I am interested in hearing your thoughts, since the HD disc wars are over (for now), on what you think of the PS3 as a viable purchase. Obviously I’m feeling a little jilted by Microsoft, even though their product is great (should it actually function as designed) the lack of reliability and lack of a next-gen player is sort queering the deal a bit for me. Honestly at this point I’d go with arrogance over incompetence, any day of the week. My issues with Sony being price, arrogance, and format shoe-horning are becoming less of a problem. My problems with the PS3 are mainly technical. Such as the problems developers are having with creating games. The tools they have and the documentation they’re provided on the Cell architecture don’t seem to be enough to create games that run as well as when they’re developed on the 360 (See Madden ’08, PS3 vs. 360). I suppose this could be solved eventually, but we don’t know for sure.
At this point I wouldn’t care if Microsoft’s XBOX 360 division got dropped into a goddamn meat grinder, pushed into an intestinal casing, then the resultant bulbous sausages shot into space. Really, I think that this is the reason I’m writing this. That, and the blu-ray dominance factor. What say you? Does this HD-DVD death news make the PS3 look like a possibility? I await your thoughts, scorn…
In case you haven’t heard yet, or rightly don’t give a fuck. The High Definition (relatively) Format Wars are over. Toshiba surrendered today and that was the last nail in the coffin for HD-DVD. After much gnashing of teeth and unsightly throes, it is sadly no more. Now can we all get on the bandwagon and start chopping down the price of blu-ray hardware? Hopefully something positive will come of this complete waste of money and resources. I’m just glad that I didn’t throw down for that Xbox HD-DVD player. I’ll bet they are feeling pretty shitty right now. Wait a minute, what am I saying? Of course they don’t feel like shit, they already got their money.
I’ll leave you all with the comforting sight of an executive serving us a full 6 course feast of bullshit. Bon Appetite!
Last night, NBC (NoBallsCommunications) debuted their 2008 continuation of my favorite tv show when I was but a wee bastard, Knight Rider. Allow me to first recant my feelings for the old show before I delve into dismantling and recycling the new one (Shouting Grounds is an eco-friendly website, chall).
I loved Knight Rider, dude. Michael Knight was the shit, and all I wanted was a black Trans Am with the little red lamp in the hood to tear around the country in, solving crime and shit. When I was little, everything except for immensely non-complicated storylines made sense to me…a super fast talking Firebird that could leap through concrete and defy the laws of physics and common sense at will. What’s not to believe?!
Years later, like three years ago…I finally got my hands on a copy of Season 1 of my beloved childhood show, and I couldn’t wait to relive the good old times. Sadly, after you’ve discovered logic and science, this classic doesn’t hold up quite like it used to. Sure, the car still rocks, Bonnie was still hot and Michael still cool…but the show turned from sharp cheddar to swiss awfully quick. Anyone over the age of 14 knows that “Turbo Boost” doesn’t equal “rampless jump”. However, the nostalgia is still there.
Okay, so last night. Tuned into channel 5 to watch what NBC thought about my new show. I even took real time notes for chall, which I’ll paste below. My expectations were low, since A) NBC has no budget for good computer effects on pilot shows, if you saw Bionic Woman you know what I mean, B) Since they had sunk my T/A and replaced it with the NEW SHELBY FORD MUSTANG GT500 KR NO WAY DOOD!!!, I knew there would be plenty of commercials lauding Ford as the savior of the automobile in America. That being said, I was ready to give it a chance. My notes:
CGI red lights instead of actual lights in the hoodscoop = GAY…if we could do it in the 80′s why not now?
Acting terrible, the bad guys are always snarling and scowling…guess the screenwriters are fresh outta fifth grade?
So this old guy (Graiman) was building KITT by hand, but then he had a heart attack from just being accosted? (Note: explained later on as a double)
the original KITT didn’t have ANY pontiac branding…this KITT says SVT, Mustang and Ford all over…at least try to suspend disbelief here
Val Kilmer is KITT? Guess NBC doesn’t have much faith for this show beyond tonight.
And who wouldn’t have guessed that the codeword was ‘Knight’?
NBC’s KNIGHT RIDER is brought to you by the star of the show, the FORD MUSTANG…FUCK!
How many times do we need to see the bullet-dent effect on KITT? Why not just use the ‘molecularly bonded shell’ from old?
The bullet effect on the glass was lame as balls.
The mouse-shaped mechanic is gonna work on KITT in the end, right?
Does the bad-guy nerd have to be so obvious?
Number of obvious Ford product placements: incalculable
SOMETHING GOOD: Cliffhanger commercial leadin during first chase
VW commercial with Lev Andropov during Knight Rider, funny irony
The shapeshifting body effect would have been cooler if it had just been the paint. The physical shape of the grill, hood and spoiler changed, making it less believable. This opens it up to allow the car to reshape any body panel Terminator style. If you want to do something like that, explain it a little bit so it doesn’t look so out of place.
Prometheus = Skynet; more than obvious, and I had just switched over from Terminator 2 on AMC when Knight Rider came on
Christ, they made this show awesome 20 years ago, why is it so fuckin hard to do now?
627mi in 3.28 hours = 191.16mph max speed; an @ least believable ‘super pursuit’ speed
KITT: “That does suck”…does he or does he not understand human behavior? The level of his AI humanity is inconsistant
The CGI is terrible, obvious and awkward
How many times do we need to see the Cobra logo? This car is supposed to fight crime, not the American people’s faith in foreign auto manufacturers
KITT had a mac keyboard in his glovebox…FUCK FUCK FUCK WHY? At what point do you have to activate a terminal windows to interface with KITT?
Sarah Graiman: “It’s not a thing, it’s a car” Car = Thing, whore!
2 commercials in 10 minutes from 8:40 to 8:50, then 9:03, 9:13…this is ridiculous…9:23. Commercials that last 4 minutes, meaning there’s 1.5 minutes of show for every 1 of commercial. That’s fucking terrible. If you don’t have 2 hours of content don’t fill it with double the commercials…another @ 9:33. From 8:30 to 9:30, there was 36 minutes of show and 24 minutes of commercials (rough estimate)…GOD AWFUL!
Blackriver = Blackwater? LOL, that’s some comedy there. Way to rage against the machine, NoBalls.
“Somebody removed all the hard drives”, referring to the workstations. NBC can’t help but breed stupidity!!!! STOP CALLING PC’S HARD DRIVES, ASSRAMS!
Michael’s whore: “KITT’s not another Trans-Am is it?” BITCH!
KITT: “Are you a homosexual?” LOL
Bad guys had no idea where to look in the desert between California and Vegas, yet were only 12 miles away when they found out where Charles was. They were more likely to stumble upon the last known home of the Manson family.
Nerd Bad Guy can hack KITT? Please, an AI system should be immeasurably ahead of a human trying to hack it in speed and adaptability. And if Doogie had the encryption codes, then why did he have to ‘hack the firewalls’? And who the fuck leaves some wireless interface open on this super car death machine so that any obvious-malcontent can h4XX0r th3 f00k1n c4r?
The part where KITT got Tboned and annihilated the other car was fucking great, even though they showed it in an earlier commercial cut, so you knew it was coming. NBC couldn’t just keep that one for the end.
The limo scene @ the end would have been the perfect time for Charles to interject the “One man can make a difference” line that Wilton Knight told Michael in the first show. But they assfucked that pooch.
Who didn’t see it coming that Michael would be at the funeral at the end? Honestly?
Scratch the “One man…” post above, it was better when Michael said it. Thank christ they made sure he cameo’d…at least that made me happy
The 4-part commercial series with KITT and Mike was fucking terrible. But don’t think that I didn’t enter to win the sweepstakes, cuz who doesn’t want a GT-500 KR?
They’ve replaced the good old FLAG semi with a C-130? Make a whee more sense from a logistical/interior space perspective, since the old lab would never have fit in the semi. However, the horrible CG wouldn’t convince anyone that you could fly a Herc 2″ above the ground. NBC’s CGI is pre-Roger Rabbit.
So there you are, my thoughts poured out John Doe-style. In case you can’t read my contempt between the lines, this show was barely watchable. If I hadn’t been obsessed with it when I was a lad, I would have turned it back over to AMC to finish Terminator 2. Even though I expected the Ford bullshit throughout, I wasn’t prepared to have it tattooed onto the back of my eyeballs. Logic would suggest that with so much Fordvertising, NBC should have a pile of cash to put into making the show a little more believable, better acted and have way better computer effects WHEN NEEDED. There were plenty of CG shots that didn’t need to be there, and could easily have been achieved with traditional shots. Instead, this money quite obviously went into the Butt-Grooming fund for the NBC Board of Dick-rectors.
However, I hope that NBC combs the shit out of their asshairs and puts it on tv for an hour a week. With the following changes:
Spend a week with Ronald Moore and the boys at BSG (a Sci-Fi show, which is owned by NBC…go figure) and talk to them about making your computer effects semi-believable
Spend more than an hour throwing together your script
Find some people that have acted successfully in the past to be your bad guys…I’m not talking Sean Connery here, but better than Days of our Lives castoffs
Can some of the tertiary good guys. Charles Graimen and the FBI broad can hit the road face first. Keep Androginethnic Mouse and the hot daughter to work on KITT
Figure out a better way to deploy KITT. The FLAG truck, while not-so-believable inside was relatively non-descript in town. A spectre gunship orbiting any town/city/state is going to raise some eyebrows and could endanger Mike’s undercover status
Either explain better or lose the ‘nanotechnology’ skin on KITT. I’ll buy it if you sell it better, knowwhaddamean?
Strip some of the over-the-top body features of KITT while in normal cruise mode. The old KITT stood out only because it was a black coupe in mostly hillbilly towns. This KITT stands out because it’s an obviously impossible custom worth easily over $100,000, and that’s without the vacu-formed computer in the backseat. Honestly all it would take is a quick flick of that nanotech armor, right? Shit.
Follow my quick and easy steps, and you might just have a winner. Think about this, the WB is into their fifth season of Smallville I think, and that show is ghastly. NBC would just have to tweak Knight Rider and they might have a success instead of a one-shot novelty.
Bottom line: craft a better fucking show, fuckheads.
Here’s something amusing and useless that I thought you guys would like… I have one of those calendars that lists interesting (and not-so) facts each day of the week. Here is today’s:
46 “Bat” things from Batman Comics, Movies, and TV Series
Batalarm, Batanalyzer, Bat-a-Rang, Bat-Armor, Batboat, Batcamera’s Polarized Batfilter, Batcave, Batcentifruge, Batclaws, Batcommunicator, Compressed Steam Batlift, Batcopter, Batcufs, Batcycle, Batcycle Go-Cart, Batantidote, Batparachute, Bat Blowtorch, Emergency Tank of Batoxygen, Bat Earplugs, Bat Gas, Batguage, Batknife, Batladder, Batmagnet, Batmissle, Batmobile, Batmobile Antitheft Device, Batshield, Batrope, Batmobile Mobile Crime Computer, Batphone, Bat-o-state Antifire Activator, Bat-0-meter, Batpole, Batram, Bat Ray Projector, Batresearch Shelf, Batscanner Receiver, Batscope, Batlseep, Batsignal, Bat Terror Control, Batzooka, Homing Battransmitter, Superblinding Batpellets.
I only have one question — what about “Batshit”? Or is that the same thing as “Superblinding Batpellets”? BWAHAHAH
With the latest school shooting at NIU today, this is the time I want to hear about this bullshit. These fucking people are fucking pathetic individuals who need to do something else with their anger instead of turning it against innocent people. There is no point, obviously. The innocent people die, the shooter kills himself, and what happens next? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. No change.
So what caused the shooter to go ballistic and open fire like a complete asshole in a lecture hall? Who knows. Something had to really piss him off enough to walk on stage and start unloading with an arsenal of weapons. Video games? Mental instability? Did the little fuckbag forget to take his medicine?
That fucking little piece of shit should have turned his anger towards something else. I am not going to state what, but look around. Corruption is everywhere. The government is cracking down like no other, bearing down and pinching the balls of the american people. Could that be a motive? Do you think the shooter was worried shitless about his 401k or social security (or lack thereof) not amounting to anything when he is ready to retire? Was he thinking that the word “retirement” may not actually have a meaning when he gets older? Could he have been driven insane by the current presidency, or the race for another wacko to be placed in office? Could the death toll in Iraq been a motive? What about the Stimulus Plan? Wasn’t he happy that he was due for a $600 check?
Who knows. But instead of shooting innocent people, he should have been a protestor. To go to D.C. and raise hell. To start kickin’ ass and taking names. He should have picked up a pen instead of a gun and wrote G.W. Bush a nasty-gram. What happened to the old expression, “the pen is mightier than the sword?”
But how do you compete with an entity so giant as the US government? The weight of one sweeping hand moved by legislature would certainly knock down any foe, right? And that’s exactly why the guy went nuts and shot innocent people. There was nothing he could do. There’s nothing anyone can do. The american people are powerless to Big Gov. No about of voting can turn the world around. And that’s just it…the entire world needs to be turned around to be in favor of the US.
All in all, we are fucked…and it’s going to get worse. At least we have one less asshole in the world we have to worry about. My heart goes out to those who lost their lives though because of the fucktard.
