Category: picture box

I’m totally wasting my night catching up on stuff sitting on my TiVo from the past week, instead of being even as slightly productive as I had planned for today. But whatever.

The first 15 minutes of any Amazing Race season are the most confusing (even watching it on a TiVo delay). Many many people, lots of switching back and forth, and little time to pigeonhole them into identities, and more so this year because they’re not listing occupation/relationship (allowing you to make snap judgments), just the family name. It takes some getting used to.

I’m also kinda scanning the MLB scores at the same time, which means I look at the screen, look at the monitor, and look back at the screen to see a completely different person in a different car doing something else. Things can catch you by surprise this way.

After checking to see if the Yankees/O’s game finally finished (wow, O’s actually won, shocking), I look at the TV to see this caption

“BLACK FAMILY”

And I check, and I think to myself “Yep, that seems accurate.”

A moment later, I remember that means Black is their last name.

So so wrong.

So, I’m watching the premiere of Lost six days later then the rest of humanity, and I got to thinking –

Is there a proper name for the Law of Disposable Characters in A Work of Fiction? I’d like to know exactly what I’m supposed to be yelling at the television set when, say, Jack roams around the submarine house and what’s going on finally occurs to me: “Oh no, now I get why he had that long random conversation with the fellow with a bad accent – it’s frigging [name here]’s Law in a horribly annoying fashion!”

Also, if things don’t start speeding up a little bit, Lost is going to be like those 12 DBZ episodes taking place during a 5 minute battle. We’ve been on the same day (or at least 24 hours) since the start of the 3 episode finale last year, and we can’t be moving on that much next week. Though, if they want to put a beeping clock on the screen, I guess I can handle it.
AND AND AND if they’re telling me what happened to all the survivors, they better tell me what happened to Rose.

(Stop typing. Watch more off the TiVo.)

Cooter has a low opinion of the upcoming Dukes of Hazzard movie.

“Basically, they trashed our show,” said Jones, who now lives in the mountains of Washington, Va. “It’s one thing to do whatever movie they want to do, but to take a classic family show and do that is like taking “I Love Lucy” and making her a crackhead or something.

(article @ http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050713/ap_en_tv/dukes_of_hazzard_complaint via TVTattle)

His full opinion, which doesn’t actually include that quote, is at his website.

FMA: NOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Way to rub it in too.
GitS: This one I was less upset about. Nice job of making it completely gory, though. Please take your excessive plot explainations with you. To your death. The whole “the machines might have developed ghosts!” subplot makes me strongly desire the end of the season.

And that’s not counting all the extranous people who died on both shows. Whole lot of dying going on.

The finale of the original is also the only one that descends into that hyper-annoying “quote literature and pass it off as dialogue” style that got me so pissed off at the movies.

See, never gotten around to see the movie. The thing that’s bugged me about the series is the prophencity to use twenty words where two words would’ve worked and the twenty words are the most overwraught . And that they tremendously over explain things; they spent three minutes explaining her watch last epsiode so we could see it again here and have another three minute explaination. It feels like half of the series has been about explaining the plot of the other half; they might have been actually better living up to Stand Alone title. (The guy and his robot doll acting out a movie with one extra line episode was great because in the end, they just pointed out the extra line and let you guess what it meant.)

And they’re going for the record on most depressing ending – “politicians out manuever them and everyone is beaten and jailed or murdered” has got to be up there – although they’ve laid the ground work to turn it around next episode and I suppose they probably will (as well as bring her back to life – because it was such a dumb move which led to her death, it couldn’t possibly be real.)

Quick JLU via BT takes while I’m at it.

Task Force X: Fun! I have nothing else to say except the part where we saw Plastique’s impossible thin stomach, and then ripped off the secret fake stomach to reveal (explosives) and an even more impossibly thin stomach was hilarious.

the Balance: I don’t know if mystic episodes suck or Wonder Woman episodes suck, but something does. “I fixed it” was great. Between this episode and the next one, I became convinced Hawkgirl has not yet figure out her new outfit, and is actually fighting crime in her workout clothes.

Hunter’s Moon: Viglante works great for this series, because he was all sorts of hilarious here (except for the scene where he decides he hates all Hawk people and then wants to Vixen to get along with Hawkgirl in under a minute), but I think he’d get annoying quick. Vig! Vix! The whole side story about Hawkguy dying seems like a fakeout, because no one dies off screen.

This seems like the first time since the first season where we ended without a team who you keep hoping would lose but doesn’t down the stretch – unless you dislike Rob and Amber, but then at least you know who they were coming in. Joyce did what few women (and probably surprisingly few men) would do, and Meredith and Gretchen won’t go away and don’t give up, despite almost always feeling as if they have no chance.

The exclusion may be the half of the team which had the one of the greatest exchanges in the history of television, based on the preview alone.

“Your history shows you don’t commit to anything.
“I committed to the military.”
“And you got out of that one.”
“How did I get out of that one?”
“By being a POW.”
I can not wait!

(x-posting, mostly)

I wouldn’t have stopped if I was Rob or Amber. (Which would be odd, but go with me here.)

My thinking is if there’s another team there to get help if needed (which there was) and no one’s in a huge panic (the teams were standing around waiting by the time Rob and Amber rolled past), there’s nothing you can really add by stopping. If they needed you then, they’d let you know.

I think the best solution was to slow down, roll down the window, and ask, which the other teams did.

(I also think he didn’t think about stopping because the gay guys were there, and they didn’t want anything to do with them.)

I’m sure I’m liking Rob and Amber more than I should as a reaction to other people equally irrationally hating them, but I still think they were okay here. Far from perfect, but not outright horrible.

I think what’s more important (yet will get lost in the mix) is a Fun Team beat out a Not Fun Team at the end. That’s gone the wrong way many times. Much of the show is dependent on how fun/entertaining the people who are left are; it’s easier to love when you don’t have to put up with couples who clearly need not to ever talk to each other again.

Add in the dramatics of how the Fun Team lost the time, and then caught all the way up, and it was an awesome finish. Pretty good show, made possible by combining the non-elimination into a two hour show.

The new “we take everything” policy for lasts on a non-elimination is neat, but kinda annoying how it was logistically irrelevant – outside the airport, there was no place they could’ve spent the money they lost, and it wasn’t neccesary there.

only person watching

I’m not against the idea of female poker player being a person of importance or have issues with the actor, but really they should’ve given her something to do (that involve playing poker at 8) in nine episodes. If they didn’t spend an episode in a sex club for nothing more than the scenery and sub porn movie dialouge, Miami would’ve been the biggest waste of time.

That, and the great “you got balls, I’ll say that” line Matador just dropped on her.

What would David Williams mom say about a cameo on Tilt? I couldn’t stop laughing when I realized it really was him. She wasn’t there or they would’ve shown her, surely.

I like how it’s no big deal our three heroes made it to the final ten. From watching the tournament, it seems skill has 25% to do and luck is all the rest – they’re not even broaching the subject of how they’re getting where they are outside of the about three hands.

Eddie just turned an ace high straight and no one even mentions it. What the heck. I was kinda waiting for Norman to hit on Miami after, but sadly no.

Suicide scenes, how lovely. At least he didn’t pull the trigger while taling to his wife, that would’ve been awkward.

“The medical benefits suck.” Ha.

How odd all the late hands are decided with big hands? Would seem to be unlikely. David did better in real life than fiction, how about that.

I will never miss the voiceovers.

You’d think someone would mention “and last time these two played, an investigation was called in and Eddie ended up beat up.” Hey, isn’t $3.5mil still enough to cover what he needs by going second place? Shouldn’t someone have pointed it out?

OH SNAP he THREW IT. That’s awesome! That’s redeeming! I guess he’s got plenty now. Or an investigation into that too, whatever.

I guess the idea for Season 2 is the Matador gets free – but since everyone’s gotten their revenge on him, why do we still care? Eh.

Did we ever care to start with?

Digger Phelps is wearing a bright green tie. Waving around a bright green highlighter. Wearing a green pinstriped suit.

I’m thinking he should gotten his hair dyed green while he was at it. I hope they have him do a standup just so we can see if he’s got green shoes.

At least he stopped throwing down Open Challenges for Notre Dame to meet the last at large team for their seed, like he was doing this morning. Or at least he didn’t early on – I’ve been flipping around every since they started the filler (celebrity NCAA tournament memories? really?)

Does Fowler really hate Vitale? He looks so unhappy every time Vitale cuts him off to say something (completely pointless.)

Edit: Majerus can eat me, by the way. It’s doing what he loves. “I don’t own a computer or a caculator or a slide rule” – you ought to be getting one of those calorie counter calculators first of all, and second of all, if you’re going to dismiss the RPI, you ought to know what the heck you’re talking about it instead of using ignorance as a defense. I mean, I believe you’re dumb but I don’t believe the rest.

There’s an episode of Static Shock on with Karl Malone, Yao Ming, Steve Nash and Tracy Mcgrady as power rangers (more or less).

This has been a very strange day.

They didn’t get Nash’s hair right. It looks combed.

I keep forgetting to say this

Don Everest skill in life is to read people and figure out their plan based on little actual evidence. Of course he figured it out, that’s the thing he does. Of course they got beat – they went after his strength, and he shut them down.

The explaination need not be that complicated. Not to even mention the “lures the young bulls into the ring” bit. Because let’s not mention that.

I do like how he’s unable to relate to anyone except in a tortured metaphor.