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16 hours ago
The treatment of sports on TV is currently broken and has been for a long time. Whether because of greed, TV schedules, or sports league rules, the current state is just horrible. The often do things that don't make sense, likely lose them money, and are just plain stupid. Let me go through a few examples. Example 1: The Olympics in prime time on the west coast. Instead of showing the live olympic coverage which would have included gymnastics and swimming (the two most popular events) live, they showed them tape delayed. They did this to match the feed from the east and west coast. This meant that they were showing sports that probably a majority of americans were not watching in large amounts during the prime time hours and leaving the popular events until 11+. Not only did this mean that I did other things during primetime instead of watching, but I avoided the internet as well. It was very unpleasant and didn't make sense as I can imagine a lot of people were not ...
18 days ago
It's been a while since I've posted and it took the internet on a plane to get me to do it. I just had to tell someone as it's pretty good. Apparently on Virgin America for the next month or so, the internet will be free. Then starting in January, they will charge 13 bucks for it. That seems a bit steap for a short flight to LA like I'm on now but I'd probably pay it for a cross-country flight. I really wish that airlines knew how to charge different prices depending on the length of the flight as that seems important. They don't for TV (at least Continental doesn't) although I guess they charge a single price per movie. The one unfortunate part of this is that the free wireless is provided by google. They demanded my email address which is definately a bit intrusive for asking for that but I'll live. The UI on the Virgin flight for the TV isn't very good or responsive and the google map control for the flight map is also pretty bad. Then again, since you are ...
55 days ago
At least once I day, I log into cnn.com and read through the stories of the day so I know what's going on. I don't bother with the videos or ireports because I find the videos to be light on content and the ireports to be...well...random people just ranting. During this time, I usually end up reading a few political articles as well. I know I shouldn't because it either annoys as to how stupid our politicians are or just wastes my time about something that the media is once again blowing out of porportions in order to get people to care. Anyway, I have now identified the dumbest contributor to cnn.com (which is a pretty impressive feat given how any stupid ones are out there). I could give this to some random extreme one who may or not believe the crazy things they say but I'm giving it to one who clearly deserves it. A year ago, I blogged about how stupid Ed Rollins was for talking about the Sarah Palin SNL skit and using that as an example of how great she was ...
64 days ago
So I'm watching the premier of dollhouse this weekend and notice something weird. During the first season, for all but the last commercial of the show, they will tell you "Dollhouse back in 60s" (or 90s). All of the commercial breaks were 60 or 90 long except for the last one which was about 150-180 long. During this premier, NONE of the commericals announced how long they would be. I estimated and they were all about as long as the last commerical would be in the first season. That means that instead of 4 1.5 minute commercials, we suddnely had 4 3 minute commercials. I want my 6 minutes of show back, A-holes. Commercials are the thing I put up with in order to get free tv. Which reminds me, I pay comcast for my tv so why do I have to put up with commercials at all? Oh wait, I fast forward through them anyway so you should stop bothering to try to sell me something and give me more plot back...
94 days ago
There are a couple of directors out there that like a particular style of Filmography (I'm not sure what to call it so I'm calling it that). In some films it happens only during certain scenes and is fairly subtle. In other films, it happens all of the time. I may have blogged about this in the past wrt the later Bourne movies as this style was incredibly pronounced in those movies. The affect is when the camera doing the filming shakes as if someone untrained is doing the filming. I can only assume it was an attempt to make you feel like you were in the action (even though the style continued when the characters were chatting over dinner). I actually don't know how they get this affect and whether it's built into cameras or you turn off the stabilizer and get the cameraman drunk or what... I'm bringing this up now becuase we tried to watch Rachel Getting Married this past weekend and that movie had this very style. Tammy actually got car sick watching the first 5 ...
