Television

Apple Commercials Make Microsoft Lovable

At the D: All Things Digital conference Wednesday, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared onstage together for the first time in 20 years. One of the topics they discussed was Apple's series of Mac Dude and Windows Dork commercials: Here in the present, while discussing some recent Apple commercials in which an Apple hipster out-talks a nerdy Windows guy, it seemed almost as if Jobs and Gates were acting in starring roles in the same ads. Jobs, in his black turtleneck and jeans and stubbled beard, ... (read more)

2007/05/31

Long Live the King of Queens

The King of Queens sitcom ended last night on CBS after nine years, and cast member Patton Oswalt (Spencer) wrote a sendoff that made the innocuous working-class comedy series sound twisted: I'm also glad I got to play Spencer, who evolved into the depository for all the writer's wild hairs. Making out with old women, gay panic, double-dating Adam West and Lou Ferrigno, wrestling matches over an asthma inhaler, driving all night to stop a wedding, stalking ... if there was something creepy the ... (read more)

2007/05/15

Mystery Solved: House is Like Holmes

It took me two-and-a-half years, but I finally figured out that the Fox medical drama House has patterned the title character, an arrogant doctor who solves sadistic medical mysteries, after Sherlock Holmes. Beyond the similarity of the names Holmes and House, both feature characters who are arrogant and addicted to drugs (Holmes abuses cocaine and morphine; House takes Vicodin for a leg ailment). They're both incredibly difficult to get along with and have only close friend and confidante -- ... (read more)

2007/05/02

Rosie O'Donnell: WTC 7 Demolished on 9/11

Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell suggested that World Trade Center 7 was not destroyed by fire on 9/11 in a post on her personal weblog Thursday evening. Writing in the poetry-like style she's adopted on her blog, O'Donnell took part of her post -- the list of reasons to suspect the building was demolished -- directly from a page on the conspiracy-minded site WhatReallyHappened.Com. at 5 30 pm 9 11 2001 wtc7 collapsed for the third time in history fire brought down a steel building reducing it to ... (read more)

2007/03/19

Dancing Mortgage People Ate My Brain

My weblog entry on protecting yourself from dancing mortgage people attracted the attention of New York Times reporter Brad Stone, who tracked down Jennifer Uhll, the graphic designer who created the ads for LowerMyBills.Com. Whenever I see one of these ads, I'm reminded of the door-to-door meat salesmen who occasionally show up at my house offering steaks from a beer cooler in their trunk. Every time they do, I want to ask, "Who are the people keeping you in business?" I half expect to find ... (read more)

2007/01/18

The Digger Diggs, and Having Dugg Moves On

When Ryan Tomayko's blog was linked recently on Digg, he was so freaked out by the experience he wrote some code to reject all Digg traffic: The funny thing about Digg is that it changes the way people read. The average Digger seems to assume that people write stuff solely for the purpose of making it to the Digg front page. ... No one knows you there so you have to write in a way that is completely void of who you are and what you're about. That sucks. I'd rather just opt out of the popularity ... (read more)

2007/01/10

Stephen Colbert on D&D: 'Enjoy Your Magnificent Isolation!'

Stephen Colbert was once an 11th-level paladin who explored Barrier Peaks: I had an eleventh-level paladin (it took me years to advance those levels) whom I took on Expedition, and he got the Power Armor, which was the big thing to get in that module. But he also went a little power mad. On the next campaign we saw merchant caravans crossing the desert, and my character flew down and landed next to a merchant and tore off the guy's head. The DM informed me that I was not a paladin anymore. I ... (read more)

2006/11/22

59 of 60 Web Users Prefer the Drudge Report

The ad broker for the Drudge Report says that Matt Drudge's site broke traffic records on Election Day with 2.3 million unique visitors and 25.1 million page views. The scariest part of the press release: This proves, once again, that when Americans want reliable, unbiased, instant news on what's happening and what's important, they trust Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report to deliver. Drudge also had 100 million ad impressions that day. If you figure a click-through rate of one percent and 5 ... (read more)

2006/11/09

Outlook for GOP Looking More Haggard

If you don't know anything about Ted Haggard, the Colorado Springs-based evangelical leader who's accused of sexing a gay prostitute for three years, a recent interview he gave Richard Dawkins provides a glimpse of what he's like. Salon.Com contributor Lauren Sandler calls Haggard the "most important evangelical" in the U.S. I've never heard of Haggard, who has led the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals and advised President Bush, but his quick resignation and the ... (read more)

2006/11/02

Republicans, Campaign Ads and Stem-Cell Research

I caught a little of Rush Limbaugh's show this afternoon as he attempted to gnaw his own leg off to escape the trap he stepped into by taking on television's Michael J. Fox. As medical experts continue to weigh in on the authenticity of Fox's symptoms, Limbaugh could only defend himself by creating an alternate universe in which he provided a dispassionate factual rebuttal to Fox's claims two days ago, not obscenely pantomimed mockery of a 45-year-old man stricken with a severe nervous system ... (read more)

2006/10/26

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