TV Post - The Walking Dead: It's not Carl's fault

Ok, maybe it is Carl's fault for being a complete and utter moron.  If he hadn't stolen Daryl's gun, and wandered off into the woods and woken a walker that followed him back and killed a cow and then killed Dale, then maybe Dale would still be alive...but come on, who's fault is it really?  Lori and Rick should be responsible for their idiot child who wanders off in a zombie infested world on his own with no repercussions.  At the very least someone should have said "Carl, where the hell have you been?  Why are your pants so muddy?  Don't you know it's dangerous out there?" but no, everyone acts like it's totally normal for the small child to be unaccounted  for hours at a time.  I don't know if it's shitty parenting/survival tactics, or just lazy writing (leaning on the latter) but this has got to stop.

The only person responsible for Dale's death is Dale for wandering off on a dark and misty night through the fields.  That's a nono.  If you want to patrol the grounds, do it in a group.  If you want to get away from the group to blow off some steam...don't.  There are ZOMBIES out there!  Frankly, I'm glad to see Dale get killed because this episode he was really getting on my nerves.  Yes, it would be great to latch onto our humanity and have a fully functioning judicial code in a post-apocalyptic-zombie world...but it's a god damn post-apocalyptic-zombie world!  The important thing is to survive.  Everything else comes second.

TV REVIEW: The Chicago Code

Ok, first off, I would just like to say, this post has virtually nothing to do with politics...well...almost nothing.    The Chicago Code, Shawn Ryan’s new police-oriented procedural-drama (weekly bad guys to stop mixed in with a longer story arc) is fast paced and entertaining, but it’s a far cry from Ryan’s previous police drama, The Shield, or Jason Clarke’s unfortunately cancelled Brotherhood.  To be fair, The Shield was on FX, Fox’s edgy and courageous basic cable network, and Brotherhood was on premium cable’s Shotime, both of which tend to display far more creativity and departure from the broadcast networks’ need to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the American viewing public.

Jennifer Beals, Jason Clarke, and Delroy Lindo are certainly not to blame for the tepid feeling once gets while watching this show.  Their performances are spectacular and from his demeanor and delivery Clarke has convinced me that Wysocki could fly off the handle at the drop of the hat if someone puts a fellow police officer in unnecessary danger.  Unfortunately the procedural element, that each episode they will have one problem to solve and one bad guy to apprehend, diminishes the long story arc that shows like Brotherhood or The Wire were able to maintain.  Catching Alderman Gibbons becomes a kind of side-story that will likely only happen upon cancellation of the show…or not at all. 

Which brings me to my second problem with the show and that is the focus on political corruption.  Of course Chicago is a great place to tell a story about machine politics and corruption in City Hall, but the kind of corruption appearing in the show, at least thus far, is a comical simulacrum of the real abuses that occur in City Halls across the country.  From the concerned constituent who reports a possible crime to Gibbons only to end up murdered by his order, or the Irish street thugs being brought into Alderman Gibbons’ office for a chat are overly visible actions that would not go unnoticed in our post 9-11 security framework.  What it does provide is a very simple narrative for the broad viewership base that Fox is hoping to attract.  And don’t even get me started on the police informant Liam who does everything wrong for an undercover officer and would be dead already if David Simon were writing this show. 

So there it is…what was a great hope for a new series that could follow in the footsteps of The Shield, is unfortunately pandering too broadly to the masses and will probably last two, perhaps three seasons before it is abruptly canceled to make way for another crappy reality show from Fox.

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Good bye Conan

It's official. Conan is leaving NBC's The Tonight Show after only 7 months on the air. Why? Because Jay "the douche bag" Leno had a smarted manager and legal team when his contract was written. Unlike Conan, Jay actually had the time slot designated in his contract, so if NBC wanted to move him to placate their local affiliates (whose news ratings Jay was killing) they would need him to agree to the move and sign a new deal or risk having to pay him $150 million.

The end result is a much less funny late night show on NBC that appeals to the elderly and the dumb. Because seriously, if your idea of humor is watching a bobble head bounce around and chuckle at his own jokes all night then you deserve to watch Jay.

Now I must admit, I am not a regular viewer of the late night shows. Given their need to churn out material on a nightly basis, and the push to sell whatever crappy movie the guest that night is in, much of the show (any of them) is pretty boring, but consistently, the bits that Conan has been doing at the top of the show and up until the first guest is on has been the best of the 4 main late night shows over the past decade. And when it comes to guest interview moments the best ones have almost always come from Late Night with Conan O'Brien when he allowed some comedian buddy of his to sit in on an interview with someone promoting their crappy movie (case in point below).

So farewell Conan. I hope you get another show soon and I hope that Jay Leno's cars all rust apart and that his core audience finally figures out how to change the channel (old people are bad with remote controls) and NBC pays dearly for this mistake. They don't really have any decent shows left other than Thursday night's lineup so to hell with them.

Finally...a use for twitter

This morning, like many mornings, I tried to browse over to google news to pass the time, but instead I was smacked with a 503 Server Error. I thought about doing a google search to see what was up, but then I thought, where can I get the most up to date information possible? Twitter! Did a Twitter search and I got hundreds of results of people all over the world discussing, or tweeting, about the fact that Google News was down for many of us.

So while many of us were unable to access our morning dose of news a la Google, many in the twitter community who were still able to access Google News were trying to help out the rest of us by tweeting news stories:

nilsafeeds: Google News: Pope meets Israeli prime minister in Nazareth (Extra) - Monsters and Critics.com: Teleg.. http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/8-2-0&fd=R&u... (contract)
half a minute ago from twitterfeed · Reply · View Tweet

nilsafeeds: Google News: Tornadoes kill 3 people in Missouri - The Associated Press: The Associated PressTornado.. http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/2-0-0&fd=R&u... (contract)
half a minute ago from twitterfeed · Reply · View Tweet




Finally, here are some tweets that shared my sentiments:

strawberryMae: Why has google news been down for almost 15 minutes now? I need my morning updates!

lundregan: Google news is down! oh boy, I'm surprised I'm not hearing wailing in the background at the office.

simonashton: I keep seeing 503 errors trying to search Google News - is it working for others?

Spelling mistakes that get me peeved

This has nothing to do with the putrid pundits that infest our airwaves (and cable lines) and much, much more to do with the crumbling state of America's education system.  America's institutions of learning, coupled with an "auto spell-checker" generation are threatening the very fabric of the English language.  I do not claim to have impeccable grammar or perfect spelling but I do expect at least that much from the news organizations that surround us.  

Recently, I have been unable to read an entire daily newspaper without coming across blatant errors ranging from the inability to differentiate between "affect" and "effect", to the misuse of phrases like the one I pointed out in my last post ("worse" and "worst").  If only newspapers still had editors who proof read submissions before sending them to print much of these problems would disappear.  

The fact that a google search for the term "worse case scenario" produces over 200,000 results is a testament to the fact that people do not think about what they write, nor do they re-read what they have written to make sure there aren't these mistakes.  Pause, and think for one moment about what "worse case scenario" literally means.

You got it yet?  Ok, take another 30 seconds and think it over...

Ok, time's up.  It means a "not as good" scenario, or a slightly more bad scenario.  That would be fine if that was what they meant to say, but clearly when flashing enormous graphics across the screen in an effort to terrify the public and stoke fears of Mexicans carrying deadly diseases, the message they were attempting to communicate was the very "baddest" of the bad scenarios....the "worst" possible outcome.

So where does this lack of ability to communicate effectively come from?  Part of it, I believe, comes from the laziness with which people enunciate these days.  If when you say the word "worst" you sort of drop the 't' at the end, soon you will begin to think you are saying "worse".  Now, I'm not saying that everyone should go around saying "ay-fect" and "ee-fect" but certainly the lack of proper enunciation contributes to the lack of proper spelling.  

The real problem is probably our complete and total reliance on the spell checker.  In that sense, Microsoft has become the grand authority on spelling and grammar.  After all, if you don't get a little green or red squiggly under what you write, it must be correct.  Too bad Gates and company were unable to figure out the user's intent in their writing.

As for a solution to this dilemma, I can not think of any actions that will properly affect the media industry to resume editing their work, nor can I think of something that can be done that will have the desired effect on the public and encourage them to enunciate clearly and correctly.  For now, I will continue to announce the most egregious errors here and on any forums available where the offending article is located.  I invite you all to do the same.

Spam: Survival of the fittest

After reading about the recent lawsuit in which Facebook won a $873 MILLION verdict against Canadian spammer Adam Guerbuez (read about it here) it made me think about what a Malthusian challenge spam has created for our society. To date I have received dozens, if not hundreds of spam messages telling me that my Amazon account is blocked, or my credit card was used in a foreign country, or a friendly member of the Nigerian royal family wants to cut me in on a good business deal and never have any of these resulted in me divulging any information that would allow an online account to be hijacked, my money stolen, or my identity assumed by the spammers. And why have I been so fortunate as to survive these assaults that claim millions of people every year? I think the two best explanations are that I am not "click happy" and I have am sufficiently proficient in English grammar and spelling.

My best guess is that over 95% of the spam/phishing/scam emails I receive are filled with terrible spelling and grammar that looks like someone threw a Chinese sentence into babblefish (does anyone still use that?) and translated it into 4-5 other languages before finally translating the last results into English. Those emails are also dreadfully inpersonal, typically addressed to "user" or "customer." From working in IT I know that businesses and organizations spend a shit-ton (that's a lot) of money to make their mass emails seem personalized. They also spend a good deal of money to hide user information in their mailings so if you receive something that's addressing something as serious as credit card or bank accounts, and you can see 30-40 email addresses in the CC: box, then you know that's fake too.

Ultimately, those who are not suceptible to these kinds of fraudulent attempts will continue to hold onto their identities and accounts while those who aren't will continue to be fleeced. I guess in a way that's the natural order of things and I imagine the same people who are being conned and hoodwinked today are probably similar to those that were tricked by the snake-oil salesmen of the past.

So while this Facebook lawsuit might deter some from scamming, it's going to keep happening so long as the "n00bs" out there keep clicking on links and giving away their account passwords, or opening the emails that say "Dude...you gotta sea this!!!!***!!!!"

NON POLITICAL - Television Comment

I just saw a preview for the upcoming episode of "Heroes" and I just have  to vent my disgust at what I call "filler episodes."  If you have a show and there's a very engaging story arc DO NOT INTERRUPT IT for some mundane flashback kind of episode where you can reveal some things about your characters that you hadn't thought of in the first 2 seasons of your show.  All the shows do it and I don't understand why other than an excuse to let the writer's illiterate nephews and nieces write  an episode of their favorite show.