Skip to content

Entertainment

Coupling – The Good and Bad

So I missed the news last month, but the BBC had a press release on Oct 14th that Coupling is coming back for a 4th season.

I never could make the transition from the (much better) BBC version to NBC’s version.

NBC’s version got the axe this week. Done. Caput. Over with. Oh well. The worst part about it is the perception problem that “Coupling’ is bad – when the BBC version is absolutely hilarious.

Oh, and the Season 2 DVD just came out. Must get.

Top 5 80's Albums

One of my favorite parts of Nick Hornby’s great book, High Fidelity (and the movie adaption with John Cusack was pretty good too, but his books are better), are his Top 5 lits.

So here’s my first one. Inspiration hit me last night when flipping through the radio dial (If I hear Coldplay’s new live song one more time….) and I heard Prince’s Purple Rain.

Here we go, Top 5 Albums (yes, I said albums, this is the 80’s, and I’m talking a complete record here, not one with just 2 good songs, in no particular order:

  1. Prince – Soundtrack to Purple Rain

  2. INXS – Kick

  3. Def Leppard – Hysteria

  4. Van Halen – 1984

  5. Depeche Mode – 101

There’s so many other ones that I could mention, but those are my personal faves.

Alias

So the 3rd season of Alias has started, and it’s now Alias v3.0. Let’s recap:

1st season: Sidney works for SD-6, where everyone thinks they’re a supersecret subset of the CIA. They’re actually terrorists.

2nd Season: Sidney, having become a double-agent for the CIA in Season One like her father, still works for SD6.

In January, having the post-Superbowl timeslot, Alias v2.0 comes out. SD-6 is dismantled, and Sidney now works for the CIA (still) as a regular agent, with her father, and now, her love interest / handler Vaughn.

Season Finale: Blow up Alias and start over for Season 3, v3.0. Sidney has a climatic battle with her former best friend (who had been replaced with a double), and at the end of the show wakes up and two years have gone by unknown to her, with Vaughn breaking the news to her. And he’s now married.

3rd Season (now 2 episodes in) Alias v3.0

Thoughts so far: I was pretty annoyed with blowing it up at the end of the second season, after they had just done it. Said I’d give it one more change. (Ok, be real, who can’t watch Jennifer Garner?) I agree with critics / ratings that the show was too serial and hard for new people to jump into who hadn’t seen it before. The show still has that challenge, in my opinion. But it is a little less action oriented so far.

Things that irk me:

  1. After being gone for 2 years, not only is Sydney an agent again, but she’s already out in the field. (I know, her mystery is central to the plot again).

  2. In the first episode this season, she goes rogue and gets the item the CIA wants. She uses this to get her father out of false imprisonment he’s been in for a year since she was gone.

  3. Her father is a senior agent again already. After being gone for a year in lockup.

  4. Another love triangle. Last year, it was Will and Vaughn. Will is now in the Witness Protection Program (good excuse since he’s not on the show anymore I suppose). Now it’s Sydney, Vaughn, Vaughn’s new wife (who is the NSC liasion to the CIA in their office). Oh, and Vaughn had left to be a French teacher. He’s back in the CIA now. And saved Sydney on the second episode.

Overall, it’s a well-written, tight show. I just wish they’d stick with a plot line. But I do understand that as good as it is, it hasn’t pulled in the amount of viewers ABC has hoped for. Let’s hope this formula works (this time).

Yahoo Radio & MNF

Speaking of Yahoo Radio yesterday, what a disappointing service.

From a broadcast perspective, it’s gotten better. It used to be when they cut to commercial, it was dead air with no sound. Now you get local commercials.

But I’m a geek – I use Red Hat 9 on the box I listen to the game on. Well, doesn’t work with Linux. Fine. Use the KVM and pull up the other Windows box. Fire up Mozilla Firebird and go back and try and load it and Yahoo tells me I’m not running the right OS again. Takes me a few minutes to realize that I’m running the right OS, just not the right browser. Fire up IE, and bam, get the popup to choose RealOne or WMP as my player. Their OS / player detection page needs to define better the problem. And they should at least be Mozilla compliant. (Hmm, just thought of putting the plugin information in for WMP, but I don’t think that would fix it anyway).

And how about those Colts last night? By the definition of the Leaping rule as Al Michaels read on TV, Simeon Rice did break the rule – even if he landed late. But even to that point, for the Colts to score 3 TDs in 3:44, on the Bucs Defense, is amazing.

Sitting around watching the game last night, we all looked at each other and said this was a defining moment for Peyton Manning – and it was. Good for Dungy, especially after how the Glazers screwed him.

My Neuros

So after, what, 2 months? I got my Neuros portable MP3 player working with Ogg files!

Using the latest beta firmware (1.40a), and the Neuros Database Manager, an open source Java interface for the Neuros, Ogg files seem to be working fine.

Pretty darn cool.

Now I just have to:

  • Mow the grass with the 128mb player today
  • Get the 20GB Backpack working
  • Load it for my trip to Columbus this week
  • Get MyFi working for my drive to Green Bay next weekend
  • Listen to Oggs!

BBC – Dr. Who & Coupling

So the good news: The Daily Telegraph is reporting that the BBC is bringing back Dr. Who. That’s great news. It will be interesting to see if they use any CGI in it now – and let the debate begin on who the next Doctor will be.

And the bad news: Tried to watch Coupling last night. I lasted 5 minutes. It’s hard enough to get past the look of the actors being different from the BBC Coupling. The lines are the same – but they are delivered in such a different way.

I was impressed with the look of the set, very true to the original series. But the guy playing Jeff – one of the best things about the original Coupling is Jeff, not only the way he looks, but his quirkiness just seemed to be zapped out of him by the NBC version.

Ah well. Just can’t adapt to the change, I guess.

Star Wars on DVD – 2004!

The Digital Bits, one of the better DVD news sites on the web, is reporting in their Rumor Mill that the Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes IV – VI) will hit DVD for Christmas next year.

They report that Lucasfilm is so happy with the upcoming Indy box set, they want to do something quite similar (3 movies plus one extras disc).

According to the Digital Bits: “We’ve heard from a number of industry sources we trust (and who have proven their reliability in the past) in the last few weeks.”

And these are the re-released Special Edition forms of the movie — according to Lucasfilm, the originals don’t even exist anymore. Which, if true, is a shame, but I do understand Lucas’ wish for a definitive vision of his movies. (Even if Greedo shoots first now). It’s too bad they haven’t been preserved for history’s sake.

Berke's Back!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45450-2003Sep8.html

All hail the return of Opus!

Berkely Breathed, creator of Bloom County and Outland, is returning to Sunday comic’s with a new Sunday weekly this coming November.

2 years ago I started collecting all of the Bloom County books. Out of print, Berke never licensed them to keep printing (unlike Bill Waterson with Calvin & Hobbes). He had his reasons, and I respect them, but it was amazing re-reading them and seeing how many topics are still relevant – especially with the current administration.

The Washington Post has the story, as originally seen on Slashdot.

Oops, I did it again

Did anyone besides me watch the NFL preseason show tonight on ABC?

Britney Spears had to do the worst lip-syncing I’ve ever seen. At one point, she is trying to put the mic on a mic stand while putting a glove on her hand. Her voice / inflection never changed as her head moved back and forth from the mic.

She really looked like she wasn’t even trying. And at the end when she thanked the crowd, there was an almost noticeable pop from turning the mic on.