Archive for ‘Blog’
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As some of you know, I’m in the middle of pursuing my Master’s degree. Y’know, because a full-time job, a two year-old and a comic I’m updating three times a week isn’t enough to keep me busy.
As part of my degree, I am taking a research class. For our final paper, we can write about any subject that we find interesting so long as we support it with research.
I’m writing a paper about the decline of print publication and the rise of online news sources – specifically as it pertains to film criticism. Within that larger topic, I am trying to uncover the value opinion leaders place on film criticism – do they turn to it as a resource and how to they regard print versus online?
The survey is 4 pages and about 30 questions long. Mostly “yes” or “no” questions. Nothing complicated.
It would really mean a lot to me if you would participate in this survey. I’m hoping to use you guys as a resource, not only as opinion leaders but as the means to wow my professor with by returning big numbers in the survey results.
If you’d like to take the survey, you can do so by clicking here.
To provide you with incentive, I will be choosing one survey participant at random to win a FREE t-shirt and FREE book. All you have to do is submit your e-mail address at the end if you want a chance to win. If you don’t want to give me your e-mail address. That’s fine, too. It’s totally voluntary and you can remain anonymous if you wish.
What’s important to me is that you take five minutes to fill it out. I would be very grateful.
Thank you.
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Before seeing Star Trek on Friday, I poked my head into my movie theater’s arcade and played Guitar Hero. (Did you know they made Guitar Hero for arcades? I didn’t.)
Anyway, on a goof, I picked Deftones, “Hole in the Earth.”
It didn’t dawn on me until later how appropriate that song is for what Nero does to Vulcan in Star Trek. It’s perfect, really.
Happy accidents!
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I realize that Jared says “googles” instead of “goggles” in the punchline of today’s comic and I am sorry.
This is what happens when I finish my comics at 1:30 in the morning. I will fix later.
Until then, let’s all pretend like I’m a professional that proof reads his own work. There. Y’see. You opinion of me is increasing already!
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Pretty much all weekend long I’ve been talking about Star Trek. So much so, that Cami feels she’s missing out a little bit.
Over dinner I expressed that it was too bad that she never got into Star Trek: The Next Generation because it was a really good show.
Much to my surprise, she said, “I’d be open to watching some of those shows if we can rent them using Netflix.”
I just about fell out of my chair.
So now I’m thinking that I have an incredible opportunity to expose my wife to a cultural touchstone, but I’m not sure where to start.
Logically, you would think “Start at the beginning.” But here’s the thing… as much as I love The Next Generation, I don’t think the first three seasons are very good. My rule of thumb is, if Ryker doesn’t have a beard, it’s a bad episode. If Tasha Yar is in it, it’s a bad episode. If Worf doesn’t have his ponytail, bad episode. If Wesley Crusher is in it… Well, you get the idea.
I have it in my head to start Cami out on Season 4, but I’m worried she might miss out on some important character development. Admittedly, it’s been years since I’ve sat down to watch a complete episode. I would catch them from time to time on Spike or G4, but I was never patient enough to sit through the whole thing. Renting the past seasons on DVD would be a way for me to get caught up as well.
So I guess the question is this: For someone who has never watched Star Trek before – let alone The Next Generation – where is a good place to start? Would you suggest starting from the beginning, or do you think there are better episodes to be found in later seasons?
Leave your comments below!
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On Wednesday I blogged about the survey I asked you guys to take to help me finish my research paper, titled The Value of Film Criticism in Comparison to the Decline of Print and the Rise of Online Publishing. I mentioned sharing the research if it was of interest to anyone in the comments section. I was surprised by how many of you said you’d like to read it! It sounds like we have a lot of part-time research analysts in the house!
If you’d like to read my paper, right click on this link to save it to your desktop.
The research data is somewhat skewed because it cultivates the opinions of online respondents only. I acknowledge that in the paper and cite the need to speak with people who are more fond of traditional media to get a true cross-section of opinion.
The paper itself is a brief outline of the problem facing print critics, followed by some research examples gathered from previous paper and concluded with an examination of chunks of data gathered from the survey. Only the more interesting or surprising tidbits. The full survey results have been tacked on to the end of the paper.
I chose the subject as a means to identify the value opinion leaders placed on film criticism with the hope that I could somehow leverage the information to benefit Theater Hopper. In the end, I think I ended up giving comfort to the enemy by identifying the ease with which print critics could bring their talents to an online environment.
I guess if I was going to take away a positive for myself, I appear to be doing things right or at least servicing a need for film fans online. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
I took the day off from work Tuesday to write this paper. 9 pages and 3,000+ words. I’m surprised I was able to put something like that together on such short notice, but kind of ashamed that I waited until the last minute to do it. Just the same, I’m proud of the paper and I’m happy that there are those of you who are interested in reading it.
Enjoy!
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I just wanted to let everyone know that there will NOT be a live recording of The Triple Feature tonight at 9:00 PM. We have canceled the show.
Sorry I didn’t mention it earlier, but I’m seeing the Toadies in concert and really the only new movie to talk about was Angels & Demons. Joe saw it, but it wasn’t on Gordon’s radar.
We will talk about the film next week along with Terminator Salvation after it comes back on Friday. That’s a flick that’s on EVERYONE’S radar.
See you then!
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Since there wasn’t a new episode of The Triple Feature last night due to the fact that I was seeing The Toadies in concert, I thought I would make it up to you by blogging about my experience at the show. Yeah, I know it’s not movie-related. But it’s my site, so I can bend the rules!
I had a great time last night. Easily one of the top shows of my life. I’ve been on a roll lately seeing concerts. Last Thursday I went to see Clutch. Bands like the Toadies and Clutch don’t come to Iowa very often – if ever. So if they’re making a stop and you want to see them, you have to seize the opportunity.
Whereas I was anxious about seeing Clutch because I felt like I was going to be the old guy in the corner bobbing my head along wit the music, I found my confidence and mixed it up at the Toadies. I was front and center as Todd Lewis and the group bellowed out songs at breakneck speed.
In case you’re not familiar with the Toadies, they were part of the second wave of grunge – the post-Seattle “alternative” sound labels started snatching up once they figured out crunching riffs and dark subject matter could be profitable. You might remember their song “Possum Kingdom” and it’s memorable coda “Do you wanna die?!” from their album Rubberneck from 1994. The Toadies were never really grunge, but the dark subject matter of their lyrics lead most people to believe they were. They have more of a hard rock/bluegrass feel. They’re basically what Alice in Chains would sound like if Layne Staley’s influences were John Lee Hooker and ZZ Top.
Their label rejected the Toadies second album, Feeler and it took the group 7 years before they produced their follow up, Hell Below, Stars Above in 2001. Of course, by then, musical tastes had moved on. Although I personally find Hell Below, Stars Above the better album, it didn’t receive the same reception Rubberneck did. The Toadies broke up not long after that, but are recently reformed and touring behind last year’s No Deliverance.
That’s quite the history lesson.
Anyway, the show was great and I had a ton of fun. I think we caught the band by surprise as well. “You weren’t the crowd I was expecting on a Monday night,” Lewis said between songs.
The only down point came during the crescendo of their song “Tyler,” a really great song I encourage all of you to download, and the crowd was really hopping. Right before it reached the breaking point, some moron starts throwing water all over the crowd and stage. Bouncers came flying out from the wings yelling at the guy to stop it. The band stopped playing and disappointed groans followed.
“Whoever is throwing water, that’s not cool, man,” said Lewis. “We’re up here with, like, a million wires and thousands of volts of electricity. Electricity and water don’t mix, moron!” People were pissed. If the crowd had figured out who it was throwing water, they would have torn him apart. It was pointless for the band to pick up where the left off because they right at the end of the song. People had been calling for that song all night and some tool went and ruined it for everyone. The band pressed on and got things rolling again, but I hope that guy thinks twice before he decides to give everyone an involuntary shower again.
Like any show, there were other interesting characters. Here are somethings I’ve noticed about the concert experience, not entirely specific to seeing the Toadies last night. Let me share them and then tell me what you think:
- Why is it that the tallest guy in the room always somehow manages to get in the front row and why am I always stuck standing behind him? I’m 5’10”, so it’s not like I’m some runt who can’t see over most people’s shoulders. But when you have 6’5″ Gigantor lumbering around in front of you, it’s a little annoying.
- Additionally, why does the tallest guy in the room have to obscure the view of people behind him further by constantly extending his arms over his head and trying to reach the singer with his banana hands? Is it because you have the reach you decide “It would be a waste not to?”
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, can someone explain to me why the tiniest of tiny girls will make their way to the front and then get pissed off when the mosh pit riles up. I had a girl who couldn’t have been more than 5’3″ pushing back on me most of the night. I’m sorry, darling, but I have 200 people at my back pushing forward. I’m not taking a knee to the kidney for your sake. The phenomenon of people in the very front annoyed there is this kind of activity going on behind them befuddles me.
- If you are near the front recording the show with your Flip camera or taking pictures with your cellphone, I will do everything in my power to stay away from you. I came to watch the band on the stage. Not have my line-of-sight corrupted by what’s on your tiny 2″ screen.
- Why is it that the white guy with dreadlocks either always wants to throw their arm around your shoulder or use your back as a springboard for jumping up and down?
Anyway, just a couple of observations. What are your thoughts?
I had a great time at the show. If you have a chance to see the Toadies in concert, I strongly suggest you do so!
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In my haste to post this morning’s blog, I forgot to include an explanation of the rather… unique sound effect in the second panel.
It’s actually a very specific reference to my good friend Mitch Clem’s old journal comic San Antonio Rock City. Specifically, the comic where he shoots me in the face.
I was always a little disappointed that “cha-bert” never caught on as a sound effect…
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Reviews are starting to trickle in for Terminator Salvation and while I am trying to avoid them for the most part, I did read Tom Charity’s review over at CNN.
It’s kind of a pan, but I was more interested in how he chose to end his review…
“…the gap between the Terminator movies and Transformers is diminishing along with any vestige of adult entertainment. In the virtual era, nobody we care about stays dead for long; there is always a second life just around the corner. They’ve even stopped numbering the sequels now.”
This taps into something I’ve been feeling about action movies for a while now.
Dropping the sequel number isn’t a big deal. That’s just a marketing maneuver to make franchises feel like chapters in a larger story rather than a long-in-the-tooth money making scheme. But Charity is completely right about there being nothing at stake. No one ever stays dead and rarely does it feel like anything is at stake. Movies are starting to feel more and more like comic books.
That’s not a dig against comic books. Comic books are meant to refresh themselves every few years to stay viable. Trying writing 12 months of content and NOT dragging out old characters people once thought were dead.
But what happened to the movie as a stand-alone story? I look at a movie like The Matrix and how, even though the ultimate conclusion wasn’t told, it felt open-ended enough that you could imagine how things went for Neo and the human resistance. Then the sequels came along and. were so overblown and boring. It was all just filler to get you to that ultimate conclusion – the humans win.
So what?
Now movie franchises just go on and on and on and never really deliver anything new. Everything in the old movies is swept under the rug or explained away so producers and studios can have another run at the trough. Audiences are learning not to trust storytellers and that’s a big problem when the ENTIRE POINT of movies is to remove the audience from their surrounding and place them inside your world for two hours.
How can death in the movies have significance when the same through it running through everyone’s mind?
“They’re gonna bring that guy back for the sequel.”
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This weekend is Memorial Day, which is the unofficial start of summer here in the States. And when I think summer, I think baseball.
Now, since I’m not a jock and probably the biggest “indoor kid” you’ll ever meet, I only think about baseball for about 15 minutes. But the thought does cross my mind.
Real-life Jared and I are going to see our Triple-A baseball club – the I-Cubs (Chicago’s farm team) – play the Fresno Grizzlies tonight at 7:05 PM. Or, rather, we’re going to sit in a baseball stadium for 3 hours, drink overpriced beers and catch up with each other’s lives as a baseball game is played in front of us.
All this talk about baseball made me think of a movie I’ve probably seen two dozen times, but don’t own – Major League.
I’ve always enjoyed this movie and I can’t explain why. Probably because the first time I remember watching it was at a friend’s house who got HBO and I remember it being vaguely dirty. Plus, it has that lovable loser angle going for it as it charts the improbably goal of the Cleveland Indians winning The World Series so their owner doesn’t move the team to Florida.
You get to see Charlie Sheen before he became a sex addict, Wesley Snipes before he became a tax cheat and Corbin Bernsen before people stopped caring about Corbin Berson. Tom Berenger does a good job playing an over-the-hill catcher trying to win back his wife (Rene Russo, of all people!) and the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers, Bob Uecker shows up delivering some of the best one-liners and withering play-by-play commentary as the Indian’s at-home radio broadcaster.
There were a couple of unfortunate sequels made to this movie (and the less said about the third one, the better). But the original stands out to me as a comedy with relaxed charm. Comedy always seemed more confident in the 80’s. Less ironic and less self-conscious like it is today. It’s a treat to watch characters deliver a funny line without breaking their stride. These days, a lot of comedies seem to have “WAIT FOR APPLAUSE” pauses built into ever scene.
Or maybe I’m just an old man griping.
I’m curious what your favorite baseball movie might be – and it doesn’t have to be a comedy. Certainly Bull Durham and Field of Dreams are the first two to pop into my minds. But I’m wondering if there are any others. Let me know!
Or, if you just want to talk about Major League, we can do that, too…
Batter up!
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