The Pseudoreality of Late-Night TV

When I went to bed late last night (ok, early this morning), the death count in south Asia was estimated at 16,000. When I woke up this morning (ok, this afternoon), the paper said 20,000. Then CNN told me that, no, it's closer to 33,000. Later, the local news said 44,000. And at 11:15 pm, the BBC said it was an estimated 60,000 dead in at least nine countries around the Indian Ocean.

ABC News has had the best coverage so far, including some downright fucking chilling first-hand accounts. But the BBC has had the most devastating video, including a couple carrying their dead, mud-covered infant twins aimlessly through the streets.

You know all this, of course, what I'm getting at is how disturbing it is to watch Late Night and the Late Late Show blithely forge ahead, oblivious. Now, I can understand carrying on with the comedy when a tragedy happens, because of laughter being the best medicine and all that shit. But after Sept. 11, 2001, both these shows set aside a respectful amount of time to talk about it. And I remember staying up late, watching Late Night with David Letterman in 1989, when Dan Rather broke in to tell me that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. Then it went back to Dave and he was pretending to be a monkey, and I thought, "This just seems wrong." In 2001, 3000 people were missing in Manhatten, and American television just stopped. As I type this, days after the quake and tsunamis killed at least 60,000 people in Asia, Conan O'Brien is rubbing a live chinchilla on his face.

Draw your own conclusions.

Sleet and Opera 7.54u1 Beta

Memphis has become a frozen, unnavigable mess, and we had no warning whatsoever. "You might see some isolated freezing rain and snow today," the weathermen cheerily told us. I guess what they meant was, "It's going to sleet for six hours across the entire tri-state area, then the temperature will stay below the freezing point for the next three days, making it impossible to go anywhere or do anything." Fortunately, our crack Municipal Adverse Weather Patrol Squad, or MAWPS, a name which I just made up, sprang into immediate action by de-icing the interstates. Not the on or off-ramps or any other roads. Just the interstate. Whatever. It got me out of any sort of Christmas get-together, so I say, Go MAWPS.

I downloaded Opera 7.54u1 the other day. I actually like it quite a lot. Not enough to pay nearly forty bucks to get rid of the ad banner, but it's still very good, much better than the last version I tried years ago, and, like Firefox, it easily outclasses Internet Explorer in nearly every way. I particularly enjoyed noting that it's substantially faster as an application than IE, even though IE is half-integrated into Windows to begin with. Of course this means I now have four web browsers and four email clients installed. I'll probably go ahead and drop the Mozilla suite, as it's the least useful. I just can't seem to come up with an excuse to use it.

Which brings me to another thing that's bothering me. I still can't resolve any non-PeoplePC SMTP mail server using any email client. You only get one email account with PPC, which I can understand at 11 bucks a month, but this forces you to sign up for additional POP3 mail services unless you want to go with webmail. And I don't. I fucking hate webmail, because all webmail services suck. I want to use Thunderbird, or christ, even Outlook Express, anything. But when I try to send a message, any client I try will invariably time out trying to reach the outgoing server. I've tried every conceivable configuration. I've tried numerous support databases. I can ping any SMTP server I want, getting instant, regular returns. I just can't send mail to 'em. The only thing left to do is to call PPC support, and I know, as a former ISP tech support rep, that they'll just tell me it's not their resposibility. It's just so fucking maddening. I've even tried a POP3 service based in Ireland, for christ's sake.

The hell with it. I'm going to go watch the DVD commentary on The Royal Tenenbaums.

Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.5

Mozilla 1.7.5 was released yesterday, so I downloaded it. I don't know why. I really have no use for it. Its browser is based on a build of Gecko so similar to Firefox 1.0, which I have, as to be more or less indistinguishable, aside from some aspects of the interface. The mail client's nice and all, but I'm going to install Thunderbird 1.0 this weekend, so I won't need that either. I haven't looked at Composer since Netscape 6, however, so maybe I'll like that. In any case, I might as well keep it, because why the hell not.

I'm reading Mostly Harmless and The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams, as well as Sean Astin's odd little narrative, There and Back Again, an Actor's Tale. I also rented Minority Report, Snatch, and From Hell. And I managed to find a place in Frayser, in the shitty, backwards heart of Frayser, in fact, that gets The Memphis Flyer. Apparently, I'm just trying to keep myself as occupied as I possibly can so I can go on pretending that there's no such thing as Christmas. Seems to be working.

Blog Post 27

I really didn't want to blog this shit, but it's life, and karma, and there's no denying it. Reality exists, and I should share it.

Shredder the Incredible Megadog has met his match, and is no more. Every superhero has a tragic end, and for Shredder, a 14-year-old, 110-pound doberman, it was one winter night too many. Shredder had to be euthanized. Three days ago, my mother and I agreed that it was in the best interests of Shred himself. He's been suffering through inoperable hip problems and the general issues a dog gets when he's lived through three generations of owners. The poor guy could hardly walk anymore, but he was game to try, and after carrying him into the house the morning we made the decision, and after carrying him to the car, I decided to help him walk from the Explorer into the veterinary clinic, through the waiting room, to the examination room. He'd been a watch-dog in Frayser his whole life, and he deserved to walk to his death, humane as it may be, under his own power. Shredder was nervous but calm, as he dropped to the floor under the steel exam table, exhausted, his head on my lap. I sat with him, on the hard floor, waiting for my mom to fill out the paperwork in the lobby. He was only half-interested in the people walking to and fro around him, mostly focused on me. I think he knew that this was it. He was old, older than a dog his size should ever be, and his breathing was steady. He looked at me like he always did, eager to please, but muted. You did your job, and I know it, boy. After a while, though, after my mom joined us, he did get a little restless. We had a while to wait still, and Shredder just wanted to make himself useful. So he tried to stand up a few times, and at first we let him have a go at it, but he just couldn't do it. Eventually the vet came in with his assistant, and Shred allowed himself to be lifted by three of us onto the exam table, looked passively, almost apologetically, at my mom and me, and passed quietly away as the vet injected him with whatever it is vets use to humanely silence wonderful pets forever.

It had been arranged that the clinic would do with Shredder whatever it is that state regulations say should be done with expired dogs. Still, it felt somehow wrong to have left Shredder there, still and silent on a steel table, while we climbed into a much emptier Explorer, backed out of the lot, pulled into traffic, and drove home. But that's how it works. Shred was an incredible dog, a terrifying but lovable dog, and nobody but my mom and myself will remember him as being anything but that.

The Greatest Movie in the World

...is not Crossroads. But Crossroads is damned close. It has everything: A cast full of newcomers who couldn't get through a junior high talent show without giggling about the chemistry teacher's bow tie; a plot that a coked-up Paris Hilton would find "endearing;" a soundtrack so incompatible it seems like a sick joke; a plot aimed at pre-teens that involves rape, child abuse, abandonment, and abortion; and best of all, a wonderfully miscast, confused-looking Britney Spears as a geeky, introverted valedictorian. Crossroads could possibly be the basis for the best Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode ever made. As it is, it's easily worth the ten bucks you can probably get it for at Target. I can't WAIT to hear the DVD commentary.

In serious, non-ironic cinematic news, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the best film I've seen all year. Really. Jim Carrey finally nailed a dramatic role head-on, after near-misses in The Majestic, which was good but just too boring, and The Truman Show, which was aimless and condescending. Eternal Sunshine has everything. There's just no categorizing this movie. It seems like a drama, then a dramatic comedy, then a romance, then an abstract indie. Then it turns out to be all at once, and that's something you just don't find in American cinema. I checked out my copy of the DVD from the Raleigh branch of the Memphis Library, and that is exactly where this film belongs: in a library, where anyone with a face and a driver's license can find out what filmmaking is supposed to be about.

JuCo My Ass

Lionel Hollins is many things, but an NBA head coach he is not. Sure he's in the Junior College Basketball Hall of Fame, but so the fuck what? After repeatedly watching him get blatantly out-coached, it was interesting watching Mike Fratello tell his team exactly how ball games are won tonight as the Griz spanked the one-trick pony Sixers. I was right about Fratello being the perfect fit for this team. Of course, it helped that Pau Gasol had a monter game, with 34, 15, and 3 blocks. The Sixers had absolutely no answer for him. I was waiting for him to turn to one of the sideline cameras after facing one of Philly's hapless forwards to scream, "I claim this land in the name of Spain!"

In non-living-vicariously-through-others news, I spent twenty minutes late, late last night chasing Shredder the Ageless Doberman around Frayser in 40-degree weather without a jacket after he forced his way out of the back yard. The only thing shittier than trying to catch a huge dog who doesn't want to get caught is catching up with him when he's sniffing around a stray chow mix who doesn't want you to live. So that was fun.

Anyway. The audio commentary on the Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines DVD really sucks. There are a few different commentary tracks, but the actors one, which is the only one anyone wants to hear, is terrible. Everyone was recorded separately, except Claire Danes and director Jonathan Mostow, and it's clear immediately that they are the only ones actually watching the film. Arnold, Kristanna Loken (the chick who plays the terminatrix), and the new, non-Eddie Furlong John Conner guy are clearly giving interviews, with excerpts pasted into the commentary. This is especially bad with Gov. Schwarzenegger, who rambles on and on in endless run-on sentences like some monstrous Faulkner clone with a bad accent about how important it was for the terminator to get dragged through a building by a crane. But the movie itself is surprisingly good. Much like The Matrix Reloaded, the writers have gone out of their way to bring the most stupefyingly unrealistic action sequences to the screen, and they pulled it off somehow.

To make this deluxe-edition update complete, I'll mention that I spent a couple hours yesterday customizing Firefox. I've got this browser doing things Internet Explorer can't even dream of. I can't stress this enough, people: Firefox, if not Mozilla as a whole, is probably the single most usable and effective internet application ever. And it's open source. Maybe that says something about the state of the mainstream, stock-exchange-listed computer industry.

A Festivus for the Rest of Us

I'm already sick of Christmas. I've done Christmas. It should end when you're nine, like Easter. Sure, when I was a kid I got a lot of cool Star Wars shit when it was brand new, but I immediately took it out of the packaging so I could play with it (like every kid), so it's worthless now.

Anyway. I sat through a couple movies this weekend, and I might as well make you people sit through my reactions. First, Buffalo '66. Written, starring, and directed by Vincent Gallo, who is seriously in love with himself. There's no plot at all, just the outline of a story about a guy getting out of jail and immediately grabbing some random hot girl, played by Christina Ricci, and dragging her to his abusive, neglectful parents' house to tell them how successful he is (they've been too engrossed in Buffalo Bills football to notice he was arrested). I had to fight with myself to sit through the whole thing, and I lost. I watched it all. Gallo builds and builds this film to either one sort of climax or the other and ends up with neither. He gives you both the happy ending and the sad ending, then tells you which one was real. A depressingly Hollywood anticlimax to what could have been a nice indie setpiece flick.

The other film I saw was Lost in Translation, which got enough hype from the Academy Awards that I don't have to say anything about it, other than it was much better than I thought it would be. Again, there's no real plot to speak of, and it's extremely slow, but it's never, ever boring. The cinematography is excellent and the pacing works. The acting is believable, and the dialogue is instinctive and genuine. What's more, the ending is somehow satisfying and inconclusive, an almost impossible feat. The only disappointment came when the credits came up and I remembered that Sophia Coppola wrote and directed it. Somehow you just want privileged kids to fail, you know?

Atmosphere of Winning

There's really nothing I can say about Hubie Brown's sudden retirement that hasn't already been said in the Commercial Appeal. And I'm not surprised at the outcome of the last two Grizzlies games. Lionel Hollins was clearly out-coached by Don Nelson in the second half of the Dallas game, which is why Hollins looks to be quickly replaced as head coach by Mike Fratello. If there's a better candidate out there, I can't imagine who it is, and that includes Phil Jackson. Fratello assisted Brown for years in Atlanta and had equivocal success. He was knocked out of the playoffs with the Cavaliers repeatedly by Michael Jordan's Bulls, understandable defeats. What sucks is that there's going to be a long adjustment period after the new coach takes over, and the extra losses are going to be hard to deal with when the playoff race starts.

I guess we've just become used to winning in Memphis. For two years we endured losing seasons easily, enjoying Pau Gasol's development, J-Will's flashes of brilliance, and The Stro Show. Now we've tasted fifty wins and domination over conference rivals like the Rockets, Warriors, and Blazers, so struggling to beat the Mavericks at home leaves people looking for answers. Clearly, injuries are playing a part. As Hubie pointed out in yesterday's press conference, last year we had no major injuries to deal with until the end of March. This year, Gasol, Posey, Swift, and Cardinal have all missed a significant amount of court time due to injuries, and it's not even December.

Personally, I've taken a step back and thought about how bad this team was when it came to Memphis in 2001. I've seen every televised Grizzlies game since, including the numerous losses, so I can endure more. It's about basketball, people. Winning is the goal, but enjoy the game.

Cripple Fight!

I was watching the Pacers at Pistons game tonight on ESPN when The Fight broke out. And even though I was impatiently awaiting the start of the Memphis at Sacramento game, I was riveted. And ESPN immediately cashed in by continually showing slow-motion replays of guys getting punched in the face and hit in the head with exploding beer bottles, which is what we all wanted to see. There's never been a more ferocious fight at a pro basketball game. The only ironic thing was watching professional broadcasters get their panties all wadded up about it, despite the fact that there have been fights at international soccer matches that put this little melee to shame.

Anyway. I finally saw Elf on DVD last night. The movie was pretty good, Will Ferrell's slapstick genious saving it from obscurity. At times it was so cutesy I felt faintly nauseous, but the double-disc home edition has enough special features, including alternate/deleted scenes with optional director commentary, that I was too distracted to throw it away and put in Bad Santa, the sort of Christmas movie you'd actually enjoy watching with your grandparents.

Substandard Movie Reviews

This week I saw three newish movies for the first time; School of Rock, The Italian Job, and The Day After Tomorrow. My recommendations for watching them would go in that order. School of Rock if you want to see a good film, The Italian Job if you're bored and want to be entertained for a couple of hours, and The Day After Tomorrow if you're absolutely desperate for something to do. Ian Holm gets third billing during the opening credits of this one, which is a little pathetic, since he spends only slightly more time on screen than I do.

I suppose the good news is that the third Harry Potter movie will be out on DVD next Tuesday. I still haven't seen this one, but I'll be buying it anyway. That, and the extended edition of the third Lord of the Rings film, shortly after it comes out next month. I just like dork movies, what can I say.

I don't feel the same way about video games, however. I watched some of TechTV's coverage of the Halo 2 release, and I feel way less geeky than I did before. Honestly, is it really worth standing around for 36 hours and missing work just to play a game 12 hours before a bunch of people you'll never meet will? "Microsoft's inconceivably expensive ad campaign told me this was the game of the millenium, so I'm going to play it almost a whole day before anyone else!" Hey, that's great, dude. Let me know how you feel about this in three years, and whether you could have saved yourself a ton of hassle and waited a few days to buy it.

Clean Slate

There's just something refreshing about getting back to business after you've fdisk'ed and formated a hard drive. I tried to get a clean Win98SE install on this system, but after six hours and a dozen error messages, I gave up and ran the system restore CD after another format. Now OS and ISP and all my software are working in harmony again, aside from those random DUN freezes. I installed newer versions of Firefox, Ad-Aware, and ZDoom. Now I'm just fighting the problems you get with 64MB of RAM.

I actually managed to re-play the first few episodes of Half Life and Blue Shift at a slightly higher resolution than 400x300 and with Direct3D turned on. As much as I love Half Life's two add-on episodes, I'm pissed that the first, Blue Shift, is so much shorter than Opposing Force, the follow-up, also by Gearbox. Blue Shift is much better. OpFor's more detailed architecture more than halved my Blue Shift FPS. Couple that with new enemies (which I did enjoy) that can hit you twice as quickly, and you have some frustrating gameplay. Still, it's fun whomping a useless private in the face with a monkey wrench so you can take his M-60.

Oh yeah, the Griz beat the hell out of the Lakers tonight. It's satisfying watching your team beat someone senseless the night after being robbed of a divisional road win in a fixed game.

You Deserve It

Remeber when people would walk outside because they wanted to get some "fresh air?" Well, forget about that. Even if you don't live in a major city, which something like 80% of us do, there's just no fresh air to be breathed. It's unfortunate, as several recent studies have shown that polluted air is doubling and trebling respiratory diseases worldwide, some of them fatal. But President Bush has re-declared his resolve to ignore any new initiatives to hold corporations accountable for the amount of carbon dioxide their plants pump out, in addition to his "whatever you want to spew out, go for it, as long as you've got a lobby" platform. CO2 is the most devastating contributer to global warming, a theory no longer realistically deniable. Bush's other policies are allowing industrial plants to fling enough toxic aerobic particles into our skies to turn us all into zombie media whores who'll gladly watch Ashlee Simpson riverdance her way into our collective subconscious. I suppose having three-fourths of the world's published scientists set against you is no obstacle as long as almighty god is telling you to ignore those thoroughly researched reports and bow low in subservience to your political contributers. After all, Gee Dub has been making national policy decisions based on political priorites for three years, so why stop just because you've been reelected? He could always run for Senate. And there are the political futures of his siblings and offspring to worry about.

Athens

Yes, Athens, Georgia, will soon become the focal point of the world, as the R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)" will soon be the most popular song in the history of Earth. Not only does it appear that George "I Rule You" Bush has been, to the horror of all right-thinking people, reelected, but we seem to be, as of 1:15AM Central, in for a recount and god knows what else in the state of Ohio. John Edwards is telling us this, as I type. But then, as big a pain in the ass as this is, I couldn't care less. I've said it before, and I'll type it now, if the Democratic party nominated a bowl of oatmeal, I'd fucking vote for it, if it stood a chance of unseating Bush from the Master of the Universe throne that Skeletor and God loaned him.

After dropping the proverbial ballot into the proverbial ballot-box this morning, I thought I could sit back tonight and watch this proverbial democracy correct its horrible mistake from four years ago. Of course, I quickly realized I was wrong, so I started slamming through the proverbial 12-pack of Milwaukee's Best Ice and watching Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2. As masterful as Vol. 2 is at completing the story, I can't help but agree with every professional critic I've read. Vol. 1 is the movie I'd rather own. Sure, the story isn't complete until you've seen the second film, and sure the dialog in Vol. 2 is spot-on perfect. But something like 200 people get creatively slaughtered in Vol. 1, and that's what I'd rather watch in slow-motion, zoomed in 2X.

Oh, and by the way, all you brainless, conservative, god-fearing citizens who think Dubya will protect you from all the bogeymen in the world? All I can say is, check your facts. Everything you accept as gospel that Bush's administration has told you, look into it. Look deep. You've been lied to, again and again and again. And as of now, there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it for years and years, short of an impeachment. Fortunately for you, we'll probably suffer another devastating terrorist attack long before it comes to that. God bless America.

Comedy, Seriously

You wouldn't think that the guys behind the brilliant satire newspaper The Onion, the precursor and probable inspiration to The Daily Show, would need a refresher course on comedy, but it seems to be so. I've recently watched Drop Dead Gorgeous on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as an over-the-top black comedy mockumentary. Perhaps because this hasn't actually ever been done before on a large scale, The Onion AV Club reviewed the movie as a film made by morons for morons. Excuse me, but you didn't fucking get it. Taking Christopher Guest's patented, and wearing thin, deadpan mockumentary style and throwing overtly excessive comedic plot devices and funny, stereotypical characters on top of it is something new. And quite entertaining, were one to step out of his film professor loafers for an hour and a half. Yes, one of the characters is mentally deficient, and yes, he's used for cheap laughs. It's only a movie, so get over your indignant reaction and enjoy Will Sasso's performance. Yes, it's predictable, but so are all slapstick comedies. The point is to enjoy the gags and the actors, and The Onion didn't bother to mention Brittany Murphy's show-stealing performance or multiple-Emmy-winning Allison Janney showing up as the foul-mouthed heart and soul of the film.

At any rate, I suppose I've made my point, and managed to work my irritation at The AV Club into a DVD review. I only brought it up because I was irritated with their review of Underworld, which they thought was overly moody and derivative. For the last time, guys, I don't care if it's derivative! A movie can be entertaining even if it's in a genre that's already been done by a more heavily-hyped flick. It's like saying Deftones' White Pony is pointless, because alterna-rock has already been done by Nirvana's Nevermind. It's time for The Onion's movie reviewers to take a step back and realize that not all movie-goers are perfectionists; we only want a well-spent two hours.

Halo 0x

I spent some time this past week going through my many, many Nine Inch Nails CDs. There really are a lot of gems buried in Trent Reznor's nationally published personal hard drive. I can't claim to be as fluent in the NIN discography as some people, but at one time I was a huge fan. For me, it started with the Quake soundtrack. I bought the Broken EP in 1996, then Pretty Hate Machine. I was still trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with this Reznor guy, when I drove to Knoxville on a whim, listening mostly to Ride the Lightning-era Metallica and cruising at my Bronco II's limit of 110mph. I arrived early, with a sore right foot (no cruise control), and with some time to kill I bought The Downward Spiral in a record store on Cumberland Ave. I parked under a bridge by the Tennessee River and played the whole record, looking through the then-revolutionary liner notes-turned booklet. Rez hooked me.

I ended up buying pretty much the whole NIN catalog, but the slow pace of Reznor's releases has caught up to me. I bought The Fragile the week it was released, and I still think it's one of the greatest double-albums ever, but I didn't bother to buy Things Falling Apart (I Napster'd it, back when Napster was free and legal) or the live DVD. Eventually I started selling off some of my old NIN remix albums, particularly the imports, after I'd burned the few tracks I really wanted to keep. I can only hope the new album, which I'm hearing should be out soon, will renew my faith.

20,000 bhp

Through a friend of my mom's, I got free tickets and pit passes to Memphis Motorsports Park this weekend for the Nascar Busch Series race called, unfortunately, the "Sam's Town 'He Dared to Rock' 250." Ridiculously overwrought name aside, it was a damned entertaining race, what with the record number of caution flags, all but two caused by wrecks and spins in turn two, smack in front of the east grandstand where I happened to be sitting. It was my third trip to MMP. Nearly eight years ago I went for a local NHRA drag racing event, and a year or so later for Busch Series qualifying and an ARCA race. But this was the first time I sat down for a full-fledged, nationally televised, sold-out Nascar race. I've been to 30 or so NCAA football games and at least as many division 1-A basketball games, but nothing quite like this. There's something about seeing nearly 25,000 people all around you standing and screaming, completely mute, because the roar of 43 unmuffled race cars tearing down the track 50 yards away obliterates all other sounds. This is the most-attended spectator sport in America today, and I can see why. Watching five years worth of races on TV is nothing compared to actually attending just one.

Marionaction!

Should be seeing Team America: World Police tomorrow afternoon. The tagline for this movie is, "Putting the 'F' back in Freedom." I think the "F" is supposed to stand for "Fuck." Hooray! I haven't seen Orgazmo, but if South Park and BASEketball are any indication of what Trey Parker and Matt Stone like to put down on celluloid, I'm going to like it. Which is why I'm paying to see it. So, there you go.

Anyway, I just watched Underworld, finally, during a free weekend of movie channels on DirecTV. Loved it. Absolutely fucking adored it. I missed out on what turned out to be a very good Nextel Cup race to see it, but it was worth it. Cool plot with great pacing, kickass action sequences, a sparse but excellent soundtrack put together by Danny Lohner (NIN, etc.), a cool backstory, and, most importantly, Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight vinyl bodysuits, killing people in various hideous ways. If the DVD has a decent amount of extra material on it, I'll have to pick it up, as soon as possible. Material like, say, footage of Kate Beckinsale stuffing herself into a skin-tight vinyl bodysuit.

Sucker Punch

So a few nights ago I'm browsing around, listening to music, playing some Tetris, basically killing time, and I decide it's time I go to bed. So I go to close down whatever's open, and as I close IE, something odd happens. I get a ton of HD activity, and I start getting a lot of downstream traffic for no apparent reason. When I try to get offline, my ISP's software hangs, and becomes unresponsive. No big deal, I think, as I try to end-task it, and that's when I notice three running apps I've never heard of before. I shut it all down and reboot. The vaguely named programs show up again, and I realize some blocked pop-up has installed spyware. Took me two fucking hours to uninstall and remove no less than six applications and all their affiliate software from my HD, and manually remove all mention of them from my registry and IE's trusted sites listings. Then I had to install SpyBot S&D to scour anything I may have missed and "immunize" IE against future invasions. Bottom line: stay off the internet.

Anyway, I hear that a former producer of Bill "Me Me Me" O'Reilly's super-non-objective talk show has accused him of sexual harassment. Among other things, he, allegedly, called her up and described his "sexual fantasies and exploits" while, ahem, using a vibrator on himself. I have to quote Craig Ferguson from The Late Late Show, who said, "Please, god, let this be true."

In non-sex-toy-related news, I found out that if you try to randomly combine Half-Life mods with no idea how to seamlessly do so, you can get some pretty entertaining results. I was tryng to use BotMan's Bot10 with Valve's Deathmatch Classic mod, and I got all kinds of neat-o surprises. Like playing DM2 with no weapons or enemies, or DM3 without the ability to switch between weapons you've picked up, or DM6 against bots who don't make any sound, ever. I suppose it's good that I gave up. The last thing I need is to get really into this and write a bot program for an obscure mod for an obsolete game.

Peter Potamus

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is the funniest animated show on television today, including Family Guy and Futurama. It's probably the funniest show on TV, period. I can't be sure, since there are roughly 477 sitcoms airing that I won't watch on the basis that they're sitcoms, and all sitcoms are derivative and predictable and embarrassingly unfunny. The only show that can even come close is Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which, not at all coincidentally, is also produced and aired by [adult swim].

In other news, never buy smokes at a bar. Four bucks for a pack of Turkish Gold is outright larceny. Unless it's the kind of bar that runs illicit slot machines behind a curtained door in the corner and sells weed behind an unmarked back door through the bartender. In that case, you're in a redneck bar and four bucks is an outright bargain. Another sign that you're in a good redneck bar: The jukebox goes from Willie Nelson to Stevie Ray Vaughan to the Beatles to Kid Rock to Parliament to Incubus to Lorretta Lynn to Creed to the Eagles. And there's no George Strait. My kind of dive.

Redirection

I spent several hours Tuesday driving around midtown and the university area. I didn't find what I was looking for, but ultimately I suppose it worked out. I spent some time in SpinStreet looking for used DVDs, and instead I found Cake's new album, Pressure Chief, on sale for ten bucks. So I bought it. I don't think I like it nearly as much as Prolonging the Magic or Motorcade of Generosity, but it is excellent driving-aimlessly-around music. I spent a good part of the afternoon driving through all my old neighborhoods, with the windows down and the moonroof open, and it made for a pretty goddamn pleasant atmosphere. So I highly recommend it for that sort of usage.

Nothing else good has happened recently, other than figuring out how to get into the Half-Life pak file to alter all the weapons to make them slightly more powerful and to make Barney slightly less useless. I see that the Grizzlies are looking to carry 60 regular season games on their very own TV channel. Isn't that nice? I especially like the part where they want a deal with Time Warner, a known outpost of Satan on earth. What pisses me off is that they seem only marginally interested in pursuing a deal with DirecTV. As if DTV subscribers can simply get a separate hook-up to TW cable. I can't believe I've watched 240-something Griz games over three seasons only to be summarily cut out of the loop because the Grizzlies' ownership group isn't making enough money from television revenues. I am not going to drive to some fucking sports bar three or four times a week to watch my fucking hometown team play. Now I know how all those Catalonian fans feel.

Wasting Time

I'll be driving all over town this week looking for copies of Blue Shift and Quake I, and, if I can't find them, Quake II and the Quake II Mission Packs. It's not that I can't order all this software over the internet, which I'm perfectly capable of doing. It's just that it gives me an excuse to spend hours and hours out of the house, driving 'round Memphis in an overpowered and obnoxiously mufflered sports coupe, looking for stores where I can waste time ogling at video cards I want and software this computer can't possibly run.

Despite the numerous emails I received practically begging me to take part in the alumni band's halftime show, I declined to attend the University of Memphis' homecoming game against Houston. Sure enough, DeAngelo Williams racked up 262 yards on the ground and beat Houston's defense into the fetal position. If the Tigers were in the SEC we'd be smelling Heisman by now.

Meanwhile, the Titans lost yet again, but who the hell cares? The Grizzlies re-signed Pau Gasol for 7 years! Life is good again. Only a few more weeks til the Griz tip off against the Cavs in their preseason opener, and I'll be right there, watching and waiting for the national media to finally figure out what we're all so excited about. We beat the goddamn defending Eastern Conference Champion New Jersey Nets by 47 points last year, the largest winning margin of any game in the league last year, and heard barely a murmur from the national press. Just wait til we're giving the Spurs a run for lead in the division, ahead of the Rockets and the Mavs.

Minimum System Requirements

I spent more than two hours driving around Raleigh today trying to waste money. That's how much Raleigh sucks. You have to work like hell just to throw money away. I was looking for some cheap DVDs or CDs or maybe a game or two, but I didn't want to drive the dozen-year-old Explorer way the hell out to the Wolfchase area or downtown while the Probe is having growing pains (more on that in a bit). I tried the Cat's Music and Blockbuster out there before getting desperate and driving to Kmart, where I found lots and lots of fullscreen editions of The Hulk and even more obnoxious, screaming kids. Oh, boy. Finally I ended up at Wal-Mart, where I bought Half-Life/Team Fortress Classic and an Ultimate Doom/Doom II/Final Doom bundle for a combined 25 bucks.

The best part is how the Doom95 front-end on this CD will not, no matter what I try, recognize that I have a mouse. I mean, I do have a mouse, and DOS Doom recognizes it, and the old copy of Doom95 on my original Doom II disc from 1994 worked on this PC when I installed it last winter. I even switched mouse drivers a couple times and checked the documentation, which, in classic id Software style, cheerfully recommends playing the game with the fucking keyboard. Anyway, I ended up installing ZDoom into three different directories and using that as my launcher. Problem solved.

So about the Probe. The other day my mom decides to go get the oil changed after I found out it'd been over 10,000 miles since the last one, and guess what? The "Check Engine" light came on before she even got out of the driveway! You know about the Check Engine light, don't you? It means, roughly, "Something's wrong, and I'm not going to tell you what it is". It might as well say, " Uh Oh." So after I added two quarts of oil, because it was that goddamned low, a $60 diagnostic said the spark plugs weren't getting enough juice. Replacing the spark plug wires didn't put out the light, and another diagnostic said that there's probably a faulty sensor. So, basically, the computer that controls the Check Engine light is setting off the Check Engine light. Oh, hooray.

Trevor the Pseudo-Magical Toad

It's funny how Stargate can simultaneously be a slightly underrated movie and a vastly overrated television series.

I'm watching Conan O'Brian's show and wondering why Tears for Fears is playing a 20-year-old song and how Selma Blair could possibly be any hotter. If there was ever a reason to pay to see a John Waters movie, it's to see Selma in A Dirty Shame. Or anything else she's ever been in.

Yesterday I got some cash in the mail and realized it was my birthday. Funny how that happens. If you try real hard not to think about the fact that you're almost 30 and have no apparent future whatsoever, you can actually turn 27 or 28 and not even know it. My favorite part is skipping out on family birthday parties where you're expected. I did that last year, or the year before, I forget. It was awesome. I imagine birthday poon is pretty fucking cool, too, but I wouldn't know. I've never actually managed to hang onto a girlfriend long enough to have one during a birthday. I think.

Anyway, this is the kind of thinking that used to send me to vodkaland. Fortunately, I've evolved as a person so that I no longer think about that kind of thing until I'm already the mayor and secretary treasurer of vodkaland, where I'm more than equipped to deal with such questions.

Antiproductive

Seems like I've gotten so much done in the past couple weeks, until I stop to think about it.

Ripped 140-something songs from 30-something CD's. Still not halfway through. Thing is, I'm probably spending as much time looking for neato Winamp and Coolplayer skins as I am actually listening to music. And when I do have the full playlist going on random shuffle, I'm just waiting for it to get back around to Deftones' "My Own Summer."

Getting really, really tired of the scrollwheel bug in Firefox. Maybe it'll be fixed in the next release or update, but if anyone knows a patch or something, for god's sake, tell me about it.

Spent a couple hours mowing, edging, and blowing my mom's front and back yards again yesterday. I rather enjoy it, to be honest, but I'm beginning to hate her lawn mower. There's just all kinds of stuff wrong with it that I can't fix, and as far as I can tell, the only way to change its oil is to actually hold it upside down to let it drain. Oh boy, I can't wait to get around to that.

Watched Reign of Fire on cable. Better than I expected, though I'm starting to wonder what the deal is with Christian Bale. I suppose taking oddly-spaced roles in B-movies about psychopaths and dragon-slayers is one way to get over that child-star stigma. But the guy can definitely act, so how about making some good movies instead?

Speaking of child actors, walking punchline Edward Furlong got arrested this week for walking into a Kentucky grocery store hammered and trying to "free" the lobsters from the tank in the seafood aisle. Way to go, Ed. That's just the sort of determination and creativity that will really get people behind the animal rights movement.

Finally got around to reading Diary and Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. I read Choke and Survivor and half of Invisible Monsters years ago, and these two were no different. Dark, sparse, twisted, presumptive. Reminded me of Jim Goad's nonfiction. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, I'm looking forward to Haunted and I should really get around to reading Fight Club.

The World of Tomorrow!

So I finally realized what year this is and started getting some DVDs. I've been clinging to VHS because, like most people, I have a huge number of tapes and a VCR so old it would kick its feet into the air and die the moment I tried to move it. But that's why god made DVD/VCRs.

So I've been catching up on my movies, Digital Video Disc-style. In the past month, I've watched, in no particular order, Master and Commander, Austin Powers 3, A Mighty Wind, Bad Santa, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator 3, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Evolution, 28 Days Later, The Royal Tenenbaums, Old School, EdTV, Starsky and Hutch, Hellboy, Hidalgo, Jeepers Creepers 2, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow, AC!

Idle

Not doing much tonight. I've ripped 80-something songs to MP3s because I was tired of switching CD's, but I just end up looping my Deftones playlist. Just now I'm on Mascara, a song I can relate to in a rather gruesome, unholy way. Anyway.

I'll be toying with PhotoPlus later tonight or tomorrow, because ver. 2.0 of the Gimp is making me want to tear my hair out. Not literally, because I gave up the Battle of the Hairline a year ago and I shave it off, but still. It's making me that mental.

Only other major news for me is that Don Poier will finally be
calling Grizzlies games on TV. I swear to your god, I've been praying for this announcement for three years. Matt Devlin, that overrated talking hairdo, will be broadcasting for the Charlotte Bobcats, those poor bastards.

Shredding

I've spent the last half-hour out in the garage with Shredder the Incredible Mega Dog. For those of you who aren't me, Shredder the Incredible Mega Dog is a 14-year-old Doberman Pinscher roughly twice the size of any other Doberman you've ever laid eyes on. Shredder is an Incredible Mega Dog because not only is he still alive and kickin' at 14, he's also the best goddamn watchdog I've ever met, even at an age when most other Pinschers are sprouting clovers. We were out in the garage blaring local rock radio stations on the 600-watt stereo and watching the Olympics on the muted TV. I'm telling you this because this is the signal that I'm drunk enough to come back inside, after checking Shredder's water bucket, to update this blog.

So. I spent an hour trying to figure out why I can't connect to my email service's SMTP server. Tried two different clients, tried every possible server settings configuration and I got nothin'. And I've been trying for almost two weeks. And I used to do this for a living. The only conclusion I've been able to reach is that I hate the Internet more than ever.

Doomed

One of the great things about using an older computer is finding all the old games it will actually run. I've been using my mother's oldish Compaq, an AMD K63 box with 56MB and a 10Gig hard drive. Remember the K63? Neither does anyone else. It won't run much other than Doom and Duke 3D and various 16-bit console emulators, and there's something refreshing about that. The built-in video doesn't even support OpenGL. Ahh, memories.

By the way, I've been watching the Olympics a lot, mostly because I have pretty much nothing else to do, and I've come to the conclusion that the U.S. Basketball team does not deserve so much as a bronze. I'd hate for these kids to go home thinking they can play like a junior varsity cheerleading squad and still medal. Like everyone else in Memphis, I'm rooting for Spain. Pau Gasol is as good as any power forward on earth and it's about time he got some goddamned recognition.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get my fifth Crown n' Coke.

Pottering

So it's becoming almost impossible to use this ridiculous Compaq keyboard. The shift keys are doing things I've never heard of, and I've heard it all. Nothing I've tried, software-wise, has corrected the problem, so I guess it's just time for a hardware fix. I wonder if that old MS keyboard that, ah, someone spilled beer into a half-dozen times still works. It's been a couple years, surely it's dried out by now...

Started reading the first of those Harry Potter books again, though I'm not sure why. I just finished the 5th a week ago. Maybe because I just blasted through the complete Hitchhiker's Guide again and I'm struggling to find more geekish reading material.

Mental note: finally get around to hooking up my dad's new DVD player. There's just no way he's going to get it working by himself. Doesn't have the patience.

Post 01

So, this is where it begins. Undoubtedly I will be experimenting almost constantly with the appearance of this blog, but of course the real point is the content. I've given myself over to the more primal of my nerd impulses lately, so I'm all in a goddamn flutter to talk about what I thought about those Harry Potter books on read-thru #1, as well as how disappointed I am with the newest versions of Trillian and AIM, and my other overpowering passion, the Memphis Grizzlies.

Did I mention that I've taken a two-year break from the Internet as a whole? Well, I have, and it was inexpressively enlightening. We'll be discussing that as well, I imagine...