Summer Blitz 2009

Last weekend I was reminded of how great life is.

Over Memorial Day Weekend, I got to go camping with some good friends and shared some great memories. We canoed down a creek in Rome, Georgia and it was definitely one of the most exciting canoe trips I've ever had. There was a fallen tree in the middle of the creek that we had to lean back and drift under; at one point, the Mandy (in the canoe in the lead) yelled "Stop! Stop! There's big animals" and we got to canoe passed a head of cows in the creek with us. It rained quite a bit but despite that the trip turned out great. Plus, the Jello Shots were a great success. Jessica planned the entire trip and it turned out incredible!

With a very heavy heart I pleaded with Liane to stay in America another year but it looks like there's not much that can change her upcoming departure. She's been a great friend to both Jessica and myself and we hate to see her go. It's like having a small kitten that you love and then one day when you open the door it runs out into the wild unknown of Germany. Be safe out there, little kitten! Come back soon! We have milk. And also dippin dots ice cream.

I got to share a lovely Memorial Day with Jessica. No matter what challenges we face, we face them together and it makes everything seem alright knowing that I'll always have her by my side. She is a wonderful person and I'm so lucky to have her in my life. We've got an exciting summer ahead of us.

Cancelled TV Shows

It's that special time of the year that every actor on a Fox show fears as stations announce which shows will not be returning in the Fall. Interestingly Fox got one-upped on their reputation as the trigger happy network by NBC who cut over twice as many shows as Fox this year. The term "cancelled" I use a little lightly, as I know some of the shows listed below (such as "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno") decided to end their series for reasons other than actually be cancelled by the network themselves. Let's take a look at some of the shows we'll be saying good bye to.

FOX

It's always fun to poke fun at the fact that Fox cancels shows prematurely. I think they often find shows with great concepts (such as Reunion - I wish I had seen that before it got cancelled), and sometimes things just don't pan out, it's all a ratings game and Fox is a strict enforcer. Maybe thats why they have the top 2 most watched shows on TV now and often fill up 4 to 5 of the top ten shows in the ratings. I think we can all appreciate that Fox very well knows when it makes a critical mistake and does right to make up for it by bringing back Family Guy. And, if you're still pissed off about FireFly, you got a major movie out of the deal and the show went out on a high note, rather than making Willow a lesbian or killing off a major likeable sidekick character in the first season.

Again, while I don't know the full details on why some of these shows will not be returning, I think it's especially bizarre that both King of the Hill and Prison Break will both not be returning while DollHouse remains on the air. I've seen a couple of episodes of DollHouse and I'm convinced the only reason this show is on the air in the first place is Fox apologizing to Joss Whedon for that whole FireFly fiasco. And from what I've read, that's the only reason it's being kept around. Fox has stated "This is a big bet on Joss Whedon" regarding DollHouse not being cancelled this season.

Mike Judge won't be going home empty handed, as he jumps down the dial to ABC with his new animated show "The Goode Family". And to fill that Animation Domination, the Seth MacFarlane empire continues to expand and cast a shadow over the Simpsons as "The Cleveland Show" premieres next Fall. Matt Groening is probably praying for a Family Guy Resurrection type miracle to happen with Futurama before the Simpsons gets a boot to make way for more MacFarlane voices.

There's a lot I could say about Fox cancelling Prison Break. TV died a little when the cancellation was first announced, but all that can be said is that Prison Break was an incredible show. It captured audiences and ratings for 2 solid and great seasons. It may have been the writers strike short season or the pure nature of a show focused around an event that can only happen so many times, but the show definitely made a mark on those who watched it and pushed the envelope for all shows about prison and evading the law to a new level. R.I.P. Scofield

FOX's Cancelled Shows
Do Not Disturb
Hole in the Wall
King of the Hill
MADtv
Prison Break
Sit Down, Shut Up
TalkShow With Spike Feresten
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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ABC

Oh, ABC. I sometimes wonder if I would ever even flip by your channel if you didn't have LOST. I do know that you have a following with Greys which continues to amaze me everytime I happen to see it and I've heard good things about Pushing Daisies and do like the general concept of the show, but you just seem to not really have anything to offer me other than everyone's favorite mystery show.

I've honestly not heard of most of the shows ABC has decided to cut this season, but I do know that Boston Legal had a good run. Eli Stone seemed to go so young, but there definitely was something missing there. It wasn't a bad show, but there was something missing. Can't put my finger on it. And Pushing Daisies was an innovative and fun concept for a show, I can only hope the network decides to try more ideas like this one and avoid the Cop-Drama fever that CBS has.

ABC's Cancelled Shows
According to Jim
Boston Legal
Dirty Sexy Money
Eli Stone
Homeland Security USA
Life on Mars
Opportunity Knocks
Pushing Daisies

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CBS

Wow. That is a short list of cancelled shows for CBS. I don't really have much to work with there. I haven't seen CSI since Grissom left but hopefully Lawrence Fishburn is filling in nicely. The last time I checked, CBS was still the number one watched network, despite Fox having so many shows in the top 10 for ratings. Keep up the good work CBS.

Special Note: Jerry Bruckheimer produces many many shows on CBS, none of which were cancelled. All hail the Bruck!

CBS's Cancelled Shows
The Ex List
Swingtown

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NBC

A couple NBC shows, we knew were ending such as ER. If you've watched anything on NBC lately, you can't miss a commercial for "The Final Season of ER" that they've been airing the entire season. It's really unfortunate that creator Michael Criton didn't get to see the show come to an end. Criton was an incredible author and will be missed from the literary, film, and television industry.

Everyone who watched American Gladiators knew it wouldn't last long. After Ninja Warrior began airing on G4TV, it's hard to compare aged people being shot by nerf guns. I could have guessed My Own Worst Enemy would be cancelled by watching the previews for it. I think the only shocker from the NBC cancel list is Life. I have a couple of friends who speak highly of it, but maybe America is finally getting tired of Cop Dramas.

NBC's Cancelled Shows
America's Toughest Jobs
American Gladiators
The Baby Borrowers
Celebrity Circus
Celebrity Family Feud
The Chopping Block
Crusoe
ER
Fear Itself
Last Comic Standing
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Life
Lipstick Jungle
Momma's Boys
Most Outrageous Moments
My Own Worst Enemy
Nashville Star
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno

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Non-Network

It is amazing Mind of Mencia is just now being cancelled and wasn't cancelled right in the middle of its second episode.

Never seen either but still surprised to see The L Word and The Shield on the list. Wondering if, like Battlestar Galactica, they just decided it's time to end it before we go downhill.

Guess its safe to say neither Will nor Grace will have much luck outside of their token roles, as both of their new series have been cancelled (The Starter Wife, Trust Me)

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody was actually a pretty watchable show for the Disney Channel, but I imagine you can only have a show like that for so long til the kids are too old for it. I'm sure Ashley Tisdale has better things to do now anyways.

And TRL has been cancelled. The one show on MTV that still showed music videos (or at least partial clips of them). The Carson Daly legacy is dead.

Non-Network Cancelled Shows
13 - Fear Is Real
4REAL
Battlestar Galactica
Charlie Jade
Chocolate News
D.L. Hughley Breaks the News
Easy Money
Flip That House
Frank TV
In Harm's Way
Kyle XY
Mind of Mencia
Roommates
Stargate Atlantis
Stylista
The Emperor's New School
The L Word
The Middleman
The Shield
The Starter Wife
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
Trading Spaces
TRL (Total Request Live)
Trust Me
Valentine

But with every show cancelled, a new time slot is open and a whole new batch of new shows will soon be hitting the air. Keep your fingers crossed that we continue to see more scripted shows and less reality television.

Oh That Kristina... (Vol. 2 "The Nail Polish Incident")

Click the picture to enlarge

When my family first moved into a new house, my mom caught my sister painting her nails on the carpet several times. She would always warn her not to have the nail polish in the living room and time after time my sister would still do it, just when my mom wasn't around.

One day, Kristina was painting her toe nails while home alone when she spilled the nail polish at the tip of her leg stretched out towards the television. She slightly panicked just in time to hear the door open as my mom arrived home from work.

"Hey, Kristina, I'm home."
My mom announced herself as my sister quickly sat down on the nail polish stain, not but two feet from the television set.

"Why are you sitting so close to the TV?"
my mom inquired as she walked into the room.

Searching for a good excuse, my sister arrived at
"Oh ... Just stretching."

As these comics have no legs, I found it easier to go with the "I need glasses" angle. One quick tip, if you or your sister or daughter or an au pair ever spills nail polish on the carpet, Nail Polish Remover works wonders! (Seems so simple, doesn't it?)

Oh That Kristina... (Vol. 1 "The Chalk Incident")

Click the picture to enlarge

Once my sister was drawing her name on our basement walls with Chalk.
All over the basement "K R I S T I N A".
In cursive.
In print.
In all caps.
Etc.

My mom came down the stairs to find her up to no good and shouted,
"Kristina! What are you doing? Your dad is going to be so mad!"

Startled, yet still thinking on her feet, my sister quickly came up with a plan.
She looked innocently at my mom and responded,
"Don't tell him who did it"

My Generation in 140 Characters or Less

I recently saw Watchmen (a little late, I know, but hell, it was only 75 cents) and I have got to say I was bored out of my mind for nearly the entire movie. I made some observations about not just Watchmen, but the the entire movies, television and video industry in general. When I was younger, I used to cling onto every minute of a movie and feel disappointed when the end credits started rolling. Yet lately, I find myself constantly wondering "How much longer is this going to take?". In fact, there aren't many movies I have seen in the past year that I didn't think could have been trimmed down a little. I would wonder is this just something that comes with age, but my parents don't seem share the same feelings. What seperates my recent lack of attention span from their own?It's not just movies. I constantly find myself sitting through television shows wishing Tivo had the ability to speed it up, maybe just 20 percent faster, or god forbid, the crew cut out some unnecessary parts and just fill in the rest of the time slot with commercials or something. Nothing annoys me more than a lingering pace, much like the one I saw in the nearly 3 hour Watchmen - much of which could have been pushed into a montage or the opening credits (much like Wolverine's opening credits - Perfect!). Even YouTube videos that exceed about a 7 minutes mark tend to have me moving on to the Related Videos or More from this User panel.

Not until I started going to bed last did I find a possible answer as to what has triggered this Video-A.D.D. I've acquired as I started watching [adultswim]. A large majority of this station's programming is fulfilled with a collection of scenes no longer than two minutes each. In fact, some of their shows are barely over 10 minutes total running time such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Frisky Dingo to name some of my favorites. Even the flagship of the station, Family Guy cuts up its scenes and kicks the pacing into 5th gear by splicing flash backs and reference videos about every other minutes or so. And Robot Chicken, well, that's the pot of gold for people like me. Was that sketch funny? Doesn't matter, it was only 5 seconds long. On to the next one!

[adult swim] is not alone in fueling this condition. YouTube plays probably just as big of a role in my developing habit. With the information super highway at my fingertip, I'm not shooting through videos like fruit at the grocery store. If it doesn't grab my attention within the first 10 seconds, I skip to the middle. If nothing interesting is happening at the random point I drop my mouse, so much for that video and on to the next.

And how about that Smart Phone? It doesn't matter if you have an iPhone or a BlackBerry, not matter what you cannot stand in a line alone anymore without playing with it. Facebook, Twitter, Chat, Email, the World Wide Web available anywhere in the world. I don't even need a newspaper anymore, I can get everything I need from this little 4 oz computer that I carry with me at all times, not to mention, most of the headlines have to grab my attention in 140 characters or less.

If you haven't lost interest in reading this blog yet, then chances are you've got a longer attention span than myself. Let me know what your thoughts on it.

IE (vs) FireFox: A New Leader Emerges

For the past 7 years, W3Schools.com has been keeping track of what internet browsers are most commonly used, what screen resolution is at, what operating systems are being run, etc. I checked in on them this past week to find that Internet Explorer is no longer the most commonly used browser (as of Jan '09). After more than a decade of being the leader in internet browsing technology, IE has about 5% less users than Fire Fox. In fact, in looking through FireFox's history, it's done nothing but grown in popularity, except during the release of Google Chrome (which I've not heard great things about, but with a name like Google backing it, I'm sure it will come around soon enough).


There have been two guiding factors behind Internet Explorer's success:
1) It comes pre-installed on your computer.
2) Because it was the leading browser, all developers code for Internet Explorer.

Having it pre-installed on my computer and not having to go download yet another piece of software was what primarily attracted me to Internet Explorer, but I noticed on my new computer at work that it now came both equipped with both IE and FireFox. This could be related to FireFox's recent success in over taking the leading browser spot. It's also got the underdog spirit with it. You'll find a lot of people in the IT industry that claim FireFox is superior simply because it's not made by MicroSoft (whether or not FF > IE). When I meet an IT guy who starts bashing MicroSoft, it's always a turn off, but then again this is probably all better saved for another blog.

Despite having FireFox already installed on my new work computer, I've continued to use IE since it was the leading web browser. In my web development work, it's imperative to write sites for the end user, and while I want to make sure people using FireFox is covered, Internet Explorer was always the highest priority, as it had over 18% more users last year.

But now everything has been changed. With FireFox now being the most common used browser on the market, I'm now getting used to using it for everything. I've noticed that they have improved a lot since their former versions. It doesn't seem to have an issue with javascript anymore. It also tends to load a lot faster initially, but then when I attempt to go to the first site of my session, it takes a little longer than IE. And of course, I've been to several sites where the CSS doesn't quite work all the way; Internet Explorer and FireFox sometimes have different terms for style sheets and some developers don't check their sites with both browsers.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Google Chrome browser. They talked a big game while it was in production, but it's not had the successful launch it planned for. But, I've rarely come across a piece of Google technology, that in time didn't impress me.

Review of X-Men: Wolverine

I wanted to wait a while and let everything sink in before diving into a little review of the new X-Men movie Wolverine. To start off, I should say that this was my least favorite of the X-men series, but I still enjoyed it. It will be very difficult for any X-Men movie to ever top X2, and I knew that going into Wolverine. I should also mention that Wolverine has never been one of my favorite characters in the comics/cartoon. I think Hugh Jackman does a great job with him, but I just don't really care for the character himself.

When I first saw the preview, I was excited to finally see Gambit in the movies! Gambit has always been my favorite X-men character and it's good to see him get some screen time, after he was written out of X2. It's difficult to say they did him justice because he was only in the movie for maybe 5 minutes of running time, but those 5 minutes were fantastic. I could have used a little more cajun accent out of him, but I'll have to let it slide, because he did at one point use the poker cards as a weapon and I may have yelled "squeeee!" in the theatre at that point. (P.S. You can see poker superstar Daniel Negreanu playing poker with Gambit in one scene)

If you watched the trailer and thought to yourself, "Oh Snap! I finally get to see ______" (Insert any character you saw in the preview besides Wolverine and Sabertooth here), then you'll be mildly disappointed. Most characters don't show up on screen for long, but I guess this is a Wolverine movie, not an X-men movie. Bolt, Blob, Deadpool, Emma Frost, etc etc - None are on screen for a significant amount of time. One cool thing is that there is a lot of talk circulating a Deadpool movie starring Ryan Reynolds. He was great in Wolverine and I really wish we could have seen him more.

The two characters I really could have used less of was John Wraith played by Will.I.Am and Stryker. Wow, I never expected Will.I.Am to be such an awful actor. I couldn't wait for him to get killed or fall down a hole or decide to move to the wilderness of Canada to be alone with himself and spare us all. Danny Huston had one of the most difficult jobs in this movie, playing up to Brian Cox's role in the 2003 movie X2. Brian Cox was incredible and Danny Huston just didn't have that same appeal. Since we're comparing anyways, there is a certain magic that Brian Singer brought to the first 2 X-Men movies, whereas somewhat new director Gavin Hood just didn't have the touch.

As far as the plot, as a whole, this just seemed like a bunch of action sequences thrown together with a shot or two of Hugh Jackman naked thrown in for the female audience. They make a small attempt at a story of love and loss with Wolverine, but it is pretty weak compared to the tragedy of Jean Gray and Cyclops in the previous movies. However, I guess its not fair to compare this movies to its predecessors. For an action movie, it did a great job of keeping me entertained. I never once thought, when is this movie going to be over and with the ADD I've been cultivating with YouTube videos lately, that's really saying something. I'm glad I got to see this one in theatres. May is going to be a really good month for Hollywood with Wolverine, Angels & Demons, Star Trek, and Terminator Salvation. I'd put my money on Star Trek to be the movie of the summer.