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Mon, March 31

BSYNW: Miss Guided—9:36 PM

ABC's Miss Guided, starring Judy Greer, is this week's Best Show You're Not Watching. It's not perfect – but Arrested Development was canceled, so what is? It's still really funny and of course Judy Greer is terrific.

So are Kristoffer Polaha as the Spanish teacher she has a crush on (Greer is a guidance counselor at her old high school), and Chris Parnell doing a new twist on the Vice Principal with the stick up his ass. Brooke Burns is great as the new English teacher (and Greer's popular cheerleader nemesis from last time they shared this campus). Burns has always been underrated because of her Baywatch roots, but she's very natural and funny.

You still have time: the last two episodes of the season air this Thursday at 8:00. (Probably the last ever; I haven't heard anything, but ABC's support for the show has been abysmal – plus the show is actually good, which is never a good sign.) Nothing else in that time slot will be as enjoyable. Set your TiVos.

8 comments with related links

Sat, March 29

Fort Walton, Kansas—1:02 AM

The Rock is among the very best action movies of the pre-Bourne era, when the rules of the game were forever altered as we learned that action movies could be both awesome and resonant. Its thrilling, bombastic score is playing in my car this week, and today it landed on my favorite track – possibly my favorite piece of film music not composed by John Williams – "Fort Walton, Kansas" from the film's energetic, romantic epilogue. Every time this track plays I'm captivated by it.

I'm normally not a fan of Hans Zimmer's scores: his pounding synth-orchestra style is too noisy for me, and lacks for emotion. But, contrary to all that, The Rock is a great score, and "Fort Walton, Kansas" is its gem. It starts soft and builds slowly, reminiscent of Zimmer's excellent – and uncharacteristically intimate – work on True Romance. Then the twangy guitar is joined by the orchestra, and things get awesome. It builds, and builds, and Vanessa Marcil flashes a winning smile, and it's over. It never fails to start the accompanying movie scene playing in my head, and it always leaves me wanting more. And it's under two minutes long, so you can check it out if you haven't heard it: The Rock: Fort Walton, Kansas

Update: I realized I should include the movie clip, too, so you can enjoy it in context. The Rock: Fort Walton, Kansas

Update again, 8 years later: Due to an unrelated copyright complaint, I'm technically on thin ice with my web host, so I'm removing this content just to make very sure nobody else hassles them about this site. DreamHost are wonderful people, and they have been great to work with for many years. I don't want to trouble them, and I really don't want to get kicked off their lovely servers.

Here are some great ways to enjoy the content referenced above, while fairly compensating the appropriate rights-holders:

Fort Walton, Kansas - by Hans Zimmer

The Rock - by Michael Bay, starring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris (and, most importantly, William Forsythe and John Spencer )

0 comments with related links

Tue, March 25

Frequently Asked Questions About the Redesigned Onebee Comments—5:56 PM

Remember to hit "refresh!" Clear out those cached style sheets, people!

  1. Q. Have any of these questions ever been asked, frequently or otherwise?

    A. Of course not.

  2. Q. Didn't the onebee comments just get redesigned?

    A. Longer ago than you'd think, but indeed. Yes, they did.

  3. Q. So... WTF?

    A. I really liked the new design, but as soon as it was implemented it began showing its limitations. I was forced to write code to truncate long e-mail addresses, or they'd break the left-hand "who said it" column. I was forced to truncate long URLs in the comments, or they'd break the other column–

  4. Q. Zzzzzzz....

    A. Point taken. Also, Brandon recently pointed out that his favorite thing about onebee is the long discussions that go on in the comments now and then. (My favorite thing, too.) As I thought about that, it didn't make sense for the comments to be squeezed into such a small space. It should be clear at a glance that you're looking the comments part of the page (and not the onebee post), but the narrow column and the tiny text made reading long comment threads a chore. The first rule of design is: don't make it a chore to do the most awesome thing.

    So, I started gathering some new ideas for a better design, with plans to implement it sometime in the next few weeks. Then, one of those glorious long comment discussions began to heat up. Seemed like a good time to get down to business.

  5. Q. Hey! How come e-mail addresses are no longer listed alongside comments?

    A. I never really wanted them there in the first place. Almost no one puts them in, and even though I encode them to deter e-mail harvesting spambots, there are no guarantees. I would've removed them during the last redesign, but I was afraid newcomers (or the elderly and infirm) might not realize who Bee Boy is. Having my e-mail address listed next to my "nickname" made it a little clearer.

    I would change "Bee Boy" to "Jameson" or something else – I'm kind of tired of "Bee Boy" – but too many commenters have referred to "Bee Boy" in some of my favorite onebee comments, so changing it would break that continuity. Finally I decided to compromise and put a little onebee logo next to my comments – hopefully that will make it clear that those are by me. For all those countless newcomers who read this site every day.

  6. Q. The new design is imperfect though. I noticed [whatever glitch].

    A. Well, by all means let me know. I only had so much time to test it out, and I went through as many pages as I could think of, but things have a way of slipping through. I'm sure a few minor details will be adjusted in the next day or two, and I'd be happy to address your glitch as well.

0 comments with related links

Thu, March 20

Unit 5: Weakness Is Also a Weakness

I think this might be the earliest Survivor column I've ever posted, while simultaneously among the tardiest. History! (Read more.)

0 comments with related links

Sat, March 15

Fire Lorne Michaels

I swear I'll stop FJM'ing these articles about comedy, as soon as they stop teeing them up for me. (Read more.)

2 comments with related links

Fri, March 14

Are you fucking kidding me?!—4:05 PM

I know I do this all the time – I guess I compose my best outraged rants on the way in from the mailbox – but this week's EW cover may take the ultimate prize. (I'd cancel my subscription if I didn't need the rants.)

Granted I haven't opened the magazine yet, but could they be more wrong? I'll grant you "most watched": The Daily Show is on cable, inaccessible to those viewers who have rabbit ears at home and no Internet at work, but "most influential"? "Funniest"?! I cry foul.

For a couple of years, I've spoken about SNL's creative nosedive from a relatively uninformed position, but in the last few weeks they've had guest hosts Tina Fey, Ellen Page, and Amy Adams. Onebee Kryptonite! Fey was hilarious, and in her Weekend Update visit she delivered the only funny or relevant political humor the show has aired since she left. Page and Adams were painfully underused, and the writing of their episodes was even worse than what I had been expecting while avoiding the show.

Like The Simpsons, SNL may still be popular with people who don't know better. Catchphrases are fun to repeat at work, there's no denying that. But to imply it is still funny, relevant, or politically influential is preposterous. Just because Hillary will book a guest appearance in a Hail Mary move – that shows how wrong she is, not how right SNL is.

Brandon, I may have to reconsider my assertion that there's not enough bad pop culture coverage to warrant regular FJM rants.

5 comments with related links

Tue, March 11

Unit 4: Strength Is a Weakness

The teams are mingling, and most of the contestants are still playing remarkably stupid strategy. Hey, it's an approach that's won before. (Pretty much every time.) (Read more.)

2 comments with related links

Mon, March 10

"Who Says That Thing I Said You Said?"

Vanity Fair's "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" celebrates Tina Fey and Sarah Silverman, who absolutely deserve it. Then, the rest of it reads like cast-offs from a Lorne Michaels profile. (Read more.)

2 comments with related links

Tue, March 4

Unit 3: Be Prepared

What makes a good Survivor contestant? Someone who watches the show religiously (or is willing to say they do)? Or someone who has been on the show before and lost? Possibly... neither? (Read more.)

0 comments with related links

Mon, March 3

Horton Hears a "Who Cares?!"—4:04 PM

Have you seen the ads for Horton Hears A Who? I love Dr. Seuss, and they made a great cartoon out of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, despite less-than-stellar results in other adaptations since. Somehow I'm still wary.

Why Jim Carrey for Horton? Has his voice ever been his selling point? I like him a lot, but it seems like getting Buster Keaton or Fred Astaire to do your animated voices – you're playing more on the physicality the name reminds you of and less on the voice itself.

When you listen to the ads, it doesn't seem like you're getting much "Jim Carrey" out of Jim Carrey, either – and Steve Carell and Seth Rogen seem miscast. I like all these guys, I love having them in movies, but this seems like casting for the value of the name and not for the suitability of the voice. Especially in Rogen's case; any number of lesser-known guys can do what he does, but Seth is "of the moment." If you're going to blindly copy another animation studio, don't let it be DreamWorks, and for God's sake don't copy the second-worst thing they do.

(Just to show how fair I can be, I thought it was stupid to have people like Richard Petty and Mario Andretti doing voice work in Cars, too. But at least those were tiny, tiny cameos.)

2 comments with related links

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