January megapost

Well, quite a while off for me wasn't it? Sorry to the 3 or 4 people a week that kept coming back over the holidays and throughout this frigid January, I'm rested and relaxed and I'm back swinging. I'm trying out polls on the site, check out the side and give a little vote.

-I tend to consider myself a sophisticated consumer of media, at least in television shows I watch regularly. I take pride in how much I like '30 Rock' and my preference for the BBC version of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Fox's version is so annoying by comparison). Unfortunately, the writers' strike has reduced me to residing in occupied territory: The biggest things I've been watching lately are 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles' and, sadly, ashamedly, giving into this season of 'American Idol' (if you didn't see Brother Guy, check it out. Fast forward to 1:39 for his audition, but it's worth watching the whole thing).

What I'm trying to say is, I think of a lot of things in terms of Terminator these days. Is the Macbook Air sent from the future? When will Google unroll Google brain, which will write its own applications, hack Facebook, take control of Earth's satellite network and become SkyNet? So you can imagine my sense of impending dread when people talk about cameras you implant in your eyes. I do not look forward to a future where machines see what I see... unless machines like watching a lot of baseball. Then I guess we're cool.

-The college movie downloading numbers are much lower than they thought. What a shock.

-Speaking of ridiculous people, a great article on Morgan Spurlock's new movie is in Variety. From the guy who brought you 'I'm going to eat McDonalds every meal, think anything bad will happen to me' comes 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden.' The review includes such colorful prose as "Wandering from Muslim country to Muslim country, he sets out to validate his premise that Arabs are just like us, or at least more like us than they are like bin Laden. This is not hard to prove, since Spurlock has no method and no accountability." Morgan Spurlock does seem to mean well, but I really can't suspend my disbelief.

-I have a few crazy friends that are participating in an amazing contest entitled Manuary Madness, a grueling decathlon to crown Boston's greatest alpha male. So far they've completed the events "Craigslist Personals," "Sudoku in a Steam Room," and "Push Jeff's Car." There's a great video of them pushing a car through a back alley, one of them dressed as if it's ESPN's World's Strongest Man Competition. Event Four, "BAC 0.18%," takes place this Saturday, stay tuned to their website for results and pictures. Personally, I look forward to their completion of the Milk Pong event.

-Monday's 'Daily Show' was actually pretty good, I'd say best one of the strike era so far. The interview with the editor from Newsweek is a classic Jon Stewart gem about the nature of media:



Hope that gets you by, check ya later.