Posts
OK GO does it AGAIN!
8 years ago
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Heard on the way to work today...funny
Things that are the same.
An OK movie and an ex-girlfriend.
They were both good at the time, but I don't need to see either one again.
Especially if the movie was bit of a bitch.
(Loosely translated from Demetri Martin on XM Comedy 150, my frequent savior on drives home after a hard day)
An OK movie and an ex-girlfriend.
They were both good at the time, but I don't need to see either one again.
Especially if the movie was bit of a bitch.
(Loosely translated from Demetri Martin on XM Comedy 150, my frequent savior on drives home after a hard day)
Monday, July 21, 2008
Reality TV(d)
Yep, that's how I view the majority of "reality" TV...I liken it to a disease that you may think you are having fun one minute and then you find out later on that you were just hurting yourself.
First let me clarify that I don't mean ALL reality TV...just the crappy stuff, you know 98.7% of it. I still give Survivor a chance every year, and sometimes I keep watching, other times I don't. I can give American Idol respect for at least being about something, I just don't like the genre of music they sing (give me an american idol "metal" edition and I'm all over it, or at least until it just gets TOO stupid).
I'm talking about the not-even-close-to-reality TV of relationships, people living in houses together, blah blah blah that are so obviously vehicles for wannabe actors and egos of massive proportion that actually think the public cares what they say or do. Now wait for the crazy part though...
they do! That is what gets me the most, there are important things going on in the world that we don't care enough about that really DO need our attention (Believe me I am not preaching here, I am one of the worst, my wife and I sponsor a child in Africa every month, and that is pretty much my sole claim to fame of being a "caring" person to those not directly around me) and then there are the most useless, self involved people in the world that are being propelled to celebrity status by virtue of a partially scripted, sometimes entertaining, always pathetic reality show. Those people are the ones we care about, they have their every move followed, analyzed and commented on, and it drives them to do more and more stupid crap to get noticed more.
The not-so-Real World started it all, back then it was sort of cool, you didn't know what to expect and the relationships seemed real. Now, everything that is REAL has been done before and they had to start making stuff up...it's unfortunate that most of reality TV draws from that plan and not the original. After every single dating show ends up with the final couple not staying together for more time then it takes to get to the reunion special, how is it that people still watch? A MySpace wannabe who would get a "sort of cute" comment in a bar if anyone saw her all the sudden has her own show because she is willing to take off her clothes and kiss other girls...and a pile of men AND women are lining up to be with her, even after they saw what happened to the first "winner" (I'm not sure exactly what happened, but there is a season 2, so I doubt they are at home waiting for her to get home from work).
One of the most depressing things each night is the audible "ugh" when I once again check the menu on my TiVo and the entire network TV section is a useless landscape of lame "unscripted" (yeah right) TV shows. It has actually come to the point where the commercials for the fall shows are better than what is on TV on the networks. At least some of the cable stations are getting it right with some great new shows (but we'll talk about that later).
My biggest thought among all this is that if we all got together and stopped watching or caring, maybe they would all just go away, people would start to actually work for a living again instead of dreaming of being bachelorette #27 on season 14 (please god, don't let that be my daughters goals) and concentrate on what good they could do in the world.
Then, to top of the reality TV world, we have the same people explode into the tabloid world. I don't care what your kids look like, I'm sure they are very cute, just please let them have more to their lives then you cashing in on their baby photos. At least Brad and Angelina I can see the passing interest in what they look like...$20 million though...really? (note: they will most likely give the $$ to charity...good for them). Over $1 million for what amounts to Britney's niece? (because god knows what Jamie Lynn has ever done, and she will most assuredly NOT give the $$ to charity).
Which brings us to the most irritating aspect of all of this...fame for being famous. That essentially means you have done NOTHING. At least Britney did some stuff before she became a train wreck, but anyone who says they only pay attention because they like to see celebs fall must not realize that you are actually helping them to not fall...they call the papparazzi and tell them they are coming (for $$)-they sell photos to tabloids and then complain about how they got out etc etc. The people that need to most go away (IMHO) are people like the Kardashians and Heidi and Spencer. I have never seen any show any of them have been on, and have never read a tabloid, but I know WAY TOO MUCH about these people that have done nothing to warrant knowing about them. I will never understand how this has happened that 2 self-serving talentless hacks with brutal narcissistic personalities have captured the interest of the public the way that Spencer and Heidi have. Good personalities. Nope. Talent. Nope. It's amazing, but people continue to care too much about people like them, and they laugh about it all the way to the bank. The scariest thing is, while turning through the channels I happened to catch Spencer saying his ultimate goal is politics.
Politics. Spencer. leadership. scary shit.
I think the saddest thing about all of this is that I'm willing to bet it happens. Even scarier, I think someone like him will fit in with the current state of that not-so-reality show going on right now called government.
(disclaimer: not ALL government is a bad thing, just the ineffectual, never gonna lose their seat no matter what happens guys, who will continuously pander to the big money holders and don't have a forward thinking bone in their bodies)
OK...that's it
more positive next time
scribbler
First let me clarify that I don't mean ALL reality TV...just the crappy stuff, you know 98.7% of it. I still give Survivor a chance every year, and sometimes I keep watching, other times I don't. I can give American Idol respect for at least being about something, I just don't like the genre of music they sing (give me an american idol "metal" edition and I'm all over it, or at least until it just gets TOO stupid).
I'm talking about the not-even-close-to-reality TV of relationships, people living in houses together, blah blah blah that are so obviously vehicles for wannabe actors and egos of massive proportion that actually think the public cares what they say or do. Now wait for the crazy part though...
they do! That is what gets me the most, there are important things going on in the world that we don't care enough about that really DO need our attention (Believe me I am not preaching here, I am one of the worst, my wife and I sponsor a child in Africa every month, and that is pretty much my sole claim to fame of being a "caring" person to those not directly around me) and then there are the most useless, self involved people in the world that are being propelled to celebrity status by virtue of a partially scripted, sometimes entertaining, always pathetic reality show. Those people are the ones we care about, they have their every move followed, analyzed and commented on, and it drives them to do more and more stupid crap to get noticed more.
The not-so-Real World started it all, back then it was sort of cool, you didn't know what to expect and the relationships seemed real. Now, everything that is REAL has been done before and they had to start making stuff up...it's unfortunate that most of reality TV draws from that plan and not the original. After every single dating show ends up with the final couple not staying together for more time then it takes to get to the reunion special, how is it that people still watch? A MySpace wannabe who would get a "sort of cute" comment in a bar if anyone saw her all the sudden has her own show because she is willing to take off her clothes and kiss other girls...and a pile of men AND women are lining up to be with her, even after they saw what happened to the first "winner" (I'm not sure exactly what happened, but there is a season 2, so I doubt they are at home waiting for her to get home from work).
One of the most depressing things each night is the audible "ugh" when I once again check the menu on my TiVo and the entire network TV section is a useless landscape of lame "unscripted" (yeah right) TV shows. It has actually come to the point where the commercials for the fall shows are better than what is on TV on the networks. At least some of the cable stations are getting it right with some great new shows (but we'll talk about that later).
My biggest thought among all this is that if we all got together and stopped watching or caring, maybe they would all just go away, people would start to actually work for a living again instead of dreaming of being bachelorette #27 on season 14 (please god, don't let that be my daughters goals) and concentrate on what good they could do in the world.
Then, to top of the reality TV world, we have the same people explode into the tabloid world. I don't care what your kids look like, I'm sure they are very cute, just please let them have more to their lives then you cashing in on their baby photos. At least Brad and Angelina I can see the passing interest in what they look like...$20 million though...really? (note: they will most likely give the $$ to charity...good for them). Over $1 million for what amounts to Britney's niece? (because god knows what Jamie Lynn has ever done, and she will most assuredly NOT give the $$ to charity).
Which brings us to the most irritating aspect of all of this...fame for being famous. That essentially means you have done NOTHING. At least Britney did some stuff before she became a train wreck, but anyone who says they only pay attention because they like to see celebs fall must not realize that you are actually helping them to not fall...they call the papparazzi and tell them they are coming (for $$)-they sell photos to tabloids and then complain about how they got out etc etc. The people that need to most go away (IMHO) are people like the Kardashians and Heidi and Spencer. I have never seen any show any of them have been on, and have never read a tabloid, but I know WAY TOO MUCH about these people that have done nothing to warrant knowing about them. I will never understand how this has happened that 2 self-serving talentless hacks with brutal narcissistic personalities have captured the interest of the public the way that Spencer and Heidi have. Good personalities. Nope. Talent. Nope. It's amazing, but people continue to care too much about people like them, and they laugh about it all the way to the bank. The scariest thing is, while turning through the channels I happened to catch Spencer saying his ultimate goal is politics.
Politics. Spencer. leadership. scary shit.
I think the saddest thing about all of this is that I'm willing to bet it happens. Even scarier, I think someone like him will fit in with the current state of that not-so-reality show going on right now called government.
(disclaimer: not ALL government is a bad thing, just the ineffectual, never gonna lose their seat no matter what happens guys, who will continuously pander to the big money holders and don't have a forward thinking bone in their bodies)
OK...that's it
more positive next time
scribbler
Once a Geek Not ALWAYS A Geek
OK, so after the amazing performance of The Dark Knight at the Box Office this weekend, it is actually 100% official, I am almost kind of sort of a cool person to know.
No, I had nothing to do with that movie, and in fact, I haven't even seen it yet (though my wife and I WERE able to sneak out to see Hellboy 2 today with my mom in town watching the girls).
The point of this whole post being, a lot can change in a somewhat short amount of time.
Let's go back to 1987. Living in Nova Scotia (just above and to the right of Maine before you ask). Graduating high school with honors and looking towards a degree in Chemical Engineering with a scholarship in Chemistry.
1989. Finally convinced myself that that was not the way to go and to follow my dream of being a comic book artist (after having collected for years...sign 1 of being the aforementioned geek).
1991. Graduated from Art School, still collecting comics with almost seek-help status, and also into computers even more than I was before, hey these Apple computers look cool, let's try those.
Many years of that passed, I was the geek who read comics religiously and was ALWAYS at my Mac (the one with the 120mb hard drive and 8mb processor that still took floppies...my IIFX, it was amazing). I designed t-shirts for people at the beginning of my career...wow...what a Loser. Had a house with 3 other guys and we always tried to party as much as we could, we were kind of popular (probably not as much as we thought) weren't we? We even had all the "magazines" laying around the house with all the "hot" women in them...wow, we were the $#!t.
Now, fast-forward to today, living in Los Angeles surrounded by women (OK, my wife and my 2 little girls, but they are all very cute)...Apple computers are the coolest thing this generation has seen in forever, along with all the i-line of products (and yes, I have them all except Apple TV, and would have had that if there hadn't been a strike). The movie theatres now have about 527 comic book movies playing right now, and they are the ones everyone is going to. 6 of the top 10 this year are comic related. So now I think we can label that cool, which would make knowing the background of all these guys even cooler, right? Not convinced? Well, those girls from the magazine covers? Now they email me to try and get into the magazine that I lead the design for (when I'm not judging them in bikini contests). So without having to even change a thing about myself I am almost, kind-of sort-of a cool guy to know.
Problem with all this is-now it doesn't help me, I have the perfect family, a great job etc, and instead of being the club-hopping, socializing guy I could be I'm still a geek that can't wait for my Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Lost fixes (and don't get me started on the X-Files movie). Just a cool geek now.
I really have gotta go see Dark Knight.
scribbler
No, I had nothing to do with that movie, and in fact, I haven't even seen it yet (though my wife and I WERE able to sneak out to see Hellboy 2 today with my mom in town watching the girls).
The point of this whole post being, a lot can change in a somewhat short amount of time.
Let's go back to 1987. Living in Nova Scotia (just above and to the right of Maine before you ask). Graduating high school with honors and looking towards a degree in Chemical Engineering with a scholarship in Chemistry.
1989. Finally convinced myself that that was not the way to go and to follow my dream of being a comic book artist (after having collected for years...sign 1 of being the aforementioned geek).
1991. Graduated from Art School, still collecting comics with almost seek-help status, and also into computers even more than I was before, hey these Apple computers look cool, let's try those.
Many years of that passed, I was the geek who read comics religiously and was ALWAYS at my Mac (the one with the 120mb hard drive and 8mb processor that still took floppies...my IIFX, it was amazing). I designed t-shirts for people at the beginning of my career...wow...what a Loser. Had a house with 3 other guys and we always tried to party as much as we could, we were kind of popular (probably not as much as we thought) weren't we? We even had all the "magazines" laying around the house with all the "hot" women in them...wow, we were the $#!t.
Now, fast-forward to today, living in Los Angeles surrounded by women (OK, my wife and my 2 little girls, but they are all very cute)...Apple computers are the coolest thing this generation has seen in forever, along with all the i-line of products (and yes, I have them all except Apple TV, and would have had that if there hadn't been a strike). The movie theatres now have about 527 comic book movies playing right now, and they are the ones everyone is going to. 6 of the top 10 this year are comic related. So now I think we can label that cool, which would make knowing the background of all these guys even cooler, right? Not convinced? Well, those girls from the magazine covers? Now they email me to try and get into the magazine that I lead the design for (when I'm not judging them in bikini contests). So without having to even change a thing about myself I am almost, kind-of sort-of a cool guy to know.
Problem with all this is-now it doesn't help me, I have the perfect family, a great job etc, and instead of being the club-hopping, socializing guy I could be I'm still a geek that can't wait for my Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Lost fixes (and don't get me started on the X-Files movie). Just a cool geek now.
I really have gotta go see Dark Knight.
scribbler
Be careful what you email
So I have a few people that I know that need to be careful with the forward/reply all buttons on their emails (among other typical email mistakes). It has caused not only small problems on several occasions, but has even been cause for people to have their offices packed in anticipation of the empty box crew showing up at their door with HR.
Now really, none have ever been on that scale, but definitely I have had more than one "oh crap, did he really just forward that to ........." or "they didn't hit reply all with so and so still on the list did they?" It is a strange mix of dread and humor at the same time, more humor after you have gone down the list and realized it is not your ass on the line somewhere in the ongoing conversation.
I always try to be very careful what I put into emails and try to keep my thoughts as straightforward as I can, especially if the body of the email contains the names of any higher ups at my company in them anywhere, but every so often I'm sure everyone has a slip-this is just a caution...be careful what you email, and make sure your friends and co-workers do the same.
scribbler
Now really, none have ever been on that scale, but definitely I have had more than one "oh crap, did he really just forward that to ........." or "they didn't hit reply all with so and so still on the list did they?" It is a strange mix of dread and humor at the same time, more humor after you have gone down the list and realized it is not your ass on the line somewhere in the ongoing conversation.
I always try to be very careful what I put into emails and try to keep my thoughts as straightforward as I can, especially if the body of the email contains the names of any higher ups at my company in them anywhere, but every so often I'm sure everyone has a slip-this is just a caution...be careful what you email, and make sure your friends and co-workers do the same.
scribbler
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