Category: Television

What’s in Your Fridge?

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That’s a response video to one of r0xy’s video. I grabbed a bunch of random objects and stuck them in my fridge, just to confuse viewers. Judging by the comments so far, it worked.

A few days ago I created a weird sign and put it up on the bulletin board at McDonalds. Click here to view a post about it so I don’t have to explain it all in this post. Lisa and I were at that McDonald’s today and noticed that 3 or 4 of the tabs were torn off of it now. Some old man has called me twice about it, wanting to buy the snow plow. I didn’t think people would actually call about it when I made the sign.

A few weeks ago Jessica convinced me to watch a show called How I Met Your Mother. I hate admitting that I like a sitcom, especially when it’s got a cheesy laugh track on it and a lame title like that, but I love this show more than anything. It’s so bizarre and messed up and fun. It frequently has old cast members from the old TV show Freaks and Geeks. (Three that I’ve noticed now, one is a main character.) I’m up to season 3 now, about 4 episodes into it. Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is the coolest character ever. If you’ve never seen it, give it a try. I downloaded the entire show from bittorrent, but it’s on Netflix if you want to wait for the discs in the mail.

The PLA Book is coming along great. I’m waiting on my sixth proof of it now. Jammie is doing an awesome job of copy editing for me and Rob T Firefly did a foreword for it and I’m waiting on some illustrations from him. I’m shooting for it to be all finished up by November 1st or so. I’ll be glad when this project is over so I can work on other things. Seems like all I ever do anymore is work on this book.

LOST

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In my last update, I said that I was watching season 1 of Lost and probably wouldn’t continue any further because I didn’t have time for it. As I write this, I’m currently watching the 2nd to last episode in season 5. I’ve accomplished very little in the past couple of weeks because of my nonstop Lost watching. It’s been fun, but I’m glad it’s nearly over. I’ll probably start watching season 6 on Hulu each week as it comes out. At least 1 hour of TV per week won’t waste much of my time.

Not many interesting things have happened to me yet this decade. Last week, Snopes disproved my fake ATM stickers. Here’s the link to it. I think it’s great that someone was worried about it. They posted a picture of one they found with the message, “This is so scary. If true, it may be a warning sign about freedom in America.” I bet they’re disappointed that the sticker is fake since it means they can’t be upset at the government. As a result, signhacker.com has been getting a lot of new subscribers and comments.

Last night Jessica and I drove 90 minutes to Portland, just to see a movie at the Hollywood theater. I’ve been waiting to see Mystery Team (trailer here and here) for over a year now. It was even better than I expected. Funniest movie I’ve seen in a really long time. There was even a Q&A afterwards with a couple of the creators of the movie. One of them was Duncan, the boy genius! If I didn’t have my kids this weekend, I’d probably attempt to drag another friend or two to see it. Unfortunately it’s not kid-friendly enough to take my kids to it.

I noticed a friend on Facebook this week joined a group called Geeky Oregon so I joined it too. Last night after the movie, we went to a Geeky Oregon event, which was a karaoke bar. The karaoke was the most messed up karaoke I’ve ever heard. A few Jonathan Coulton songs, Rick Astley and songs from various Disney movies like Little Mermaid and Aladdin. I even sang an re: Your Brains duet with Nate. Me and Jessica kept turning off the karaoke TV with my keychain remote during peoples songs. They eventually rolled out an old 80’s TV to replace it which was impervious to my remote. www.geekyoregon.com

I think that’s about it for this year so far. Not sure what me and the kids are gonna do today. It’s sort of nice out, so maybe we can do some Geocaching. It’s been awhile since we’ve done any of that. But first, time to go watch my last episode of Lost.

Christmas and Yelp

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Merry Christmas! At 6:30am, I heard Payton’s alarm clock go off and then he turned it off. I thought he was going to wake us all up, but he went back to sleep and Emily woke me up at 8am instead. I got a new digital camera and a popcorn popper. I think I’m going to buy myself a griddle to cook pancakes on too this weekend. My kids got lots of video games, Snuggies (as a joke!), Legos and other miscellaneous things. I got my cat a remote controlled helicopter.

This is a picture of Yelp running on my iPhone, pointed in the direction of Albany so that it shows me a few restaurants and other businesses down the road. It’s a really neat application that shows you user-submitted reviews of businesses, parks and anything else. It’ll come in really handy when we’re walking around big cities and need to find our way to places. For that kind of thing it’s a much better application than regular maps, mainly because you can point your camera at a group of buildings and it labels them all for you. And the reviews are a great way to have an idea of what you’re getting yourself into or to watch for hilarity in certain employees.

Of course I’ve started using it to make crazy reviews of my own on places all over town. My profile is at rbcp.yelp.com where you’ll find reviews that I’ve done on Target, Arby’s, the post office and other places. I’m really loving Yelp and I hope they don’t kick me off for being too bizarre since most of my reviews are mostly honest. I plan to take pictures and review as many businesses as I can.

My BFF Spessa is doing equally hilarious reviews, which you can read at spessa.yelp.com. In her reviews you can learn about how to steal chips at Subway and that Petco employees are creeped out when you ask them to figure out the gender of hamsters.

In other exciting news, I started watching Lost this week. I was browsing around on Hulu and nothing looked interesting, so I decided to give Lost a try. So far I’ve watched the first 8 episodes of season 1. Even though I enjoy the show, I doubt I’ll keep watching after season 1 because there’s just too much to watch and I don’t have time for it. Great show though!

Roswell

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For a little over a week now I’ve been completely addicted to Roswell. It’s an old TV show from 1999 about aliens. Basically a teen soap opera with lots of aliens and making out. I remember seeing commercials for it on TV, back when it came out but never got around to watching it even though when I was married our TV was on nonstop.

Last week I was browsing through the television selections on hulu.com for something random to watch while I did some other things and I picked Roswell. And I’ve done nothing productive since then. It’s a ridiculous show, with nonstop love scenes that make me wanna puke and the gayest music ever, but it’s still great. In just a week I’ve watched 2 1/2 seasons of their 45 minute episodes. Only the first season was on Hulu so I downloaded the rest on bittorrent. Only 8 episodes to go and I’m free! Free to resume my life and quit staring at my laptop all day.

In non-Roswell news, Emily had a birthday. I got her a D&D starter kit, even though I know nothing about D&D. The kids and I and two of their friends went to see 17 Again at the theater, which I expected to not enjoy at all but it was actually not so bad. Today we had dinner at Denny’s and then stopped by Goodwill for some speakers. This evening I ran speaker wires to the new speakers for my stereo. Doesn’t that sound like an 80’s thing to do? Who has a stereo anymore? I use an old stereo that I got from Goodwill for the sound on my computer. While stripping various wires tonight, I remembered how much I got yelled at as a kid for using my mom’s scissors as wire strippers and butter knives from the kitchen as screwdrivers. And I think it was my babysitter that used to complain at me for using my teeth to strip wires. (Which is how I discovered that phone wires have enough current in them to shock you.) Now that I’m an adult I get to do all that stuff guilt-free.

Hrmm, more things happened but as usual I’m old and can’t remember much. Molly came by to pick up all my boxes because she’s moving to D.C. I’ve been texting the hell out of Jessica this weekend, and she is currently watching the pilot episode of Roswell because I ranted to her about it, so I might have a new recruit for that show. Tomorrow night is The Phone Show, which I’m being ordered to clean up my act on. (No more cursing.) I think that’s it. Time to go watch the rest of episode #10 in season #3 before I go to sleep.

Family Ties

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No kids this weekend. Hiked on Saturday morning, then spent the rest of the weekend at home doing pretty much nothing. The most unproductive weekend I’ve had in a long time. Watched a lot of Netflix on TV. Somehow I got the idea that Across the Universe would be a good movie. I think I lasted for maybe 20 minutes of that. I wasn’t expecting it to be a musical. Not that I have anything against musicals, but this was awful. I also watched Jenn’s movie Spaced Out, which was great if you like movies about anal probes. It was fun to watch once, and about a million times better than Across the Universe. (I’ve been writing wacky reviews for Spaced Out on imdb, Amazon and Netflix. Plus I added some fake trivia and goofs on imdb, which haven’t been approved yet.)

Somehow last night I ended up watching Family Ties on Netflix. It’s a show from the 80’s I loved which I haven’t seen since the 80’s. Usually when I attempt to rediscover some old show from the 80’s, I can’t believe how awful it is and that I ever liked it. But Family Ties was great, despite that God-awful intro song where the hippies sing about how much they suck at math and English. I watched about 6 episodes. And I was really surprised to find out that Alex P. Keaton was friends with George McFly a year before Back to the Future came out. He had a small part, but it was cool to see them together in something else.

Terminator

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One of my all-time favorite movies is Terminator 2. In 1991, I was working at Union Station Cine in St. Louis, Missouri when the movie came out. I had no idea what Terminator was and didn’t care. I wasn’t a fan of action movies and didn’t care much for Arnold. I caught bits of it while doing my ushering thing at the theater, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.

Finally though, after it had been in the theater for a few weeks, I caught the ending chase scenes and was intrigued enough to start sneaking in as often as I could while working to catch parts of it. Eventually I saw the whole thing and I was hooked. Soon after that I rented the first Terminator movie and I liked it as well. Not as much as T2, but it was still a good movie. I ended up staying after work several times just to watch T2 in the theater again.

The reason I was working in downtown St. Louis (a 30 minute drive from my home in Illinois) was because I was hoping to move there. I was looking at apartments and other job opportunities in the area, saving money, and happily planning my new life in the big city. My parents didn’t even know I was working there for the first couple months. They thought I was going to work in Alton each day. I finally mentioned that I was when some guy from their church was surprised to see me working there and I figured it’d be best for my parents to find out from me instead of some random person at their church.

Earlier in the year, my girlfriend and I had been apartment hunting in Illinois. We’d also been talking about moving to Galveston, Texas. At some point during all of this she decided that I sucked and broke up with me, which is when I decided to move to St. Louis. The only reason I picked a city so close is that I knew my move would upset my parents and figured they could cope better if I were a mere 30 minutes away. But then I liked the scenes of Los Angeles so much in T2 that I suddenly decided I would just move there instead. And I was tired of waiting, so I put in my 2 weeks notice.

Over the next 2 weeks, I made my final preparations to move which included looking in Los Angeles newspapers for rent prices. They were insane and I knew if I drove there, not only would I blow a lot more of my saved money on gas, I would probably be homeless too. So I settled on Galveston, which I really wanted to see anyway since I’d been reading all about it earlier in the year. I left and I made it there. Thanks for the inspiration, T2!

A few years ago Terminator 3 came out. I was excited to hear about that, but then I heard they weren’t using the original John Connor, there was no Sarah Connor and James Cameron had nothing to do with it. By the time it was released, I was expecting to be disappointed and the movie didn’t let down my expectations. It had neat effects, action and a cool ending, but it just sucked overall.

Now they’re preparing to release Terminator 4, with ANOTHER new John Connor, no Arnold and no James Cameron. It seems weird to use Batman as John Connor, though I’m sure he’ll be better than that guy from Terminator 3. I actually have higher hopes for this one than 3. I know there’s a pretty good chance of just being disappointed again, but I think it could be good.

For the past year I’ve been really enjoying The Sarah Connor Chronicles on TV. It’s the only show on that I never miss. I actually watch it on TV and not hulu.com because I don’t want to wait the extra day to see it. I like all the characters in it and it’s a fun plot with them going around battling random terminators and hoping to stop Judgment Day. And they keep throwing all these random filler episodes in, like the girl Terminator losing her memory and thinking she’s a real girl with amnesia or the Terminator who’s accidentally sent to the 1920’s and becomes a real estate mongol. Silly, pointless stuff, but it’s great.

Each week, after the episode ends, I spend sometimes more than an hour reading the Sarah Connor Chronicles message board. That’s how much I like this show. Today while on the message board, I found a link to The Secret Diary of Cameron Baum. It’s hilarious stuff, especially the first couple chapters. It’s a humorous take on Cameron’s (the girl Terminator) day-to-day life. Read about her adventures in making a miniature reptar terminator for her science fair project, her failed attempts at being on top of the cheerleading pyramid, her night of big winnings in Vegas and her Terminating ants and dogs that wander onto their property. This is why I wrote this giant entry, because this diary story is cracking me up. One chapter to go…

OMG 7 Years Since 9/11 7 Years Ago!

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I rarely watch TV, but I turned it on today at 6:30am and flipped through several news stations and it seemed like they were all talking about 9/11. Do they do this every single year? Really, what’s the significance of 7 years? 1 year, I can understand. 5 and 10 years, sure. But 7? Do they really talk about an event that old instead of news every year? It’s not like there’s any new news about it.

Digital Collection Lists

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In my quest to rid myself of tangible items, I’ve come across a small problem. I want to be able to easily browse my digital collections. It’d be nice to be able to see the cover art of my movies. Especially when perusing movies from the couch, which is hard to do anyway since everything is in tiny text. I’ve done a little searching on the subject, but I can’t seem to find any software that will let you add cover art pictures and easy browsing to your collection of digital movies. I know Windows Media Player sort of does it, but most of my movies are in mp4 format, which can’t be played on WMP. Any suggestions?

Also, I’ve tried pretty hard to not collect tons of books since I moved here. I think I currently own less than 20 books, since I usually sell them back after I’ve read them. But I’d like to have some kind of catalog of books that I’ve enjoyed, so I don’t forget about the book. You know, if you have a giant book collection, sometimes you’ll come across an old book that you haven’t read in years and you’ll decide to read it again. I need a way to create lists of books, preferably with cover art, that I can browse. Amazon has wish lists, but I don’t want people buying me books on a wish list. They don’t have just a regular list of stuff you like.

I’m thinking I’ll just set up an Amazon Store of my media, even though I’m not too crazy with the way they lay everything out. I already have a store for phonelosers.org. I guess it would be cool to have the added bonus of receiving a commission if anyone decides to buy anything in my personal store.

About the movies, I’m sure Netflix will come out with a way to make lists of favorites eventually. They already have Top 10 lists that users can make and share. I don’t think it goes much further than that, though. But if anyone has any other suggestions for doing what I think I want to do, other than making an Amazon Store, I’m open to them.

EDIT: I just set up a quick list on Amazon. Click here to see my Amazon store. Right after I made that, though, I discovered that Amazon actually does have a thing called Your Media Library which might do everything I was looking for. I’ve only spent a minute or two looking at it now, and I’m not sure if I like it. I’m going to look it over now, though. I’m still open to any alternative suggestions.

ANOTHER EDIT: I just remembered that after RijilV moved out of my spare apartment in Illinois, I had this insane idea of converting his old apartment into a library. As if I didn’t have enough useless space in my house as it was, I thought that turning every wall of his old living area into a bookshelf was an awesome idea. I came really close to actually beginning this project too, but luckily someone I knew needed a place to live so I rented it out again.

I didn’t even own enough books at the time to fill more than 1/4th of one of the smaller walls. So besides the lost rental income, I would have spent all this money on wood for bookshelves, lowered the value of the house, and then probably spent thousands of dollars after that just buying books to fill up the shelves so it would look cooler. Sure, it would have been a fun project, but I’m so glad I got sidetracked on that idea.

Weeds

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I just now finished the last episode of season 3 of Weeds. A few days ago I was browsing around Netflix and clicked on it, remembering seeing previews about it on Showtime back when I was watching Dead Like Me. I was immediately hooked on Weeds and have watched them nonstop for the past 4 days. There hasn’t been a show that’s made me LOL this much in a long time. I loved every episode. What a great show. It’s almost enough to make me want to sign up for cable this fall so I can catch the new episodes as they air. Almost, but not quite.

Also, Netflix’s Instant Play is awesome. This is my first time using it. The picture quality is a lot better than the movies I rip myself. Once they build their catalog up, there will be no reason for me to own movies and TV shows anymore. They didn’t have Season 3, so I had to spend a day downloading those from bittorrent. I was downloading them one at a time so I could watch them as they came in. But Netflix is great and I hope they work on making a lot more available soon.