Sep. 10th, 2007

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Along with the ongoing Emmy and Mega-TV deals, today's Deal of the Day is the Complete Dawson's Creek for $109.99 (60% off). That's tons of Katie Holmes pre-Scientology, Michele Williams pre-Heath, and Joshua Jackson and James Van Der Beek pre-"Where Are They Now?"

The VMAs

Sep. 10th, 2007 08:45 am
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So, watched the VMAs last night. By "watched," I mean that if a performance didn't catch my interest in the first ten seconds, I fast-forwarded. Still, there were some moments.

The good:

1. Sarah Silverman's monologue was performed in front of the wrong crowd, but was damned funny (mostly).

2. Chris Brown. Holy fucking shit. Go here. Watch. It doesn't matter what you think of the music; this is what a live performance should be.

3. Justin Timberlake. That reprieve he got as a result of "Dick in a Box?" Extend that by a couple of years. He used both his award speeches to implore MTV to start playing videos again. Oh, and his exhortation for MTV to play more videos and fewer reality shows? Came after being presented with an award by the skanks from The Hills. And he used the rest of his "Male Artist of the Year" speech to do nothing but rave about Chris Brown. Classiest guy at the awards show.

4. Rihanna. Most folks (Brown, Timeberlake, and a few others excluded) phoned it in. She, meanwhile, performed about sixteen times, including numbers with Brown and with Fall Out Boy.

The bad:

1. Britney. It wasn't even bad in a "train wreck" sense. More like watching a really bad karaoke video by a girl who just swallowed a handful of quaaludes. Truly pathetic.

2. The ongoing reminder that the "V" in VMA is pointless. Only one award was actually presented for a video.

3. Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. Off-message and out-of-it. Bad combo (but good train wreck).

4. The fact that many music stars suck as presenters.

5. The fact that almost no talented artists get played on MTV any more, anyway.

Anyway, I'm back to my tradition of not watching MTV again until this time next year.
yendi: (Default)
1. Kathryn Cramer has more patience for dealing with power-abusing self-important morons on Wikipedia than anyone else I can think of.

2. How to beat carnival games.

3. Google Earth now has a built-in Flight Simulator. And I suck at it as much as I do at any flight simulators. All planes should work like the ones in the assorted Capcom games like 1942.

4. I'd been away from IF for a long time, so I'm pleased to see that there's a damned fine new OSX client, Spatterlight. It handles TADS, Z-Code, Hugo, and a bunch of other formats.

4.5 Also, holy shit -- Inform has changed a lot. As in, I might be able to muddle my way though it now.

5. I finally made my first trip to Russo's (yes, my link dump is over a week behind), where I discovered that I love Longons!

6. Most useful link I've ever gotten from a videogame magazine: IDEA - The International Dialects of English Archive. Clips of English being spoken by folks with almost any accent imaginable.

7. I've raved about Adam Roberts as a writer before (both this year and back when I was at Bookslut). He also writes some damned great stuff online, like this post.

8. The book that will win every sf award ever.

9. Forget the VMAs. "Dick in a Box" won the Emmy!

10. Finally, it seems that DHL's take on customer service is the exact opposite of UPS and Fed Ex's stance. As in, DHL seems to actually like and respect customers. Color me impressed.
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Billy Mitchell responds to some of the issues in the movie.

There's almost no doubt, from what I've read here and in a lot of articles, that the movie was cut in Steve's favor. There's also little doubt, however, that some of the more embarrassing comments made by Billy on screen were perfectly legit. That said, I know plenty of folks (myself included) who could come across as arrogant or full of stupid comments in a documentary. And real life people tend to be neither heroes nor villains, so there's no inherent contradiction in the idea of a guy holding back a videotaped performance until the right moment to undercut his rival, and the same guy also buying a septuagenarian so she could work on reclaiming her Q*Bert world record.

Still, it's hard to not feel supportive towards Steve Wiebe; there's been almost nothing to indicate that he's anything less than he's portrayed as during the film.
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The always-interesting Mark Evanier explains the history of near-twins Brutus and Bluto in the Popeye universe.

But why?

Sep. 10th, 2007 08:16 pm
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Okay, the question I've got is, why would anyone bother stealing the defensive signals of the Jets?

I mean, really, what is Belichick going to learn? "Okay, when the defensive coordinator makes this signal, he wants the defensive line to fall back and give Brady thirteen seconds to make a pass. When he does this other signal, however, he wants the defensive line to open up and let the running back through."

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