From the Audience

The entire time I was watching the video the two contrasting thoughts of "This is like reading the comments on the internet" and "And what exactly makes you better than the people who works their asses off on BN" crossed my mind alot.

--Dude Man

Fair point. In fact, I'm actually shocked that I didn't get this sooner. Now, it wasn't phrased as a question, more as an accusation, but I'm going to assume that this guy has the balls to ask me to my virtual face and just missed all of my contact information.

Short version? I worked for a few weeks shy of a decade in theatre. Not just any theatre; live theatre. I know, I know, live theatre, and television shows are very different, blah blah blah.

Shut up, because actually, they are very similar, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Long version: I mostly worked in technical, which means that I designed and built sets, I painted, I worked make-up and effects, I hung lights and did some basic sound engineering. It also means that I saw a lot of shows. I got to see what playing the same character night after night does to the performance, I saw what it does to the actors. I learned to differentiate between the acting and the directing and the producing. I know what jobs belong to which people.

I also did some acting (I'm not saying that I was ever good), so I know what it's like to form a character (knowledge bolstered by my years and years of playing D&D) I know how direction gets adapted by the actor, and I can totally sympathise with playing that same character night after night after night.

Also, I went to college for theatre. When I went to college. You know, before I moved half-way across the country and opened a gaming store. So I know things like color theory. I can date molding and wallpaper by the patterns. I can design and create costumes. I can light a set, I can run live-mics for a cast of forty by myself (but those were dark times). I can build a rig for pretty much anything. I'm aware of budget constraints, and what tends to get cut first. I know how to write a script, and I can identify script-writing techniques, as well as more general literary techniques like foreshadowing and symbolism (thanks primarily to the greatest English teacher evar: Mrs. K).

So, how are live theatre and television similar? Well, for a start theres the run. For a movie there's a set amount of material that needs to be acted, teched, and filmed, and that's it. For a television show, there's not only considerably more material, but everything about the show needs to be sustainable. It needs to be reused; everything from the characters to the sets to the lighting models to the rigs cannot be one-time-use, or even until-we-get-the-shot-use. In theatre, while the show stays the same, it does happen over, and over, and over. Some shows run longer than others, but I've worked everything from six-show community theatres to thirty-show tours, and the stress and the deadlines and the weariness from doing the same thing grates on a person. Similarly, there's the stress of doing the same thing.... but different. Adapting to different venues is a bitch and a half. In short, the amount of change that's expected and allowed is almost identical between live theatre and televison, and the same techniques for most everything to do with the production translate easily from one to another (the exception is acting. Watch the pilot for Babylon 5 and understand what I mean what I say, "You're used to a stage, get used to a soundstage for the love of all that's holy!").

My greatest strength has always been tech (which I'm simplistically defining here as "everything that's not the acting or actors"), and my reviews reflect that. I get sidetracked by things like lighting and sets because that's what I'm familiar with. That's what I'm most comfortable judging.

And that, kids, is what qualifies me to pick on television shows. Well, that and I really, really like them and would like to see them improve as an artistic and expressive medium.

From the Audience

You know what? Even if I don't win the contest, I've gotten some great exposure from this. I've gotten more comments and emails in the past week than I've gotten from the last three months before that. Most of them aren't worth sifting through, but let's pick out some relevant ones, shall we?

These revives share a few points with Zero Punctuation and works as well even thou the visuals could defiantly be experimented with a bit.

--The66Monkey 

 Just modify the visual style; it's too similar to Bob's or Yahtzee's.

 --DrEmo

Good points made but need to change animation style. 

--nashty13 

I'm not going to get into the ZPish style either, but you may want to mix it up if they hire you.

--Mcoffey

Perhaps a little change in the presentation. 

--Mr. Omega 

How to put this politely... No. I will not change my presentation. I will not change the way I make these videos. Perhaps if Burn Notice had been my first review, I would, but three months in my style is pretty well established and changing it would not only be difficult, it would create a buffer period of crappy videos while I get my feet under me again. Sorry kids, but I ain't changing now.

And here's something that my harshest critics don't seem to take into account: How very difficult is it for someone to consistently rip off someone else? For those of you that don't know: Very. Once you become comfortable with a style, your own starts to leak in. It happens to everyone who imitates someone else. Hell, it happens to actors on TV shows all the time! On the long-running ones, there might be an episode with a less-strong-than-usual director, and a character or two might inflect or react minorly out of character. It's usually not the actors fault, it's just that there's only so long you can keep something compartmentalized.

And the point of that story was that even if I had started out as a Yahtzee rip-off, the fact that I've consistently produce Yahtzee-like work just means that our styles are similar anyway. So I won't change it. And if you ask again, I'll probably smirk at you.

Which you totally can't see, but trust me, I shall.

While overall I was impressed, my only concern is with regards to doing something like a weekly episode.  Currently, it's easy for both Bob Chipman and Ben Croshaw to review their respective media because there is always new content coming out during the year.  The question I pose is whether or not you would review new shows only, shows that have a couple seasons under their belt, or a mix up of both.  Typically the Escapist reviews "what's hot", so my personal curiosity begs me to ask you.

--Cody D.

I gotta say, I loved getting this email. It was polite and grammatically correct, and something about the formal tone just tickled me. Like those times I look at my life and say "I'm really happy that I've cleaned carpets today... I must be an adult." The idea that people can treat me and my work so seriously is massively entertaining and flattering at the same time.

To answer the actual question, though: I want to do primarily current shows, though I have, and will continue to do so, done dead shows. Most of the time these are relevant reviews, which means giving an opinion on something current, however sometimes I need to illustrate a point, or demonstrate some quality in TV, or there's something in the show that I've spoken on before and wanted to critique in a different environment.

Plus, according to my rules, I can review web serieses and miniseries, so I shouldn't lack for material. And shows that have been running for a while would need to be broken up according to how much I can watch in a given week, and, if I can manage it, by internal segmentation of the show.

And then there's the things that'd be marathons. Like if I ever have to review CSI. And someone's requested Law and Order. Things that have spin-offs will be done next to each other, hopefully in the order in which they were started so as to trace the evolution better.

So yeah. Run out of stuff to review? Probably not.

More Burn Notice

Sorry not to have anything new for ya'll. Partly it's that my review schedule has been shelved for a month or so, and partly it's that Burn Notice is just so bad that I still have a metric fuck-ton of stuff to talk about. And the topic of the day is... execution.

See, Michael Westen spends a lot of time talking about "When you're a spy," and "When you're a covert operative," and "If you work in the information industry," but he's not really a great spy. In fact, he's a horrid spy. A spy needs to be able to talk to anyone and everyone. Micheal Westen can only talk to the bad guys. In a room with the client or victim, he's invariably cold and distant, and visibly makes the characters uncomfortable. You'd think that a guy who's a jerk on the outside but secretly cares for children and puppies would be more invested in that whole "reassuring people" thing.

Further, Sam Axe, who's introduced as an "Ex-Spy" but later is retconned to "Ex-SeAL," can talk to people. He makes friends with everyone and easily comforts clients and victims alike. He can befriend anyone in minutes to the point of them lending him their stuff. Expensive stuff. Cars, for example. Further, in the three seasons that I watched Sam was the only one who shot anyone. He also did some pretty impressive sniping on a couple of occasions, including dealing a fatal abdomen shot on a guy with 3/4 cover, and one-shotting a surveillance camera from across the four-lane street and two floors up (twice).

(Not quite true. Micheal did shoot that one guy who's name I can't remember. That Agent to the Spies guy. But that was because AttS sold out Micheal's twoo wuv, so I really can't count it. It also wasn't an impressive shot. Fast, yes, but he shot the guy from fifteen feet away with a pistol. Some things should be epic, and the first time the protagonist kills someone directly is one of them. Also, that whole scene was shot and scored and lit like it was something epic, but the writing and the acting made it more melodramatic than moving. Say it with me guys: /epicfail.)

Also, The Girl. Good lord does she irk me. To start out with, she's really not that great looking, but the show treats her like she's a world-class beauty (before you ask, yes I did get the opinion of people who like women on this one. There was some discussion over whether the excessive muscles were scary or hot, but no-one said that she was a beautiful as the show and everyone in it seems to think). Also, for someone who's said to be a slightly psychotic, trigger-happy, gun-dealing, ex IRA guerrilla, she's surprisingly level-headed and tame. Yes, she talks about blowing shit up left and right, but someone with the character we're repeatedly told she has would have gone solo and blown up a bunch more shit than she actually does. Maybe it's the leash her twoo wuv has her on, but she's surprisingly open to reason and logic. Also, as you may have gathered, she doesn't ever shoot anyone. The show makes her out to be this amazing marksman, but she's the one that gets to miss things.

Yes, I know, the voice-over tells us at one point that it takes great skill to miss someone while making it look like you're trying to hit them. But if we've seen her hit anyone before, it's still an informed trait. That's the thing about extreme skill, and it's the reason that trick horse riders generally start out straddling the saddle like anyone else. Starting with the basics actually makes the exceptional more believable. It shows the range of skill that's required to impress the audience.

At one point (during the Great Sam Rescue at the end of season one), Fiona's got a sniper rifle and a great vantage point on Sam's captors and instead of sniping them off, she provides cover fire. With a sniper rifle.

Head? Meet Desk. I know you two will meet often and I hope you will become good friends.

So... yeah. I hope that clarifies some of my gripes on the characters. If not, feel free to ask questions here or send me an email.

Also: "Hell, I never even paid enough attention to the joiners to see all the bikinis, and yet we use that as an example of why the show was "atrocious." Criticizing that just makes you sound girl who is probably jealous of others in a swim suit and finding it borderline offensive." -- Sigma


I said the show was an abomination. I never said it was "atrocious," so you're kind of missing the point of "" there, bud.


And also? LOL.

The Escapist Film Festival

No time for extensive rambling right now, but the video gallery for the film competition I entered my Burn Notice review into is here. Go vote!

Not Like the Rest

What is it that makes a show good?

This is a question that I've spent some time thinking on, partly because I get into extended debates with my brother about my reviews, and partly because ultimately I need to decide whether or not to recommend a show.

Nothing kills a show faster than bad writing. Even great actors can't save bad writing (after all, there's only so many ways to deliver a campy line, and most of them are equally campy), and, in dialogue-heavy shows, the writing is key to pacing and character development. There is an incredible difference between shows that are "people talking" (The West Wing), and shows that are "just people talking" (Law and Order, and anything that aspires to be a Sorkin show).

There's also a delicate balance between Good Writing Technique, and Writing How People Actually Talk. And that is how Joss Whedon manages to pass as a great writer: He writes really well, even though he has no technique, because he understands the way people speak. This is something the Coen brothers do really well, too, they remember that, though a script is written, it isn't meant to be read. It's meant to be listened to.

Patchy writing is actually worse than writing that is out-and-out bad. It happens pretty frequently in Burn Notice in particular. The writing would be competent and competent, and competent, and then horrific, and that awful line is the worse for having come directly after something passable. Similarly, the writing would be competent and then there'd be a single shining moment of greatness that I couldn't believe had actually happened because the rest of the show had been nowhere near that caliber. It wasn't a relief that something good had happened, on the contrary, it was disappointing that the rest of the show couldn't be that good.

Even if the rest of the show is hands-down fantastic, bad, or at least, not as good, writing can kill it quick. It's the contrast that does it in this case: When most of the show is fine, bad writing sticks out. Glee is the one that stands out in my mind for this one; most of the show isn't really that bad (concept, insensitivity, and rampant misogyny aside), but the writing brings it way down.

It doesn't work the other way, too, though. Great writing in a terrible show will always be memorable. The line is always, "Well the show sucked, but the writing was good." This is also the reason I didn't like The Big Lebowski, but I didn't hate it either. What I said, precisely, was, "I don't know what that was, but it was well-done." Had the writing been terrible (or, "Had the Coen brothers not been the ones to make it."), I have no doubt that I would have despised it like I hate... well.... most movies.

So writing is key to making a show good. Everything else can be highly annoying, but forgiven (unless we're talking about the level of Stoopid Camera Trix of Burn Notice, that's unforgivable) eventually. Cinematography, if truly terrible, can be detrimental, but isn't usually egregious. Really, the other major part of What Makes a Good Show is the experience.

For I while I had this boiled down to the question, "Is it fun to watch?" but that doesn't really cover it. Some shows aren't meant to be "fun." So that question has been revised to, "Is it an experience?" If a show can elicit a genuine emotion from me every (or even most of the) time it tries, it's a great show. That's something that was great about Studio 60; it could pull an emotion from me every time. I feel the pressure of the deadline, the anticipation of going onstage, the satisfaction of a job well done. Those are much harder to pull from an audience than simple happiness, laughter, or indignation, and Sorkin does it effortlessly. The West Wing was similar, but it was also a real thinker of a show. Studio 60 was %100 emotional involvement from start to finish.

So there you go. How do I decide what to recommend? Is it well written? And if so, does it make me feel something? If I answer "yes" to both, then it's definitely worth watching.

Burn Notice

There's something about That Show that's been bothering me since I learned it. It really doesn't have a whole lot to do with the actual quality of the show, but it's been bugging me.

Apparently the producers let Gabrielle Anwar choose most of her own costumes.

That may not sound like such a bad thing, I mean, the actress should know her character better than anyone else right? Well yes, but that doesn't make it okay.

There's a lot that goes into costuming that I, with eight years of experience in technical theatre, had no notion of until I took a class devoted to costumes. It's not ever just about "what the character would wear." In fact, "what the character would wear" is generally considered after fabric choice, color, style, scenography, and whether she can fight in those shoes. Once everything has been hashed out, then they look at "what the character would wear" from what's left.

The result of Anwar picking her wardrobe? An insufferable amount of short, ugly-ass dresses in a limited color palette that's totally inappropriate for her coloring, and no bras. I can't stress enough how much I'm bothered by the lack of bra. For someone who might have to get into a fist fight on moment's notice, bras are awesomely practical.

And the wedge heels. Good Gods. First off, high heels in combat is downright stupid. Breaking an ankle fighting, or at the very least twisting one, is shockingly easy. Heels throw off your posture and balance and make combat almost impossible unless you already outweigh and outreach your opponent by a significant margin, which is unlikely if only because there's not a whole lot of men or orangutans who wear heels. Then there's wedge heels, which are actually more awkward than ordinary spike heels. They're worse for balance and leverage.

So then why does Fiona wear them? Because the actress who picked them out likes them.

What a bullshit reason. Actors act. Costumers dress. Seems like a pretty straightforward division of labor to me, but then here I go again, expecting people to do their jobs competently. The actress stepped out of bounds, the producers allowed it, and the costumer didn't fight back.

I'm having some serious trouble expressing just how much I'm bothered by this, so discuss among yourselves: Does an actor have the right to choose their own costumes in a show where physical limits must be observed for safety reasons? Or indeed, should an actor be able to say anything to a costumer other than, "Excuse me, but I tore out the underarm tossing the baddie into a wall, can you do something about that please?" in the politest and most obsequious of tones?

Edit to add: Also, the store is opening on December first, and the lease starts of November first, so I will in no way be attempting to keep up with my review schedule. I'll still work on them, but slower. Especially as Burn Notice must be submitted by October twenty-ninth, so it's a priority.

Also, one week until Monthly Munchkin!

Burn Notice

Not a shit-ton of time before I either die or watch Skins (whichever comes first), but I finished writing Burn Notice, and I know for a fact that there's something that won't make it in to the video. So here you go.

Things Discussed Rather Than Watch Burn Notice
Fruit (just the names of fruit, not the fruit itself)
Teleportation
The Greek Pantheon
Pope Jokes
Snails
Shoes
Innuendo
Shellfish
Tim Curry
Demotivational Posters
Halloween Decorations
Rum
MMOs
Yogurt

From the Audience

The other day  my computer had a pretty thorough meltdown. It pitched a little fit and shut off and refused to find Windows when I turned it back on. That's happened before, and if I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete enough times the little bastard usually decides that it's not worth the effort to keep my operating system from me and goes and retrieves Windows from... I don't know, time-out perhaps.

This time, though it didn't work. So I took my laptop to my resident computer guy (that would be Dad. Dude used to contract at Intel, so he gets all the computer-related bitching withing a mile radius), and he did some surgery and concluded that something on the motherboard had melted. Fortunately my hard-drive is just fine, so all of my writing and reviews and stock pictures and slides aren't lost they're just inaccessible. Until someone around here (four other computers in the house, surely someone is willing to let me tear apart their tower to replace their hard-drive with mine for long enough to retrieve a couple of massive folders. Surely) lends me (Dad) their tower for a bit.

So my review schedule is shelved for now. I'm trying to do what I can on the computer in the living room, but unless I revert to nocturnalism (which is looking better and better by the hour), I have to share it. I'm going to try to get White Collar out on time, but no guarantees.

Incidently, White Collar is terrible. More on that on Sunday (I hope), but yeah. Not great.

Seems to be a thing with these shows that could have been. Burn Notice could have been a modern day MacGyver, but is instead James Bond as done by Micheal Bay with worse writing. Heroes, could have been a fresh take on superheroes, but instead was just slow and painful. Stargate could have been an intense, psychology driven survival drama, but instead is shameless cashing in.

Speaking of Stargate, now that I'm a bit calmer, here's the comment I got on... whenever the hell that was. I'm going to outline my response paragraph by paragraph, rather than taking the whole thing on at once. And here we go.

Problems with your review are manifold, and almost all come down to your own unwillingness to watch the intervening series'. Now, you can critique the "big issues" exactly as you did without issue, as the ones you mentioned are all related to the mechanics of the show, for the record we disagree about the characters. However, your "quibbles" section is full of things which are either down to your own inadequacy(really, you can't keep track of nine characters?) or your own lack of knowledge about the franchise, but I'm in a nice mood so I'll help you out.

Points for the condescending tone. Also, the word manifold means "many and varied". You've got half of that down pat, but your complaints with me seem to all be "ignorance", which really isn't very varied. And why the hell are you telling me that you disagree about the characters in the same paragraph as you calling me "inadequate." Insults and legitimate opinions should never go together. And you can take your "nice mood" and shove it where-- oh, look another paragraph.

1. You can't apply Newtonian physics to a damn wormhole. In normal circumstances, a person entering a Stargate will exit with the same direction and velocity. However, while within the wormhole itself, a person is simply energy and an encoded data stream, so in the event other factors influence the gate at either end, or the wormhole itself, they can be literally thrown out of the exit aperture as a safety measure. For the record, this has been observed in each of the ten seasons of SG1, as well as the 5 seasons of Atlantis, and the TV movies.

Now, I'm not a physicist, but why can't you apply Newtonian physics to wormholes? Oh, right, wormholes are unproven. Still, that doesn't mean that you can abandon physics just because half the situation is hypothetical. And further, Meta is Bad, remember? Dude, I don't care if there was an ad in the paper explaining the physics of this show, if there's a logical discrepinsy that isn't covered in the show, it could light itself on fire and tango in my front yard and I still wouldn't care.

2. FTL is explained in the series as one of several standard sci-fi variations based on vague real science hypotheses. Hyperspace is the most common, in the case of the Destiny, it would be appear to be some variation on the Alcubierre drive.

Meta is Bad.

3. Your argument about the ship's longevity is entirely dependent on knowledge of what materials were used in its construction, which we as viewers do not have. Considering the knowledge we have from earlier series'(which you couldn't be arsed to watch), Ancient technology is extremely advanced, one would assume their materials sciences would be as well.

Meta is Bad.

4. Your complaint about the Ancients is, once again, down to your own lack of knowledge rather than a flaw in the program(seriously, you couldn't even waste ten minutes reading the Stargate entry on wikipedia?); Stargate uses the "humanity was seeded by aliens" trope, those aliens being the Ancients who built Destiny. The entire five-season run of the Atlantis series was based on this very premise.


Boy are you proving my point. New audience remember? Not everyone who watches Universe is going to have watched fifteen previous seasons of material! It must be accessible to everyone, elsewise someone is falling down on the job.

5. Stores of food? Seriously? You missed the part of the show which explained the concept of Destiny entirely then, you know, where the Ancients would 'gate into the ship with all the necessary supplies to set themselves up. Including food.

Yeah, that was a dumb complaint... but then it was also part of a list of other spectacularly petty gripes that weren't picked on by Fanboy Prime over here.

6. I'm going in order along with the video, so this is really a repeat, but: Alcubierre drives circumvent special relativity.

Meta is Bad. Also bad, is justification from other shows. The premise is universal, but everything else is, and should stay, compartmentalized.

7. While I agree with you that cutting the "stargate trip" CGI was a bad thing, the irony is this was done by the producers in order to please viewers such as yourself - non-fans who don't have the patience or inclination to understand the lore.

Oh, Gods, a cogent statement! Cutting the trip was a good idea, but they didn't cut it out every time, so it looks sloppy.

8. You're even going to get on top of the episodic cliffhangers? Really? I'm not trying to come off as offensive, but have you watched any sci-fi dramas before? It's pretty much an integral part of the format.

Dude, what kind of a sci-fi fan are you if you make a blanket statement that precludes the greatest sci-fi drama of all time: Babylon 5? And yeah, I was offended.

9. And the time travel. I had a suspicion you would have a crack at that episode after the first minute of your video. Again, watch the preceding series'.

"Everything else is, and should stay, compartmentalized." Just... stop talking. You're done. Just... no. Oh, shit, there's more.

I know I'm coming off as a dick, but SG:U gets a lot of crap, and I really rather enjoy it. Most the points people make I can agree to disagree, but fully half your review is predicated on problems which aren't really problems if you've watched the previous shows, or can muster the energy to type "Stargate" into Wikipedia.

Aaaand we're back to the condescension. Okay, being a fan does not, not, make you entitled. It just doesn't. Further, after watching seventeen hours of show, writing nineteen hundred words, making a hundred seventy six slides, and recording ten minutes of audio (heavily cut down), no I didn't "have the energy" to do some arbitrary research on something only tangentally related to the review! Maybe, SG: U gets a lot of crap because it's not a good show. Just a suggestion.

Would you review Return of the King without having seen Fellowship and Two Towers? If you did, would you base that review in large part on quibbles which would be solved by seeing them?

That's not even a relevant analogy. Apples and oranges there, bud. Or rather, books and television. Different mediums, is my point, and you can't make the standards there linear enough to cross-review.


I know I spoke at length on this last time, but I've since done some stewing, and what is the internet for if not spewing my opinions?


Ooh! Ooh! Also! This... guy on That Guy With the Glasses is featuring part of my Eastwick video in his Forum Feature segment. I'll put up a link here as soon as I have it. Let's just say that if he pans me unfairly I'm'a review his stuff and see what he makes of it.


In other, other news (This one's getting a tad long, so I'll keep it short), I saw Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog the other day, and I would love, love, to review it. Sadly, it's technically outside of my purview, being an internet series, not a television series. So I'm'a leave this one up to ya'll. Review Dr. Horrible, yay or nay?

Stargate: Uninteresting

I've been making slides for the Stargate review all day and I can honestly say that I will be thrilled to see the end of this. I wrote the script for this one and then didn't even look at it for almost a week. I'd focused my ire on Burn Notice, so by the time I got back to Stargate, I'd forgotten exactly how much I hate it.

Well, I've been reminded. I've been reminded all damn day.

There's a problem inherent to the slideshow-style video that I make: I have to illustrate everything. That doesn't sound like that big a deal, but then you try and illustrate a sentence like, "What this means for Stargate: Universe is that it's contractually obligated to look like the next installment of a science fiction epic," and it quickly becomes apparent that this isn't as easy as I'd like it to be.

Now, granted, for some videos I haven't even tried. Heroes and The All Bad All the Time Edition most notably, though I blame those on illness and massive amounts of medication, because I can. Point is, though, it's not easy. And to make matters worse, I have a lot to say about SG: U so the script is longer, and I'm anxious to continue the trend I started with The Mentalist and have better videos. I decided to make videos instead of written reviews so that they would be more interesting to the viewer, and having a seven minute video with only thirty images is a pretty fair cop out.

I'm sure that when I started writing this I had a destination or a point in mind. I don't anymore. Sorry 'bout that.

Also, Burn Notice is coming along nicely. Still tongue-shreddingly bad, but fun to watch... with other people. Because misery loves company.

Change of Plans

Okay, I was going to cut down the Glee review to a submittable length. And I even made all the slides for the new script (118, by the way. That's about six hours of work, right there). And now I've decided not to do Glee.

Part of it is my concern that a Glee review won't be considered relevant enough. Part of it is that I don't want to be disqualified just because I started with material that wasn't original to the contest. Mostly though, it's that Burn Notice is shaping up to be awesome.

Not the show. The show is... well, you'll have to watch the video. I'll link to the site after I submit, but I can't post it as a review until after the contest, so there may be a blank week in my schedule. I'll try to do another in time, but no guarantees.

Also, I have a Twitter now (which seems like a terrible idea now that I've already done it, but I'll forgive myself later when I'm not feeling quite so betrayed... by myself. Good Gods I'm screwed up), so if you care about the random humor that comes from watching bad TV at two in the morning, I'm OpinionCritic, but only because "Opinionated" was taken and "OpinionatedCritic" has too many letters. I got as far as "OpinionatedCrit" but that just sounds like I'm judgmental about my Nat 20s.

Feeling a Little Off

It's so strange not to have anything to post tomorrow (today, technically, but I haven't been to bed yet so it's still Saturday, damnit). After two months of posting every week, I feel like I've failed or something, even though this week off was scheduled.

And then not doing anything tomorrow is also a tad bizarre, as not having the kind of job that requires my attendance on certain days means that I also have only the weekends I give myself. I usually work on Sundays.

-Sigh-

And the poll for the video to post tomorrow? By a resounding majority of one (1) vote, Heroes: The All Bad All the Time Edition won. So I'm just calling the whole thing off. I know that it was a silly little idea and everything, but I had hoped for a much better reaction.

So yeah. Stargate: Universe is next week. After that's Burn Notice.

From the Audience

"Quick question: Are you ever going to review Leverage, or Burn Notice? I liked both of them, and it would be interesting to see your take." --ALuckyChance


I was and they've both been upped on the list now that it's been requested. In fact, once I'm done with SG:U, I'll do Burn Notice.


"Good review. You hit all the key points and were very entertaining. As for the show, I always preferred Psych, myself." --Super Toast


Thank you, I try, and now Psych's on the list as well. See this whole "getting comments" thing really cuts down on the need to come up with the shows for myself. And I get to put off CSI: Wherever for a little longer.


"I liked it. Also i like your voice lol. Don't know how to describe it though lol." --Tankichi


Okay, this one's more of a personal gripe of mine. "LOL." I don't have the words to express to you how much I hate LOL. It's a good abbreviation, and I do use it myself, but I use it... when I laugh out loud. Such a concept, I know, but it's been overused to the point that people seem to use it the way they would use a nervous chuckle in conversation. That is to say, involuntarily. And that usage just doesn't work very well at all in a written medium.


Last year someone actually said "LOL" to me. I was incredibly confused. Why would someone do that? Lawl is awkward to say, awkward to listen to, and it doesn't have any connotations when spoken. Now I'm not one of those "Text-speak is killing the English language!" nutbags, but I do have a problem with the new words that don't translate the medium of interaction. That is to say, abbreviated phrases should stay in a written medium.


On an entirely different note, I'm editing my edited schedule. I thought about how doing a video every two weeks would be boring as all get out, even with the store to get up and running, so I decided to go back to a video a week, BUT! I'm still going to take this week out so that I can start watching shows one week, and making the video the next week, while I'm watching the next show. I know this sounds just as bad as a video every week, but it's actually not. You see, I spend a lot of time not doing whatever it is I should be doing, and on this schedule I'll have something productive to do while I'm not doing what I should be. It's foolproof!