It's Friday…

…and, having found the LOLcat generator, goodness help me, I’m LOLcatting.

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Breaking the Law of Averages

Thanks to a heads up from pal Mike at Progressive Ruin, I’m now aware of The Film Crew, a series of Mystery Science Theater-like commented films from, well, the folks from Mystery Science Theater. One available, three more on the way.
So I head over to Netflix, and they do indeed have the first one available, both for DVD shipping and for online streaming to Windows machines (which means borrowing the wife’s laptop, but it’s a handy option to have at the odd hour when there’s nothing else to watch.)
And they have three more which can be “saved”, not available yet but presumed to be coming at some unspecified time in the future. And these already have user ratings; Amazon lets users rate their movies as one, two, three, four, or five stars. And then I saw this entry:

So excuse me, but how can 1 person’s integer vote average 3.1? (And before you Flixheads point out that Netflix has a system of skewing averages to try to predict how I will like something: that’s true. But this isn’t one of those skewed averages.)

San Diego and the Supermarket

As Comic-Con International: San Diego approaches, you’ll find a number of going-to-the-con guides recommending that you stop by the convenient Ralphs supermarket for food (actually, most of them will refer you to “Ralph’s”, unaware that the apostrophe is incorrect; the store chain was founded by George Ralphs.)
Be forewarned, however, that there is a strong possibility of a grocery workers’ strike starting before the convention, and the last one we had here in Southern California lasted for months. As such, there is a good chance that you will face the question of crossing a picket line to shop there… and that if you choose to shop, service may be lackluster (which could include understocked shelves as well as longer wait for checkout.)
The website for the fine alternative market Trader Joe’s shows that they have a store on 9th, just south of Broadway. It’s not as handily close to the convention center as the Ralphs is, and it’s only open 9-to-9 rather than 24 hours, and in the event of a strike they’re likely to be busy, but they do carry some good stuff!

When time is not kind

Some of the things we once enjoyed simply don’t hold up in the long run. As we get older, we see more things and discover that what we once enjoyed was sloppy, not that well constructed, and that in our earlier years we were more willing to wade through the dross to get to what sometimes turns out to be chaff. Some of it is well-crafted but reflects a style or attitude that no longer hits our appropriate nerves.
And some of it, it’s not so much time as events that have not been kind. For example, a few weeks back I was driving with Sally, a younger gal whom I enjoy sometimes introducing to good movies, songs, and the like that she would not have experienced. She’s got a good ability to be enthusiastic. (In fact, where we were driving to was the live stage version of What’s My Line?, because I thought she’d like that.) And looking to introduce her to something else, I slipped into the car’s CD player my copy of comic folk singer Christine Lavin’s 1993 release Live at the Cactus Cafe: What Was I Thinking?. And some of it holds up quite nicely. But I hadn’t realized just how long it had been since I’d listened to the album. I suppose I must’ve listened to it sometime after Princess Di’s death, so the song ripping into her for taking the prince off of the market would’ve already felt both dated and inappropriate… but the other song, the one that had people jumping out of the top of a burning skyscraper to avoid the flames, splattering to death on the sidewalk? Somehow, that imagery lost its comedic impact about six years ago, and isn’t apt to come back any time soon. It cast a pall over the entire album.
A shame. But you can’t create work with that in mind.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Happy Days

I had heard that the new Indy Jones flick was going to have a World War II setting again. This Modern World » Blog Archive » Apparently, this was incorrect. So that does put aside the question of “just how much does Indy age during the few years of that war?”, but it does leave open the question of how well the character translates into the different vibe of the 1950s.

uPhone

While waiting for the genius at the Mac genius bar to tell me that the problems with my new MacBook will likely require me to wipe out the hard disk and reinstall everything, I got to play with an iPhone. And it’s quite a sleek little gadget, well designed to serve the needs of people living a lifestyle that I’m not living.

Burn, Notice, Burn!

USA Network has turned out, well, another USA Network series. A person with an interesting set of personal tools becomes a detective. In the case of Burn Notice, the interesting background is that he’s a US spy who has been dropped from the spy biz for mysterious reasons. It’s not a bad set-up.
But by the end of the extended-length pilot, it becomes clear that his desire to find out why he was kicked out of the spy biz is mere petulance; the mysteries he goes after aren’t particularly interesting, and his great spy skills are some fighting ability and some friends to call… friends that are more interesting than he is. (Of course, if your friends were played by Bruce Campbell, then they too would be more interesting than you. Unless you are Bruce Campbell, in which case I say “welcome to the blog, Bruce!”)
Not horrible to watch, but not a great use of one’s time either. Could get better, but that’s not the track record that the USA Network shows have.

Rescue Me reskews

Well, yes, I was leaning toward giving up Rescue Me, but dang, it runs during the seasons when other things don’t. As such, it’s easy to give in to the temptation to watch.
And the new season has taken an interesting twist. Where in the past, the series had the characters getting sex, lots of it, from various gals. And this season… it’s about a bunch of guys who aren’t getting sex, who are choosing in a range of ways not to get sex. There’s one exception in the gang – at least supposedly, but all we hear is about him not being able to keep up. We don’t see it, he may be lying… but in general, this about people who aren’t getting sex and aren’t getting beyond sex.
It ain’t better, mind you (heck, there was something to be said on a cheap level for the flings with the purty gals), but it’s different.