Drinking whiskey clear!
All about what’s on the boob tube!
Rose Byrne is an Australian actress. She’s interesting, in that I first remember seeing her on the new FX series Damages, but then she started appearing everywhere: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, 28 Weeks Later, and even the new sci-fi flick Sunshine. Here’s hoping we see more of her soon!
Check me out:
You too can be “Simpsonized” – just go to this site and upload a picture of yourself. The picture needs to be at least 640×480 and for best results it should be a close up of your face. You can also add a “Springfield scene” to the background if you wish. Registration at the site is not mandatory, but registering will allow you to save your image online and come back to it at a later time.
So – what do you guys think of the Simpsonized Jim?
Alton Brown is the beloved host of Good Eats, one of the most popular shows on Food Network. His show is based on molecular gastronomy, which is the “application of scientific principles to culinary practices”. As a result, his show is usually half traditional cooking show and half Mr. Wizard’s World. People enjoy the show not only for its “wacky” style, but also because Mr. Brown teaches sound scientific principles that easily carry over to everyday cooking. For example, if Alton was making a spaghetti sauce, he’d show the scientific reasons why the aromatics needed to be added first, and why some form of alcohol needs to be added to the tomatoes to unlock alcohol-soluble flavors. Thus, even if you don’t use Alton’s exact recipe, you still learn how to make your own dishes properly. Which is good.
But there’s a lot you might not know about Mr. Brown and his show:
He was originally a cameraman! Actually, a lot of people know this. But did you know that he was a steadicam operator for the Spike Lee film School Daze? Did you know that he was the director of photography for R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” video?
He changed careers midstream! One day, Alton Brown decided that the quality of American cooking shows was lacking. Having little cooking experience, Brown decided to enroll in the New England Culinary Institute. He also considered himself to be a poor student of math and science, so he also read a considerable amount on both subjects whilst enrolled at the cooking school. So while it wasn’t much of a leap to go from cameraman to cooking show host, he had to spend a considerable amount of time learning about the subject matter!
In the world of online video file trading, a “PREAIR” is a video file of a television show that has yet to air in its home market. Most frequently, PREAIRs are ripped from “screener” DVDs sent out to television critics, although this is not always the case. Some PREAIRs are leaked from production or special effects studios. Sometimes studios even make PREAIRs freely available: the first four episodes of season six of Fox’s thriller 24 were sold as a special “preview DVD”; these were released online as PREAIRs, even though they lacked any sense of cachet, since they were available to anyone with $14.98 and a way to get to Target or Wal Mart.
A veritable flood of PREAIRs began hitting the scene late last week. PREAIRs of the first two episodes of the new seasons of existing Showtime series, like Dexter, Brotherhood and Weeds are available, as well as a PREAIR of the first episode of the new David Duchovny series Californication. ABC’s new show Pushing Daisies, NBC’s new action\comedy Chuck, and Fox’s new The Sarah Connor Chronicles are also available, amongst others.
These PREAIRs are available just about anywhere torrent files are offered. If you have no idea what “Bittorrent” is, or where you might find such files… lemme know and I’ll hook you up!
Here’s Fox News’ Shepard Smith’s infamous on-air flub during a story about Jennifer Lopez. The story was about how fake her “Jenny from the block” phase was, and how her childhood neighbors in the Bronx didn’t care for her any more. He was supposed to say her neighbors would “rather give her a curb job than a block party”… only he said that they’d rather give her a curb job instead of… another kind of job! Even though the clip is a couple of years old, it’s *still* funny every time I see it! And now you can too, by downloading the file here. (NOTE: file is a 1MB zipped WMA).
OK, so maybe jimcofer.com is the last site on the entire Internet to get the news about this, but hey – better late than never, right? It seems that Pat O’Brien – famed sportscaster and host of The Insider and former host of Access Hollywood – has a wee bit of a problem with alcohol, cocaine and sexual harassment. It appears that Pat once harassed a woman via voicemail, repeatedly making obscene requests and telling her what nasty things he wanted to do with her – including getting it on with another female friend of O’Brien’s and “getting some coke”. Of course, this woman wasn’t stupid – she recorded all of his voicemails – which have leaked onto the Internet and can be downloaded here. (NOTE: file is a 2.4MB zipped WMA). Let this be a lesson to all the would-be sleazebags out there – be careful who you harass!
What: Time Warner Cable’s newest digital set-top box.
Where: Available in Charlotte and elsewhere, contact your local cable provider for details.
How Much: As low as $6.95/month
It you don’t know what a “DVR” is, you’re behind the times. It stands for “Digital Video Recorder” and popular DVRs like TiVo and ReplayTV record your favorite TV shows on a computer hard drive instead of a tape. Given the massive capacities of today’s hard drives, DVRs can record dozens of shows on the hard drive, instead of a measly 8 hours on a T-160 VHS tape. And programming them is a breeze compared to a VCR. Easy to read on-screen menus – much like the channel guide you already have with your current analog or digital cable – have replaced the cryptic commands associated with setting the timer on your VCR.
For years, conservatives railed against what they called the “liberal media”. The liberals were strangely quiet about it… that is, until the birth of Fox News. Now they lampoon the idea that a “liberal media” even exists. Imagine my surprise a few days ago when MSNBC published this list of political contributions by journalists. There are dozens upon dozens of names on the list, and guess what? Most of them have a “D” by their name! Surprise, surprise surprise! In fact, if you remove the few names on the list from “known conservative” publications like the Washington Times or New York Post, and if you remove the names from journalists so high up on the food chain that they feel compelled to give to both parties… what you have left is a sea of Democratic campaign contributions.
Come on folks – you can’t tell me that a bunch of people, 85-90% of whom contributed to the Democratic party, can’t make up a “liberal media”. That just doesn’t make any sense! So read the list and tell me what you think.
For the record, I’m a registered Republican, but am actually more of a Libertarian. I was actually a card-carrying Libertarian for several years, but got sick of being lonely on election night. In any case, I’d side with fiscal conservatives of any party before I’d side with the socially liberal ones.
From 2004, when Fox canceled Wonderfalls:
Well, Fox has done it again! I have been a loyal viewer of the Fox Network for years, mainly due to their edgy comedies and “non-stuffy” dramas. Of course, my loyalty has been tested for the past couple of years, as Fox seems determined to become the “bad reality TV channel”. I enjoy a lot of their footage-based reality shows like World’s Wildest Police Chases and World’s Stupidest People Caught on Tape, but some of the “original” reality shows they offer – like Who Wants To Marry A Gay Midget Millionaire? and When Animals Attack Magicians – just push the envelope into bad taste instead of edgy television.
Advances in technology are rapidly changing the way we “consume” entertainment. MP3 players with gigabytes of space on them mean we can take around entire jukeboxes in a player smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Satellite radio means we can get non-stop music or uncensored talk radio from anywhere in the country. Using my PC, I can record audio streams from thousands of radio stations anywhere in the world and burn them to an audio or MP3 CD for listening later in my car (or on a portable player).
But one of the biggest changes that will come is to the way we view television. Already DVRs like TiVo, ReplayTV and Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer are making just about all TV “commercial free” in a sense. There are very few shows that Lisa and I watch “live” these days as it’s just far more enjoyable to record it and use our DVR’s “super fast-forward” feature to skip through commercial breaks in around 5 seconds. Even for shows that we watch “live” – like 24 and Lost – we typically wait until around 20 minutes into the show before watching so that we can skip through all the commercial breaks and still finish the show at the usual time. And the easy-to-use interfaces on these DVRs mean that even Mom & Dad can record their favorite shows – either a single show or an entire series – and watch them at a time of their choosing.