Kings

If you didn’t watch Kings, get over to Youtube or Hulu and do so. The finale was this week, and it’s the best show I’ve seen in a while. For me it replaced Galactica. Here's a good piece from Ian McShane and Sebastian Stan (king and prince, respectively) from the first episode.

I won’t ruin the show by telling you what it’s about, but it’s got everything a great tv show needs, minus Bruce Campbell. The characters are well-drawn, the acting is all above par, and the plot and dialogue are as good as anything that ever came out of (Battlestar’s) Ron Moore and David Eick (bitter? Me?).

I just can’t say enough about this show. It’s cancelled, which (imho) only adds to its credibility. There’s even a movement to get it un-cancelled, and given that it’s not a Fox show (Firefly, Family Guy, Futurama, just to rattle off the short F-list. Yet The Simpsons hang on for twenty seasons), that’s heartening. Anyway. Just thought I’d spread the word about the show and get people to watch it maybe. If, after reading my blog, then watching the show, one person sends a butterfly to

Ben Silverman
3000 W Alameda Ave
Admin Bldg
Burbank, CA 91523

then I consider my mission successful.

Sherlock Holmes

Oh man. A week or two ago, my dad mailed me The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I have never read them before, but I remember staying up late with Dad to watch Jeremy Brett (now atop my Netflix queue). He was the best.

After reading just the first two stories (A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of Four), I’ve downloaded the next book onto my blackberry’s e-reader so I can read on the go.

If you have not read Sherlock Holmes, you must. Holmes does everything the NCIS crew does without the benefit of technology. That sounds ridiculous, but that’s really the mark of a great writer, isn’t it? Taking something that, at first blush, seems ridiculous, and making you believe it. And the writing is good as well.

Aside from the primary characters (Holmes and Watson), character development is… not lacking, but certainly not in abundance. Every character is whole and believable, there just isn’t much time wasted in exhibiting their completeness. You feel like you know the characters just because you’ve spent some time with them. Gregson and Lestrade, for example, are full characters on which very little time is wasted, but whom you get to know very well. Imagery is a little lacking, but there’s a lot of meat to the writing. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tells a good story with real characters.

That all being said, I worry (only a little) about the upcoming film starring Robert Downey jr. and Jude Law. We’ll see how that goes.

Animated TV in HD

To begin: I’m whining and I know it. we’re just surrounded by all this great technology and it seems to make things worse, not better. I thought digital cable was a great idea until I started watching it all the time.

How come South Park and Family Guy look like ass on my 720p 37’ LCD? It’s animation! It’s drawings! from paper to camera to TV, it should all look the same! I get why Burn Notice looks better on HD cable than it does on Hulu. But why should that make a difference with an animated show? Okay. I exaggerate. It doesn’t look awful, but… It’s animation! It looks great until you digitize it and don’t bother to clean it up. I just don’t get it. Again, I know I’m whining now, bit dammit I want to understand.

Between filming the animation and it getting to my screen, where is it that the picture gets aliased and the colors get… made to look like a one-megapixel digital photo?

Let Me Google That For You .COM!!!

So I was croozing the crackberry forums for to see if there is yet a dvorak keyboard layout for my crackberry (there is not). I happened upon this post, in which some novice user (pronounced “noooooooooob”) was unfamiliar with the awesomeness that is Dvorak. In the next response to that post was what appeared to be a helpful link: “Let me google that for you.” This intrigued me, so I clicked it. Go ahead. Try it out. I’ll wait.

 

Welcome back. As it turns out, that was a helpful link, but it’s also the best joke site I’ve seen in a while. I don’t know about you, but I’m loading that one into the extended clip on my Noobhammer 9000, right between “if you don’t like it, mute me,” and “GTFO my kitchen!”