Sun, November 30

Taking It to the Streep—5:45 PM

If you're like me, you probably thought, "An EW cover profile on Meryl Streep? Good for her – I like her and all – but I probably don't need to read that." Well, you were wrong, friends!

Streep hopes her box office clout can pave the way for younger actresses. She's slated to shoot a movie directed by Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give) in which she plays a woman being wooed by both her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and a new beau (Steve Martin).

Even if it turns out this movie doesn't cure cancer or fight communism (and I'm not suggesting it won't), this may be the best movie ever! Having seen Steve and Alec spar on SNL and 30 Rock, I think we are in for some serious fun.

If you didn't love Something's Gotta Give, Meyers is also responsible (with ex-husband Charles Shyer) for the Steve Martin remake of Father of the Bride and the Lindsay Lohan remake of The Parent Trap (one of the few Lindsay Lohan movies that doesn't leave you pitying her). So I am ready to believe that this movie will cure cancer, or at the very least end our dependence on foreign oil.

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Fri, November 21

Frogurt Still Cursed Dept.—1:00 PM

People, it's a mixed bag from EW's Michael Ausiello today. On the one hand, I am thrilled to learn that Dirty Sexy Money is coming to a close. I have tried since the beginning to quit watching this show, but Natalie Zea is just too phenomenal. She's very sexy (and the show takes great advantage of this) but the real draw is her flighty performance. The rest of the show is kind of irritating and strains plausibility in an attempt to create maximum drama, so I'm glad I can give up on it pretty soon without missing any fun Zea moments. That's good!

But, ABC is also nixing Pushing Daisies, which is not just an excellent show, it's a different show, and there are so very, very few of those any more. If you look at the shows that premiered this year, only True Blood even comes close (though Worst Week and Life on Mars might, if they weren't remakes). It's a damn shame ABC never found a way to make people watch this show, because it's not for everyone but it's too good to have as much ratings trouble as it's had. I will miss it terribly. That's bad!

Still, I was thrilled to find out that Ausiello is capable of writing useful and interesting TV coverage that does not come with the dipshit "reader pleas" aspect that characterizes his magazine column. ("Jennie from Boise writes: Do you have any Grey's Anatomy scoop? I'm dying over here!!") It's just a normal update about some TV shows. That's good!

In related news, I have kept the Family Guy 100th episode extravaganza on TiVo since it aired last year, and I watched it again last night. The clip-show part is as annoying as it is on any series – maybe more so because the style of Family Guy is practically like a clip show every week. But the interview segments with focus group participants who hated Family Guy are unbelievably entertaining and fascinating. I don't want to sound like a typical America-bashing leftie (okay, let's not kid ourselves; I don't know how to sound like anything else) but if you're ever curious why your favorite show got canceled, it's because TV networks are in the business of pleasing people like this.

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Tue, November 18

Awesomeness Later!—12:20 PM

Excerpted from the start of a recap of last night's Heroes (which I didn't read, but which happened to catch my eye):

It's a shame that nobody's watching this show anymore, because tonight was all about setting the stage for the battle to come.

Dude, that's why everybody bailed on the show – it was all about "setting the stage" and nothing ever actually happened. At least, that's why I quit, and every time EW devotes a wailing page and a half to the show's foundering status, that seems to be their best guess as well.

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Mon, November 17

Why They Hate Us—11:58 AM

Reading some highly excellent reportage from Daring Fireball's John Gruber and others on the subject of iPod/iPhone earphones, I was reminded to paw through my stash of extras to replace the set I usually carry to the gym with my iPod shuffle, which have recently developed a buzz in one ear.

I had to find a set with the proper cable length, because Apple has varied this over time, and the shorter ones won't reach my pocket with enough slack to work out – reason enough to stay home and watch TV instead, if you ask me. Once I had them all out, I became curious about audio fidelity. Theoretically, the technology gets better with each new set of earphones they release, and I had a seven-year spectrum in front of me – would the newer ones sound appreciably better?

To test this, I set up something like the split-screen effect they use on TV when they want to sell you the re-mastered version of a DVD you already own. ("Look how crappy your version is next to ours! Throw it away!") I plugged one set of earphones into the shuffle, and another into my iPod touch, then cued the touch to play whatever song was currently going on the shuffle, with one set of earphones connected to each ear. The first thing I noticed is that two different iPods will keep remarkably tight sync with one another (something two CD players or two Super-8 projectors will not do, just ask Joe or anyone else from our Cinema 290 class). Also, my sophistication as a listener falls far short of being able to distinguish between two sets of decent earphones. But it was damn fun getting the songs to sync up, especially the period as I was narrowing it down – songs sound funny when the left channel is a half-second out of sync with the right, even though it will give you a headache if you do it too long.

Then I briefly saw myself as an outside observer would have: a pudgy white dude on the sofa, with a Coke in one hand and a TiVo remote in the other, listening to two iPods at the same time. Kind of indulgent, right? Like a grimy street urchin should've happened by my window at that moment, and assumed that was my life: strolling around listening to a pair of iPods while he was scrounging in the gutter for chicken bones and rat droppings. ("Honey, he's teasing you. Nobody has two television sets.")

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The Evils of E-mail—10:03 AM

Joe was nice enough to point out an interesting NYT article about Obama's (ugh) BlackBerry, and the concern that he may have to surrender it because the Presidential Records Act requires executive communication to be archived and available for review. Interesting stuff.

First of all, I love it that now we care about the Presidential Records Act. When Cheney was hosting e-mail off-site at GOP servers to evade discovery in the Valerie Plame trial – servers that conveniently "lost" thousands of messages – it was apparently no big deal. Also, who among us hasn't at one time or another set up an auto-forward for all our mail? Obama could read and respond on his BlackBerry, with copies of everything going to a backup server to satisfy the PRA.

Other concerns are even more laughable:

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

"They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked," said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. "The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him."

The implication being: hackers are brilliant, but none would think to break into the account of the guy who's writing and receiving e-mail for Obama. Genius.

Not everything that's wrong with big, dumb, snarled, bureaucratic government can be solved by more efficient communication, but a lot of things can. At worst, it sure wouldn't hurt. This will happen eventually – it might as well be now. (And are you telling me the NSA and the CIA haven't figured out secure enough e-mail to keep hackers out? This isn't like that kid guessing Palin's Yahoo! password.)

(I mean, I know you, personally, aren't telling me that – but still.)

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Mon, November 10

How I Met Your Mother—6:28 PM

Fox refuses to cancel Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is a joyous thing (did you hear Life got a full-season pickup, too?) but it creates a conflict with Chuck and How I Met Your Mother. Chuck is a distant third among these three, but tonight's episode features Jordana Brewster – which fucks up the math like a math-fucking-up machine.

So I took to the web to see which show is most easily available from its network web site and/or iTunes so I know which one to cut tonight, and I think it's going to be How I Met Your Mother (funny, since it's in first place out of the three, by several laps). While I was perusing CBS.com's video offerings, I discovered to my great delight that the following clip from last week is available for free. It's only a couple of minutes long, and it's entirely self-contained (except for the explanation of why the entire episode takes place under a table, which is just the sort of awesome thing HIMYM will do now and then, but it has no bearing on this clip so don't worry about it).

Here's the clip.

If you watch that clip all the way to the end and don't agree that HIMYM is doing comedy at a genius level, then I have nothing left to say to you. (On this subject, at least. I mean, we can still be friends.)

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Fri, November 7

Jon Stewart Still Alive!

It should come as no surprise that The Daily Show is capable of mocking any presidential administration, even one it voted for, like Barack Obama's. (Read more.)

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Wed, November 5

Obama Still Alive!—9:58 AM

Let's hope he stays that way. He may not live up to all his hype (Could anyone? Could Jesus?) but it'll be nice to listen to speeches like that for a while.

McCain is a good guy, and his concession speech sounded like him talking again, instead of the desperate partisan robot who's been stumping for him the last month or so. I'm sure he'd rather have won - it might have made all those compromises worth it - but he looked very relieved that it's all finally over.

The Minnesota senate race is about a thousand votes apart right now, and with the likelihood of a run-off in Georgia, that starts to be pretty interesting. Nate Silver's electoral map and six-point spread in the popular vote are looking just about perfect. He will definitely be someone to watch.

Now, is there any chance we could get a nice week off from the media frenzy? No? Well, I tried.

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