Etcetera

Goin' to the Deerfield Fair

Roast Turkey Legs and Apple Crisp. Yum. Deerfield, NH.

Studio 60 pulls it off!

Third acts are the toughest thing in storytelling.

It takes a lot of talent to create good first and second acts, but it's done all the time. The really hard part is coming up with an ending which lives up to the setup.

Tonight's episode of Studio 60 was terrific. I was lukewarm about last week's first ep, but I figured they had to do a lot of explaining and introducing in the pilot, so let's wait and see. But #2 was definitely an Aaron Sorkin show. The dialogue, the fast pacing, the insider feel. It was great.

But I spent the second half of the show wondering if we were going to get to see this all-important "cold open". Or would they just fade to black and leave its greatness to our imagination.

But they showed us the open, and it was awesome.

More, I want more.

Six!

Today is the sixth anniversary of my first blog posting.

Take note that my second and fourth blog posts were about the TV show Survivor, and my third about the Redsox. Some things never change.

Sunday Scramble

On Sunday morning I awoke to discover that I was the victim of a major website snafu.

To the geek's eye, the site -- in fact, ALL my sites -- looked like one of those buildings which had collapsed into a pile of rubble.

I spent all day putting the pieces back together. It's almost there.

Survivor: Cook Islands Ep#2

I haven't watched the ep yet. But feel free to start talking about it in comments. I'll close my eyes.

Redsox clinch the AL East pennant... for the Yankees

The Yanks magic number was 1 going into last night's games. They lost. But the Redsox lost too so the Yankees win the AL East.

The "magic number" for the sox to be eliminated from the wild-card is 2 vs Twins. It's looking like the AL playoffs will be Detroit, Minnesota, and Oakland.

It was a season with such promise. Ah well. We have a saying here in Redsox Nation:

"Wait 'til next year."

Where does he come up with these things?

Ze Frank has decided that this is the week for all his listeners to dress up their vacuum cleaners and send in pictures of them. This could get ugly.

Say it ain't so, Willy

Willie Nelson is a drug user? Who would'a thought.

MSNBC:

Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop Monday morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said.

New Aaron Sorkin show tonight

The premiere of Studio 60 is tonight. Looking forward to it.

Redsox Sweep Yankees!!!

OK, so it was just a double-header sweep. But, considering how badly things went a month ago, us winning 3 out of 4, on their home-field, is nothing to sneeze at.

Hey, we don't have much left to crow about this season in Redsox Nation. I'll take what I can get.

Here comes 51!

Thinking outside the box

According to this story in AvWeb...

[Getting on my soapbox: AvWeb is a great news source, they do a terrific job of covering aviation, but their website drives me crazy 'cause they do a terrible job of providing permalinks to their content. It annoys us bloggers, and hurts themselves by reducing the number of "long-tail" visitors.]

... this jerk, who led police on a car chase across an airport, is being charged with "Using A Device To Disrupt Service".

Maybe we can get rid of the ridiculous airport security by charging the x-ray checkers with the same thing.

FYI, here's the AvWeb news item:

A man who allegedly led police on a high-speed chase on a runway at South Florida International Airport could face up to 20 years in jail. Jack Brems has been indicted on charges of Using A Device To Disrupt Service after an Aug. 8 incident in which a vehicle was chased by police around the airport, ducking under aircraft, including one taking off…

Survivor: Cook Islands Ep#1 "Marooned"

The peanut gallery has already posted a lot of interesting comments over in the GEWF forum.

For the most part I felt the "race" thing only became an issue in that some of the tribe members themselves had issues with their own race. In the long run I think that this will be no more of a thing than young-old and men-women has been in Survivor all along.

I loved the way Jeff did the intro commentary while the chaos of the abandon ship sequence was going on all around him.

Spoilers after the jump.

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Ozzy: "I don't want to be a leader."

Someone: "...as long as we stay fed and happy with each other." !!! duh!

"Cao boi" I wonder if anyone knows how this is spelled, or do they think he calls himself "Cowboy"

Sekou thinks he's the leader. That's always a good strategy.

Flicka let the chicken's escape. <I'm shaking my head in amazement>

At the challenge the chicken thief got singled out. Target on his back now.

[Aside: The commercial for the "Happy Feet" penguin movie looked like fun.]

Jeff said the Exile Island immunity idol will be good "up through the Final Four" Does that mean it can be used at the FF TC? Is that the way it worked last time? I thought it expired after the TC that made them four.

Interesting that the hiki tribe immediately divided themselves by sex. In comments, Sherm said something about black men not marrying the mothers of their children. I've always thought this was not a racial thing, but the economic result of the early welfare system making it more lucrative for the father to disappear. My sense has always been that "African" cultures have strong natural family bonds, which were shattered by the slave economy and the welfare state.

"You are our weakest link" I'm surprised they left that in. Jeff even repeated it in the wrap-up.

Sekou voted out. The lesson here is, don't declare yourself to be the leader.

One last interesting thing. Jeff gave them fire at the end of TC. Usually they let them struggle for awhile. Have the powers decided that the no-fire struggle is boring? Or is there some other reason to make sure they have water from the get-go?

Technorati admin stuff

I'm trying to get the Technorati system to notice this blog. They say if I create a post with the following link in it, it will make this happen. So here it it.

Technorati Profile

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Survivor New Season Premiere Tonight

The infamous tribes-divided-by-race season starts tonight.

My sister heard a rumor, which neither of us has been able to confirm, that there is a player in this season, who becomes so offensive that the players go to the producers and ask him/her to be removed without even waiting for the next tribal council. If you've heard anything about this, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting page about this season. They seem be to be planning to do the sort of record keeping for the season that I've tried in the past. I'm NOT doing that stuff this time. So this may be a substitute.

UPDATE2: Oh yeah, these folks do a good job of documenting the season. Here's what they did for the previous season.

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We're even more safe than we were before.

I wasn't going to post this Daily Show clip about syntax in the post-9/11 world such as the President's recent assurances that we are "safer, but not safe".

It's a little long, but this line toward the end made me laugh out loud.

George W Bush is the right man to lead us in the era [after] whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next.

..||..

Ze Frank remembers. Me too.

Home from PodCamp

I had a great weekend at the PodCamp conference in Boston. Many attendees have posted pics over on flickr. Here's one that shows me at the pre-party on Friday night.

...the dirt was somehow sacred...

In a serious moment, Ze Frank remembers 9/11. One passage that stood out for me.

The parked cars were clean that morning, the last time they would be for weeks to come, as the wind shifted the smoke plume directly over my neighborhood.

The ash that covered the windshields looked like a fine snow, except for the scraps of paper, some of which contained a legible word or two. The cars were dirty, but the dirt was somehow sacred, and even the schoolkids resisted the tempation to write "clean me" in the passenger side windows.

Listen to the whole thing.

Fairy Helpers

Here's a video from Lisa Nova. The first part is a little heavy-handed, and I almost stopped watching, but around 4:25, it becomes really terrific. Fast forward if you need to. It's worth it.

[via Steve Garfield]

Not Fredonia

Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic strip, has been doing some serious thinking (no kidding, no jokes here) about a better strategy for the middle-east.

When I’m not drawing comics, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to bring peace to the Middle East and end terrorism. Today I’ll describe my best (craziest) idea so far.

Part One. And a followup.

Redsox all beat up

Story in today's Boston Globe about how many injuries the Redsox have suffered this season, especially recently. I'm always reluctant to blame the kind of "slump" we've had on injuries, but maybe that's it.

"I don't think I'll see anything like this again," said third baseman Mike Lowell. "This started out so promising. We had such high hopes here for so long."

Until everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in what will go down as one of the most injury-ravaged seasons in Sox history.

Did the crow bring us bad luck?

A new "curse"?

Boston Dirt Dogs summarizes some of the analysis.