Lenopocalypse

So it's been a few months, and here is how the late-night wars stand:
Conan has been picked up by TBS to provide a lead-in for George Lopez. Looks like a good choice.

In late night Letterman has been failing badly and he's in last place. Nightline is ahead of him, and Leno is ahead of nightline.
AND ALL OF THEM ARE BEHIND "FAMILY GUY" RERUNS ON ADULTSWIM!!!!!

Seriously, just checked the numbers. Reruns of family guy get more viewers than new episodes of Leno or Letterman. Same timeslot and everything.

Two movies to review

First up: "She's out of my league" Avoid this movie. There are moments of amusement, but mostly the movie is just awful. The awkward scenes are far too long, too frequent, and too goddamn awkward. It was almost more than I could bear.

Second movie: Starship Troopers 3. This was surprising. It was actually better than Starship troopers 1. But that's not saying much. Heavy religious bent throughout the movie, but still bearable. One major flaw of three vs one, is that is that there is zero fucking in the whole movie. Still not a good movie, but better than the first one.

Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell

Don't fucking watch this movie. Seriously, I have sat through both twilight movies, THIS IS WORSE! This is almost StarWars X-mas special-bad.
Plot is awful "The world has ended, all humans have either turned into mutants or gone feral. All of your livestock and housepets have turned into giant dinosaurs" This is legit, not making any of this up. All of the monsters are claymation horrifying piles of shit. And the basic theme seems to be "girl is minding her own business, guys attempt to rape her, hero guy rescues her from rapists, hero guy tries to rape her, she runs, into a dinosaur, hero guy rescues her again, repeat.
I almost started screaming at the screen they hurry up and rape her so we could all get on with our lives.
They seem to be constantly traveling, but have no destination, just continuing on to the next location and the next monster.

"B" movies are bad, some are soo bad that they become good, this one does not. I wouldn't even call it a "B" movie, that's too high praise.

Seriously, I cannot warn you away from this film urgently enough. If you want a good laugh, watch the first 5 minutes of it, it's like the old 50's movie commercial where a narrator tells you exactly what's going to happen. That's mildly amusing, but just in how bad it is.

What you missed this season in heroes..

Before you read any further, please be aware *SPOILER ALERT*


















Ok, those of you who don't care about spoilers but do want the nerd-rage:



Claire suddenly becomes a lesbian, then in the last episode becomes the most poorly written character ever (after successfully hiding her identity as a super for 5 or six seasons, she suddenly decided to reveal herself on national TV).

Peter dates a deaf doctor and becomes friends with Sylar.

Sylar becomes a good guy after he and Peter spend 5 relative years trapped together in a telepathic prison.

Matt Parkman is still an awful character. With the death of Daphne last season he gets back with his cheating ex-wife and is now a stay-at home dad. He does the vast majority of his appearances this season in his own living room.

Noah Bennet starts dating Lauren, his former partner, whom he had an affair with but refused to leave his wife for. Now that his wife left him, he goes crawling back to lauren. We also discover that his dog-loving wife is actually his second wife. his first wife was murdered by a super and he joined the company to get revenge. The company also made him marry his second wife to become less of a psycho. Noah joins the ranks of extremely poorly written characters.

Tracy Strauss (like the 4rth incarnation of the same actress) still isn't dead, basically she can't die, she just turns into water. She's also vaguely enamoured with Noah, making her like the 4th love interest in him during the series.

Hiro gets his brain tumor removed and finally reunites with his beloved Charlie, however she was dumped back in the year 1944, so she's now very old and has a family so hiro can't just go back in time and bring her back to the present.

Ando is still a sidekick and still gets to use his power about once a season. But now he is engaged to Hiro's sister, so he's happy.

The Haitian still appears and disappears only when the plot calls for him. He appears every few episodes whenever one of the main characters needs their memory wiped.

Characters that died and stayed dead:
Nathan Petrelli (Finally)
Previous versions of Tracy Strauss
Artist-boy from season one
Peter's Original girlfriend
Hiro's dad
Hiro's mom
Nathan and Peter's dad
Matt's Dad (well he's trapped in a telepathic prison, but he's been gone from the show ever since)
The "I can do what I see on TV" girl
The brother of the death eyes girl.
Claire's birthmother
Daphne
Immortal guy who hates hiro (really did like that character and was irritated when they killed him off)

People that randomly disappeared from the series:
Mohinder (vanished like 4 episodes ago and has not been seen since)
Claire's 1st boyfriend
Claire's 2nd boyfriend
Claire's 3rd boyfriend
Death eyes girl
"I can talk to machines boy" (rescues Tracy last season then disappears)
Peter's Irish girlfriend who gets stuck in the alternate future.

So after all of the bizarre story arcs and ridiculous cast changes, I really hope this show gets cancelled. It's like crack, it's not a good show and the writers should be dragged out and shot for having a worse story arc than Dynasty, but it's very hard to stop watching the train wreck.
So for the good of everyone else, NBC, please stop making this show. It's entirely too fucked up, convoluted and confusing for anyone to enjoy. The only way to even know what's going on is to have watched every single episode from the beginning of season one. And if you have watched every episode then the constant plot resets will make you very, very angry.

Late night scandal

So the Tonight show with Conan Obrien is officially being reset back to Jay Leno. Obrien is being forced out to the tune of a almost $40 million dollar severance package, and will be release from his network contract within a year. Leno goes back to hosting the Tonight show, and his primetime show is cancelled.

This has been a remarkably bad move for NBC. They lose Conan with alot of bad blood. They are also keeping the rights to his segments and characters from late night and tonight.
They of course can't use any of these characters since even though they own the rights, everyone connects them with Obrien. It's just a play to try to prevent Obrien from succeeding without them. Yea, cause that worked so well on Letterman.

The bigger problem for NBC is that they are losing their late-night anchor right as their station is about to go into the broadcasting failure that is the olympics. So Conan leaves next friday, then nothing until March. So Fimmy Fallon will likely keep his normal viewers, but will lose his hip-lead in. Leno however, is fucked. Different timeslot, different show, audience hostility, and a month of downtime while the other late night shows suck up all of the viewers that NBC is shedding. Leno will return to zero audience.

The only one who profits from this is Letterman. Due to NBC's retardation, everyone has forgotten about his sex scandal.

So here is my prediction- 3 months from now NBC will have entirely lost the 10-midnight timeslot. Letterman and Kimmel will control latenight, and there is nothing they can do about it. Conan will make guest appearances all over TV to attempt to keep his popularity up until his contract ends, then he'll pitch a show to one of the other networks. So another network gets to try their hand at late night, and NBC officially loses late night, due to their own stupidity.

So good job there NBC, piece by piece you are killing your own network.

On Avatar

Finally a good movie to review.
Avatar: James Cameron's masterpiece.

Honestly, Im not a huge cameron fanboy, I hated Titanic, but I love Avatar. The movie is so good in fact, that this post will contain no spoilers, simply commentary on the storytelling process of the film.

The film received alot of grief for being all style and no substance. I retort that the people making these claims are also the same ones who can't seem to figure out why it is doing so well.
The movie touches a part of the human soul that is beyond style or substance, it looks back at human history to the pre-industrial eras and says "Hey, we may not have had toilets and TV's, but it was a rather fufilling way to live".

This also brings up the next big question: "Does technology make us more or less happy?"
I would honestly say Less. We spend less time with real people and real activities, and more time doing meaningless things in cyberspace. These internet and television activities are a great way to kill time, but not a great way to enjoy time.

A happy human is one who is actively enjoying their life, not their lifestyle. A man in love will work like a slave if he has to, as long as he gets to come home to the embrace of his lover every night. Happiness, like love, is an intense emotion, and does not translate well via cyberspace.

In the modern era happiness is so rare that we work and strive for even momentary happiness. We'll do anything for a moment of happiness, but most of the time need to settle for merely dulling the pain of reality with false enjoyment, drugs, booze, etc. We have fake friends of "social websites" who we never see in person but share our innermost thoughts with. As humans, we've become so desperate for "real" that we even seek it out in the land of the fake.

Avatar shows us a man of the fake world who comes into the real world.
The experiences are intense, the emotions are real, to the point where discerning reality from fantasy becomes a game of harsh truths.

In the Avatar world there is much joy, because they live in the moment and leave the future to itself.

Modern man has made the mistake of living for the future. We do awful terrible things with the justification that we'll make up for it in the future, but we never do. In Avatar the people live for the present, everyone is held accountable for what they do now, not for what they plan on doing.

No more excuses, just make the best of the moment.

If not for the quality of filmmaking or the depth of the story, watch the movie for the social commentary. The world of Avatar could be our world (with some sci-fi exceptions). We are not so far gone that we couldn't live a simplier, happier life. and this movie shows us that.

The 00's, a decade in review

So the last ten years can pretty universally be stated as one of the worst decades in American history.

We had the economic troubles of the 1930's, the wars of the 1960's, and probably the worst president in American history.

But more than anything else, this was a decade of drastic change. Consider the following:
-In 1999 alot of people had a computer and a cellphone, in 2009 cellphones have progressed to be more powerful than most computers in 1999.
-In 1999 most people were vaguely connected via e-mail and phone numbers, now we have social networking sites that allow us to remain in contact with people we would have lost contact with in 1999.
- In 1999 Napster was the big change to the internet and media marketplace. You could get music without copying it from radio or buying a CD. Now you can get anything from the internet. PDF's, movies, tv shows, computer programs, videogames, etc. you name it, it can be obtained from the internet. Some people even do their grocery shopping via the internet.
- The biggest change in America has been the way the American people deal with employment. In the 1990's a person would take a job, and likely keep it for many years. in the 00's a person would get a job and then be in the market for a new job within a year or two. Job security has vanished, with it goes Pensions and medical coverage.

But as amazing as these changes are, most of them resulted in very negative outcomes. Internet file sharing as led to decreased value in most content. Social networking has decreased socializing. And the employment change has left most Americans without any sense of financial security.

So this decade ends with most Americans in financial danger, we're still at war, and basically 95% of Americans have significantly decreased happiness this decade over last decade.