T-Plus Seven Days from the Most Important Day of Your Life
Well, we've now had about a week to let the little hiccup we call the presidential election blow over, and no matter who you voted for, doesn't life seem just a little bit better? The only polls that I've heard about in the last week have been college football polls (Go Noles!); the only personal attacks I've heard have been between Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis; local roadways have been cleared of political signage and billboards have returned back to their original purpose... advertising local strip clubs. I tell you, it's a wonderful time to be alive!!!
But fellow liberal-minded people have not taken the news of another four years of Double-Duh in as optimistic a manner as I. Andrew Veal of Athens, Georgia drove up to the former site of the World Trade Center and shot himself in the head. As mentioned last week, Al Franken sounded like he was about ready to cry on his Air America Radio talk show. The Village Voice is running a headline on their homepage "The Dream Is Lost: Four More Years".
Don't fret though, my little owlets... I shall provide you with some quick tips to get you through the 2008 Beijing Olympics and that other thing they normally do every four years.
- Don't Like a Double-Duh Policy, Support Organizations that Oppose It
It can be as easy as writing a check or as time-consuming as becoming a full-fledged volunteer or employee. If you're afraid that the Patriot Act may cause additional restrictions on our civil liberties, join an organization like the ACLU. Opposed to the unravelling of thirty years of enivironmental policies, support groups like the Sierra Club. If you support the citizens of the third world instead of the natural resources that can be exploited by corporations, organizations such as CARE can always use help. If there's an action taken that you disagree with, more than likely there is some not-for-profit organization that agrees with you and is working hard against it.
- Civics Lesson for Those New Voters: Congressional Seats Are Elected Every Two Years
So you may have heard that Republicans made gains in the real seat of power, the U.S. Congress (they gained four seats in both the House and the Senate). BUT, the House seats will come up for a vote again in just two years and 1/3 of the seats in the Senate will be up for election in 2006. So, if you're unhappy with an incumbent who ran unoppossed (either literally or practically), find a local official or just anyone who you think would be an asset to Capitol Hill and get the ball rolling. Obviously, for most it's easier to start a Congressional career in the House than running a statewide Senate campaign, but the most important thing is to start early. Work on a platform and start trying to garner some local interest.
- All This Stuff About the National Election, Stuff Sucks Here Too!
Well, have you ever gone to a city council meeting? If there's an intersection in your area that you think needs a stoplight, do you (a) write your local traffic director and city council representative, (b) contact your local homeowner's association or other civic institution that may be able to help, or (c) bitch about it everytime you have to wait for traffic to clear to get across. For those who voted, you probably saw a bunch of weird races where you had no clue who you were voting for... water management district, fire district, city manager (and apparently President). Anyways, each of these people may not get the press but probably make more decisions that affect your day-to-day life than the President or any other federal official. Take the time to see who they are, what it is they do, and find ways that they could do better.
The main point I'm trying to make here is that NOW IS THE TIME! The Democrats put themselves in a hole by whining that Bush was an illegitimate president for two years instead of properly planning a course for the mid-term elections in 2002 and the presidential election of 2004.
So, you may be asking yourself what I plan to do. Can't preach if I'm unwilling to act. Well, I'm going to use my annual bonus to support the three organizations I listed above (but I encourage you to do your own research and find groups that you may more closely agree with) and I'm actually going to check the Florida state constitution to see what the minimum age to be a member of our state house is (I'll be 29 in 2006, so I think I may not be old enough). That's right, Grand Owl for State House 2006!!! If anything, I'd get paid more to sit in boring meetings for three months than I do now in my current job all year.
Did You All Here About This Video Game Revolution Thing?!?!
This holiday season will be good for the Gamers out there. Of course, today is the highly anticipated launch of Halo 2 for Microsoft's Xbox console. In addition, PS2 launched the similarly hyped Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas a couple of weeks ago. Fans excitedly waited for recent releases such as Doom 3 and The Sims 2, and EverCrack II (oops, EverQuest II), Metal Gear Solid 3, and Half-Life 2 are due out in the next couple of weeks. And as you can see, all of the games mentioned are sequels, so who knows what new and original killer game may roll out in time for Christmas.
But what puzzles me is the press that this season is generating. Like the video game fan is a "new" phenomenon. Many are writing that the stereotype of the nerd hiding in his parent's basement for days at a time have been broken, but it has only been the media that perpitrated that stereotype. I remember as a kid going to video game arcades and watching adults dump their quarters into the machines like the rest of us. One of my favorite childhood memories is playing "Frogs & Flies" for the Atari 2600 with my grandfather, then him playing by himself to figure out why I always beat him (I had my controller on the easy setting and his on hard). One of my favorite movie scenes is the "Super Fan 99" scene in the movie "Swingers" where a group of 20-somethings gather around the TV to play EA's NHL 1994 ("Make somebody's head bleed!"). The new flag's already flying from the Capitol, and the media is just now getting wind of the revolution?! While I love the pub for the gaming industry, in my mind it shows the hypocrisy of most media outlets who are attempting to dispell a sterotype that they helped start in the first place.
Random Thoughts
- I don't really get SpikeTV. I was psyched when I heard that TNN was going to change their format to appeal to a young male adult audience. Yet every time they take a stab at something original, it's just a swing and a miss. Over the weekend, I was watching their "Ultimate Gamer" show which was going to focus on Halo 2. What I was expecting was a cool look inside how Halo 2 was made with some gameplay shots and insight on special new features. What I got was like a SpikeTV version of "Queer Eye for the Lame Guy". While I did get some of what I was hoping for, the show focused on someone who they selected as the Halo "Ultimate Gamer" (while giving no explanation as to why he was picked other than that he played the game a lot) as he gets to tour the Bungie Studios in Washington and has his apartment made over in California. You know the shows going to be bad right off the bat when the host's name is "Stryker", denigrates further when all of the lucky participant's "reaction" shots look so staged that it seems he's reading from a cue card, then goes totally off-tangent when for some reason they spend five minutes showing this guy driving around in a dune-buggy. The finale where they show off his new apartment was the capper because, in my opinion, it looked WORSE THAN BEFORE. While his furnishings weren't great, what they replaced them with weren't spectacular either. They painted his living room this ugly and depressing gray, used a grafitti artist to add images from the game on his walls, and pretty much made everything in his place a walk-in advertisement for the game. Not that this guy was a looker, but if I brought a date home to this place I could pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't be getting any action! But enough bitching about this show, SpikeTV has done this kind of thing consistently. If only we could forget the totally awful 2003 SpikeTV Video Game Awards. It would have been Harry Caray's kind of award show since it seemed the producers felt the audience didn't need to be bothered with such minor matters as WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON! They didn't announce the award or who was nominated, they just would pop up and say "The winner for best sports game is Madden 2004!" then show the bewildered developers of the game sitting at a table as confetti rained down and dancing girls joined them, then quickly cut back to their wrestling match or the B-list celebrities that they conjured up to attend this disaster. Some other misses were "Joe Schmo 2" (the first one was cool), "10 Things Every Guy Should Do" which was supposed to show average guys getting to attend premier sporting events but turned into a lame game show (which appears to have been ripped-off for some reason by the ESPN show "I'd Do Anything"), "The John Henson Show" (which I loved him on Talk Soup, but this was a lame "Man Show" rip-off), that weekend late-night programming block from earlier this summer which was just soo all-over the place, and I could go on. But, I write this long rant because I care. I still think the channel could work without reverting back to a USA or TNT type channel (which just replays shlock spooned out by their corporate parents), but the channel execs already seems to be heading in that direction with reruns of Star Trek and CSI that are taking a larger cut of the daily schedule. A last gasp at creativity starts tonight at 9:00 ET, with a new nightly block of original programming (yes, wrestling fans, I know it technically started last night with WWE Raw but it's not new and is not Spike's own original programming): a Tuesday night reality show hosted by Al Sharpton(?!) called "I Hate My Job", a Wednesday night reality show in the guise of "The Casino" or "American Chopper" called "The Club" which highlights the day-to-day activities of a Las Vegas nightclub, a Thursday night Japanese trivia show import called "Hey!", and a Friday night sports retrospective called "Untold" which will show the stories of sports greats (lets see, ESPN Classic has "SportsCentury" and FOX Sports Net has "Beyond the Glory"... yeah we can always use a third show to see where Fran Tarkenton grew up). However, I doubt a quartet of reality shows and a weekly wrestling program will be what it takes to finally launch the network off the ground, but we'll see. HEY, SPIKETV EXECS, I'M ACTUALLY A 27 YEAR-OLD MALE... HIRE ME AND I'LL TELL YOU WHAT IS WORTH AIRING AND WHAT GUYS LIKE ME WOULD FLIP PAST FASTER THAN THE LIFETIME MOVIE NETWORK!
- Now, to totally burn bridges with anyone from Viacom, I know many others have said it but I have to throw in my two cents, YOU KILLED MTV2!!! Music fans probably remember back to when the network launched in 1996 with execs cracking on themselves on how MTV didn't play music anymore. MTV2 was going to go back to its roots by playing only music videos. Then, it was anything "music-related" which was still cool with live performances such as the "$2 Bill" series and artist collections. Then it began to denegrate into a VH1 clone with lame "Worst of..." specials and celebrity lifestyle shows. Now, it's just as the name suggests, a second channel of MTV. While they still play more music than their sister station, they've drifted away into playing reruns of old MTV shows such as "Road Rules/Real World Challenge", "Celebrity Deathmatch", "Cribs" and all that other crap. Luckily, we at least have a counter-weight to how bad MTV is with the incredible Fuse (which happens to be run by Canadian media conglomerate CityTV, who actually ditched scripted programming for an all-music format when they made the jump from MuchMusic USA to Fuse). Next week, I'll find a way to rip on Viacom's future gay channel LOGO, but I've gotta keep it nice because they are going to have a show featuring Kid in the Hall Scott Thompson.
- As those of you who follow my blog know, I run about a day behind in my TV viewing as a Tivo a show and usually watch it the next day. So last night I was able to watch Sunday night's Adult Swim lineup from Cartoon Network. This week's lineup differed from normal, with the introduction of a short called Perfect Hair Forever which was an Americanized take on how weird Japanese anime shows can be. I can't really explain it, but if you enjoy any Adult Swim shows, you must see this if you missed it! It was then followed-up by a comical "round table discussion" on that short hosted by Space Ghost which was just as bizarre as the short itself (today's blog title was going to be "My father stuck his human penis in my shark mother" before I heard the Harry Caray clip where he tried to pronounce Kaz Suzuki's name backwards). It makes you wonder if the Williams Street people are comic geniuses or if they will just throw any crap they think up out there to show how stupid we are for thinking it's funny.
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