I am sure the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) felt their offer to the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) would make it look like they are the ones trying to seriously settle the ongoing writer’s strike, but, alas, their offer was a joke.

Dubbed the “New Economic Partnership”, according to an anonymous source to the New York Times, even the name was chosen to convey they were working with the writers.  The offer was for an additional $130 million over the next three years, but it was done in very small increases.

The biggest insult was in the royalties for an hour long show to be streamed on the Internet for one year.  Currently the fee is $20,000 for a one hour show to be aired on television for one year, for Internet streaming the producers offered $250 for the same length of time.

… 1.25% of the television rate?  I mean, I’m sure the advertising rates are cheaper online, but are the networks trying to say they earn only 1.25% of the rate they do for airing it on TV?  Somehow I find that unlikely.

Talks are scheduled to resume Tuesday, but it appears that the two sides are still miles apart, and the writers are preparing for the strike to go for the long-haul. What does that mean to you, the viewing public?  Be prepared for a lot of the episodes airing now to serve as your “season finales”.

This has been all over the media, so I assume most of you have heard about it by now, but for those who haven’t, a nurse in Massachusetts wants to ban the spanking of children entirely, including in your home.

The theory is that spanking is as much a crime as domestic abuse and it is wrong for parents to have carte blanche to abuse their children. From the ABC News article this quote (and picture) came from:

“I think it’s ironic that domestic violence applies to everyone except the most vulnerable — children,” said Kathleen Wolf, who wrote the bill.

Look, there is a difference between “domestic violence” and swatting your kid’s behind for misbehaving. Sometimes it is the only way to get a kid’s attention, and I know it sure as heck always worked on me as a kid. Sure, there are some parents who take it too far, and those people should be punished, but if you want to swat your kids behind after you have repeatedly told them no about something, then do it.

The general sense is that the bill won’t pass, but it is just insane to me that it ever even got considered. Spanking is as old as humanity for the most part, and while I think it can be taken to excess, I think every parent has the right to make this decision for themselves.

Working in a comic book store for over 15 years, I saw my fair share of rowdy kids, and the parents who always went the “Do you want a time out?” route usually got no where with their kids, and the one’s who gave them a small swat on the butt got their attention. Again, it’s all in degrees, but to give a total ban is just stupid in my opinion.

And if this does pass somehow, what’s next? What part of your private life in your home will the regulate next? Rough housing? Watching wrestling? Where does it stop?

Oh, and by the by, according to the poll on ABC, most folks think this is stupid also.

I’m not one for sharing YouTube videos usually, but this is one of those rare occasions.  This aired in the second season of Mad TV, you know, when it was actually funny.   Anyway, one episode featured a now defunct comedy troupe called Corky and the Juice Pigs singing a song called “I’m The Only Gay Eskimo”.  10+ years later and I still laugh myself silly through out this song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bid9KsuxECA[/youtube]

Zack Snyder, director of 300, is hard at work on his adaptation of the classic comic book work, Watchmen. He posted some new images on his blog, one of I have here to the left. (Click it for a much larger view) You can see the other super-sized pictures here, here, and here.

I enter this project with some trepidation. We all saw what he did to 300, and what I thought of that mess of a film, and here he is playing with what is potentially one of the most important works in the history of comics. So far it LOOKS good, but this is an incredibely deep and layered story, I’m not quite sure how they’re going to pull this off within the confines of a movie If he does succeed, this could be the movie to show that comic books are not just child fare, but works of fiction on par with most novels.

___

Next up is a promising quote from Sir Michael Caine in regards to Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker.

‘The problem was, how do you top Jack Nicholson as the Joker? Heath Ledger plays the Joker and he is fantastic. I couldn’t see how Jack could be topped but he’s at least equal to him. It’s extraordinary. Jack’s Joker was a very nasty old uncle, this Joker is a maniacal, murderous psychopath.

‘And when you see the make-up - he looks like he’s mentally gone. He puts the make-up on to disguise himself and then goes and never takes it off again, or washes, so gradually it looks like leprosy. I’m a great fan of Christopher Nolan. I thought ‘Batman Begins‘ was the best Batman I’d ever seen. And I think this one will be better than that.’

The problem with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal was he didn’t “get it”. He played The Joker for laughs, maybe a bit too much Cesar Romero from the 1960’s television series for my taste. The images I’ve been seeing from the film seem to speak more to the twisted Joker I love, and know he can be. This film is sounding better and better!

… then I remember the “Batpod”.

___

And finally, some new pics from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (ugh… I still hate that title). You can click the one to the left for a much larger view, and you can see the other two here and here.

Not a whole lot to see except for an older Harrison Ford running around with Shia LaBeouf. I’m still not sold on portions of the basic story premise (which I won’t say here for those who wish to remain spoiler free), but darn it, I know I’ll go see this any way. It ranks up there with Star Wars: You know it’s silly and pointless, but you just really don’t give a damn because it’s so much fun.

I know, I know… this is an attitude I need to have more often with movies. I keep trying to get there, and I may even succeed some day. And there are times I can suspend my critical nature, such as Indiana Jones movies. The difference is that these movies don’t take themselves seriously.

And that is where my problem is with most movies. If you take yourself seriously, and then if you especially break a rule you set for yourself, then I have no respect for you because apparently you think I’m too stupid to remember what happened a half hour ago in the film.

Anyway, there looks to be a lot of films coming up that I want to see, and, surprisingly, I may even enjoy some of them!

I love the idea of being able to see how many people are subscribing to the RSS feed, but it sure would be nice if I could rely on Feedburner to be accurate.

Maybe it’s this inaccurate with everyone, but somehow I doubt people subscribe and unsubscribe from my feed quite at the speed Feedburner implies.   Let’s just look at a week.

• 11/18 - 22
• 11/19 - 21
• 11/20 - 26
• 11/21 - 26
• 11/22 - 25
• 11/23 - 28
• 11/24 - 25
• 11/25 - 30

I understand this is a free service and all, but it should would be nice if it could at least be consistent.  It is possible people are jumping on-and-off my feeds the way this shows, but it seems unlikely with this small of a user base.

In what is becoming an annual list, I’m going to share the holiday programming I enjoy every year.

A Christmas Carol - Patrick Stewart is a classically trained actor and he brings a powerful tone to the role of Scrooge. A fantastic version of this classic tale of Christmas spirit.

A Christmas Story - Set in the 1940’s does nothing to diminish the fun or relevance of this movie. Every kid has had that “dream” gift on their Christmas list that it seemed no one wanted you to have. Fun, cute and so many quotable lines. “You’ll shoot your eye out” if you miss this one!

It’s a Wonderful Life - Come on…do I even really need to discuss this one? Is there anyone alive who hasn’t seen this? Actually I did find someone this year…and I promptly pointed her out for the heretic she is. This is one of my all time favorite movies. Jimmy Stewart is amazing.

Love Actually - Really, the only connection to Christmas is the time of year, and a couple of holiday jokes, but it’s cute and sweet. Never mind it has a stellar cast of English actors and actresses.

Miracle on 34th Street - While some can believe it’s like a film length ad for Macy’s department store, it’s still a cute film with a central message that Christmas can be magical for any numer of reasons.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation - The Vacation movies have been a mixed bag (as has most of Chevy Chase’s career), but this film is so easy to relate to. We all have those dreams of the perfect family Christmas, just to have them dashed and never have them live up to our hopes. Plus, the Cousin Eddie scene in white sweater, with green dickie, is worth the entire price of the movie!

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Not only is it a sweet story, and amazing to watch, how can you not love a movie that can make both the Halloween AND Christmas movie lists?

The Original Television Christmas Classics (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer / Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town / Frosty the Snowman / Frosty Returns / The Little Drummer Boy) - I recommend this primiarly for Rudolph, but now you can only get it with all this other stuff. Oh well. What is Christmas without Rudolph? Nothing I tell you!

Santa Claus - The Movie - This movie got ravaged by critics, but it is cute, funny and warm. Deal with it.

You have a fave? Talk about it!

And yes, I know a lot of these movies show up on TV, but if it’s something like It’s A Wonderful Life, PLEASE don’t watch it on commercial television. It is deserving of your hard earned money being spent on a DVD of it. Same with Christmas Vacation. Christmas Story I don’t mind because it’s a 24-hour marathon, I usually watch it 3 - 4 times through out the time period. Yes… 3 - 4 times, I love it that much.

Recently my Mother was out of town on business, and I had sorted the mail for her while she was out.

This lovely example to the left is the catalogs she got while she was gone. Mind you, this was after I had already thrown out the duplicates that she sometimes gets. So the result was 8 & 1/2″ of catalogs. I didn’t think to weigh it, I should have.

How many times since the Internet got big have we heard we will be entering “a paperless society”? That always kills me to hear because our daily mail is just stack upon stack like this.

The part that kills me is most of those come from companies we deal with online, so they know we’re online capable, but yet they feel the need to send us printed catalogs. Why waste the paper, the mailing fees, the toxins released in to rivers, and everything also involved in printing and mailing? We used to turn them in to shred and use them for packing material, but we get more than we could ever use, and they just keep coming and coming.

Every so often I have a customer request a print catalog of our products, and we haven’t produced any sort of printed material in eight years or more. Why should we? We have multiple web sites, updated multiple times a day, no print catalog could ever keep up with that sort of timeliness. Sure, some people in this world still aren’t online, but how would they know to go to our website and request a catalog? They wouldn’t.

I don’t fault people who still like tangible items, heck, I still prefer a hard copy book over an ebook any day, but that’s a book, something I read in bed. (Yes, I am aware of Amazon’s Kindle, but I’m just not that interested)

In short: I just don’t get it.  Can’t we save a few trees and let people who order online just check a box saying “Please, no print catalogs”?

Not that it matters to 99.9% of you, but I have chosen my High Def format and… I went HD-DVD. I ordered my Toshiba HD-A35 and will be getting it next week.

So why did I finally decide on HD-DVD over Blu-ray?  (In no particular order)

1. Cost - HD-DVD is bringing their prices down much faster than Blu-ray.
2. Promotion - I got 10 free movies in addition to the excellent price.
3. Installed User Base - No matter how Sony tries to spin it, the people with HD-DVD players are purchasing more movies per player than Blu-ray.
4. Quality - Again, it’s a matter of spin, but the only MAJOR advantage Blu-ray has over HD-DVD is storage capacity, and when you get up to these numbers, does a person really need THAT many special features?  Otherwise they’re very close to be negligible.

Now that I’ve picked a side… expect a surge in Blu-ray sales.

Ugh… yeah, like pretty much every other American, I ate too much. And, yes, this picture was my dinner. Damn my weakness for stuffing!

Something interesting happened though: Why did I take a picture of my meal?

Over the past few years I have become friends with a woman from a foreign country in the Souther hemisphere (I won’t say which country as she would die of embarrassment if I identified her), and she is fascinated with Thanksgiving. Her only exposure to it has been via movies and American television shows. This has led her to have a very romanticized idea of what Thanksgiving is all about. I explained to her the true history of the holiday, but she still has this idea of how families gather and it’s all cheery and sweet.

There’s no denying it’s a good time most of the time, but nothing like the movies portray, of course. It’s interesting to ponder just how much our culture has permeated culture all around the world. I had a friend from England who told me how people would call 911 in an emergency as opposed to their 999 number. The reason being they remembered it from seeing it on American television shows.

Is this a healthy thing? Sure, in the case of my one friend, she just thinks the day sounds like fun, and it gave me an endless source of amusement. But, in the case of 911, not so much. There’s no way to stop this from happening, but you have to wonder what else it may be leading to.

It was 70F on Tuesday, and today we’re expecting as much as 2″ of snow.  It won’t stick as the ground is still too warm for it.

I took this picture this afternoon from the front porch of my warehouse (yes, that’s “my” truck, though I avoid driving it like the plague as it is a hand-me-down and I hate it).   This is a bit early for our first snow, and looking at the forecast that we’ll be back in the 40’s by Friday, which is more the average, but was nice to see it.

Over the past several years our snow fall has dropped to next to nothing, which in some ways is welcome (less inconvenience), but it sucks for the farmers.   Course, hopefully we would never have a repeat of the Great Flood of 1993 snows/rains where we ended up being in the middle of what was later called “a 1,000 year flood”, meaning one of that severity would probably only happen once every 1,000 years.

That… was not fun.

Well, the mysterious movie “1-18-08″ finally has a name, and it is “Cloverfield“. This name has long been rumored, and it was known that the film was using this name as a cover during some of its filming. Everyone is a little shocked it ended up being the actual title.

Pictured to the left is a screen grab of the monster from the new trailer for Cloverfield that came out. We finally get some idea of the scale of the thing at least, but that’s about it. (For those who check out the trailer, this happens around the 1:28 time mark) 1-18-08.blogspot.com has a shot for shot analysis of the trailer, and some interesting things do pop up if you know what to look for.

I’ve written about this movie a couple of times now, first when the teaser hit, and then again when the “viral” sites started popping up. I make no bones about it, but for whatever reason, I love monster movies. Sure, they are mindless, and completely lacking in plot, but there is something fun about watching a monster just lay waste to a city.

What bugs me is the rumors we will never get a clear shot of the monster, nor will learn its back story. As much hype as has built up around this movie, I am starting to get a sinking feeling it will never be able to live up to it. It’s beginning to feel like the whole hoopla over Snakes On A Plane from a few years back.

Snakes generated a tremendous amount of buzz over its marketing, and then completely failed to live up to the hype that surrounded it. And the closer 1-18-08 gets, the more I think the same thing is going to happen. I’ll probably still go see it, hey, buildings get knocked over, but I have zero expectations of it being good, which means I should walk out pleasantly surprised!

… right?

Anyway, for those who wish to follow along, here is an updated list of sites connected to the film.

Official Sites

1-18-08

CloverfieldMovie.com

Trailers

Supposedly Connected Sites

BoldFutura.jp - Part of the Tagruato Corp. (this one is questionable to being legit)

Jamie and Teddy - Love videos from the character of Jamie to someone named Teddy.

Slusho! - The mysterious drink that also has a connection to Abrams’ old series, Alias.

Tagruato Corp. - Yeah, I discussed it above already.

MySpace Profiles of Characters

Beth McIntrye

Rob Hawkins

Hudson Platt

Lily Ford

Marlena Diamond

Jamie Rascano

JJ Hawkins

Sites Following The Insanity

1-18-08News.com

Cloverfield Central

Cloverfield Clues

Cloverfield Movie News

I have come to the conclusion that if an older television series I like comes out on DVD, I am waiting until all the seasons are out and wait see what happens. The “Complete Series” box sets trick is quickly annoying me.

Let’s take Buffy, The Vampire Slayer as an example. Going through Amazon, seasons 1 - 7 will run $218.93, but if you waited for them to do the complete box set, you can have the entire series for $164.99. Amitadely I started buying the seasons while the show was still airing, but I still wasn’t too happy when the box set came out. You would have thought this taught me a lesson, but oh no.

There have been other instances, but the latest, and the one that taught me my lesson was The Addams Family. Buying sets 1 - 3 separately comes to $59.97, but if I had known there would be a complete series set coming, I wouldn’t have picked them up as they were released. Actually, that’s the burn, I had the first two, and then as the third came out, the set was announced.

So, my lesson has been learned, unless it is something I am trying to catch up on, such as 30 Rock, then I can wait it out and see if the box set is coming out, and hopefully save myself a couple of dollars… or… you know… I could just stop buying DVDs, but… that would make sense…

As we enter week 3 of the WGA strike, an agreement has been reached for the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) to go back to the negotiating table without the writer’s returning to work in the meantime.  This had originally been a condition for the AMPTP to come back, but they have waived it.  Talks will resume on Monday, November 26th.

Why is this significant?  Well, the rule of thumb had been that if the strike went in to the new year, what was in the can would be the end of the season for most shows.  By returning to the table now, they have all of December to has out the contracts prior to this deadline.  Some shows have also said they would have problems with a five-week strike, so this gives them a week to get in under that wire also.

Thus far the AMPTP has been threatening to play hardball with everyone, so my gut says they aren’t ready to give much slack on their side of the table, but we’ll have to see.

And thanks to Michele for pointing out the site fans4writers.com.  If you’ve been sitting around wondering how you can express your stance behind the writers, this is the way to do it.

I have no idea what has prompted me to talk about this finally, but it’s acting up this weekend. Yes, boys and girls, welcome to the world of tinnitus. (image from bupa.co.uk)

Wikipedia describes it as:

Tinnitus is not itself a disease but a symptom resulting from a range of underlying causes, including ear infections, foreign objects or wax in the ear, and injury from loud noises. Tinnitus is also a side-effect of some oral medications, such as aspirin, and may also result from an abnormally low level of serotonin activity.

I have no clue how I got it, but I have had it as long as I can remember. Predating my having any sort of Walkman, iPod or the such, so I doubt it was loud music that did it to me, and I was never a big aspirin user, so I really have no clue how it happened. But the fun is never ending with a constant ringing in my ears. Most of the time I can ignore it, and it doesn’t hurt my ability to hear at all, as I can hear conversations with no problem from even across a room.

True, you learn to live with it, and the majority of the time I can ignore it, unless I am in a really quiet situation, and then it sounds like an alarm clock going off. A while back I adopted going to sleep with my iPod playing in my ears (at the absolute lowest volume setting) as it drowns out the tinnitus.

Yes, I probably should get it looked at, but since mine is “subjective”, there is no way to test the severity, and I have had my hearing tested numerous times, and my ears examined regularly, with nothing detected, so I just trudge on and ignore it. The only time it bothers me is when it’s a lovely, quiet night, and you would like to just sit outside and enjoy it… I hear a ringing.

Oh well, William Shatner has it far worse than I do from what I’ve heard, so at least I’m in good (?) company.

You know, I’ve never used this thing, I have no intentions of using it, but the commercial and mere concept drive me nuts.

The Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner proclaims that it will wash your whole shower for you, and will even do it automatically so you never have to think about it.

Does anyone else see the two design flaws in this?

1. Really?  It can clean behind and above it?  You know, above the shower head?  Well you SAY it will clean the whole shower… guess not, huh?

2. It’s on a timer… what if little Jimmy leaves the shower curtain open?  Heck, what if the parents leave it open?  You really want this thing running unsupervised to spray your entire bathroom?

Look, no one likes cleaning their shower, but come on!  This thing is not only poorly designed, and misleadingly advertised, it’s just plain ugly to look at!  I’ll gladly clean instead of trusting this thing not to ruin parts of my bathroom due to one time forgetting to close the door/curtain.

Edgar Bronfman, the boss of Warner Music seems to finally “get it”.

Mr. Bronfman, whom I wrote about here and here, seems to have done a sudden about face in relation to music piracy. That’s not to say he condones it, but he seems to understand how and why it happened.  Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress, he said:

“We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.

How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

He also went on to say:

“You need to look no further than Apple’s iPhone to see how fast brilliantly written software presented on a beautifully designed device with a spectacular user interface will throw all the accepted notions about pricing, billing platforms and brand loyalty right out the window. And let me remind you, the genesis of the iPhone is the iPod and iTunes - a music device and music service that consumers love.”

Say what? Is this the same man who at one time thought Apple should give music companies a cut of every iPod sold because Apple was keeping the price of music “artificially low”?  Does this mean that he will back away from attacking consumers?

Who knows, but it’s amazing to see such a turnabout.  Now… what’s the catch?

Can’t say I’ve ever seen this warming before.

I had to go look up that it means conditions are favorable, but it still surprises me seeing as we have standing water still from our last rain, so I’m not quite sure why they issued this.  Hopefully nothing will come to pass, but that certainly was odd to see it pop up on my screen earlier.

This picture is from the Associated Press, and it deals with two people claim to have found a musical code hidden in The Last Supper painting. Using a computer, they discovered what they claim sounds like a requiem.

Really?

I mean, we have the guy who reversed the image and found all sorts of secret meanings. And then we got the 16 gigapixel picture every one could study. And now… now it has music in it.

So, this got me to wondering what I could find in it if I worked at it.

First… I drank 8 pots of coffee. I felt this would bring me closer to the universe since I don’t do drugs.

Then… then I snorted a line of Lucky Charms marshmallows. HEY! Don’t judge me!… they’re magically delicious you know.

Finally, I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory… backwards… at high speed…

With my mind in a proper state… and using an abacus… I… I found a hidden message. I just hope the world is ready for it…

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

Continue Reading ->

Harmonia Azyridis may look like a Lady Bug, but… they’re not.

The little bastards bugs were released in this country to control the spread of aphids, but apparently we didn’t keep them in check. Now every fall/winter we’re treated to exploding populations of these flying little bastards. And if you don’t keep up with them, killing them as soon as you see them, you get treated their enormous reproduction rate.

Why kill them?

• If you use a vacuum, they have their kids in their.
• If you let them go free by putting outside, they just hang around and get back in.
• If you wash them down the sink, I’ve seen them come back up.

However, the fun of killing them? The smell! It’s a defensive mature to keep predators away, but when you pick them off with your hands, you get the lovely smell all over them.

So, my inventive method of getting rid of them? Packing tape. I cut off a strip, walk around the house, tapping them with the tape, and when done, I seal it back on itself and toss it. They’re trapped, no smell on my hands, and they’re gone.