Hello World

Awesome internet things I am loving lately:

• Flickr--I've already babbled about how lovely Flickr is, but they keep adding cool new features and making it more wonderful every goddamn day. It's ridiculous. The latest innovation is "interestingness," a pretty silly name for a fun little function. Basically, it uses a complicated algorithm to analyze images to determine the relative, um, interestingness of all photos. You can use it to look at the most interesting photos for a given day or month, and you can also sort your own photos by interestingness. At any rate, this is just one example of the neat stuff they're doing over there. The best thing I can say about Flickr is that since signing up for my account there (in April or so) I've probably taken more pictures than I took in my entire life prior to then.
  
  
• Netflix--What can I say. A great, simple service that gets me to watch lots of movies I otherwise wouldn't ever get to, for a reasonable price, with lots of nice online gimmicks (like Netflix Friends, which as far as I can tell is almost entirely useless but fun to browse around in). These guys did it right, and blew Blockbuster and Walmart out of the water.
  
  
• Konfabulator--like Flickr, a recent Yahoo! purchase, Konfabulator is probably the nerdiest thing on this list. It is, I think, an XML-based code environment that is simple to program for, the end result of which is that you can download any of dozens of different tiny "widgets" that run on your desktop, performing lots of different functions. Here are the ones I've got going right now:
  • mini Weather, which displays current temperature and conditions in DC
  • mini CPU, which displays my current processor load
  • mini What to Do?, which is a tiny little to-do list that stays on my screen all the time.
  There are many great widgets available, including volume controls, remotes for media programs (iTunes, Winamp, etc), and, because it's so simple to program new ones, tons of extremely specialized ones (Denver traffic report? What's playing on some random radio station? What laws were just passed in German Parliament?). An especially useful duo for laptop users are battery meters and wifi detectors. You can set each widget's display preferences (always on top, only visible on the desktop, and a few others) and can usually also adjust the way it looks/performs. I'm just starting to play around with this thing, but it shows a lot of promise.
  
  
• Gmail--You can use POP to download your emails. Great search functionality. Huge file sizes accepted. Enormous storage capacity (and increasing all the time). Hotmail and Yahoo! webmail are completely obsolete.
  
  
• Google Maps--All they did was take the best features from Mapquest and Yahoo Maps and proceed to leapfrog them in every way. Plus, they released the APIs, ensuring that all sorts of awesome indie mashup services would take that functionality and do something great with it.
  
  
• Rhapsody--I don't like DRMed music files, and I will never pay to download a crippled file whose sound quality is worse than a CD's, but I don't mind an all-you-can-eat streaming music service that costs much less than Netflix and allows me to listen to my playlists at home, at work, at school, at Starbucks (see below), or anywhere I can get internet access. Rhapsody ain't perfect (and there are other streaming music services out there that might be better/cheaper) but I think this business model might work out okay.
  
  
• Firefox (especially tabbed browsing, which NEVER gets old)--If you haven't already downloaded Firefox by now, I'm pretty sure you're a lost cause. I've personally installed it on a dozen of my friend/family's computers, and if I were at your computer right now I'd install it there, too. Tabbed browsing changed my life, and not having to worry about the myriad problems with Internet Explorer is invaluable.
  
  
• Dreamhost's absurd hosting deal--See my post on this subject.
  
  
• The USPS's mail forwarding form--If you're moving, do this. It'll be the one simple step in the process.
  
  
• Starbucks/T-Mobile Hotspot--I'm a T-Mobile cell phone user, and although there are plenty of sad aspects to this second-class cellular citizenship, it does get me a hefty discount on Hotspot service. I don't know if I will keep it after I get settled in in Boston, but while I've been travelling around the country this summer it's been extremely handy knowing that I could always take my laptop into a Starbucks (or Barnes and Nobles, or some other places) and get online. In concert with Rhapsody, Gmail, Google Maps, and Flickr, I have essentially the same capabilities in some random Starbucks that I do in the comfort of my own home. In fact, I wrote this whole entry while sipping on a venti double half-caff mochachino (with soy milk). Not really. But I could have.

Also, they cloned a dog.

One of my favorite time-wasters in college, when I was supposed to be writing papers on post-structuralism and gender identity, was Minesweeper. I would spend blocks of 10 or 20 minutes at a time just trying to beat my best time. Sometimes more like an hour. It was pretty bad, guys.

So the point is, I got pretty good at it*. Good enough to scare people who saw me playing, my stupid mousehand flying around clicking and clicking and clicking. Good enough to develop fairly complex analyses of the intricacies of the game. So here's my intermediate strategy guide to Minesweeper: ( it is pretty long. )

---

I have been playing Minesweeper for a really long time now, and at this point it's pretty much just a matter of seeing if I can shave 1 second off of my best times. This is pretty boring, so I have a new obsession: Minesweeper without marks. It's simple--you play as normal, but you don't right-click to mark mines. All you do is left-click to clear spaces. You end up with games that look like this:

I have yet to make it to the end of an expert game like this, but one day I will, and it'll be really really sweet.

So, let's talk about the OC.

( Spoilers ahead! )

And now, let's talk about Star Wars.

( More spoilers. )

A selection from The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

The crippled freighter sailed into my view from the bridge, crossing the crescent of Bespin and making for black space. In moments we would have them!

"This will be a day long rememebered," I said.

...Which is pretty much when the Millennium Falcon escaped to hyperspace.

I sighed. Why me?

I was even too dispirited to crush Admiral Piett's trachea.

Now I am in my hyperbaric chamber, listening to music (Rotan's Sonata for Holotyne) and trying to get a grip on things. Betrayed by a mimbo, surrounded by incompetence, my soul in knots; lost Skywalker, lost Organa, sold Solo...

The Emperor is going to barf when I tell him.

I know I should try not to get too excited about the next (and, theoretically, last) installment of Star Wars... but I can't help myself. The previews look awesome, and Tom Stoppard rewrote all the dialogue so it might not suck, and, oh yeah, Anakin turns into DARTH VADER.

Damn you, OC. DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL!

So, first of all, how did I do on my predictions?

( Read more... )

Last night, I pulled my Zen Xtra (40gig) out of a pile of crap. My first thought was "what the eff is that?" Then, I remembered, "oh, yeah. That's the mp3 player I used to use at work. Why'd I stop using it? It would be great to have all my music accessible in my office!" So I updated its hard drive with all the music I'd gotten since I stopped using it in July of 2004, and brought it to the office.

Upon which point I began to remember just why, exactly, I stopped using it.

It is slow. It's literally a second of dead air in between songs, and selecting a new playlist or browsing artists or whatever, or just navigating the menu system, is filled with delays and even occasional freezing-up.

It is not user-friendly at all. You know how most players have a "shuffle all" function that is easy to find? Well, not here. You know how to get to that with this magical device? Menu (although you actually get to the menu using the back button--what the fuck?) > Music Library > Play any track. How "play any track" translates to "play entire catalog," I have no idea. It makes no sense at all. Also, you better have it set to shuffle already before you do any of that. Blah. Stupid. A perfect example of how annoying this thing is to use.

The file loading process sucks. It takes forever, and you have to keep the player plugged into the electrical socket because the USB connection doesn't charge the device. Also, although it sometimes stores the id3 tags (you know, the information about who is playing the song and what it's called and all that--somewhat important stuff), sometimes the only info you get is "05 Track 05."

It's a big and awkward fucking thing. Now, okay, size isn't so important in this case, since I'm just planning on sitting it on my desk, connected to my headphones/speakers. But let's get back to the awkward. The buttons are laid out such that, when you're walking around with this huge brick of an mp3 player in your jacket pocket, you can kind of use them efficiently. But when it's sitting on your desk, it's really irritating having to get at tiny side buttons whose functions you can't see from the front (compare this to the iPod's click wheel on the front).

Anyway, this is a more-or-less obsolete player now, I think. So basically I just wasted your time whining about a device that, unless you already made the mistake of buying it, will never affect your life at all.

I am accepting offers for it, if you're interested.

My friend emailed me to ask what kind of mp3 player she should get. ( Here's my response )

Quick thoughts:


The Mac Mini is cute, but too expensive. It will be an enormous fucking hit.

The iPod Shuffle is awesome but many many people will not buy it because it lacks a screen. Nonetheless, it weighs LESS THAN AN OUNCE, is smaller than a pack of gum, and is incredibly cheap when compared to flash drives of equal memory size. I think I will probably get one to replace my current flash player, which primarily accompanies me on nights out for the walk home. This thing was made for the change pocket in my jeans.

Here is a great article written by Microsoft copy-protection engineers which considers the "darknet"--the illegal intellectual property distribution network that used to be personal associates trading cassettes and is now characterized by peer-to-peer file-sharing. The article considers current and proposed methods of thwarting or minimizing illegal activity on the darknet and basically concludes "we're fucked." This is my favorite paragraph:

There is evidence that the darknet will continue to exist and provide low cost, high-quality service to a large group of consumers. This means that in many markets, the darknet will be a competitor to legal commerce. From the point of view of economic theory, this has profound implications for business strategy: for example, increased security (e.g. stronger DRM systems) may act as a disincentive to legal commerce. Consider an MP3 file sold on a web site: this costs money, but the purchased object is as useful as a version acquired from the darknet. However, a securely DRM-wrapped song is strictly less attractive: although the industry is striving for flexible licensing rules, customers will be restricted in their actions if the system is to provide meaningful security. This means that a vendor will probably make more money by selling unprotected objects than protected objects. In short, if you are competing with the darknet, you must compete on the darknet’s own terms: that is convenience and low cost rather than additional security.

AMEN. Note that this was written 2 years ago and we're still stuck with obnoxious copy-protection that doesn't work and makes life more annoying for legitimate users. I know big corporations are slow to adjust to changing conditions, but seriously. If somebody had an online music store that sold unrestricted near-CD-quality mp3s I would be on that in a second, even if it were a little more expensive than iTunes (which I don't use, because the files are lower in audio quality than CDs and because the only mp3 player I can use them with is an iPod). And I'm a SOPHISTICATED consumer who realistically could download any song I want for free¹. Imagine how happy grandma would be if she could just download a song and use it however she wanted, rather than get stuck with error messages because she can't figure out DRM.

I think the salient point of the article as well as this posting is that the best way to lose legal paying customers is to restrict their rights (see: DRM, CSS, watermarking, fingerprinting, gene-mapping) and the best way to gain them is to provide a service of equal convenience and value to that of the darknets at a price that makes sense. No more $16 CDs, no more movie downloads that only work on one computer within 24 hours--no more crazy rules or prices that drive consumers into the warm and comforting arms of illegal file-sharing.

1. Though I don't, actually, download any song I want. Instead, I buy CDs and rip them to my hard drive, which is so STUPIDLY INEFFICIENT AND ARCHAIC IT MAKES ME SICK. I mean, I was doing this in 1997!

Yesterday, my mp3 player broke in an annoying way: the volume up button doesn't work. Everything else is copacetic, though--I just can't mess with the volume, lest I decrease it below my hearing threshhold. Some people would react to this by sending it back to the manufacturer for repairs, and I may just do that. But I am also a fool with money (and we know what the result of that combination is). So I did a naughty thing. I know it's overpriced (the 15 gig ipod is only $50 bucks more), but it's also kind of underpriced (a flash-based player with 1/8 the storage capacity is priced more or less the same). And the thing is, I don't want or need to carry all of my music around with me. 4 gigs, about a thousand songs, is definitely more than enough to last me a week or 10--my experience with a player with more storage was that shuffle kept bringing up songs that I had downloaded on a whim years ago and never wanted to hear again. So I'll spend a fun afternoon going through my mp3s and pick the songs/albums/artists worth carrying around with me and never look back.

Of course, so many of you jerks have ordered the mini that they probably won't be shipping mine til next month. Thanks a lot, jerks.


Unrelated: if you hate giving out your email address online (and who doesn't?), you owe it to yourself to check out mailinator.

So, it turns out that file-sharing doesn't hurt music sales. Yes, that's right, the worthless RIAA is full of excrement. Let's just make this explicit: "'From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales,' said Oberholzer-Gee." But wait, it gets even better: "they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies." Although this is a direct contradiction of the assertion that "there is no effect between downloading and sales," it's pretty damned easy to make the case that it in fact means that there is a POSITIVE correlation between downloading and sales. Well, kind of. That is only true for albums that are popular; low-selling "niche" albums suffer a "small negative effect" as a result of jerks like you frequenting peer-to-peer file-sharing services. So I guess that's not awesome, but really how many niche artists do you think expect to make a living off their poorly-selling albums, anyway? If you really like an unpopular band, just buy a t-shirt and a concert ticket.

Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, an Atlanta company that tracks file-sharing activity, said the findings match what his company has observed about the effect of file sharing on music sales. Although the practice cannibalizes some sales, it may promote others by serving as a marketing tool, Garland said.

Uh, no kidding, guy. Holy smokes, is it really possible that it has taken 5 years for anybody to figure out that people who listen to more music are likely to buy more music? Isn't that the whole reason that radio stations don't have to pay royalties on the music they play?
Anyway, later on in the article the RIAA asserts that the study is contradicted by other studies, and this is about where I stopped really reading so maybe the story concludes with a tender description of an infant's first steps or perhaps a nice sonnet. But I'm pretty sure I got the main point, which is:

File-Sharing is Good for America!

Last night's meta episode of the OC was pretty crazy. Some aspects of it, like Adam Brody as Seth talking about Colin Hanks as pseudo-Adam Brody playing his character as pseudo-Seth on the Valley as pseudo-OC, were so complicated that I'm pretty sure no one, including the writer of the show, really has any idea what the hell it even meant. Even so, I thought that this episode did a yeoman's job of mocking itself and its cast, and I'm sure it was damned hard for an already self-consciously ironic show to knock down the 4th wall again (or maybe just more? like, knocked it downer?) by dramatizing the Valley as a foil for the OC itself. They actually set this up quite a few episodes ago, showing Summer and Marissa, in various states of hating boys, watching the Valley. So I guess somebody reminded the writers that plots work better when they're credible and conceived in advance. Speaking of well-crafted plotlines, it was pretty funny hearing Adam Brody (who is rumored to improvise a lot of his lines--I know this to my eternal shame, but whatever, throw it on the pile of things I am not proud of knowing) talk about how the Colin Hanks character was basically playing himself (Colin Hanks... satirizing Adam Brody). Every time Brody describes his character's doppelganger as funny and attractive and generally hot stuff he's more-or-less complimenting himself. Maybe I think about this stuff too much...

If I wrote the OC, Colin Hanks would not have been the star of an OC equivalent. Instead, he would be the co-star of a show in which he and his buddy have to dress up like women in order to live in a building full of women. Guys in dresses, miscommunication leading to HILARIOUS misunderstandings, costume changes in fancy restaurant bathrooms... Imagine the high-jinks. Oh, what might have been.

Ryan made Luke break it off with Julie Cooper by glaring at him over the phone--a glare so powerful it even worked via voicemail. Astonishing. Anyway, Luke was a tactless dumbass throughout the episode (yeah, maybe crashing a dinner party to tell your grown up girlfriend you can't sleep together anymore wasn't the best idea) and I think it's about time for his big gay dad to reenter the plot of the show. That, or Luke should start a band (Brian Austin-Green is probably available to back him on keyboard).

Unfortunately, Luke had one last trick tucked carefully up his oafish sleeve--surprise, Marissa, your ex-boyfriend and your mom were rutting like free-range hogs! Weirdly Marissa didn't seem to take this news well, which ended any chance Ryan had of executing the delicate "pillowfight to making out" gambit. Sorry dude, I guess you'll have to find another girl who wears 3 inches of garden hose as a tube top.

Speaking of the shaved pipe-cleaner figure that is Marissa, I've got to say that her "smooth-talking the bouncer into thinking Ryan is a celebrity" scene was all-the-more unconvincing because although I know that the guy who plays Ryan is a celebrity, by the end of this scene Mischa Barton's terrible line delivery had me thinking he couldn't be a celebrity. Poorly explained, I know, but how can one explain acting so bad that it makes the truth seem like artifice? It's as if her line was "water sure is wet!" and then it started raining, and I was like "dude, the rain totally wouldn't be making her hair damp like that!" She's that bad an actress. So after enduring her painful "acting" I was torn between pitying the guy who plays Ryan for having to pretend to be impressed by this and wishing the bouncer would just say "I'm not a moron, skank. I just saw you both get tossed out the front door." And then he'd punch her in the mouth. Alas, the same guy who wrote the implausible dialogue got to write the bouncer's implausible response, and into the VIP entrance they went.

Oh, and my bad--it wasn't Vegas, it was just dumb old LA. Big disappointment for me, since the episode was supposed to be the culmination of a bizarre days-long escalation of excitement on my part all based on how much I love Las Vegas and gambling. I guess there just would have been no practical way for Jimmy to drive from Orange County to Las Vegas in time to weakly talk shit about a scuzzy club owner and his "I could crush Ryan like a packing peanut" bouncer. But "Hailey's a stripper who mysteriously never takes off her clothes in LA!" is just not as sketchy as "Hailey's a stripper in VEGAS!" At any rate, I'm pretty sure that we're going to have to put up with Hailey and Jimmy as a boring plotline for quite a while. It almost makes you miss Anna. Almost. Well, not really at all. I just wish she hadn't left her entire wardrobe in Marissa's closet.

As for serving meatloaf to Orange County's movers and shakers, well, in some ways I wish this whole plotline just hadn't happened. I don't really care whether Ann Coulter likes the restaurant, and I'm not particularly interested in Eyebrows's oasis from Caleb or Jimmy's oasis from Julie or, for that matter, whether the lighthouse is a beacon of things to come or a bridge between the past and the present or an enormous phallic symbol casting its terrible shadow over all the land. Can we just skip straight to the part where all the kids work there as their summer jobs, please? Where the new characters move to town from the French Riviera and New York City, forcing everyone to reevaluate their various relationships and the town they thought they knew? Oh, and everyone wears really ugly aprons and hats? Maybe that's a little too Saved By the Bell, but I'm not entirely convinced that there's any such thing as "too Saved By the Bell." Maybe the College Years. And "SBTB: the New Class" never happened.

Next week's scenes: What's with Marissa running to Theresa in Chino? I'm sorry but Marissa acts so ridiculous all the time, I'm thinking about just calling her Plot Contrivance from now on. PC for shizzle. And who will punch first, Eddie or Ryan? Or might they team up to battle the sinister auto-stripping gangsters of the Inland Valley? Possibly in capes? That's probably too much to ask.

California here we come
Right back where we started from

California here we come
Right back where we started from

California!
Here we come!

California here we come
Right back where we started from

California!
Here we come!

The OC started with one of its strongest openings in memory. Seth and Ryan have a funny conversation, then Ghetto Girl shows up, then Marissa shows up, then there is some awesome awkward conversation, then the skanks leave, and then Eyebrows gets involved. Good times. During this scene it becomes clear that Ryan has his own little love triangle to deal with (oh yeah, and Eddie the moustached fiancé may be a bit... perturbed). Also, Seth is funny.

But wait! Anna "the indie-rock Skeleton" is planning on leaving the OC!!!!!! Seth freaks out and it's kind of overwrought but eventually it's kind of nice, because he is her friend and doesn't want her to go (although he must be reading about how adorable he is in Television Without Pity because he thinks she's leaving because he's so lovable). Anyway, throughout this episode she pretty much demonstrates why Seth is the only one who's going to miss her. Plus, we all know she'll be back next season, probably with a huge rack and a sense of style that doesn't beg comparison to Pauly Shore.

Now, last week I complained about Ryan being a moron for hooking up with Ghetto Girl when she has a fiancé (the aforementioned Eddie, who always wears a mechanic jacket for some reason--Eddie, relax, nobody is going to make you tune up their transmission in the OC!) and also a strangely low voice (check for an Adam's apple, dude). Well, he's still a moron, but at least this week she puts out. Apparently a lot. While Eddie sits outside in his big car, fuming and plotting. I'm sure he'll give up soon, Ryan, and not stalk you to a party and punch you into a pool... Anyway, Ryan went topless for the ladies, which I guess is fair since a few weeks back we got to watch Summer take her bra off like a million times (from the back, unfortunately... Janet used up network TV's nipple quota for the year).

Luke is a guitar-playing weenie this week, although he still has a vacant stare and the cold blue eyes of a killer. But he is obviously over Marissa (and into her mother, heh heh). You just know that after the hotel room door is closed he says things like "can't we just lie here for a while and cuddle?" Also, he apparently doesn't realize that if you say or do things in public other people can see! Like, Luke, maybe you should cool it with the "you look hot tonight" and "damn, that ass!" and stroking her arm and everything at least until her ex-husband is busy hitting on his high school girlfriend's younger sister (and his ex-wife's ex-boyfriend's daughter, I might add)?

Before we get to watch Anna leave, we get to watch Eddie (reasonably) get pissed at Ryan and Ghetto Girl. Um, guys, maybe he's got a point? I don't know for sure, but it seems like if my betrothed skipped town and started gallavanting around with my boyhood friend in a poolhouse I might be kind of upset, too. I might even be mad enough to warn the guy to "stay out of this." And if he tried to fight me, I would totally punch him right into a pool. So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm siding with the beleaguered and betrayed Eddie here, and I think Ryan has totally forgotten what it's like on the streets.

At some point Seth makes out with Summer on the hood of a beemer (Beenie Man translation: "bimma"), and if every guy in America wasn't like "that is awesome" I don't know what is wrong with this world of ours. Anyway, later on he decides to tell Anna not to leave but everyone watching the show knows it's not going to work. She belongs in the 909 of the east. After she gets on the plane, Seth and Ryan make fun of Luke. They compare him unfavorably to a caveman, which is so unfair, because cavemen don't even know how to play water polo. Poor Luke. A gay dad and a gunshot wound and he folds like a birthday card. I'm predicting a short haircut and a new attitude for him next season. Maybe he'll start dating Ryan's great aunt Ethel (driving great uncle Phil to suicide via schooner or something)!

Anyway, Ghetto Girl's OC visa expired so she is going back to Chino (that's the 909 of the west, by the way). Ryan doesn't know. He'll be sad/mad/indifferent for an episode and then won't mention her again. Who will replace her as Marissa's competitor for Ryan's expressionless love? Obviously it's time for a television contrivance: the FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENT. You heard it here first. Also possible: a hot teacher.

In three weeks:

HAILEY LEAVES THE HOUSEBOAT TO STRIP ON THE STRIP! Ryan and Seth are like "Hailey?!?!?!?!?!!" and hijinks ensue.

Marissa's mom working at the restaurant? But... but... this was supposed to be Jimmy's escape for her! Suck it up, Jimmy. She's a fan favorite and won't be going anywhere (except the motel, with Luke, who's banging her regularly).

Oh, and Eyebrows is going to be SO arrested. Bribery is not a great idea, dude. Stick to surfing and defending impoverished male models; that's where you shine!

I can't believe I have to wait 3 weeks... and I can't believe it took them this long to get Paris Hilton on the show. She literally has never done anything except wear stupid clothes to rich people parties--I don't need to make the comparison with the characters on the OC any more directly, do I? Let's just say that I bet Paris has ODed in Tijuana because she saw her boyfriend making out with some (other) dumb skank on a club dancefloor.

So, the OC was stupid again. First of all, if we're going to settle plots (Sandy/Kirstin having marriage problems because he has a soul and she is her father's sinister minion of evil and despair, Anna ruining Seth/Summer's pure and fateful love) can we try to wait at least 2 weeks before the same stupid crap happens again? And really, what happened to Jimmy Cooper's burgeoning love affair with his high school girlfriend's little sister? That plot had such promise! I demand more uncomfortable inter-generational making out!

And we have GOT to get Luke's dad back on the show. Considering recent events (see post below) it would be quite topical to show that Mr. Meathead, Sr. and his male companion have a stable, loving relationship.

Here's my main concern, and it's an echo of what I wrote a couple of weeks ago: when characters abandon rational thought and realistic motivationi for their actions, I have a lot of trouble committing any interest to the program. Like, I have seen NO evidence that Ryan has feelings for his Chino ex, Theresa--even last week, when he and Marissa were broken up and he didn't know Theresa had a fiancé, he still didn't try to make out with her--and yet at the exact moment when he could have easily left her ("I have a fiancé, you're still in love with Marissa") he decided to start making out with her. ???? It's like Marissa's decision from a couple weeks ago, made in a mental vacuum, to call Ryan instead of running away from the psycho with the gun. I simply can't stomach this nonsense.

Seth was good in this episode, as he always is, although he took an awfully long time to figure out that Summer was ashamed of being seen with him (and don't even pretend to believe that she's scared he'll get bored with her, she ain't that complicated). But that scene at the end was straight up nonsense. It was a good idea on his part because once he's embarrassed her in public by telling everybody about their secret love (that was lame when he was like "I like you this much," like come on guy you might as well use the word "love" if you're going to make this much of a geek of yourself), I will start over because this sentence is running too far on: It was a good idea on his part because once he's embarrassed her in public by telling everybody about their secret love she has nothing to lose by making out with him and generally acknowledging his presence in front of the people who were her friends til they saw her admit to liking a geek. But it was also over-the-top cheesy nonsense, and made me feel a little like I was watching the conclusion of a Very Special Full House.

I'm glad Luke and the wanna-be MILF are still making the beast with two backs, if only because it shows a little commitment by the writers to a plot, which I would like to encourage. To be honest, though, by the end of the episode I could tell that I would be zoning out every scene featuring the two of them because they all go like this:

Luke: [something awkward demonstrating how he's dumb, innocent, and horny]
Mrs. Cooper: [something showing that she looks down on him but is also horny]
Luke: [still dumb, but can tell she likes him, but thinks she likes him for him and not just his shaved pecs]
Mrs. Cooper: [debauches him]

In other words, I wouldn't mind a little character development please!

Next week: Some dramatic stuff is supposed to happen, like Kirstin might get indicted or something! OOH, SCARY!!!! Plus, Ryan finally gets in another fight, and Seth is torn between two girls... again. Maybe Marissa will OD on shrooms, too.

Well, the OC seems to have managed to right itself. Not write itself--that was what started this whole mess. From the improvement of last night's episode it is evident that intelligent human beings have resumed putting the show together. Seth got lines beyond "I don't like Summer, I like Daphne [or whomever]," Ryan and Marissa turned back the clock and started awkwardly interacting as if they hadn't already gotten together and broken up because she was too stupid to realize that an obviously psychotic jerk was stalking her, and self-same psycho Oliver was offscreen in Palm Springs getting electroshock therapy. And Summer called Seth "assface"! Awesome!

Plus, the Luke/Mrs. Cooper thing has gone from annoyingly implausible to utterly-ridiculous-Luke-is-a-horny-moron-and-she-is-a-pitiful-love-starved-harlot-(like her daughter) funny. In the scenes from next week, she's like "we can't do this" and he's like "you're breaking it off?" and she's like "no, you moron, we can't do this at school." When a plot like this is embraced to that degree, how can you do anything but sit back and just enjoy the fact that in 2 weeks she's gone from her friend's father to the guy who took her daughter's virginity?

And, Jimmy Cooper is totally going to rock the houseboat with Hailey (his daughter's exboyfriend's adopted brother's aunt, also his high school crush's sister, and his ex-wife's ex-boyfriend's daughter - can you believe this show or what?????).

Eyebrows and blondie had a fight and made up (in other words, they did the same thing they do every single episode), and Ryan's ghetto ex-girlfriend from the 'hood showed up to cause jealousy and class-conflict.

Oh, right. Seth and Summer did the nasty, twice. I award these characters the most improved player award for their respective genders, because for the first few weeks of the show they both annoyed me to no end and now their scenes (mostly Seth's, really) are the highlight of every episode. Hell, for the last few weeks, they were the only things that made the show tolerable.

But that's all changed, thankfully. I don't know how they turned this around, but the OC has regained its status as the zenith of my television week. All I can say is that I'm glad they took my advice.

I have been reading old West Wing episode recaps on Television Without Pity and it just tears me up inside. For the first 4 years of its existence, it was such a great show--direction, acting, cinematography, and of course writing--and in the last year its quality and enjoyability has plummeted. It started with the departure of Sam Seaborn (I mean, Rob Lowe), continued with the arrival of Will Bailey, his replacement (the great supporting actor Joshua Malina, who is simply not charismatic enough to take over for the Young Number Two), and absolutely, positively, indisputably, crashed, burned, and exploded with the loss of writer/genius/drug addict Aaron Sorkin. He was replaced by John Wells, the guy who thought it was a good idea to incorporate helicoptor crashes and staff death into every single episode of ER.
I still watch West Wing, but more out of duty than interest. I feel like I owe the franchise this much for so many hours of clever dialogue, and intelligent plot twists, and fascinating characters who developed and spoke with their own voices (one might argue that they were all Democratic voices, but what about Ainsley Hayes?).
I loved the show so much, and watching it founder now is like watching your beloved pet succumb to a fatal illness - you want to turn away, but you know you can't.
I guess after this long eulogy, my only point is: it's too late to save West Wing, but please, television gods, don't let this happen to the OC. It's not too late for Ryan and Seth and the whole gang (not even for Rachel's old boyfriend from Friends). Reverse your course, please, and give me back my ironic dialogue, self-mocking plot twists, and irreverent exaggeration of soap opera convention.

More sports idiocy: In March, police said they stopped [Qyntel] Woods and found marijuana in his car. When asked to produce his drivers license and proof of insurance, Woods reportedly provided officers with his rookie trading card as identification.

What a world, what a world.

On an unrelated note, I've decided to accept--nay, embrace-- the use of "they" as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. Anyone who has a problem with that needs to rethink their position, aided by a perusal of The Vocabula Review's excellent article revealing the gender-neutral use of "he" as a sinister plot created to make money off of--gasp--grammar textbooks. It also may have been a class-struggle thing, or good old anglo-saxon sexism, as well. Regardless, I disapprove.