First of all, on any given day, a few of them will be off/out of order. Currently 2 of out 10 are completely dead. One TV is working, but has blotchy black edges around the picture, like Shadow Creatures are attempting to possess it. Every day, they devour a little more of the screen from the outside-in. It totally freaks me out.

Some of the sets have closed captioning on and some don’t. I’m assuming very few people actually plug their headphones into the jacks on the treadmills, ellipticals, cycles, etc and listen to the TVs. I think most people are like me and they listen to their MP3 players while occasionally glancing at the sets. Therefore, CC should be on for most, if not all, of the sets. With my luck, CC is on only for the sets furthest away, which I can’t read very well when on the treadmills without my glasses. I prefer not to wear my progressive lens glasses at the gym, since they get covered with sweat and I can’t see through them anyway. (BTW, I’ve totally grown used to the glasses and wear them at all other times, even when on the computer.)

Then there’s the content. Lately, some of the TVs at the gym have been set to the Food Network. This seems overly sadistic to me. Are they thinking that by getting people to crave food after a workout, they’re more likely to keep coming to the gym and pay those membership fees? Like I really want to see someone rolling dough while I’m huffing along at 7mph on the treadmill.

Sometimes some TVs are set to infomercial channels. Or at least to channels that show infomercials during the time I go to the gym (the Food Network does this sometimes in the early morning). That is unacceptable. Even if I were interested in the product, how am I going to remember the phone number or URL by the time I get home? Man, I could really use that weed whacker that uses the special double helix fishing line.

What’s especially weird is when the infomercials showing are for fitness products that could conceivably cause someone to stop going to the gym. When I see one of those, then I know the gym doesn’t have a plan like I thought with the Food Network thing. If I go home and send for the Become Totally Ripped At Home In 90 Days With No Exercise Equipment And Eat All You Want DVD, then what use would I have for the gym?

Also, they almost always seem to have a couple of the televisions set to the NFL Network, even when it’s not football season. Does 24-Hour Fitness have some sort of arrangement with the NFL Network that requires them to constantly show it? Do I really need to see some Titans/Ravens game from last year while I’m sweating it out?

At least they’ve stopped setting the TVs to channels that show scripted dramas such as Law & Order reruns. Those are pretty useless when working out, since chances are you’re not going to see the whole thing and won’t know how it turns out.

Ideally, the channels should be set to “small digestive bites” networks. I like when some are set to a local station for the local news and some are set to a national news channel like CNN. I am also willing to put up with ESPN, since that seems logical for people working out. And some days, they do have the televisions set up that way, like this morning. But that’s becoming increasingly rare.

Of course, the best bet would be setting them all to The Erotic Network. That I could go for.

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “i’m not the one you were looking for home and away”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None

The other night, I finally got around to watching the DVRed season finale episode of How I Met Your Mother. At the end of the episode, they had a song playing over the last few scenes, as these sort of shows do from time to time. The good old “End of the Episode” musical montage. Rescue Me does it on practically every episode. Anyway, the song playing sounded very familiar. Sounded like a New Pornographers song, but one I didn’t recognize. I surmised it must be a song from NP lead singer AC Newman’s latest solo album Get Guilty, which I had downloaded from eMusic but only listened to once so far.

So after the show I went into iTunes to look up the song, but I wasn’t getting sound out of the computer. I had redirected the audio through my Logitech Music Anywhere USB widget so I could listen to iTunes on my living room stereo earlier in the evening when I was reading. In order to hear anything, I had to restart iTunes. But I didn’t want to do that just then because I was syncing/charging the iPhone. So I went to bed and decided to just pursue it in the morning.

Cue the next morning. My iHome clock radio alarm goes off at the usual time. I have it set to wake me with my oldest iPod, which I have set to shuffle play. Guess which song it played? Yep, the very same AC Newman song from the Mother episode. This is out of some 3300 songs stored on the iPod.

The title of the song? “Prophets”.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: The grocery store only having yellow bananas and no green ones.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “why is there always somebody else”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None

Oh, it can be cool and everything, but will it ever really rise above “gimmick” status? James Cameron says (I think) that all his movies are going to be 3D from now on, which probably explains why it takes him ten years to make one. Yeah, I saw Beowulf in 3D IMAX, and that did draw me into the movie, but I never did see the non-3D version to compare.

Recently, there were a couple of SuperBowl ads in 3D, including a trailer for the upcoming animated movie Monsters Vs Aliens. Even though I knew about the gimmick beforehand, I didn’t go out and seek the 3D glasses. I wasn’t even quite sure how to do that, though I knew that it was a promotion through Sobe Life Water and I guess that glasses were available at store displays. Did you have to make a purchase? From the commercials, the glasses didn’t look like the old standard red/blue glasses, which I have plenty of from old 3D comics. Anyway, when I saw that 3D trailer without glasses, it of course looked fuzzy, like there was an aura around everything. That lessened my enjoyment of it and I was bummed.

I haven’t been watching the TV show Chuck this season, since I was pretty marginal about it the first season. But as part of this same promotion, last night’s episode was in 3D, which you needed the same glasses to view. It wasn’t enough of an enticement to get me to watch the show again, although perhaps I would’ve if I did have the glasses. My friend Pilto does still watch the show, and when he attempted to watch it (DVRed) without the glasses, he was too bothered by the fuzziness and couldn’t do it. Today he was searching out the glasses so he could watch it tonight, and I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if he was successful. He may end up just having to delete the episode unwatched, which says to me that this gimmick failed.

And even when 3D works, is it too distracting? Does it draw too much attention to itself and pull focus (ha ha) away from the story? I don’t believe that any kind of audiovisual enhancement technology where you have to wear something on your head is ever going to catch on in a big mainstream way. It’s just too uncomfortable and dorky. It’s bad enough I sometimes have to wear wireless headphones when watching noisy shows TV in order to not disturb the girlfriend. (Although I must say it does make understanding dialog easier for these aging ears.) Once they get 3D working without glasses, then perhaps it will become the entertainment norm. But since the world is a hologram anyway, will it really matter?

Latre.

Yes, I know I used the word “glasses” approx 200 times in this post. You try finding another word for it. I suppose I could’ve stuck in one or two uses of “spectacles”, but what’s the point?

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Bog Update: None, since I haven’t exercised. No sooner did I get over my cold then my right foot started hurting when I walk. Good thing I’m getting a lot of use out of that new gym membership!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “how to get rid of crabs for guys”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

I can’t believe it, but I actually laughed at a Garfield strip in the paper this morning:

This seems like a throwback to the original Garfield strips, which were actually, y’know, funny at times. Hard to believe, but true.

Or maybe my sense of humor is just getting… old. That must be it, since today’s Dennis The Menace also made me laugh. Or at least nod in agreement.

Speaking of getting old, Pioneer has announced it’s finally going to stop making LaserDisc players. What the…? Who knew they were still making them after the advent of DVD and then Blu-Ray? Maybe there’s a market for my old LD’s after all…

The mid-season premiere of Battlestar Galactica from last Friday night continues to haunt me. Wow. The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan has compiled a number of writer interviews and such about it in her column. (MAJOR SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE! Even the URL was a spoiler, so I had to tinyurl it.) I spent a long time this morning reading through that, and it was very illuminating. I was a little disappointed with the first part of this season (from way back whenever it was on – last summer?), but it looks like they’re going to be making up for it heading into the final stretch here.

Speaking of Spoilers (and BSG), commenter yellojkt has an interesting discussion about that in his Foma* blog entry yesterday. Yellojkt also recently had a fascinating in-depth series on what he considers to be the four big failures of the Bush administration, which starts here. Well worth reading. Yello brings the whup-ass!

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Guess I have to use my $10 Circuit City gift card really quickly! Like this guy, I won’t miss the chain. I’ve had too many bad experiences in their stores. But I don’t like losing $10!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “lardbutt oprah”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Still none! No time!

Firstly (via ADS), for every blog that posts the new Neko Case song, she’ll donate $5 to the Best Friends Animal Society. So, here’s my contribution. It helps that the song is really good. Even though I’m a big New Pornographers fan, I haven’t always been entirely keen on Neko’s solo output. But I’m not very much into country. I have to say I really like this one though. It’s uptempo, which always helps, and doesn’t sound all that country. So, here we go. Listen and enjoy.

Neko Case “People Got a Lotta Nerve” (Middle Cyclone, 2009)

Yummmm…. Neko.

Secondly, way back in this entry, I was complaining about how the synchronization of Microsoft Outlook to the iPhone Contacts was causing many people’s birthdays (including my own) to show up as one day off in the iPhone contact information (but curiously not in the iPhone birthday calendar events created from the contacts). Well, Apple is claiming it’s not their fault (see this Apple Discussion Board thread), but at least now they have a workaround. I tried this and it works. Whew! Now I no longer celebrate my birthday on the wrong day.

Thirdly, tonight’s episode of Smallville featured the first (live action*) appearance of DC Comics staples The Legion of Super-Heroes (referred to only as “The Legion”), those super-powered teens from the 31st century. I have to say that even though the usual TV-liberties were taken, it was incredibly faithful to the comics. (Or at least as faithful as anything in the weirdo Smallville universe can be.) This is not surprising, since the episode was written by DC Comics writer Geoff Johns. It was odd to see founding Legion members Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Lightning Lad in the “flesh” for the first time:

The actors did a pretty good job, although the Lightning Lad character was a bit too “gee whiz” youngish. It included a lot of bits of Legion lore to make us fanboys swoon, such as the Legion Flight Rings, the real names of the heroes (though only Lightning Lad was referred to by codename), costumes that at least call to mind costumes from the comics (which were always changing anyway), references to other planets, an actual Legion enemy (Persuader with his Atomic Axe, although they didn’t mention he was a member of the Fatal Five), mentions of other Legion members (including Brainiac 5, which tied into the main plot of the episode), lots of talk about the future destinies of the Smallville-ites, and even a quick reference to the Legion of Substitute Heroes, which only the really geeky among us would get. Mix it all in with Superman enemies Brainiac (including the first use of the three-circle Brainiac insignia from the comics and Superman animated series) and Doomsday, and you’ve got pretty much the most superheroic, comic-centric episode ever of the show. It even beat out the proto-Justice League episode from a few seasons ago. Kudos.

* – The Legion has previously appeared in animation, including it’s own two-season Saturday morning series a few years ago. I believe they also appeared in an episode of the Justice League Unlimited animated series and the old Superman animated series as well.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising:

• “The Snake” (Frank Black)
• “Colleen” (Ted Leo)
• “The Fundamental Blues” (Bill Nelson)
• “Henry” (Bif Naked)
• “Downed” (Fig Dish)
• “Down by the River” (China Drum)
• “Modern Woman” (Dogs Die in Hot Cars)
• “Nevermind” (Ecotour)
• “High Time” (Icicle Works)
• “Blatant Dis” (Poster Children)
• “1234″ (Helicopter Helicopter)
• “Fool for the Taking” (Gin Blossoms)
• “Look Like Shit” (Lauren Hoffman)
• “Imbusteros” (Calla)
• “The Same Mistakes” (The Records)
• “Twlight” (Elliott Smith)
• “From A Voice Plantation” (Guided By Voices)
• “The Hardest Thing” (Poi Dog Pondering)
• “Knight Rider” (Of Montreal)
• “Crash Into June” (Game Theory)
• “Woman With Reason” (Steve Kilbey)
• “Sing About Me” (Papas Fritas)
• “Mark of Excellence” (Mind Reels)
• “Listen” (The Wondermints)
• “Some Way Some How” (The Features)
• “Suburban Homeboy” (Sparks)
• “In The Wilderness” (Mercury Rev)
• “Crash Into June” (Game Theory)
• “Atlantic” (Keane)
• “ABC” (The Pipettes)
• “Petrol” (Ash)
• “American Music” (Violent Femmes)
• “Nose Over Tail” (Alkaline Trio)
• “The Heat In The Room” (Bill Nelson)
• “That Must Be The Way” (Uncle Green)
• “Anybody’s War” (Icehouse)
• “Chips Ahoy!” (The Hold Steady)
• “So It Goes” (Broken West)
• “Sob Story” (The Bolshoi)
• “Blue Flowers” (Pleasure Thieves)
• “Death or Glory” (The Clash)
• “Tony The Beat” (The Sounds)
• “Nowhere Now” (Econoline Crush)
• “I Want None Of This” (Radiohead)
• “Bust” (The Connells)
• “Sleepwalk” (Ultravox)
• “Alright” (Blake Babies)
• “Sleeping Through Heaven” (Game Theory)

Pet Peeve of the Day: Canker sores.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: prius locked out engine running”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None!

The bizarre thing about this new series is that the tone of it is diametrically opposed to the tone of the current series of Batman live action movies. No “dark and gritty” here. B&B is the closest thing to the old campy 60s Batman series since the George Clooney Batman and Robin movie. The drawing style is sparse with clean lines. The animation sometimes has still action frames, like you see a lot in anime and in old cartoons from the 60s and 70s. Batman has short ears like in the 60s series. (As a general rule of thumb, you can tell what the tone of a Batman series is going to be by the length of his ears.) And Batman makes jokes. Lots of jokes. I guess that’s not surprising, since he’s voiced by Diedrich Bader. Sometimes he even smiles. This is a very light-hearted take on the Batman legend. All it’s missing is Robin, though I’m sure he’ll appear eventually.

The plots are pretty outlandish with villains concocting extremely elaborate plots that have very little basis in scientific reality, requiring an immense amount of suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. Of course, that’s da rigeur for the superhero world, although it does violate the recent trend from the last few decades to inject a slight bit of realism here and there. B&B throws convention to the wind. When a couple of mind-controlled pteradactyls can lift a cruise ship into the air, you know that any pretense of logic is not going to make an appearance. The show also seems to exist in its own separate little dimension of the DC universe, as the characters are not real consistent with their appearances in the comic books or other shows. For example, in the show, Plastic Man’s origin is tied into Batman. (Batman knocked Eel O’Brien into a vat of chemicals while Eel was in the middle of a robbery, turning him into Plas. Shades of the sometimes-origin of The Joker!) Aquaman is a genial, pompous idiot who reminded me more of The Tick than of any Aquaman from the comics. I half expected him to be voiced by Patrick Warburton. His half-brother Orm (Ocean Master) is now suddenly Atlantean, instead of being the human son of Aquaman’s landlubber father. I understand they need to cut corners so that the viewer can quickly come up to speed on what’s going on, but some of those alterations don’t really seem necessary.

It’s not surprising that B&B The Show is so out of continuity with everything else DC, since in the heyday of B&B The Comic, it also existed in its own little world. Those Batman team-ups of the 70s were mostly written by Bob Haney, an old-time writer at DC who was obviously given free reign to play in his own sandbox and create his own universe that didn’t have to tie in with anything happening in the rest of the company. He would do things like have Batman team up with heroes from alternate Earths as if those heroes existed on his Earth. (This was before DC collapsed their multiverse, and “Earth-2″ heroes had to actually travel to “Earth-1″ to team up with the heroes there.) For just one example of Bob Haney craziness, see here. Here’s more. Haney was also responsible for the Super-Sons in World’s Finest Comics, who so annoyed me that I quite collecting comics for a few years in the 70s because of them.

So, anyway, the show is Bad. Horribly Bad. Yet I can’t stop watching it. The pinnacle of animated Batman was the series from the 90s, and I doubt it will ever be surpassed. The series from this decade that recently ended it’s run on the WB was pretty bad, although it did get better near the end. It’s not that I’m so starved for Batman fare that I’ll watch anything that comes along, but I just have this need to see what comes next and how bad it will get. And as loathe as I am to admit it, there’s something actually fun about B&B. And we can all use a little fun, can’t we?

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Christmas cards with glitter. Why do I keep buying them? Actually, I didn’t buy any this year, but I had some left over from last year. That stuff gets on everything.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “phobias and damage to life”.

Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

(FYI, Pushing Daisies is one of those shows that I keep watching even though I kind of hate it. I like how the look of it is different than anything else on TV, and I really like Anna Friel, yet it all still somehow manages to bug the hell out of me. So I’m probably not going to be too sorry to see it go.)

Anyway, don’t screw this up, ABC!

In other weird TV news, NBC is not only giving up on showing dramas during the third hour of prime time on weekday nights, they’ve also given up on giving Jay Leno the boot (these two things are connected). I can’t help thinking this is an extraordinarily bad idea. The networks are just going all out to hasten their own demise, aren’t they? It’s like they’ve given up trying to compete with cable.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Walking To Lunch The Other Day:

• “Definite Maybe” (Ecotour)
• “Who Do You Think You Are?” (Duran Duran)
• “Bridges Burning” (Mission UK)
• “Where Are They Now?” (The Caulfields)
• “Object” (The Cure)
• “Nosebleed” (Maxïmo Park)
• “See-Saw” (Popinjays)

Pet Peeve of the Day: Damn winter weather! Damn laziness! I’ve been really remiss in my jogging lately and am turning into a total lardbutt.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “cockroach in crispix”.

Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

Okay, well, this is fascinating to me, though I’m not sure most people care. I’ve always been into episode titles since I was a kid. There’s just something about them that makes the show seem more real, more substantial. It’s like the writers and producers have more invested in the series if they bother to title individual episodes. Of course, one thing I realize now that I didn’t know back then was that pretty much all shows had episode titles even if they weren’t shown. In these days of the DVR and the Internet (not to mention TV on DVD) it’s easy to see what the titles were on those old shows.

Very few shows these days display the episode titles, though I almost always know what they are anyway from the episode info description on the DVR. If they have titles, why don’t they show them? Probably because they have to reserve too much room for the rest of the episode credits, especially in these days when very few shows have separate opening title sequences (another thing I dearly miss) and instead list the regular credits over the opening action along with the guest stars.

I can only think of a couple of shows that I regularly watch that display the actual episode title in the show: Heroes, Dexter, Stargate Atlantis, True Blood. Probably one or two others. Sometimes the title will actually give away something that happens in the episode and will act as a sort of mini-spoiler, but that’s rare. (And maybe that’s another reason they don’t display them.) Science Fiction shows seem to have episode titles more often than other types of shows, probably because it’s a more of a writerly genre. One of the things I loved about Babylon 5 was the episode titles and how much thought was put into them. I can still remember when “The Coming of Shadows” flashed across the screen and brought chills to my spine. Not to mention “Z’Ha’Dum”.

But the best reason for giving a show episode titles is probably just so you can have something to refer to them by. Instead of saying “The episode of Bablyon 5 where the station declared independence from Earth”, you only have to mention “Severed Dreams” and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

Latre.

Spock’s Brain!

Pet Peeve of the Day: I’m not sure I like the new look of Google Reader. Why can’t people leave Good Enough alone? Also, I’ve just upgraded to Firefox 3 and there’s some thing I don’t like there as well.

The Flying McCoys, 12/2/2008:

The name of the TV show/movie is Sex and the City, not Sex in the City. Why can’t the non-fans ever get that right?? Sheesh.

And who’s the dude on the far left?

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “phobia that starts with q”.

Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

Some interesting news lately out of Hollywood on the progress of two highly anticipated (by me anyway) possible future HBO shows. Since both of these projects were first announced, there’s been a regime change at HBO which made it look unlikely (according to some people) that either project would see the light of day.

The first one was the proposed adaption of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon 66-issue comic book series Preacher, one of the most blasphemous and graphically violent works ever committed to the four-color page. Also, one of the most exciting, funny, and enthralling. The HBO series was to be overseen by Mark Steven Johnson, director of the Daredevil and Ghost Rider movies. Seeing as how average those turned out, I wasn’t entirely looking forward to seeing what he would do with edgier fare. (Let’s not even mention what he did to A Prayer For Owen Meany.) But in interviews, he said he was going to stay faithful to the comics, even going so far as to adapt each individual issue into a separate episode of the TV series. That had a lot of potential. And as such, it was ultimately shot down by the HBO brass.

But recently comes word that it will be adapted instead into a feature film. A previous try at that in the 90s, to have been directed by Tank Girl director Rachel Talalay, er…. tanked. Thankfully. The director of this new version is going to be Sam Mendes, Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and also director of the upcoming Oscar-bait movie Revolutionary Road, which reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. He has previously directed another comic book adaption, Road To Perdition, which was critically acclaimed but didn’t fare that well at the box office. So he does know his way around a graphic novel and he is a great director. This should prove interesting. I just wonder how much of the story he’s going to adapt for the movie. It’s a looong story, and the first part of it (collected as Gone To Texas) is not really as interesting as the rest of it. So I don’t know how well it would turn out if he just did that initial storyline. But I can’t wait to see who’s going to play super-powered preacher Jesse, his ex-girlfriend hitwoman Tulip, and Irish vampire Cassidy.

Around the same time that the HBO Preacher thing was initially bandied about, HBO also announced they were developing an adaption of George R.R. Martin’s seminal fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire. And then… nothing. Even though Martin said the project was still rattling around at HBO, no concrete confirmations of movement have been forthcoming and I assumed it was another victim of the leadership change at HBO. But I guess that HBO is now getting serious about this genre stuff due to the success of True Blood (That’s a success? Even though I like it, I thought the ratings numbers were down compared to past HBO successes. I guess the numbers have inched up lately.) So HBO has actually greenlit a pilot for the series. This is no guarantee that the show will make it to air, but it’s certainly an encouraging sign.

Even though the book series is unfinished and I’m only halfway through the most recent book, A Feast For Crows, I declare this series to be the best fantasy books ever written. Or at least the best I’ve read. And like the HBO press releases say, it’s a natural fit for pay cable. It’s more about the (twenty million) characters than the battles, magic, and creatures. (In fact, there’s very little of those last two in the books at all.) So the budget should be doable. And since there’s a lot of sex and violence, it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to see on say the SciFi Channel or in weekend syndication. A feature film would definitely not be able to tell even a fraction of the story (which, admittedly, does seem to wander a bit at times). They are talking about adapting the series as one book per TV season, which sounds about right. Even at that pace though, they’ll have to cut out a lot of ancillary characters and story. And it’s the perfect vehicle for big stars who may want to dabble in the genre and then be gone, since no character is ever safe in Martin’s universe.

So, I’m holding my breath. After what HBO did to Deadwood, Rome, Carnivàle, and John From Cincinnati, I’m a little worried about the whole story getting told once it gets started. But I’m willing to take that chance.

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “speed dial worry about misdialing”.