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Brand X Music
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Jun 28, 2011
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Brand X Music creates "beautifully composed, premium, orchestral music scored for the marketing of feature films, video games, television programs, commercials and all forms of internet broadcast." It's that nondescript, intense music that's in most movie trailers. Who knew this was an actual thing? #entertainment
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Onion joke depth
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May 6, 2011
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I love how The Onion pays such close attention to detail in their jokes. Like this recent video, which was talking about Obama befriending an elderly woman, where the stock ticker at the bottom of the screen displayed the following commodities: Frozen pig heads
Unleaded hogs
Live cattle
Feeder cattle
Horse sh**
Aluminum
Sculptures
Platinum
Spandex
Felt squares
Decent coffee
Bananas I don't want anymore The primary joke was the Obama story. The secondary joke was the news ticker with funny headlines. The tertiary joke was the commodities. That's dedication. #entertainment
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Video game after effects
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Apr 26, 2011
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One of the unexpected things that happens when you play realistic video games for hours and hours is that your real life starts looking somewhat similar to your game life. This can be a problem when said games include violence and other types of crime. This wasn't an issue with earlier games, since most days you don't find yourself encountering floating blocks of bricks with magical flashing coins. But newer games are so much more life-like, and sometimes it can be confusing whether you're still playing a game or not.
On a related side note, I refuse to use video games as an excuse for my actions, like those stupid kids who shoot people and blame it on video games, because that rationale is about as solid as reading a Superman comic and thinking you can jump off a building. Unless there are important parts of your brain missing, all people have that little check valve in their heads that helps them determine whether something is right or wrong. And most people use that check valve, regardless of what they see in movies or do in video games.
One example is from the Grand Theft Auto series, which is well-known for including many different types of crime and violence all in one game. One major component of the game (as referenced by the title) is the act of stealing cars. When you steal a car in the game, you typically drive it around until you crash into too many things and it blows up. So you hop a few curbs, hit a few streetlights, and then ditch your ride and get a new one. After playing the game for a while, I remember getting into my real life car one day in a parking lot and almost hopping a few curbs to get out quicker, before I realized that I was still making car payments and it wouldn't be wise to rack up more bills.
Another example is from Half-Life 2, which for some reason included a lot of carefully placed 55-gallon explosive fuel containers. Whenever you wanted some more bang for your buck, you'd simply wait until an enemy got close enough to one of the containers, then shoot the container until it blew up and killed your enemy. The problem with these fuel containers is that they look surprisingly similar to these floating cylinders scattered around the lake near my house to warn about depth or something. Every time I drive by them, I want to shoot at them, not because any of my "enemies" are nearby, but simply because I like blowing things up (in video games).
The final example (for now) is from the game Borderlands, which included a lot of swarming animals and bugs that liked to attack you indiscriminately. Early on, I would do my best to avoid these creatures because they were more trouble than they were worth, but as I got better I would kill things at random almost out of spite for previous attacks. I'd see a flock of flying bird-like animals and just shoot them all down for the heck of it. It turns out that compulsion followed me into real life, where I routinely see birds circling overhead and have a strong desire to shoot them out of the sky.
In conclusion, don't turn off that check valve. #entertainment
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Cows vs. sharks
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Mar 28, 2011
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As with many times in the past, today I gained valuable new information from Ripley's Believe It Or Not, which is found on the comics page of your local newspaper: Statistically, you're more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark. Cracked explains that it's more about the fact that people spend a lot of time with cows and not much time with sharks, rather than the fact that cows mistake you for food and try biting your legs off. #entertainment
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Beat deaf
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Mar 9, 2011
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Science News reports that researchers have identified a guy "as the first documented case of beat deafness, a condition in which a person can't feel music's beat or move in time to it." I knew a guy in college with the same condition. He would attempt to "air drum" to his favorite song on the radio, and I was always amazed at his total inability to follow any sort of rhythm. He just flailed his arms in a horrific randomized pattern. I never said anything about it at the time. Maybe someday they'll make a pill for it. (via Boing Boing) #entertainment
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Dogs barking at night
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Feb 24, 2011
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A recent Family Guy episode included a clip of Peter being kept awake all night by his barking dog Brian, except translated from dog language to human language: Dog 1: Hello? Hello?
Dog 2: Hello?
Dog 1: Are you a dog?
Dog 2: Yes!
Dog 1: I am also a dog!
Dog 2: Alright! I'm pretty sure this is really what happens. #entertainment
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Behind The Onion
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Feb 15, 2011
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A recent episode of This American Life had a cool segment about the headline-writing process at The Onion. Very cool behind-the-scenes stuff, similar to that On the Media piece. #entertainment
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Typos in books (1)
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Jan 18, 2011
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One of my unintentional talents involves effortlessly finding fault in others. Mostly that takes the form of being able to find at least ten mistakes in an average book, sometimes grammar, sometimes spelling. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is this: Don't writers, or editors, or publishers, or any of the other people involved in the process of producing a book use spell check? I can understand the presence of grammatical errors; machines can't catch them and you'd need several sets of eyes in order to find any mistakes. But spelling mistakes are incredibly easy to catch, ever since the advent of the 20-year-old technology of spell check. Please, book people, click on that little button with the "a-b-c" and a "check" symbol. #entertainment
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VCRs are dangerous (4)
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Jan 5, 2011
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Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, testifying to the House of Representatives in 1982: I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
However, if you are an advertiser who has paid $280,000 a minute to advertise, he feels a very large pain in his stomach as well as in his checkbook because it destroys the reason for free television, the erasure, the blotting out, the fast forwarding, the visual searching, the variable beta scans. The technology is there and I am one who has a belief that before the next few years the Japanese will have built into their machines an automatic situation that kills the commercial. (via MarketWatch)
First of all, what a crybaby. A technology that might take money out of the giant pockets of movie studios and advertising firms? Boo-hoo. Second, he was right. Broadcast television used to be free; VCRs probably played at least a small role in destroying free TV. #entertainment
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Description vs. reality
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Jan 4, 2011
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From a recent On the Media episode concerning descriptions of reality versus actual reality: And I would start out by asking you is anybody ever not making stuff up? When you pick up the newspaper and read about a news conference, let's say, somebody went to that news conference. You are not reading the entire transcript.
Something I often think about is Borges, the great Argentinean writer, who says that there are two universes. There is the universe of material reality, of bodies, of places, and there is the universe of words, and any attempt to shape a representation, of one in terms of the other is provisional at best. It is falling apart as we speak. It is something which he calls a fiction. #entertainment
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