As I have said severaltimesnow, parents, and you, are the ultimate judge of what should be on your television, not the FCC. Well, it seems 82% of registered voters agree with me.
TV Watch, a group dedicated to keeping the goverment out of the business of regulating TV, commissioned a poll of registered voters to see if people want the FCC controlling what they see. This news story breaks down the information. 12% of respondents want the goverment controlling what we see, but the majority wants to control their own TVs and the programming. With all of the filtering equipment out there now such as the V-Chip and set top control boxes, you have the tools now to control what is on the TV in your house more than ever. It is time the goverment stepped back and realize that we do not them holding our hands every step of the way. It is time parents take more responsability.
It’s just time.
So what does this tell everyone? Our TV is being controlled by a small group of busy bodies with nothing better to do with their time than muddle in your business. It is time for the majority to speak up. Go to the TV Watch site, sign up, ask to get alerts when shows are under attack, stand up to the these bullies!
So…Microsoft Messenger 8.0 Beta decided my computer was it’s own personal play toy and decided to spontaneously reboot my system five times in about a half hour period. So one $90 technician call later we traced the problem to MSN 8 Beta, uninstalled it and the system seemed fine. So I spent the rest of my day backing up files on to my external hard drives.
Just how I wanted to spend my day…and now I am dead tired.
Yep, it’s that time of…week…again…for *snore* huh? What? Oh yeah, The Apprentice synopsis.
The teams met up with Trump, Bill Rancic and Carolyn aboard a Norwegian Cruise Line ship to receive their next task. They were to come up with a 30 second commercial to promote the companies new “Fire In Every Room!” cruise…wait…that’s not right. “Intestinal Trouble Spree”? No…”Freestyle Cruising”! That’s it! The catch was the ship was departing in 3 hours and they had to be off the ship by then.
This has to be the single most insane task yet. “Unrealistic” is one word that springs to mind immediately. There is no way a company goes to an ad agency and says “Hey, we need a commercial. Come up with the concept, hire the film crew, hire the actors, stage it and shoot it…and oh yeah, we need this all done in three hours.” In the past this show’s tasks have at least had SOME connection to reality, but this one was so off-the-wall, it was jarring to the senses!
Dan stepped up as Gold Rush project manager and did a horrible job. I liked Lenny’s concept of the cruise ship picking up a castaway, but it wasn’t shot properly and was poorly edited.
Roxanne was PM for Synergy and they went with the concept of showing off how the Freetyle-Intestinal-Trouble-With-A-Fire-In-Your-Room program allowed you to dine at any time you wanted. Roxanne lacked any real leadership skills, but they got the job done anyway, even with Andrea being a total pain-in-the-butt. (Because, as she will tell you, she’s made millions, what do you know?)
Here’s what the offical site said of the decesion:
“The executives felt that both ads were good, but that Synergy’s use of voice-over compared to Gold Rush’s use of text was much more effective. They also thought that Gold Rush’s ad was confusing while Synergy’s was clear. Therefore, the winner was Synergy.”
Synergy won some diamonds from some secret vault place, I don’t know, I was bored senseless at this point. Dan whined a lot in the boardroom, Trump got pissy Lenny wasn’t in the room, Carolyn got on the table and danced…who knows…Dan got fired. This show has crossed over in to the land of silly with just downright awful tasks this season.
Some people just do not need to be in the business world. The way people act on The Apprentice make more sense to me after days like this. I am not going to take the fall for you mess ups and I have already spent 5 months trying to fix this guys mistakes and he just keeps making more of them, so…I unleashed on him today. You know what? It felt REALLY good. He has no power over me and it was time he learned that. Grrrrrrrrrrr don’t mess with me!
You know, I don’t remember what the world did before TheSmokingGun.com came along, but I, for one, don’t really want to remember.
It seems that ABC has decided it’s ok to start dictating what people are most deserving of the Extreme Makeover:Home Edition treatment. In a letter to their affiliates, ABC has listed their most desired problems for the new season. It reads like a shopping list of explotation to me.
Now, I am not saying these people aren’t deserving, all the ailments/problems listed in this letter are severe, and these people probably can use the help, but the letter just seems downright tacky to me. You can almost hear the hooping and hollering in your head when they get a phone call telling them that an affiliate has found them one of those “17 known cases in US” of congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. Because, as the letter writer so enthusasitically points out “let me know if one is in your town!”. Yeah, I’ll let you know if one is my town right after I was the filth off of me that is this letter.
ABC has sunk to a new low, and I am sure they never wanted this letter seen by the public, but this shows that this show is nothing to them except for explotation of people. I am glad the people end up with a new house, but at what price? More pain?
The Channel I watch All My Children on in the afternoons, when I can, shows the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the version hosted by Meredith Viera. I try to avoid seeing this show, but sometimes I do flip channels early. So today I flip over and a woman gets asked on the $4,000 question “What famous Washington D.C. monument is featured on the back of the $5 dollar bill?”. I smirk thinking how easy this is.
She used the “Ask the audience lifeline”…only 65% of them got it right. The AOL Instant Messenger respondets…well…only 56% of them got it right.
Where in the world does the daily version of this show find it’s contestants? Do they only accept people with the lowest possible IQs they can find? “That man appears to have trouble tying his own shoes…quick! Snatch him up for the show!”
And if you are reading this and need to pull out a $5 bill to see which monument is….first you need to be smacked….secondly, it’s the Lincoln Memorial.
As you probably all remember, back in June I burned my leg with a pot pie I dropped. I have a lovely scar from it, but overall it healed nicely. So, tonight I decided to throw a lovely Marie Callender Lasagna in the oven. In the last 15 minutes of baking you are supposed to remove the lif to crisp up the cheese. Ok, so when your hand slips and your right middle finger hits the upper backing rack, guess what happens? Yep…burn.
Let’s face it folks, ovens and I don’t mix. This burn isn’t very bad, and I sokaed it in ice water for quite awhile, but oven baked Marie Callender items and I are just not having a good track record. I think I may switch to just eating salads, but knowing my luck, I will find some way to harm myself with those also.
As I get ready to return to Tokyo again, I decided to go through my Google Earth on my laptop and mark the places I go the most so I could refresh my memory now, and when there. I also thought it would be fun for my family to see where I go, and I also thought I will post screen caps each day in the blog so you all could see where I go each day.
Well, as I went through marking spots, there was a couple of places I couldn’t find because they were not near any major stations, and especially not near any of the Yamanote stops. So I started seaching the Google Earth Keyhole groups for downloadable overlays. I finally found one that marked EVERY subway and train station in the Tokyo region. I had no clue there were that many stations! Yikes! But, I found the places I was looking for.
I then found another overlay that showed shopping centers, coffee shops, bars, resturants, parks, shrines and so on. So many new places for me to check out and explore. I will have to study the maps harder before I go to make sure I don’t get lost…which is easy for me.
Now, I have talks specifically about Tokyo, but these same sorts of overlays exist for just about ever major city in the worl. So download Google Earth, and begin exploring yoru favorite cities, even if you’ve never been there! It’s hours of fun, all for free!
I hate to say it, but I’m not big on going out to the theater any more. It always seems more hassle than it’s worth. Ticket prices are climbing, snacks are over priced, if you have to go to the bathroom you can’t pause it and so on. Hollywood wonders why theater attendance is down, and like the music industry, they are quick to blame piracy. Well, like the music industry, I would like to say how about lowering your prices and making better quality films instead of releasing total schlock? Just a thought.
So, all that being said, it takes a lot of convincing to get me to go to the movies any more until I have total faith in a project. While I loved the graphic novel of V For Vendetta, the writer, Alan Moore, had his name removed from the project because he didn’t like the changes they made to it. To Warner Brothers defense, Alan Moore removes his name from everything (he also wrote the books From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were based on) because he is…well…to be blunt, a bit wacky. Here’s a picture to scare your children with. After glowing reviews from some friends (thanks Farah and Rachel) of mine, I decided to head out to the theater on a slow work afternoon and see it.
Wow.
Really, that’s the whole review “wow”. The script was done by the Wachowski brothers, the creators of the Matrix Trilogy, which it is well known, I thought was just a horrible series of movies, so I was really hesitant about how this film would be. Overall I think they kept the best bits of the original work, added a few things that I thought worked well and cut a tremendous amount of sub-plots that were really unnecassary to the main thrust of the story. The changes are significant, enough to make it almost like another work, but with the same basic theme of “governments should not be allowed to run wild over it’s people.”
The big question you are left with when this movie ends is have you just rooted for a terrorist or a freedom fighter? Is V someone fighting for the betterment of people, or is he a run of the mill terrorist? Honestly, if you see the movie, the answer is obvious, he is a freedom fighter. Once the plot is fully revealed, and you know what all this goverment has done to it’s people, there is no way you can view him as anyone but someone fighting for a greater good. I don’t want to say too much so as not to spoil anyone who has not seen it, but believe me, it would be impossible to convince me that V is evil.
Going back to what I said about Hollywood should improve the quality of movies, this is a prime example to me of what films should be. Three times I got goosebumps during this movie. THREE TIMES! I don’t remember the last time a movie did that to me! (for the curious folks the scenes were Lady Justice, Dominoes and Parliament…if you’ve seen the movie you will know what all of those scenes are) This film is filled with power, hope, a message and a meaning. It is NOT just a blow-them-up action film, it is a story of accepting your fellow man and that rejecting him can lead to nothing but trouble. That, as the movie tag line says “People should not fear their goverments, goverments should fear their people.” Do not just sit back and take what your government says as the gospel. If you disagree with it, speak out! Make your voice heard! Do not grow complacent just because you are comfortable with the way your life is going. Do not sit back and think “Oh well, this is how things are.”
There is so much more I would like to say, especially the journey of Evey’s character, but I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone planning to see it. I may revisit this subject after the DVD release, because I really believe this is a film that is going to be on my mind for quite awhile.
Amazing Race opened with Eric & Jeremy being told by Phil that the leg was not over and being handed their next clue. They were instructed to fly over a 1,000 miles to Frankfurt, Germany and then take a train for a 100 miles to Stuttgart. Once there they needed to locate the Mercedes-Benz factory and find their next clue. Lake & Michelle were close behind and second place and the teams took off for the airport.
The other teams who did the nesting doll Detour from last week were the first teams in-and-out of the Pit Stop, the Trolley washers were way behind. The last team to get the stern-gaze of Phil, was Dave & Lori. They seemed to be the only ones relieved to hear the leg wasn’t over for some odd reason.
At the airport, Eric & Jeremy got on a Lufthansa flight that was leaving immediately. Lake & Michelle got an Aeroflot flight leaving two hours later due to the other flight now being closed. This led to Lake once again saying “Dang gummit!â€, once again affirming my suspicion that his father is Jed Clampett. The teams all started to bunch up at the airport when all of a sudden the computers went down, possibly stranding the remianing seven teams.The teams stood at different windows to get the best position when the computers came back up. BJ & Tyler lucked out and were at the first window to open up and made it just in time to get on the Aeroflot flight. The other six teams got stranded until 7:00 AM the next morning.
Meanwhile, Eric & Jeremy made it to the Merceds-Benz factory and read their clue. They would be taking a test drive on an old test track known as The Wall of Death. Unfortanly the factory didn’t open until 8:30 AM the next morning, so they saw their lead disappearing. Little did they know the teams were standed for the most part. While the six teams finally made it in to the air, the three teams that had made it out of Moscow were at the test track. They chose a driver to take them on the track and experienced speeds up to 170 KMH (105 MPH) and angles of nearly 90 degrees. Once done their clue instructed them to drive 200 miles to the city of Bad Tolz were they would find their next clue.
As the follow up teams made it through the test track they headed out, but all except for Barry & Fran had trouble finding the Autobahn. Due to Fran’s navigating they propelled themselves from last to fourth place. Meanwhile, Wanda & Desiree were working wih Dani & Danielle on not only getting lost, but getting lost in grand style as they managed to travel in a complete circle and get lost in the same place twice. Pretty impressive I must say.
Once the teams arrived at the farm just outside of Bad Tolz, they opened their clues to discover a Roadblock:
“In this Roadblock, one Team member had to search the large field filled with 150 hats and feet of the Travelocity Roaming Gnome. Underneath 11 of the hats and feet would be a gnome itself that held its next clue.”
The most amusing thing in the early part of this was Lake & Michelle couldn’t find the field so they got a drunk local man to ride in the car with them until they could find it. Whatever it takes! As the teams finished, their next clue told them to drive to Bavaria Film Studios in Grunwald and they were to take their gnome with them safely to the Pit Stop.
Once at the studio, the teams found their Detour for this leg:
“In this Detour, Teams had to choose between Break It and Slap It. In Break It, Team members took turns breaking stunt bottles on each other’s heads until they found one with “prost,†the German word for cheers, written on back of the label. However, they could only smash one bottle per cuckoo from a traditional German cuckoo clock. In Slap It, Teams had to learn and correctly perform a sequence of steps from a complex German folk dance. The task would be physical, but Teams with the right rhythm could finish fast.”
To be quite honest, I saw Fran & Barry mess up their dance they were allowed to go on through, so not sure how hard the dance was. The bottle smashing was hillarious though as teams found different ways of breaking the bottles. Eric & Jeremy hit on the clue girl and got kisses on their cheeks from her. When BJ & Tyler got up to her, Tyler all of a sudden spoke in German to her and asked if she would like to go dancing with them. She seemed impressed. As the teams finished their clue instructed them to drive 10 miles to travel 10 miles into Munich and find the street Leopold Strasse where they would find the Siegestor, a 153-year-old monument to peace and the Pit Stop.
To be short, Eric & Jeremy arrived in first place and won a trip. Wanda & Desiree ended up in a battle for last place with Dani & Danielle, both of them running hours behind the other teams, and it really did get down to the last few seconds, but Wanda & Desiree were eliminated from the race. Funniest moment of the Pit Stop, of course, goes to BJ & Tyler who decided to run backwards on to the mat, causing Phil to turn to the German greeter with a puzzled look and say “They’re running backwards, Peter.” Upon jumping on the mat, they looked at the German man, who has a long beard, and exclaimed “SANTA!” I swear these guys are about the happiest team this race has ever seen.
South Park is over, and as the title promised, it was indeed “The Return of Chef!”. They used pieced together sound clips of Isaac Hayes from various episodes to provide his voice and made no effort to hide it, just adding to the comedic effect.
In short, the episode was brilliant. We learn that Chef left town to join the Super Adventure Club (SAC), which sounds innocent enough. Upon his return to town though, the boys can tell something is…different about Chef, and it’s not his stilted speech pattern, it’s his desire to make love to young boys. It seems the SAC travels around the world so they can have sex with the young boys of the world. After the boys discover this, they also learn SAC brainwashed Chef and they do everything they can to bring him back to “normal”. They succeed, but in the end Chef tries to go back to the SAC and ends up being killed by a fall…then a mountain lion…and a bear. There was a funeral and then SAC rebuilds Chef in to…Darth Chef, complete with glowing spatuala.
It was much funnier than my transcript, but that’s not the point here. The episode was all about the boys (who embody creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone) trying to save their friend (Isaac Hayes) from the “silly little club”. While this episode could have been an all out attack on Isaac, it wasn’t. It was actually a touching story of how they are sad this happened and they want him to know they love him and will miss him. Kyle summed it up best at the funeral for Chef:
“A lot of us don’t agree with the choices Chef has made in the last few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can’t let the events of the last week take away the memories of how Chef made us smile. I’m going to remember Chef as the jolly old guy who allways broke in to song. I’m going to remember Chef as the guy who gave us advice to live by. So you see, we shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us, we should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.”
This is one of the things that kills me about this show. People look at it and just see crass toilet humor, and I’m not denying it’s there, but if you pay actual attention to it, you will find that Trey and Matt are very passionate men about any range of subjects. If tonight’s episode is to be believed, they are hurt by what’s happened with Isaac and feel no ill-will towards him, just towards the “Church” of Scientology. I, for one, stand firmly behind Trey and Matt and applaud them for their…classy…handelling of the situation. (Yes, there was a bowel joke towards the end, so not sure you can label it classy)
Now comes the question, will Darth Chef be a recurring villian? And also, will the seeming “war” with Scientology continue?
Is it just me, or is this group of candidates on The Apprentice the most annoying group yet? I would love to see them just once concentrate more on the task than on trying to stab each other in the back and set up other people to take the fall.
We start off this week with yet more crying! What is up with this group?!? Backstabbing, crying, general bitchiness…ARGH! Charmaine learns that Theresa got fired for her poor choice of not bringing her back in to the Board Room so…cue the crying!
The next morning, the teams emt up with Trump, Ivanka and George at the Trump Grille in the lobby of Trump Tower which resides in the city of Trump York in the state of Trump York….you get the idea. The teams were to design a banner for the new Post Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch, which has to be the MOST unwieldy name for a cereal ever. They would then be judged by executives from Post.
Tammy stepped as Project Manager for Synergy due to her background in marketing. She wanted to decide who would be presenting to the executives, Brent raised his hand and…yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. He also suggested they focus their ad on weight loss, an idea the team did not warm to. Instead they wanted to go with a theme of one generation passing the Grape Nuts on to the next…yeah…not so bright.
Over at Gold Rush, Charmaine stepped up as PM in an an effort to prove her worth to Trump. No ideas really caught on until Bryce suggested the idea of an attractive woman chugging a box of cereal. I will admit I scoffed at first, but the final product was much better than I expected.
Oddly, both teams got the idea to search the city streets for models, as opposed to hiring them. Synergy was going to hire real models, but decided that they instead wanted normal people for their ad. I would like to have seen some discussion of how the teams arrived at these decesions, but alas that information was never shared. Synergy wanted a daughter and father set up, they would have been wise to go with an older guy than they did, but what do I know.
And again, with Synergy, Brent tried helping with the design of the box packaging, but was shot down at every turn, mostly be Andrea. Once the package was done and the image emailed over to Sean and Allie, who were working on the photography, the team again clashed as Sean hated the packaging.
The next morning, as Synergy (noticing a theme as to who this episode was focused on?), was ready to leave for their presentation, the team had to wait on Brent due to his getting up late. Andrea scolded him and that resulted in an even bigger delay as they argued. Once at the presentation, the Synergy banner was too crowded, Sean stammered through his presentation and…yeah, they lost. Big shocker. Gold Rush won a prize of cooking a meal with world reknowned chef, Jean-Georges. Lenny made an ass out of himself by finishing off some of his plating…Lenny is not long for this world I think.
In the board room, Synergy praised Tammy’s leadership skills, except for Brent, of course. Long story short, Brent got fired without anyone even being sent out of the room. He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but at the same time, I have to say his entire team is a disater.
