Whose Faulty Vision

Link: “My cone is melting in the sun”

Sorry about the lack of posts. I’ve been super-busy with social activities, something going on every night. Which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t leave me a lot of time or energy to blog about it.

When I was a kid, I loved the cartoon “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” For some unknown reason, there was a particular line that my brother and I latched on to as being incredibly hilarious. It was Shredder, the main villain, asking his lackey Baxter to do something, and Baxter replied, in a whiny voice, “but my cone is melting in the sun!” Anyway, I finally tracked down a copy of the line on Youtube. It’s in this episode of the show, at 4:55.

“Chuck” Nitpick

I’m watching last week’s “Chuck” right now. It’s a show I enjoy a lot, but can someone explain me this: Why does the female lead walk into a room full of armed guys, carrying a machine gun herself, and start punching them? And why do they punch back?

Courtroom Drama Idea

You know what I’d like to see sometime? A courtroom show where some of the main characters are prosecutors, and some of the main characters are defense attorneys, and sometimes the prosecution is right, and sometimes the defense is right. You never see that, do you? You either see a show where the heroes are all on the prosecution side, and the prosecutors are pretty much always right (like Law and Order), or shows where the heroes are all on the defense side, and the defenders are pretty much always right (like the many Perry Mason clones). Let’s have a little variety.

Henry and Edward

During the Olympics, NBC has been advertising a new fall show about a man with two personalities. One personality, Henry, is a mild-mannered suburbanite. The other, Edward, is some kind of gangster or assassin or something similar.

The choice of the names “Henry” and “Edward” is cute. I wonder how many of the people seeing the ads will get the reference? I hope that, in the show itself, they leave it as a nod rather than spelling it out.

Game Show Correction

Question on a game show I’m watching right now: “Which Amendment gives us freedom of religion?”

No Amendment gives us freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right; we have it simply by virtue of being human beings. The First Amendment protects our freedom of religion from government interference.

This sounds like a nitpick, but it goes to the basic philosophy behind the Constitution, and people should know it.

The Mole Theory

(SPOILERS, I suppose, although it’s all just theory)

After the most recent episode of “The Mole”, I’m leaning towards Clay as the Mole. Two very different reasons:

From an in-game point of view, it seems like all of the players trust him. And, of course, it’s in the Mole’s interest to have everyone trust him, whereas it’s in all of the other players’ interests to be distrusted.

From a TV show point of view, I swear I saw the tiny letters “M O L E” in the text box that shows his name when he was doing one of his interviews. I tried to photograph it, but it didn’t really come out. But it sure looked that way on the screen. I tried to look for the same letters in other players’ text boxes, and didn’t see them.

Outdated Survey Thinking

I was having trouble sleeping last night, moping about having to start dating again, and feeling grumpy as usual, and thank goodness, I didn’t write another long, whiny blog post about it. So instead, here’s some more musing about DVRs.

I started an online survey today, and one of the first questions was, “on an average day, how many hours do you spend watching primetime TV?” And I couldn’t answer it. I dropped out of the survey because I genuinely didn’t know how to answer it, and I didn’t want to give them a misleading answer.

Here’s the rub: By “primetime TV”, do they mean TV shows that I watch during the primetime hours, or TV shows that are broadcast during the primetime hours, regardless of when I watch them? I never watch anything as it’s being broadcast. And I don’t usually even know what time the shows I watch were originally broadcast. So what am I supposed to answer?

You see, too many media people are still stuck in an outdated mentality when it comes to TV. I would no more watch a TV show as it’s being broadcast than I would read a magazine as it’s being printed. And there are an increasing number of other TV viewers like me, whether they do their viewing via TiVo (like I do), via DVD, or online.

Media and advertising people need to get with the program. And yes, I’m in advertising, so a part of this is my responsibility, but I’m not in the media buying side of things, so I wouldn’t be involved in designing a survey like that one. When I do get to influence media decisions, I make sure that everyone remembers the media age we’re living in.