Subaru ad targeted at soccer moms, well hockey moms actually, uses “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” by The Pogues.
Archive for the ‘tv’ Category
Madison Ave WTF
Sunday, February 13th, 2011Every transition, really?
Sunday, October 24th, 2010We had the first ‘storm’ of the season in Seattle today, with a tiny power outage, that the local news is milking for all it’s worth. Standard local news kind of stuff, but someone has gone a little overboard with the ripple effect transition. We get it, it’s a water story =p
Tivo, great product, crappy support
Thursday, October 7th, 2010This morning, my HD Tivo let me know it wasn’t capable of automatically adapting to my new network topology, unlike all the other boxes in my house. Whatever. And of course, there’s no option in setup to just reset the networking, no I have to reset the whole box. OK, fine. Hrm, stuck at a black screen? Well, I have to go to work, maybe it’s just slow. 9 hours later, still stuck at a black screen? Fine, hard boot it. Oh look, it’s back up, oh crap, trying to do anything makes it reboot. And reboot. And reboot. Sigh. Time for Tivo support, my least favorite support team.
Dial dial, ring ring, oh nice, guy answered as soon as I got into the right queue. But oh, he’s in a hurry to get to the next call, and keeps trying to close the case before it’s actually resolved. His attitude is so annoyingly rude, I assume the guy is incompetent. Turns out he’s just rude, looks like the box is working again, and haven’t found any lost recordings so far. So, hooray for the unix dude who wrote whatever self-repairing file-system they use inside there.
UPDATE: It occurred to me a possible reason why Tivo support favors trading out machines instead of doing any sort of real debugging…the lifetime tivo contract is only for the life of the box. If they can get you to send them the box, they can probably make you buy a new contract. Why would I not be surprised if that’s how they work, these days.
Goliath Awaits (MR)
Monday, August 30th, 2010I love the internet, most of the time.
Like when it can supply me with not just the name of a half-remembered tv-miniseries, but the entirety of it. Mark Harmon has had a long career, even if I don’t realize it sometimes.
The film is just as over-the-top-silly as I remembered it. Caricature villains, a rigid social structure under autocratic rule offered up as a impossible utopia to the messiness of a real world under democracy, doomed by the frailties of human ego.
And yet, it still manages to age remarkable well. It helps that 90% of their time is spent on a liner built during WW2.
Most annoying plot hole is the whole “it’ll never work” rigmarole over the heat exchanger. What exactly did the script writer think the difference was between a heat exchanger based on lava, and a scotch boiler based on oil? Pointing out that simply generating more oxygen doesn’t remove carbon-dioxide would have been more believable. Whatever.
Reshooting the Past
Friday, August 13th, 2010I’m watching Y&R today, and I realize, the ‘flashback’ I’m watching has to be new. When Hope died originally, the actor was the other Adam. I’ve always wondered what they did for a flashback, if the actor had changed. It seems like it would only work for recent flashbacks. You can’t reshoot Victor at 35 without way more effects budget than I suspect they have.
UPDATE: Oh wow. They reshot scenes with new Heather as well. It’s going to be a whole episode of reshoots, methinks….
Missed Opportunity
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010I’m watching Y&R, and they have a scene in a book store. In the background behind one of the characters, they had a book cover prominently displayed, for “Bumpy the Camel”. I’ve never been more disapointed in not being advertised to. OK, that’s a little hyperbolic, but still, I can’t believe no one has written a book with that title yet. Maybe I will.
One day there was a camel. A camel named Bumpy.
“I’m not bumpy
I am humpy” he cried, whenever someone called him “Bumpy”. So naturally, all the animals called him Bumpy.
….
Uncle Frank is my idol
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010After all the faildate-ing of late, I’m starting to think Uncle Frank is on the right track with his “proud to use whores stand”. At least for just sex kinda stuff =p
Chowder’s Cake Was A Lie!
Sunday, February 7th, 2010LOLzers
The “cake is a lie” meme made it into an episode of chowder =)
Cybill Shepherd as Martha
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Cybill did a great job as Martha Stewart, in the two Lifetime movies Tivo grabbed. I could never stand the real Martha, or care about her problems, but the movies were actually worth watching.
Chia Obama? Really?
Thursday, October 1st, 2009I mean wow….just wow. Let it never be said that the American dream is dead.