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lost and lostpedia

The folks at Lostpedia have a great interview with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the producers of Lost. I just loooove the fact that the writers / producers of the show actually rely on Lostpedia every once in a while for information about their own show...

You know, obviously one of the questions that Carlton and I get asked very often is like “Is there a Lost Bible that has all the details of the show? Is there a database?”, and our answer to that question is “Yeah we have this guy named Gregg Nations, who is the keeper of all the information”, but there is also a website that is like Wikipedia, that is sort of fan aggregated, that has sort of every little detail about the show ... When we've visited the site we are incredibly impressed with sort of the level of detail. There are occasions where we basically say “What was Juliet's husband's first name?”, and if Gregg is not sitting in his office we will log into Lostpedia to get that answer.

One of my favorite meta-discussions with fellow Lost fans is debating just how much the show's arc has been pre-determined by the producers and writing team, and how much they're making it up as they go along. And yesterday a few of us at the office realized -- if the Lost producers are relying on Lostpedia for information about their own show...is there an opportunity for Lostpedia to hack some misinformation into the show itself? And if that happened, would that information then become Lost canon, which would mean that Lostpedia then needs to treat their misinformation as real information?

Thinking through a self-referential hack like that hurts my head...it's almost like trying to figure out how time travel works.

live by the sword, die by the sword

So I've been slowly making my way through Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica (I'm a laggard), but for whatever reason didn't buy the entire season at once through iTunes, instead purchasing the episodes a la carte either from my laptop or from the AppleTV at home when I had a chance to watch another ep.

Until last night, when Season 2 disappeared from their catalog. I'm sure there's some crazy contractual reason why this happened, but now I'm stuck with one of two options. I can either buy the entire DVD set for the season, which means I'll have paid for the season one and a half times. Or I steal borrow the remaining episodes from a friendly neighbor in order to make my way through the season.

Live by the sword, die by the sword: I bought into the Apple digital media ecosystem, and probably shouldn't be surprised when something like this happens. At the same time, the fact that what was there yesterday, available for purchase, isn't there today makes very little sense to me. Paging Chris Anderson: wasn't this supposed to be the land of infinite shelf space?

random reruns

I love this new experiment from Ben Brown: Random Reruns.

Making the leap from normal TV to internet TV means you lose the ability to just turn it on. In order to watch something on Hulu, even in the background, I have to search, sort, browse and select through thousands of choices. Do I want to watch a new episode of 30 Rock? Or maybe an old episode of He-man? It takes way too much thinking!

Put in your Hulu username, and Random Reruns will randomly serve up a show from your list of subscriptions. I love anything that injects a little more randomness into the media diet.

i want to know why you still read slate

Slate is too bored with ER to cover the final episode...

We have approached both staff writers and a series of reliable correspondents, inviting them to weigh in on the final episode and the legacy of the drama's 15-year run. No one wanted the assignment.

...so they're turning the job over to their readers and asking them to file reports on the series finale.

There's a whole mess of interestingness packed into this little nugget (Slate's wink wink nudge nudge that ER's just not good enough for them to cover (but it's fine if their readers do), the attempt at editorial direction for contributors, the obvious and lame poke at Clooney, the fact that I'm sure their readers will do a better job of it than they would have), but I'm just too busy to unpack it all.

Instead, I'm leaving it to you, my readers, to do the hard editorial work for me. Why do you still read Slate? Is Slate right for not covering the ER finale? Should they be paying more attention to culture that's actually popular? Is their editorial voice as grating to you as it is to me? Leave all your thoughts on Slate not covering ER in the comments, and I'll pick the best ones and repackage them as my own content in a future blog post!

joss whedon on fresh air

I wasn't a Buffy watcher (and thus never became a Buffy fan), but I'm looking forward to watching Dollhouse this weekend. I caught most of the Joss Whedon interview on Fresh Air last night, and now not only do I feel the need to connect with my inner Buffy, but also to finally watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (Yes, I know. I'm way behind.)

this post is for natalie podrazik

This week's gem from Lostpedia, a bon mot re. Christian: "Plenty of gifted doctors become alcoholics having never lived on a magical island."

uncensored sopranos

The thing about the sopranos, uncensored video is that it simultaneously tests your patience (I only made it to 1:28 before needing to turn it off) and makes you want to go back and watch all six seasons all over again.

can't wait to see the nebbishy con man again

OK, so the Lost chatter began today (what I meant with my last post was that tomorrow will be all about the Lost chatter; today would just be the quiet before the storm). Via David, this mock interview with the Oceanic Six...

Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village built by the scientists that the people who don’t age gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody.

i absolutely agree 100%

CNN's Marquee Blog on the shifting cast at Saturday Night Live:  "This game of musical chairs could be great for Poehler and SNL — or it could be a disaster."

like cheetoh dust

Fourfour (my new favorite blog) tears Britney's new song "Womanizer" apart.

This thing stinks worse than Cheeto dust and is just as tenacious. ... It's in my head indefinitely, and though my fingers are spared, I fear that my soul is turning neon orange.

Oh, and if you're watching America's Next Top Model without reading fourfour I feel sorry for you.

palin's impact on couric

Leaving no stone unturned, the Times covers the effect that the Sarah Palin interviews are having on Katie Couric's ratings. Short story, not much effect at all.

But the week was still considered, by executives from both CBS and its rivals, to be among the best Ms. Couric has experienced since she joined the newscast two years ago. Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic operations, said, "It was brand-building for a woman who is still one of the very best journalists out there."

N.B.: that brand building primarily took place on YouTube, where each of those clips is racking up hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views...

i love these

#6.5 If You Love Something, Let It Loose in Midtown While You Sniff a Scotch Bottle, originally uploaded by Dyna Moe.

I know I'm not the first, but I'll be the next to profess my love for these Mad Men-inspired illustrations. The title on this one is just perfect...

the audacity of despair

Now playing: archived video of The Wire creator David Simon's talk at UC Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities, titled "The Audacity of Despair."

this week, on a very special fringe, the large hadron collider

National Geographic has a nice collection of photos of the LHC at CERN, including this one of Peter Glaessel, a technical coordinator sitting inside the "time projection chamber."

In other news, JJ Abrams debuted his new TV series Fringe last night, which based on the pilot promises a full season of not-even-pseudoscience, completely improbable situations, ridiculous conspiracy theories and awkward love interests. I'm personally hoping for a Large Hadron Collider guest appearance coupled with a time travel / black hole plotline somewhere around episode 8. Talk about product placement opportunities...

mass media

I'm fascinated by Google's Hot Trends. I don't have a chance to follow it much during the day, but I keep it open in a tab when I'm online at home at night and occasionally refresh and it's amazing just how closely search traffic follows what's happening on TV.

News flash: people are watching the convention. And Dennis Rodman's going to be on this season's Celebrity Apprentice. Also, I had no idea what slippery kittens was, or why it would end up in the top 20 hot search terms for tonight, but a quick clickthrough led to the exciting news that they were on America's Got Talent tonight. Good for them! I guess.

raisin brahms

As the folks at Serious Eats put it, "every moment of this video is a WTF-moment. That's why it's so good."

The billowing cloud of dust is such a nice touch.

exiled

Amanda learns she's being Exiled to Africa. (Swiped from MTV.com.)

For years I've been carrying around (and pitching anyone who would listen) this idea for a summer camp / reality show called "Inward Bound" where you take rich kids from the burbs and drop them in the middle of an unfamiliar city with only $1.69 and a good luck wish.

Obviously my idea never made it off the ground...which is probably for the best. But! MTV's gone and one upped it with their new series Exiled, which takes former stars of their must-stop-watching-but-can't series My Super Sweet 16 and air drops them into radically unfamiliar territory...

A few years after tossing the parties that made them stars in their schools and fueled rivalries among the rich kids, you're going to see some of the Sweet 16-ers you loved to hate the most -- Ava, Sierra, Amanda, Bjorn, Marissa, Chelsi, Meleny and Alex -- shipped away from their plush homes and easy lives and Exiled to foreign locations such as the jungles of the Amazon, the tundra of the Arctic Circle, the Andes mountains and remote islands in the South Pacific where they'll have to live like local commoners with none of the amenities of their normally privileged lives.

I don't even have to watch the show and I already love it: it's revenge of the TV viewer. I mean, we watched her preen and bitch and squeal and drive away in the brand new suckerparent-supplied BMW, and now we get to see Chelsi-with-an-I sent off to the Arctic Circle! Must see TV!

is he underestimating?

Chronicle / SFGate TV critic Tim Goodman on the impact of Mad Men's $25 million advertising campaign in advance of Season 2:

Now, to the worry and the inherent challenge of growing the audience: If all the advertising pays off and new fans flock to Season 2 of "Mad Men," what are they going to think when they find a very intelligent, somewhat slow moving, exceptionally shaded character study? In other words, this isn't "The Sopranos." The brilliance of "Mad Men" is that the drama is mostly in the words. Actions are subtle. Many times the interior dialog of a character like Don Draper isn't explained.

Goodman's characterization of the show is right on (see the last bit in my last post), esp. if newcomers don't initially understand the backstory of Draper. (After all, it took most of the first season to explain it.) But is Goodman underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public?

(Or should we be more worried that AMC's spending the $25mm because they've dulled the sharp edges and know season two can attract -- and retain -- a mass audience? And since when does Goodman use The Sopranos as a comparison like that? He's already deserted Tony and the guy's not even in the ground a year?)

upgrading your television is too hard

So I'm in the market for a new television.  This should be a good thing -- I love television, I love watching television, and I'm looking forward to a bright, shiny future in widescreen HD.  But instead, it's become a decision-making nightmare.

Our current setup is pretty simple:  plain vanilla cable (no digital, only up through channel 72 or whatever), piped into a Series 2 TiVo, and then to a big Sony CRT trinitron.  But what I've discovered is that if I want to upgrade, I basically need to upgrade the whole kit and kaboodle.

• I need to go from basic cable to digital cable.  So OK, it's more expensive, I get that, but there's also some sort of box involved.  With a new remote.  And I'm pretty damn sure that that won't work with our TiVo.
• So then I need some sort of TiVo device -- preferably a real TiVo device.  But an HD TiVo is insanely expensive, and I keep hearing something about cable cards, which some people hate and some people love.  Also, I hear now that you can DVR functionality directly in your cable box, but that the UI sucks. And frankly, the whole point of TiVo is the UI.   
• Then there's the screen itself.  Plasma or LCD? I've discovered that you can't just Google said question, because the rate of change is so high that any article comparing the two technologies is pretty much out of date by the time it gets transmitted down the Intertubes. And a visit to your local electronics retailer doesn't really help, since they're all mostly LCD now, and they're all lined up side by side by side, which I suppose in some platonic world should aid in the decision making process, but actually just confuses the hell out of you.
• Oh, and 720p or 1080p?  I keep hearing more p is better, right?  

So basically right here my decision-making ability goes straight to hell.  Because not only are there decisions to make on all of these axes, there's also the process of executing on said decisions, and timing them right so that I'm not out of luck without any television for two or three weeks.  (What happens if Comcast delivers a digital cable box before I have the flat screen?  Or vice versa?  I'm at risk of missing an entire summer of America's Got Talent!)  And right here is where I marvel -- frankly, upgrading to a new computer is a much simpler proposition than upgrading your television.  (Just buy the fastest chip, most RAM, and most storage you can afford.  What else do you need to know?)

You'd think that the folks who have the most to gain from this transition -- the cable companies -- would want to make this decision process easy. But they're too focused on trying to sell combination voice + internet + television services to make it easy for me to upgrade the service I have to something better...and to guide me through the process.

All I want is to be ready for Season 5 of Lost.  Because if next season Claire's gonna be all Jacob's-cabin-happy in a "I just got high and found the stash of chocolate chip cookies" kind of way, then I need to experience it in all of its HD glory. Seriously, any help / advice on how to make this transition is welcome. (And yes, I know this is a ridiculous problem to have, in the grand scheme of all problems to be had.)  

an in-depth analysis of the writers' strike, complete with footnotes

This whole "no Daily Show" thing[1] really sucks ass.[2]

[1] I mean, seriously. There's a whole new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and all of us self-satisfied armchair liberals are stuck looking for the humor in Tom Friedman columns. Shoot me now.

[2] Classy, eh?