Dark Side of the Carton

This is the space where I should be talking about My Name is Earl, The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, and CSI. Thanks to our wonderful power company I am not. You see, my power was out for nearly 3 hours beginning at 6:30 pm today. That means no shows for me to watch today. I’ll have to dl them or wait for them to be available on the Live Marketplace later this week.

Nintendo sent over the new Zelda game, Phantom Hourglass, and it had a nifty bit of swag to accompany it. This beautiful hourglass emblazoned with the game’s logo on top and bottom. The premise behind it is that it only takes 10 minutes to see why the game is so amazing. I’ll be the judge of that, but I think someone goofed as mine only timed out at less than 5 minutes of sand. Below are pics of the swag, but if you want to check out my first impressions of the game, head on over to SBG.

Wednesday night is a big TV night for us with Criminal Minds, CSI: NY, and the new Grey’s Anatomy spin-off, Private Practice. This season of Criminal Minds is going to be a bit different with Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) leaving the show and Hotch’s future up in the air. They already lost a main character when Elle went nuts and now they are set to lose 2 more. I think Morgan, Reid, JJ, and Garcia can carry the show with the help of Prentiss and whoever else steps up, but it’s definitely going to shake up the formula that the show previously had. I’m not too worried about it and I’ll keep watching even if Gideon and Hotch get the boot.

CSI: NY is the third spin-off in the CSI series and is quite good. I like it way more than CSI: Miami, but it’s just a hair behind the original for me. I didn’t exclusively watch the season premiere last night because I was too busy checking my eyelids for holes, but it seemed to be a good episode. This is one of those shows that I don’t mind missing and more often than not my wife watches without me. Still a good solid show though.

We didn’t get a chance to check out Private Practice yet so I’ll update this post today or tomorrow after we’ve gotten to watch it.

[UPDATE] So we finally had a chance to check out Private Practice and I kind of like it. It’s got a different feel than GA, but it’s good. It’s more lighthearted and fun feeling. We’ll see how next weeks episode plays out.

Criminal Minds - Must Watch
CSI: NY - Must Watch
Private Practice - Must Watch

The only show that I am currently checking out this season that airs on Tuesday nights is House. I got to the party late with House so I’ve missed a lot of the back story on why he’s such an ass, but I do enjoy the relational dynamics that the show brings to the table. If you missed the end of last season, Dr. House lost all 3 members of his team through various events. He’s now going it alone and on a mission to prove to everyone that he can do it alone. Quite entertaining and still a show I’ll keep recording. It’ll be interesting to see how this season plays out.

House - Must Watch

I like LEGOs. I always have. My brother and I had a disproportionately large number of LEGO sets growing up. They are mostly long gone now, aside from a few Star Wars sets I picked up at LEGOLAND in California a few years back. There is just something innately fun about putting LEGO sets together. It can’t be explained. I digress.

The real point of this post is to talk about the LEGO set that Gizmodo got their hands on today. I would venture to call this the Ultimate LEGO set. With over 5,000 pieces and a 4 pound ring bound manual, this set won’t be something you throw together in an afternoon.

At $500, this is not meant for the casual brick builder, but for the die hard. Many of the first run of this set were preordered over 5 months ago and are just now going out to consumers. The gallery at Gizmodo has some pretty sweet pictures of the set.

I’ll be passing on this as I can think of much better things to spend $500 on, but it sure would be awesome to have this set. I’d probably forget a brick like on step 10 and have to start over.

Despite running what I would consider a fairly successful gaming website, I was kind overlooked by the powers that be for a copy of Halo 3 before launch. That said, my wife picked up a copy of Halo 3 for us today at Costco for $49.99, not a bad price by the way. After putting the kids to bed, we jumped on the 360 to get a little co-op campaign going. After ignoring many invites, sorry guys, we got underway.

So far, I am digging just about everything about Halo 3. Getting started was a little confusing as launching co-op campaign uses the multiplayer lounge concept and it threw me for a loop until I realized what I was doing. In game, the gameplay mechanics are fundamentally the same as previous games. New weapons, new vehicles, and better graphics are what make this a new Halo.

I haven’t gone online for any MP action since the beta so I can’t comment on that aspect of the game yet, but I hope to do that sometime this week. Maybe you’ll see me online… and maybe you won’t.

So despite the fact that last night was one of the bigger events in the gaming industry, I hung at the house with the family and had some pizza. After the kids went to bed, we checked out a few of the new shows starting up this fall. You see, the networks have finally realized there is a big demographic out there that they have neglected. They are referring to this demo as the “geek” demographic. Based on what I saw last night, geek translates into “above average intellect in the fields of math, science, and computing.”

First on the list was The Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory stars Kaley Cuoco, who played the late John Ritter’s daughter in 8 Simple Rules … for Dating My Teenage Daughter. The premise of the show is simple; cute girl moves in across the hall from 2 uber-dorks, they meet, hilarity ensues. Out of the gate, the show set itself up to fail with a laugh track that was going off every 2.5 seconds and geek humor that seemed to fly from high level math jokes to computers. As the show went on, the laugh track seemed to cut way back and the jokes had a better flow to them.

It’s almost as if they were afraid that if they didn’t go over the top nobody would watch the show. They went too over the top and almost ruined the pilot. They got 4 solid laughs out of me and ended on a high note. I’ll tune in to the 2nd episode to see how it turned out. After all, pilots almost always suck.

Next up, we checked out Chuck. The only thing I knew about this show was that a flash ad somewhere said it would be funny. How’s that for reinforcing the fact that internet advertising works? At any rate, Chuck works for “Buy More” aka Best Buy as the head of the Geek Squad, I mean the Nerd Herd. Chuck is a down and out geek that lives with his sister and has no luck with girls. He obsesses over a girl that dumped him for his college roommate, who happens to be engineer turned CIA operative. This friend is a rogue agent who sends him an encrypted file of images that contain tons of government secrets. Chuck opens the file and now has all the secrets stored in his head. After his computer is destroyed, his mind is the only copy of these secrets.

With CIA and NSA operatives fighting over him, Chuck helps them diffuse a bomb in the middle of a dinner presentation by a high ranking military official and solidifies his value to both organizations. Chuck had a nice mix of action and humor that really worked well. The actor playing Chuck struck me as a combination of The Office’s Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Scrubs’ Zach Braff and he really nailed the character. I will definitely tune in next week and make sure I catch the next episode.

The lash show for the night was Journeyman. This was another show I had not heard a lick about. My wife is a sci-fi nut so she wanted to check it out. The premise behind the show is almost identical to the TV series Quantum Leap that aired from 1989-1993 starring Scott Bakula. Basically, Dan Vassar, husband and father disappears through time portals.

In this episode, he falls asleep in a cab and wakes up in 1989. He ends up saving a man named Neil Graves from committing suicide and then comes back to the present time. Several more times he flashes into the past, each time to help this Neil Graves through a potential life changing disaster. Along the way, he runs into people he knows and criss crosses with his former self and even runs into the present day version of his deceased fiance who is also jumping through time. The episode ends when Neil is killed by a bus in 1997. Dan, comes back to the present and finds out that the son of Neil Graves saved 6 school children from a bus accident, due in part to Dan’s interventions in the past. The show is fast paced and solid even if the concept is a rehash. Journeyman will be part of my regular viewing from here on out.

So there you have it, 3 shows, 2 hits, and 1 so-so. I know there are a lot of other shows starting up this week so I’ll touch back when I’ve had a chance to check them all out.

The Big Bang Theory - 2nd Episode is do or die
Chuck - Must Watch
Journeyman - Must Watch

I saw this today on another blog and thought it was too cool not to share. This is a large group of inmates in the Philippines re-enacting MJ’s Thriller. Apparently prison over there is a place where you go to learn to dance. They need a prettier leading lady though

Let me start by saying that I love music. I love listening to it, watching it, and owning it. What I do not like to do is to buy it. Obviously I must be a music pirate right? Negative. I don’t steal music. I simply choose to deny myself the joy of buying music until the RIAA cuts their crusade against the customers. I know the RIAA is being stupid and antiquated; the general public does. Hell, even some politicians do. That has yet to thwart their massive campaign of strong arm legal tactics that result in extortion payments from people that can’t afford to defend themselves.

Metallica is who I give credit to for starting us down this slippery slope. Their whole campaign against Napster triggered much of what we are enduring today. Thanks Lars. On occasion other artists have drawn a line in the sand and given their thoughts on the whole situation and a few of them have been right with the camp fighting to get rid of the RIAA, which in turns puts more money in the pockets of the creative minds behind the music, the artists. The most recent case of an artist being very vocal on the topic comes in the form of an interview with Trent Reznor of NIN.

I’ve never been a real fan of NIN, but I have a new found respect for Trent and why he makes music. I’ll include a few nice snips from the interview and then you can head over and read it all for yourself. Before I do that, I just want to applaud Trent for his stance. I hope more musicians take this stance and start a landslide of people leaving the major labels.

It must be an odd time then to have a new album, Year Zero, out?

It’s a very odd time to be a musician on a major label, because there’s so much resentment towards the record industry that it’s hard to position yourself in a place with the fans where you don’t look like a greedy asshole. But at the same time, when our record came out I was disappointed at the number of people that actually bought it. If this had been 10 years ago

I would think “Well, not that many people are into it. OK, that kinda sucks. Yeah I could point fingers but the blame would be with me, maybe I’m not relevant”. But on this record, I know people have it and I know it’s on everybody’s iPods, but the climate is such that people don’t buy it because it’s easier to steal it.

….

Given all that, do you have any idea how to approach the release of your next album?

I’ve have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it’s done in the studio, not this “Let’s wait three months” bulls—.

He goes on to talk about the label taking credit for his genius work on a personally expensed alternate reality game and how they bilk his loyal fans out of $10 for packaging on the new album even though it costs Trent $.84 personally.

The full interview on News.com.au

Lauren and I just finished watching Clerks II and I must say that it was pretty good. I was a bit skeptical at first. Kevin Smith had a lot to live up to by trying to put out a sequel to any of his movies, much less Clerks. It was part traditional crude humor, part love story, and fully offensive but good nonetheless. We didn’t bother watching any of the 6 hours of bonus footage, because really who watches that stuff anyway?

I’m no good at rating movies, but I’d give it a thumbs up. Just don’t try to watch it with your parents.