting brutally slaughtered and hearing the kids' voices (Trey & Matt, using voice manipulation software) in place of what they should realistically sound like. Pure audio-visual gold. And I do mean slaughtered, to the point of the kids playing as them (read: "Blizzard's Final Solution") throwing up their poorly animated hands in disgust, and one who recognized the futility of the strike at first blow whipping out a Playboy. Yes, one of the kids gives up and actually breaks out dad's porn in the middle of the desperate final battle to save the world. ........of Warcraft. Honestly, I missed the ending first time around (fell asleep), but that's just why man invented VCRs and reruns, now isn't it?
Later this week, I'll review the tape and catch the no doubt hilariously ridiculous ending, but I'm going through all this rant to simply state that I'll give South Park: "Make Love, Not Warcraft" four out of five stars, with the fifth star reserved for the ending I have yet to see and rate, and of course, my trademark Bottom Line: Why is this show still on-air? Yes, I enjoyed what I saw of this season's launcher, and yes, I do enjoy the show, but if I wanted to see ridiculous barely plausible plot lines and visual gags out the yin-yang, I'd catch some good old-fashioned manatee gags on Family Guy, which I do anyway, so that statement doesn't have a whole lot of "sting" to it, but you get the point. There are some shows that hit the ten-year mark and end prematurely (Stargate SG-1), shows that almost hit the decade point, but for some reason, the network didn't let it happen despite fans' outcry (The X-Files), and shows that had absolutely no business whatsoever dragging on to season ten in the first place (Friends, Frasier, Law & Order, Rugrats). This, to me, is one of those shows. Comedy Central, please just make the sequel to BLaU, and let the show end on a high note: Kenny living. ...........and Butters dying.
.............But that's just me.
See ya next Monday!
-D.
In case you missed it, the tenth season of Comedy Central's flagship series (other than their prestigious Stewart/Colbert "news" hour, of course) "South Park" premiered last Wednesday night, boasting simultaneously one of the wackiest, yet not-too-unrealistic, plot lines in recent memory, and one of the funniest uses of Warcraft machinima I've ever seen. Apparently, this episode deals with the emergence of a seemingly unstoppable World of Warcraft player who keeps killing people all over the place (in-game, obviously), ruining things seemingly forever, and even the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, are incapable of stopping him, since they can't just load up the master player list on the game server and simply delete his profile and account, neutralizing the threat on the spot, since A) that would be waaaaaay too convenient for them to do and ruin the plot, and B) Trey Parker and Matt Stone(the series' creators/main writers) know better than that. The resulting plot line has everyone's favorite racist, foul-mouthed, big boned festively plump fourth-grader, Eric Cartman, recruiting all his classmates to help take down the one geek to rule them all (wink-wink, J.R.R. Tolkien), or else it'd literally be the End of the World!!! ...............of Warcraft.
As I said, this is hands-down, very high (#2) in my top five machinimas ever, right behind "Red vs. Blue," of course. Mainly because of the surrealness of watching these Warcraft characters getting brutally slaughtered and hearing the kids' voices (Trey & Matt, using voice manipulation software) in place of what they should realistically sound like. Pure audio-visual gold. And I do mean slaughtered, to the point of the kids playing as them (read: "Blizzard's Final Solution") throwing up their poorly animated hands in disgust, and one who recognized the futility of the strike at first blow whipping out a Playboy. Yes, one of the kids gives up and actually breaks out dad's porn in the middle of the desperate final battle to save the world. ........of Warcraft. Honestly, I missed the ending first time around (fell asleep), but that's just why man invented VCRs and reruns, now isn't it?
Later this week, I'll review the tape and catch the no doubt hilariously ridiculous ending, but I'm going through all this rant to simply state that I'll give South Park: "Make Love, Not Warcraft" four out of five stars, with the fifth star reserved for the ending I have yet to see and rate, and of course, my trademark Bottom Line: Why is this show still on-air? Yes, I enjoyed what I saw of this season's launcher, and yes, I do enjoy the show, but if I wanted to see ridiculous barely plausible plot lines and visual gags out the yin-yang, I'd catch some good old-fashioned manatee gags on Family Guy, which I do anyway, so that statement doesn't have a whole lot of "sting" to it, but you get the point. There are some shows that hit the ten-year mark and end prematurely (Stargate SG-1), shows that almost hit the decade point, but for some reason, the network didn't let it happen despite fans' outcry (The X-Files), and shows that had absolutely no business whatsoever dragging on to season ten in the first place (Friends, Frasier, Law & Order, Rugrats). This, to me, is one of those shows. Comedy Central, please just make the sequel to BLaU, and let the show end on a high note: Kenny living. ...........and Butters dying.
.............But that's just me.
See ya next Monday!
-D.
Monday, October 2, 2006
Entry 29: "Soap Oprah"
Yo!
So I was watching Larry King on CNN last night, and he was talking with Oprah Winfrey "and friends" (read: "and business partners," I'll bet most of whom [except Gayle King of course], were purposely painted up as "friends" solely for the sake of having a catchy group name that rolls off the tongue better than "Oprah & Harpo Media Empire Business Partners"), and the topic of the hour was Oprah starting her own channel on Sirius' barely-a-threat satellite radio competitor XM last week. This means that those die-hard fans out there who REALLY need more than their 300 minutes a week Oprah fix now have an alternative, 24/7 fallback option, before, during and after the initial TV show to scratch that itch whenever the heck they want.
......................Ooooooooooookaaaaaaaaaayyy.........
Obviously, this move is nothing more than XM continuing to struggle to compete with Sirius by signing over their own really popular, high-profile celebrity, and reserve a channel on their lineup (channel 156, if you must know) exclusively for attempting to answer the million-dollar question: "How, oh how, do we compete with Howard Stern??" Personally, I've been on the satellite radio bandwagon for a while now; I've been a happy Sirius subscriber since December. It seems to me that there's just no end to the one-upsmanship XM is willing to stoop to in their never ending uphill battle for superiority.
I forgot who came first, XM or Sirius, but I remember when I first heard about satellite radio a few years back, I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea on paper ("Radio beamed down from space?!? Madness!" and later, "......Ooooooohhh, on second thought, why the crap didn't I think of that?!?! First TapLights, now this?!?!?!"), and soon after, put it on my top-ten list of things to get after I could afford to, and in this case was old enough to, sign up for it. I turned 18 last October, and got a "Starmate Replay" Sirius receiver as a Christmas present from me to me because I'm always missing the Eagles and Steelers NFL games for one reason or another, and the commercial-free music was alright by me. Stern was, and still is, just the occasional icing on the cake to me. Seriously. I'm just not that heavily into Stern, and anyone who thinks people get Sirius only for hearing Howard's show.......... Well, okay, they're mostly right, according to the new subscriber numbers since January. But not all of us are SFN members, that's for sure.
..............Getting to the Bottom Line, though, Good luck to Oprah and XM. ...Oh yeah, and friends. From the looks of it, they'll sure need it. Sirius is about to start selling their first walk around, truly portable receiver unit, the Stiletto (yes, like the women's shoe), very soon, and The Sirius Store, aka "TSS Radio," is taking preorders on it as I type, but after all the dust settles from this radio war, you have to know that at some point, these companies are probably going to merge somehow. Heck, at this rate, by this time next year, Sirius will probably be making almost enough money to just buy XM out, and Oprah will just have to take her friends with her. All I'm saying is, watch your corporate news, people. All these companies merge eventually. ........But that's just me.
Later.
-D.
So I was watching Larry King on CNN last night, and he was talking with Oprah Winfrey "and friends" (read: "and business partners," I'll bet most of whom [except Gayle King of course], were purposely painted up as "friends" solely for the sake of having a catchy group name that rolls off the tongue better than "Oprah & Harpo Media Empire Business Partners"), and the topic of the hour was Oprah starting her own channel on Sirius' barely-a-threat satellite radio competitor XM last week. This means that those die-hard fans out there who REALLY need more than their 300 minutes a week Oprah fix now have an alternative, 24/7 fallback option, before, during and after the initial TV show to scratch that itch whenever the heck they want.
......................Ooooooooooookaaaaaaaaaayyy.........
Obviously, this move is nothing more than XM continuing to struggle to compete with Sirius by signing over their own really popular, high-profile celebrity, and reserve a channel on their lineup (channel 156, if you must know) exclusively for attempting to answer the million-dollar question: "How, oh how, do we compete with Howard Stern??" Personally, I've been on the satellite radio bandwagon for a while now; I've been a happy Sirius subscriber since December. It seems to me that there's just no end to the one-upsmanship XM is willing to stoop to in their never ending uphill battle for superiority.
I forgot who came first, XM or Sirius, but I remember when I first heard about satellite radio a few years back, I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea on paper ("Radio beamed down from space?!? Madness!" and later, "......Ooooooohhh, on second thought, why the crap didn't I think of that?!?! First TapLights, now this?!?!?!"), and soon after, put it on my top-ten list of things to get after I could afford to, and in this case was old enough to, sign up for it. I turned 18 last October, and got a "Starmate Replay" Sirius receiver as a Christmas present from me to me because I'm always missing the Eagles and Steelers NFL games for one reason or another, and the commercial-free music was alright by me. Stern was, and still is, just the occasional icing on the cake to me. Seriously. I'm just not that heavily into Stern, and anyone who thinks people get Sirius only for hearing Howard's show.......... Well, okay, they're mostly right, according to the new subscriber numbers since January. But not all of us are SFN members, that's for sure.
..............Getting to the Bottom Line, though, Good luck to Oprah and XM. ...Oh yeah, and friends. From the looks of it, they'll sure need it. Sirius is about to start selling their first walk around, truly portable receiver unit, the Stiletto (yes, like the women's shoe), very soon, and The Sirius Store, aka "TSS Radio," is taking preorders on it as I type, but after all the dust settles from this radio war, you have to know that at some point, these companies are probably going to merge somehow. Heck, at this rate, by this time next year, Sirius will probably be making almost enough money to just buy XM out, and Oprah will just have to take her friends with her. All I'm saying is, watch your corporate news, people. All these companies merge eventually. ........But that's just me.
Later.
-D.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Entry 28: "I Can't Believe It's Not Batman! ....Wait. Yes, I Can."
Yo!
Well kiddies, let's take another brief trip back in time to September, 1997. The WB network's then three-year-old "Kids' WB" Saturday morning program block kicked off another new season on-air, with as its most anticipated addition, aside from the "Men in Black" animated series (yes, for those who don't remember, there WAS a cartoon show based off the movie. Too bad it didn't last until season five, because the new season/second movie timing would've promoted each other beautifully, but that's another rant), was their new Superman animated series returning for its sophomore year, but this time being directly teamed up with a new Batman animated series being handled by most of Superman's creative and animation team, meaning the 30-minute Superman show was now an hour long "Batman/Superman Adventures" show.. This was hyped to be a sixty-minute DC Comics fanboy's orgasmic dream come true.... And it was for most of the first year... Until the Batman episodes started to lag in story quality and originality ("okay, we get it! The writers REALLY like writing Joker episodes!"), the Superman episodes were noticeably winding down in the last season (1999-2000), and they decided to cut the show down from an hour-long format Saturdays, to a half-hour hero-alternating weekday format, until "Batman/Superman"'s iminent doom in late August, 2000. God, I miss Fox's original Batman series (1992-1995)
September, 2004. After even MORE hype, WB launches Batman show number two, "The Batman." My first thought: "Okay, big deal. They added the word 'the' to the title of this show. The producers are billing this as the original 1992 animated series crossed with Batman Beyond. They better not screw this up." Then, "'The' Batman" "the" premieres, and "the" first thing that pops into "the" brain is "the" following: "Holy crap, I'm never going to get used to the word 'the' being used all the time like that. It's just too annoying and stupid." His name is Batman, not THE Batman, after all. Character designs from the old shows have been given a thorough redesign (read: brutally trashed and given a semi-Tim Burton makeover), and story content, while slightly better, just can't quite make up for the out-of-place visuals, the aforementioned awkward title, and the fact that the writers decided with this incarnation to wait until the third season (fourth, if you include the "real" second-season episodes they ran all through last summer to subtly push more publicity for Batman Begins), which just launched Saturday, to introduce Robin to the show. In the process of airing said episode, the first-half of Batman/Superman was officially reborn.
Also on Saturday, WB launched another new show that brought a teenage Superman back to the lineup, but this time with a little backup: the "Legion of Superheroes", a small group of teenage superheroes defending truth and justice and blah-blah-blah-blah, but in the distant future, with a bunch of enemies that certainly beats out the retardedly conceptualized abortions that are the villains from last year's it-sucks-and-everybody-knew-it "Loonatics Unleashed", which somehow survived to another season as well. Anyway, the pilot episode worked out well, I thought, with some promising hints at things to come. Not the best beginning for a Superman show, but far from the worst. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt this first season, but the story quality had better not start sinking steadily, or we'll have a problem. Good news is, as a fan, I'm willing to accept the change of setting, Mr. Kent's age-reduction, the fact that WB can't just use the name Superboy already (big lawsuit over that. Check Wikipedia.), and the all-too-convenient magical self-resizing of Clark's suit to fit his teenage self automatically, after he gets the suit out of a local Superman museum in said future, which shouldn't even exist since Clark was persuaded to come to the future, in the process rendering everything he would do as present-day Superman non-existent because that time-travel should have altered the timeline accordingly, but that's just the quantum physicist in me talking there. Anyway, thanks to the fact that WB paired this show's timeslot right before Bat--- sorry, "THE" Batman, the golden days (for me) of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini-era Batman/Superman shows are back and almost tolerable!
Bottom Line: "The" Batman gets three of five stars. Story quality and character dynamic is slightly improved here, because the fans have had some time to adjust to this new format. For me, though, it's still not really the same. At least, any Batman cartoon without Kevin Conroy voicing the bat just isn't right. Although he did do a cameo as Robin's dad in this episode, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Yeah, I know that's kinda nitpicky of me, and all things considered, Romano does do a pretty good job of delivering an appropriate voice for a Batman in his mid-twenties, but for me, that glaring voice change was the last straw. Rumor has it, this is the final season of the show, so production staff, don't make "Batman Gotham Knights" (the Batman half of Batman/Superman's formal title)'s mistake and let the show suffer death slowly and antagonize the fans because you're winding down. A show with the buildup it got, better have the ending it deserves, if for no other reason than it now, I believe, ties the original Batman cartoon's lifespan, and a cartoon show with that kind of tenure (considering it's WB) deserves a good finale. "Legion of Superheroes" gets three and three-quarter out of five stars. Overall interesting premise, good character designs, voice acting kinda flat, but I expect that to grow and keep a high quality quickly. If I'm supposed to buy this as a replacement for Teen Titans, you better fill those shoes darn well, production crew. And when this show ends, please. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, again, don't make the Titans' mistake and end the show with more loose ends than a shoelace put through a high-power blender for five minutes by letting the network air the piss-poor finale, unadvertised, on a Monday afternoon. .....But that's just me.
Sorry about the length again this week, guys. I just had a lot to say about this one. Form your own opinions by checking out both shows back to back, Batman/Superman-style, "Legion of Superheroes" at 10am, and "The Batman" at 10:30, EST, Saturdays, on whatever your local W--- ah, crap. Almost forgot. I mean, whatever your local CW network is. For a history lesson on what you probably missed, every Timm/Dini Superman and Batman animated series episode (including the "Batman/Superman" ones, of course, up to season two of Beyond) is currently available on full-season DVD sets. See ya next week.
-D.
Well kiddies, let's take another brief trip back in time to September, 1997. The WB network's then three-year-old "Kids' WB" Saturday morning program block kicked off another new season on-air, with as its most anticipated addition, aside from the "Men in Black" animated series (yes, for those who don't remember, there WAS a cartoon show based off the movie. Too bad it didn't last until season five, because the new season/second movie timing would've promoted each other beautifully, but that's another rant), was their new Superman animated series returning for its sophomore year, but this time being directly teamed up with a new Batman animated series being handled by most of Superman's creative and animation team, meaning the 30-minute Superman show was now an hour long "Batman/Superman Adventures" show.. This was hyped to be a sixty-minute DC Comics fanboy's orgasmic dream come true.... And it was for most of the first year... Until the Batman episodes started to lag in story quality and originality ("okay, we get it! The writers REALLY like writing Joker episodes!"), the Superman episodes were noticeably winding down in the last season (1999-2000), and they decided to cut the show down from an hour-long format Saturdays, to a half-hour hero-alternating weekday format, until "Batman/Superman"'s iminent doom in late August, 2000. God, I miss Fox's original Batman series (1992-1995)
September, 2004. After even MORE hype, WB launches Batman show number two, "The Batman." My first thought: "Okay, big deal. They added the word 'the' to the title of this show. The producers are billing this as the original 1992 animated series crossed with Batman Beyond. They better not screw this up." Then, "'The' Batman" "the" premieres, and "the" first thing that pops into "the" brain is "the" following: "Holy crap, I'm never going to get used to the word 'the' being used all the time like that. It's just too annoying and stupid." His name is Batman, not THE Batman, after all. Character designs from the old shows have been given a thorough redesign (read: brutally trashed and given a semi-Tim Burton makeover), and story content, while slightly better, just can't quite make up for the out-of-place visuals, the aforementioned awkward title, and the fact that the writers decided with this incarnation to wait until the third season (fourth, if you include the "real" second-season episodes they ran all through last summer to subtly push more publicity for Batman Begins), which just launched Saturday, to introduce Robin to the show. In the process of airing said episode, the first-half of Batman/Superman was officially reborn.
Also on Saturday, WB launched another new show that brought a teenage Superman back to the lineup, but this time with a little backup: the "Legion of Superheroes", a small group of teenage superheroes defending truth and justice and blah-blah-blah-blah, but in the distant future, with a bunch of enemies that certainly beats out the retardedly conceptualized abortions that are the villains from last year's it-sucks-and-everybody-knew-it "Loonatics Unleashed", which somehow survived to another season as well. Anyway, the pilot episode worked out well, I thought, with some promising hints at things to come. Not the best beginning for a Superman show, but far from the worst. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt this first season, but the story quality had better not start sinking steadily, or we'll have a problem. Good news is, as a fan, I'm willing to accept the change of setting, Mr. Kent's age-reduction, the fact that WB can't just use the name Superboy already (big lawsuit over that. Check Wikipedia.), and the all-too-convenient magical self-resizing of Clark's suit to fit his teenage self automatically, after he gets the suit out of a local Superman museum in said future, which shouldn't even exist since Clark was persuaded to come to the future, in the process rendering everything he would do as present-day Superman non-existent because that time-travel should have altered the timeline accordingly, but that's just the quantum physicist in me talking there. Anyway, thanks to the fact that WB paired this show's timeslot right before Bat--- sorry, "THE" Batman, the golden days (for me) of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini-era Batman/Superman shows are back and almost tolerable!
Bottom Line: "The" Batman gets three of five stars. Story quality and character dynamic is slightly improved here, because the fans have had some time to adjust to this new format. For me, though, it's still not really the same. At least, any Batman cartoon without Kevin Conroy voicing the bat just isn't right. Although he did do a cameo as Robin's dad in this episode, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Yeah, I know that's kinda nitpicky of me, and all things considered, Romano does do a pretty good job of delivering an appropriate voice for a Batman in his mid-twenties, but for me, that glaring voice change was the last straw. Rumor has it, this is the final season of the show, so production staff, don't make "Batman Gotham Knights" (the Batman half of Batman/Superman's formal title)'s mistake and let the show suffer death slowly and antagonize the fans because you're winding down. A show with the buildup it got, better have the ending it deserves, if for no other reason than it now, I believe, ties the original Batman cartoon's lifespan, and a cartoon show with that kind of tenure (considering it's WB) deserves a good finale. "Legion of Superheroes" gets three and three-quarter out of five stars. Overall interesting premise, good character designs, voice acting kinda flat, but I expect that to grow and keep a high quality quickly. If I'm supposed to buy this as a replacement for Teen Titans, you better fill those shoes darn well, production crew. And when this show ends, please. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, again, don't make the Titans' mistake and end the show with more loose ends than a shoelace put through a high-power blender for five minutes by letting the network air the piss-poor finale, unadvertised, on a Monday afternoon. .....But that's just me.
Sorry about the length again this week, guys. I just had a lot to say about this one. Form your own opinions by checking out both shows back to back, Batman/Superman-style, "Legion of Superheroes" at 10am, and "The Batman" at 10:30, EST, Saturdays, on whatever your local W--- ah, crap. Almost forgot. I mean, whatever your local CW network is. For a history lesson on what you probably missed, every Timm/Dini Superman and Batman animated series episode (including the "Batman/Superman" ones, of course, up to season two of Beyond) is currently available on full-season DVD sets. See ya next week.
-D.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Entry 27: "The Land of the Fallen Son"
Yo!
I'm really tired of hearing about Daniel Smith's mysterious death last week. In case you haven't been paying attention to the news AT ALL lately, Daniel is the 20-year-old son of former Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith. He died last Sunday, the 10th, in the Bahamas, in the very same hospital room where his mother was recuperating from giving birth to his baby sister just three days earlier. Anna is currently (understandably) extremely depressed and in mourning while simultaneously taking care of her new baby. On top of the fact that Anna has yet to publicly reveal who the father of child #2 is, the cause of Daniel's death has yet to be determined, or at least yet to be publicly released.
My gripe about this is, again, you couldn't turn to any news outlet at all last week without getting some serious recapping and perspectives and conjecture surrounding this death. My stance is, could the media possibly have made a bigger deal of this? I mean.... okay, I understand that it was an extreme tragedy that this death happened, and my condolences to Anna Nicole and her family, but seriously. The way the TV media and the internet over-covered this story, you'd almost swear it was a presidential assassination. I can't wait until the results of the second or third (I lost count) autopsy's results are made public, so then the spinning can REALLY begin. I can hear the various questions now:
"Where did he get all those drugs from?"
"How long has this been happening?"
"Did anyone in his family know about this?"
"What kind of evidence did the forensics guys recover?"
"Have the authorities found a suspect yet?"
"When's the trial??"
Bottom Line: Okay, I'll try very hard to avoid making this week's BL turn into an improvised eulogy-type...... Um... thing. Anyway, like I said, it's an extremely unexpected bomb to drop on a new (second-time-over) mother, and my condolences go out to Anna Nicole and family. But please, news media. Exercise restraint and show just a little tact and learn when to stop milking the living crap out of a story, just because of how big and high-profile you think it is. ...But that's just me. Okay, enough preaching to the choir. That's all. I'm outta here.
Later.
-D.
I'm really tired of hearing about Daniel Smith's mysterious death last week. In case you haven't been paying attention to the news AT ALL lately, Daniel is the 20-year-old son of former Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith. He died last Sunday, the 10th, in the Bahamas, in the very same hospital room where his mother was recuperating from giving birth to his baby sister just three days earlier. Anna is currently (understandably) extremely depressed and in mourning while simultaneously taking care of her new baby. On top of the fact that Anna has yet to publicly reveal who the father of child #2 is, the cause of Daniel's death has yet to be determined, or at least yet to be publicly released.
My gripe about this is, again, you couldn't turn to any news outlet at all last week without getting some serious recapping and perspectives and conjecture surrounding this death. My stance is, could the media possibly have made a bigger deal of this? I mean.... okay, I understand that it was an extreme tragedy that this death happened, and my condolences to Anna Nicole and her family, but seriously. The way the TV media and the internet over-covered this story, you'd almost swear it was a presidential assassination. I can't wait until the results of the second or third (I lost count) autopsy's results are made public, so then the spinning can REALLY begin. I can hear the various questions now:
"Where did he get all those drugs from?"
"How long has this been happening?"
"Did anyone in his family know about this?"
"What kind of evidence did the forensics guys recover?"
"Have the authorities found a suspect yet?"
"When's the trial??"
Bottom Line: Okay, I'll try very hard to avoid making this week's BL turn into an improvised eulogy-type...... Um... thing. Anyway, like I said, it's an extremely unexpected bomb to drop on a new (second-time-over) mother, and my condolences go out to Anna Nicole and family. But please, news media. Exercise restraint and show just a little tact and learn when to stop milking the living crap out of a story, just because of how big and high-profile you think it is. ...But that's just me. Okay, enough preaching to the choir. That's all. I'm outta here.
Later.
-D.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Entry 26: "This Is The Anime That Never Ends..."
Yo!
Okay, four things: Thing #1, I noticed last week that the BTJM Blog's 500th page view happened, and I want to quickly thank all my visitors and regular readers who've been putting up with me over the last six months. Thing #2, apparently, today marks the five-year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost family and/or loved ones as a result of the events of that morning. Thing #3, please excuse my lateness again with this Blog. My laptop's on the fritz again, and I completely forgot my timeframe while recovering my files. Hey, any of you ever heard of or seen a virus or something that causes your entire screen to do this northern lights-ish effect and slowly turn the screen white, top to bottom? Anyway, I'll be back in top form next week.
Moving on, starting two days ago, all brand-new season nine Pokemon episodes are airing only on Cartoon Network, which thoroughly screws over the loyal fans who kept the show going all this time, even when it was syndicated in those early season one episodes, early weekday mornings (memories..... light the corners of my mind.....). I'll say right off the bat that The Pokemon Company (henceforth known here as "PokeComp") already did a heck of a job improving the former 4Kids voices over the abysmal "preview" that was the Mirage special that aired this Spring. Max, Jessie and Wobbuffet are almost spot-on impersonations of the 4Kids cast we all know and love, but they're not bad enough to not be able to get past over time. Keep it up. Meowth and Ash are almost as hilariously off as the Mirage actors. Change the voice tone, please. Hey, new guys! When you're fixing your voices for those two, just ask yourselves: "What would Blaustein and Taylor do...?", rent a couple of their Poke-movies, and deliver the voices right. Period. Brock and May are vast improvements, considering how constipated and old (respectively) they sounded in Mirage. James and Pikachu are in pretty much the same boat Meowth and Ash are in. Except they're not really THAT bad. Just change the voices a little bit more, and we'll talk. But not too much. I hate watching history repeat itself.
Story content this go-round, I'd say is about season four- or seven-caliber, meaning us true regular viewers can easily tell these are just filler stories just before yet another major tournament Ash will no doubt lose-- Oops! Sorry, I almost slipped into an old rant for a second there! But seriously, PokeComp. tell your writing/translating staff to step it up. If you expect us to accept the new cast, new timeslot, new supporting Pokemon cast changes (James' Chimeco is gone?!?!? .........eh.), and even the new network, we expect a positive tradeoff. Make the switch worthwhile, and don't you dare try forcing another "Mystery Of The Mirage Pokemon" special on us. The U.S. market that helped build you up to where you are now deserves better than that. And please... Let Ash win one stinkin' championship. The Orange League victory cup from September 2000 is collecting some serious dust.
....And then there was Yu-Gi-Oh. It ended on Kids WB on June 1, and I was relatively fine with that... but then I saw the atrociously patched together resurrection effort that is "Capsule Monsters." (*stomach grumbles from sickness relating to mere mention of the spinoff show. Also, long and wordy explanations.) That's all I can stand writing about that without losing my lunch. .............Again. Read ToonZone's advance review HERE for more on that show. Bottom Line: Pokemon: 3/5 Stars. Good, but not great. Step up the quality, or the fans will stop watching. There'd better be a FullMetal Alchemist Movie-esque quality ending at some point, and if this winds up ending prematurely because you wouldn't get your stuff together, PokeComp, and we have to download out subbed (subtitled Japanese) episodes from torrents because you wouldn't step up enough so CN wouldn't cancel the show, we'll be really pissed off. ...Well, at least that's just me... Yu-Gi-Oh: 1/5 Stars. Nice try, 4Kids, but........ no. If you at home want to form your own opinion, "Pokemon: Battle Frontier" airs Saturdays, 9:30am on Cartoon Network, and "Yu-Gi-Oh: Capsule Monsters" is Saturdays at 10am on whatever your local Fox affiliate is.
See ya next Monday!
-D.
P.S. I almost forgot Thing #4: This week's title pun, in case you didn't catch it, parodies "The Song That Never Ends" from Shari Lewis' "Lamb Chop's Play Along" puppet show last seen on PBS in the early '90s.
Okay, four things: Thing #1, I noticed last week that the BTJM Blog's 500th page view happened, and I want to quickly thank all my visitors and regular readers who've been putting up with me over the last six months. Thing #2, apparently, today marks the five-year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost family and/or loved ones as a result of the events of that morning. Thing #3, please excuse my lateness again with this Blog. My laptop's on the fritz again, and I completely forgot my timeframe while recovering my files. Hey, any of you ever heard of or seen a virus or something that causes your entire screen to do this northern lights-ish effect and slowly turn the screen white, top to bottom? Anyway, I'll be back in top form next week.
Moving on, starting two days ago, all brand-new season nine Pokemon episodes are airing only on Cartoon Network, which thoroughly screws over the loyal fans who kept the show going all this time, even when it was syndicated in those early season one episodes, early weekday mornings (memories..... light the corners of my mind.....). I'll say right off the bat that The Pokemon Company (henceforth known here as "PokeComp") already did a heck of a job improving the former 4Kids voices over the abysmal "preview" that was the Mirage special that aired this Spring. Max, Jessie and Wobbuffet are almost spot-on impersonations of the 4Kids cast we all know and love, but they're not bad enough to not be able to get past over time. Keep it up. Meowth and Ash are almost as hilariously off as the Mirage actors. Change the voice tone, please. Hey, new guys! When you're fixing your voices for those two, just ask yourselves: "What would Blaustein and Taylor do...?", rent a couple of their Poke-movies, and deliver the voices right. Period. Brock and May are vast improvements, considering how constipated and old (respectively) they sounded in Mirage. James and Pikachu are in pretty much the same boat Meowth and Ash are in. Except they're not really THAT bad. Just change the voices a little bit more, and we'll talk. But not too much. I hate watching history repeat itself.
Story content this go-round, I'd say is about season four- or seven-caliber, meaning us true regular viewers can easily tell these are just filler stories just before yet another major tournament Ash will no doubt lose-- Oops! Sorry, I almost slipped into an old rant for a second there! But seriously, PokeComp. tell your writing/translating staff to step it up. If you expect us to accept the new cast, new timeslot, new supporting Pokemon cast changes (James' Chimeco is gone?!?!? .........eh.), and even the new network, we expect a positive tradeoff. Make the switch worthwhile, and don't you dare try forcing another "Mystery Of The Mirage Pokemon" special on us. The U.S. market that helped build you up to where you are now deserves better than that. And please... Let Ash win one stinkin' championship. The Orange League victory cup from September 2000 is collecting some serious dust.
....And then there was Yu-Gi-Oh. It ended on Kids WB on June 1, and I was relatively fine with that... but then I saw the atrociously patched together resurrection effort that is "Capsule Monsters." (*stomach grumbles from sickness relating to mere mention of the spinoff show. Also, long and wordy explanations.) That's all I can stand writing about that without losing my lunch. .............Again. Read ToonZone's advance review HERE for more on that show. Bottom Line: Pokemon: 3/5 Stars. Good, but not great. Step up the quality, or the fans will stop watching. There'd better be a FullMetal Alchemist Movie-esque quality ending at some point, and if this winds up ending prematurely because you wouldn't get your stuff together, PokeComp, and we have to download out subbed (subtitled Japanese) episodes from torrents because you wouldn't step up enough so CN wouldn't cancel the show, we'll be really pissed off. ...Well, at least that's just me... Yu-Gi-Oh: 1/5 Stars. Nice try, 4Kids, but........ no. If you at home want to form your own opinion, "Pokemon: Battle Frontier" airs Saturdays, 9:30am on Cartoon Network, and "Yu-Gi-Oh: Capsule Monsters" is Saturdays at 10am on whatever your local Fox affiliate is.
See ya next Monday!
-D.
P.S. I almost forgot Thing #4: This week's title pun, in case you didn't catch it, parodies "The Song That Never Ends" from Shari Lewis' "Lamb Chop's Play Along" puppet show last seen on PBS in the early '90s.
Monday, September 4, 2006
Entry 25: "U.S. Open for Business"
Yo!
1987. The Sul America Open tennis competition in All Saint's Bay's Itaparica island, near Salvador. A then-unknown Andre Agassi would win his first top-level singles title there, barely a year after turning professional. Age 17 at the time, he wasn't even old enough to get drafted into the Armed Forces. The beginning of a sports legend. 2006. September 3rd. Round three of the 2006 U.S. Open. Agassi loses to Benjamin Becker, a former (read: 2004) NCAA Men's Singles Tennis Champion. A very appropriate standing ovation roars out from the audience. Agassi's goodbye speech:
"The scoreboard says I lost today, but what scoreboard doesn't say is what it is I have found. Over the last 21 years I have found loyalty; you have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I have found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I have found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams; dreams I could never have reached without you. Over the the last 21 years I have found you and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life."
I'm not into tennis very much, but this is the first time I can say with all certainty that I tuned in to a match willingly, without looking in on a game my mom was watching at the time, paid attention to and Iwas genuinely excited and enjoyed witnessing it. Even though the only game I managed to see this year so far was Agassi's 1st round match against Andrei Pavel of Romania last Monday night. Yes, I missed Agassi's retirement match yesterday. But that 1st round match was sure one heck of a way to start a tournament!
Anyway, hands-down, this has to be one of the more eventful Opens in recent years. ...Or at least that's what my mom tells me. ...Mainly because of Agassi's retirement. Being a big fan of the Williams sisters, she's way more into tennis than me. She also tells me that one of the players to watch this year is James Blake, who currently ranks #7 on the official U.S. Open website's Top 20 Players page (men and women) seen HERE... Could be something big there......But that's just me.
Bottom Line: Mr. Agassi, professional tennis won't really be the same without you. Good luck in the future, and thanks for the memories. If you readers want to catch some of this action for yourselves, apparently USA is doing the bulk of the cable TV coverage (if not all of it). Also, the Open tournament ends on the 10th. Next week on the BTJM Blog... My final verdict on the Post-Kids' WB Pokemon..... and Yu-Gi-Oh episodes..............
SYNM! See Ya Next Monday!
-D.
1987. The Sul America Open tennis competition in All Saint's Bay's Itaparica island, near Salvador. A then-unknown Andre Agassi would win his first top-level singles title there, barely a year after turning professional. Age 17 at the time, he wasn't even old enough to get drafted into the Armed Forces. The beginning of a sports legend. 2006. September 3rd. Round three of the 2006 U.S. Open. Agassi loses to Benjamin Becker, a former (read: 2004) NCAA Men's Singles Tennis Champion. A very appropriate standing ovation roars out from the audience. Agassi's goodbye speech:
"The scoreboard says I lost today, but what scoreboard doesn't say is what it is I have found. Over the last 21 years I have found loyalty; you have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I have found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I have found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams; dreams I could never have reached without you. Over the the last 21 years I have found you and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life."
I'm not into tennis very much, but this is the first time I can say with all certainty that I tuned in to a match willingly, without looking in on a game my mom was watching at the time, paid attention to and Iwas genuinely excited and enjoyed witnessing it. Even though the only game I managed to see this year so far was Agassi's 1st round match against Andrei Pavel of Romania last Monday night. Yes, I missed Agassi's retirement match yesterday. But that 1st round match was sure one heck of a way to start a tournament!
Anyway, hands-down, this has to be one of the more eventful Opens in recent years. ...Or at least that's what my mom tells me. ...Mainly because of Agassi's retirement. Being a big fan of the Williams sisters, she's way more into tennis than me. She also tells me that one of the players to watch this year is James Blake, who currently ranks #7 on the official U.S. Open website's Top 20 Players page (men and women) seen HERE... Could be something big there......But that's just me.
Bottom Line: Mr. Agassi, professional tennis won't really be the same without you. Good luck in the future, and thanks for the memories. If you readers want to catch some of this action for yourselves, apparently USA is doing the bulk of the cable TV coverage (if not all of it). Also, the Open tournament ends on the 10th. Next week on the BTJM Blog... My final verdict on the Post-Kids' WB Pokemon..... and Yu-Gi-Oh episodes..............
SYNM! See Ya Next Monday!
-D.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Entry 24: "CW Run. Run, W, Run."
Yo!
Yeah, I really need to work on thinking up funnier titles. ....Anyway, hands-down, among the top chatter this week is the ever-increasing hype about both new syndicated network TV channels, replacing The WB and UPN: The CW, and MyNetworkTV. Apparently, The CW will be replacing both The WB and UPN simultaneously, serving as a near-perfect fusion of the two networks (Show of hands, who seriously thought this time two years ago that eventually Smallville and Veronica Mars would be on the same channel? Yup, I didn't think so.), while MyNetworkTV will be shown on the former WB/UPN channels that don't become The CW next week. Example: In Los Angeles, MyNetworkTV will be taking over former UPN channel 13, while the CW will be dominating what once was WB's KTLA, channel 5.
What surprises me the most about this merger isn't the selected programs between WB and UPN that will be renewed and carried over to the CW, despite certain programs' threat of cancellation constantly looming, yet never striking fully (C'mon, Brenda Hampton, just let 7th Heaven die already!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but rather what's happening with MyNetworkTV. As you can easily tell from their official site, HERE, the only thing these guys have going for them, I found out from another website because they don't have a full zip code-searchable schedule on the official site yet, is the 22 hours a day of syndicated programs. Which basically means the 48 contiguous United States at least (I'm not sure about Alaska and Hawaii) will be given a complete grab bag of programs practically at random, with almost every MNTV outlet getting a different set of programs in near-constant rotation. All day. Every day. Not an ounce of decent originality in sight.
Speaking of, the only original programming these guys have happens to be a pair of ripped-from-Univision primetime soap operas, "Desire" and "Fashion House." Go on, I triple-dog-dare you to tell the discernable differences apart. If this is the kind of pompous drivel we'll have no choice but to expect from the sister company of MySpace, of all things (yes, THIS MySpace.), I can't help but believe that this'll be one more nail in the coffin of network television in general as we know it.
Bottom Line: If this is supposed to be a decently competing alternative to cable TV, frankly, I'm not impressed. The CW is renewing crap that doesn't need renewing (Except Smallville, Everybody Hates Chris and Supernatural. I'm happy about that. Also, I'm hearing good things about this year's Veronica Mars...), and MyNetworkTV doesn't even have an animation block! Just syndicated sitcoms and dramas all the time! Personally, I'm betting on most of the major broadcast networks dying out when everything goes exclusively Hi-Def. Even then, it'll only be a matter of time before the only burning question won't be "CSI" or "Law & Order" anymore. 'Cause their native networks will be dead as the dodo. Besides, Spike and TNT handles those two syndicated shows, respectively, just fine. ....But that's just me. Any thoughts/comments on this, readers...?
See ya next Monday!
-D.
Yeah, I really need to work on thinking up funnier titles. ....Anyway, hands-down, among the top chatter this week is the ever-increasing hype about both new syndicated network TV channels, replacing The WB and UPN: The CW, and MyNetworkTV. Apparently, The CW will be replacing both The WB and UPN simultaneously, serving as a near-perfect fusion of the two networks (Show of hands, who seriously thought this time two years ago that eventually Smallville and Veronica Mars would be on the same channel? Yup, I didn't think so.), while MyNetworkTV will be shown on the former WB/UPN channels that don't become The CW next week. Example: In Los Angeles, MyNetworkTV will be taking over former UPN channel 13, while the CW will be dominating what once was WB's KTLA, channel 5.
What surprises me the most about this merger isn't the selected programs between WB and UPN that will be renewed and carried over to the CW, despite certain programs' threat of cancellation constantly looming, yet never striking fully (C'mon, Brenda Hampton, just let 7th Heaven die already!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but rather what's happening with MyNetworkTV. As you can easily tell from their official site, HERE, the only thing these guys have going for them, I found out from another website because they don't have a full zip code-searchable schedule on the official site yet, is the 22 hours a day of syndicated programs. Which basically means the 48 contiguous United States at least (I'm not sure about Alaska and Hawaii) will be given a complete grab bag of programs practically at random, with almost every MNTV outlet getting a different set of programs in near-constant rotation. All day. Every day. Not an ounce of decent originality in sight.
Speaking of, the only original programming these guys have happens to be a pair of ripped-from-Univision primetime soap operas, "Desire" and "Fashion House." Go on, I triple-dog-dare you to tell the discernable differences apart. If this is the kind of pompous drivel we'll have no choice but to expect from the sister company of MySpace, of all things (yes, THIS MySpace.), I can't help but believe that this'll be one more nail in the coffin of network television in general as we know it.
Bottom Line: If this is supposed to be a decently competing alternative to cable TV, frankly, I'm not impressed. The CW is renewing crap that doesn't need renewing (Except Smallville, Everybody Hates Chris and Supernatural. I'm happy about that. Also, I'm hearing good things about this year's Veronica Mars...), and MyNetworkTV doesn't even have an animation block! Just syndicated sitcoms and dramas all the time! Personally, I'm betting on most of the major broadcast networks dying out when everything goes exclusively Hi-Def. Even then, it'll only be a matter of time before the only burning question won't be "CSI" or "Law & Order" anymore. 'Cause their native networks will be dead as the dodo. Besides, Spike and TNT handles those two syndicated shows, respectively, just fine. ....But that's just me. Any thoughts/comments on this, readers...?
See ya next Monday!
-D.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Entry 23: "When You Wish Upon A Stargate..."
Yo!
Well, well, well. Apparently, the series MacGyver helped build just celebrated its WELL WORTH TAPING 200th episode last week, which officially cemented its well-deserved place next to "The X-Files" and "Star Trek"as one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Period. Furthermore, because of the series' continually high ratings and popularity, even during the past year, despite certain cast replacements (Thanks Browder and Bridges, for not ruining the show!!!), there are rumors running rampant around the internet right now that a second and THIRD Stargate movie will come to fruition... Except the sequels will reportedly be taking the Superman Returns route and completely ignore the more recent incarnations of the franchise (read: SG-1 and Atlantis) in favor of picking things up right where Kurt Russell and James Spader left off back in '94... By getting Russel and Spader to come back and pick up where they left off personally! Meaning NO LEAD REPLACEMENTS IN THE SEQUELS!!!
And here we were supposed to be under the assumption that SG-1 was supposed to be the "sequel." A 10 year long, extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely dragged-out version of what should've been a real theatrical sequel, but a follow-up nonetheless. Okay, first off, if the rumors are true, and by this time in 2010 we'll have a full Stargate Trilogy on our hands, where does that leave SG-1? Are we, the fans, supposed to instantly shelve that alongside "Lion King 1.5" as the dweeby younger sibling, or "in-between-quel", as it were, of the entire Stargate franchise? And don't even get me started on Atlantis. The instant I heard about SciFi making that show, I immediately knew it was the beginning of the original franchise creators trying to make up for approving Infinity.
I suppose if this does happen, here's hoping that SciFi won't do what Fox is supposedly about to do with The Simpsons: Make a movie, and pull the plug on the series. Not that I'm complaining about the cancellation of the series, mind you. How that show is existing post-1998, I'll never know. I'm just trying to create an analogy here. Also, if SciFi does end SG-1 because of the new movie(s), they better find a way to squeeze at least a couple more seasons past this point in the show before they cancel it. because as big and bad as these newer, post-Richard Dean Anderson episodes claim these "Ori" villains to be, that might dampen their massively evil image in the eyes of the show fans just a bit. Please, SciFi. At least stretch this to Season 12.
Think about it. It took seven years for SG-1 to dispose of Ra (also the villain from the movie, no less) once and for all, and to have a story arc that's strikingly reminiscent of the current conflict in Iraq (supposedly, it's America vs. The Evil, Oppressive Autocracy That Kills Thousands In The Name Of Religion, last time I checked Fox News) go from start to finish in less than half the time it took Ra and the Goa'uld to go down, that just seems a tad anticlimactic to me. Bottom Line: SG-1 show crew, I hope you guys know what you're doing. The way you guys have been building up to the inevitable end of the Ori, and the entire show, the finale had better not have a cheap ending. Especially if the movie sequel reports are right, because we, the fans, won't buy, or be able to buy, a copout excuse of "Everything'll be explained/wrapped up with the new movies." I don't think that's a very appropriate send-off/thank-you to the fans that supported you for so long. ...But that's just me. Anyway, readers, what do you think about this situation? As always, comments and kudos are more than welcome... That's all for now, though. 'Til next time...
Later!
-D.
Well, well, well. Apparently, the series MacGyver helped build just celebrated its WELL WORTH TAPING 200th episode last week, which officially cemented its well-deserved place next to "The X-Files" and "Star Trek"as one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Period. Furthermore, because of the series' continually high ratings and popularity, even during the past year, despite certain cast replacements (Thanks Browder and Bridges, for not ruining the show!!!), there are rumors running rampant around the internet right now that a second and THIRD Stargate movie will come to fruition... Except the sequels will reportedly be taking the Superman Returns route and completely ignore the more recent incarnations of the franchise (read: SG-1 and Atlantis) in favor of picking things up right where Kurt Russell and James Spader left off back in '94... By getting Russel and Spader to come back and pick up where they left off personally! Meaning NO LEAD REPLACEMENTS IN THE SEQUELS!!!
And here we were supposed to be under the assumption that SG-1 was supposed to be the "sequel." A 10 year long, extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely dragged-out version of what should've been a real theatrical sequel, but a follow-up nonetheless. Okay, first off, if the rumors are true, and by this time in 2010 we'll have a full Stargate Trilogy on our hands, where does that leave SG-1? Are we, the fans, supposed to instantly shelve that alongside "Lion King 1.5" as the dweeby younger sibling, or "in-between-quel", as it were, of the entire Stargate franchise? And don't even get me started on Atlantis. The instant I heard about SciFi making that show, I immediately knew it was the beginning of the original franchise creators trying to make up for approving Infinity.
I suppose if this does happen, here's hoping that SciFi won't do what Fox is supposedly about to do with The Simpsons: Make a movie, and pull the plug on the series. Not that I'm complaining about the cancellation of the series, mind you. How that show is existing post-1998, I'll never know. I'm just trying to create an analogy here. Also, if SciFi does end SG-1 because of the new movie(s), they better find a way to squeeze at least a couple more seasons past this point in the show before they cancel it. because as big and bad as these newer, post-Richard Dean Anderson episodes claim these "Ori" villains to be, that might dampen their massively evil image in the eyes of the show fans just a bit. Please, SciFi. At least stretch this to Season 12.
Think about it. It took seven years for SG-1 to dispose of Ra (also the villain from the movie, no less) once and for all, and to have a story arc that's strikingly reminiscent of the current conflict in Iraq (supposedly, it's America vs. The Evil, Oppressive Autocracy That Kills Thousands In The Name Of Religion, last time I checked Fox News) go from start to finish in less than half the time it took Ra and the Goa'uld to go down, that just seems a tad anticlimactic to me. Bottom Line: SG-1 show crew, I hope you guys know what you're doing. The way you guys have been building up to the inevitable end of the Ori, and the entire show, the finale had better not have a cheap ending. Especially if the movie sequel reports are right, because we, the fans, won't buy, or be able to buy, a copout excuse of "Everything'll be explained/wrapped up with the new movies." I don't think that's a very appropriate send-off/thank-you to the fans that supported you for so long. ...But that's just me. Anyway, readers, what do you think about this situation? As always, comments and kudos are more than welcome... That's all for now, though. 'Til next time...
Later!
-D.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Entry 22: "Oh Podcast, Where Art Thou?"
Yo!
SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! It seems to me that the good quality audio podcasts are getting more and more scarce, not in terms of general quality, but in terms of regularity, as far as releasing them on a schedule. Those of you who regularly use podcasts know what I'm talking about here, no doubt. Apparently, either these guys are all really super-busy around late summertime, or they're starting to slack off.
In case you don't know, "podcasting" is a special kind of blog, like this one you're reading right now, my "BTJM" Monday blog, but in a special spoken-word audio format: MP3. MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group [class 1] (or MPEG-1), Layer 3 Audio, which is an extremely popular and common audio format used by millions of people to store lots of music without taking up a lot of space on their computers, and due to the varying audio quality rates, or "bitrates", people can choose to copy, or "rip" songs off of their existing CD collection onto their computers with a diverse choice of bitrate between a very low bitrate (which produces a very low filesize, taking up much less space on your computer), or a high bitrate (producing significantly better sound quality, but getting a very high filesize in the process). The most commonly used bitrate currently is arguably 128 Kbps (Kilobits per second; 128,000 "bits" of audio information copied from original audio source per second. Pretty good sound, depending on content).
As far as where the format came from, back in the early '90s, a group of European engineers were tinkering around with special hardware and software in a special digital radio research program, and eventually discovered several different file formats alongside MP3, including MPEG-Layer 1 and 2, and used different compression programs to find one bitrate compression method and file format that would work well with large audio files and require very minimal hard drive space and computational power (remember, this is circa 1990. Hard drive capacities were less than half a CD's worth back then), and used the song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, because of its softness and simplicity, to hear imperfections in the resulting audio test files easier. Guess which one came out on top. Because of this, some people (read: the Wikipedia community) sometimes refer to Vega as "the mother of MP3."
Also, "podcast" is a phrase coined by Apple Computer, meaning when people produce audio recordings of themselves talking about different topics for varying time lengths, usually from 30 minutes (roughly 25-28MB of 128Kbps MP3, or 4 percent of a CD) to an hour (50-60MB, 8 percent of a CD), then submitting it to Apple's iTunes Podcast store (which isn't the only source of podcasts anymore. More on that in a second). iTunes users would then download the audio files ("podcasts"), for free, and (ideally) play them in either their computer, or Apple's iPod MP3 device, hence the term "PODcasts". There's another couple file formats, M4V (basically MP3s with embedded pictures, or iTunes TV Show downloads use this file extension too) and MP4/MPEG-4 video, which are used for VIDEO podcasting, but that's another blog entry.
Phew! Now that this week's little history lesson is out of the way, those of you still awake and reading can enjoy the real rant. I don't know what the heck is going on lately, but it seems a lot of people are taking the last couple of months or so off from sticking to their own weekly or biweekly podcasts, or at least the ones I listen to, and I'm not talking about the iTunes users. Websites like IGN, GameSpot and TV.com alll have podcast shows I personally subscribe to and listen to regularly, thanks to my PlayStation Portable (Thank you, Firmware 2.60!), and The Podcast Network has gobs of categorized podcast content you can listen to as well, as does Yahoo! Podcasts Beta, but the underlying problem again is consistency.
Case in point: TV.com's guys haven't done anything since July 6th, and they haven't updated their RSS feed (for Really Simple Syndication readers like My Yahoo and NewsGator, and Firmware 2.60 PSPs, of course) since May 25th! Another one I use, ToonZone.com, hasn't done jack since June 1st! Maybe it's just these TV-related sites that are really getting lax, though, because most of the others are fairly regular. Well, except for Podcast Network's "The PSP Show". (Hey, Ewan Spence! July 18th is long gone! What's the deal???) Maybe they're just waiting until the September Fall stuff starts before they come back. But the fact that they don't even say they're going on hiatus sends up a red flag to me. Bottom Line: Hey, TV Podcasters! If Thanksgiving rolls around and your early-mid summer stuff is still "current", we're gonna have a problem here. Please get with (your) program and don't leave your listeners hanging! As for you other, more consistent podcasters out there, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Just please give some advance notice before you go on a 90 day mini-sabbatical. .......But that's just me.
See you next Monday!
-D.
SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! SPECIAL TOPIC ALERT! It seems to me that the good quality audio podcasts are getting more and more scarce, not in terms of general quality, but in terms of regularity, as far as releasing them on a schedule. Those of you who regularly use podcasts know what I'm talking about here, no doubt. Apparently, either these guys are all really super-busy around late summertime, or they're starting to slack off.
In case you don't know, "podcasting" is a special kind of blog, like this one you're reading right now, my "BTJM" Monday blog, but in a special spoken-word audio format: MP3. MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group [class 1] (or MPEG-1), Layer 3 Audio, which is an extremely popular and common audio format used by millions of people to store lots of music without taking up a lot of space on their computers, and due to the varying audio quality rates, or "bitrates", people can choose to copy, or "rip" songs off of their existing CD collection onto their computers with a diverse choice of bitrate between a very low bitrate (which produces a very low filesize, taking up much less space on your computer), or a high bitrate (producing significantly better sound quality, but getting a very high filesize in the process). The most commonly used bitrate currently is arguably 128 Kbps (Kilobits per second; 128,000 "bits" of audio information copied from original audio source per second. Pretty good sound, depending on content).
As far as where the format came from, back in the early '90s, a group of European engineers were tinkering around with special hardware and software in a special digital radio research program, and eventually discovered several different file formats alongside MP3, including MPEG-Layer 1 and 2, and used different compression programs to find one bitrate compression method and file format that would work well with large audio files and require very minimal hard drive space and computational power (remember, this is circa 1990. Hard drive capacities were less than half a CD's worth back then), and used the song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega, because of its softness and simplicity, to hear imperfections in the resulting audio test files easier. Guess which one came out on top. Because of this, some people (read: the Wikipedia community) sometimes refer to Vega as "the mother of MP3."
Also, "podcast" is a phrase coined by Apple Computer, meaning when people produce audio recordings of themselves talking about different topics for varying time lengths, usually from 30 minutes (roughly 25-28MB of 128Kbps MP3, or 4 percent of a CD) to an hour (50-60MB, 8 percent of a CD), then submitting it to Apple's iTunes Podcast store (which isn't the only source of podcasts anymore. More on that in a second). iTunes users would then download the audio files ("podcasts"), for free, and (ideally) play them in either their computer, or Apple's iPod MP3 device, hence the term "PODcasts". There's another couple file formats, M4V (basically MP3s with embedded pictures, or iTunes TV Show downloads use this file extension too) and MP4/MPEG-4 video, which are used for VIDEO podcasting, but that's another blog entry.
Phew! Now that this week's little history lesson is out of the way, those of you still awake and reading can enjoy the real rant. I don't know what the heck is going on lately, but it seems a lot of people are taking the last couple of months or so off from sticking to their own weekly or biweekly podcasts, or at least the ones I listen to, and I'm not talking about the iTunes users. Websites like IGN, GameSpot and TV.com alll have podcast shows I personally subscribe to and listen to regularly, thanks to my PlayStation Portable (Thank you, Firmware 2.60!), and The Podcast Network has gobs of categorized podcast content you can listen to as well, as does Yahoo! Podcasts Beta, but the underlying problem again is consistency.
Case in point: TV.com's guys haven't done anything since July 6th, and they haven't updated their RSS feed (for Really Simple Syndication readers like My Yahoo and NewsGator, and Firmware 2.60 PSPs, of course) since May 25th! Another one I use, ToonZone.com, hasn't done jack since June 1st! Maybe it's just these TV-related sites that are really getting lax, though, because most of the others are fairly regular. Well, except for Podcast Network's "The PSP Show". (Hey, Ewan Spence! July 18th is long gone! What's the deal???) Maybe they're just waiting until the September Fall stuff starts before they come back. But the fact that they don't even say they're going on hiatus sends up a red flag to me. Bottom Line: Hey, TV Podcasters! If Thanksgiving rolls around and your early-mid summer stuff is still "current", we're gonna have a problem here. Please get with (your) program and don't leave your listeners hanging! As for you other, more consistent podcasters out there, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Just please give some advance notice before you go on a 90 day mini-sabbatical. .......But that's just me.
See you next Monday!
-D.
Monday, August 7, 2006
Entry 21: "Movies Killed The Real-Life Story"
Yo...
...I'm feelin' really sad this week... Not just because I couldn't think of a better title-pun this week than that attempt at a parody of that Buggles song about radio stars getting killed by videos. If you care enough to want to know why, well, thanks for your concern. You see, it's all because of Hollywood's new obsession on the events of September 11th, 2001. I'm using this as a topic this week, because I find it very interesting how it wasn't very long until we started to see big-screen slightly fictionalized takes on the life- and almost country-shattering events that transpired only five short years ago, on a seemingly average Tuesday morning that September. It seems to me that when I see things like this happening, people making money off of tragedies like this, it's the ultimate injustice, if for no other reason than it's way too soon to come out with this many screenplays documenting the same day, I don't care how many victims' families' approval the studios claim to have.
When the "Titanic" movie came out in 1997, we had about 85 years worth of recovery time from that disaster. That plus the rather majestic musical score and the immersably believable effects (by late-90s standards anyway), of watching the whole cruise liner go down the way it did, of course those guys got awards and acclaim by the wheelbarrow-full. Flash-forward four years. The real September 11th happens. People were almost literally crapping their pants out of the sheer gripping realization that there was no "stop" or "eject" button on this movie. The way the news media covered it, you'd swear it actually did feel like the "War of the Worlds" Orson Welles radio show redux, in terms of the believability of it. But it didn't take long for us to realize that this was no movie, and we were in for one helluva ride in the blossoming 21st century.
Flash-forward again to today. Almost five years after the day that defies description. Earlier this year, we got our first taste of what Hollywood could do with this story by delivering a made-for-TV movie about the famous "flight that fought back", United Airlines Flight 93, in the form of A&E's "Flight 93" in January. Then, we got a "24"-ish real-time retelling of that day, in late-April, again from the perspective of United Flight 93, but this time using the title "United 93." Now, here it is, August 7th. Not even the full half-decade anniversary has actually happened yet, and this weekend will see September 11th movie #3, "World Trade Center." For shame, Oliver Stone. You know better than that.
BOTTOM LINE: It's my humble opinion that more time needs to have passed for ANYONE to start crafting fiction on majorly tragic historical events like this, let alone "the 'biz", or it dampens the seriousness of going through the movie-like tragedy of that day, by actually making a real-life-like movie about a movie-like event from real-life. ..........I think that came out right. Anyway, you get my point. .....But that's just me. Oh, by the way, with my blatant promotion of that free Xbox 360s offer at the end of last week's post, again, I apologize for throwing that on, but I don't have anywhere else to post that kind of stuff where it'll get seen. Don't worry, though, it WON'T be commonplace. Anyway, as usual, please feel free to post your responses or comments on this week's topic, and I hope to see you here again next Monday night.
Later...
-D.
...I'm feelin' really sad this week... Not just because I couldn't think of a better title-pun this week than that attempt at a parody of that Buggles song about radio stars getting killed by videos. If you care enough to want to know why, well, thanks for your concern. You see, it's all because of Hollywood's new obsession on the events of September 11th, 2001. I'm using this as a topic this week, because I find it very interesting how it wasn't very long until we started to see big-screen slightly fictionalized takes on the life- and almost country-shattering events that transpired only five short years ago, on a seemingly average Tuesday morning that September. It seems to me that when I see things like this happening, people making money off of tragedies like this, it's the ultimate injustice, if for no other reason than it's way too soon to come out with this many screenplays documenting the same day, I don't care how many victims' families' approval the studios claim to have.
When the "Titanic" movie came out in 1997, we had about 85 years worth of recovery time from that disaster. That plus the rather majestic musical score and the immersably believable effects (by late-90s standards anyway), of watching the whole cruise liner go down the way it did, of course those guys got awards and acclaim by the wheelbarrow-full. Flash-forward four years. The real September 11th happens. People were almost literally crapping their pants out of the sheer gripping realization that there was no "stop" or "eject" button on this movie. The way the news media covered it, you'd swear it actually did feel like the "War of the Worlds" Orson Welles radio show redux, in terms of the believability of it. But it didn't take long for us to realize that this was no movie, and we were in for one helluva ride in the blossoming 21st century.
Flash-forward again to today. Almost five years after the day that defies description. Earlier this year, we got our first taste of what Hollywood could do with this story by delivering a made-for-TV movie about the famous "flight that fought back", United Airlines Flight 93, in the form of A&E's "Flight 93" in January. Then, we got a "24"-ish real-time retelling of that day, in late-April, again from the perspective of United Flight 93, but this time using the title "United 93." Now, here it is, August 7th. Not even the full half-decade anniversary has actually happened yet, and this weekend will see September 11th movie #3, "World Trade Center." For shame, Oliver Stone. You know better than that.
BOTTOM LINE: It's my humble opinion that more time needs to have passed for ANYONE to start crafting fiction on majorly tragic historical events like this, let alone "the 'biz", or it dampens the seriousness of going through the movie-like tragedy of that day, by actually making a real-life-like movie about a movie-like event from real-life. ..........I think that came out right. Anyway, you get my point. .....But that's just me. Oh, by the way, with my blatant promotion of that free Xbox 360s offer at the end of last week's post, again, I apologize for throwing that on, but I don't have anywhere else to post that kind of stuff where it'll get seen. Don't worry, though, it WON'T be commonplace. Anyway, as usual, please feel free to post your responses or comments on this week's topic, and I hope to see you here again next Monday night.
Later...
-D.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Entry 20: "A Not-So-Limited Time Offer!"
Yo!
Spam. Not just a spreadable meat substitute. It's also the most hated addition to your daily incoming email list. Most email services offer an automatic filtering system to avoid having all those ad-heavy emails clutter up your inbox. Unfortunately, that's just not enough. Thanks to a couple strategically placed spelling errors in the return email address and/or subject line, millions upon millions of unwanted spam emails seep into your inboxes each and every day. Why you can never actually unsubscribe from them all and stop having to use spam filters period definitely ranks among my personal top 5 most likely to never be answered questions of all time. Well, aside from "Why do the orange and pink Fla-Vor-Ice Popsicles you get at Rite-Aid for $1.59/box always freeze first, before the other colors?", "Why are we STILL fighting in Iraq?", "Is Tupac Shakur really dead?" and the timeless "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?", of course.
According to Wikipedia.com, approximately 55 BILLION "spam" emails were sent out last month alone and dumped into your spam folder (give or take the entire population of Spain), with, I'll bet, exactly 83,512 actually worth opening (not counting the automatic resending of the same email to multiple addresses, obviously. Just the one send each.) because, and ONLY because, the spam filters graciously donated to us by our email provider accidentally filtered an important email to that folder because it thought there happened to be one too many numbers in the return email address, or there was a slight spelling error on the subject line. Readers, in the end, all that's happening here is a 21st century fighting-fire-with-fire scenario, what with trying to thwart a spam email "bot" program with a mail server-implemented spam filtering counter-bot program and all, but when all is said and done, and you get so fed up with the horde of spam thrown your way every day that you're just about ready to stop using email altogether, we must understand the plain and simple fact that...
COMPUTERS ARE RETARDS.
You see, when I used to do website design all the time, I was constantly faced with a never ending situation of debugging my own work, making sure the web content program language worked perfectly. Not a tagline out of place, not an embedded picture name misspelled. It's all part of the job. It's all part of the raw precision that makes not just the internet, but computers in general, tick. Everybody knows the computer is the single most logically precise "mind" (read: "system") in the world. It's also the single dumbest pile of silicon, plastic and metal you'll ever encounter in your life. Obviously, if you don't know how to configure everything just right and make it all work, since the computer can't check itself for you, your several hundred to a few thousand dollar investment isn't worth more than the paper you used to write the check to buy it. Period.
Firewalls, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware. We've all heard of them. We all use them (at the very least, Anti-Virus. Almost all email services carry embedded virus protection that's used at the very least when you download attachments. Yahoo, for example, uses Norton AntiVirus for protection). But sometimes, unless it's set up properly, your whole security system can, and will be used to your own detriment. BOTTOM LINE is, we all need to exercise more care when we take the risk of not just opening a spam message, but even opening our spam folder. My advice is, when someone gives you their email address for the first time, add it to your address book IMMEDIATELY so the system will recognize the person and pass the message through to your inbox intact. Don't wait until you receive an email and then hit the button to add them. Like I said, the reason for spam-dumping can potentially be as simple as a misspelled name. Obviously, if you're not worried the person you added to your address book will get lost in spam, or you know for a fact that the system won't get confused when you receive something from the person, you can always take 'em out of the list later. Now that that PSA is out of the way, I've got some Anti-Spyware upgrades to download. ...But that's just me.
-D.
P.S. I hope you'll excuse the blatant self-promotion here; you know I wouldn't do this ordinarily, but I'm in extenuating circumstances here. While I'm on the subject of spam this week, I'd like to transition into mentioning something a friend of mine passed on to me personally, not a spyware-carrying spam message. I'm working on one of those referral sites where if I can get some of you readers to do one of their listed offers (don't worry, they have some free or super-cheap $1-$6 offers too), I'll score an in-demand piece of current cutting-edge technology. Specifically, an Xbox 360. I also want to casually remind you all of the past twenty weeks of interesting blog content I've been delivering to you. Not that I'm expecting this to actually work out as if I'm expecting you all to get involved in this, but it'd really, really be appreciated if I could get some assistance with this. Also, if you wouldn't mind helping with this, one: THANKS BILLIONS and two, make sure to uncheck the "I want to receive promotional emails..." box on the signup page I'm about to provide a link to. I really wouldn't want any of you fine readers to start getting MORE spam on account of me, especially after this week's blog post.
http://xbox360s.freepay.com/?r=31545003
Also, if you get some more people to complete some of those offers when they're linked to the page you'll be sending them with your referral number in the address (obviously, 31545003 is the number for me), you'll get a 360 too! I just wanted to pass this on. Again, everyone, thanks for any help you can give with this. I hope to see you here next Monday, same time and place.
Spam. Not just a spreadable meat substitute. It's also the most hated addition to your daily incoming email list. Most email services offer an automatic filtering system to avoid having all those ad-heavy emails clutter up your inbox. Unfortunately, that's just not enough. Thanks to a couple strategically placed spelling errors in the return email address and/or subject line, millions upon millions of unwanted spam emails seep into your inboxes each and every day. Why you can never actually unsubscribe from them all and stop having to use spam filters period definitely ranks among my personal top 5 most likely to never be answered questions of all time. Well, aside from "Why do the orange and pink Fla-Vor-Ice Popsicles you get at Rite-Aid for $1.59/box always freeze first, before the other colors?", "Why are we STILL fighting in Iraq?", "Is Tupac Shakur really dead?" and the timeless "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?", of course.
According to Wikipedia.com, approximately 55 BILLION "spam" emails were sent out last month alone and dumped into your spam folder (give or take the entire population of Spain), with, I'll bet, exactly 83,512 actually worth opening (not counting the automatic resending of the same email to multiple addresses, obviously. Just the one send each.) because, and ONLY because, the spam filters graciously donated to us by our email provider accidentally filtered an important email to that folder because it thought there happened to be one too many numbers in the return email address, or there was a slight spelling error on the subject line. Readers, in the end, all that's happening here is a 21st century fighting-fire-with-fire scenario, what with trying to thwart a spam email "bot" program with a mail server-implemented spam filtering counter-bot program and all, but when all is said and done, and you get so fed up with the horde of spam thrown your way every day that you're just about ready to stop using email altogether, we must understand the plain and simple fact that...
COMPUTERS ARE RETARDS.
You see, when I used to do website design all the time, I was constantly faced with a never ending situation of debugging my own work, making sure the web content program language worked perfectly. Not a tagline out of place, not an embedded picture name misspelled. It's all part of the job. It's all part of the raw precision that makes not just the internet, but computers in general, tick. Everybody knows the computer is the single most logically precise "mind" (read: "system") in the world. It's also the single dumbest pile of silicon, plastic and metal you'll ever encounter in your life. Obviously, if you don't know how to configure everything just right and make it all work, since the computer can't check itself for you, your several hundred to a few thousand dollar investment isn't worth more than the paper you used to write the check to buy it. Period.
Firewalls, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware. We've all heard of them. We all use them (at the very least, Anti-Virus. Almost all email services carry embedded virus protection that's used at the very least when you download attachments. Yahoo, for example, uses Norton AntiVirus for protection). But sometimes, unless it's set up properly, your whole security system can, and will be used to your own detriment. BOTTOM LINE is, we all need to exercise more care when we take the risk of not just opening a spam message, but even opening our spam folder. My advice is, when someone gives you their email address for the first time, add it to your address book IMMEDIATELY so the system will recognize the person and pass the message through to your inbox intact. Don't wait until you receive an email and then hit the button to add them. Like I said, the reason for spam-dumping can potentially be as simple as a misspelled name. Obviously, if you're not worried the person you added to your address book will get lost in spam, or you know for a fact that the system won't get confused when you receive something from the person, you can always take 'em out of the list later. Now that that PSA is out of the way, I've got some Anti-Spyware upgrades to download. ...But that's just me.
-D.
P.S. I hope you'll excuse the blatant self-promotion here; you know I wouldn't do this ordinarily, but I'm in extenuating circumstances here. While I'm on the subject of spam this week, I'd like to transition into mentioning something a friend of mine passed on to me personally, not a spyware-carrying spam message. I'm working on one of those referral sites where if I can get some of you readers to do one of their listed offers (don't worry, they have some free or super-cheap $1-$6 offers too), I'll score an in-demand piece of current cutting-edge technology. Specifically, an Xbox 360. I also want to casually remind you all of the past twenty weeks of interesting blog content I've been delivering to you. Not that I'm expecting this to actually work out as if I'm expecting you all to get involved in this, but it'd really, really be appreciated if I could get some assistance with this. Also, if you wouldn't mind helping with this, one: THANKS BILLIONS and two, make sure to uncheck the "I want to receive promotional emails..." box on the signup page I'm about to provide a link to. I really wouldn't want any of you fine readers to start getting MORE spam on account of me, especially after this week's blog post.
http://xbox360s.freepay.com/?r=31545003
Also, if you get some more people to complete some of those offers when they're linked to the page you'll be sending them with your referral number in the address (obviously, 31545003 is the number for me), you'll get a 360 too! I just wanted to pass this on. Again, everyone, thanks for any help you can give with this. I hope to see you here next Monday, same time and place.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Entry 19: "Raising the Userbar"
Yo!
Man, I've really got to get back on schedule here. 9:40pm is obviously not within the 7-8pm timeframe. Gotta set some alarms next week. Anyway, I've been noticing this recurring trend in the message board community. They're called "Userbars", and they're basically copy-and-paste-able HTML code that inserts super-thin GIF images into your message board or blog posts, website, what have you, whenever you paste it in, and where HTML tags are applicable. This is apparently a way to take a super-small MySpace page with you wherever you go online, because there's a pasteable Userbar for just about everything you could be involved in, and you can paste in as many bars as you want to tell the world about who you are, what you're into, what type of music you're into, even whether or not you download asian pornography (seriously. There's a Userbar for that, too)!
Thanks to the extreme difficulties involved with getting the userbar images themselves I was gonna show you here hosted and linked one-by-one without worrying about the host site deleting them for site bandwidth and you seeing a post full of dead image links, as I'm sure the above bar is soon to be, I'm unable to show you a collective sampling of the available u-bars. Just Google "userbars" by clicking HERE and look around those sites. You'll soon see what I mean about the multitude of bars out there.
Anyway, my gripe is: Is it really necessary to come out with stuff like "Toilet user" and "spoon user"? Yes, they're humorous, but it's almost like an episode of Futurama. Stupid humor just for the sake of stupid humor, except in a bad way: the Userbars don't get away with it as easily as Groening and company do, and nor should they. Also, there's the overuse factor. These things are so popularly used in message boards across the internet, you'd be hard-pressed to find a board without at least one... dozen... displayed somewhere on it. Bottom line: Yes, the userbars are good and pretty darn funny depending on what website you see them posted on, but please, people. Exercise moderation in Userbar posting. Remember: Friends don't let friends post stupid crap. ...Or something like that. Ah, forget it, you get the joke...........................................But that's just me.
See you next Monday.
-D.
Man, I've really got to get back on schedule here. 9:40pm is obviously not within the 7-8pm timeframe. Gotta set some alarms next week. Anyway, I've been noticing this recurring trend in the message board community. They're called "Userbars", and they're basically copy-and-paste-able HTML code that inserts super-thin GIF images into your message board or blog posts, website, what have you, whenever you paste it in, and where HTML tags are applicable. This is apparently a way to take a super-small MySpace page with you wherever you go online, because there's a pasteable Userbar for just about everything you could be involved in, and you can paste in as many bars as you want to tell the world about who you are, what you're into, what type of music you're into, even whether or not you download asian pornography (seriously. There's a Userbar for that, too)!
Thanks to the extreme difficulties involved with getting the userbar images themselves I was gonna show you here hosted and linked one-by-one without worrying about the host site deleting them for site bandwidth and you seeing a post full of dead image links, as I'm sure the above bar is soon to be, I'm unable to show you a collective sampling of the available u-bars. Just Google "userbars" by clicking HERE and look around those sites. You'll soon see what I mean about the multitude of bars out there.
Anyway, my gripe is: Is it really necessary to come out with stuff like "Toilet user" and "spoon user"? Yes, they're humorous, but it's almost like an episode of Futurama. Stupid humor just for the sake of stupid humor, except in a bad way: the Userbars don't get away with it as easily as Groening and company do, and nor should they. Also, there's the overuse factor. These things are so popularly used in message boards across the internet, you'd be hard-pressed to find a board without at least one... dozen... displayed somewhere on it. Bottom line: Yes, the userbars are good and pretty darn funny depending on what website you see them posted on, but please, people. Exercise moderation in Userbar posting. Remember: Friends don't let friends post stupid crap. ...Or something like that. Ah, forget it, you get the joke...........................................But that's just me.
See you next Monday.
-D.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Entry 18: "Reality Check"
Yo!
What the crap is America's continued obsession with reality television? Sure it can be argued that the real reality onslaught started with CBS's "Survivor", which gave everyone excellent water-cooler-chat-fodder while the nation waited for the 2000 Summer Olympics that September [Seriously, Olympic Comittee. Could we please consider changing the name to the current season of the year, if the games don't actually start in Summer? At least call 'em the "Indian Summer" Olympiad already], but actually most people don't know that the real genesis of Reality can be traced back to MTV's "The Real World", which launched on May 21, 1992. Seriously.
It's fast approaching a time where we'll be facing a "Running Man"-esque future where we'll actually be bombarded not by arguably pseudo-scripted television, but by networks so desperate for programming, they start forcing their cameras on us all, literally, and this time, no $1,000,000 stipend for the winner, who won't be picked since noone will be bothering to vote, because noone will want to watch that kind of crap anymore, especially with themselves in front of the camera lens. The camera adds ten pounds, you know. I can see the intro sequence now: "This is the story of 295,734,134 strangers suckered into watching a pointless television genre on a regular basis and have their primetime TV viewing habits thoroughly manipulated. Find out what happens when people stop tuning in, and start turning off their TVs. The Really, Really, Real This Time, We Promise World, America."
Adding insult to injury is the coincidental fact that Real World just hit a 400th episode milestone just last month, on a very appropriate date: 6...6...06. That's right, Episode 400 happened to air the same day as the big day people were fearing would be the other, OTHER day of the Apocalypse. ...And that creepy Damien kid's return to theatres, but that's completely unrelated. The Bottom Line: Networks of America! FORGET ABOUT REALITY ALREADY! Nobody really cares about reality TV that much anymore, and beating a dead horse, post-decomposition, won't get you ratings. Only angry bloggers like myself trying their darndest to end the madness, but with no positive effect. Seriously, how many American Idols do we need? Ah, forget this crappy topic. I'm watching RAW tonight. Somehow, scripted sports manages to beat scripted reality every time........................But that's just me.
Later, peeps!
-D.
What the crap is America's continued obsession with reality television? Sure it can be argued that the real reality onslaught started with CBS's "Survivor", which gave everyone excellent water-cooler-chat-fodder while the nation waited for the 2000 Summer Olympics that September [Seriously, Olympic Comittee. Could we please consider changing the name to the current season of the year, if the games don't actually start in Summer? At least call 'em the "Indian Summer" Olympiad already], but actually most people don't know that the real genesis of Reality can be traced back to MTV's "The Real World", which launched on May 21, 1992. Seriously.
It's fast approaching a time where we'll be facing a "Running Man"-esque future where we'll actually be bombarded not by arguably pseudo-scripted television, but by networks so desperate for programming, they start forcing their cameras on us all, literally, and this time, no $1,000,000 stipend for the winner, who won't be picked since noone will be bothering to vote, because noone will want to watch that kind of crap anymore, especially with themselves in front of the camera lens. The camera adds ten pounds, you know. I can see the intro sequence now: "This is the story of 295,734,134 strangers suckered into watching a pointless television genre on a regular basis and have their primetime TV viewing habits thoroughly manipulated. Find out what happens when people stop tuning in, and start turning off their TVs. The Really, Really, Real This Time, We Promise World, America."
Adding insult to injury is the coincidental fact that Real World just hit a 400th episode milestone just last month, on a very appropriate date: 6...6...06. That's right, Episode 400 happened to air the same day as the big day people were fearing would be the other, OTHER day of the Apocalypse. ...And that creepy Damien kid's return to theatres, but that's completely unrelated. The Bottom Line: Networks of America! FORGET ABOUT REALITY ALREADY! Nobody really cares about reality TV that much anymore, and beating a dead horse, post-decomposition, won't get you ratings. Only angry bloggers like myself trying their darndest to end the madness, but with no positive effect. Seriously, how many American Idols do we need? Ah, forget this crappy topic. I'm watching RAW tonight. Somehow, scripted sports manages to beat scripted reality every time........................But that's just me.
Later, peeps!
-D.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Entry 17: "Top of the World Cup, Ma!!!!"
Yo!
Alright, in response to "Leo Mom"'s comments on last week's blog post, I don't currently, and didn't ever resent "parent(s) expecting their offspring to share a little of their techno-expertise from time to time." Furthermore, as far as the "technology that replaced said parent(s) in importance to you", that is/was never the case with me. Again, my point last week was a brief plea to the parents of America to exercise more effort in remembering what we, the teenagers of America, teach you about technology from time to time. I never expressed resentment in that post, and if anything about that post supposedly got any of that across, I apologize for writing it in a manner that could be easily misconstrued like that. But please understand, eventually the re-teaching does get old.
Case in point, earlier today, I had to teach my grandmother how to turn on her cell phone again, because she forgot to hold the power button down for a couple seconds. Since she uses one of those color Motorola phones, when she quickly pressed it, expecting it to turn on, it flashed white and cut off prematurely, which she thought meant a dead battery. Do I resent my grandmother for forgetting to hold the button and not press it, or the fact she came to me for help? Certainly not. Do I hold technology in a higher regard than people period, let alone my closest family? Of course not. I hope this answers your comments appropriately, "L.M."
Moving on, unless you were nowhere near a television last night, chances are, you already know about Italy's World Cup victory, and the fact that Fabio Grosso is now basically being treated as Italy's version of 2005 Tom Brady, but without actually having the two previous championships under his belt. As far as I know offhand. I'll have to do more Googling later. Anyway, congrats to Italy on their newest football feat. Mark your calendars, people: The next World Cup in 2010 will, according to the official WC website, HERE, will have South Africa as a host country.
Personally, I've never been one for soccer/"football", but apparently that's the sport of the summer. It seems you can't do too many Google searches these days without finding something somehow WC-related. Plus, all the merchandising, promotions, and THIS little gem that Xbox 360ers are running left-and-right I hear, apparently [the OTHER] football's where it's at. Bottom line: As I said, I've never really paid attention to this sport a whole lot, but I suppose all the hubbub is worth verifying sooner or later. By the end of summer, I'm gonna check out this sport and try at least one of those game simulations. If any of you know of any good online soccer games worth checking out, you know the drill. Shoot me a comment or message. I'm pretty sure, though, even after doing this investigation, AMERICAN football'll still be my main sport.........But that's just me.
Later!
-D.
Alright, in response to "Leo Mom"'s comments on last week's blog post, I don't currently, and didn't ever resent "parent(s) expecting their offspring to share a little of their techno-expertise from time to time." Furthermore, as far as the "technology that replaced said parent(s) in importance to you", that is/was never the case with me. Again, my point last week was a brief plea to the parents of America to exercise more effort in remembering what we, the teenagers of America, teach you about technology from time to time. I never expressed resentment in that post, and if anything about that post supposedly got any of that across, I apologize for writing it in a manner that could be easily misconstrued like that. But please understand, eventually the re-teaching does get old.
Case in point, earlier today, I had to teach my grandmother how to turn on her cell phone again, because she forgot to hold the power button down for a couple seconds. Since she uses one of those color Motorola phones, when she quickly pressed it, expecting it to turn on, it flashed white and cut off prematurely, which she thought meant a dead battery. Do I resent my grandmother for forgetting to hold the button and not press it, or the fact she came to me for help? Certainly not. Do I hold technology in a higher regard than people period, let alone my closest family? Of course not. I hope this answers your comments appropriately, "L.M."
Moving on, unless you were nowhere near a television last night, chances are, you already know about Italy's World Cup victory, and the fact that Fabio Grosso is now basically being treated as Italy's version of 2005 Tom Brady, but without actually having the two previous championships under his belt. As far as I know offhand. I'll have to do more Googling later. Anyway, congrats to Italy on their newest football feat. Mark your calendars, people: The next World Cup in 2010 will, according to the official WC website, HERE, will have South Africa as a host country.
Personally, I've never been one for soccer/"football", but apparently that's the sport of the summer. It seems you can't do too many Google searches these days without finding something somehow WC-related. Plus, all the merchandising, promotions, and THIS little gem that Xbox 360ers are running left-and-right I hear, apparently [the OTHER] football's where it's at. Bottom line: As I said, I've never really paid attention to this sport a whole lot, but I suppose all the hubbub is worth verifying sooner or later. By the end of summer, I'm gonna check out this sport and try at least one of those game simulations. If any of you know of any good online soccer games worth checking out, you know the drill. Shoot me a comment or message. I'm pretty sure, though, even after doing this investigation, AMERICAN football'll still be my main sport.........But that's just me.
Later!
-D.
Monday, July 3, 2006
Entry 16: "The Computer-Knowledgeable Guy Wore Tennis Shoes"
Yo!
Well, America, you'll hit your 230th birthday this week. Congratulations! And you don't look a day over 229! ....But that's not what this week's post is about. I'm using this post to address a common problem among teenagers these days, most notably those of us who keep up with modern technology: Our parents are constantly using us as an on-call resource for computer help. The instant our parents' computers start acting up because they've been forgetting to empty their recycle bin for the past several months and the computer's getting slow, or they can't check their "E-mails" because they forgot to check if the wireless connection is active (or they forgot to plug in the phone line, whatever the case may be), it's "run to the young'un's room" time!! Mentality simulation: "They're up to the task of figuring it out! I'm way too busy with stuff like paying bills and keeping up with work to remember what my kids take time to teach me about how to operate my [several-hundred to a few thousand dollar] investment!!!"
Parents of America! Hear my proclamation! We, the "ornery, ungrateful, don't-know-how-easy-we-have-it" teenagers, know and understand the difficulties that come with being a responsible adult. Well, unless you're age 18 , you don't know through firsthand experience, but we all generally do observe the stress that these real-world matters load on you on a regular basis, and we do appreciate you for constantly doing what you do to make our transition into full adulthood as relatively painless as possible, with nothing but the best intentions in mind. But seriously. When we come in to hook up the phone line, switch on your wireless network card, point out the "compose email" button, or even turn on the computer for you-- whatever the problem may be,
Please.....
PLEASE..............
PLEASE TRY TO REMEMBER WHAT WE DO SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO COME BACK TO US EVERY OTHER WEEK AT BEST OVER THE SAME TYPES OF PROBLEMS!!!!!
I say this mainly to my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother has only recently (read: since September) been actively involved with her computer, and I understand that, and I'm willing to be patient with my explanations. We all have at least one truly non-computer savvy relative. My mother, on the other hand, is a tad more computer-literate than my grandmother, and it's her job to be (she does medical transcription. You know how when you go to the doctor for a checkup, and near the end your doctor steps out of the room to go to his/her office to add to your records? What he/she's actually doing is dictating the checkup results into a tape recorder and it's transcriptionists like my mother that type out the recording, and add the full document to your medical records. That's what a transcriptionist does), but when she comes home and has difficulty with how long it takes with opening her web browser because there's too many programs running in the background, that problem is usually solved with this helpful trick (you other Windows XP-er parents might want to take note):
STEP 1: Hit Ctrl Alt Delete on your keyboard.
STEP 2: Make sure the "Processes" tab is selected in the newly popped-up Task Manager window.
STEP 3: Click the "Mem[ory] Usage" tab a couple times so that the numbers in that column are in descending order, going down.
STEP 4: If you recognize the "Image Name" of a program that you didn't/shouldn't have run (read: "Startup Program"), right-click on it, hit "End Process", tremble in fear of the thought of the "system instability" warning being right this time (it almost never is, depending on what's closed. Only do this trick on programs that don't have "System" or "Network Service" as a user name, just in case. Those programs are kinda sensitive to this), and after confirming with your kid(s) how useless, at the moment, the program is, hit OK, and that should speed things up a little bit.
Now, don't go overboard and do this with all the programs in the list, because some of them are required for running certain things on the computer, even if they don't have System or Network Service as a user name. For example:
IEXPLORE.EXE/NETSCAPE.EXE/FIREFOX.EXE = Chances are, one of these programs is what you're using to read this Blog. IEXPLORE is Internet Explorer, NETSCAPE and FIREFOX are... well, Netscape and Mozilla Firefox. These are your web browsers. That's it.
EXPLORER.EXE = This is called Windows Explorer. This program must be running at all times, at least unless you prefer working with a computer interface that doesn't involve opening folders or using the Start Menu. That's what Explorer does.
WMPLAYER.EXE = This is standard Windows Media Player. If you don't know what this does, chances are, you have no business even being in the same room with a computer.
QUICKTIMEPLAYER.EXE = QuickTime Player. If you own a Mac, see above sentence.
These are just a few examples of programs you'll see in Task Manager. If you see a program you're not sure of, hit Start --> Search... and type in the name of the program. When the search is done, right-click on the program icon and hit "Show Containing Folder". Hopefully, the surrounding files should clue you in on what the file is and what it does.
There. That's my community service time for the month. Hopefully, that'll help you parents solve a VEEEERRRRRRYYYYYYY common computer problem, and let you learn a little something in the process. As always, comments, questions and kudos are always welcome on this, or any of my previous Blog entries. Keep on coming to this page, and I may have some more small suggestions like these to help you out a little along the way. Oh, and sorry about the length of this post. A tad wordy, I know. At least it was really informative and worth reading .........................But that's just me. ........................And hopefully, some of you parents out there, too. You're welcome, and Happy 4th of July!!!!!!
Later!
-D.
Well, America, you'll hit your 230th birthday this week. Congratulations! And you don't look a day over 229! ....But that's not what this week's post is about. I'm using this post to address a common problem among teenagers these days, most notably those of us who keep up with modern technology: Our parents are constantly using us as an on-call resource for computer help. The instant our parents' computers start acting up because they've been forgetting to empty their recycle bin for the past several months and the computer's getting slow, or they can't check their "E-mails" because they forgot to check if the wireless connection is active (or they forgot to plug in the phone line, whatever the case may be), it's "run to the young'un's room" time!! Mentality simulation: "They're up to the task of figuring it out! I'm way too busy with stuff like paying bills and keeping up with work to remember what my kids take time to teach me about how to operate my [several-hundred to a few thousand dollar] investment!!!"
Parents of America! Hear my proclamation! We, the "ornery, ungrateful, don't-know-how-easy-we-have-it" teenagers, know and understand the difficulties that come with being a responsible adult. Well, unless you're age 18 , you don't know through firsthand experience, but we all generally do observe the stress that these real-world matters load on you on a regular basis, and we do appreciate you for constantly doing what you do to make our transition into full adulthood as relatively painless as possible, with nothing but the best intentions in mind. But seriously. When we come in to hook up the phone line, switch on your wireless network card, point out the "compose email" button, or even turn on the computer for you-- whatever the problem may be,
Please.....
PLEASE..............
PLEASE TRY TO REMEMBER WHAT WE DO SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO COME BACK TO US EVERY OTHER WEEK AT BEST OVER THE SAME TYPES OF PROBLEMS!!!!!
I say this mainly to my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother has only recently (read: since September) been actively involved with her computer, and I understand that, and I'm willing to be patient with my explanations. We all have at least one truly non-computer savvy relative. My mother, on the other hand, is a tad more computer-literate than my grandmother, and it's her job to be (she does medical transcription. You know how when you go to the doctor for a checkup, and near the end your doctor steps out of the room to go to his/her office to add to your records? What he/she's actually doing is dictating the checkup results into a tape recorder and it's transcriptionists like my mother that type out the recording, and add the full document to your medical records. That's what a transcriptionist does), but when she comes home and has difficulty with how long it takes with opening her web browser because there's too many programs running in the background, that problem is usually solved with this helpful trick (you other Windows XP-er parents might want to take note):
STEP 1: Hit Ctrl Alt Delete on your keyboard.
STEP 2: Make sure the "Processes" tab is selected in the newly popped-up Task Manager window.
STEP 3: Click the "Mem[ory] Usage" tab a couple times so that the numbers in that column are in descending order, going down.
STEP 4: If you recognize the "Image Name" of a program that you didn't/shouldn't have run (read: "Startup Program"), right-click on it, hit "End Process", tremble in fear of the thought of the "system instability" warning being right this time (it almost never is, depending on what's closed. Only do this trick on programs that don't have "System" or "Network Service" as a user name, just in case. Those programs are kinda sensitive to this), and after confirming with your kid(s) how useless, at the moment, the program is, hit OK, and that should speed things up a little bit.
Now, don't go overboard and do this with all the programs in the list, because some of them are required for running certain things on the computer, even if they don't have System or Network Service as a user name. For example:
IEXPLORE.EXE/NETSCAPE.EXE/FIREFOX.EXE = Chances are, one of these programs is what you're using to read this Blog. IEXPLORE is Internet Explorer, NETSCAPE and FIREFOX are... well, Netscape and Mozilla Firefox. These are your web browsers. That's it.
EXPLORER.EXE = This is called Windows Explorer. This program must be running at all times, at least unless you prefer working with a computer interface that doesn't involve opening folders or using the Start Menu. That's what Explorer does.
WMPLAYER.EXE = This is standard Windows Media Player. If you don't know what this does, chances are, you have no business even being in the same room with a computer.
QUICKTIMEPLAYER.EXE = QuickTime Player. If you own a Mac, see above sentence.
These are just a few examples of programs you'll see in Task Manager. If you see a program you're not sure of, hit Start --> Search... and type in the name of the program. When the search is done, right-click on the program icon and hit "Show Containing Folder". Hopefully, the surrounding files should clue you in on what the file is and what it does.
There. That's my community service time for the month. Hopefully, that'll help you parents solve a VEEEERRRRRRYYYYYYY common computer problem, and let you learn a little something in the process. As always, comments, questions and kudos are always welcome on this, or any of my previous Blog entries. Keep on coming to this page, and I may have some more small suggestions like these to help you out a little along the way. Oh, and sorry about the length of this post. A tad wordy, I know. At least it was really informative and worth reading .........................But that's just me. ........................And hopefully, some of you parents out there, too. You're welcome, and Happy 4th of July!!!!!!
Later!
-D.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Entry 15: "The Once and 'Futurama' Thing"
Yo!
For those of you who haven't heard of this yet, the futuristic "Simpsons" spinoff, "Futurama", has just been officially resurrected!!!!! And before you think to yourself "Alright! New episodes on Fox/Adult Swim!!!!!", ..............WRONG. New Futuramas will premiere on the one network almost none of us really anticipated: Comedy Central. That's right, people, the infamous cable channel that brought us "daily" satiric primetime news, a festive, talking piece of crap, Stephen Colbert and Dave Chappelle is now the exclusive home of not just the 13 new episodes coming soon, but the 72 episodes previously produced for Fox from January, 1999 to August, 2003.
Allow me to elaborate: See, in 2007, apparently, Turner Broadcasting's acquisition to the franchise's broadcasting rights will expire, so last year, a quiet buyout took place to prevent Turner from holding onto the show any longer. Apparently, Viacom won that bid, and so the new Futuramas will be shown only on Comedy Central starting in 2008. It hasn't been confirmed yet as of this writing whether or not Comedy Central will also air the DVD movies later down the line, or how much of the original cast will return, other than Billy West (Fry, Prof. Farnsworth, Zap Brannigan, Dr. Zoidberg), Katey Segal (Leela), and John DiMaggio (Bender), all of whom have definitely signed on for the new stuff. The full news story can be found HERE, courtesy of IGN.com.
Well, it's about darn-tootin' time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ever since word of the Family Guy resurrection last summer exploded across the internet back in 2004, there were just as many message board posts, blog entries, and editorial podcasts left-and-right, asking the (until-now) ultimate unanswered question: Will Futurama ever return?????? If you saw the Family Guy DVD movie that came out last fall (and aired on Fox last month), that was one of the gags used in the opening red carpet prologue sequence, that had the question-asker inevitably killed immediately (He worked for Entertainment Weekly. He had it coming. HERE's an explanation, at the bottom of that section).
Bottom-line: In my opinion, Futurama is very high in my personal top-10 TV shows EVER list, and even though it's a shame it took so long for it to come back, and it won't be returning on the original network, it's good to see the old gang back together. After the five-year wait to see new episodes, here's hoping the writers haven't gotten rusty over time, or there won't be a season seven, even on Comedy Central. But there will be DVDs. Thank God for DVDs. Us fans will always have the DVDs. ...But seriously, though, Futurama writers, you better not blow this or the fans will be seriously pissed about the long wait for sub-par new material. ....................But that's just me.
Later!
-D.
P.S. In case you didn't catch it, this blog entry's title is a subtle reference to an episode title of arguably the greatest animated superhero show ever, Justice League. Specifically, the "Unlimited" episodes that started in 2004. This show recently aired its series finale on Cartoon Network a few months back with a few dangling plot threads, and a rather interesting end for Lex Luthor, when compared to where he was in the beginning of the Superman cartoon, almost exactly ten years ago (get the season one DVD from Amazon HERE). From head of Lexcorp, at the top of Metropolis, to a smoldering crater at the bottom of Metropolis. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
For those of you who haven't heard of this yet, the futuristic "Simpsons" spinoff, "Futurama", has just been officially resurrected!!!!! And before you think to yourself "Alright! New episodes on Fox/Adult Swim!!!!!", ..............WRONG. New Futuramas will premiere on the one network almost none of us really anticipated: Comedy Central. That's right, people, the infamous cable channel that brought us "daily" satiric primetime news, a festive, talking piece of crap, Stephen Colbert and Dave Chappelle is now the exclusive home of not just the 13 new episodes coming soon, but the 72 episodes previously produced for Fox from January, 1999 to August, 2003.
Allow me to elaborate: See, in 2007, apparently, Turner Broadcasting's acquisition to the franchise's broadcasting rights will expire, so last year, a quiet buyout took place to prevent Turner from holding onto the show any longer. Apparently, Viacom won that bid, and so the new Futuramas will be shown only on Comedy Central starting in 2008. It hasn't been confirmed yet as of this writing whether or not Comedy Central will also air the DVD movies later down the line, or how much of the original cast will return, other than Billy West (Fry, Prof. Farnsworth, Zap Brannigan, Dr. Zoidberg), Katey Segal (Leela), and John DiMaggio (Bender), all of whom have definitely signed on for the new stuff. The full news story can be found HERE, courtesy of IGN.com.
Well, it's about darn-tootin' time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ever since word of the Family Guy resurrection last summer exploded across the internet back in 2004, there were just as many message board posts, blog entries, and editorial podcasts left-and-right, asking the (until-now) ultimate unanswered question: Will Futurama ever return?????? If you saw the Family Guy DVD movie that came out last fall (and aired on Fox last month), that was one of the gags used in the opening red carpet prologue sequence, that had the question-asker inevitably killed immediately (He worked for Entertainment Weekly. He had it coming. HERE's an explanation, at the bottom of that section).
Bottom-line: In my opinion, Futurama is very high in my personal top-10 TV shows EVER list, and even though it's a shame it took so long for it to come back, and it won't be returning on the original network, it's good to see the old gang back together. After the five-year wait to see new episodes, here's hoping the writers haven't gotten rusty over time, or there won't be a season seven, even on Comedy Central. But there will be DVDs. Thank God for DVDs. Us fans will always have the DVDs. ...But seriously, though, Futurama writers, you better not blow this or the fans will be seriously pissed about the long wait for sub-par new material. ....................But that's just me.
Later!
-D.
P.S. In case you didn't catch it, this blog entry's title is a subtle reference to an episode title of arguably the greatest animated superhero show ever, Justice League. Specifically, the "Unlimited" episodes that started in 2004. This show recently aired its series finale on Cartoon Network a few months back with a few dangling plot threads, and a rather interesting end for Lex Luthor, when compared to where he was in the beginning of the Superman cartoon, almost exactly ten years ago (get the season one DVD from Amazon HERE). From head of Lexcorp, at the top of Metropolis, to a smoldering crater at the bottom of Metropolis. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
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