Culture kills... wait, I mean cutlery

Sunday Video: Hot Toy Fuzz

Hot Fuzz meets the Toy Story movies. Hilarity ensues.

I love the role reversal.

Week 26: Pageant of the Transmundane

A car reported stolen 35 years ago in Spokane, Washington was recently recovered from a shipping container in Long Beach, California. I guess this gives everyone who has had a car stolen the dim hope that one day, it may be found again in a totally restored condition (it was a 1965 VW van). What would really make this a funny story is if it ended up getting stolen again.

Anyway, this week's winning entry was suggested to the royal us by long time reader Lee Sargent, who was cited in it. Hey, I am never one to frown on self promotion after all.

The entry in question is from the blog Captain Incredible - Hero of Neptune.

It features a video which was put together with various sound clips from the geeks' menagerie of influences, from cult and classic television to movie and a few other places in between.

And for some strange reason, I thought that the Sgt. Pepper-inspired Simpsons cover for the Yellow Album would be the appropriate image this week. I don't know why really.

Congrats Captain Incredible, whoever you are. Here is your badge.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Labels: transmundanity

No Doubt Sues Activision

The band No Doubt is suing Activision over an issue which I feel is rather silly, but which they take very seriously.

No Doubt agreed to appear in the game Band Hero, and now they are upset that within the game, the band can be chosen by the player to play any song. That's it. Their virtual image isn't being used to have virtual sex, do drugs, commit violent acts or anything unseemly... they are simply able to be used as the covering band, doing the thing that they do as themselves.

Now does anyone really think that a digitalized version of No Doubt lip synching to Y.M.C.A by the Village People or ABC by the Jackson Five is going to irreparably harm their image?

I mean, when Guitar Hero: Aerosmith or Metallica came out, did the fact that those bands in question were playing music by other artists somehow diminish them? No. So how come all of a sudden No Doubt feels that they are so special that being associated with other artists of their caliber somehow makes them less. If anything, they are elevated above them rather than being sublimated by them... so if anyone should be bringing suit, it is those artists who are not being represented like that.

When I mentioned this story on a game trading site I frequent, it turned out I was of the minority position because there is a lot of hate towards Activision for their perceived and real slights against gaming fans and such, and the general consensus seems to be that Activision is evil and they deserve what they get.

Am I really the crazy one in all this?

Labels: music, video games

My Enemies List: Addendum #4

It has been about two months since I last made additions to my enemies list, but I think I have found two more worthy entries for it.

Andrew Schlafly: Whenever I do one of these lists, there is usually one wingnut. Some are easy to recognize, some are very difficult. This entry is almost wearing a t-shirt that says they are in great big letters. You see, the reason that Mr. Schlafly is on this list is because I was looking at wikis this week, and he started the Conservapedia. The reason why he did so, and some of the subsequent incidents because of it are the reason why he is made this list. Schlafly has stated that he felt that Wikipedia has a "liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American" bias. I could bring up a Stephen Colbert's quip that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" as well, but that would be mean on my part. Some of the reasons he has seemed to find the site anti-American is due to the fact that non-Americans can edit the site from their own point of view and with their own take on the English spelling (British spelling is evil you know), and it is anti-Christian because the accepted date format is CE rather than AD amongst other things. He has been miffed that his edits of Wikipedia seemed to get deleted at times within a minute of posting, and has taken that as a sign that the whole thing is liberal, rather than as a sign that he may be a crank, and yet on his side of the Wiki aisle, there is very little freedom to express one's self outside of an agreed upon version of Conservative Christian orthodoxy. I've even heard rumors that editing is closed on Conservapedia during what are twilight hours in North America. There is the Lenski affair, and a spurious complaint to the FBI because someone edited a number of pages on the site by changing "Christianity" to "Ethnic Identity", the upshot of which is now people are getting permabanned for even mentioning the FBI on the site. But the topper for all this, the thing that proves just how nutty Schlafly is is the fact that he is spearheading an effort to take liberal influences out of the Bible... which includes the passage about He who is Without Sin, Cast the First Stone and Jesus asking God to forgive the people who crucified him. This is of course, just the tip of the iceberg.

Canadian Cable Companies: I have to preface this by saying that I live in an area that may or may not lose its local stations. There is a battle between local television stations and their networks and the Canadian Cable Companies. The cable television companies, who as far as I know have territorial monopolies (although maybe there is competition in places like Toronto and Montreal), and are carrying local stations on their systems without compensating those stations for their content. Those stations want some compensation, especially since as I understand it, cable viewers cannot be counted when they sell advertising on the station. What's more, the cable companies pay American stations to air them on the system, and yet, somehow they've gotten around that with local broadcasters, despite the fact that they are getting paid for doing so. When local stations started to complain and they banded together to get the revenues that they are owned with a series of television ads explaining the situation, the cable companies responded with a series of commercials of their own, making it seem like the local stations were being paid and were just trying to extort 10 dollars a month from subscribers, which is sheer chutzpah on two level. One as I mention, the local stations are getting dime one from the cable companies and two, where this 10 dollar fee came from is a mystery since the parties involved haven't even started negotiating over this, which to me tells me that the cable companies plan on instituting a new charge no matter what happens, even if the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) says they can't pass on the local TV payments to consumers. The CRTC declared that cable companies couldn't charge customers for a payment they are supposed to make to support independent productions in Canada, but somehow, cable bills went up the same amount that the cable companies are supposed to be paying into that account. But I am going to tell you a little story that might demonstrate why I have a hard time believing anything the cable companies have to say at the moment. Back in 2003, our cable system was slowly making the transition from a purely analog system to a two tier system with basic analog cable with a set of digital channels with a box for the higher channels. During this transition, the Canadian equivalent of HBO was on both the analog and digital dial, until one day, it just disappeared from analog, which was what I was watching it on. So I call the cable company and tell them my problem, that the station disappeared without warning, and the guy on the other end, without missing a beat, says that what I say isn't possible... because that channel was never on analog. Right... a channel that I had watched for 7 years was never on the system. So I am a liar then and my previous experiences were a hallucination. I mean, that is a much more likely explanation than say this one: you wanted subscribers to move up to the digital package, and you didn't want to send a letter telling analog subscribers that you were in fact discontinuing that channel for them like you had for so many other changes. Telling your customers they are liars is always a great policy, isn't it?

Labels: enemies

Midweek Video: The Most Honest Used Car Ad Ever

Why do people hate used car salesmen? Because they've met a used car salesman.

Even though this is a parody, I think it accurately portrays not only the pomp of used car commercials (because wording aside, it is almost exactly like the ones I'd see as a kid on local TV), but the underlying attitude a lot of bad used car salesmen bring to the jobs.

Labels: advertising, videos

Hmmm...

I just realized I haven't done an enemies list post in a while.

Maybe I should... I don't know... do something about that.

A Excellent Wiki Site: TV Tropes

A lot of sites on the web have taken the Wiki idea, and ran with it, none more successfully than Wikipedia of course. I have to say that I have visited a lot of these sites over the past few years, most of which are based on documenting a single topic in minute detail (especially the ones based on pop culture).

But I think one of the best wiki-based sites out there at the moment is TV Tropes, a place I didn't even know existed until it became the basis for an XKCD strip.

And the strip gets it right... it is like crack. I mean, I go there every day to look up things and just browse around.

TV Tropes is a site that breaks down almost every kind of narrative form, from film, literature and television to animation, video games and even professional wrestling into its component parts.

For instance, if I was curious about a movie... say, RoboCop, and I wanted to know some of the specific themes that were explored in the storytelling, I can just look it up on TV Tropes, and read through the itemized list of tropes, each of which is hyperlinked to a page devoted to that trope.

And because it is a wiki, if anyone thinks of new things to add to an entry, they are free to do so. But there is a certain amount of informality to the whole thing which makes it somewhat refreshing. In the words on the front page of the site, "We are not Wikipedia. We're a buttload more informal." It isn't just major works that are allowed on the site either... almost any narrative can have a page and be listed under the various categories, and if you are a fan of something, you can start a page dedicated to it, and perhaps through the wonders of Wiki Magic, a mighty page may emerge from your humble stub.

And there are trope categories that, while they don't specifically discuss a theme in a work, are still interesting to read. For example, there are sections about Fridge Logic (about plot holes you notice just after you've seen a particular work), and the Crowning Moments series (Awesome, Heartwarming, Funny along with a music one too). It is a site that just keeps expanding with the addition of excellent content daily.

Of course, I am not just a casual browser of the site anymore... I am also an active member of the editing community, so I am naturally very enthused by the whole thing.

Labels: movies, pop culture, television

Express Checkout: Southland, Leno, Gaga

- TNT has rescued the NBC drama Southland from NBC's cancellation scrap heap. If they get to run the episodes that are already in the can (as the show was cancelled before it aired a single episode this season), TNT made an awesome move, one which might benefit the series as well with the network's solid cable ratings and emphasis on drama. For those of you who were upset that Jay Leno pushed this series aside, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

- Speaking of which, Jay Leno has stated that if NBC was to offer him the hosting duties of The Tonight Show once again, he would take them up on the offer. I don't know about you, but I think the fact that Leno is stinking up an hour of prime time every week night seems to indicate that he might be willing to do anything to get that slot back. Part of me wonders if David Letterman would have taken a 10PM slot on NBC after Jay got The Tonight Show?

- Lady Gaga has plans to release a collector's edition of her first album with a book that has a lock of her hair in it. Outside of people who might want to kill her with with a magical curse and a stalker or two, who really wants a hunk of Lady Gaga's hair... I mean, really. I should also note that aside from a little bit of Let's Dance, I can honestly say that I haven't heard a thing she has sang... I feel fortunate.

Labels: express, music, television