Fox cancels “Drive” after four episodes. This means that Fox spent more weeks promoting the show than actually showing the show.
I didn’t watch it, figuring that if it was decent, it would get a DVD release. I haven’t watched NBC’s Heroes yet, using the same reasoning. It’s amazing to me that anyone will commit to watching a TV show with an ongoing plot line anymore.
When a band or solo artist puts out a double album of original songs, it usually means they’ve started to believe their own hype and can’t bear to edit down their brilliance to only one album of better songs. And yes, Bruce Springsteen, two simultaneous albums count, too.
There are only two ways to get money: earn it or have it given to you.
Nobody ever seems to think it’s important to make an economic case for recycling. It’s just assumed to be a good thing.
Interfaces and editors are nice, but sometimes you have to edit the HTML directly.
Katie Couric needed the Today show a lot more than the Today show needed her. This is not to say that the Today show has, at any point in recent memory, stopped sucking.
The police enforce speeding laws more often than reckless driving laws because it’s easier, not because speeding is more dangerous.
The fact that Troy Aikman wants to sell me a Ford does not make it any more likely that I’ll buy a Ford.
If you can’t handle disappointment, you can’t handle life.
John Grisham has no idea how to end his books.
Any time it rains in the Metroplex, expect your commute to take at least 50% longer.
The latest example in a long line of new-age bunkum is “The Secret,” which promises you everything you want if only you can visualize it and want it enough. You know, without all of that pesky effort, work, committment, or talent. The book & DVD combo are nicely summarized and dissected by Jason Steorts on NRO:
An Australian TV producer named Rhonda Byrne recently began moonlighting as prophetess-in-the-desert. In this more exalted station she made a film and wrote a book, both called The Secret and both claiming to reveal The Secret. The Secret to what? Why, to everything: wealth, health, relationships, happiness, world peace. Want to be a millionaire next month? Consult The Secret. Feel like eating whatever you wish and having 8 percent body fat? It’s in The Secret. Need to re-grow that diseased kidney? The Secret tells you how.
This Secret works according to something called the law of attraction, which governs the Universe (a word always capitalized by Ms. Byrne, who uses it much as a Christian or a Jew would use “God”). “The law of attraction says like attracts like, and so as you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to yourself.” Not merely thoughts: “If you can think about what you want in your mind, and make that your dominant thought, you will bring it into your life. . . . Your thoughts become things!”
Any time someone asserts that success in life is dependent on having a certain vibrational profile or resonating on a certain frequency you can be sure they are utterly full of crap. And yet this book is sold out all over the country. Steorts considers the profile of a “Secret” believer:
I first began to wonder whether a specific kind of person is especially vulnerable to Byrne’s enchantments when a friend of mine described his plan for getting into shape with The Secret. “I’m going to attract a sixpack,” he proclaimed. When I faithlessly asked whether his abs could use some time in the gym, he conceded that yes, he might have to do a few sit-ups — “but not as many as someone who isn’t putting it out there.”
Now this friend is by no means stupid. He has a clever and agile mind, and would probably get a high score on an IQ test. At the same time, he has one of the most aggressively anti-philosophical temperaments I have ever encountered. Thought bores him endlessly; he prefers to feel his way through each day. He is full of religious sentiment, having been raised in a family of believers; but, being homosexual, he is now estranged from the faith. For as long as I’ve known him, he has experienced life as a series of crises — personal, financial, professional — and has scanned the horizon for a Great Escape.
It’s easy to think of this stuff as harmless, but in many cases it can take the place of something that could be genuninely helpful to a person. But if you can really be convinced you’re the center of the Universe, then maybe you aren’t helpable.
I’ve been following this story for a while now, and it has me concerned. Apparently, bee colonies are collapsing and the beekeeping industry is is danger. As are the agricultural industries that use bees for pollenation.
Some say it’s cell phones, but they’ve been around for a while, and this problem is recent. This article discusses the phenomenon and discusses possible disease-related causes.
Here’s the scenario: Mom & the rest of the kids leave town. 17-year-old immediately decides to throw a party despite warnings to not have anyone over.
17-year-old then makes the amazingly stupid decision to put a party invite up on MySpace. Strangers trash the joint and steal at will. 17-year-old, who has yet to set foot in the house again and is staying with a friend, now claims her account was hacked.
Sure it was.
First it was low-flow toilets, or as I call them: multi-flush toilets. Now, noted scientist and scholar Cheryl Crow* will save us all by limting TP use.
Crow has suggested using “only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required”.
Wow, not only do her waste products not smell, they don’t make a mess, either.
* For my less pop-culturally literate readers, that was sarcasm. She’s actually a moderately successful pop singer whose most significant accomplishments of the last couple of years are a hair color commercial and a song in Pixar’s “Cars.”
Digging through the Weekly Standard’s Archives, we find The Case for the Empire. A political comparison of the Jedi, the Republic, the Empire and the Rebels.
Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator–but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It’s a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.
Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In “The Empire Strikes Back” Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor “falls down on the job.”
A bit tounge-in-cheek, but you have to admit those Jedi were pretty smug.
From seekingalpha.com, a market analyst points out that Microsoft hasn’t made any money from its Xbox division and doesn’t appear to be likely to start any time soon.
Making money, e.g., the creation of long-term shareholder value, has got to be the ultimate driver of Microsoft’s gaming (and H&E) strategy, right? Well, after five years and over $21 billion invested all they’ve got to show for it is $5.4 billion of cumulative operating losses, and Xbox 360 doesn’t appear to be the silver bullet to turn things around. I think it is also interesting to note that Microsoft’s actual disclosure shows only Revenues and Operating Losses; I backed into and show EXPENSES below for explanatory purposes.
Why might it be that Microsoft has strayed from the classic Revenues - Expenses = Profits (Losses) disclosure? Perhaps because they don’t want investors to focus on the fact that over $21 billion - the market cap of a sizable independent company - has been invested in a business that has performed so poorly, with unclear prospects for improvement.
So, if making money is not the object, you can make a pretty cool game system. Meanwhile, Nintendo keeps doing its own thing and turning a profit year after year.
Busy Gamer News gives us 10 Things to Hate About the Wii (but there’s some praise in there too). Oddly enough, the stupid name doesn’t make the list. Most complaints relate to (in my opinion) Nintendo’s inexperience in creating a usable console interface with internet connectivity. But then, they weren’t able to lose billions on a “practice” console like Microsoft did.
Sony’s not meeting its sales targets for the PS3, but says it “doesn’t have any specific plan to cut the PlayStation 3’s price.” I kind of figured they were eliminating the $500 20 gig version to create a room for a new price point for the 60 gig version.
Famous Psycho Dad! Alec Baldwin goes off on his 11-year-old daughter, visitation yanked. TMZ.com has the actual message (requires Quicktime), illustrating the point: never leave evidence.
The news is unwatchable right now due to wall-to-wall coverage of the VT shootings. The worst element is the videotape sent mid-rampage by the killer to NBC. NRO’s Jack Dunphy sums it up nicely:
None of them will ever admit this publicly, of course, but in the safety of their corner offices at Rockefeller Center sit men and women who are privately gleeful at the ratings boost they were given in the form of the box that landed in their mail room Wednesday morning. That the box was sent by a man who had just killed two people and would within the hour kill 30 more, well, that’s unfortunate, but business is business so let’s get this stuff on television. Proof of this is in the way the NBC News logo is displayed on the tape and in the still photos that accompanied it. Rather than appearing unobtrusively in a lower corner of the frame as is customary, the logo appears in bold letters very near the center of the screen. This was done ostensibly for copyright protection, but it also informs viewers who chance to see the images on other networks that the real scoop is over on NBC, so why not pick up the remote and join us?
It’s become very obvious that this guy was performing for the camera, fantasizing about the attention and infamy he would receive for his deeds. By showing his video non-stop, the media are sending a message to the next guy considering mass murder: they will uphold their end of the bargain and give him what he desires.
Also, I can’t resist a good slam piece. Hillary Clinton condemns Circuit City for its recent layoffs, but ignores the layoffs at Simon & Schuster that immediately followed the extraordinary (and never fully earned) $8mil advance for her book.
Interview with game translators at Nintendo of America. What a cool nerd job that must be.
From the Washington Post: Suing everyone in sight over music downloads really seems to have paid off for the record industry:
Revenue from CD sales was down 13 percent last year compared with 2005, the Recording Industry Association of America reported yesterday. The drop-off exceeds that of any year during the Napster era of 2001 to 2004, when the file-sharing service and its descendants — such as Kazaa and Grokster — allowed users to download music for free.
Corporate karma? There are too many entertainment alternatives out there for the RIAA to act like it does and get away with it.
Kotaku’s Brian Crecente dissects one of Jack Thompson’s slanderous TV appearances in which he claims video games cause violent crime and are used as “trainers” by would-be murderers. Crecente finds Thompson repeating unverifiable claims and arguments that have already been refuted:
What do we learn from this assessment of Thompson’s babble on national television? That you can say anything on TV and not have it fact-checked as long as you say it quickly, when TV needs someone to fill time and it’s a good sound bite.
Thompson clearly has no regard for facts, he’s too busy trying to get airtime.
The natural question to ask after a senseless and brutal massacre of innocent people is “why?” Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson say it was violent video games, of course. Morons. People always use this sort of occasion to advocate more of whatever they were in favor of in the first place.
UPDATE: Some Germans blame Charlton Heston. Hey, when have Germans ever been wrong about anything?
A Nintendo DS game can survive a trip through a washing machine.
Rachel Ray is overexposed.
Rosie O’Donnell is both unpleasant and nuts.
Renting games is OK right up to the point you feel compelled to finish the damn thing before giving it back and end up spending 16 hours on it over the weekend. Then it just feels like work.
If you see something you want at Sam’s Warehouse Club, buy it. Chances are it won’t be there the next time you come back.
Leasing a car means obsessing about the number of miles you drive, if you’re the sort of person to obsess over things.
You can either work to build your own fortune, or to build someone else’s. Or, and I’m just throwing it out, you could get a government job.
When it comes to homosexual autobiographical essayist/performers, David Sedaris beats Augusten Burroughs.
Saturday Night live hasn’t just lost its edge, it stinks for 75 minutes out of 90.
I don’t trust Oprah.
From the Wall Street Journal: A fascinating article about the competing and shifting interests in Iraq. History may well praise Bush’s persistence in reconstructing this country.
From The Beat, the creator of Ghost Rider sues Marvel Comics for owenership of the character. Before the movie hit, I guess there wasn’t enough money to fight over.
From Deadline Hollywood Daily: Tarantino & Rodriguez’s double feature Grindhouse was beaten at the box office by both Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons. Despite a $30mil ad budget. The word “flop” is being tossed around, as is “this year’s Snakes on a Plane.” They think it’s due to the double bill, and plan to split them up with extra content.
From NextGen: Even SonyStyle stores give up on the 20gig version of the PS3. Just like Sony to make a business decision without ever publicly admitting they are doing it. However, Insomniac’s chief creative officer Brian Hastings gives us “Ten Reasons to Love PS3.” About half of them make sense.
Via Kotaku: Office building + post-it notes + free time = Donkey Kong mural. Impressive detail.
From Bloomberg: Electronic Arts bet on the PS3, ignored the Wii. Now they’re scrambling to put together Wii product. Interesting info on sales momentum:
U.S. and Japanese sales of Wii players totaled 1.47 million in January and February, said market researchers NPD Group Inc. and Enterbrain. PlayStation 3 tallied 604,331, while stores sold 584,329 of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 consoles.
Guess what this woman did:
“I was accused several times of being a ‘stupid, redneck bitch,’” recalls TCPR’s vice president Nicole Williams, who fielded numerous calls. “I repeatedly was called a ‘whore’ and asked ‘Whose whore are you?’ for three days straight, almost as if those were talking points… I was shocked by these sexist insults — basically attacking my gender.”
The calls continued beyond Williams’s Nashville office.
“I had to change my home number and get an unlisted number,” Williams tells me. “I got about 10 death threats by phone that made an impression on me. I got the ‘I’m gonna get you’-type threats more than 100 times…I was worried that I would get shot walking to my car.” Williams discovered her obsolete address posted online. “If they could find my old home address, it would not be so hard to find a current one.”
Give up? The Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) pointed out that Al Gore’s Nashville estate “devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours” of electricity in 2006, “more than 20 times the national average.” Follow the link for more venom.
Thought one: I’m sure every one of those hate-spewing nuts felt completely justified in doing what they did, and believed they advanced the interests of all they regard as “good” with their actions.
Thought two: Who the heck has time to sit around and send hate mail and do telephone harassment?
