Breaking Science News!

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNnsAx19eaM

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.

Irritating Commercials

January 25, 2011February 8, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

It’s odd how often I end up writing about commercials, because A) No one watches commercials anymore, and B) Just in general, WHO CARES? but I can’t help but find them fascinating. I think what intrigues me about the medium of television advertising is that often the true effectiveness of a commercial has absolutely no connection to how good it is, or at least how much I personally like it. Sometimes it seems like an inverse relationship. It’s the reason I title these posts “Irritating Commercials” and not “Terrible Commercials.” If I hate a commercial it usually just means that it was directed towards a different demographic.

Of course, knowing all that won’t stop me from complaining about them.

Luvs Diapers

Nope. No, this should definitely not exist. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are people out there who think this is funny. Probably a lot of them. But we should not be encouraging said people. I mean, seriously, what we have here appears to be a depiction of three babies gleefully and explosively defecating into their diapers. In some sort of sick contest. Set to Tag Team’s classic and terrible 1993 novelty rap hit “Whoomp! (There It Is)“. All depicted in a style of animation that brings to mind, for me at least, 1990s breakfast cereal commercials. Nope.

I don’t have a kid, so I am definitely not in the target demographic for this ad. But is this what appeals to you after you have a baby and get totally sleep-deprived and spend all your time watching bright, loud, children’s programming? I can’t believe that. I won’t. I’m sticking with my original thesis that this should not exist.

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Ridiculous DVDs

January 18, 2011February 21, 2011 / Jared / 8 Comments

Were you to walk into the living room of my apartment, it’s likely that one of the first things to draw your eye would be the massive, seven-foot-tall DVD shelf. I’ve always been vaguely uncomfortable with it. Having that many DVDs on display and out in the open like that has always seemed a bit tacky. Besides, as we all get more comfortable with digital media and hard copies of things become sort of unnecessary, having as large of a DVD library as my wife and I do is almost embarrassing.

Were you to actually approach the shelf, however, things would really start to get embarrassing for me. Impulse purchases and rash decisions abound. There is nearly as much chaff as there is wheat. Both my wife Johanna and I own movies that not only are we not likely to watch again, we didn’t even really like them the first time.

Below is a list of sixteen that struck me as particularly ridiculous. These aren’t necessarily the worst movies we own; a couple of these are actually pretty good. But, for one reason or another, none of these films deserves a place in our DVD collection. Most of them don’t belong in the DVD library of anyone who wasn’t directly involved in their production.

16) Coyote Ugly

I almost cut this out of the list so that I would have an even fifteen. I mean, even without having seen this I know that it’s a terrible movie. But if being terrible were the only consideration, this would be a much longer list; inclusion here requires a DVD to be particularly useless. Johanna expressed surprise, however, when I went to put it back on the shelf, saying that this was the movie she was most embarrassed to own. That was enough to re-earn it a spot.

15) Patriot Games/Clear and Present Danger

OK, so these aren’t terrible movies. I mean, as far as action movies go, they’re a little bit quaint by today’s standards, but that’s still Harrison Ford and not Steven Seagal on the cover there. But the question remains, what would possibly compel me to buy one of these on DVD, let alone BOTH? And I can guarantee that these were separate purchases and not some discount two-pack. I decided, on two individual occasions, that I needed to purchase a Jack Ryan movie on DVD. And, both times, Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan. Not Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan. Not Ben Affleck’s Jack Ryan. What was my motivation? I’ve never even read a Tom Clancy novel!

14) Papillon

The first half of this movie is actually kind of great! The second half just keeps going and going and going and is a mess. But quality isn’t really the issue here. Why do we own this? I’m kind of surprised this is even available on DVD. How many of you have even heard of this movie?

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m glad we have this. How many copies of this can their even be in circulation? I’m guessing no more than 500. I now consider myself a part of a very exclusive Papillon club.

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The Golden Globes, 2011

January 17, 2011January 23, 2011 / Jared / 1 Comment

We warmed up earlier this month with the People’s Choice Awards, but now Awards Season begins in earnest with the Golden Globes. By the way, People’s Choice Awards, you may need to reassess your existence if you’re nothing more than an unnoticed ramp-up to the ridiculous disaster that is the Golden Globes. And I’m sure you noticed that I didn’t even bother with you, Critics’ Choice Awards.

As per the usual, my wife Johanna and I will be competing in a winner-picking competition. We’ve done this for nine award shows and I’ve beaten her eight times. Her one win? Last year’s Golden Globes. That doesn’t bode well for me tonight; I suspect her tendency to make at least one or two crazy choices really helps her because of the general goofiness of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

She wants the win, too. You guys should have seen her agonizing over her ballot! I thought she was going to have a breakdown making her picks. She also had to fulfill her role as award show bartender. In honor of the foreign voters and the drunken, vaguely trashy vibe of the evening, she’s whipped us up a wine spritzer with equal parts Chardonnay, Sprite Zero, and Diet Orange Fanta. As she set it down in front of me she said, “These are relatively disgusting, BTW,” but I’m enjoying mine so far. She’s calling it the “Slutty Exchange Student” and assures me that she’s working on a second concoction for later this evening.

All right, let’s get started. As always, categories and winners in bold. Take it away, Ricky Gervais!

8:01 – Here’s Ricky! As I said last year, I think he’s perfect for this job, mostly because he doesn’t seem to care much about offending people and he doesn’t seem stiff and over-prepared. I’m looking forward to it.

His drinking a beer on stage thing is starting to feel like a gimmick, though.

8:04 – The audience has definitely warmed to him since last year. He’s getting more laughs from the famous people up front. Robert De Niro is certainly enjoying himself.

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The unparalleled sports coverage of the New York Times.

January 16, 2011January 23, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

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

January 12, 2011January 12, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSHeKfZG7c

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]

The People’s Choice Awards, 2011

January 6, 2011February 17, 2011 / Jared / 3 Comments

2011 has begun and another awards season is here, and we all know what that means; Johanna and I must resume our award show winner-picking competition. If you’re sensing a lack of enthusiasm on my part, that’s due to the fact that tonight we’re starting with The People’s Choice Awards.

I don’t know about you, but I was under the apparently false impression that this was a real award show. I mean, I knew from the title that it was voted on by the “people,” so the actual winners are inevitably going to be terrible. That’s no excuse for the list of nominees, though. No real award show in 2010 has any reason to nominate Jackie Chan for anything, right? The categories themselves don’t even make sense. Two of the TV show categories are “Favorite TV Obsession” and “Favorite TV Guilty Pleasure” and the nominees for both seem pretty interchangeable. And Mad Men apparently doesn’t qualify as either an “Obsession” or a “Guilty Pleasure.” At least we finally get to vote for our “Favorite TV Doctor.”

I’m having trouble even figuring out who the target audience for this show is. This is key, because since this is a winner-picking competition, I need to know what type of person was doing the voting. So, judging from the nominees, this is basically the MTV VMAs/Movie Awards except it’s aimed at the dorkier tweens and teens. Also, there is probably a lonely housewife factor that I need to consider. Noted.

If you’ve been keeping score at home you’ll remember that I pretty handily trounced Johanna in the 2010 competition. Of the eight award shows we’ve done this for, I won seven of them. It’s a new year, though, so we’re wiping the slate clean and giving her a chance to redeem herself. Let’s get started. As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – No one told me this was hosted by Queen Latifah. Although, to be fair, no one said anything about this show to me at all, ever.

9:02 – She’s opening with a cover of “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. This is officially Johanna’s favorite opening to an award show. I’m busy scanning the audience to see how many celebrities are actually in attendance to try to see what I’ve gotten myself into.

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New Year’s Eve, 2010

December 31, 2010 / Jared / Leave a comment

As we sit down to ring in the New Year (or, in the case of my wife and I, stand up and play Guitar Hero to ring in the New Year), let’s take a few minutes to look back at the year that was. I have no idea what watchmojo.com is, but I thought this was fun.

While watching that video I couldn’t help but wonder how much of this stuff we’ll remember in ten years. Chatroulette? I barely even knew what that was at the time. My only real experience with it was watching the guy that looks like Ben Folds make up songs about people.

So let’s take a look back at a year in review video from ten years ago and see how much we remember.

Oh god I miss ten years ago so much! Elian Gonzalez! It’s all so quaint. Seriously, though, that video was absolutely no help. I remember everything in it, mostly because it is about 75% Bush v. Gore. I’m pretty sure some other stuff happened in the year 2000. You so rarely fail me, YouTube.

Anywayz, I hope everyone has a safe and exciting New Year’s Eve, and let’s try to keep it together in 2011! It’s only 24 short months until the Mayan Apocalypse; let’s do our best to comport ourselves well. Play us out, Robert.

[First video via Mediaite]

Songs, 2010

December 30, 2010January 10, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

I enjoyed making my list of favorite albums of the year more than this list, because it’s easier to think of things to say about an entire album than it is a single song, but this list is probably more appropriate for the times in which we live. It also allowed me to include some stuff that couldn’t make the albums list because it is from an EP or an otherwise unspectacular album.

A few notes: If the song was released as a single, I generally used the single’s release date, if only to get some great songs from albums released in 2009 on the list (notably the two Florence + the Machine songs near the top). Also, sorry that this takes a minute to load; I think I’m going to have to start breaking up these video-heavy entries up into multiple parts. As always, this is not a list of the best songs of the year, which I don’t necessarily feel qualified to write, and rather just a list of my favorites.

Remind to listen to some more hip hop in 2011. All that really made the list here is Kanye, and that doesn’t even completely sound like what I think of as hip hop anymore. I miss it.

40) MNDR – “I Go Away”

As I’ve said before, I’m very charmed by MNDR, even though normally someone with as many affectations as she obviously has would drive me crazy. OK, by “many affectations” I really just mean her crazy, unnecessary glasses. That’s pretty much all I know about her. Also, yes, I know it’s technically a duo, but c’mon, you know what I mean. Don’t be that person.

39) Active Child – “When Your Love Is Safe”

I was introduced to this band and several others on this list by this great post over at Stereogum, so props to them. This song sounds like it could have been an outtake from that Holland album Beirut put out under the name Realpeople. You know, falsetto vocals on top of pretty electronic music. Although, in the video below it isn’t electronic.

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Movies, 2010

December 29, 2010February 13, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

I had such big plans for my Christmas in Boston. We were going to see so many movies! One every other day, or maybe even more than that! I was going to see True Grit, Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, all the movies that aren’t yet playing in Chapel Hill. I was going to really beef up this list and make up for the fact that I didn’t make it to the theater much this year.

Alas, time flew and whatnot, and none of this happened. I did have a chance to watch the movie I have at number five below, so at least I got to round the list off with ten. Because, honestly, I didn’t see anything else that really came close to warranting a spot here. As it is, this is sort of a weak list. MacGruber made my top ten, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, let’s start things off by watching this montage of scenes from the many, many movies I did not see this year.

Now let’s move on to the very few movies that I actually did see. As always, this is not a list of the best movies of the year, since I really don’t see that many movies and don’t feel qualified to write that. This is just a list of my favorites.

10) MacGruber

Like Hot Fuzz, this is a satire of action movies that pretends to be an homage to action movies. I enjoyed Hot Fuzz, but I think this was quite a bit funnier. It’s basically just a long series of gags, so it sort of is just the extended SNL sketch that its critics accuse it of being, but I thought the gags themselves were really pretty hilarious.

This was my dog’s least favorite movie of the year. He normally completely ignores the television, but he lost it during the sex scene in this movie and would not stop barking at Will Forte’s over-the-top grunting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqySbDqTGGc

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