Into The Outerspace Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Artistic License
  Hilarious, and one of those "can’t believe that nobody thought of this sooner deals. (via Boing-Boing)
• Tiki Bar TV - Episode 17 - Space Cadet
  Part 1 of a thrilling two-part series. Posting this for two reasons: 1) it has Nicki Clyne — Cally on Battlestar Galactica, silly! — as an alien who needs to get back to her home in The Outerspace. 2) Kirk needs to know about anything called "Tiki Bar TV."
• Despite Talk of Ethics Codes, Airbrushing Is Here to Stay
  Phew! We thought we’d have to see our celebrities as they are in real life and, frankly, that’s too scary to contemplate.

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As some you might know, we are sadly (and temporarily) separated from our DirecTV (and TiVo). We had planned to use this separation as a chance to revisit cable, see what was new, and, maybe re-evaluate our television viewing options. Cable failed on every possible level.

While there isn’t much of it to watch, the television that is available right now is good. We have our household favorites lined up like happy brain-busters: Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Lost. Given the fact that the Charter Cable DVR had a 75% failure rate (amazing!), we sought and found alternatives.

Yes, kids, I’m talkin’ about the Hulu.
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Batshit Ladies of Baltar Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Apple Ends Stealth Safari Installs Via Software Update For Windows
  For those of you who insist that Apple has the moral superiority to Microsoft in all instances, I offer this. It was bad enough that they were offering to install Safari every time I updated iTunes, but this is unconscionable. Listen up, other browser makers: I have Firefox. I don’t need IE, I don’t need Safari, so piss off!!
• CW to stop free streaming of ‘Gossip Girl’
  And in doing so, CW demonstrates a deep understanding of its audience.
• No 10 goes digital with a spot of Twittery-pokery
  We hear Gordon Brown is following Kirk, Jim, and Tim.

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Failing The Flash Test Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Viewers Not Rushing Back to Favorite TV Programs
  Don’t blame the shows, blame the networks for their confusing scheduling and lack of decent publicity for programming.
• The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere
  As a public service!
• The presidential race has become America’s most obsessively watched reality show
  A year after we wrote: "we are looking at the 2008 Presidential Campaign as the biggest and best Reality TV show ever," someone else notices.

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To Have Output, You Must Have Input Edition

Todays links of interest:

• My Year Of Flops, The Saga Continues, Case File #107: Tough Guys Don’t Dance
  The latest hilarious entry.
• Psystar Exposed: Looks Like a Hoax
  Apparently, there was a pretty good reason that Apple went after these people, so I shouldn’t have been so quick on the trigger to criticize them.
• New music video Web site features major label artists
  At first glance, this isn’t instantly hateable. Yes, they make you download their player, and no, they didn’t have the first two things we searched for (R.E.M. seems to have ended their career in 1987, and Bob Dylan never had one), but you can’t dis a beta site for lack of catalog. Refreshing: no pre-roll ads, and the banners are (for now) at the bottom of the page, so the entire player fits neatly above the fold. Not hateable at all.

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Death By Taxes Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Motley Crue set to rock the world
  You know how some bands find their musical reputations get rehabilitated over time? Like the critical buzz has come around on acts like The Monkees, ABBA, Kiss, and even Stone Temple Pilots? This is not one of those cases.
• New atom-smasher could fill gaps in scientific knowledge — or open a black hole
  Will since we are either going to die via Killer Earthquake or new Motley Crue song, this might be preferable.
• John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Is Dead at 96
  Oh man, had he lived just a little bit longer, he could have actually experienced one!!

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How I Met Your Mother is one of the three funniest shows on TV right now, along with The Office and 30 Rock. However, because it’s on the normally sucky CBS, it gets very little love and very little attention, except when they do things like stuntcast Britney Spears.

Sigh. They don’t need Britney, not when they have great comic actors like Neil Patrick Harris,Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, Alyson Hannigan and the absolutely awesome Jason Segel.

For the uninitiated, the framing device of the show is simple: in the year 2030 (still no flying cars, sadly), this guy Ted is telling his kids the story of how he met their Mother. That’s it: nearly every episode starts with a shot of highly uninterested teenage kids staring in the camera while a voiceover starts the week’s episode with a “Kids, let me tell you …), before flashing back to the present with that week’s part of the story of how he met their Mother.

Seems simple enough, but within that framing device lurks misdirections, fast-forwards, flashbacks, Rashomon-like POV changes, and, so far, no concrete idea of who The Mother actually is. And oh yeah, lots and lots and lots of great jokes.

At its best, it is, in a word, awe–

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We’re Going The Wrong Way! Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Users Fight to Save Windows XP
  Sigh. This weekend, the one ‘Loper who still uses Windows had to dig up an older XP laptop because some lame-ass Vista extra security process made a brand-new laptop not work with a brand-new scanner. Windows Vista is the Patriot Act of software: a heinous bill of goods designed and defined entirely by fear.
• In court, J.K. Rowling nearly cries over Harry Potter Lexicon
  How can she not get that guides like the one that nearly made her cry only help spur and maintain interest in the world that she created?
• Major quake almost inevitable for California
  Yay? Also: tell us something that we don’t know. And try not to think about.

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Last week, Leslie Moonves — the man we can’t decide if we love or loathe here — received a 29% pay raise with compensation totaling about $36.8 million. Of course, the headlines were filled with chatter about the fate of well-compensated news anchor Katie Couric, so it’s understandable that most of you missed this news.

CBS news is faltering. CBS programming is faltering. Other divisions are doing okay, but if I were the type to own CBS stock, I’d be fuming at the chief executive’s compensation. But that’s neither here nor there…I want to talk about Katie Couric.
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Born In A Crossfire Hurricane Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Microsoft: Vista feature designed to ‘annoy users’
  Microsoft sucks!!
• Solution Providers: Windows Is Not Collapsing
  Microsoft rules!!
• CBS cancels Secret Talents of the Stars
  Sigh. Seriously, even in a day and age where things like the Britney stuntcasting are commonplace, CBS must have had just the tiniest glimmer that there was a reason these "talents" remained secret. Ladies and Gentlemen, not everybody is good at everything, ‘k??

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