My favorite thing about videos like this is that they remind me that I’m not actually as jaded as I sometimes think I am.
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WHICH ONE KING SHOULD HAVE SO MUCH POWER
The Emmys, 2011
So, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Emmys. I always get excited for them because I love quite a bit of television, and quite a bit of the television that I love gets nominated. But there are always one or two nominees in each category that (even though MAYBE I’ve never actually watched the show SO SUE ME) are clearly not worthy. And, more often than not, one of those two nominees ends up winning. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnny Galecki won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy this year. JUST KIDDING even the Emmys wouldn’t go that far, I mean it’s JOHNNY GALECKI lolz gimme a break! If that happened I would expect the Emmys to receive an Emmy nomination for Best Comedy next year! Get it?? Wocka wocka wocka!
So usually I start out excited, slowly lose my enthusiasm after some mind-numbingly bad award choices, and by the end of the night I’m a disillusioned husk of a man. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, because I don’t really care all that much, but you get my point.
As usual, my wife Johanna and I will be competing in a winner-picking competition. She’s trying not to over-think things tonight and keeps muttering things like, “I refuse to base my self-worth on this. I am an adult with a job.” She is also going to fulfill her role as bartender for the evening. We very recently found out that we will be moving from North Carolina back to Boston soon so that she can start the aforementioned job. In honor of both Game of Thrones and the impending New England blizzards that we’re dreading, she has concocted a drink made up of vanilla-flavored vodka and seltzer that she’s calling “Winter is Coming.” Yummerz? We’ll see.
OK, let’s get this thing started. Time to hype ourselves up for another bloated award show! Repeat after me: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!”
8:01 – Fun (??) opening musical number! Oh, Jane Lynch. In just a couple short years I’ve gone from liking you a lot to still liking you but being annoyed at your overexposure because of Glee to kind of maybe not even liking you anymore? But this bit is pretty winning. Maybe you’ll redeem yourself in my eyes tonight! And I know my opinion is all that really matters to you, Jane.
Are you guys watching Survivor?
Boston Rob is really running things, huh?
The Big Love Finale
I totes should have written this post last night right after watching the show because it seemed like I had lots of thoughts then that I can’t remember now, but oh well, I’m lazy and thems the breaks!
I should start by saying that I know that you hate Big Love. Everyone hates Big Love! But I was always sort of fond of it. It was basically a soap opera with high production values, right? And that’s fun, I think? It seems that most of the problems people had with it were story-based, and that is completely valid. Because like 83% of the stories this show chose to introduce and explore were really stupid. I get it. But I always saw it as more of a character-driven show than a story-driven show, and while I wasn’t really in love with any of the individual performances, these were some pretty compelling and well-drawn characters, IMHO. It was always in the Entourage vein of HBO shows, in that it’s really stupid, but I can settle in and distractedly enjoy it every week while I try to get through my Google Reader. And, unlike Entourage, at least it had a little bit of forward momentum, even if it was stupid forward momentum. Entourage has, like, backward momentum. I suspect I’ll miss Big Love a bit.
I should also say that my wife Johanna and I had some conversations as the season built to the finale about the way the show should end, and it mostly ended, in word if not in spirit, exactly how I thought it should. I wanted Bill to die (BELATED SPOILER ALERT!!1!). Bill needed to die. And Bill died. Also, I wanted to get confirmation that the story was really always about the wives and their relationships with each other, and I got that confirmation.
OK, all that said, this finale was terrible.
The Super Bowl, 2011
OK, wait, just for one second let’s talk about the Puppy Bowl. Did you guys see Two Face? He was clearly the best and my favorite because he just wants to chill.
I’m also probably going to be good friends with Oliver (and maybe his brother River) because we share a love of movies.
But anyway, the Super Bowl. So, this seems like it’s going to be a good game. Most people that I’ve heard have been picking the Packers to win, but they aren’t huge favorites. It should be close. Plus, both the Packers and the Steelers have huge fanbases and storied histories. There is a lot going on here. And somehow, I absolutely could not care less. I can’t remember the last time I was this uninterested in this game.
My desire to watch it is also hurt by the fact that the television rights this year belong to FOX, which means this is going to be really overproduced and will constantly pander to the lowest common denominator. And will feature a robot.
OK, OK, Dexter is a BIT formulaic.
Granted, I pretty much know what to expect from a season of Dexter at this point, but it’s generally fun enough to keep me watching. When you see all of its repetitive plot devices and character tics recreated in one eighty second spoof, though, it does make the show look a tad ridiculous.
Great job, LandlineTV, whoever you are! This is my favorite Dexter parody since Showtime aired that full, 12 episode fake season 3 back in 2008.
Wait, that was real? The whole thing, even the Jimmy Smits stuff? No way!
[Via Urlesque]
Breaking Science News!
I know I just posted an entry about commercials, but I just saw another one that featured some shocking news that I had to share immediately.
Did you catch it? It was barely noticeable; it kind of seems like they’re burying the lead. Here, I’ll do a screengrab for you:
No, not the fact that she looks like Robyn. Up there in the top left corner!
FANTASY SCENE, YOU CAN’T GROW YOUNG! What?!? And this is how you tell us, scientists? Hidden in some random commercial? What about Ben Button?
That was what that movie was about, right? No one I know saw it.
The unparalleled sports coverage of the New York Times.
The New York Times proves once again that it only pretends to like sports:
Because on game day what we all really want to read is an analysis of the opposing quarterbacks’ personal styles. At least the Jets vs. Patriots preview coverage features players that are currently alive. For the Chicago Bears they’re transporting us all the way back to the Great Depression.
I suspect that they run stories like this because they still regret their adoption of color photography back in 1997.
Someone should tell the editors that when you’re talking football you need to tap into fans’ deep-rooted anger, aggression, and bloodlust. The New York Post gets it.
Columnist Steve Serby considers anything short of the literal decapitation of the opposing team’s coach and quarterback to be a failure, regardless of the score.
At the very least, The New York Times needs to employ more pun headlines. ESPN has at least twelve people on their pun-writing staff at all times. Look at the gem they came up with today:
I think they might also need to hire a pun ombudsman; that headline can’t possibly be considered up to their standards of journalistic integrity. It took me a full minute to even realize that it was a play on “fair-weather friends.”
New York Times, I love you, but you’re doing it wrong.
Technological Ephemera
Image via Wikipedia
For years my wife and I have meant to sit down and write out a point by point summary of the various ways we interact with technology and/or receive culture. For instance, if we had done it for 2010 I would have mentioned that it was the year I first started tweeting and first used full-body, motion-controlled video games and pretty much abandoned buying physical CDs of music. I think we forget sometimes how briefly we’ve been using technology that we now take for granted. YouTube has been in my life for less than five years, HD television for less than four. Ten years ago I didn’t have a cell phone; today I don’t have a landline. I think it would be fascinating to go back and look at annual updates of this information to get a clear picture of how quickly and dramatically all of our lives have changed.
The video below approaches this concept from a different angle, by taking a look not at how we’ve adopted new technology, but at how quickly we’ve forgotten about old gadgets, in this case by having young children attempt to identify some old gear from the Eighties. Granted, some of this stuff probably couldn’t have been identified by the average person when it was new, even, but the concept is interesting. Plus, one of the boys thinks that a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk is a camera, so that’s hilarious.
Two other hilarious things: 1) the term “floppy disk,” and 2) the fact that some Canadians speak French.
In a somewhat related note, Gizmodo has an interesting piece on technologies that probably won’t be around in ten years. I agreed with most of it, but I think it’s a bit odd to include digital music players (iPods) on the “survivors” list for the same reason eBook readers made the “doomed” list, namely a lack of versatility. They’re probably right, though, mostly because people like music more than they do books.
[Via Urlesque]
Of Modern Proportions 