Thursday, April 30, 2009

Yet Another Law and Order Cameo (or two)

Hillary Duff on SVU, Jason Jones from The Daily Show briefly shows up in Law and Order: Mothership as a real reporter. Always entertained by the impressive cast this show manages to put together.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Odd Day

I fully awoke at 3pm - much much later than I ever have. At some point, I had a dream where I beat up someone who had been trying to rob my neighbor across the hall. Also unusual - I never remember dreams or have dreams about fights. Then I went outside to the near 90 degree April day in NYC (record high) and came home to find the Yankees in an 8-8 tie with the Red Sox in the 6th inning (aces Burnett and Beckett were pitching) and that Mark Sanchez was now a Jet after they traded up for the 5th pick (I don't agree with this one). Maybe I should stay home tonight.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Booing Cody Ransom?

Is it really necessary to boo temporary 3B Cody Ransom in the bottom of the 7th inning of the 14th game of the year after he makes an out while the Yankees are up 5-2?

Monday, April 20, 2009

More 24

I was disappointed in Season 7, Episode 18. I thought the season was going well until then.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Things On 24 That I Just Noticed

Watching 24 today, a pair of quick observations. One non-spoiler, the other minor spoiler.


First, non-spoiler: I never really thought of this but it seems way too easy to knock a guy out in an action movie by smashing him on the back of the head. Not that I've ever tried to smash people on the back of the head to knock them out, but I would think the force necessary to do so is more than is typically represented.


Second, minor spoiler:


In the last few episodes, Jack Bauer has been relegated to the sidelines of the action. I wonder if Kiefer Sutherland sustained some sort of injury that prevented him from performing some more of the physical actions required from the show and his usual role.

Mercy Rule

Poor Chien Ming Wang. The guy has been great the last 2-3 years for the Yankees but has been horrible this year. He seems pretty nice but I think because he doesn't speak much English and isn't a big personality in interviews or in general, the fans don't recognize him as much as some of the other players. But today, wow, he got destroyed by the Indians. Games like today's 22-4 loss where the Indians put up 14 in the 2nd inning make you wish there was a baseball mercy rule.

Couples

Every so often, I see couples where the man and the woman look like they could be related. But they clearly aren't (ie they're making out or holding hands). I have to wonder if the members of such couples are aware of the resemblance they have to each other. Also, I wonder if this suggests anything about their personalities, such as some weird narcissism or something.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Packaging

I've always found marketing interesting. Consider this - the redesign of Tropicana's packaging in January also happens to correlate with a 20% drop in Tropicana sales. The juice itself hasn't changed. The packaging is the only difference. But now Tropicana is going to turn back. I wonder if the change is because people couldn't find Tropicana or because they saw the package and they chose not to drink it. Pretty wild!

via Freakonomics Blog

Easter 2009

Happy Easter

Saturday, April 04, 2009

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Leaked

As has been widely reported, a preliminary version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been leaked to the Internet. Fox is understandably concerned that this will cut into their box office; there is precedence for this as Ang Lee's Hulk suffered after a copy was leaked and bad buzz surrounded it.

But from what I can tell, Fox has a feeling that this movie is not going to be very good. Besides the fact that the advertisements and trailers don't look so hot, here are some other predictors I've seen. First, they're advertising this film a lot. I think the only commercial I've seen recently is for Wolverine, and they sponsored the entire Yankees game last night. It sponsored the entire episode of something else I was watching the other day as well (Heroes? Family Guy?). So either they're targeting really well (young men) or advertising a ton.

Besides heavy marketing as a predictor that the studio knows it's not going to be very good, from what I've seen, there are a ton of comic book related characters appearing in this film. This seems to be another poor prognostic indicator - that is, the quality of the film is inversely proportional to the number of costumed characters in it. I guess marketing pressures force filmmakers to put more and more costumed characters into each subsequent release of a movie like this? It nearly always affects the story for the worse.

I'm curious to see where Fox / Marvel is going with the whole X-Men Origins concept. Will there be future "X-Men Origins" films? A quick google search reveals a possible "X-Men Origins: Magneto." In my opinion, origin stories are generally the most boring of films in the comic book genre, so I find it curious that they would want to launch a film franchise focusing specifically on origins. Another question is of source material. Are there even any other X-Men related characters that are interesting enough to make a film about?

Addendum: If this film is successful (and I'm sure it will win it's opening weekend box office), will there be a sequel? X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2? That's an unwieldy title!

New Yankee Stadium

From what I've seen on tv, New Yankee Stadium looks pretty nice. So what if there are $2000 seats still available? The place looks pretty and I bet it'll be even better in person (I'm going in a few weeks, and secured a ticket for a tour in May).

But based on the two exhibition games against the Cubs, the Yankees may hit a ton of home runs (and possibly allow a lot too). The balls seem to be flying out of the stadium and it's not even warm yet. Strangely enough, the field dimensions are identical to the old stadium. Could the wind be playing that much of a difference?

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Jay Cutler Trade Complete...

...to the Bears. Whew.

Interesting note from a Redskins blog via NY Times:


Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell said he plans to move forward and “to do everything I can do to help us get to where we want to be as a team” after the team failed to acquire quarterback Jay Cutler from the Denver Broncos and trade Campbell.

Campbell acknowledged that he was disappointed in having his name involved in the trade speculation, “but you can’t let that get to you. You really just have to understand what it is. That’s the business side of it and you have to go do your job still.”


Addendum 4/3/09, 5:55pm
Great piece on NY Times 5th Down blog about Cutler.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Google Goes All Out for 4/1

Google, well known for their April Fool's jokes in the past really went all-out today.

There's CADIE, their odd little artificial intelligence system with a weird blog page reminiscent of the worst of MySpace. Then they added 3D to their Chrome browser, inverted YouTube, brought us Gmail Autopilot, mobile Brain search and have a Red Eye Adder for Picasa.

While they've had some clever jokes in the past, I don't remember there being so many of these little jokes at the same time. There's a maps joke too regarding the CADIE system.