Category: television

television

Cracking the Jeopardy! Code

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A few months back, Gawker posted about how one uber-geek named Roger Craig (no, not the retired San Francisco 49er) was able to develop a web app that modeled America’s favorite question and answer show’s question sequences so that he could win an insane amount of money and break their all time record.
Craig delivered this news to the New York “Quantified Self Show & Tell” where he explains how he developed a web tool and various supporting programs to analyze and effectively train himself on a database of past questions. Its a 14 minute talk and its worth watching if you plan to ever be on the show, like I do.
If you did not know, every year I take the entrance exam hoping / praying that this is the year I end up on the show. When I throw out of my many inane pieces of trivia and/or little known facts, I usually follow it up with the statement, “One day I’m going to be on Jeopardy!” to try to reduce my geek factor. That being said, my secret fear is that I’ll get on the show and get destroyed by my lack of opera and classical music knowledge. Having Mr. Craig’s app to help me identify my weak spots would be ideal.
As an aside, one of the best articles I ever read about “Jeopardy!” was written for GQ magazine and it was titled “Why is Alex Trebek laughing at me?” It came out in the late 90’s and I cannot find it online – I was hoping to link to it in this post. If you find it, please let me know!

art

From the "Art Imitating Life Imitating Art" Department

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This news is a few months old but just as funny now as it was then. A few hours after television producers set up a replica of Occupy Wall Street for the filming of a new episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the real Occupy Wall Street announced plans to occupy the fake one.
As Mother Jones put it, “It’s straight out of a Don DeLillo novel.” I frankly just love the speed in which this happened – further proof the “art-life-art” cycle is moving faster than ever.

politics

It's Better to Have Never Watched

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One of my favorite “glass half full” statements is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson who wrote, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” It can be considered trite but it is almost always true, at least when it comes to love.
It seems that the reverse is true though when one is talking about about current events and Fox News. Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind center is reporting that people who depend on Fox News are even less informed than those who don’t watch any news programming at all.
Yes, you read that correctly. You are better off learning about the news from overheard conversations in elevators and on the street than by watching channel 640 on your Verizon supplied cable box. To me, this information is more of a “duh – this simply confirms something I already knew!” moment as opposed to a “wow – I had no clue!” moment. That being said, I’ll be very happy to point this study out as a rebuttal to anyone who uses Fox News as source material during a future debate.
Please note that this is a separate study from the one that the University of Maryland ran last year that found that a s found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.
In closing, Fox’s tag line is “Fair and Balanced” never ceases to make me think of the line from 1984 that says, “We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.” ‘Nuff said.
Via Jessie

movies

Winning!

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I’ve gone from “not caring” to “totally obsessed” with Charlie Sheen in the past 36 hours. While its been proven that he hasn’t had any “foreign substances” in his body for the past 72 hours, I think that whatever toxins he’s been putting into his system for the past few years are just leeching out now and making him flat out crazy. That being said, I cannot decide if it’s crack or meth that is driving his craziness. My co-worker thinks its crack based on his gravelly voice. Regardless of what is driving his quotes and antics, I must say that they are awfully entertaining (his anti-Semitic diatribe aside). For instance, I’m never going to look at the term “winning!” the same way again.
My favorite quotes of his thus far are:

  • “I am on a drug, it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”
  • “I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars.”
  • “What’s not to love? Especially when you see how I party. It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards just look like droopy-eyed armless children.”

In case you’ve been in a hole, here are a few Sheen related news links for you to catch up on what’s been happening. These articles will have “related news” links at the bottom that you can click through to read up on all of the nuttiness…

music

'Cause I'm As Free As Bird Now…

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It figures that my first real post of this new year is not about a first but a last, a goodbye and a very public one at that. The Late Night TV Debacle of ’09 finally ended with Conan signing off last Friday night from his gig at “The Tonight Show” – something which he called the “greatest gig in all of television” which I find very hard to believe. I would choose doing “In the Papers” on NY1 before hosting “The Tonight Show” even though I hate waking up early. “In the Papers” – that is a great gig. But I digress.
I wound up watching the Conan finale purely by chance – when I finished up something on the old TiFaux I was dumped onto NBC. While I loved to follow the Late Night sniping and barbs through the press, I never cared enough to actually tune into any of the shows to hear the grenades that were being lobbed back and forth nightly. But, once I arrived lazily at “history” I thought I would stay and check out what happened.
Well, after a sort of funny exit interview was conducted by Steve Carell (though all Conan did was laugh the entire time), his Tom Hanks interview was pretty lame and I was about to turn off the tube and head to bed when I decided to just stick it out and see how it all ended. I’m really glad I did.
To quote the review of the show from Time.com:

And after all the acrimony, bad faith and low blows of the Tonight fiasco, he [Conan] closed, voice breaking, with a statement of unimpeachable class: “All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

That bit left me feeling a little warm and fuzzy and then low and behold something truly amazing did happen. Let’s now go back to the Time.com review (emphasis in bold added by moi) for the description:

Conan called onstage Will Ferrell, in bell-bottoms and wig (with cowbell!), to lead a band including ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, Beck and Ferrell’s own pregnant wife—plus Max Weinberg and the crew—in a full version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” And in what must be a first in talk-show-host farewells, Conan—who’s wielded an axe numerous times on his shows—played himself off the air by ripping a guitar solo, to a balls-out Southern Rock power ballad about getting out of a relationship with no future.

You can watch a clip of the performance on the Huffington Post as it seems that NBC’s copyright attorneys have removed it from most of YouTube.
I must stop now and inform you of my love for all things “Free Bird” – both the highbrow and the lowbrow of it all. I love the song, the music, the lyrics, the flow and the way it builds. I love that it’s probably the best example of Southern Rock that exists in a single song. I love how the band has a two word name that is misspelled (like my favorite band).
I also love how people will shout out “Free Bird” during a break in a performance, no matter what type of performance they are attending. It could be a piano concerto, it could be a political speech, or it could be the “Bare Naked Ladies” concert I went to my freshman year in Binghamton’s West Gym. A guy was shouting “Free Bird!” at the end of each song from the start of the show. Finally, in the middle of the second set, the lead singer shouted into a microphone “If we play ‘Free Bird’ will you shut the fuck up?!” and when the man responded with a curdling “Yes!” BNL just launched into a pitch perfect cover that blew the doors off the gym. I have been waiting for something similar to happen at one of the shows I attend since. I have never been present for a “Free Bird” cover at a Phish show or any other shows and cannot wait for the day when I hear it once again because I love it, and this bird you cannot change.

television

We Shall Remain…Online

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The recent excellent PBS series on how badly the various colonists and governments in the landmass now known as the United States of America screwed over the indigenous populations (i.e. the Indians) has come and went but if you missed it, like me, you can catch all 5 parts of “We Shall Remain” online at the American Experience web site.
I traveled to Hawaii a few years ago and while there I fell in love with the pronunciations and the language and social quirks – the evening news broadcast in Honolulu captures this idea completely. One reason I loved it so much was because I imagined this is how all of America could have been – where an indigenous population was absorbed peacefully and uniquely – where the sum is greater than the parts. Unfortunately, for most of the Indian groups in this country from the 1600s to even the present, this has not been the case.
Having grown up on Long Island where so many towns and parks have Indian names, having studied Long Island history starting in fourth grade, having had a Hopi as an Art Teacher for grades K – 6 (so of course many of the crafts projects through the years were Native themed) and frankly being part of an ethnic group that has gotten screwed throughout history, I have always had a strong affinity to Indian issues where my bias is towards the Indians. Everything from the Shinnecock Indian Pow-Wow to Dances with Wolves has captivated me and I am looking forward to watching this series. I just hope that at the end there is something positive to look forward too, because the past has been pretty horrible.

television

A Clusterfrak of Legos

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In honor of last week’s frakkin awesome Battlestar Galactica episode titled “Blood on the Scales” (which really should be considered part two of an episode they should call “Mutany!” as it picked up exactly where “The Oath” ended), here is a link to a Gizmodo post titled Lego Galactica Clusterfrak So Big It Can Probably Crush a Real Cylon Baseship.
Those people at Gizmodo love them Legos and really, who doesn’t? I posted in the past about how they went to the Lego Vault. Here’s to hoping they continue to post Lego related posts!
Via Ken

television

I Frakkin Love BSG

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First off, when creating anything on the computer you should always hit “save.” I wrote this entry yesterday and somehow never saved it so about 750 words went down the intertubes. Doh.
Second, if you Dear Reader are my friend on FB, you should be used to reading status updates that mention how much I frakkin love the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series. It’s not just a television show: it’s special, it’s art.
I am quite overjoyed that some serious art is being made for the Sci-Fi genre. If you did not know, I have always been a fan of science fiction.
Star Wars is still my all-time favorite movie and I fondly recall my Grandfather’s exasperated tone when, planning to take me to the movies, he asked me why I needed to see “Return of the Jedi” again instead of something new.
I have read all of Asimov’s Foundation novels and could recite his Three Laws of Robotics long before Will Smith popularized them and have read many, many, many more sci-fi novels – way too many to list out here. I should note though that I did use a quote from Stranger in a Strange Land in the “Goodbye from the Editor-in-Chief” column I wrote in “The Vanguard” (my high school newspaper) when I graduated. The quote? “Age doesn’t bring wisdom, only perspective” – Jubal Harshaw.
During my youth, I spent many, many Saturday evenings at home babysitting my sister and, after I put her to bed, watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of classic Star Trek – commercial free (thanks to Cap’s Comic Cavalcade) on Scranton Wilkes Barre’s PBS station (which I got through LI Cablevision at odd times – I still have no clue why).
Something about the USS Enterprise’s five year mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” just grabbed my imagination and never let it go. I loved the promise of the show and the themes that were much larger than the episodes that contained them. For instance, I learned tolerance towards my fellow man and to never wear a red shirt. At the end of “Wrath of Khan,” when Spock, dying of radiation poisoning, palms the blast proof glass and says to Kirk “I have been and always shall be your friend, Jim” I seriously almost tear up – every time without fail. I’m a Trekkie – it’s true.
Sam Miller is also a Trekkie and on Mental Floss he compares Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica and has some very keen insights about the differences between the two shows. He writes,

“Battlestar Galactica presents a problem for me and my Star Trek-fan friends. Why do we love it so much? We call each other up after each new episode and ramble in nervous high-pitched voices, batting back and forth theories and questions and “OH MY GOD” moments… all the while feeling vaguely guilty that no Star Trek clash with the Borg or tampering with the time-space continuum ever engaged and obsessed and haunted us to such a profound extent.
Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica have wildly different aesthetics and ideologies, and both aspire to very different goals. Fundamentally, it boils down to this:
Star Trek is about who we want to be, and Battlestar Galactica is about who we are.

That is a great way of putting it and the rest of the post echoes many of my thoughts. If you like BSG, I suggest you read it.
Via Neu

television

Oh My Singlet!

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If you are the type of person who thinks that John Fogerty is singing “There’s a bathroom on right” instead of “There’s a bad moon on the rise” then you might think that Beyonce is singing “Oh my Singlet” instead of “All my Single Ladies” in her new hit song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”
The video for this song features Beyonce and two others dancing in leotards Bob Fosse style. It also has been mocked, first on SNL and then by legions of others, and I find the spoofs hysterical (the original that it being mocked is pretty good too). I’ve been on the lookout for SNL clip for about two weeks now – its not on Hulu and its not on YouTube but it is on Andy Samberg’s site (duh).
Enjoy the clip below and then just try to get this song out of your head. Its been stuck in my head for two weeks now.

If you are a fan of Samberg and his digital shorts, you might alsol love the most recent golden short “Jizz in my Pants”.
Happy Friday.
Via Sara