Hard to believe that Monday starts a new semester of school for me. Fortunately, my classes are only on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, so I do actually start classes until Tuesday. I get an extra day! But, I didn’t exactly get done what I had planned to get done over the break. I admit [...]
Dear Senator Schumer, I applaud you and your office staff for embracing Twitter as a means of communicating with your constituents. It is a great platform for getting information out there. However, there is a problem that I came across after I discovered that you were following me on Twitter. I was flattered that you [...]
Back in November, I changed my mobile phone provider to AT&T so that I could a Samsung Focus with the Windows Phone 7 operating system. I am now writing this post on that phone with the WordPress app. Why did I decide I wanted Windows rather than an Android or iPhone? Because having played with [...]
It’s been nearly seven months since I have posted anything to my own website and I decided that since it is now Christmas, I might as well at least post something to this place! I did get a great gift from my sister: a new Apple keyboard. No, it’s not the wireless model. And that [...]
Science Fiction has given us a plethora of ideas over the years, from the submarine depicted by Jules Verne, to the tricorder used in Star Trek. And we have seen many of these devices become reality. Lasers are now being used in and as weapons and can be bought at any convenience store for [...]
The History Channel has a reality-TV series by the name of Pawn Stars. It’s about a family that owns/operates a pawn shop in Las Vegas. I have seen many episodes of this series, and it’s pretty good. It’s definitely worth checking out.
However, the more I watch of this “reality” show, the more I find myself calling bullshit on it.
Some of the items that end up coming into this pawn shop are not items one would normally take to a pawn shop. For instance, I happen to have an episode that I purchased from the Zune Store in which an 1890s cannon was brought in. As there are only about 50 of them in existence, and it is a rare collectors item, I seriously doubt that the collector who owned it thought “Hmm, a pawn shop is where I should go to sell this!” And I seriously doubt that after being told that it was worth $40,000 he was more than willing to take just $30,000 like he was offered because the pawn shop “had to make some money off it.”
In fact, so many “rare and valuable” items seem to come into this shop that it makes one wonder if these people were specifically sought out by the producers and a “sale” recorder for the cameras only, or if there are really just that many dumb-ass, lazy people in Las Vegas who don’t want to bother actually looking for a better buyer.
If you collect rare and unusual items, there are about 9 million other places where you can sell it other than a pawn shop, whether it be in Las Vegas or Kallamazoo! The fact that so many of these pieces end up in his shop just screams “scripted” to me.
So, Pawn Stars is completely watchable, and “the old man” is a lot of fun – he’ll make you laugh your ass off – but just like any other reality show, don’t for a second believe that what you are watching is real.
Back toward the end of July, I posted a video from ABC with some scenes of the new reboot television series “V” and told you that the new series would air in February of 2010. I was getting this information from ABC at the time, but looks as if things have changed.
I am not sure why, but it seems that ABC has decided that the new series of our favorite reptilian aliens trying to take over the planet should now start earlier than February. In fact, the new series will be premiering on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009, at 8:00 PM.
The time of the premiere concerns me, though.
8:00 PM is still in the kid zone for prime time, so I it will need to be appropriate for the younger viewers, as well as the adults who, like me, want to see what ABC has done to one of our favorite ‘80s television events.
I am not going to hold out high hopes that this show will be darker and more mature, ala Battlestar Galactica. But I am hoping that this show is good!
And from I have been reading online, it seems that those who have actually seen the pilot episode of the reboot say it is one of the best shows they have seen in quite a long time.
So, set your schedules! November 3rd, the world gets it’s lizard invaders back!
When I was growing up in the ‘80s, NBC ran a mini-series called “V”, about aliens coming to earth in peace, then slaughtering the humans as food. It was so successful that there was a second mini-series called “V: The final Battle” and a regular weekly series followed.
At the time, “V” (in all of it’s incarnations) was bizarrely intriguing. It was a modern-day telling of Germany under the Third Reich, but on a global scale. Instead of Nazis there were aliens, and the Hitler of the Aliens was Diana, ruler and destroyer of the planet. And I was a fan.
A BIG fan! I never missed a single second of either mini-series or the weekly series. It was the be-all-end-all of television shows for me.
Watching the Resistance battle the Aliens, watching as Robin Maxwell gave birth to twins, one of which was a green alien baby that crawled out of the womb on its own, watching the plots and conspiracies as they unfolded, watching the evil Diana foil the Resistance, it all just seemed so fantastic to me.
But what can I say, I was a kid when “V” aired and I was easily impressed.
In the 2+ decades since “V” was shown, technology has changed and so with it the expectations of what science fiction should be and look like. Watching the ‘80s version of “V” today is like watching the original Flash Gordon of the ‘30s after seeing the original release of “Star Wars.”
The special effects, which I remembered being so cool when I was a kid, now look cheesy compared to what we are used to seeing in today’s world. The acting, which was so serious in my youth, is now campy beyond imagination. While the story itself holds water, watching it now I can come up with 100 ways of doing it better than the approach taken back then.
And it seems I am not alone in thinking that way.
ABC has decided that it is time to take the “V” story and remodel it for a more modern world, and watching the preview video, I have to say I am once again seriously impressed!
The mother ships have a new design. No longer are they just round discs hanging in the air. There is an Art Deco/geometric/organic design about the ABC version. And the shuttles no longer have the lightweight white plastic look box look of the ‘80s. Now they are grey metal, and look much larger and more substantial on screen.
And while the original story dealt with scientists who discover the truth about the aliens, it seems that in this new series religion and the FBI play a much larger role. I am getting that impression from the preview clip alone, so I will have to wait until it arrives to find out exactly what really happens.
Watching the preview I did have one small complaint: the arrival.
The opening scenes of the preview are those of the unseen arrival of the aliens, and it looked as if it were copied directly from the movie Independence Day: from the shaking houses/rooms, to the people running into the street to see what’s going on, to the shadow moving across an aerial shot of a city, to the news reporter on a TV saying there is no clue what’s really happening. While it was well done, it still smacked of rip-off.
I wanted to embed the video into this post so you could see it, but the embed code that ABC provides does not work properly, so click this link to watch it in a new window.
While ABC does not reveal exactly when “V” is going to be aired (just says it’s a mid-season show), IMDB.com is claiming that it will start airing in February 2010. Which means in approximately 8 months from now. Can’t wait to see how good, or bad, this re-visioning of a classic ends up being.
UPDATE
After posting I was able to get the embedded video to work. You can see it below.
It seems that the people who brought us the most over-hyped, annoying, personally invasive social network in the world today is now wanting to show up on our television screens.
7 million people use Twitter to announce what they are doing in 140 characters or less. It will be these same 7 million who watch the show, I am sure.
For those of us who have more important things to do than announce to the world that we are sitting on the pot with a bad case of diarrhea probably care less about a Twitter TV show than we do about Twitter itself.
What is worse than the idea that Twitter might actually get it’s own show is the thought of yet another “entertainment” vehicle involving that hideous Ashton Kutcher creature invading our lives even further.
With that said, yes I do have a Twitter account. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I found it to be the worst online experience I have ever had. I think I managed to get as many as 5 posts onto it.
But then I came to my senses. Why should I limit myself to 140 characters when I am trying to tell something? Especially when there are no limits to what I can write on my own website, or in one of any dozen free online websites that allow people to really say what they want to say?
And until the rest of the 7 million users finally realize that Twitter is nothing more than a cheesy and annoying way to say you feel like crap or are taking a crap, the rest of the world will have to suffer not only Twitter but also this new TV show they want to develop.
But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud: We will all get to go to heaven, because Twitter is about to make life on earth a living hell!
I have a confession to make: When I first heard about NBC creating a show based on the movie Friday Night Lights, I was a bit skeptical. Let’s face it, television shows based on movies don’t exactly have the best of track records.
Not having seen the movie, I then discovered that the show, like the movie, was about high school football. I wrote it off. I don’t like football, and never really have. So not only was NBC creating a show based on a movie, it was based on a football movie.
My verdict at the time? Complete crap and a waste of my time.
I was WRONG!
I saw that Friday Night Lights was available to watch on Hulu, and being a little bored and lazy during one of my rare downtime days, I watched the first 5 episodes of season 1.
WOW!
Yes, football is an element of the story, but it’s not all there is. The storylines of the shows I watched were truly amazing, and I wanted to keep watching so that I would know what would happen next.
Of course, there is only so many hours in a day, and only so many downtime days I get with school, so trying to catch up will take me some time, but I am truly looking forward to it.
Below is the very first episode of the show. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!
Hulu has removed the first episode (and probably some others) so I have removed the embedded video from this post.
