Commercial Interruption

Okay, this is a bit of a random, stupid thing, but it's been bugging me for a while, so I need to talk about it.

There's a commercial for Chili's that I see every time I'm hanging out at my friends Tim and Desiree's place. It's your typical advertisements for one of those type restaurants, but whenever they show the exterior of the building, it's raining.

Why? I don't get it.

This isn't real rain. It's pretty obvious that this is man made rain which means they had to plan it out in advance that it was going to be raining.

Tim says it's supposed to be a regional ad. Portraying somewhere like Seattle.

Desiree says it's supposed to show comfort. Like Chili's is a place to come and feel safe.

They're both good answers, but nothing else about the commercial seems to imply either of those things. Advertisers aren't idiots. They drop millions of dollars into research on how to manipulate people's minds. I'm sure there was a team of psychologists who spent months plotting out that there should be rain outside every shot of Chili's in this commercial.

I wish I knew why.

To me it just makes it seem like the people aren't running into Chili's because they can't wait to dig their teeth into some baby back ribs. They're running into Chili's to get out of the rain. It could be a T.G.I.Fridays' or a Denny's or a Post Office. They just don't want to get soaked.

Guys with Skills

I didn't like Napoleon Dynamite when I first saw it in a bridal suite at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Vegas. Sure it made me laugh a lot, but I kind of felt like it was a rip off.

Since it came out on DVD, I've had a strong urge to see it again. It finally grew to the point where I bought it last night on my way over to Tim and Desiree's house. After the second viewing, I love it. I love it for all the reasons I didn't like it before.

There's no real plot. No character development. It's just a series of events.

That's what makes it so great. It's just a chunk of a life in a very specific world, and that world is the world I grew up in: lined notebooks full of drawings, metal folding chairs at high school dances, gravel roads leading to houses in the middle of nowhere.

I tried to explain that to Tim and Desiree (more her because she'll keep asking if she doesn't get it). I guess it's just one of those things from living in the middle of nowhere. By the time pop culture reaches you, it's stale. I think satellite TV and the internet have gone a long way to bringing the Midwest up to speed, but there was this sort of timeless gap when I was a kid.

They still found the movie funny but I think for different reasons then I did.

I just love how real it is.

I need an iPod

It's amazing how much music can effect me.

This morning I was feeling pretty crappy. It had a lot to do with a girl who was more interested in a goofy-look Meisner student than me.

On my drive to work I hear the combo mix of that Green Day song and Wonderwall by Oasis. Then I walked into 7-11 to get my bottle of water (new diet), and Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve was playing. When I got back into my car, Indie 103.1 played Peek a Boo by Souixsie & the Banshees. Some of those songs have a connected memory. Others are just good songs.

But you know what? I'm feeling pretty good.

Committed

Last night I was stuck working on the floor here at the hospital. I dislike doing it and try my best to get out of it (to the point of sometimes calling in sick). But last night I couldn't find any good reason to escape, so I ended up working.

The patients usually go to bed around 9pm, leaving me with two hours to fill before the end of my shift. On Tuesdays, I watch Law and Order: SVU. About 9:45 I settled down with a bag of popcorn and some Gatorade and flipped it on NBC. Being fifteen minutes early, I caught the end of the sitcom leading into my Dick Wolf fix.

The show was called Committed. I'm going to leave a little space for you to come up with your own joke about watching a show called Committed in a mental hospital.








Done? Okay.

I'm not going to say this show was awesome and my new must see tv, but I have to say I was impressed by the story. Basically it was the "morning after" for the show's two characters: Nate (Josh Cooke) and Marni (Jennifer Finnigan). They attempt to have a romantic time but run into Marni's father who abandoned her as a child. Now come on. That's a heck of a plot. The jokes weren't insanely hilarious (there was a good bit about leaving messages as the pick up names for coffee and sandwiches) and there was a horrible side story (the respect you gain by carrying a baby bag), but I admire a show that doesn't get stuck in the same plot lines that every show goes through.

Like I said, I don't think this is going to become required watching for me. Checking out the site for the show (http://www.nbc.com/Committed/about/) makes me a little nervous (Marni has a squatter ex clown living in her apartment?). But I do give the show credit for not being one of the countless crappy sitcoms which are opening the door for reality tv to seep in.

Keep trying.

Comic Monday

Thursday night, Pat and I hit Meltdown, and I purchased about $40 worth of comic books. I'm trying to catch up. I was buying big for a while. I picked up any series that looked that interesting. Then I funneled down to just the absolute necessities: the Batman titles going trough War Games (a let down), Flash (my current favorite), and the Identity Crisis (that last issue was horrible).

Now I'm trying again to find the titles that I want to be following for the time being. I'm picking up a bunch of titles to see how they read. Plus I'm catching up on what I missed in the Batman family. I've generally avoided the Marvel Universe, but I picked up some titles when I was back in Iowa on the urging of Joe, my comic book mentor. I followed up two this week, and they're the first to books I read from my $40 spree.

New Avengers #2: Breakout Part II - I have never liked the Avengers. They just seemed like a crappy version of the Justice League. None of them had very distinct personalities. But I'm enjoying this book. It might be the massive scale of this first story. Matt Murdock and his best friend/law partner Froggy are visiting a prison for metahuman criminals guarded by Luke Cage and a former Spiderwoman to meet with a guy called the Sentry. There's an attack on the facility, and Captain America and Spiderman come to help. Issue two had Spiderman thrown into a mob of his worst enemies and severely beaten, Carnage trying to devour Luke Cage and Murdock, and this Sentry guy starts doing something. I guess what I like is the sense of peril. You know none of these characters are going to die, but there is a sense of peril and pain. You do feel that they could lose, which is why I stopped liking the Avengers in the first place. They seemed invincible. And who wants to read that?

Invincible Ironman #2: Extremis Part II - I've been iffy on Warren Ellis as a writer for a while. Transmetropolitian seemed like just a bad mix of Hunter S. Thompson and Frank Miller's Elektra stuff. Planetary was good, but I didn't get very far into it. But there's something about this book that I love. Maybe it's the mixture of his writing and Adi Granou's art. They work together to make this great naturalism. I don't think I've ever purchased an Ironman book before issue one of this series. The character is so mature and real that he doesn't seem to fit in the world of comic books. A millionaire industrialist recovering alcoholic who defends with a mechanical suit to make up for developing weapons for the first part of his career. I read a little on the message boards about this issue. Some people complain that Tony Stark never suits up as Ironman in the entire issue. The complain about too much character development and not enough action. Well, go read Claremont's X-Men crapfest or buy a collection of Stan Lee garbage. Leave this for people with more than an 8th grade education.

Wow, got a little mean at the end. Message Boards will do that to you.

I also picked up the Legends of the Dark Night issues of the Riddler's reinvention (which I'm not looking forward to), a Robin/Batgirl cross over I haven't heard about, and the next JLA from Busiek. I'll bore you to death with my opinions of them once I've read them.

I'm a Big Dork

I'd better get that piece of information out there now. Especially seeing as my post tomorrow will most likely be about the comic books I'm buying tonight. I'm a dork. Full fledged. Not chic dork. The kind buys t-shirts with pictures from old Nintendo games on it. I'm a comic book reading, video game playing, Star Trek watching (though I've never written Fan Fiction) dork.

Well, this dork here was randomly cycling though blogs, and I came across this.

Now I can't get it out of my brain. The Curta Calculator. It seems so incredibly cool to me. Curt Herzstark came up with this little machine that does multiplication and division. All these little gears and switches. It reminds me of a genre known as "Steampunk." It's kind of period science fiction. Cast iron robots. Coal burning space ships. Cool stuff like that. The most well known (and worst) example is "Wild Wild West." Loved the concept, hated the execution.

Thinking about the Curta Calculator reminds me of the clock in the pediatrician's office I used to go to way back when. It worked with marbles. The number of marbles on one shelf represented hours, then next was minutes, and the next was seconds. Every time the sixtieth second marble fell, all the second marbles fell and one marble got added to the minute shelf. The best was to have an appointment for 1:00 p.m. One hundred and thirty-two marbles drop, leaving just one on the shelves.

I checked eBay and Curta Calculators are running around $800. Maybe I'll just get a poster.

Air waves

I'm not really reading anything right now. I have a copy of "the Story of O" that I carry around at times, but it's not the kind of thing you can whip out on the subway (which I don't ride. I pollute).

But I can talk about what I'm listening to. Yesterday, I listened to Indie 103.1 fm online (www.indie1031.fm). Today, I'm listening to Air America Radio (www.airamericaradio.com).

Now I've done a spattering of radio jobs, and I feel no qualms (oh, that's one I need to save for Scrabble) about judging the on air personalities.

I love Indie 103.1. I think it by far plays the best music in Los Angeles, and for the only man without an iPod, that's very important. Indie went forever without announcers. Slowly they've been picking up more and more. First was Steve Jones for Jonesy's Jukebox. Harmony in my Head with Henry Rollins. Camp Freddy. I love all these shows because the hosts are not DJs. I'm not sure who Indie's afternoon guy is, but he's a DJ. He says the names of the songs, makes the station announcements, and is generally, boring. Jonesy or Rollins or the other guys are great because they talk about the songs. Give some history or express their personal opinions/memories of them. You might say, "But Andrew, they're big rock stars. They have it easier." And I'd say shut the hell up, I'm talking here. It might be more instinctive for them to talk about music this way, but anyone can do it.

In my car Indie 103.1 shares a button with KROQ. I hate the announcers on KROQ. It's like some man in a suit who got to be the head of the station because he sold the most advertising handed down a memo saying "You can't say this or this or this or this and definitely not this or this. Now be edgy." These people are so generic and removable. Except for Loveline. I still enjoy Loveline.

As for Air America Radio, I'm about to turn it off just because I can no longer stand Randi Rhodes. I didn't really understand why conservatives hated liberals so much until I started listening to Randi Rhodes. She's unbendable, she's loud, and she's just rude. I like Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher. Franken keeps a good balance between entertainment and information. Sometimes his background in comedy comes over a little too strong. Jokes out weigh message, but I'd rather have that then a woman yelling at a caller until she simply disconnects from them. Arguing an issue by just saying how stupid your opposition is falls far from the power rhetoric can have.

But then again, they're on the air, and I'm sitting in my office at the mental hospital.

Maybe I'll put in a CD.

He didn't mention the death rays

Okay, this is Andrew. Blogger #2. I'm the guy with the blogging experience, so I must say pay no attention to what Patrick has told you. "Self-indulgent?" No. Never. Blogs are made for the reader. What, do you think this some sort of futuristic narcissism ? The adult equivalent of shouting "hey, look at me!" Never. At least I wouldn't admit that if it were true. Gotta keep some things behind the curtain.

What were doing here is a public service. We're supplying you with our opinions so you don't have to bother getting opinions of your own. And we'll also be putting up links to stupid funny videos.

Now that all this crap is out of the way... do I have anything to say?