Super Bowl XLII: Great Game, Lousy Commercials

At the Super Bowl viewing party I was at, pro-underdog and anti-Boston sentiment was in full effect. Outside of a smattering of Patriot fans (and not counting those with a strictly financial stake in the matter), most of us were pulling for the Giants.

It was probably the best game I can recall in recent memory -- looking at previous Super Bowls, I see that New England has had more than its fair share of 3-point margin games, though they've usually been on the other side of things.

As to the commercials (for which MySpace was the official online partner, though AOL's page is still good) -- the best were okay -- mostly for fizzy, sweetened, or alcoholic drinks -- the worst were horrible, and the rest were bleh:

* Sales Leads Are for Closers! They could be peddling the Glengarry leads for all I know, but those horrible, horrible animated Sales Genie "100 free sales leads" commercials inexplicably employed unfunny, edge-of-racist ethnic stereotypes for no apparent reason.

And the fact that there were two of them gave me a horrifying flashback to the worst of the dotcom bubble 1.0's burn rate excesses.

* For Your Next Supercar Purchase: The Godfather parody ad for the Audi R8 was okay (though they might as well have gone the whole way and done a shot-for-shot remake) -- but it was for a US$100,000+ supercar. Yes, yes: Halo effect and all that. But come on.

* Women Loved Temple of Doom, Right? Careerbuilder chose poorly with the gruesome images of the heart jumping out, Alien-like, from the woman's chest. I felt like shouting, "Indy, cover your heart!"

* Guilty Pleasures: With shame, I have to say that I liked the Tide talking stain (the nonsense syllables put it over the edge for me), and people (I'm not saying I was one of them) did laugh at the commercial for the Adam Sandler movie. Though it's still not enough to make me want to go see an Adam Sandler movie.

* Last Words: Overheard outside a Harris Teeter after the game: "There's no difference between a foreigner and someone who just doesn't watch football."

Tags: super bowl XLII

Dumb People on Planes on Conveyor Belts: A Question of Psychology, Not Physics

Mythbusters finally aired their "Plane on a Conveyor Belt" (a.k.a. Plane on a Treadmill) episode.

Here is the result -- it's not a spoiler, because anyone who truly understands the basic physics involved, will not be surprised to hear that the goddamn plane takes off.

However, I've since come to the conclusion that Plane on a Treadmill looks like a physics question, but it's actually a psychology question.

If you're one of those people who thought the plane in the Mythbusters setup wouldn't take off, the answer is simple:

• Your understanding of physics isn't quite as strong as you thought
• You can't wrap your head around the fact that people and cars behave differently from planes
• You should probably pay more attention to the nice demo and animation they did
  

On the other hand, if you believe that the Mythbusters experiment itself had to be flawed, because the plane shouldn't take off, you've shown that:

• You're being stubborn (or deliberately obtuse), because you're sticking to an interpretation of the problem that doesn't make sense and that requires magic
  
• You're probably never going to change your mind, because the Mythbusters folks basically demonstrated it as good as you can get, and by sticking to your opinion in the face of proof, you're taking it out of the realm of fact and science and officially joining the realm of the 9/11 Truthers and Moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists and Creationists.

Looking at the relevant Mythbusters message board, there seem to be a lot of both types of people, as well as folks who generally just don't get it.

The main, physics part of the problem is that people hear "treadmill," and they think back to their experience running on a treadmill or driving on a dynamometer, and try to apply that to an airplane on a treadmill, which is superficially similar but actually completely different.

The other, psychological part of the problem is that the wording of the original question that most people saw isn't very good. In fact, the original wording stinks on ice.

This is because it allows an interpretation of the question that is self-negating -- the "speed" bit can be read as stating right off the bat that the plane can't move forward (relative to a fixed point to the ground), no matter what. Which means it won't take off. Period.

(I held this interpretation for about 5 minutes -- I originally thought the plane wouldn't take off. I came around shortly after.)

The problem with the "doesn't move forward, no matter what" interpretation of the question is twofold:

1. It's not a question anymore. It's pointless -- you've taken a moderately interesting thought experiment and turned it into a reading comprehension exercise.
   
2. It requires a magical treadmill.
   

Obviously, if you can keep the plane from moving forward (relative to a fixed point on the ground, and leaving wind out of it), you won't get any airflow over the wings and the plane won't take off. You can do this by using a rope to tether the plane a fixed point off the treadmill, like a pole or a wall. Which would be silly -- if you're going to tie the plane down, why bother with a treadmill at all?

However, if skip the rope and rely solely on the treadmill -- you can keep a person or a car from moving forward, but you can't do it with a plane (or a rocket car, or a rollerblader with a Wile E. Coyote jetpack), unless the treadmill itself is magical.

The only forces holding the plane back are the friction of the wheels against the treadmill; inertia; and friction in the bearings and with the air: All of which are real, but vastly overwhelmed by the forward thrust of the engine.

If you insist on sticking with this "things don't move forward, for anything (even planes)" treadmill, it has to move fast enough so that the relatively tiny, tiny friction forces are magnified enough to overcome the thrust of the engines. Almost infinitely fast, in fact. Which is fine: You've now got an impossible, magical treadmill.

What you don't have is a real world physics problem anymore, the kind they test on Mythbusters. At best, it becomes a metaphysics question, like "Can God microwave a burrito so hot He can't eat it?"

So here's the psychology question -- pick the statement which best describes you:

1. I would do anything to be right, even if it means picking an arcane interpretation of a self-defeating question that requires magic and keeps things completely in the realm of theory, precluding any possibility of doing something cool
2. I would rather have something you can actually build, like a big-ass treadmill, scaled-up to handle a plane and match the speed of the wheels (which is just an engineering problem -- merely impractical, not impossible)
   
3. Shut up, I don't like physics, engineering, psychology, or you.
   

A loaded question, I know. For me, the real-world scenario is the most interesting one, and this is what the Mythbusters folks did. And as they showed, for any treadmill that we can actually build:

• The plane will move forward (relative to a fixed point on the ground).
• The plane will take off.
• People will keep complaining and keep arguing.
  

Tags: mythbusters, discovery, plane on a conveyor belt, plane on a treadmill

All Red Dawn: All the Time

After careful analysis, and with CourtTV's rebranding to TruTV fresh in mind (to better reflect its updated programming mission blah blah blah), I've come to the conclusion that the AMC network, formerly American Movie Classics, should update its name to the RED network, for "Red Dawn Every Day."

This is only a slight exaggeration -- if they could get "RDFFHH" into a meaningful acronym, it would be even better, since the Big 3 AMC offerings seem to be Red Dawn, Firefox and Hamburger Hill. (Okay, throw Heartbreak Ridge into the mix, too.)

Tags: AMC

Nuke the Whopper Freakouts -- It's the Only Way to Be Sure

Consider this an early New Year's Resolution -- after extensive thought and through analysis, I have come to the conclusion that every "actual customer" who was upset by the purported discontinuation of the Whopper sandwich needs to be beaten thoroughly about the head and neck. And I'm volunteering.

Furthermore, anyone who was stupid and/or fame-seeking enough to actually sign the release to appear in the Burger King Whopper Freakout commercial needs to be stopped. By any means necessary.

Stop the Whopper Freakout.

Sure, we all have our tastes and preferences, but if a fast-food chain hamburger means that much to you, you need to be put down with extreme prejudice.

While this may be a master stroke in quasi-viral marketing, I can't watch, or even listen to the commercial, lest I get overwhelmed with rage and disgust.

On a side note, I see that the fake manager of the store is Regan Burns, formerly the host of the game show Oblivious ("The game show you don't even know you're on!"). Guess he doesn't mind getting typecast in hidden camera shows.

I actually kind of liked Oblivious, not least of all because their gimmick allowed them to pay out what was probably the smallest cash prizes out of any game show, ever.

Looking at Mr. Burns' IMDB entry, I see he was also involved in Fox News' alleged news-comedy show, The 1/2 Hour News Hour, so he must be used to projects that aren't funny and inspire loathing. Though I understand that an acting gig is an acting gig.

Tags: whopper freakout, burger king, regan burns, oblivious

Smash Lab: Everybody Pile On!

I caught a little bit of the Smash Lab preview just now on Discovery. It has the distinct whiff of FAIL about it.

Poking around the Smash Lab message boards (you need to choose better seed topics, guys), there seems to be a lot of negative feedback from Mythbusters fanboys, who're calling it a Mythbusters knockoff. Which is true. But just because it's a Mythbusters knockoff doesn't mean it can't also be good. It's just that this show isn't very good.

I mean, the Mythbusters pilot was pretty rough and it's a lot different from the way the show is now. But it was still good.

Primary problems with the Smash Lab premiere:

1. It was an hour-long commercial for Rhino Linings.
2. The "car bomb" used 12 pounds of TNT. Even tamping the charge with sand to direct the blast into the building makes it a laughably small car bomb.
3. They showed the effects of the "car bomb" on the "protected building." However, they didn't show the effect of the "car bomb" on an unprotected building. That's kind of important. In fact, without it, it's useless.

As to the rest of it -- some folks are ragging on the hosts, others don't like this or that -- it might get better, it might not. But if they're going to be "solving" problems instead of disproving things that are myths anyway, they're going to have to do a better job.

Tags: mythbusters, smash lab, discovery channel

On Consuming TV Series on DVDs

I had a Chipotle burrito for dinner tonight. It pretty much put me out of commission for the rest of the evening (heartburn), which is why I'm staying in and watching a Firefly mini-marathon on Sci-Fi channel. Which is kind of dumb, since I already own the series on DVD.

I also received the Band of Brothers boxed set this week (Amazon, $25), even though it basically runs on the History Channel in a continuous loop. So I have new additions to the evergrowing-pile of unwatched DVDs -- the one that you might think I would have whittled down during my enforced downtime. But no.

(Incidentally, I'm now fully and officially unemployed -- Friday was my official separation date from AOL -- up to this point, I've been technically on the payroll, without actually having to go to work. It was pretty sweet. I will be talking more about it and my AOL career. Eventually.)

Anyway, unless you're one of those people who've ripped their entire DVD collection to a gigantic media center hard drive, you've probably encountered this little problem with TV series DVD boxed sets -- namely, how do you go about choosing which episode to watch?

(Actually, even if you're ripped your DVD collection, it just makes consumption a little more convenient -- it doesn't solve the whole choosing side of things. I'm sure someone [Corey] will tell me about this great Linux/Open Source/Media PC/Ginormous Hard Drive solution, though there's also the problem of bonus features and such. And do they even make DVD jukeboxes that actually, you know, use the actual physical media? I'm old-fashioned that way.)

For something like Firefly, it's relatively easy, since the series tops out at 14 episodes that mostly stand alone (despite having an underlying story arc). But what about something that was actually, you know, successful, like Friends, Star Trek, Seinfeld, whatever, that ran many seasons and had hundreds of episodes? Or something where episode order really matters, and you can't just snack on individual episodes (24 being the ultimate example of this)?

Unless you're going to do your own mini-marathon, or you're actually disciplined/OCD enough to keep track and watch the episodes in order, how do you keep from just cherry-picking the best-known episodes? Especially for a series that you, say, liked well enough to buy the boxed set when it was on sale for really cheap at Best Buy, but you don't have the episode list memorized?

I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of media management system -- something like a Netflix (with a little bit of iTunes) for your personal collection, to keep track of your personal viewing to show you how many times you've viewed an episode, and what's next in the queue. Which would pretty much mean ripping the DVD and forgetting the physical media -- wouldn't really be workable any other way.

My own DVD player is a now-ancient Apex player which doesn't have many features, save for one of the least intuitive remotes ever made. It also occasionally tries to die on me. However, its saving grace is that it's a 3-disc carousel, which I find helps with serendipity and flow -- I can pre-load it with 3 discs and get around to watching them (or not) when I feel like it.

Feel... Myself... Getting... Dumber

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is on. I keep flipping past it, and I can actually feel myself getting stupider.

It's a similar feeling I get when I flip past MANswers on Spike TV. I watched most of an episode once. It's like Mythbusters, only with all the smart, interesting, original, and funny bits taken out.

I got remarkably little done today. Sitting around and watching OpenOffice download doesn't count for much.

I was planning on doing up a quick and dirty design for business... excuse me, calling cards, but I figured I might as well wait until I look into setting up a consultancy.

Lazy Saturday TV Watching

My original plan for Saturday didn't work out (read: hangover), so I'm puttering around the house, reading a few library books that are almost due, and watching TV.

Well, actually, it's been mostly just watching TV.

USA Network has been rerunning the premieres of the new fall NBC shows, so I've been doing a little catching up:

* Chuck: Better than I expected, though it's still filled with odd bits of stupid. Like the whole premise of the show. And that NSA vs. CIA trying to kill each other thing. Good role for Adam Baldwin, even if he's basically playing a slightly-smarter Jayne Cobb.

* Life: Pretty good. Perhaps even very good. I'm a fan of Damian Lewis, from his role on Band of Brothers. They certainly did frontload the pilot with a mess of character baggage, potential plots and arcs.

* Bionic Woman: Eh. I was napping for the first 15 minutes, maybe I would have liked it better. Probably not. And Mark Sheppard is way too young to play the mad scientist father. Even with gray in his hair.

There's also a Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon on. I've pretty much stuck to reruns -- I like Randall Flagg better than Eric Bogosian as the captain of the Major Case Squad, and I don't care much for the Chris Noth episodes. Especially when they started moving more to character-driven episodes instead of plot-driven ones. But the writing for the new ones? The one I saw this afternoon involved polonium, the Mossad, the FBI, and the Men in Black. It was pretty ridiculous.

Also pretty (but still ridiculous, or at least implausible) is having Alicia Witt playing a hard-boiled Major Case Squad detective. She's 32 and looks even younger, which is a stretch even for TV cops.

Oh, and in this one that's on now, (which is a Vincent D'Onofrio one, of course), everyone, from the crime scene tech to the former Marine who was supposed to carry it, is calling the M1911 .45 cal pistol an "M11", which is irritating.

Anyway, I just had a chicken curry for dinner from Charcoal Kabob. So it's all good.

Tags: chuck, life, bionic woman, law and order: criminal intent, nbc, usa network

Note to Self on Time-Shifting, Appointment TV and Self-Control

Dear Dumbass,

With the abundance of TV time-shifting technologies available to you, both digital (which you, inexplicably, don't have) and analog (which you do), and given that the entire series is now available on DVD, I put forth that, just because SpikeTV shows Star Trek: Deep Space 9 reruns, does not mean you need to watch them at that particular moment in time.

Especially if those particular moments are between 2 and 3 AM.

Even if they just started in on Season 4, which is a full season after when the show really hit its stride, Worf joins the cast, and the Dominion War draws near.

Tags: spiketv, deep space 9, ds9, insomnia

Something From AT&T That Doesn't Suck

I had the TV on just now, and an AT&T commercial came on. It features a band -- a girl on keyboards and a guy on drums -- playing a show in a club; the shot pulls back and shows all the happy cellphone users in the crowd bopping along (and presumably bootlegging the show with their phones).

It's a 15-second spot, and you only hear the song for about 10 seconds, but the tune is impossibly catchy:

I checked out the url featured in the commercial, Then Ewatt.com (hey, that's what it says), which had no relevant information, but The Google has the ad on the first page of results -- the song is "For The Actor", the band is Mates of State, and they've got 4 songs for download on their MySpace page.

Another band for the list (which needs refreshing, anyway -- most of the bands I would go see live are defunct in one way or another).

Tags: mates of state, for the actor, at&t

More Big Infomercial Boobs

I was a little hesitant to blog this, only because I know it'll lead to a bunch of unrelated pageviews from horndogs who either:

• Don't speak English as a first language, or
  
• Just don't understand how to find porn with The Google very well
• Or most likely, both.
  

But, hey, it's boobs. What can I say -- I'm a fan.

Following up on my earlier entry on informercial cleavage, it looks like others have hit upon this seemingly-sound late-night infomercial strategy: Feature big breasts and low-cut tops.

What's more, if one pair is good, two pair is even better, right?

Inadvertent porn mouth.


Just like poker, only with a brunette and a blonde.

At least with this one, they tell you what they're ostensibly selling (besides the false hope) -- it's some sort of turnkey Internet sales dealio, where working for mere hours a week, you'll get thousands and thousands of bucks, big houses, fancy cars, the adoration of your friends, the return of your dead pets (and not in the scary, "sometimes, dead is bettah" way), etc.

Yes, Joe and Jane Schmoe, by having your random crappy turnkey trinket e-commerce site, people will be beating down your door to throw money at you. And you don't even need to be there. It's nothing at all like setting up a lemonade stand on your front lawn and expecting to make a fortune, because that would be silly. This is The Internet. Completely different.

Don't know why no one else has thought of that yet.

Tags: infomercials

Dr. Thaddeus Venture Pitches for Shell Oil

Driving in on the toll road this afternoon, I had the radio on and was half-listening to a commercial for some Shell credit card, when I realized (with a start -- which is probably the anti-cliche for the NYT Metropolitan Diary's overused saw "without skipping a beat") that the voice-over was coming from none other than Dr. Thaddeus Venture, the ineffectual, developmentally-arrested, amphetamine-addicted scientist-patriarch of The Venture Brothers cartoon series.

Although the odds of me getting a Shell credit card were already approaching non-existence to begin with, hearing the voice of Dr. Venture as pitchman effectively bumped that down to zero.

As it happens, James Urbaniak, the voice of Doc Venture and others, mentions the Shell gig in his blog.

Tags: venture brothers, thaddeus venture, james urbaniak, with a start

Friday Night Blogging

Yeah, I'm blogging at home -- alone -- on a Friday night. But no fear -- it's not like I'm going to be watching Friday Night Videos (unlike, say, most of my middle school years).

I'm heading out in a half-hour or so. Not going to make it all the way into Adams Morgan for the blogger happy hour, but it's something.

In the meantime, UFC is on Spike.

Along the way I noticed something disturbing: Hitch is on right now on both TBS and TNT.

I'm not sure what movie would warrant simultaneous multi-channel showings, but I know that Hitch is not one of them.

Other thoughts:

* Z100 (WHTZ) in New York used to do a Friday 5 O'Clock Whistle. Maybe they still do. They would play a steam whistle sound effect, then play Todd Rundgren's Bang the Drum All Day, then Loverboy's Working for the Weekend.

I still associate those songs with Fridays.

* Amy Winehouse's Rehab -- heard it for the first time yesterday. Talk about a throwback sound -- it feels like it should be in the next Austin Powers movie.

It's a little gimmicky. Let's see how many hit songs she gets.

* That Lip Gloss song -- heard it for the first time in the gym this week (they have XM): Catchy beat, but what a stupid, stupid song. Not to mention one big consumer fetish song.

Okay, out of here.

Tags: fridays, z100, hitch, lip gloss, amy winehouse

The State of the Onion, 24 and the H&R Block Box Bitch

You know, I think the chimp-in-chief didn't do all that bad of a job giving the State of the Union this time around. At least in terms of delivery. Well, except for that whole "assed/asked" thing. And I have mixed feelings about that bit of pandering to the fairer sex when he referred to Pelosi (who, truth be told, does have an incredibly annoying voice.)

Though Dikembe Mutumbo?

The Jim Webb rebuttal was hardcore, though.

Looking over at my catchup viewing of '24', I think the primary takeaway is that Rocket Romano's wife Marilyn is HOT. (She's also apparently wheelchair wife from Heroes, so there's that Monday night connection.) Also, Milo, Chloe and Mick Schtoppel are going to have a three-way in Tech One. And soon.

Finally, if you've seen that H&R Block TaxCut software commercial -- the one where the husband and wife are getting audited because they used Turbotax, and the wife keeps going on about how they should ask the box for advice?

Man, what a bitch.

Tags: sotu, bitch

9/13/99: Never Forget

September 13, 1999 marks the 7-year anniversary of the tragic events at Moonbase Alpha, where all 311 of the base's inhabitants were lost and presumed killed after terrorists set off a thermonuclear chain reaction on the moon's Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2.

The resulting catastrophic explosion blasted the Moon out of Earth orbit and into deep space (an event that has been seared into our collective consciousness through repeated viewings of footage from Alpha's internal cameras):



It seems hard to believe, but only 7 years after the Moon was stripped from the sky, the events of Sept. 13, 1999 seem distant and remote -- as if they had happened 30 years ago, not 7.

To commemorate this horrific event, and to honor its victims, I've created some graphics to show our resolve and prove to those who would harm us that we will NEVER FORGET:

Similarly, we must always remember the heroism of the Eagle Transport pilots and crew as they tried to rescue the trapped Alphans:

May the victims of the Moonbase Alpha attacks always be remembered:

Spread the word with graphic badges:

250x153

200x122

100x61

9/13/99: Never Forget.

********************

Okay, so I liked Space: 1999 as a kid. I had some of the toys -- an Eagle transport (not the big one... though I wanted it), the playset (with action figures), the Colorforms, and a jigsaw puzzle. But I'm not a diehard fan. I don't participate in any of the online fan forums. And I especially never thought I'd be doing up tribute graphics for the "anniversary" of a fictional event from a 70s TV show.

So why do it?

I blame YouTube, and two blog entries that were floating around the geekosphere last month: The best and worst sci-fi openings of all time.

I didn't geek out about the lists then and I won't now (other than to say that the Blake's 7 opening and closing themes should have been on the best list).

Not only did the Space: 1999 theme song bring back memories, but it rocks. It still kicks ass (listen to that bass line! the wailing guitars! the orchestral break!) -- and it's aged really well (unlike, say, the Star Blazers theme, which, though still epic, is a lot more like a show tune than I remembered).

Anyway, when I was watching the Space: 1999 opening credits, I zeroed in on the "September 13, 1999" title cards.

Obviously, because of the Sept. 11 anniversary, we've been seeing a lot of remembrances and memorials on the Web, including graphic tributes of genuine sincerity (but varying quality) with crying eagles and "Never forget" and such.

I think it was the eagles that did it for me. Eagles and the Eagle Transporter. I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make fun of anyone's 9/11 memorial graphics -- I guess I just kind of overloaded on them over the past week. So that's why all this "Never Forget: 9/13/99" silliness.

Tags: 9/13/99, eagle transporter, geekosphere, moonbase alpha, september 13, space 1999