Sean’s Rant

Thank you TBS for the movie last night. It was Hitch. What I thought was interesting was that it had been edited specifically for on demand. It wasn’t the same movie as they would use for their tv spot, with the same commercials. No, it was specifically sponsored at the beginning and had very short commercials spread throughout. I can tell you that there is a new show on TBS that they were promoting, even though I did my best to fast forward through it, it almost took more effort to fast forward than to just watch it. This is the type of thinking that tv stations are going to have to adopt because with DVR and TIVO, long commercial breaks are just blips on a fast forward screen. The commercials should be no longer than 20-30 seconds so that it is harder to try and fast forward through them than just to watch them. Who will watch commercials when they don’t have to unless they are superbowl commercials or the cavemen from Geico?

I have just finished watching hitch last night, on TBS on demand (its on Cox-freezone-cable-TBS) thinking the same thing I usually do after a movie that has a plotline shift that is obviously what creates the rest of the plot of a movie. That point in a movie where it becomes almost another movie. To all the movie buffs - I don’t know or care to look up the specific terminology, so feel free to comment it if you know. I was thinking of what the movie would have been like without the plot shift, before the movie started to have to clean up the mess it just made. I started to think of the choose your own adventure books and just how cool it would be if there were interactive movies. Now that we have DVDs and HDDVDs, this is no longer just a thought. It could very easily be a reality. The first ones there could be only a few splits just as a trial. Obviously this would take more directing, but if they want to ensure that movies don’t die, they should be willing to work for it. It would take a lot more effort to rip an interactive movie, and just videotaping it would not have the full effect. I think this would be cool, and it would be cool to analyze who picks what ending more often. Maybe we would have an evolution of directing.

I took my phone in because I had a few problems with it. It is almost a year old and the directional pad center key is falling of and the camera isn’t working right. Neither are that big of a deal as far as interfering with the functionality of the actual phone and its functions but nevertheless are necessary items. So I took it in and it is still under warrantee, which requires that I send it in and use a loaner phone. This kind of sucks because I really like my phone and the loander phone isn’t that cool. I am paying for insurance which would replace my phone if I ‘lost it’ for $35 which I should have just done. It would have been worth the month for me not using it to just pay it. But then I would have to manually type in my numbers. Its silly that because I am still within manufacturer warrantee that I have to wait. Like a punishment.

Jesse had a nice rant about the current state of media. I feel your pain Jesse, it has gotten pretty damn ridiculous. My only relief has been online media. Google News and Digg have been saviors. There can be a lot of crap on digg, but it has far more choices than mainstream.

I am getting burned out on the standard choices for fast food. I am baffled that there isn’t some sort of drive through health food. I know the old restaurants have converted part of their menu but I mean a full blown healthy restaurant - to go. I would go there at least once a week. There is a lot of talk about niche marketing these days, so I think this would be right up that alley.

In response to the comments about Pay for WIFI-