Mon, February 28
Monday—10:26 AM
Deathly, deathly ill right now, so I'll have to get into the details later. In brief:
Congratulations to Andy for winning this year's onebee Oscar Pool, with a whopping 14-point lead over his nearest competitor!
Congratulations to The Incredibles for winning not only the richly deserved Best Animated Film of the Year Oscar, but also taking the top prize in the 2005 onebee Movie Tournament (of Movies). Thanks to all who voted! (Even more thanks to those who abstained indignantly!)
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Fri, February 25
MTM: The Finals!—7:34 AM
It's down to two! Our scientifically rigorous method has determined that The Incredibles and Collateral were the two best movies of 2004, and now it's time to decide between them.
I was reading Manohla Dargis's review of Sideways yesterday, and I think I was a bit hasty tipping the tie in favor of The Bourne Supremacy. Sorry about that; you know me – gotta be a rebel! Would it have beaten Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Incredibles? Hard to say. But surprises make it interesting.
By the way, other than the tie-breaker, I promise I've only voted once in each matchup. I know that's more than I can say for some of you! That's okay; have your fun. I just want you to know that if The Incredibles miraculously beats Collateral, it won't be me stuffing the ballot box.
Have fun voting! All the pleasures of democracy without the inky fingertips!
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Thu, February 24
Archipela-GO!
Surprise! It's just about the last thing you ever thought you'd see on this site – aside from a column extolling the virtues of Shrek 3, starring Michael Gross and Julianne Moore – another Survivor column! Will wonders never cease? (Read more.)
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I just hope my TiVo is Left Behind—12:02 PM
I was catching up on some of this week's Daily Show last night, and Ed Helms delivered a brilliant report about a website named Rapture Letters, at which you can sign up your loved ones to receive automated e-mail after you and millions of other believers have disappeared simultaneously from around the globe and ascended to heaven in the Rapture.
For more details, follow the link on the homepage to read the text of the letter which will be sent. Unsurprisingly, it includes some sanctimonious language through which the True Believers will continue annoying their Left Behind friends with their preaching even after they're gone. I think it's kind of silly to believe that if something like this were ever to happen, the rest of us would be hanging around checking e-mail. Also, this Rapture might still be a while off – with no way to update your friends' e-mail addresses on the site as they change over the years, I have a feeling the Mail Delivery Subsystem is going to be hearing a lot about the glorious kingdom of heaven.
What's interesting is the way it works: each week, the creator, Scott Butcher, logs onto the website and resets a countdown. If he's not around to do it, then the e-mail goes out once the week is through. I've thought of doing something like this a few times: there are plenty of things I'd like to say to friends and family in the event of my demise, and I thought of setting up automated e-mail in a very similar way. But I've never done it, for the same reason Ed Helms brings up: what if I forget to reset it, or I can't get around to it? I like Ed's idea: a disclaimer reading, "Either the Rapture has occurred, or Scott Butcher is trapped under something heavy."
I'm definitely signing myself up, just so I'll know when something heavy falls on this guy.
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Tue, February 22
Amazon Comes Through—6:20 PM
Just a brief update to share the fact that there is (sometimes) justice in the world. Well, not justice. But a giant corporation made a cursory attempt at customer satisfaction. These days, I'll settle for that.
I called Amazon.com. Their toll-free customer service number is 1-800-201-7575. Tell your friends – seriously, tell them, because they won't find it published anywhere on Amazon.com.
A nice young lady named Kristi informed me that my preferred return method for the Seinfeld DVDs wasn't available. (Since the box set includes the trinkets, plus the Season 1 & 2 box set and the Season 3 box set – packaged identically to their freestanding counterparts – I had hoped to just return the Season 1 & 2 box set for an identical replacement, in order to keep the majority of the seven non-defective DVDs around to watch.) However, she came up with a pretty decent compromise. She's rushing shipment of an identical Seinfeld gift set and a pre-paid return shipping label – then I can send mine back once the new one gets here, and not have to be without my DVDs in the interim. She even made the clever suggestion of just pulling disc 4 of Season One out of the new box and sending back the new box with the defective disc in it, so I don't have to repack all the playing cards, salt shakers, etc. Smart girl.
So, it's hardly great that it takes so much legwork to get things to work out marginally okay, but it certainly is a relief that there are still opportunities to get halfway decent service – you just have to work at it.
Talk to an actual human at Amazon.com customer service: dial 1-800-201-7575
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"There are no words..."—1:32 PM
On the one hand, I'm exceedingly proud of Arksie, who's well on his way to making a living as a comedy writer, for his delectable rundown of this year's Oscar nominees.
On the other hand, I'm groin-stabbingly jealous because sometimes I read something that he's written, or Bill Simmons of ESPN.com's Page 2, or even sometimes TWoP, and I say to myself, "Wow, that's excellent. Funny and well said. If I had more time to devote to onebee.com, I'd come up with funny stuff like that and say it that well." But, reading this week's Average Mulder, I had to admit: I could never do that. I don't know if he worked on it for days, or just threw it together in about three hours (although history leads me to suspect the latter), but in either case, he hits on things that would never occur to me and polishes them to a brilliant sheen with some damnfine wordsmithing. I'm not going to spoil for you one of the best laughs I've had all year (and I'll go "last twelve months" with that – this being only February and all), but it involves the phrase "on the plus side." Here's the second funniest part I could quote for you:
I know someone who knows someone who liked to wrap his couch in cellophane, pour some oil on it and slide around naked, but I don't know anyone who knows anyone who's seen Vera Drake. Okay? So Mike Leigh is out.
It's full of gems like that – not to mention the excellent argument in favor of the Five Year rule, an idea so great that the preposterousness of it tells you not only how great it is, but also how fucked up the Oscars are for it to sound preposterous in the first place.
(And I'm not the guy with the sofa, by the way. Arksie knows me, so I wouldn't fit this description. But I have to say now that the idea's been presented, it's intriguing – if I don't do it, it'll only be to preserve the genius of the 'Porter Oscar Picks column.)
Enjoy!
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Round Two (at last)!—9:49 AM
Round Two voting in this year's Movie Tournament (of Movies) has finally commenced. It was due to start yesterday, but I stupidly didn't set it up to start before I left home to spend the weekend with friends. This is what happens when I suddenly have a life; it comes up so infrequently, I'm ill-prepared to set my affairs in order and respond to it.
So, this means we'll be voting for two matchups every day this week except Friday (the finals!) instead of just Monday and Tuesday. Sorry about that.
Also, a 50/50 tie on the battle between Sideways and The Bourne Supremacy. All 50/50 ties are decided by ... ME!! I cast my original vote for Bourne Supremacy, because I had more fun watching it. (Not lots more. Not "WAY" more. But more.) Tune in tomorrow to see if I cast my tie-breaking vote the same way!
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Mon, February 21
DVD Misery from Sony
One of my Seinfeld DVDs is pretty massively defective – not like a scratch or a skip; broken. But do you think the company who made it, who sold me a drink coaster in a box with Kramer's picture on it, cares? If you do, this is clearly your first time reading this site. (Read more.)
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Wed, February 16
Well! I Never!—11:58 PM
Say what you will about Lost (and by "you" I mean "I"), but tonight's episode had some phenomenal moments. Maybe I respect the writing more when it focuses on smaller, character moments rather than the big overarching mysteries – so many of which I feel have been mishandled lately. No monsters, no hatch, no mysterious Jr. Dolittle this week.
The "surprise" toward the end wasn't too surprising, but I've harped on that before – if the show is going to train you to expect the unexpected, they need to work a lot harder at making the unexpected fall outside the realm of what you might expect the unexpected to be... otherwise, you're liable to expect it. But I think both fireside scenes were excellent. And the bar scene – some might say it's a little convenient, but I liked it a lot.
And this was probably the best opening flashback we've had so far. Wow. Compelling stuff. I'm still not religious about it, but – unlike God – I can see why people believe in it!
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Round One continues!—12:18 AM
Voting continues in Round One of this year's Movie Tournament (of Movies). Use the following link to go back and catch up on previous days' matchups – all Round One matchups will remain open through the weekend, then Round Two begins on Monday with the winners of Round One doing battle against one another.
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Tue, February 15
Buzz (Lightyear) worthy—3:10 PM
The onebee "Buzzworthy" section is temporarily out of commission to make more room for the Movie Tournament (of Movies), but I couldn't resist passing along this gem, submitted by alert reader "AC":
Toy Story 3: Does Anyone Want to Do It? [Fox News (of all people)]
It's positively delicious that not only will the vocal talent be difficult to entice, but Disney's even having trouble finding directors to helm the Toy Story project that they're pretending to produce. Another pleasant surprise: Pixar won't be forced to hand over the character models and 3D environments they created for the first two Toy Story films, so Disney's goons will have to start from scratch. This movie is going to be horrible.
Let's just hope I'm right and it's all a big bluff. Eisner will be gone next year, then maybe Disney will be more amenable to negotiation. (Of course by then, maybe Pixar won't even take them back. My stock broke $90 today! They're on a roll!) Either way, there's a lot of time left for cooler heads to prevail – I can't imagine it will be worth it to Disney to release an ugly, unwatchable, unprofitable movie just to spit in Pixar's eye.
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Mon, February 14
Movie Tournament (of Movies)—2:13 PM
Let it never be said that I don't love: a) deliriously entertaining time-wasters; b) stealing the brilliant ideas of others; c) snarking at length about movies (especially movies I haven't seen); d) jefftidball.com.
It came to my attention (late, as all things do – God, where have I been? The sad thing is, I know, and so do you – and it will have been worth it!) that a website I rarely read called The Morning News is doing this ingenious thing called the TMN Tournament of Books, in which prominent and praiseworthy books from 2004 are pitted against each other NCAA Sweet Sixteen-style. (You can even print out a bracket to help you track the progress.) This is not only a very ingenious thing (very! ingenious!) but also coincides with my decision to try to do more reading. (As it turns out, I still know how. More details forthcoming – isn't everything?) It turns out there's a damn good reason why TMN is at the very top of the very long list of sites I don't read very often but wish that I read more often.
So that takes care of A and D. Let's see if we can't fold B and C into the mix. And here it is.
I'm proud to announce onebee's First Annual Movie Tournament (of Movies) – with apologies to TMN and Tidball's brilliant Choose or Perish Tournament. I've drawn up a bracket of sixteen 2004 films – not necessarily the most worthy, but the most acclaimed/awarded/notable. My selection process was similar to TMN's in terms of being wildly arbitrary. #1 seeds (and one #2) went to the Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars. The other 11 slots were filled by movies which earned multiple Oscar nominations, wide critical acclaim, or my adoration (sometimes all three). The bracket will be available for download by the end of the day, but the voting for Round One begins now!
We are under a bit of a time crunch if we want to finish by the time of the Academy Awards. (Stupid things coming to my attention late!) So, we're going to vote on a couple of match-ups each weekday. Voting on previous match-ups won't close until it's time for the winner to move on to the next round of battle, so hopefully this will still give everybody a couple of days to catch up in the early running.
Come back often, and make your voice heard! I look forward to announcing a winner on the 27th!
Update: Download the official bracket for the 2005 Movie Tournament (of Movies), and fill it in as the winners are announced!
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Thu, February 10
It's On!—10:00 AM
As you're no doubt aware, the Wayback Machine section of this site's homepage sheds new light on stuff that happened here a year ago. And, about a year ago is when this section of the site (the part you're reading now; the shorter-form "entries" as opposed to the longer "columns"; the "blog-like" part of the site, if you must) really began. It will be spotty for the first few weeks, but starting around March we should have a pretty steady diet of entries in the Wayback Machine almost every day.
Which I've been looking forward to since its inception, because it means more daily homepage content, and it'll be a hoot to see what I was all worked up about back then. The columns (on average) tend to have more of a shelf life, but the entries are usually nothing more than knee-jerk ranting about some topic of the day – which will make the antiquated ones all the more hilarious. (For example, I believe we're in for a few solid days of ranting on the whole Echostar/Viacom fracas here in a couple of weeks.)
Enjoy!
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Wed, February 9
You All Everybody—9:40 PM
I know it's sacrilege to say it – especially here on this site – but after watching tonight's episode of Lost, I can see a situation developing in which – in the not too distant future – Claire could eclipse Kate as the cute one.
Also, Lost is showing that it's not the sort of show that can stand up to too many repeats. Maybe they should've done like Alias: a non-stop half-season. Because after a few weeks off, it's hard to be as obsessive about it as I was when it first started.
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Mon, February 7
MacFarlane on politics—4:44 PM
Seth MacFarlane on American Dad:
There are people on staff who have [said] that the upside to a second Bush term is that it makes American Dad work better. To me, the price is too high. I would gladly give up the comedy to have a President Kerry. But you work with what you have.
I don't know; I'm pretty sure there would have been tons of comedy with President Kerry, too. Just different comedy. (Have you seen him speaking since the election? He's almost as bad as he was before the debates!)
American Dad shows some potential – it isn't as bad as I kept hearing it was going to be, but I hope the May episodes are better than last night's. MacFarlane is funny and the rest of his A.V. Club interview is interesting, but I'm suspicious of anyone who liked Kerry for any reason other than he wasn't Bush.
14 comments
Sun, February 6
Upside Down is the new Right Side Up—10:18 AM
In my opinion, anything that comes in a squeeze bottle should come in a bottle that is designed to rest on its top – wherein "top" denotes "the side where the stuff comes out of." If you're designing a bottle, and you don't design it to stand on that end, you're just deluding yourself. Eventually, it's going to get to the point where there's only a little left; and people are going to want to use gravity to get at that little bit. I mean, hell, even the Heinz people have gotten on board with this – why is it that half the shampoo industry still hasn't embraced this technology?
If you're not going to go all the way (tapering the top, flipping the label – admitting that upside down is the only way it should be stored), at least square off the top so that people have the option either way. How hard is that to do? There's just no excuse for selling anything more viscous than – say, milk – in a container that's not designed to give access to those last few gooey drops.
The other thing that really drives me up the wall is the squeeze bottle which is too narrow to be effectively squozen. I've got this bath soap bottle right now that's a very low-profile oval in shape (i.e., if you're looking down from the top), which means you've only got maybe a half-inch of squeezing room before the middle has been flattened. What's that about? Who is that for?
(You'll notice I said "bath soap" – I was this close to typing "body gel" but I changed it out of fear that the Straight Police would take away my membership and then I'd no longer be able to ogle 19-year-old girls on Sorority Row during the last minutes of my commute to work; that's the only thing that keeps me going in the morning!)
So, here's what I'm thinking. We pioneer a set of empty squeeze bottles that are designed the right way. They've got a nice flat base with an easy-open cap that seals tight, and at the top they have a heavy-duty Ziploc-style closure so that you can fill them up easily but still lock them tight. (Maybe you even fasten a snap over it after you zip it up.) Then we sell these at Target or wherever with a little kit that includes a funnel and a stand – so when you bring home your useless, antique right side up shampoo, you uncap it, place it on the stand, and let it run through the funnel into the good bottle overnight. Then you throw away that useless piece of junk, snap up your squeeze bottle and you're good to go.
Who's with me? We're talking millions here!
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Fri, February 4
Priming the Pump
I hate to be a grumpy codger twice in one week, but I've told you all about my semi-boycott of Best Buy and completely forgotten to tell you about my semi-boycott of Amazon.com. Now that Amazon's trying to woo me back, it's time to catch up. (Read more.)
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Super Blog II—4:36 PM
The frenzy that's enveloping my dopey hometown as it prepares to host the Super Bowl this weekend is intensifying on an hourly basis, and it's almost as weird to me as it is to people who still actually live there. I wasn't used to seeing this much of Jacksonville on TV when I lived there, for crying out loud!
One delightful fringe benefit of this is that ESPN.com's Bill Simmons is writing a Super Bowl blog from Jacksonville all this week, and it's excellent stuff. To paraphrase Arksie, Bill is the second-funniest Simmons writing on the Internet today, and his column is more enjoyable than you'd think, even for a non-sports fan. In the way I sometimes succeed at loading the Survivor columns up with enough fun stuff that you can enjoy them without having watched the (awful, awful) show, Simmons does with his sports columns so you don't have to follow sports too closely. It's definitely a recommended read.
(And yes I realize that I'm paraphrasing Arksie in a way that misrepresents what he actually said. But – come on – if you're going to have a problem with wild self-aggrandizement, you've really picked the wrong website to read.)
Anyway, amongst the non-football content of the Super Blog is Simmons's take on the tribute to Johnny Carson that Letterman aired. Simmons, like me, like smart people everywhere, is a huge fan of Letterman and (by extension) Carson – and understands that Jay Leno is a giant ass.
I thought the past eight days illustrated the difference between Leno and Letterman better than any show ever could. It's not that Leno is a bad person – obviously he isn't – but that it's physically impossible to feel any semblance of a connection to him.
Superbly put. Read all of Simmons's entry – it's great stuff. I haven't seen the Letterman episode yet, but I look forward to it (thanks, TiVo!). I agree that Dave's been going through the motions for the past few years – I'm sure Dave would agree, too – and it's a testament to how amazing he is as a comedian that that's still enough to keep me watching. And it shows how compelling and familiar he is to those of us who love him: we require so few glimpses of who he really is, and cherish each such instance like gold-plated gold when we get it.
And, Simmons is really entertaining – it's fun to see Jacksonville through the eyes of someone who thinks like me and is seeing it for really the first time. He's a little more generous than I'd be, but otherwise right on the money.
I look forward to watching the city and the Super Bowl over the rest of this weekend to see if it just splits wide open. (The city rustled up all the homeless and shoved them into an empty high school for the week to make things look nice, but they're so low on hotel rooms that plenty of Super Bowl ticket holders will probably be homeless this weekend, too – so, look forward to that.)
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Thu, February 3
By the way, did I mention? Fuck Best Buy.
People like me, we fight for the things we love. We don't back down from insurmountable obstacles that stand in our way, and we won't be dissuaded by logic or reason. Yes; I'm talking about the cow creamer. (Read more.)
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We're boppin' along in our barrels...—9:52 AM
As fate would have it, the Wonderfalls theme song played randomly on my iPod during my unusually eventful commute into work this morning. Even more surprisingly, as I was singing along, I burst into tears.
I suppose I'm in a sort of fragile state these days (when am I not?) but this was a shock even to me. I think hearing it, and knowing that I was mere hours away from being reunited with Jaye and her pals, I was just overjoyed. I never realized how much Wonderfalls meant to me, but now I'm starting to.
I think it's partly because in my mind it stepped right into the hole in my heart left by Ed. As much as I adored Ed Stevens, Jaye is a character who's more like me: she is a good person and wants to do good things, but she's a little too cynical and self-involved to schedule special time for it. Wonderfalls has the same warm heart and silly tone as Ed, but it's sarcastic where Ed was syrupy.
The song also reminds me of the free and breezy style of the show – Jaye's whole life is kind of happy and uncluttered. Sure, she's got problems (family, situations at work) but she's self-sufficient and comfortable with her place, even if her overbearing parents would like her to show more initiative. I often think I'd like a life like that.
I was planning to drop the DVDs on the shelf when I got home tonight and save them for after the Super Bowl, but now I don't know if I can wait. It feels like a reunion with an old friend after a long time apart. Wonderfalls was taken away from me prematurely, just as I was starting to love it – and now I'll finally get to pick up where I left off.
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