2 hours * 1 me = 1 assload of snow moved
A year of Netflix.
I've had Netflix for just about a year now, and it's simply a fantastic service. For the most part, I get 1 day turnaround on movies (or 2 day ... I don't know exactly how you'd describe it). For instance, I'm on vacation, so I'm trying to get through a bunch of movies. I watched one on Monday, get it in the mail that day, and I'll have a new movie on Wednesday.
Over the course of a just about a year, I've never had a single problem. Occasionally I've had a delay in getting a movie, but that's rare.
Today, I had my first problem. I received Swimming Pool and I sat down to watch it. My DVD player starts making that tell-tale noise where it's having trouble reading the disc. Sure enough, no matter what option I pick, my DVD player chokes and I can't watch the movie.
Booo.
However, Netflix handles the whole situation pretty well. I just go to my account, tell them there's a problem and that I want a replacement DVD sent to me ASAP. Hopefully, that means I'll get it on Monday. We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm down to just having Kurosawa's Ran at home. While I do really want to watch it, I have to be in the right frame of mind to watch a 2.5 hour Japanese movie. So, I'm probably going to watch a few episodes of Angel Season 4 instead.
Netflix is a perfect example of a modern, Web 2.0 type company. They give me the ability to decide what I want to watch and (for the most part) when I want to watch it. No forcing down my throat the new releases. If I want to watch a random crappy horror movie, I can do it by just throwing it in my queue and waiting for it to show up. When they screw up, they make it very easy to get restitution. Pretty great.
I've just requested that they send me my rental history. I'm curious to see how many movies I've been able to see over the past year or so using Netflix. If I had to guess, it's probably in the range of 100 movies or so.
Dead Like Dead Like Me
Argh.
That's the sound I make when another one of the shows I like a good deal gets killed by the network it's on.
In this case, it's Dead Like Me, Showtime's quirky, supernatural comedy.
My TiVo Season Pass list keeps getting smaller because the networks keep cancelling good shows and replacing them with crappy reality shows. Oh, and procedural crime dramas. I guess I have to start watching CSI: Des Moines.
Ridiculous. The only upshot is that if HBO kills The Wire, I'll probably just cancel both HBO and Showtime and save myself a bunch of money (on car insurance.) The only shows really left worth watching on the two cable networks would be Deadwood (HBO) and the Penn & Teller show (Showtime). And that's what BitTorrent is for.
Blah. TV depresses me sometimes. Everytime a good show comes along, they kill off two good ones. It's like some backwards ass evolution, only the shitty survive. This season we get Lost and Veronica Mars, but lose out on Angel, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, and potentially The Wire.
Phew. Good thing they can make space for "Who's Your Daddy?" -- what would life be without a show about some poor human trying to figure out who their biological father is on national TV?
Yeah, and somehow the Red States thought Buffy was the most dangerous show on TV.
Goodbye Pedro
I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon of folks who are saying good riddance to Pedro Martinez, who most people know has left the Red Sox for a 4 year, $53m deal with the New York Mets.
Pedro's had a lot to say about the Red Sox, the front office, and the negotiations that took place -- none of it good. Many people are accusing him of simply leveraging the Sox to get a better offer. I've seen no proof to say that's the case.
Much of what Pedro has said echoes what Derek Lowe, Todd Walker, Jason Varitek,Nomar Garciaparra, and a number of other free agents have said about the Sox brass and their negotiations. Some of it is sour grapes, but there's probably an inkling of truth to it. The Red Sox front office has a philosophy and they stick to it. Part that philosophy seems to involve leaking stories to the press to spin the PR in favor of the front office and against the player. I'm not sure if it is systemic, or if it's one random guy in the front office, but it is obviously happening (c.f. the Manny Ramirez stories from 2003). It is easily the least attractive aspect of an organization that has had very few missteps since they purchased the team a couple of years back.
Hell, maybe if we had a real sports media in Boston stuff like this wouldn't happen. Instead we're stuck with Dan Shaugnessy, Tony Massarotti, and Steve Buckley doing most of the heavy lifting in Sox coverage. Between the three of them, I don't think there's a popular baseball player they couldn't defame.
The point being -- I hold no ill will towards Pedro. He put together arguably the best stretch of pitching ever in his 7 years in Boston and was instrumental in the Red Sox winning the World Series. I find his willingness to speak his mind refreshing in the days when 99% of players soundbites are interchangeable. I also feel he's more likely to earn his money over the next 4 seasons than will Jason Varitek, Matt Clement, or even Edgar Renteria.
But he'll be doing it for the Mets, and that makes me sad. I can't root for the Mets, but I'll be rooting for Pedro each time he pitches (as long as it's not against the Sox).
The Smartest *and* Best Show on TV
I've just finished watching the season finale of the The Wire on HBO. If that episode turns out to be the season finale, I really do think that it will be the finale to the greatest three season run in television history.
Better than Buffy Seasons 1.5-4.5 (it's hard to pick a 3 season stretch of Buffy that was completely solid).
Better than Angel Seasons 2-4.
Better than Farscape Seasons 2-4.
Better than The West Wing Seasons 1-3.
I can't explain the show's greatness. If you watch it and give it a couple of episodes, you generally get it.
So, just in case HBO is checking the blogosphere for reactions on the show and whether they should renew it, let me add my piece:
Dear HBO,
If you cancel The Wire, I will burn your house down.
Love,
Ryan
Saturday Night Live
I'm pretty much an SNL apologist. Most people gave up on them pre-Will Ferrell. Even more gave up on them when he left.
Not me. I TiVo it every week. I sit through every minute. And, up until this year, I generally would find 2 or 3 sketches that would make me laugh, and then there was the ever reliable Weekend Update to round out the night.
But not this season. Damn, it's been awful. Last night's episode had to be rock bottom. Outside of the Roomba parody, a few moments of the "Pranksters" sketch, and one single moment in the Robert Smigel bit (when he referred to the Red states as "Dumbfuckistan"), it was excruciatingly bad.
Part of that can be attributed to Robert DeNiro, who was god awful the last time he was asked to host. But most of it is the writing, since it has been pretty uniformly awful this season. Last night they had a sketch that was Rober DeNiro dressed as an old lady with cats.
That's it. No punchline. Someone thought it would be funny enough to dress DeNiro up as an old woman and make him a cat lady and broadcast it on TV for 2 minutes.
I think that's been my major issue with SNL this year. I love the over the top comedy, the sketches that are these surreal situations that are inherently bizarre and funny. But they have to lead to a punchline. There has to be a joke. Otherwise it stops being funny after a minute or so.
Think back to the Celebrity Jeopardy stuff. Just weird and funny, but they always had punchlines.
Then watch last night's show. There's a funny premise with Horatio Sanz going undercover as a super over the top Italian criminal. It was somewhat funny. Then the punch line was that he was going to infiltrate an Asian crime ring as Hong Kong Phooey.
Hong Kong Phooey? That's the best punchline you could come up with?
Compare that with the stuff on Chappelle's Show like the racial draft. The whole premise is insanely funny, and you get a billion and one jokes including the whole Wu Tang appearance.
Now, I'm not a comedy writer, and I don't think I could be because I'm not that funny. And I know how much harder it is to do SNL than Chappelle's Show. But that's not an excuse for not being funny.
Anyway, my guess is there's a shelf life on being the head writer at SNL. Tina Fey had a really good run, but it might be time for some new blood at the top. I think they've got lots of talented performers (including the criminally underused Maya Rudolph and Darrell Hammond). There's no reason the show can't be funny again.
The final skit last night was at least redeemable - it had Horatio Sanz come out to do the Christmas song he used to do with Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and Chris Kattan, who've all since left the show. It's a silly skit they did around every holiday, but it worked for me. Last night, the Muppets (well, Fozzie, Kermit, Gonzo, and Animal) joined Horatio, doing the mannerisms and everything.
It made me think - right now, I think I'd rather see new episodes of the Muppet Show than more episodes of SNL. Same hosts, same musical guests, but using the Muppets rather than the normal SNL folks. I bet it would work.
The Smartest Show on TV
If you're not watching The Wire, then you have no right to own a television.
Damn. I don't think that, in my lifetime, there has been a show as amazingly good as this one has been for the past 3 seasons.
Buffy will always be number one in my heart, but The Wire simply does stuff that no other show would dare do, and it does everything better than everybody else.
It's not even hyperbole. I dare you to rent the 1st season on DVD (Netflix it!). Watch the whole thing - it's only 12 episodes, so it'll take you like a weekend. Just watch it, pay attention to the characters and stories. If you're not completely blown away by say, episode 8 or 9, I will give you a cookie and apologize for wasting your time.
Then I'll punch you in the face for being stupid. If you don't get this show, you can't be my friend.
It's as Ann on the nose of Plain's face
I'm a big fan of Scrubs. I've considered it the top sitcom on TV pretty much since it came on the air. Consistently inventive and funny and makes me laugh hard every week.
Arrested Development may have passed Scrubs last night. Any show willing to make a bunch of homages to the Peanuts animated shows scores major points with me.
This is what cracked me up last night:
<cue the Charlie Brown Christmas Special sad music>
That may be the funniest sight gag since Bender shit a brick on Futurama.
I Just Tipped Over My Couch
I had a mini-riot at Casa De Ryan this afternoon.
VT 16 - Miami 10
Hokies vs Hurricanes
My Virginia Tech Hokies take on the Miami Hurricanes for the ACC Championship in just about 2 hours. This was a year when no one expected the Hokies to be successful. They lost "phenom" Marcus Vick before the season, they were entering a new conference that was supposed to be tougher than the Big East that they'd run roughshod over for the better part of 7 years, and they do not have a single recognizable player on the team.
What have they done?
-Played #1 USC tough until a couple of bad calls drastically changed the tenor of the game,
-Missed a last second field goal against NC State that would have won the game,
-Won every other game.
Last week they picked apart a pretty good Virginia squad to reclaim the Commonwealth Cup, bringing it back to Blacksburg where it belongs. This week, they're down in Miami to take on a team that has become a rival of ours over the past decade.
It should be a fun game. This Miami team is a team prone to make mistakes, but they're super talented. This Hokie squad is a team that plays generally mistake free football, behind a solid, if unspectacular offense, and an extremely tough defense. The Hokies feed off of mistakes.
Basically, it's old-school Miami football vs. old-school Virginia Tech football. Beamerball, at its best.
A Hokie victory means a top 10 ranking, full claim to the ACC Championship in our first year in the league, and a spot in a BCS bowl game, likely the Orange Bowl against Auburn or Utah.
It should be a fun afternoon. I fully expect to hold a little riot in my living room when we win. Maybe I'll set a couch on fire.