PlasmaSplasm

Hello loyal readers,

We here at the Splasm are quite proud of our excellent coverage of tv spaceships, Sanjaya, and video games. But, let’s take a rare moment on this site to recognize and honor something a bit different. There are occasional programs and activities that don’t involve spaceships, games or comic books. And they too deserve our attention.

There is a tv show on the air that involves NO SPACESHIPS, no video games, no comic books, and no singing. Amazingly, it is still worthy of a posting on the Splasm…because of its overall excellence. So I urge you, one and all, to give it a try. I think you’ll find it’s a much-needed break from the typical splasm material, yet still worthy of your attention.

This achievement is Friday Night Lights, airing on NBC every Wednesday.

This is the best new show this season, and it’s unlike anything else on TV. It is not just about football- it’s about everything. Last week’s episode was so good that I got chills watching it. Seriously.

DO NOT READ IT IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE SHOW WITHOUT HAVING IT RUINED FOR YOU.

Will, you should probably turn away for this post. In fact, if I find you have read it, I will be very angry.

On to the story…

After a long, tantalizingly disappointing season, Battlestar Gallactica finally kicked ass!

In the last 15 minutes.

Of the last episode.

Until 2008.

Lee Adama, who was never my favorite character, has turned more whiny and annoying than I thought he could be. It feels like they are trying to have him grow up, but both the actor’s puppy face and lack of strong acting ability just make for failing attempts. He got a brief bump up in my estimation last night when I learned that, in real life, he has a British accent, but that bump was fleeting.

A lot of this season just felt waisted on mushy “love” stories that I couldn’t give a shit about (and I’m the girl), and sham trials that felt all the more shammish for the lack of focus the writers seemed to have regarding it.

And don’t even get me started on Cally. I hope she freakin’ implodes when she finds out she’s been frakking a cylon and that her beloved baby that she’s always whining about is an abomination. But I digress…

There was some pretty cool stuff, but it was lightly peppered throughout the season to infuriating effect. And now I have to wait a year before the coolness picks up again.

But on to the real point of this post: season cliff-hanger theories! We all have them. We sat around on the couch at the end of the episode and excitedly spouted off what seemed obvious to each of us. The awesome part: what was obvious, was completely different for each of us. I’ll let the others spell out their own theories, but I will divulge mine here.

OK, we now know 4 of the final 5 cylons. They are (spoiler alert, Will!): Tigh, Chief, Sam, and the president’s Billy-replacement (sorry, don’t know her name and it would be dishonest of me to look it up now). So, that leaves one remaining. Who are the top suspects? I would have to say: the President, Admiral Adama, Gaius Baltar, and Starbuck. Let’s take them one at a time (’cause I’m at work, and I’m bored).

President Laura Roslin (or however you spell her name): I’m going with a no here. It’s true that she did have that bonding moment with cylons Sharon and 6, but she’s also on the wonder-drug, which has given her special powers in the past. Also, she has, insofar, been humanity’s prophet of the gods, as opposed to the one God that the cylons believe in. If they reverse that role now, I will declare the writers LAZY.

Admiral Adama: Apparently, he and the president have a thing going on. Gross. I don’t wanna know. As for him being a cylon, I, also, don’t wanna know. I can’t deal with that kind of conflict in my life. Also, it sounds boring.

Gaius Baltar: He was abducted by some hot chicks, who threw a robe over him. Next, we see glowing silhouettes of the final 5 all in robes. Hm. Fishy. However, I feel like we’ve really gone over the Baltar-as-cylon thing numerous times. It would just be lame to now say that he is, after all, a cylon. LAME!

Which leaves Starbuck! Guess what! I don’t think she’s a cylon, either! (Bet you thought I did!) OK, maybe she is, but I really hope they do something truly different with her resurrection. With all the talk about God vs. gods throughout the entire series, my theory is that she is not a cylon, that she didn’t somehow miraculously survive the explosion in the “eye” a couple weeks back, to miraculously survive in her short-range ship for at least a month, to miraculously show up in the exact place Lee Adama would miraculously defy his father and fly to. No, I think she is the new ambassador of the Olympian gods worshiped by the humans; a kind of Hercules, if you will: half human, half god with a special destiny all her own. Either that, or she’s the “one” the cylons have been referring to for years. But why would a cylon show up in a non-cylon, non-current issue human ship and promise to lead the humans to Earth. No. Something else is going on with Kara Thrace’s special destiny and I can’t wait to find out what it is!

Don’t let me down you frakking lazy writers!

I’ve been working at South Park for over 15 hours today, and around midnight they had me write a blog for the official website.

Enjoy this link to it:

http://southparkstudios.com/show/blog

As I’ve driven through LA’s billboard infested streets recently, I’ve found myself bombarded with ads for a Halle Berry/Bruce Willis “thriller” where she plays somebody smart and he plays somebody with hair.

They’ve been making me crazy and I just figured out why.

Here’s what they’ve been stretching out onto billboards.

And here’s a movie Halle Berry made in 1996.

Sure, there isn’t a man’s reflection by her face in the older poster, and Halle had less acting experience (Gothika taught her that new scared face she’s doing), but I guess when you have eleven years to finely tune something that worked so well once, you are able to involve such intricacies.

Rich Man’s Wife lifetime domestic gross (theatrical): $8,538,318. Thanks to inflation, Halle’s oscar, and the floating head of Bruce Willis, this new version will probably do better. Still, I’m not seeing it. And I’ll see fucking anything (I even saw White Noise).

Perfect Stranger stains the silver screen like projectile feces on April 13th, 2007. Whether you see it or don’t, you’ll probably be seeing it again in 2018.

DirecTV heard from me today. I was going over my exorbitant new bill (now in HD!) that somehow seemed to double from last month, and noticed something peculiar. A “Leasing Fee” for my Receiver. That I paid $300 for at Best Buy. Screams of “bullshit” echoed through my brain, and I picked up the phone. The first guy I talked to seemed to be listening to a coworker’s story, but eventually decided to listen to me, so I told him what was wrong for the third time and he did what all DirecTV people do best. Transfer me. Digression time.

I have spent more hours on the phone with DirecTV in the past year than with my family. Upgrading to HD took 3 months of having to alternate calling and waiting, and before that I would frequently stop getting any channels at all. To fix that, someone on their end would simply need to press a magic switch of some kind. The problem is that 95% of DirecTV employees immediately offer, no, are excited to transfer you. I’m convinced that only a few people who work there actually know how to deal with any problem a DirecTV subscriber could have, and they are surrounded by assholes. Who, I’m assuming, work in little hamster cages where if they transfer someone a fish biscuit falls through a hole in the top. Anyway, I’ve been transferred as many as 4 times in one phone call before, and whenever I demand the direct phone number to the intelligent people, they deny me (they must also be attractive ladies). I’m going to get back to my point.

I got lucky this time, and the first guy I talked to was the only person to transfer me in the whole phone call. I was pretty excited to tell them they were wrong and to demand satisfaction (a lesson from Pete). Then, DirecTV rubbed shit in my face. They told me that the $300 I paid for the HD-DVR (described in an earlier post) was just to lease it and that it wasn’t mine. Not a single Best Buy or DirecTV employee ever made this clear to me at any time. Luckily, the “fee” was a mistake, as they still thought I was using my old receiver also. They only charge you if you have more than one. So, I got some of the shit unrubbed from my face in the form of a refund.

Still, the implications are astounding. You can pay $300 for a spastic piece of equipment that wrestles with your every command like an alligator with a hornet stuck in its urethra and it still won’t belong to you. When I eventually cancel my DirecTV, I have to send this thing back to them (I just wish I could hurl it through one of their windows instead of ship it) or they’ll charge me so much money it will cause me to die. I won’t mind parting company with it. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is feeling like I’ve been living a lie. The whole process of transaction I am used to at Best Buy (I take something, bring it to the counter, give them money, and the something belongs to me) has been defiled. It feels like I just took a sleazy hooker to Spago. I’m not successful in the movie industry yet, so I didn’t know what that felt like until today.

I can’t stand American Idol. It kills my soul and I was deeply saddened when I got the call from Mike that they were actually watching it one night. Thank goodness I was safe in the confines of my own home that night. I blame Howard Stern for this tragic turn-around in not only my life, but the lives of the boys with whom I hang out. It is an abuse of his powers as a public figure and role model to the mass of men who think he’s awesome.

Now, the producers of American Idol are walking a fine line here, too, with this crying girl thing. Guess what, she’s not the first cryer ever, so get over it, America! Here’s a cryer:

This girl, known to some as the “White Rabbit”, is crying. While those around her are jumping around, screaming, grabbing at their own faces, and peeing their seats in sheer delight, this girl is in a quiet, desperate euphoria. The one thing she whispers over and over: George.

This girl had a reason to cry: it was 1964 and she was watching the fucking Beatles! She, too, was noticed. She was shown more than any other screaming fan at the concert that marked the end of A Hard Day’s Night. She was noticed by the filmmakers, by the Beatles themselves and is still noted by critics today.

American Idol is not the Beatles, so can we please stop pretending that it is? Actually, you know what? Fuck ‘em! Boys, you vote for Sanjaya as many times as Stern tells you to! Make a sham out of Fox, Simon, Paula, and crying girls everywhere!

When is A Hard Day’s Night coming out in HD?

Hello loyal readers,

The arm waves, dancing, jumping, and other various emotional responses make we wonder where they find these alien life forms that sit in the audience. Well, now we know.

Quoted from the Los Angeles Times….

“Who was the crying girl? After the show, I chatted with Idol’s newest superstar, the crying girl, Ashley Ferl, aged 13, from Riverside. For some long minutes after the show, Ashley remained in a state of inconsolable sobbing, unable to choke out a single word. However, through an interpreter (her mother) we were eventually able to learn some facts about the young superstar.

The family, I was told, obtained tickets on a website to attend a taping of “Smarter Than a 5th Grader” a day passage that included not just the taping of the show itself, but also the dress rehearsal of either “Grader” or “Idol.” The fates were kind, and the mother and daughter found their way to the “Idol” rehearsal, where Ashley’s waterworks began. Her prowess was quickly brought to the attention of “Idol” producers who summoned the clan to a ringside seat of honor at the final taping.

Her powers of speech slowly returning, Ashley revealed that while she was on stage she had been thinking that “this was the coolest thing ever.” Asked whom she was supporting in the competition she named “Sanjaya, Melinda, Gina and Jordin” as her picks, refusing to narrow her vote down to a single choice. All my journalistic powers of persuasion, cajoling, bullying and insistence that on her vote might turn the entire competition, that “Listen to reason, young Ferl, there can’t be four American Idols,” would not convince her to name a single favorite. To my every argument, she would only repeat her mantra, “All Four: Sanjaya, Melinda, Gina and Jordin.” And so the race begins in earnest, with tears at every step of the way.”

Working in the entertainment industry has put me in a place I never expected to be spending massive amounts of time: my car.

Someone hands you an 8 1/2 X11 envelope with hastily scrawled sharpie on the front and demands that you courier it across town, in traffic, to various important places on a daily basis. It’s not the whole job, but it’s often a large part of it.

So goodbye, terrestrial radio, and hello the radio of the future: XM and Sirius. As I have used both services, I’m going to lump them together while yacking about satellite radio altogether.

Let’s get this out of the way: yes. There ARE many ways that the consumer is fucked by these radios. Here is a short lost of the hardest fuckings that you will receive:

-It costs money, unlike magic old-fashioned radio.
-It often cuts out under trees and while waiting at red lights under underpasses.
-If it’s not already built into your car you have to install an ugly, wire covered mess of bullshit that involves (I’m not kidding here) a magnet you have to plop on your roof.
-You often have to attach the radio to your windshield with glue or a suction cup, so that it both blocks a large amount of the visibility AND looks bad.
-If you like baseball, you can’t listen to Howard Stern. If you like football or Howard Stern then you can’t listen to baseball.

So yeah, it’s going to be a little while before these things catch on to a huge audience. They’re trying to merge the two companies so I don’t kill somebody when i can’t listen to baseball in my car this season, but the government is putting its dick in my ear for no reason at all, just like it has been for the last 8 years.

Satellite radio is not all magnets on the car and dicks in the ear, though. It’s also good things too! For those not in the know, satellite radio doesn’t have the same type of stations that a regular radio does. They have a channel for everything you could imagine wanting to listen to. Here’s a list of some of my favorites:

-They have a channel for every decade, from the 50’s forward. So if you want pretend you’ve traveled to the 80’s in your Delorian time machine, just hit up channel 8.
-Howard Stern can ALWAYS be heard on either channel 100 or 101. If he’s not on one, then check the other.
-Channel 85 is Sounds Of Nature, where you can hear crickets chirping any time of day OR night. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, there are crickets AND the sound of waves crashing.
-Channel 13 is The Who channel, where you can listen to The Who playing live, with guests, being interviewed or just a selection of their albums.
-Channel 65 WHITE is a white noise channel, for when you just need a tone that gently drowns out other tones.
-There are Fox News, BBC news and CNN/CNN headline news channels.
-There’s a channel where they play the sounds of “things spinning” all day and all night. Sometimes it’s tops, other times records or coins, but a lot of the time they’re spinning things you don’t expect, like buckets, dice or strawberries.
-There’s a large amount of rock, country and dance stations, each one catering to a different sub-genre.
-A station that can tell you the weather for any state you’re driving in.
-A station where you can listen to babies shrieking, apparently to wake you up as an alarm clock or some nonsense (i don’t understand this one, really).
-Channel 23 is the Cinema channel, where you can listen to a majority of soundtrack selections, but sometimes they have interviews with people and play clips (audio clips, of course) of various memorable scenes.
-Channel 66 plays rock songs in reverse, for people to see if they can hear secret messages.
-Channel 67 plays the sounds of liquids dripping off of things and onto hard surfaces while channel 68 plays the same types of dripping, but landing in liquids.
-Channel 75 is Disney, kids music and such.
-and finally, channel 72 is a channel that plays the audio of people hitting potholes and then swearing.

So if that kind of selection is what you crave, I highly recommend it.

Yesterday was one of those days that set out to remind me why I hate certain things and love others. Let me start with the hate.

God of War II came out. The worst review I could find of it called it one of the best video game experiences of the reviewer’s life. I happened to be at a mall with some time to kill (Brooooooke…we’re hungry), and decided to pop into EbGames, Where We Buy and Sell Used Games. Which is literally how they answer the phone. Try it: (310)474-7742. Oh wait. I just gave you the number for the EbGames in the Westside Pavilion, where the number is somehow ALWAYS busy. Here, try the Century City one: (310) 201-0161. I just tried it and hung up on Scott before he could finish saying his name.

Sorry, Scott. I don’t want anything to do with your used games. But more on that later.

Anyway, I go into this EbGames and ask the guy behind the counter if they have God of War II. Before I tell you his answer, I will present a photo.

His answer: *scoff!* “Did you preorder it?”

It was the scoff that made me want to break a bunch of used games into little, vitamin-sized pieces and reenact the end of The Marathon Man. “No, sorry” would have been fine.

My question was more out of curiosity. I have a ton of games I’m playing, and tons of accounting homework (more depressing than games) to do. Technically I shouldn’t even be writing this right now because I have so much accounting on my plate. So, it’s not like I’m pissed that I don’t own God of War II right now. I can wait a couple of months until stores don’t know what to do with all of the extra copies (or Mike can rent it on the wonderful Gamefly where it can later be purchased with the click of a mouse. Pretty please?)

What happened? When I was a kid, I loved “Electronics Boutique”, as they were called. I can fondly remember picking up and holding the original NES Mega Man wondering about it in one of their stores in New York. I would crawl with excitement walking into them, not knowing what new game could be waiting inside. It wasn’t as much fun as the Toys R US slips of paper, but for a video game loving kid in a world with no internet it was great. Now look at it.

It feels like that every time I’m in there. The clerks (the assholes in the first picture) are constantly having brain scramblingly numb conversations where they explain to unsuspecting customers why their game is going to catch fire and need insurance, and how paying EBGames ten dollars is going to fix that. News flash: I have never had a game on CD/DVD stop working. Systems, yes (PS2, I hate you), but a game, never. It’s a total scam. Also, I don’t want the fucking strategy guide. If I get stuck, I’ll go to a free one (www.gamefaqs.com).

Even if you trade in your used game (which you usually paid $40-$60 for), often times the most you can get is $20 (though usually it’s $5-$10). Then they turn around and sell the game for $5 less than the price of a new copy (usually $35-$55). While they’re at it, they should bend you over the counter and just fuck your ass.

I just want to give you money to buy a thing and never speak to you again unless it is to buy another thing, EBGames people. I can detect in the tone of your voice that you are speaking from rehearsed corporate-enforced dialogue. All of you reading this should call one of the above mentioned EBGames and listen to the tone in which they say “Where We Buy and Sell Used Games”. I don’t know about you, but a chill runs up my spine. It has an inhuman ring to it.

So, to talk about something I don’t hate for a second, after my EBGames experience yesterday, I was walking by Hyper Game on Sawtelle yesterday and decided to go in to ask them about the game. The response I got was an apology that they were sold out, and then, the guy gave me a poster for the game and apologized again, saying there might be some more in this week. I thanked him and left, wondering why I should even bother going into EBGames again. Then I remembered it was because there was time that needed killing in a mall that I even went in there the first time. Hyper Game will continue to have my business, but not the EBGames with the constant busy signal.

Here is a YouTube video that will end this post where an EBGames employee doesn’t wash his hands after shitting and harasses one of the other employees. It’s a terrible video. Not funny, no beginning or end, but it was made by EBGames employees, so there you go. I’m posting it as the definitive reason to not buy used games from them. New games have cellophane on them, used games don’t. Which means, used games are touched by all of the EBGames employees. Even if they do wash their hands after shitting, you are still at risk of catching whatever they have. I don’t think $5 is too much money for cellophane in this case. Just think of it as insurance.