Skot managed to get out to a movie theatre and catch WALL-E; me, I been busy. Okay, not so much, but I’m not going to surround myself with kids under any circumstances, no matter how good the movie is. And anyway, I managed to get my paws on something that I had long considered the [...]

Finally, finally finally got out and caught a movie, at the spiffy new Century 20 in Tanforan Mall. It’s a nice new theatre with excellent presentation, but it isn’t without some problems. For one thing, it’s understaffed: On the way to our auditorium I came across a pair of propped-open exit doors, which is an [...]

Generally, American scripted television series follow a familiar cadence of life phases, showing stages of youth, maturity and senescence in the same manner as the humans who created the shows do.
Pilot Era – That crucial first season. This is the stage where a show has to prove its Darwinian fitness. Fresh, full of ideas, often [...]

I watched exactly twelve minutes of the very end of this season of “American Idol.”
I am not really going to go out of my way to say anything too bad about the show. I have to respect what “American Idol” does: connects well with it’s audience, makes ordinary people feel special and gives these ordinary, [...]

It seems like just two years ago I wrote a commentary explaining what sweeps is; and now here we are and sweeps is virtually indistinguishable from regular televsion.
In the old days (two years ago) when November or February or May came around, TV would get cheap and exciting like Paris Hilton before the launch of [...]

I missed you guys! How’s it going? Been busy this last few weeks? Me too.
The podcast network has emerged from the rubble of a particularly nasty server crisis, covered with sexy scars and stronger than ever. It’s not just this show, it’s all of them. We are only now approaching normalcy. Thanks for your patience. [...]

As we’ve learned from better science fiction, our creations sometimes surpass their original parameters. Sometimes they run amok (2001), sometimes they kill everyone everywhere (”Battlestar Galactica,” The Matrix), and sometimes they turn into charming naïfs (Data from Star Trek). Another unusual example can currently be seen during commercial breaks on American television.
Esurance, an online insurance [...]

All this Star Trek talk has made me sort of nostalgic. When I think about it, it’s difficult to remember the details of any given show.
Something…
But there was definitely, definitely something I liked about one of the later shows. Something that sort of drew me back, again and again…
Something…
I believe it was some sort of [...]

The ol’ Trek-o-Meter, that linear scale used to track the intensity of one’s Star Trek fandom essayed in these pages last July, apparently isn’t quite ready to be retired yet. For one thing, there is finally a new original cast Star Trek movie in production, with Chris Pine (Smokin’ Aces) as Kirk and Simon Pegg [...]

Got to spend the weekend up in Lake Tahoe with family. Tahoe is a large high mountain lake that straddles the border between California and Nevada. It’s mean level is 6225 feet (1898 meters) above sea level. I’m a sea level sort of guy, which meant the first evening I was up there I [...]