Correct me if I’m wrong, but is this supposed to be a reference to the flux capacitor, the fictional invention said to make time travel possible, as described in the 1985 film Back to the Future?  If so, what the hell is it doing serving as the headline for an article about the psychological affect of Tiger Woods’s presence on other golfers?  Keep it up ESPN.  Everyone loves it.

“Who does a doctor treat?  …You see the elbow on my jacket?  What’s it doing?”

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.

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.

——————————————————————–

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)

Yes.

Jon Lester just wrapped up the first no hitter of his career, and the 13th at Fenway Park.  (Ellsbury’s no-hitter-saving play can be found here.)  It’s a pretty fantastic achievement, but the question I found myself asking as I watched the top of the 9th is not what was going through Jon’s head, but what goes through the batters’ heads, specifically the potential last out?  It’s a 7-0 game, you play for the Royals, it’s pretty clear you’re not going to stage a 2-out, 7-run rally.  Are these guys still legitimately trying to get a hit?  What are the incentives to do so?  Do you want to pad your stats?  Would your teammates even appreciate it?  Do you want to be the villain?  Is that a role some players aspire to fill?  Congratulations, you just broke up a cancer survivor’s no-hitter.  You’re a gigantic asshole, but you raised your batting average by .001 in a contract year, so was it worth it?

I was especially curious when Tony Peña (I think it was Tony Peña) was facing a 3-0 count in the 9th.  Generally, hitters take the strike in this situation.  Was there ever any thought given to swinging on this “gimme” pitch?  And what kind of a dick move would that have been?

I’d like to believe that the guy that represents the last out in a no-hitter situation just acquiesces and goes down swinging (or pops out, whatever).  Usually the noble thing to do is not in the best interest of the person doing it, but in this case I think it comes at very little detriment to the hitter.  What’s the worst thing that happens to the hitter?  Another strikeout on his stat sheet?  Big deal.  Don’t be a dick.

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.

But that’s fine. Maybe the point of the article is to identify the best 10 all-around laptops or something. I will concede that some laptops, while technically capable of everything, are not practically suited for certain tasks. For example, I would not recommend the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition to traveling businessmen, or, y’know, aspiring non-virgins. Either way, the article is bound to have some criteria for identifying its best 10 laptops right? You can’t just make a list of laptops and call it the best 10 of anything right? It’s probably included in the very first lines of the article:

1) Acer Aspire 5920-6954 Laptop

Nope. They’re going to be launching right into this thing. That’s fine. We’ll have to assume some basic criteria then. Well, since we’re dealing with laptops, battery life and weight are going to be primary concerns. Because people carry laptops.  Regarding general computer features, the most important are probably storage, processor performance, and bundled software. Then there are the little things like connectivity options, expandability, value-add features, and design. So, how about that Acer Aspire?

Except for business applications, which it lacks

Wait a minute. They’re ranking the best 10 all-purpose laptops, and #1 on the list doesn’t have business applications? Aren’t business guys the guys that do most of the computer buying? Don’t they make things called “business laptops” or “laptops for business?” Does this mean Acer, as a business, cannot use its own laptops?  And what are the business applications that it lacks? Microsoft Office? LotusNotes? Does it lack them pre-installed, or does it lack the capability to run them? We’re seven words into this and we’ve already got more questions than answers.

the Acer Aspire 5920 Vista Home Premium laptop has just about everything home-office buyers could ask for in a solid budget laptop

…except business applications

The terrific keyboard boasts loads of shortcut buttons that do everything but take out the trash.

Alright now we’ve got something to work with. It’s got a terrific keyboard! What makes it so terrific? Well we don’t know, because PC World only tells us what the keyboard isn’t capable of doing–taking out the trash. Turns out, that terrific keyboard has media control buttons and one-button application launching abilities. Alright, that’s pretty handy, but what about those basic criteria we talked about for laptops? It weights a beefy 7.3lbs and gets about 3.8 hours of battery life. That’s a pretty heavy laptop, and while the battery life is respectable, I know I can get about 4.5 to 6 hours on my MacBook. It even has a keyboard shortcut for emptying the trash!  I wonder what the next computer will be. I hope it has business applications.

2) Lenovo IdeaPad Y510

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y510 vaults into the upper reaches of our most recent all-purpose laptops chart, largely on the strength of its design smarts…the Lenovo IdeaPad matched the Acer Aspire 5920-6954 almost step-for-step, yet the Lenovo costs $100 less

Alright! This computer performs as well as the Acer Aspire, but costs less. Sounds good to me. Also, it’s a Lenovo, which means it definitely has business applications. Clearly, this is a list where #1 is really #10. The IdeaPad is a pretty good computer. It’s got a webcam, and “a responsive keyboard that doesn’t bow to fingertip pressure.” It’s also got thick hinges that contribute to its alluring “design smarts.” You know, most people tend to credit Apple with having the best industrial design in the industry. And they include webcams on all their thick-hinged laptops. And if you want design smarts, look no further than the MacBook’s MagSafe power connector.  That thing is like the Mayor of Design Smarts City.  If the IdeaPad is on the list, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say the MacBook will show up a little later.

3) HP Pavilion dv2660se Laptop

The HP Pavilion dv2660se offers strictly budget performance, but its battery life, great design, and low price make it a winner. The six-pound HP Pavilion’s high-capacity 12-cell battery endured for a whopping 6.3 hours on one charge in our tests.

This sounds like a winner.  It has a great battery life and comes with good capacity for a laptop (250GB).  Except, PC World’s actual review of the laptop says that the graphics of the computer are not suitable for gaming.  And that great battery life?

The way the big battery protrudes from the bottom of the notebook does not make the dv2660se the most briefcase- or backpack-friendly model

So briefcase-toting businesspeople should not own this laptop.  Or backpack-toting student types.  BUT… it has multi-media features like touch-sensitive media controls and two headphone ports.  (Headphone splitters are available at your local anywhere for $3).  I am not getting a very “all-purpose” feeling from this laptop.

4) Dell Inspiron 1525

you can customize it down to the smallest detail–even lid color–before buying it online

That’s cheating.  You can’t pick a highly customizable computer and call it all-purpose, because you’re really picking a multitude of computers based on the permutations and combinations of available options.  And how is lid color used to argue multi-purposeness?  That’s like saying that red pillows do a better job relieving neck pain.

The 1525 is wedge-shaped but svelte at 6 pounds, including a 15.4-inch 1280 by 800 resolution screen, a DVD writer, and a good keyboard

A svelte 6 pounds?  Is that anything like my 27″ big screen TV?  And as far as that 15.4″ 1280 x 800 screen–my 13.3″ MacBook (which weighs a “svelte” 5 pounds) has a 1280 x 800 screen too.  And 13.3 is less than 15.4.  It’s smaller and lighter and has the same screen resolution–pretty handy.  I’ll bet it’s next on the list.

the 1525 gives multimedia lovers lots of entertainment features: an instant-on button, a Webcam, and even dual headphone jacks

Seriously, what’s with the dual headphone jacks?  Because a computer opts to build-in a feature that can easily be replicated for $3, it’s all-purpose?  If I designed and built a laptop with a built-in penlight, I think I could make PC World’s list of the best 10 all-purpose laptops.

5) Lenovo ThinkPad R61 Laptop

The R61′s 3-hour, 19-minute tested battery life is good.

Now I’m getting annoyed.  We have our first repeat manufacturer, Lenovo, and this time it’s the more business-oriented ThinkPad.  And about that 3-hour, 19-minute battery?  Not good.  That’s actually the worst battery life of any computer mentioned on the list so far.  And it’s over an hour less than the “official” 4.5 hour battery life of the MacBook.  I guess they’re just building up the list to the obvious conclusion.

6) Fujitsu LifeBook A6120 Laptop

The A6120 comes with most of the features you’d expect from a well-rounded machine–except good battery life…2 hours, 36 minutes

Okay, so battery life has nothing to do with the purposefulness of a laptop.  I could have sworn that the whole concept of a laptop was its portability.  That is achieved through two things: light weight and battery operation.  Would you buy a cell phone that shoots video, automatically does criminal background checks on your contact list, and manipulates your voice to sound like the celebrity of your choice if it only got service for 30 minutes at a time at altitudes of 4,000 feet and above?  If you said “yes,” you’re probably in the target demographic to own the A6120.  But, to be fair, it does have USB and FireWire ports, and video out.  That separates it from the pack.  

The criteria for “all-purpose” laptop are really deteriorating.  Let’s take a moment to review what’s been important to PC World:

• terrific keyboards
• media control buttons
• price
• built-in webcam
• thick hinges
• touch-sensitive buttons
• dual headphone ports
• customizability
• lid colors
• USB and FireWire ports
• Video out

And on the other side of the fence (which we shall call That Which Divides the Logical from the Arbitrary), what has not been important?

• Business applications
• Battery life
• Size/shape
• graphics processing
• hard drive capacity
• bundled software
• processor power
• connectivity

When someone says “indeed” what they really mean is “I have no interest in what you are talking about”.

I discovered this fact through a college roommate who would use this phrase upon my informing him of; happenings in my life, interesting facts, current events, relationship status, random occurrences from the day, and emergencies.

If you listen carefully out there in the world you will hear this word uttered at the end of a long monologue someone gives perhaps in your office, at a dinner table, or in a social setting and you will realize its true meaning.

Here is a standard example:

Neighbor 1:”Hey, I just got a new lawnmower!”

Neighbor 2: “Indeed.”

You can almost feel the contempt.

Great article right?

Indeed.

Clearly, I am not the first person to blog about the shortcomings of Southwest Airlines. It’s just that I had a particular experience on Sunday night flying home to Chicago from Baltimore, the details of which I would rather not go into, so I will bullet-point summarize:

• overhead compartment above my seat filled with flight attendant’s bag, which could only fit horizontally; really, flight attendant? rainbow flag sticker on there, eh?
• took me about 2.8 minutes to find a place for my carry-on bag, due to situation outlined above; passenger waiting to board behind me tells me, “You’re real intelligent!”; really, guy in overalls? really?
• flight attendant mentioned above did safety lecture, and quipped, “if our flight should turn into a cruise, your seat can be used to flotation, so just kick to shore!”; really, clay aiken in a red vest? plane crash jokes on a plane? while giving the safety lecture?
• peanuts were dropped, suspiciously, directly onto and in the middle of the document i was reading by – you guessed it – the aforementioned in-flight-waiter; i’m picking up your contempt, kajagoogoo.
• woman seated next to me opted for not ONLY the Sbarro slice of supreme, but the caesar salad too. mmm, sbarro – italian for goodness.

I’m sure I’ll continue to fly with these assholes, despite this experience. I really just can’t stand the in-flight jokes.

1. how to get our money back
2. how to ask you to pay us back (check or cash)
3. how we would get our 1.5 hours of life back
4. If there was ever a worse movie
5. If a movie could actually be broken down into 3 awesome scenes and the rest actually CUT
6. If you were crazy or on acid during your movie experience
7. Maybe we saw the wrong “A History of Violence ”
8. Perhaps “the good version” didn’t get distributed in NYC