entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

A new reality TV show from TLC, bringing together twenty-something male fans of My Little Pony and pro wrestling: "Bronies & Jabronis"

After watching the first two episodes, "Mad Men" makes me think of "Seinfeld": it's an inexplicably popular show with a very distinct style populated by abhorrent characters where nothing happens, except that instead of purportedly playing the dialogue for laughs, it's a dramatic drama.  It's another example of Schadenfreude TV, where having a story takes a backseat (or, in Mad Men's case, it's shoved into the trunk) to having characters who are mostly repulsive and, at best, give you mixed feelings.  The costuming and sets are visually striking and very well done, but all that came to mind after i was done watching were those eight deadly words.

simon_cozens: So, what's this "Lost" thing that everyone's talking about, then?
ronebofh: imagine Gilligan's Island crossed with The Prisoner

I never could relate to people who really got into the badness of certain forms of art, like Mystery Science Theater 3000 or the cult of Rocky Horror Picture Show.  But that changed once i watched a few episodes of the epically bad CSI: Miami.  The writing is sub-mediocre, even for Hollywood; the main characters not only have an extremely narrow set of behavior, but they are only allowed one or two facial expressions (David Caruso's two facial expressions are with and without sunglasses, if that counts as two); the non-recurring characters are acted with the care you'd see in your typical high school play.  And this lily is gilt with the choice of an H2 as the official crime lab vehicle.  I can't recommend this show to anyone; however, for those of you who revel in experiencing awful stuff, it might just be up your alley.

wacky_hijinx informed me some time ago that Kevin O'Neill would be signing yesterday, so i dropped by and picked up a copy of O'Neill's and Alan Moore's latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel, Black Dossier.  O'Neill was very kind and drew something on the first page for all comers.  He asked me what i wanted, and i said, "Surprise me," and i got a really nice Miss Murray.  I'm still reading BD; it is, well... it's mad.  It includes a set of 3-D glasses.  That's all i'll say for now.

Week 6: still not king employed.  Now that we're essentially in holiday season, it would be too optimistic to hope for a job before 2008.

palecur and i will be leaving tomorrow afternoon to go to Los Angeles to see Soda Stereo.  I believe that it's fair to say that they're the band i've been wanting to see play for the longest time.  We'll be back in time for Thanksgiving.

"Heroes" is a comic book title on the TV screen, and ( my rant is full of spoilers. )

wacky_hijinx

This ought to segue into my oft-promised rant about the dismal world of DC & Marvel, but i've had a migraine all day and i'm feeling a little drained now.

Once again, Dan Shahin at wacky_hijinx brings us the goods: screen captures of TV's Batman with captions from Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns".

<ronebofh> god damn it, will someone PLEASE kill larry king.
<lb> maybe we can suffocate him with lou dobbs' balls.

<dpk> so far the tv highlight has been a show i call "stupid baby". brazil may have a different name for it. they put babies in high chairs and tell them to let go of balloons or drop blocks or something. but they jus sit and stare for 30 seconds.
<dpk> for some reason that show helped me fall asleep.

Vancouver's traffic lights tend to blink green a lot. I don't see the point. Many also seem to exist only along the main street, and the cross street only gets stop signs. The lights turn red so pedestrians may cross safely. It seems like a half-assed way to save on traffic lights.

Vancouver is very similar to San Francisco in many ways: surrounded by water, a bustling Chinatown, a large park in the northwest, a suspension bridge that leads out of the northern part of the city, large clusters of homeless people. Commercial Drive is a collection of New Age-y shops and vegan/vegetarian restaurants that reminded me a bit of Berkeley.

The ferry ride to Victoria is beautiful. So is Victoria. Here we found the same painted orca statues we found in Vancouver, a series similar to the cow statues in Kansas City. We took a walk to the end of the Ogden Point seawall and back, and saw a bunch of starfish (including a fuzzy purple variety), lots of two kinds of jellyfish (one about cantaloupe-sized and dark reddish, the other basketball-sized and eggyolk yellow), as well as one lazy seal who cruised by for a couple of minutes before returning to deeper waters.

We saw the first episode of "Medical Investigation", and the characters can be summarized as the hardass, the tightass, the badass, the dumbass, and the piece of ass. We also caught Napoleon Dynamite, which was weird, often surprising, goofy, funny, and cute. Not great, but good.

On the ferry out of Tsawwassen to Victoria, there were prominent signs that forbade further transportation of BEES.

We're leaving Victoria now, heading back to Seattle.

A recent episode of The Simpsons mocked Fox News; Rupert Murdoch sprang into action and tried to sue himself. You couldn't pay for this quality of entertainment.