Oh The Drama!
The people, the locations...and the dramaare real.
Oh, Laguna Beach. It's hard not to make fun of you, but it's hard not to watch you.
If you're in the US, and you're under the age of 25 and own a TV, you've probably seen Laguna Beach and you've been inundated with it's drama for years. We in Canada though, have only been graced by Laguna's presence for about 2 or 3 months (nonetheless, they've sped up the process and we're already almost done Season 2).
After MTV debuted in March (I think it was March, I know I was busy, but I watched the premiere anyway) we were treated to lots of drama, but no one can top the drama that Laguna provides. Apparently Laguna is the highest rated show for 15-25 yo's on Friday's now, and while that scares me, it's not surprising.
One of my co-workers (Emily) rightly describes it as 'hangover TV' (she watches on Saturday afternoons) and I think that's just about sums things up. From Jessica's whining about Jason, to Alex M. and Taylor being pissed they weren't invited to a party to Kristin's sexual promiscuity to Stephen's wanting to "get it on" with just about any girl who walks by, Laguna is the definition of guilty pleasure.
Plus, it's the only show on MTV with an After Show in Canada, and as much as I hate most of the MTV Canada "VJs" (that means you Aliya-Jasmine) but I do adore Jessi, Dan and Johnny (I'm trying to get confirmation that these are their names, but MTV Canada's site is useless. And Dan gave Jace and I are favourite new saying of the year, Totes GT's (Totally Good Times) and for that I am truly grateful.
So, I went on a really long Wikipedia spree looking for more info and links on stuff, but now it's really late so I'm gonna stop typing.
Oh, and before I forget, I watched the premier of CTV/Comedy Network's new show "Alice, I Think", which I was actually looking forward to because it sounded like a cool-ish concept and it's produced by the same people I worked for last summer. But I was SEVERELY disappointed and won't be watching again. It sort of tried to be Wonderfalls-esque, but it failed miserably. I still love you Omni, for giving me a job and making fine programs like Make Some Noise and Robson Arms, but I won't be watching this show. Sorry. Plus, you aired at the same time as my beloved After Show. So you lose... buh-bye.
Holla back,
PDubbya
That's Being Upgraded To First Class From Economy For No Charge!
Not very much happened today. I woke up stupidly late and did absolutely nothing that could be described as "productive". I'm proud of myself.
My phone is finally coming out on Rogers, but it's gonna be $50 more than I thought it would be. The Sony Ericsson w810i is coming out for $299 on a 3 year plan, but I need a new phone on account of Telus' not working in my house, and I'm getting it as a very belated birthday present anyway, so it won't really cost me anything. just, if it was cheaper, my parents would have paid for more airtime as well.
Other than that, I played Burnout: Revenge for many hours. My thumb hurts a little as a result. OK, it hurts a lot. But I got to crash a hell of a lot of cars (apparently I'm up to over $350 million worth of damage) and Jace came home midway through my playing and we came up with a game where we say something like 'that's fantastic' or 'that's superb' or 'that's bananas... son' whenever we scored a takedown. It got to be very difficult after awhile, but as you can see by the title of this post, we also got more creative.
I may be seeing X3 tomorrow, so there may be a review, or maybe I'll just do nothing again. i'm feeling a little guilty for having done nothing the last few days, but I feel I deserve at least one week of no school and no work seeing as I haven't had that since last August. plus I worked my ass off this year.
If I don't have anything interesting for tomorrow, I'll post the trailer for Ether, the short film we did in 2nd term. Maybe that will pique people's interests. Or not, whatever.
Holla back,
pdubbya
I want my questions answered, dammit!
All of my questions answered, my ass Lost. While you answered maybe one of them (what the fuck does the button actually do?) you left a hell of a lot unanswered, and not just all the new setup stuff for next season.
First of all, why is everyone who was in that go kill people spree so stupid (minus maybe Hurley). Michael is beyond reasonable thinking anymore, and I hope Walt deliberately crashes that boat and drowns his father. Why did Jack keep it secret from the rest of the group if he was going to crack at the first sign of Michael suspecting something. And how did Sayid know that this place would be on the water and he could take the boat there? What was his plan before the sailboat conveniently sailed ashore? He must have had one if he approached Jack pre-funerals. Maybe one that kept him in close contact with Jack so he could have him and the others in case something bad happened to Jack? And why was Kate even on this mission? I know she feels she has to be on every one of these, but she had no strong personal connection with the dead like Hurley, or small physical attraction to the dead like Sawyer.
And wasn't this magnet thing foreshadowed ages ago? I know I remembered reading something about magnets in someone's theories in the past. It just didn't seem all that interesting.
I did like the new things we found out about from the hatch, like the ability to fake a lockdown or the presence of the underground, but Desmond just seemed a little to convenient for everything that was happening. Why didn't Locke just take Desmond to Pearl Station and show him the video (you know, like he said he would)? Why'd he take him down right then and there and end the button-pushing extravaganza?
Mr. Eko seemed particularity perturbed by the whole absence of button-pushing, but if he'd known about the magnets, why didn't he tell anyone? And the dynamite thing was just stupid - blast doors!
I think I liked Desmond's back story, but it didn't seem to mesh too well with the only other time we'd had him in flashback (Jack's one from the start of the season) and I felt the mood was off. I liked Libby's hair though. I didn't like her motivation, that was stupid. Why is she ... I'm just going to stop asking questions.
I'd like if some bigger, less season-specific questions were answered though. Possibly some of the polar bear or flesh eating variety. I was never really on the edge of my seat, but I was still fairly entertained. And I like that we have real names for Zeke and Clue now, but I dislike that the others are stupid enough to follow someone who got caught by the French woman. If there's one thing that doesn't make sense, it's the French person being the strongest on this island (burn on the French... OK I love the French, so it's more of a light-hearted jab).
The only other thing I didn't like was the Hanso Foundation commercial that aired during the show (there's one good things about CTV pre-empting Lost for American Idol, it meant I got to watch with US commercials). That's way too meta even for you Lost. Just stop it... stop it now. Or give me the reason why there's a polar bear on the island.
Holla back,
pdubbya
Confessions of a Political Junkie
So I have an indefinite amount of time off with school just ending and me not having a full-time job for the first time in a long time, so I've been catching up on things I don't do when I'm busy: cleaning my suite, making food that takes longer than 5 minutes to prepare, downloading Hed Kandi albums I haven't had a chance to listen to, and going through my computer to free up some space.
And while I was accomplishing that last task, I stumbled upon a gem from a few years ago; a game I actually BOUGHT online. I know, I was a little scared myself. The game was The Political Machine a follow-up to Stardock's game The Corporate Machine which was about building your company into a giant Microsoft-esque empire.
Now, I know both of these games are inherently geeky, and not in a World of Warcraft sort of way either; it's the sort of geeky that geeks find geeky. Actual business or politics majors don't spend much time playing video games and real geeks want graphics, not political strategy.
But for me, this is just the sort of thing that keeps me entertained. While the "edu-tainment" environment isn't exactly my favourite, deciding which states my candidate should visit and target, what ads I should run where and what the best form of smear campaign I can use is right up my alley. I was hooked by politics in grade 10 during the 2000 US Presidential campaign (Canadian prime minister campaigns are fairly boring and we had the same government for about 14 years, so there was a little bit of apathy there; not enough to not vote, but enough to not become involved) and decided I wanted to be a politics major. While that didn't quite pan out, (took 2 years at university, but dumped it for the far more glamorous world of television) I still pay a lot of attention to American politics.
So I played the two year old Political Machine for the first time in a long time for a few hours and bombed pretty badly, losing to, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I couldn't capture Pennsylvania or Florida and was ruined as a result. Plus, the Governator's from California, and that auto wins that state pretty much, and that's a big chunk of normal democratic pie.
So yeah, I geeked out hard on a Tuesday night and lost the presidency to the Terminator.
I also watched House (excellent episode, first I've watched in a long time on account of it being on opposite Veronica Mars) and the last 15 minutes of American Idol. It's the only Idol I watched all year. I think you should vote Taylor, because although he looks hideously old, he can sing pretty well. Of course, I don't listen to mainstream radio, so I don't really care who you vote for.
Oh, and I watched the 2nd half of last year's CSI directed by Tarantino, and I cried a little again. It's the Poncho line; it gets me every time. Damn you CTV for re-running my favourite CSI episode again.
I'll post tomorrow with some new music picks, and maybe some thoughts on the new fall shows as the pilots begin rolling in.
Holla back,
pdubbya
The Dawn... Actually It Almost Is Dawn
Blah, Blah, Blah... dawn of a new age. OK, it's just a blog, and new blogs pop up everyday and I'm not going to promise this one will be any different.
What will you get here? Mostly things media related. I work in TV and really like it, and may share some of my experiences in it from time to time, but there are also confidentiality agreements in place, so not too much can be said.
What I will talk about is TV and music and the net and all those other good things. I have opinions, like the rest of you, and sometimes you'll agree with me and sometimes you won't. I'll try to let you know about stuff, or I'll just talk about the latest trends.
I also go off on rants quite a lot, or long stream-of-consciousness sentences that make very little sense when you actually try to read them.
I'm a veteran of a few websites, which have all been busts, and I'd like to take it easy with this one. The extreme ease of blogs now is a wonderful thing, and I'm glad I live in an age like this.
Drop me a line if you're reading. For all I know, I'm typing to no one and this will just be a nice memory for me to peruse years down the road when I try to remember why I ever liked Grey's Anatomy and Metric.
The people, the locations...
