Insanity Part 2.0

Is it just me, or does Lewis Black’s new show, “the Root of All Evil” use a laugh track?

It’s not that funny of a show (contrary to the show name, it’s two comedian guests who do most of the talking) to begin with really. What’s more, if you look at the audience in the background while the comedians are delivering their bits, it doesn’t seem like the audience is really reacting all that much. As in, there’s no where near the amount of hooting, hollering, or even laughing compared to what’s playing back on the audio.

Anyone else notice something like that?

As a reminder, Futurama just came out with their new direct-to-DVD movie, “Futurama – Bender’s Big Score“. For a show that thrived and returned off of DVD sales and good ratings, be sure to throw your consumer vote of support by buying your own copy or legally renting it if you intend on seeing it!

Muslims rip ‘24’ for renewed terror role – Television – MSNBC.com

When I first heard about this, I thought “I suppose they have a point,” but now after the season’s progressed a bit, I now understand Fox’s reaction.

TLDR version: Season 4 and 6 both feature prominent Muslim characters that are evil. CAIR, among other groups, have taken issue to this as they believe it is unfair. In Season 4, Fox had Kiefer do a 30 second (or maybe 1 minute) PSA where he basically said “Not all Muslims are evil, and most American Muslims are actually good! Please don’t prejudice.” Fairly pointless as it aired only once and during the commercial break, so it probably wasn’t seen by a fair amount of people. Anyway, fast forward to Season 6, and Fox has chosen not to do the same thing. In the context of the plot as it stands now though, it makes total sense.

SPOILERS HERE! Stop reading if you don’t want either Season 4 or Season 6 to be spoiled for you. Season 6 spoilers are only current up to the current episode, episode 6.

Season 4′s main villain was a straight up Muslim, and he was the one leading the show. Season 6 looked like it was going to be this way at the time the article was written, but since then the plot’s taken a turn. The story has taken a turn away from the Muslim villain but now pretty much follows Jack and his hijinks. Fox probably decided that they didn’t need to apologize this time around because the new main villains are once again middle-aged white guys! To be precise, the big villains appear to be part of Jack’s family, and Jack’s not above torturing them either (you may evoke some love for Bauer here).

In other words, why bother apologizing for a theme that’s not actually in the plot?

I’m still not enamored with other aspects of this season though. Way too much crappy politicizing, something that 24 is not particularly good at. Let’s boil down complex arguments into trite snappy comebacks between a few different smarmy characters! Yeah!

Another note on television: 30 Rock is an awesome show. Highly recommended. Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, and Alec Baldwin are all excellent. Procure episodes from iTunes, Tivo, or your other digital video source of choice if you get a chance.

NOTE: Don’t read any of this if you haven’t seen any of 24 and wish to. There is a non-character-specific spoiler for season 1 in the first paragraph, and the list discusses events occurring early on in Season 6.

24 has a rich history of the variety of computers on the show being carefully placed and selected. In season 1, the mole characters were using PCs (Dells to be specific) while all the good characters (such as Jack) were all using Macs. No idea if Apple paid Fox for this, but I seem to recall reading that the producers like Macs, so I personally think it was free.
In seasons 4 and 5, CTU was pretty much all HPs.

In season 6 though, CTU’s IT department seems to have loosened up their computer purchasing requirements.

• Chloe, a perennial good character (and lovable for her awkwardness), has what is either a 23″ or 20″ Apple Cinema Display on her desk and uses a MacBook Pro for a notebook.
  
• Morris also has a MacBook Pro visible in various conference rooms.
• In episode 3, Jack is using a Panasonic Toughbook.
  
• In episode 3, a terrorist appears to be using a Compaq of some variety.
  
• Various other characters have Dells visible. Some have either a 2007WFP or 2407WFP on their desks and then some others have Dell notebooks, likely Latitudes.

In case someone was wondering, yes, I do have a slight bit of extra time on my hands at the moment. I just thought it was interesting 24 decided to expand their machines to more than one company for once

I’m sitting here at my campus job, missing my cable TV and 24-hour news channels (which I normally loathe). So what’s a fellow to do other than hitting Reload on CNN.com repeatedly? Why, look for live streaming video of course!

What are your options? CNN.com is quite proud of their Pipeline offering, maybe that’s good!

Nope. Pipeline sucks. A lot. You may think you’re getting CNN’s cable show streamed live to the Internet, but you’re actually getting something else. One of their “pipes” is “America Votes 2006″ but it’s entirely a web-only feed, with anchors that I’ve never seen before (their C-team?) and are even worse at repeating information than CNN TV usually is. If I were to take a guess, I’d say that they’re on about a 15 minute loop with nearly the exact same material. That’s worse than CNN Headline News, for those of you keeping score, and the whole point of that network is to be deliberately on a 30 minute loop! Their set also looks incredibly fake, with this entirely digital look to it that looks awful. Occasionally they switch to some segment from CNN TV but it’s only for a minute or two at a time before they switch back, and they’re not even above repeating those clips too!

What’s more, every half hour or so they switch to some camera of Congress’s building with some electric guitar version of “Star Spangled Banner” (Jimi Hendrix’s version?). They stick to this feed for nearly a whole minute, which is totally ridiculous when you consider that NOTHING IS HAPPENING THERE. It almost seems like filler for commercials, but remember, it’s web-only! There are no commercials! There’s absolutely no reason for that segment to be there! But don’t forget, it’s LIVE, as that helpful indicator in the top left tells us.

CBS News seems to have no live coverage at all. Whatever.

ABC News has some live coverage, but it’s a similar web-only thing with never-heard-of anchors (Charlie Gibson, where are you?!) on “ABC News Now.” Pass.

NBC News doesn’t seem to have any coverage, but their sister network MSNBC does, and this is where we have a winner. MSNBC is streaming all of their network cable coverage online (minus commercials), which is exactly what I’m looking for. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Windows Media format and only appears to work in Windows. Even though I have Flip4Mac installed, they essentially give me a “not available” message, after conveniently playing a commercial I can’t skip. If you’re on a PC though (and there is a Dell here at work), it works pretty well. Kudos to MSNBC for at least putting forth the effort, though boo for not having Mac support. If I could make a suggestion, it’d be to not make it such Windows-centric, as I even had trouble playing it in Firefox before I switched to IE. With a name like MSNBC though, I can’t say it was unexpected.

My advice? Completely skip CNN Pipeline. It’s a waste of your time and money.

In case you haven’t heard, Fox has cut short Arrested Development’s 3rd season down to 13 episodes. Unforunately, this sounds the death knell for a show that’s been on the chopping block for a while now, which is a damn shame. However, it’s my belief that purchasing the DVDs is the best feedback you can possibly give Fox that you actually like the show, not to mention that you get to own a copy of the best show on TV! Watch the pilot and you’ll be hooked, trust me.

Buy both episodes for $32 right now. Add both to your cart and the discount should be applied.