Clotheus Expelliarmus

Soccer moms have never been this confused. Worry for their children or enjoy the sights? Daniel Radcliffe, you may know him as Harry Potter, will appear in the stage revival of the controversial play Equus. The play is controversial because it�s mostly just people hanging out naked. Yes, I oversimplified. I don�t care. Anyway, here's a little Equus tease:

As you can see, Radcliffe has been spending up to a reported SEVEN hours per week in the gym to prepare for his role. While clearly his attempt to distance himself from the probable Harry Potter typecast, this little stunt will do less for his image than his self-satirizing performance on Extras. Honestly, I�d be more worried about what's going on with that horse than a naked Harry Potter.

From the Crib to the Grave

Friday. January 19th, 2007. New episodes of Cribs. I spent my week anxiously awaiting the time when I could be transported away from my apartment of disproportionate rectangles and into the homes of America's most beloved celebrities. These episodes were even termed "Sucker Free Editions." All killer, no filler. Sweet. You can imagine my confusion when I noticed they would once again be featuring Ice-T. Yes he has an extravagant house, but I mean come on, once is enough. I am going to invoke The Law of One, Two, Skip A Few and get straight to the point: these episodes were not new. MTV spent two hours showing episodes of Cribs that were listed in the TV Guide, the Comcast On-Screen Guide, and the MTV website as new, but were in fact several years old. The real kicker was the word "PREMIER" written in some fancy font (it looked live Groovy) in the upper right corner of the screen throughout the whole presentation. I'm sorry to report that MTV has decided their target audience does not have a long term memory. I, for one, am insulted. I realize the days of music videos on MTV are long gone, the Real 7 at 7 has gone off the air, and the Semester at Sea has been docked, but come on MTV, how bout a little effort?

24 Stupid Things

The sixth season of 24 premiers tonight. I feel some important aspects of this show have been overlooked. What follows is a list of 24 stupid things about 24.

1. As much as you want to feel like events happen in real time, they don't.
2. Characters are developed quite well for only one day of exposure to the audience.
3. Jack Bauer spends more time on his cell phone than a high school cheerleader.
4. No one uses the bathroom. Ever.
5. Not a single building has fluorescent lighting.
6. At least one character would fall asleep over the twenty-four hour period.
7. With all the phone calls, none are ever wrong numbers.
8. The rotation of Earth is gradually slowing, so days are in fact not exactly twenty-four hours long.
9. A show with such time usage innovation (which is untrue) should have known better than to say "I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer, and today is the longest day of my life." in the voice-over introduction to season one. Sorry Jack, time has been standard since the introduction of railroads.
10. Jack majored in English Literature and Art at UCLA. When I think of potential terrorist combatants, I think English majors.
11. Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that Jack Bauer looks just like First Lieutenant Johnathan Kendrick? Looks like someone got out of Fort Leavenworth a bit early.
12. Birth name: Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland.
13. Am I the only one who noticed Jack Bauer was a heroin addict for one day. Must have been one hell of struggle to stay away from heroin for a day while saving the world.
14. No one eats.
15. Inflated season premier ratings due to airing opposite Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
16. 24: The Movie is going to cheat viewers out of twenty-two hours of entertainment.
17. Daniel Craig > Kiefer Sutherland.
18. Jack has only worked five days in the last several years.
19. Jack Bauer action figures complete with PDA are available. "Action" should not be in the same sentence as "PDA."
20. I bought a TV with a large screen. Unfortunately, 24 chooses to show me several different shots and once. They are too cool to just split the screen and instead show little rectangles of action on various sections of the screen. I can only imagine what it must be like to watch the show on a small television. Who has a magnifying glass?
21. In case you can't tell how action packed the plot is, the cinematography is jerky to create an even more hectic and out of control environment.
22. Keeler/Logan would not have have won the presidency of a high school student body much less that of the United States.
23. One of these days Jack is going to need a file (probably some sort of PDF), and Chloe won't be able to upload it to his PDA (probably because the F isn't compatible with the A). Jack is then going to kill Chloe for failing him. Feminists are going to get pissed, Jack will fall from grace, and only another very busy and exciting day can restore Jack's image of emotionless and borderline psychotic crime fighter.
24. It's on Fox. Come on.

Just some things to keep in mind during the sixth day of Jack Bauer's career.

Living In Lava

I caught the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith today on HBO. As I watched Anakin descend further into madness and get his ass handed to him by Obi-Wan on Mustafar, I began to wonder if Anakin's judgment had been affected by the generally shitty conditions of the planet. Could it be that evil flocks to lava so they have an excuse to be evil? After all, aren't people in Florida and California supposedly happier due to better weather? Anyway, Count Dooku chose the planet as the stronghold in the war against the Galactic Republic. Could the Sith attain a higher degree of evil by living on a planet of magma? It seems there is a symbiotic relationship between evil and lava. And magma.

For those who prefer the lesser of the epics, Mordor fulfills the same purpose. Mordor got its name from (and was formed by) the volcano Orodruin. More lava/magma. Oddly enough, it seems to be that the defeat of evil (if only temporary) comes from the horrible environments so beloved by the dark ones. The fires of Mount Doom destroyed the ring. Anakin gets his legs cut off, then is burned and deformed/gains the voice of James Earl Jones by the lava of Mustafar. The antagonists never seem to learn that the oppressive conditions in which they choose eventually create major problems.

Maybe if these guys would start picking nicer places to serve as the headquarters of their operations, we could have a story in which the bad guys actually win. Set up shop somewhere in Colorado. The worst thing that is going to happen there is a snow delay at the airport. To those placing themselves in the category of "protagonist" or "not evil" I propose this: if you are going to piss of a bad guy, go do it on their home turf of lava and smoldering rock. Someone will catch fire, and it won't be you.

If I spoiled any parts of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings for you, too bad. If you haven't seen them yet, you didn't really want to and you don't deserve the experience of absolute plot surprise.

Quick Tip?

As I flipped through the on-screen TV Guide (my second favorite Comcast feature next to HBO OnDemand), I noticed something a little different. The bottom sixth of the screen was devoted to giving me a �Quick Tip� about the guide feature. �[I] can get more listings.� Great! A listing of five shows on consecutive channels (only three channels currently because of the quick tip at the bottom) is good, but seven or eight would be even better. I followed the on-screen instructions and set the guide cell height to �single� and pressed �exit� on my Comcast remote to exit setup and confirm my settings. This adjustment was on track to give me seven channels worth of information per screen, but the bottom two were now covered by a new �quick tip� telling me I could customize my guide screen. Nowhere in the customization menu was there an option to turn off the �Quick Tips.� To summarize, Comcast basically lied by telling me I could get more listings. The tip should have said �Go back to the number of listings you had before we decided to pretend to have useful information.� Crushed as I was by being deceived, I was looking forward to learning about new features of the guide (color customization, flip bar timeout, channel entry behavior, etc.) so everything seemed to even out. Then this morning the quick tips were gone. �In The Womb. Multiples. Sunday 8P et/9 pt� next to a National Geographic Channel logo. Seriously Comcast? It�s bad enough that I have to watch your advertisements for OnDemand programs after I am already in the OnDemand menu, but now do I really have to watch you advertise programs while I�m browsing through the catalog of available programs? I�m already there. I�m not the target market. Quit trying to sell me. In theory I�ve already paid my bill. You have my money. I know Comcast is getting paid to put up these advertisements, but come on. Is that the best they could put together? They�re making too much money to put forth garbage like that. At the very least put up ads for programs in some way related to ones I already watch. Just show some effort, that�s all I�m looking for (other than a return to my ad-free TV Guide and access to that channel that plays constant reruns of Legends of the Hidden Temple, Double Dare, and Global Guts). I suppose I�d also like a little more honesty; replace �quick tip� with �continuous bullshit.�