Category: TV
Selling Pucks
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images. Yes, I believe that is a built-in beer holder on that Hulk hand.
Slate recently ran an article on the difficulty of selling hockey through star power. It’s a good read, touching on a few common hurdles to watching hockey: stars only playing part of the game (what are these shifts you speak of?), the difficulty identifying players on the ice (helmets + visors = robocop), and the difficulty of following the play.
Pioneer Shiro-Kuro
For those of you who simply have to have your tv match with your AppleTV or Ceramic White PS3, a Pioneer Kuro with a white bezel. UK only, apparently.
Catching Up
Lots of stuff on the burner. Finishing a big project at work, so I’ve been quiet on this space for a bit longer than I anticipated.
Evan brought me along to see the Kings/Rangers game last week, which proves what a great guy he is – burning one of his season-ticket shares on a last-place west-coast team is a lot to ask, and going into the game I hoped that the Kings would just do me a solid and at least make things interesting. Somehow they managed to sneak away with a 4-2 win, with Frolov playing a whale of a game against the surprisingly sluggish Rangers. Sean Avery was running around early in the game, perhaps trying to show up the Kings for trading him exactly a year ago. It was great to see the kids like Kopitar and Boyle score. Given how horribly the Kings’ season has gone this year, at least there’s plenty of young talent to look forward to.
Visited Mom in fair Belchertown, MA a few weekends ago. My (newly-engaged) brother and his fiancée Kristen made the trip out from Boston and joined me for a weekend of skating on the backyard rink. Check the recent flickr stuff for a few shots of us out on the ice. Dad expanded things to 60 by 40 feet this year, and it was nice to fly around and build up speed out there. However, all that work didn’t save me from getting laid out multiple times in the Sled Dogs’ last game, a 5-3 loss to the Hotshots.
Other recent distractions: a new Pioneer flat panel. After five years, my trusty Samsung CRT HDTV will be getting a new home with Joseph and Kristen. I will say that the Samsung is no slouch compared to the new panel, proving once again that it’s hard to beat CRTs for picture quality. That said, having the extra screen real estate is nice. Bluray discs and upscaled DVDs from the PS3 look fantastic – I have a feeling I’ll be loading up the Netflix queue again. The Pioneer also came just in time for new episodes of LOST. I’m not listening to the haters – last year’s finale got me back on the Oceanic 815 bandwagon and so far things haven’t disappointed.
I’m also playing Uncharted, and I’ve switched over to Nullriver’s MediaLink software to pipe my music, photos, and videos from my Mac to the PS3.
Somewhere in there I also upgraded to Leopard, which I’ll pay a compliment by saying that it hasn’t gotten in my way at all.
Like a Phoenix
It’s been quite for far too long in this space. Figured it was time to resurrect the blog for my three readers out there. My absence is mostly due to a very busy month at work, as well as long-ish trip out west. Jordan and I spent a week out in Napa Valley, leading up to a friend’s wedding. Photos are back from the lab, and I’ll be posting a few shortly.
The title of this post refers to my 2 1/2 year-old 12″ Powerbook, which Friday night started going into a beach-ball spiral of death. An attempt a reboot stalled at the Apple logo screen. This, friends, is why you back up. I loaded a cloned backup of my harddrive from a week ago and so far things appear to be stable, but I’m wondering how much longer this hard drive will last. Super Duper!, which I use for backups, has proven to be worth every penny of the $30 license.
In other news, I am now officially part of the bike commuter nation, the recipient of this bike from my family. Kudos to Joseph for the great idea. It now takes me roughly 10 minutes to get to work, with most of my route sporting a dedicated bike lane. And yes, Mom, I wear a helmet.
If you’re not up on it, it’s probably too late. But for the rest of us, rejoice - The Wire is back on tonight.
Finally, Joyce Bakeshop is now open in Prospect Heights. It’s like the Peach Pit for Brooklyn Vassar kids, only featuring superlative baked goods.
Bye, bye, Bristow. Where in the world is Jack Bauer?
Finished off the finales for ‘24′ and ‘Alias’, yet another instance where the DVR has saved my life. ABC did its usual bang-up job with the ‘Alias’ *series* finale, sticking it on a Monday with zero promotion. Thanks for watching, suckers! I’m glad the show is done, if only because there was nowhere left to go creatively. For better or worse, the serialized nature of the show demanded resolution. I think the show would’ve been better had that end come after two or three seasons instead of five, but I have the benefit of hindsight here.
Usually series finales are a lose-lose situation - there’s so much pressure to self-eulogize onscreen that even comedies become maudlin affairs. Thankfully there was little of that - the writers/directors kept things moving. I liked that they tied up some big loose ends, but left new ones out there so that it wasn’t too neat.
‘24′, on the other hand, is a case of familiarity breeding contempt (at least for me). When it premiered in 2001 (the same year as ‘Alias’) I loved the setup: real(ish) time! Split screens! Flawed heroes! Despite the many plot dead-ends and U-turns, that first season kept me riveted because it seemed that the rules were being bent, if not broken outright. Flashing forward to this season (which has garnered both ratings and critical/public acclaim) all that seemed fresh is now rote. It’s like watching “Groundhog Day” with spies. We know that:
- Jack Bauer will get pulled back into saving the world by something bad centered in LA.
- CTU doesn’t believe in background checks.
- The US president will rely on one, possibly two, advisers at the most.
- Jack Bauer will be caught in a cycle of reinstatement and arrest.
- CTU employees will spend more time spying on each other than pursuing the bad guys.
- There will be torture.
This is all fine and good, and it occasionally still makes for good tv, but more often it’s served as unintentional comedy for me. With the prospect of three more years of this, I would hope that the creative team would think about changing the show’s direction. Maybe a different city? How many bad things can happen to LA? I have hope that this season’s cliffhanger won’t be dropped on the floor like season 2’s was, because it opens up a bunch of possibilities story-wise.
