(Dramatic silence)

(Possibly followed by large explosion – though only applicable for Jerry Bruckheimer films)

To the only man who could leave 20 voicemails for a girl and probably still lock it up – we will miss you Don LaFontaine.  While there are certainly the proud few who can continue his legacy… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRtuxdfQHw

…the deep familiar voiceover “that sounds like a seven foot tall man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood”, will be missed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzrerZ0133c

Had the man been a telemarketer – we’d all be poor.

Front row at the Team USA / Team Canada pre-Olympics-why-would-anyone-even-go game in Vegas.  From left to right: Warren Buffett, William Gates, and Christopher Bridges

I get that you had to prioritize.  Start with your newer titles and your big grossers.  Then move on to the sci-fi and action movies with the great sound, and then the cult classics that you can package with extra features and sell to rabid fans for $40.  (By the way, what made you think you could sell a special edition version of The Rock for $40?  It’s not like it’s Evil Dead II.)

But eventually, you know you have to do every title, right?  It’s kind of your responsibility.  How much could it possibly cost to put a movie on a DVD and manufacture a couple thousand copies?  Can’t be that much because the technology is readily available for me to do this myself.  Rule no. 1 in technology is that if a person can do it himself, it’s really cheap for a company to do it in scale.  Are you worried it won’t sell well?  Call it a limited edition and double the price.  The eight people on the planet that want that movie will gladly fork it over.  Are you worried the movie is a piece of crap?  Guess what, they’ve been putting pieces of crap on DVD for years.

My issue is not your negligence or sense of self importance, it’s that you are robbing history of these movies.  VHS players are no longer being manufactured, and copies of these movies on tape are becoming scarcer and scarcer.  Soon, there won’t be any way to watch Speed Zone! That’s a crime.  That’s cinemacide.  You’re erradicating a piece of culture that seven, maybe six people hold near and dear to their hearts.  What gives you the right to say that Speed Zone! cannot live on in the digital age?  Do you realize what you’ve done?  You’ve cut every John Candy Movie Marathon short by ninety minutes.  You’ve robbed the world of one of Eugene Levy’s great performances.  How could you actively, consciously abridge the lifespan of a contribution to annals of culture?  Do you think Plautus intentionally destroyed the ending of Aulularia?  The five people who love Speed Zone deserve to have their needs addressed.  Hell, you made three other movies based on the same idea, starring mostly the same people, and those are on DVD!

This is bullshit.  You’re bullshit.  Put Speed Zone! on DVD so that I can rent it from Netflix and rip it for free.

Count the internet sensations!

By Brian Lysaght

May 30 (Bloomberg) — Revelers are planning a final cocktail party on the London Underground tomorrow evening before an alcohol ban takes effect on June 1.

Mayor Boris Johnson announced the ban on May 7, six days after his election, fulfilling a campaign pledge. The new rule will bar alcohol consumption on city buses and trains and is aimed at making traveling safer and more pleasant, Johnson said.

”The Final Circle Line Party” will take place in the rear cars of the 9 p.m. Circle Line train leaving from the clockwise platform at Liverpool Street station. Revelers should bring their own cocktails, said James Darling, 20, a Web site designer helping to organize the event, in an interview yesterday. Similar parties are happening on other lines.

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With the kind of weather that could drive Richard Simmons to depression – one of London’s greatest assets is the drinking culture. Walking down the street with a pint is a beautiful and glorious feeling. The drunken Sunday sprawl of Brick Lane out in Eastie could be the alcoholic’s equivalent to the Sound of Music.

It’s not the worst loss for the Big Smoke, banning open containers on public transport, and at least it results in the most massive underground party since the awkward tribal dance in The Matrix.

Just be careful of setting dangerous precedents fellow Londonists, don’t let a public transport ban become a citywide ban. Meanwhile, see you on the Circle Line.

For your moment of zen, I leave you with the lyrics from…
The Jam – Going Underground

What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns

And the public wants what the public gets
But I dont get what this society wants
I’m going underground, (going underground)
Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound
Going underground, (going underground)

Citing the slump in the housing market and the general economic concerns in the U.S., GE announced today that it plans to sell or spin-off its appliances business. A representative from the company stated, “We correlated our upward revenue stream dynamics and found that there simply were not enough synergies to fully support continued product development. GE now faces the difficult task of synergizing backward overflow, which translates to facing the challenges of tomorrow, today, for all of us.”

Interim CEO Cathy Geiss was unavailable when reached for comment.

Covering analyst Robert Schenosky of Jefferies & Co. favors the deal, and does not think it is out of the question for GE to sell off other struggling assets, including the Sheinhardt Wig Company and its subsidiary NBC Universal.

It’s a recognition that there is not anything that is untouchable at this point. Certainly other candidates could include the lighting business and even potentially NBC Universal.

So I was somewhat surprised when I read that the show actually has a very un-predictable, un-formulaic aspect to it. And it’s the last second of every episode, literally. The show’s writer, Chuck Lorre, chooses to use the vanity cards (You know when a show ends and they remind you who produced it? That’s a vanity card.) as little personal diaries. The thing is, vanity cards usually only air for a second or two after a show ends, so you’d have to use some sort of magical time-shifting machine to actually read the entire thing. Luckily, that technology is readily available for about $9.99 a month from your local cable provider.

Shown at about 8:29 p.m. and 9:29 p.m. Eastern time, his Chuck Lorre Productions vanity cards feature an essay — usually about 100 to 200 words — on subjects such as meddling network executives, Hollywood culture and his own family drama. The messages can’t be read in full as they air, because they’re shown so briefly, but they can be read by viewers who have DVR technology with a pause button on their remote control. The cards have attracted a cult following, as well as the attention of network executives.

I have precisely zero statistics (Hey! That’s a statistic!) to support me, but I feel like DVR technology has been around for long enough and has made its way into enough households that TV types and advertising whatsits would start to alter their gameplan a bit. I’m waiting to see an ad on TV that is shown in split screen. The left side of the screen would be for regular type TV viewers stuck in the present tense, and the right side would be for time-shifting future watchers such as myself. For example, let’s say you want to advertise auto insurance. (They do some TV ads right? ) The left side of the ad would be your standard ad, and show some sort of car crash, in real time, and with sound, while the right side would show the same thing silently in slow-motion (which would appear as real-time while being fast forwarded through). Left siders get the added benefit of seeing a dramatic slow-motion car crash (a definite audience pleaser which also hammers the whole “seriously, get insurance” point home), and right-siders get to see a high-speed car crash Benny Hill style. It would be different, and people would talk about it. And that’s kind of the idea, right?

Oh, the WSJ article has a few samples of the vanity cards available, including an audio only vanity card in which Mr. Lorre plays a jazz guitar version of the Knight Rider theme he learned during the writers’ strike.

Maybe Kurt is hanging out with Tabitha Soren somewhere.