herbie the love blog

Scott Pilgrim DVD/Blu-Ray

2010-09-21T18:06:00.000-07:00

This should have been the poster art for the theatrical release too:

It's similar to the UK poster, only better.

Both of these beat the U.S. poster, which is a fine homage to an image from the comic (which would be a perfectly good teaser poster), but does a poor job of communicating what is special about the movie.

Obviously they did this because by the time they were selling the movie, Youth in Revolt had made it clear that Michael Cera was box office poison. Still, there's ultimately no hiding that Cera is the star of this movie. The DVD cover at least tells us that this is Michael Cera with a flaming sword, which we haven't seen before, instead of Michael Cera with a guitar, which we have seen before. Also, what's with the "epic" tagline? Does that have anything to do with anything?

Then again, I'm not sure the flaming sword market is all that huge -- maybe they were afraid to weird people out. But the billboards showing every evil ex while the hero's face was hidden came off as pretty weird too.

Nickelodeon Grand Prix

2010-09-03T00:48:00.000-07:00

Iron Man 2

2010-05-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

This pretty much sums it up, don't you think?

Glee

2010-04-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

It's weird to see so many TV bloggers and critics earnestly evaluating the Glee back nine saying things like "all the songs don't give the story and characters room to breathe." I mean, I suppose if it's your job and you're obligated to say things about every episode, you have to say things like, "I don't think the character moments landed here" or "This story didn't really make any sense."

But what I don't understand is how anyone has any expectation that Glee is capable of things like coherent, believable stories and character motivations that you can track logically and invest in emotionally. The series has never done that. Supposedly the pilot was solid but even that got butchered before it hit the air. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I've belabored the point that Glee's stories and characters were never good in numerous tweets. But the reason I feel so strongly about it, the reason I feel compelled to repeat it every time someone says something like "too much songs, not enough story," is that Glee made me feel that strongly. Basically, I enjoy the show now, but I also feel like it was constantly betraying me until I learned not to trust it.

Like a lot of Gleeks, I did musical theater in high school, so I've always wanted to like Glee. And when I started watching it, and tried to take the story and the world and the characters seriously, I was constantly insulted by the most idiotic, unbelievable plot contrivances imaginable. Schue's wife and Quinn, in particular, were made into irredeemably loathsome shrews so extreme that we could not feel sympathy for Mr. Schue and Finn, we could only write them off as hopeless morons. The only sensible conclusion is that everybody on the show is a joke. (Jayma Mays getting hilariously engaged for no reason to the poor coach she couldn't stand was supposed to make us hate her too, right? Good.) Not to mention the repetitive stories that would have us believe that the existence of Glee club -- the very premise of the show -- was at stake every single week. It's fine once in a while, but schmuck bait like that loses its impact fast. I'm pretty sure Glee club is not going to be permanently disbanded three episodes into the series, so let's move on to some other plots, please.

Glee basically trained me in every possible way to not care about anything you would normally take seriously about a show. I hung on for the musical numbers and Sue -- not just the best things about the show, but many weeks the only things about the show that were remotely watchable at all. I went through a period of episodes where Stephanie watched the show without me and I literally fast forwarded everything but songs and Sue, and didn't feel like I missed much. So if they're OD'ing on those things now, I don't really mind. There's nothing else on offer there, so let's load up on songs and Sue and enjoy them until we can't anymore. If they're shortchanging their stories, which never made any sense, great. I can enjoy the stories more now because we're done with the horrible baby secrets and Schue is divorcing, so they are actually better, but it's also because I've learned not to ever take anything in them seriously at all.

And you know what? Between the show's changes to lean more on its popular elements, and the adjustments in my own expectations, I quite enjoy the show now. They're playing to their strengths, and even discovering new ones (Brittany and Santana especially, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed Kurt last night). But taking it seriously (or asking for more of what the show does worst) is a recipe for disappointment, and I feel like people who want it more like the first half of the season were watching a different show than I was. The time to complain that the show is bad has passed. If you're still with it after all it's done, I would think you'd have made peace with it.

Old Stand-Up

2010-04-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember when I used to perform live?

New Vlog Star Episodes

2010-04-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

Vlog Star: Best Original Song

2010-04-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Vlog Star is back with a new episode. I know you get tired of hearing this but I think this one is really good.

Phone Call

2010-03-31T13:42:00.001-07:00

Apparently I never even posted the last episode of Vlog Star here. Goes to show how neglected this blog has become.

Nate & Max argument outtakes

2010-03-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

Fun but unusable improv takes from the Break-In episode.

Vlog Star - Alternate Pilot

2010-02-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody! Remember the beginning of Vlog Star? Maybe not. We've come a long way since then, and in retrospect, the early episodes are kind of a slow start. But at the same time, they do lay some groundwork that could be helpful to the series! Here's a recut episode encompassing elements of the first two that lays out the main characters a bit more economically. I'm putting the episodes up on web series site blip.tv, and probably won't put up all of them, but the show feels like it needs a first episode, so I'm using this to kick things off.

Vlog Star - Last of the Sister Outtakes

2010-01-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

There is really way too much stuff from the sister arc, but here is one more long, awkward piece of seduction, along with a few other brief outtakes.

Don't forget to be a Vlog Star Facebook fan if you aren't yet!

Where Thoughts Should Go

2010-01-25T18:58:00.000-08:00

As the other participants in the 2004-era blogaround have abandoned their blogs entirely, I've been content to let this become yet another place to post my videos. Eventually one tires of the burden of writing a whole post on everything one thinks about every movie or TV show one watches or thing that one does. One realizes that 140 characters will suffice for most sentiments in life, because honestly, who has the time?

That said, I think I might need to start writing on this blog again, at least occasionally, because lately I have been bothering friends with very long-winded treatises on such subjects as How Vegans Are Like Christians and I fear this points to a suppressed need to pontificate on nonsense at great length. Since I have been limiting myself to the brevity of tweets and status updates, my indulgent ramblings have taken the unfortunate form of Facebook messages, making me look like an unbearable pest and proving that I have inherited my parents' strategy of winning arguments by exhausting one's opponent past the point of caring.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes I really enjoy belaboring a point with a series of long sentences, and social networking and microblogs aren't so conducive to that.

Vlog Star - Kent

2010-01-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

The best sight gag of the episode, and maybe the season, Alexa carrying Nate for a long time while Kent chats her up, almost didn't happen. In the script the whole first half of the episode was to take place with everyone already riding in the car. However, it turned out that Bryan ("Todd") didn't have a car to drive, and I didn't want to force someone else to let him drive while we were all trying to film a scene. So at the last minute we had to retool the scene so that it happened before they got into the car. Having Alexa and Kent carry me was the first option, and might have looked pretty funny due to their height difference, but could also have been pretty difficult to do for the same reason.

So Chase volunteered to carry me on her own, confident that she could do it. And she did, for four or five full takes, with only the aid of sturdy wires holding me up that we erased in post! It worked out great, and the spectacle of her struggling to carry me while two much larger guys, including the one hitting on her, totally ignore her plight is pretty hilarious. Much better than the car scene would have been, and easier too. It also inspired the earlier counterpoint gag (shot later) in "The Plan" where Nate tries to lift Alexa and collapses immediately.

So thank goodness for happy accidents and strong co-stars.

Vlog Star Outtakes

2010-01-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

Some more outtakes and alternate improvised bits that didn't fit in the episodes.

Nominate Vlog Star for a Streamy!

2010-01-17T14:40:00.001-08:00

There's not much time left, but you can nominate Vlog Star for a Streamy Award. You've probably never heard of them but I assure you they're very prestigious.

Vlog Star: Break-In

2010-01-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

In season 3, I think we've been successful in making the show funnier, yet somehow in doing so we ended up spending a lot of the season back on the couch, which we'd tried to get away from in season 2. Go figure. Anyway, one of the reasons we allowed ourselves to do a bunch of couch episodes was that we had this story coming up, which we considered to be the big eventful arc, at least for this first half of the season.

This episode was conceived after I visited Romie's sister's house, where Romie was staying last year, and realized that access to such a gorgeous location was something we had to take advantage of. From there we ended up with Nate breaking into Todd's house, but we were still in the midst of season two at that point, so actually doing the episode was a long way off. During the intervening months, Romie moved out of the house and his sister put the home on the market, so getting the shoot done became more urgent.

To make it worth Romie's while, we threw in a cameo where he would get to kiss a dude. You're welcome, Romie.

This episode also makes use of fake blood for the second time this season. Watching it, I wish we had used more. I just finished watching season 5 of Lost, and every time someone gets punched on that show, their face is completely covered in blood a moment later. That's what this should have looked like, especially the way Nate gets beaten into the ground. But when we were in the location, even what we had seemed risky. Shooting in someone else's spotlessly clean and expensive house, full of white carpet and white furniture, made us constantly fearful of staining anything, since anything I touched would have turned red. I think we made it out without ruining anything, though. It's ironic that we planned our messiest scene for our cleanest, most untouchable location.

Editing this episode, I began to wonder whether we were leaning too hard on punching Nate for comedy, but two comments have gushed over the hilarious violence in this episode. That's two more than we usually get, so fortunately, our audience agrees with me that people getting punched is funny.

I've been bleeping the F-bombs in the show since season 2, since I think it is funnier, the way the bleeped expletives were funny on Arrested Development -- you know what they are anyway, yet it's somehow more acceptable. But Bryan Burgess, who plays a violent wild man better than anyone, will take any expletives you have in the script and multiply them exponentially, so I figured it was futile here. He swears funnier than I do anyway. I always feel like my swears sound too self-conscious. This episode also features Ken Peterson as another manager, Kent. As the name suggests, the part was written with him in mind, and his performance proves he was the right choice. He doesn't get much more here than some understated reactions and a handful of straight lines, but he nails every one of them and manages to be hilarious while seemingly doing nothing.

There's so much going on in this one, the joke of Nate tearing Alexa's shirt off to bandage his hand is almost lost in the shuffle. Don't forget to notice it!

Vlog Star: Christmas Special

2009-12-31T00:24:00.001-08:00

About two weeks before the week of Christmas, I met up with Vlog Star producer/writer/director David Duman and he proposed doing a Christmas special. I feared there wouldn't be time, but liked the idea. We started batting jokes and concepts around and decided it would be worth a shot. Put out the call to our cast and guest stars, rounded up as many as possible, and started knocking around various bits built around the concept of Nate shooting his own Christmas special. And that's how, in the show's shortest lead time, we ended up meeting the week before Christmas to film the show's longest episode. (Good thing more guest stars weren't available or it would have been too long!) Despite the length, the fact that it's funny makes the special play pretty briskly. It's basically a series of sketches, so it's jokes all the way through, which is what we should always be doing anyway. It also has some of the show's dirtiest jokes. I wasn't sure about them since they go farther than the show has in the past and I am a big prude, but they made us laugh that first night we were pitching out ideas. No one else had a problem with them, but I wonder if we need to pull it back a little before Nate becomes a full-time sexual harasser.

This episode also had our biggest crew, including a student from my English class who is interested in film as PA/boom operator, and Chase's parents, who watched us film and beautifully wrapped the boxes that would contain our dirtiest jokes. Thanks to everyone who came out on short notice. We had an awesome time and made something that stands with my favorite stuff from season 3.

Still, getting it done before going home for the holiday was a killer. So I was right about that.

Vlog Star Outtakes

2009-12-31T00:09:00.000-08:00

More outtakes from season 3. Some bloopers and some fun alternate improv that cracked us up too much to be useable.

Vlog Star: Sister Parts 3-4

2009-12-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

So, what else is there to say about the concluding parts of Vlog Star's "Sister" story arc? Though one of our missions this season was to make the show more self-contained, that doesn't always mean avoiding multi-episode arcs (indeed, there is another multi-parter coming soon). Instead, it means that when we do multi-parters, they'll be more focused and contained within themselves. So, "Sister" spans several episodes, but it's not something you have to keep track of all season. That's a slight difference, but I think it makes a difference in how accessible the show feels.

4 parts for this story might have been too many. But we've also been trying to wring more comedy from the story, and sometimes this means bits got expanded. My favorite is the exchange at the end of Part 3, when Nate obsesses over Nicole's freckle while claiming not to be bothered by it. There's a nice, natural, realistic rhythm to the bit that is also really funny to me since Nate is ostensibly agreeing with Nicole, yet obviously can't let it go. So, Part 3, long as it is, may not advance the story much, but the whole bad/awkward seduction is the reason you go to the trouble of setting all this up, so we might as well stay awhile.

Also, we had to rush these episodes out so that they would finish in time for the Christmas Special, which references the events of this story. Editing two of these, plus a nearly 10-minute special, in half a week, was pretty brutal and wouldn't have been possible at all if it weren't for the holiday. We'll be taking a break this week so you can get all caught up. No, not really. The break is for me.

Vlog Star: Sister

2009-12-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited about how this episode turned out. I feel like a lot of the things I've been trying to achieve in season 3 are starting to really come through. In both scenes here, I feel like the timing and the energy of the performances have a spark that I've found lacking in the past. That is, even when the editing was brisk, there was something draggy or artificial about the performances (mainly mine, but sometimes others, usually because we were rushing to get our footage and not taking the time to rehearse and refine the scenes), and here they feel fresh and spontaneous. The other thing that works well here is the extended improv riffing that we did in multiple takes, which this time were actually usable and cut together pretty nicely. Again, the looseness of these bits results in some of my favorite moments -- in this case, it's everything after Nicole's "compliment" to Nate in the first scene.

Other happy surprises: I think this is the first time the show has had a scene where three characters are bouncing off each other at once, and having Nicole caught in the middle of Nate and Max's escalating nonsensical argument worked really well. What's more, I think we're finally finding something that works for Max. In the first two seasons, Max was a nice guy despite being constantly put-upon, but we failed to get much comedy out of it. In season 3, we decided that Max would be fed up with Nate, and the hostility between them would come to the surface much more. This has given the character a lot more room to breathe, and in this episode and "Overdose," we get good stuff out of it. I'm pleased since, outside of Professor YouTube, we've strained to give Max stuff to do and now I feel like we've found a direction that's interesting.

The other change this season is that we gave ourselves permission to let the show be a little edgier and dirtier. Looking at past episodes it kind of felt like we were holding back and not always letting the show be as funny as it needs to be. We felt like the show could stand to be a little more fucked-up, and I think this comes across in the episodes so far this season ("Makeover," "Overdose," and "Hit Me" all have elements that are weirder and darker than we've done in the past) and continues in the multi-part story launched by this episode.

Vlog Star: Hit Me

2009-12-04T16:57:00.000-08:00

For a show with a premise that's often (twice?) described as "meta," Vlog Star is usually not all that meta as a show. This episode actually is. Obviously there is the fact that Alexa criticizes Nate's intent to make another crying video in hopes of getting noticed by weirdos as "fetish bait," while the episode itself could be accused of the same thing. (Side note: When writing this episode, I assumed that there was probably such a thing as a crying fetish, but I'd never heard of it specifically and didn't bother too look it up. Even so, I was still kind of shocked when Dave looked it up and so quickly confirmed it. The most hilarious thing we learned was that you can get porn where the sex is actually interrupted by the participants breaking down crying and holding each other for twenty minutes. I assume they just make this out of outtakes from regular porn.)

Anyway, in addition to that meta joke, this Vlog Star episode could also be considered a (very, very) in-joke, since this actually happened to us, not with Vlog Star, but with a certain episode of Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, which is now the most watched video on my account (viewers: 100% male, ages 55-64) for reasons not entirely unlike those described in the episode. But hey -- most-viewed video! Yay?

Not that we're expecting lightning to strike twice, but hey, if it happens, it happens. The Internet is an amazing thing.

Makeover Outtakes

2009-12-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

One of the things we're trying to do in the new season of Vlog Star is leave more time during shooting to do some improv takes and find fresh new variations on jokes. You can see the results in our first two episodes, and I think the improvised segments in each end up containing some of my favorite moments.

The problem is, it can be tough to actually make the additional material fit in the episode, not to mention to find a way to edit it cleanly. Example: all the jump cuts in the latter part of "Overdose." Starting from the point where Max exits for the first time, everything was written or improvised on set. (I don't know, maybe that's obvious.) Anyway, we end up with a lot of stuff that is not quite usable, even though it's pretty funny. Especially when we have to get back to a point that joins up with the ending as written.

For example, take this run from our first episode of the season, "Makeover." We couldn't use all this stuff in the episode (only the joke comparing Alexa to a disfigured supermodel made it in, and then only partially), but putting it all together here, I like it a lot. It's almost funnier than the actual episode, which makes me think I should have found a way to use more of it, or to better integrate this style in the future.

Vlog Star: Overdose

2009-11-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of strong episodes coming up, but so far I think this is one of our funniest; it's definitely my favorite Max episode. We had a lot of fun making it, which usually helps.

Vlog Star: Makeover

2009-11-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

Speaking of which, here's the first episode of season 3.

This episode was written to address the fact that Chase ("Alexa") got Invisalign between seasons to close the gap between her two front teeth (think Letterman but less drastic). Probably no one would notice or remember that she even had a gap, especially at streaming video resolution, but I like the idea that Nate would force her to make major cosmetic changes for the sake of their videos, and that she would actually do it.

It is true that Chase's dad thought her gap was cute. It's not true that he left. At least I hope it's not. Yikes.

What Else I've Learned About Making Web Series

2009-11-19T15:36:00.000-08:00

Making Vlog Star, and before that, Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, has been a constant learning experience.

When you look at things that become popular on the Internet, most of them are bizarre curiosities, often things that you never would have imagined existed, let alone would be discovered by a huge, fascinated audience. Because of this, it's easy to conclude that if you do something random and weird, you will capture people's attention based largely on the curiosity factor.

That was the thinking behind Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, a show where the whole joke hinged on anticlimax. No content, no jokes, no events, and abrupt endings. One thing that was fun about it was that after a while it's harder to write nothing than it is to write something, and talking about something without actually saying anything about it required increasingly awkward contortions of language. And the character developed mannerisms that were increasingly distinctive, which gave the show a little but of substance after all. In the end, the show subverted its own uneventfulness by actually launching an unexpectedly high-stakes story arc, though it was approached with the same strangely hesitant structure of everything else.

Is it weird that I'm analyzing my own shows here like they are some established work? This is what I would be like if I were to record a DVD commentary.

Anyway, the problem with this kind of show, I think, is that before viewers can enjoy the joke of having their expectations constantly frustrated, they have to discover the show, and that requires viewers to be thrilled enough to share the show with others. (It also requires the makers to be savvy and dedicated about publicizing their work and targeting a potentially receptive audience, like Felicia Day, which is something I'm still trying to figure out.) The central anti-joke of Kenny Bloggerly is something that (theoretically) grows more satisfying with subsequent episodes, as one learns the rhythm of the show and the games of the character. But any individual episode is unlikely to pack a big punch. You might smile with amusement, but let's be honest, a video about nothing happening is not going to set the world on fire. Shows where the joke is that there isn't one are generally more fun for creators than viewers. If something is going to attract attention for its weirdness, it has to be exceptionally, genuinely unique. Without that, the average viewer will lack the motivation to explore multiple episodes unless he or she truly has a lot of time on his or her hands.

Which brings us to the central ratio that determines the success of any piece of entertainment, but is especially marked in the field of web videos:

Investment/Reward.

Where Investment, usually time, must be as low as possible, and Reward, the viewer's enjoyment and satisfaction must be as high as possible.

I know, this seems like a no-brainer, but when you are in your own world creating a series, it's easy to presume that something will be great simply because you are the one making it and you are great.

If a video is long, over 2 or 3 minutes, or especially over 5 minutes, most people won't watch the whole thing. I've made plenty of videos over 5 minutes that I hoped people would watch, yet if I click on a video and discover it's over 5, I'll usually bail. It's a big Internet and when you're procrastinating, it's hard to commit that much time to a single video. If a video requires that you be caught up on the continuity of a series to understand it, you'll be similarly unlikely to get all the way through it. Too much Investment.

If you can invest a small amount of time but come away with a high level of enjoyment, you'll come away extra-satisfied. And what's more, you'll be willing to explore more episodes. They're like bite-sized candies -- a lot of pleasure for a small investment. This is something that Jake & Amir does really well. They never waste much of your time, and while there are some duds, more often than not, you feel like you got your 90 seconds' worth and you might as well watch another one. The most extreme example is the compulsively watchable 5 Second Films, which are basically the web video equivalent of potato chips. Again, some are bad, some are brilliant, but when most of them are at least pretty good and it only takes 8 seconds to watch another one, why not roll the dice a few more times? (And if something is really good, right away, it can even get away with being over 5 minutes.)

I know, I know, this is a lot of words to say that people like videos that are good and don't waste their time, which is blindingly obvious but easier said than done.

With Vlog Star, I've always made an effort to keep the Investment side of the ratio low, at least time-wise -- episodes are consistently 2-3 minutes or less. Where I've faltered, I think, is on the reward side. Season 1 leaned too heavily on the central joke that Nate is a has-been web star, yet it never hit this joke in a big, memorable way, nor did it offer much variation on the concept. What's more, it was pretty uneventful. This grew out of a few attempts at Channel 101 pilots like this and this, where I found that trying to squeeze too much plot into a 5 minute video seemed to leave the comedy without much room to breathe. I came to believe that webisodes based around a single, funny scene could lower the Investment side while raising the Reward side at the same time. The problem with Vlog Star season 1 was that the scenes were just not funny enough. Maybe they had too much room to breathe.

With season 2 I attempted to correct the problem of the show's uneventfulness. You might notice that there is a much stronger story arc informing the season, especially at the beginning and end. The problem I found here was that we ended up with too many episodes that were basically just connective tissue for the story arcs, but with little comic meat of their own. My favorite episodes from season 2 are the standalones like "Arm Run Over By Car" or the mini-arcs, like the cup-stacking/juggling episodes or the Road Trip arc. These, I think, are a good way to inject story without bogging things down with scenes that are purely functional or turning things into a soap opera that ask too much of viewers.

(An example of a series I think has the soap opera problem is Break a Leg, a very well-made show that aspires to the Arrested Development style and builds an intricate comic universe that diverges from reality to the point that it's kind of impenetrable after the first few episodes. In spite of that, it's pretty successful as web series go, and seems to have helped its creators find further work in the field, so what do I know? My point is I have trouble getting into it because it starts to feel like work.)

Yes, I am aware of the irony that the Investment/Reward ratio of this blog post is astonishingly low.

My point? I guess it's that I'm still working at this, and trying not to get discouraged that I'm such a slow learner. More Vlog Star episodes are on their way, and if you don't notice a difference, it's not for a lack of overthinking. The goal this season is to further refine the all important Investment/Reward ratio. I'm trying to make things more accessible -- more stand-alone episodes, less exposition, something that you can jump in and watch without being caught up on 20+ previous episodes -- and funnier -- which is a constant battle against my rusty and limited performing ability.

Enjoy the new season! I hope it's good.

Bourne to Party

2009-10-26T19:21:00.000-07:00

You've seen him fight, kill, drive and bake quiche, now watch him plan a party.

Never let it be said that we are too proud to go back to the well.

Featuring the talents of John T. Woods, of guest-starring on last week's episode of The Forgotten fame, and Vlog Star's Chase McKenna.

What I've Learned About Making Web Series

2009-10-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

A year or so ago I heard that USC is now offering a web video class, which I thought was ridiculous. Nobody knows how to guarantee success in web video; big media companies like HBO and Warner Brothers are throwing money at it and failing all the time. Why pay tuition to take a class in it? There are no rules. We are all inventing them right now.

Having made a total of three seasons of two different web series, I think I have learned a few things about the form. The first one is that nobody cares about web series. I'm not just saying that because nobody cares about my web series; I know that's just because they're not very entertaining. But I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody cares about any web series, really, except for people who are making their own web series, watching each other's shows to see what works and hoping against hope that there is a market for this format.

If you look at the views of even the more successful web shows, they pale in comparison to the views of random one-offs, quirky vloggers and internet curiosities. So, you could let an unselfconscious nineteen-year-old vamp on a webcam for five minutes of jump-cutting and get five million views, or you can spend ten thousand dollars on actors, locations, equipment and crew and get ten thousand views if you're lucky. Who wouldn't want to make a web show?

Has any web series ever even gone viral? When the pinnacle of the form is French Maid TV, it's time to question whether that form is worth making viable. Congratulations, you've leveraged T&A against product placement, now just make something that a person would want to watch a second time.

There are exceptions, of course--as I've mentioned, Jake & Amir is both popular and entertaining. But that show aside, I've never heard a real person in real life say how much they love a web series, or even that they have watched one. Does mainstream America even know they exist?

Speed: Needed

2009-09-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I picked up Need for Speed Carbon, despite the fact that I still feel guilty about not finishing Most Wanted on PS2, is that I was looking for something else to make use of the Nerf Wii Wheel peripheral that so far I've only been using with Speed Racer. Now, I've only played it for two days, but in that time I have learned two things. One is that the game is generally pretty fun and the other is that the default "steering wheel" style control scheme is an unmitigated disaster. It is possible to control the car only in the loosest sense of the word, in the same way that if you shake a box with a cat inside you could be said to be "controlling" the cat. Yes, your actions affect its movement, but not in any kind of predictable or repeatable way. It's not a matter of the tilt being too sensitive or not sensitive enough; somehow it is both. Your car won't turn enough, until after the turn is over, at which point it will curve straight into a wall even though you have straightened the wheel. I've seen it said that there is a learning curve here, and maybe if I could figure out exactly when in the turn I ought to stop turning my car even though the turn is not done yet, there would some way to do it. But I suspect that by the time I mastered such a thing, the experience would bear little resemblance to operating a steering wheel anyway. Furthermore, I believe a simple thing like maneuvering a virtual car around a corner while not even at top speed should not require a learning curve tantamount to landing the space shuttle. Call me crazy, but that is just how I was raised.

At first I feared the game, though graphically gorgeous (for the Wii anyway) would be completely unplayable. There is no excuse for control this hopeless (especially when the Wii's other racers prove it's possible), and I can only conclude that the guys at EA simply failed at it. Maybe there is some specific issue with their physics model, which was designed to be controlled by an analog stick, that cannot be ported over to a tilting controller without destroying the fabric of the game. I don't know.

Happily, there are 5 control schemes here to choose from. One of them involves tilting the nunchuck, which works marginally better than the Wiimote (imagine an angry cat on a leash instead of in a box), but twisting a nunchuck is nothing like using a steering wheel anyway, so why bother? The last two options involve steering with the analog stick, which is an absolute delight, especially after an hour of slamming your unruly car into walls with your Wii wheel. The analog stick steering is, in fact, especially good, and furthermore, the Wiimote throttle control, in which you tilt the controller like a gas pedal, works like a charm. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive and completely stupid, but in fact it triggered an epiphany -- the key to racing, especially in these games, is actually not steering at all. After all, any idiot can steer (once he is using a sensible control scheme and not one that is fundamentally broken); one usually blows a race by trying to take a turn too fast. This is because mastering finesse with the gas, brake and handbrake are the key to success. Once I tried control scheme 5 (4 is nice too, as it tethers the Wiimote to brake/reverse as well as gas, but unfortunately the handbrake is operated by jerking back on the nunchuck, which doesn't seem to do anything), I found myself commanding the throttle and handbrake with an assurance and precision I had never experienced playing NFS with a conventional controller. In fact, it works so well, I wondered if EA's programmers had consciously not bothered to perfect steering wheel controls, so certain were they that the weird nunchuck-analog/Wiimote gas pedal scheme was superior.

So yes, the game is playable and so far, a lot of fun on the Wii -- not just in spite of, but even due to, the Wii's unique controls. But not the ones you expect.

Phones Are Ruining My Life

2009-09-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

All of you with iPhones and Blackberries and assorted cool phones with apps and web browsing and so forth ought to know, every time I see you staring down at your phones, activating the screen with that precious little swipe-to-unlock, it is like a knife in my heart. Every time your status updates appear on Facebook with the attribution "from Facebook for iPhone," I fight back tears as my soul overflows with agonizing envy.

You see, most people are either frivolous enough to go ahead and spend money on fancy phones full of exciting features no one needs, or sensible enough to not care about them. Unfortunately, I am neither. I have an overwhelming gadget lust that is matched only by my unbearable cheapness. So what happens is, I look at these phones longingly, then discover how much they actually cost to operate on a month-to-month basis, and conclude that voluntarily doubling one of my monthly bills would be an act of extraordinary idiocy for someone with a modest income who is already carrying around massive debt.

If I were a reasonable person in full control of my faculties, it might end there. Unfortunately, every time I see a banner ad for a smartphone, or an individual engaging in the aforementioned screen-swipe, all my Want rushes back to the surface. I am locked in a struggle with consumerism. Don't get me wrong, consumerism is delightful if you lean back and let it wash over you (at least until you lose your job or something and discover that you are broke and your money has been squandered on trifles that will provide neither food nor shelter), but it's a force to be reckoned with should you try to resist. Everywhere you go, people are entranced by their little phones, blissfully tapping away. Obviously there is something awesome happening on phones these days, and here I am missing out on the modern world!

Where was I? Oh yes, so then I get sucked back in to my Phone Want. And I start searching for halfassed alternatives. Maybe the aptly named EnV Touch would sate my appetite; there's html web browsing and a second-rate but good-looking touch screen; and a flip-out keyboard for texting might be kind of nice. And there's even the VPak: an unlimited data plan, plus VCast videos, for $15! But would this really satisfy me? Would the savings be worth the reduced functionality? Maybe not. I talked myself out of it.

This week, Verizon replaced the VPak option with a limited data plan with no VCast for $5 more, and I lamented my missed opportunity to be grandfathered in. On the other hand, now there is the Samsung Rogue, a much slicker option as far as halfassed smartphone alternatives go. I'm not opposed to limited data plans as a concept; my limited text plan suits me fine. But Verizon's data limits are absurdly stingy and a terrible value. The $20 option, for 75 mb a month, is only $10 less than a Blackberry unlimited data plan. And the only unlimited options put you in territory that is exactly the same as a Blackberry. So why would you ever get a phone with less? It's like if GM made the Chevy Aveo cost the same as a Cadillac CTS -- is the Aveo really there to be bought or is it just there to make the upsell look better?

It's Apple's fault, actually -- their iPhone price drop has fucked the industry by forcing every carrier to flatten their handset prices to around $100, regardless of whether it makes any sense, and then to make back the subsidy with unreasonable data plans, just like AT&T.

I just want to stop thinking about phones. I want to stop reading reviews, comparing prices, hoping in vain to beat the system and find the nonexistent rate combinations that would actually make sense. It is a real problem.

I tried to psychoanalyze myself out of it. You don't really want a phone, I told myself. You want what the phone symbolizes: the financial security to spend money wastefully, the additional discretionary income that comes with the career success that continues to elude you. A phone would not make you happy. Focus on self-improvement and hard work and the rest will follow. Your phone obsession, and the absurd amount of time and mental energy it consumes, is only an impediment to your success. This worked for a week or two, but then it came back.

I know I don't need all this bullshit. I have a laptop I carry almost everywhere anyway. I have a fucking map in my car, and even that I only use about once a year. I go through an average day never needing the capability a smartphone would give me, except that I am constantly thinking about smartphones and how I could possibly acquire one.

The Blackberry Storm 2 looks like it's going to be pretty good.

My Favorite Insomnia Cafe Bathroom Graffiti

2009-09-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

From the bathroom of Insomnia Cafe, an insufferable yet invaluable screenwriter haunt:

8/19/07
Today is my last day with Jon DuBos and I just want the world to know he's my Best Friend and I love him more than you will ever know.
- Sam Sam

He knows
He loves Sam Sam too!
BFM FOREVER!
=) 8-19-07

8/19/08
Today I celebrate one year without Jon DuBos. Awesome! To think I ever thought he was my Best Friend(!) or even cool! Looking back, I now see what a douchebag he was. I loathe him more than you will ever know.
-Sam Sam

--

By the way, does anyone know what "BFM forever" is supposed to mean?

Dodger Dawgs

2009-07-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

Went to a Dodgers game for the first time. Brought the Flip video camera. Get ready for five minutes of mild amusement!

Ghosts: Busted

2009-07-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

Just finished Ghostbusters: The Video Game today on the Wii. How was it? Terrific.

Normally I like the stylized, cartoony designs that show up on underpowered Nintendo ports. I thought the goofy look of Windwaker suited the game nicely, much better than Twilight Princess' hideous attempt at fantasy realism.

In this case, though, I did eye the graphics of the PS3 and 360 Ghostbusters games with envy. Despite its precarious perch on the ledge of the uncanny valley, the attempt at photorealism does help the game to feel like it takes place in the universe of the movies.

That said, once you are playing the game, you never give it a thought. And I doubt the slicker versions can match the fun factor of the Wii's control scheme. The nunchuck/Wiimote combo is in top form, immersing you in the gameplay while never feeling gimmicky. Smashing the ghosts around by waving the Wiimote is perfect (although it might have been better with less delay between real-life and onscreen movement, but whatever).

The Wii version stands on its own and never feels like a hobbled version of a better game. If you go and actually compare it to the other versions, you'll find the levels can be very different, and some (like an extended outdoor Times Square battle) have been omitted. Some things, like exposition about a Super Slammer weapon, have no purpose in the Wii version, where you never use the Super Slammer (a mega-trap on the roof of Ecto-1). But basically, the story still works and is always fun.

The difficulty is exactly right. There is a nice hit system where your energy builds back up if you don't get hit for a while, and fellow busters can revive each other providing they're around and not dead too. All this means you don't die that often, and when you do, you're usually started at a reasonable point not too far from where it happened. There's still enough challenge to keep it interesting, without all the failure and repetition that makes me frustrated and bored and keeps me from finishing most games. Combined with the voice work and decent story, it easily makes for what's easly the best movie-to-game conversion ever (admittedly a low bar to clear, but still).

I guess more hardcore gamers complain when a game is too short and easy, but I like when I can play through a game and enjoy it without investing over forty hours of time. I feel like I got my money's worth, much more than when I have to give up on a game and never come back to it after finishing 5% of it.

Trade Secret

2009-06-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

Oh, by the way, in case you don't know me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter -- in case you are still living in the era when things like blogs and phonographs and daguerrotypes are the cutting edge of communications technology -- there is this.

The article makes it sound like I'm riding high already; in fact, it is a bit premature. I can still barely pay my credit card balance, and not because I just bought a ranch and a pony with big fancy Hollywood fuck-you money. Things are still not quite so definite. But as much as I prefer to keep quiet about things until they are more certain, this is still my first mention in the trades, and it's no fun to let that go by without showing people, even if I have to qualify it heavily.

Kenny's Wine Video

2009-06-11T14:32:00.001-07:00

I made a video application for the wine job too. I hope I don't steal too many votes from Dave with this awesome application.

Dave's Wine Video

2009-06-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

The estimable David J. Duman, co-writer and director/producer of Vlog Star and Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, and your favorite Bourne spoof ever, is applying for "A Really Goode Job." This is the cheesy name for Murphy-Goode Winery's new Lifestyle Correspondent. This person will be housed in Sonoma wine country and paid handsomely for six months for doing nothing more than getting shitfaced all fancy-like and building buzz for the winery Web 2.0 style. All of this is way more setup than you need to enjoy Dave's application video:

If you think Dave deserves this job more than some boring loser (and while there are many highly qualified applicants, there are a lot of boring losers vying for this thing), go to the Murphy-Goode page and favorite him! This job is perfect for him; seriously, this asshole loves talking about wine.

Terminator Salvation: Unacceptable

2009-06-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Slant's Terminator Salvation review neatly and concisely articulates the central plot hole that devastates the entirety of Terminator Salvation, the same one I would have written about had I blogged about it in a more timely fashion.

How is it that Skynet is actively targeting Connor in Salvation, fully aware of both his future centrality to events and his childhood escape from their robot assassins? The established timeline does not support this. Armed with this knowledge, why would Skynet even commence with their eventual plans to attack the Connors in a different time, knowing as they must that such plans will fail? Another question: Why am I putting more thought into this than the screenwriters did?

To add on to that point -- since the machines shouldn't even know that Connor is important, it is even more outrageous that they know that Reese is important. If Skynet knows Reese, Skynet knows everything, and the entire franchise is stupid and pointless. To accept Terminator Salvation on any level is to create a black hole of stupidity that disintegrates and swallows up the franchise in toto, and that simply cannot be tolerated.

Just as the T-800 in T2 tells John, "I know now why you cry," I can say that I know now why Steve continually denies the existence of T3. Personally I thought T3 had enough good moments to outweigh the bad -- sure, there's some timeline discrepancies with John's age and some dopey failed jokes, and the general feeling of a franchise being stretched too thin... but there is also the pleasure of revisiting something familiar, a few memorable action scenes, an interesting arc for John, an effective, if depressing, ending, and some successful comic moments as well. Overall, there is enough to recommend it as a watchable, if inferior and not-wholly-canonical entry in the series.

Terminator Salvation, however, should not be allowed in the door at all. There's just nothing that good in there; the action is flashy but utterly unmemorable and uninvolving, Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin do their best to connect, but at no point does the story reward them or us or give anyone a reason to invest in the characters, and the ending is just plain retarded, as was the equally retarded ending it replaced. Certainly nothing here good enough to justify overlooking the staggering crimes of logic and story.

Political Cartooning

2009-06-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Making fun of political cartoons is as old hat as political cartoons. But still funny after all these years. Hat tip to Jaime Weinman's Twitter (Man, I hate the term "hat tip").

Vlog Star Bonus Featurette

2009-06-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

If you're not yet, come be a fan of Vlog Star on our Facebook page! We might even post more cool behind-the-scenes bonus videos of us talking about ourselves, like this one:

The reason we say Vlog Star "started" as a web show is that I edited footage from season 1 and season 2 together into what is hopefully a semblance of a half-hour (22 minute) pilot which a cohesive storyline. This was always something we'd had in mind, although originally I thought one season would offer us enough material for a pilot. As it turned out, having the second season to draw on was much better. The pilot version basically focuses on the material that advances the overall story. A lot of our favorite stuff that appeared in standalone episodes didn't make it because they would feel out of place in a half-hour show if they just brought the plot to a standstill.

Anyway, I did all this in order to submit the show as an independent pilot to the NYTVF, the New York Television Festival. I spent all weekend shaving bits off the show to edit it down to 22 minutes (even with only the story-arc-episodes, it still added up to almost 40 minutes initially), and then burning it to DVD. They wanted 5 copies, one of which would contain a bonus feature discussing the making of the show. So that's what this is.

I called up Chase and Dave and we sat down on Dave's couch, talked about the show for about 40 minutes, and then I went and cut that down to one. In retrospect, we probably should have just thought about what we wanted to say and spent 20 seconds each saying it. But it was a good time and we got to act like big shots praising each other effusively. I ended up not using the worst of that because it was kind of nauseating. Still, there's a lot of footage left over so if I have time this may become an occasional series to fill the time until season 3.

Over the weekend, I thought I would never get the submission done. Twice I thought I was finished and then realized there were more brand names and logos that I had to censor out due to rights issues, and each time I had to go back into Final Cut for a few hours and then spend a few hours more exporting and burning.

Bourne to Cook

2009-05-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

Check out our new video, a stand-alone parody of the Bourne movies. Then send it to everyone you know!

Jason Bourne cooks a quiche from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Transporter 3

2009-05-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

Transporter 3 is an essential entry in the franchise, assuming you have been waiting for the Transporter to fall in love with the least charismatic girl in the world. Actually, their chemistry is so bad that it's more like he falls in like, or falls in tolerate. By the end, he can sort of stand her, and she's goaded and pestered him into having grudging sex with her that he doesn't completely hate.

The problem is not that she's useless, annoying, dumb, shallow, and constantly distracted by booze and pills, it's that the actress playing her fails to make any of this fun. A charming girl could make us like this idiot, and that would have been kind of brilliant, the perfect love interest for a franchise so wonderfully, unapologetically brainless. Unfortunately, Natalya Rudakova is not that charming girl.

A fan's first thought might be, who cares? After all, we don't watch this for the story, and the slo-mo easy-listening-scored love scenes in the first Transporter movie were painful too. But those scenes felt more compartmentalized. You could grit your teeth and get through them, and they never felt like they dominated the movie. Unfortunately, in Transporter 3, we are stuck in a car with the girl for most of the movie, and worse yet, there is nothing to occupy our attention but their dull banter about food and the green-screen backgrounds quietly sailing past the windows.

One of Luc Besson's strengths is setting up simple but high stakes dramatic situations with crisp, economical pacing that quickly pulls you in. This strength is not in evidence here, where we jump around to various situations we don't care about before finally meeting the Transporter fishing. The first big fight scene is thrown away in a flashback, which is a clever and subtle way to sap out what little tension there is -- in these movies, we know the Transporter will always win a fight, but watching it when it's already over just makes the danger even less significant. (In an odd touch, several henchman bones are obviously snapped in this sequence, but conspicuously lacking the crunching sound effects that would make them satisfying -- a PG-13 concession perhaps?)

The pacing is leaden, the action scenes are too few and too brief, and at least two-thirds of the movie (though it feels like more) is the Transporter driving his car while talking to boring people. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, but they are too short, and they're shot and cut in showy, annoying ways that make them less exciting instead of more.

For a franchise that revolves around a man driving a car, the car chases have never been the series' strongest suit. The first movie's first scene was its only decent car chase, and the second movie had several hilarious car gags, but no extended car action that was actually impressive. In this installment, new director Olivier Megaton seems to have pioneered new ways to make speeding cars look dull. Either that, or he shot a bunch of terrible footage and tried to save it in the cutting room with lame and desperate editing tricks. Here are some tips for him in case next time he wants to make his car chases good:

1) The best way to add excitement is not to get as far away from the cars as you can -- don't shoot the whole thing from a helicopter.

2) When you're choosing a bad guy car to chase the hero's black luxury sedan, maybe don't select a nearly identical black luxury sedan, especially if you're going to shoot the whole thing from a helicopter. I shouldn't have to constantly check the Audi and Mercedes logos to tell whose car I'm looking at.

3) I can tell when you speed up the footage. Are you trying to disguise the fact that you shot the whole thing at 10 miles per hour, or are you just fast-forwarding it for me because you know how boring it is? If it's the latter, then thanks, I guess, but maybe next time have the cars do more cool shit than swerve at each other on an empty road.

4) Two-wheeling between the trucks was a nice, appropriately stupid-in-a-good-way kind of idea. Now just don't surround it with worthless filler and then we'll have something.

On the plus side, my fondness for the first two Transporter movies has increased as I'm reminded how difficult it is to do fun, low-budget action. This car-bound, claustrophobic exercise made me wonder if they ran out of money.

There are a few decent set pieces here, including a well-conceived but half-assedly executed bike/car chase, a nonsensical but sorta clever underwater predicament, and a climax on a train that is hilariously awesome and far superior to the lousy airplane fight at the end of Transporter 2. Unfortunately, they're buried by the movie's many flaws.

Vlog Star #27: Come Back

2009-05-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

In the season 2 finale, Alexa tries to convince a despondent Nate not to run away.

Come Back | Vlog Star #27 (Season 2 Finale) from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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So... what did you think?

Vlog Star #26: Riding the Rails

2009-04-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

In the penultimate episode of season 2, Vlog Star gets all dramatic on you.

Riding the Rails | Vlog Star #26 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Vlog Star #25: Betrayal

2009-04-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

Vlog Star hurtles toward season 2's dramatic conclusion:

Betrayal | Vlog Star #25 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Professor YouTube #7: My New Haircut

2009-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

Discussing this:

And this:

Vlog Star #24: Trading Spaces

2009-04-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Nate and Alexa switch apartments. This episode is notable for having the most scenes and cast members of any single episode.

Trading Spaces | Vlog Star #24 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Merv and the Mystery Meat

2009-04-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Oh, this is so not a turkey sandwich.*

The texture was almost like hot dog, only as you can see it's cut into wide, thick slices. The taste could also be hot dog like, though you could make an argument that it was not totally unlike ham. Then again the sandwich also had bacon, which confuses matters.

Any guesses?

*I ordered a turkey sandwich.

Vlog Star #23: Sexual Tension

2009-04-08T13:19:00.001-07:00

Sexual Tension | Vlog Star #23 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Professor YouTube #6: Magibon

2009-04-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

Providing a critical interpretation of this girl:

Fast/Fury

2009-04-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

So help me, I'm looking forward to Fast & Furious. Justin Lin did a great job with the underrated franchise best Tokyo Drift, and even if this one is saddled with Walker and Diesel, whom I couldn't care less about, the buzz on the action is solid.

How retarded is the 3-D GPS system with race girl graphics, by the way?

Vlog Star #22: Girls' Night Out

2009-04-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

Girls' Night Out | Vlog Star #22 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Tobacco!

2009-03-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

Imagine this was your only source of information with which to form an opinion on a tobacco tax increase.

Conclusion: Smokers are gravelly old badasses and tobacco-tax supporters are horrible busybody douchebags.

DVD vs. Blu-Ray

2009-03-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I met a woman at a party who worked for a major studio's DVD marketing department, and mentioned how I had felt no rush to upgrade to Blu-Ray. "Why not?" she asked. Which is the thing, really -- the studios think the question is "Why not?" when actually the question is "Why?" As in, why should anyone want to upgrade in the first place?

To even start to become interested, you need to own an HDTV of a certain size, and at the time, I didn't. That has since changed, and so I recently did upgrade to a Blu-Ray player. Even then, I would have been satisfied with an upconverting DVD player with HDMI output, except that it seemed silly to get something like that when it was possible I would get a Blu-Ray player eventually. I got the cheapest Blu-Ray player I could find that still seemed trustworthy. It doesn't support online features through BD Live, so I'm banking on the fact that when I want to go online to talk about movies, I will be satisfied to use my computer and not a cumbersome proprietary interface through my television. I hope I didn't make a mistake.

The Blu-Ray player does a fine job of upconverting DVDs and finally displaying content that I feel is worthy of our new TV screen. Last week we got our first Blu-Ray disc from Netflix and experienced our first true HD picture.

Watching Blu-Ray is kind of like getting new glasses. You're impressed at how clear everything is, how much detail you can see that you weren't even aware of before. Then again, you were never aware of it before, so was it really all that important? It seems to demand part of your attention to appreciate, so that part of your mind is always thinking, "Look how sharp everything is; I must remember to be grateful for this." All of this is beside the point in terms of actually becoming absorbed in a film's story, for which DVD resolution is perfectly sufficient. Still, it's nice.

The other thing is that Blu-Ray players are slow, almost comically slow. As in, it's actually funny that something could load this slowly and still be considered a viable consumer product ready for market. The thing must take almost a minute to boot up, way longer than we are accustomed to with DVD. Remote commands like fast-forwards, rewinds, and menu selections feel like they have a slightly delayed response. The high resolution playback of Blu-Ray is like a heavy train that takes an extra effort to start moving and to stop.

I like watching Blu-Ray from Netflix, but I'm not sure when I would start buying movies on Blu-Ray. One reason I buy DVDs is so I can show movies to my family, and Blu-Rays wouldn't play there, or on my computer, so right now it feels more limiting.

Vlog Star review

2009-03-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Managed to get Vlog Star a write-up on a video review site called Viral Vengeance. Thanks to TroubledYoungMan at ViralVengeance for his review and for watching a show even if it has no hits.

Professor YouTube explains Hamster on a Piano

2009-03-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

Discussing this:

Chip Tusken: Road Sign Writer

2009-03-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

Yo, I have a piece on McSweeney's today. Check it out!

Vlog Star #21: Arm Run Over By Car

2009-03-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

This was actually the first episode I wrote for season 2, and I still think it's pretty great.

Arm Run Over By Car | Vlog Star #21 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Wedding Video

2009-03-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

The "groom's eye view" video. It doesn't include any of the big moments like the ceremony or toasts because I was a little busy at the time.

Vlog Star #20: Alexa Loses It

2009-03-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

Alexa Loses It (Road Trip part 2) | Vlog Star #20 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Fun fact: The establishing shot of San Francisco was shot as I was completely drunk after my bachelor party, riding in Charlie's car across the Bay Bridge as she drove Mike back to his friend's place before dropping me off at my hotel. In this state, I still had the presence of mind to remember that I needed a San Francisco establishing shot and this might be my best chance to get one.

Vlog Star #19: Road Trip

2009-03-11T18:15:00.000-07:00

As I embed this it's still showing no thumbnail, but the video works. Press play and see for yourself!

Boback might be interested to know that the majority of this episode (all the stuff outside the car) was shot on his and Sarah's wedding gift to us, the same gift that some of you may have seen me using at the wedding itself. (So, thanks ... um, I was going to say "Thanks again" but we haven't sent thank yous yet. So, pre-thanks, I guess.)

Prius Road Trip | Vlog Star #19 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Professor YouTube explains Kevjumba

2009-03-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

Commenting on:

Vlog Star #18: Target

2009-03-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

Here begins a story arc that was conceived with the goal of opening up the world of the show and not having so many episodes where the characters just sit on a couch like they did so much in season one.

Filmed on location, guerilla-style, which obviously shows.

Target | Vlog Star #18 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Facebook Fan Page

2009-02-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

By the way, I've publicized this already on my many other outlets for internet self-promotion, but if you haven't yet, you should really become a fan of Vlog Star on our Facebook page. It's a good place to declare your support for the show and check out behind-the-scenes stills like this one.

Vlog Star #17 - Clay Mask

2009-02-25T18:00:00.001-08:00

This episode was good for my skin.

Clay Mask | Vlog Star #17 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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I Eat Food

2009-02-25T17:55:00.000-08:00

Subway has the best street team ever.

Chimp off the Old Block

2009-02-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

Ever since that horrifying chimp attack story, I just can't look at Clem the same way anymore. We let him sleep on our bed, and he looks so cute and harmless, but is there a savage animal lurking beneath the surface?

Professor YouTube #3: Mac vs. PC Transformers

2009-02-24T00:07:00.001-08:00

Refers to:

License to Drive

2009-02-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

Went to the DMV today to renew my license. Apparently it's been long enough that they want to see me there in person. Fair enough. I've started to get funny looks when I show people my ID. I can't remember what clerk looked at it recently and said, "You're twelve!" Stephanie laughed when she saw my renewal notice, which still listed my weight as 125 and my height as 5'9".

After I checked in and got my waiting number, I realized that I did not have enough cash to pay the renewal fee and had forgotten my checkbook. I went outside, spotted a 7-Eleven on the next block, made an emergency ATM trip and got back in time for them to call my number. That sounds boring now but it was a tense predicament when it happened.

And so in a few weeks I will have a new license with a new photo and a printed-on organ donor dot that I won't be able to peel off during my periodic bouts of worrying about my organs being harvested prematurely.

I've always loved my old driver's license picture. I got away with turning my head a little, creating a slight three-quarters angle that is more flattering than the required straight-on shot. Also, I was so excited to get my license that I look really happy. At the time I really liked it because it made me seem like a happier person than I actually was. It looked better than any portrait anyone ever took of me. I wished I could have my driver license photo blown up and framed.

Today's shot was less notable. I looked straight on and didn't buck the system. It's a wide-eyed, almost exaggeratedly blank stare. I purged my face of any expression. We'll see what happens. I hope I don't hate it too much.

*Updated with my old license picture.

Vlog Star #16: Alexa Juggles Machetes

2009-02-18T12:11:00.001-08:00

Alexa Juggles Machetes | Vlog Star #16 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

Easily my favorite episode title.

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion, Veoh, Crackle and Vimeo

Hong Kong Airport Woman

2009-02-17T22:28:00.000-08:00

Already posted this on Facebook, but here is the version with English subtitles so you can understand the tantrum without worrying that she is actually dealing with something important enough to justify her childish freak-out.

It's pretty great either way, really.

Vlog Star #15: Speed Stacking

2009-02-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

Speed Stacking Worst Record | Vlog Star #15 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Is it speed stacking, cup stacking, or sport stacking? Who knows, really?

I really like this episode. I think season 2 is much better than season 1, where, admittedly, some episodes got bogged down in exposition/set-up and didn't always go anywhere comedically. I think this episode is a good example of how things have improved. It's faster, funnier, more visual and just plain more fun. Check it out.

Next week's is really good too.

Professor YouTube explains Where the Hell is Matt?

2009-02-06T18:25:00.000-08:00

Professor YouTube continues in a semi-spinoff.

He's commenting on this:

Vlog Star #14: Three's Company

2009-02-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

Three's Company | Vlog Star #14 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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This seemingly modest episode actually represents several milestones for the series... not only adding a new cast member in Shelly, played by Marion Kerr, but also in staging an apartment scene that actually required several setups! Moving from one area in the apartment to another actually forced us to reset the lights for every angle, just like a real movie. It was exhausting but I think you'll agree it was worth it. Just one more example of how we're raising the bar for season 2! Also, this is the first episode with Nate in a more minor role, and the first episode scripted by (and credited to) Dave Duman and not me.

Vlog Star Season 2 - First Episode

2009-01-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

Season 2 of our little show is starting today. Please watch it! If you'd like to support the show by re-posting and re-blogging it, that would be great too. Although I'm very proud of the first season, we learned a lot about making a web show, what worked well and what didn't, and I think season 2 will be a lot better. If you haven't watched the show before, this is a good place to start, and the recap should get you up to speed.

Moving Out | Vlog Star #13 (season 2 premiere) from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Well Wed

2009-01-27T14:22:00.000-08:00

I'm having trouble thinking about anything else today... I'm too enamored of our wedding slideshow that just went up.

Vlog Star Season 2 Trailer

2009-01-25T00:11:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late on the season 2 trailer on account of, you know, getting married. But I'm still shooting for a Wednesday premiere for episode 1. We've taken the lessons we've learned making season 1 and hopefully created something that is better, funnier, and most important of all, something you will blog about and tell your friends about so we can all get rich and spit on you from our passing limousines. Wait, pretend you didn't read that last part. (I don't want to bother deleting it.)

Seriously, though, please watch our show, tell your friends, and let us know what you think. Thanks!

Vlog Star - Season 2 Trailer from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Chun Li

2009-01-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

So, that's fine that someone decided to make a Street Fighter movie over a decade after the franchise has been relevant to anyone. It even kinda makes sense that they decided to base it around Chun-Li. Attempting to make a movie with too many protagonists was among the (many) things that derailed the last Street Fighter movie. Also, Chun-Li is apparently played by Kristen Kruek, so yay for Team Hapa.

But I feel like it's a mistake to build the movie around Chun-Li, and then make a trailer where you never see Chun-Li. That seems misguided to me. There are maybe two shots in this where you see her face, and even then she's not in a recognizable costume, and she's not terribly Asian-looking, so it's kind of hard to recognize her as anyone. M. Bison is also in this trailer, not that you'd ever know it. Vega is the only one you could pick out here without someone telling you who everybody is.

Yes, Chun-Li's chi-pao and hair buns are kinda cheesy looking, but surely someone could have designed a cool version of that. Because without it, you just have half a Chinese girl. And there is definitely no point making a movie about one character from an out-of-date property and then costuming her so that no one will ever recognize that character. In fact, this trailer seems desperate to avoid anyone ever making the connection to the video game.

Yeah, now this just seems dumb.

Maybe they should have continued the numbering from the last movie, so that this one could be Street Fighter II: The Movie. The phrase "Street Fighter" doesn't really evoke the game unless you have the "II" after it anyway.

Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub

2009-01-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a Vlog Star video we did for the Flight of the Conchords lip dub Fansterpiece contest. I've uploaded it over there but it has yet to show up on their channel. Based on the comments it looks like this delay is common, or maybe they don't post all of them. Either way, it was fun to do and makes a good teaser for the season. In fact, it's such a good teaser it already has more YouTube views than most of our episodes! So, yeah.

I wanted to do one where Nate and Alexa are doing the lip dub on their webcam, and then Max enters the shot and Nate gets pissed off at him and tries to get him to go away (this during the long pause after the first Hiphopopotamus line). But that didn't work out for reasons of scheduling and exhaustion/laziness -- this came at the end of our shooting for season 2, by which point we were tired, all the way across town from our apartment "set," and Mike was five hours away from being available.

So instead we did this. This version doesn't really fit into continuity at all, but certainly the scenery is nicer than the webcam version would have been.

Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub / Vlog Star teaser from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

On Tom Cruise and Tropic Thunder

2009-01-08T13:11:00.001-08:00

I am not a big Tom Cruise fan, generally. Not necessarily because of his Festival of Crazy these past couple years, which he is now attempting to correct via the most overtly desperate charm offensive in memory, or as it is known officially, the "Valkyrie Press Tour." I did, of course, share in the schadenfreude over the incredible spectacle of self-sabotage that is Tom Cruise unleashed, but the original reason I was not that into him is that he is one of those actors who always makes the movie about him, so that it is impossible even for a moment to imagine that you are watching a character in a situation and not Tom Cruise Acting.

Cruise gained a lot of acclaim for his role in Tropic Thunder last year, and now having finally seen the movie I am somewhat surprised to report that his performance is actually good, even with the burden of incredible hype that accompanied the movie's release. He is very funny in it and a scene stealer in a movie full of scene stealers. What the performance isn't, though, is uncharacteristic. Some people suggest that Tom Cruise is playing against type here. I submit to you that he is so good in it because he is playing exactly his type. The only way in which he is playing against type is that in Tropic Thunder, he is ugly.

Tom Cruise is at his best when he is playing a cocky showoff (Jerry Maguire, Top Gun) or intense megalomaniac (Magnolia, Collateral). Tom Cruise is at his worst in the Mission: Impossible series, where he has no real character to portray, and his amazing stunts play not as Ethan Hunt's heroic feats but Tom Cruise, cocky showoff, showing off cockily how many stunts he is willing to perform himself. So Lev Grossman, Cruise's Tropic Thunder character, is really just another Tom Cruise intense megalomaniac, only ugly. The fact that people think this makes the character different just goes to show how much slack people will cut an asshole for being good-looking. Cruise could play the same character as himself, and audiences would think, "How charming!" Play the role with a fat gut, hairy hands, a beard, glasses and a bald cap, and they think, "What a grotesque monster!" What is the much hyped dance scene but Risky Business With an Ugly Guy? Of course Cruise is good at it.

Still, it's hilarious, to give the man his due, and benefits tremendously from Cruise's intensity and even his charisma. Personally, I think Tom Cruise is even better ugly--it brings him down to earth (even though on another level it's still a showoff-y ploy). And I always like it when he's playing an asshole on purpose instead of by accident.

Gran Torino

2009-01-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

Defamer was being really bitchy to Gran Torino for awhile -- even their posts about Oscar handicapping would include some aside like "at least that's one less nomination spot for Gran Torino." This baffled and annoyed me since my reaction to the trailer was much closer to this, minus the detailed knowledge of Clint Eastwood's filmography.

I guess Defamer had some issue about how standing up to criminals is fascist and wrong, and seeing movies about guys doing cool shit will turn everyone into vigilantes or something. First of all, vigilantism is a satisfying and cathartic fantasy, not to mention awesome and badass, so get over yourselves and let us enjoy our movies in peace, Defamer wet blankets. Second, Gran Torino isn't that kind of movie anyway, so much as it is a meditation on those movies, about which Eastwood now seems to have complex feelings. So give the man some credit and don't judge so fast, jerks.

Anyway, aside from a few heavy-handed moments and the inexperienced Hmong cast's sometimes shaky acting (though no worse than the likes of, say, Jessica Alba), Gran Torino is a pretty fine movie, and its take on the values of the older generation, and what it meant to be a man, really rings true. It's a good movie to watch with your dad, which is what I did.

I Can Put it All on my Credit Card

2008-12-22T13:26:00.001-08:00

Credit Card (Flobots "Handlebars" parody) from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

For the holidays, why not enjoy a catchy song parody with a side of heavy-handed satire?

Laugh, then think, then cringe at my rapping/singing.

If you're not familiar with the original song, you can check it out here or here, which ought to greatly enrich your appreciation of our version.

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Diploma

2008-12-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Hey look! I finally got my diploma!

It's a long story but even though I graduated from USC two years ago, there was a hold on my diploma. Basically, they said I didn't go to a required student loan exit interview. I was sure that I had gone, so I figured it was just a misunderstanding and all I would have to do was call them and straighten it out. In fact, I figured it would be so simple that I didn't bother doing it for six or seven months.

Finally, I did call and I was told that I had missed some other exit interview, which was online. They gave me a web address but the online exit interview failed to work for some reason. I chalked it up to the site not being Mac compatible (I had just switched) and figured I would do it later on my old PC. However, my life at that point was busy and exciting and I never got around to it and eventually lost the website. Calling to get it again was never a priority.

Recently I've been thinking I should probably get around to getting that diploma, and I fortuitously discovered the original letter USC sent me about the hold, thus saving me the hassle of looking up the necessary phone numbers. At this point, the hold was especially asinine since I've long since paid off the small Federal Perkins loan that the exit interview pertained to. This fact meant nothing to the USC workers I spoke to, and I was again referred to the exit interview site.

However, you can't take the exit interview online without calling the ECSI for your school code, an annoying extra step that reminded me why I waited so long to deal with this. When I called the ECSI and asked for my school code, they looked up my records and, slightly confused, told me, that I was already paid up and they couldn't generate an exit interview for me. Fortunately, what they could do was call the school and remove the hold.

So if you want to get out of doing your exit interviews, all you have to do is wait a couple years and pay off your loan. And that's the boring story of how I beat the system.

Flashback: Aborted China Diary, 2002

2008-12-15T23:16:00.001-08:00

Stephanie and I are sifting through old papers, looking for stuff to throw away. The air is thick with the dust we've stirred up and we are sneezing profusely, burning through a box of tissues as our sinuses run rampant.

I discovered that on my trip to China several years ago, I had attempted to keep a journal. It didn't last. Here's what I had.

Wednesday, 6/5/02

7:08

We're weaving through Beijing and I don't know which way is up. You can't tell how big the city is because you can't see more than a half mile through the fog. We could be going back and forth and I wouldn't know it. I wish I knew Chinese characters better. I wish I had my textbook. I wish I had my tape recorder.*

People walk in the streets and ride bikes out into lanes totally without regard.

Later

The hotel toilet seat says: "No leaning backward." As if you'd want to just relax by reclining against the underside of a toilet lid.

It's nicer at night because you can't see the smog, just the colorful glow of brightly-lit signs in the darkness.

We went through some malls near the hotel and Tammy proposed we go to drink so we each had a beer and I had some probably undercooked lamb kabobs. This was with the guy chaperoning us, whose friend and brother showed up to hang out too. There's no drinking age here, which is sensible, especially since everyone drives like they're drunk anyway.

6/6/02

Morning TV: A horrible ad whose extensive use of questionably accurate computer graphics tries to convince people to take a pill that will grow their bones.**

*I think at the time I was trying to do that writer thing you see in movies where they narrate into a tape recorder instead of writing things down. It always seemed like it would be easier, but the problem is that you feel really self-conscious when you actually do it, and then you have to transcribe it all later anyway.

**Chinese people are desperate to be taller. This pill promised to make them taller by stretching their bones. A computer animated simulation showed how your leg bones would grow longer if you took the pill. It looked like it would be really painful if it were actually real.

Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life: Las Vegas Special

2008-12-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

Kenny Bloggerly at Defcon 16 hacker con in Vegas from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

Marty McFly Nukes the Fridge

2008-12-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

Just stumbled upon the Cracked.com list 7 Terrible Early Versions of Great Movies, which includes a link to the fascinating first draft of Back to the Future.

I've read a weird early Back to the Future draft before -- it opened with Marty getting out of detention by sticking a match to the ceiling with gum and then lighting it with his mirrored sunglasses to set off a fire alarm -- but this one is even earlier, and weirder. I'd read about it before, in my Back to the Future Official Book of the Complete Movie Trilogy, and I'm pretty sure they mention it on the DVD, but this was my first chance to read it. As a writer, it's pretty instructive -- there's all kinds of stuff that is very clunky but was later made elegant.

As Cracked points out, this version features Marty as a video pirate, which I'd heard about -- not surprisingly, studios balked at having a hero who is a video pirate. After all, it's one thing for movies to set a bad example when it comes to violence and sex, but when it comes to something serious, you can't be too careful. Also in this version, Marty helps discover that Coca-Cola is the secret ingredient to making magical inventions work (which must have seemed like a cute idea but is way too stupid for the screen) and the future at the end of the movie is a retro-futuristic paradise that runs on Coke.

Cracked also notes that the specter of atomic war looms heavily over this draft, the better to foreshadow a climax in which, in lieu of harnessing lightning, Marty and Prof. Brown sneak onto an A-bomb test site to power the trip back to the future. There is no Delorean, so this involves Marty climbing into a refrigerator as the time machine activates to protect him from the blast.

(In the BTTF book, Bob Gale or Bob Zemeckis explains that, besides the A-bomb sequence being too expensive, this was changed because they were worried about kids trapping themselves in refrigerators. I guess that was a big problem in the '80s? There was even a special episode of Punky Brewster about it, where Margo makes the mistake of playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned fridge and can't get out. So did we somehow solve this child-danger crisis, or did we just get distracted by worrying about pedophiles?)

The surprising thing about reading this sequence now is how much it sounds exactly like the A-bomb test scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Too Many Words to Finish Writing This. I guess all that bullshit about fully stocked, furnished towns complete with electricity and food in the fridge was true after all -- the BTTF script explains how the government really wanted to test how everything responded to a nuclear explosion, and make the most of their limited above-ground detonations. They must have been disappointed when every object reacted in pretty much the same way: by getting completely incinerated.

EXT. TRACT HOUSE – MARTY

Marty is walking around in front of the house, looking it over. He goes inside.

INT. TRACT HOUSE – MARTY

Amazingly enough, it looks like a model home---there is furniture, magazines on the tables, a TV, a radio.

In the dining room, more MANNEQUINS are seated at the table, which is set with full place settings. Marty wanders through the house, chuckling at the idiocy of it all.

MARTY

goes into the kitchen and has a look around. There is a Frigidaire refrigerator---Marty opens it and discovers it is well stocked with food, including meat, cheese, milk, eggs, Coke, fruit and vegetables. Marty takes an apple, has a bite, and returns to the living room.

INT. LIVING ROOM

Marty turns on the TV. Snow. He switches channels and finally tunes in a picture---the “Howdy Doody” Show. Marty watches Clarabell dancing around and shakes his head.

MARTY: The “fabulous fifties.”

So Marty explores an eerie, fake town, goes inside a house, checks the fridge, watches Howdy Doody on TV, then jumps into a fridge just in time to escape the atomic explosion. Yes, he travels through time instead of being hurled several miles, which makes this farfetched script still more believable than Indy's version. But at one point, it looks like the time machine might not work, so Professor Brown floats the idea of getting in the lead-lined refrigerator and hoping for the best -- Indy's plan exactly. Also, apparently refrigerators filled with lead? Also a thing.

EXT. PROF. BROWN’S VANTAGE POINT

A distraught Professor Brown calls instructions into his walkie-talkie.

PROF. BROWN: Marty, it's over. Do you understand? It's over. Now I want you to get in the refrig---the time chamber, and we'll just pray that the lead lining---

INTERCUT WITH MARTY, IN THE GARAGE

Marty interrupts with an idea.

MARTY: The refrigerator! Hang on, Professor!

Marty runs back into the house.

Professor Brown doesn’t know what to think.

INT. HOUSE – KITCHEN

Marty runs to the refrigerator and opens it. Sure enough, there are several bottles of Coke here! Marty is elated!

MARTY (into walkie-talkie): Don't worry about a thing! There's plenty of formula in the refrigerator!

The similarity is pretty impressive, and maybe it's just that once you go to a '50s test site town, there's only one place to go, and that's a fridge. But maybe, just maybe, Steven Spielberg, who produced Back to the Future and championed the script in order to get it made, remembered this scene and always wanted to make it? Then, when Crystal Skull came along, he thought "Now's my chance!" and threw the idea back into the mix.

I think the answer is clearly yes.

How Not to Eat Right - Follow Up

2008-12-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

Kelley: If you are to continue your newly found interest in fast food, you owe it to yourself to go down to the South Bay Galleria and sample a Chick-fil-a sandwich.

I've heard from a couple of sources (one of which was possibly you, one of which was Aziz Ansari's blog) that the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich is very much like a Chick-fil-A sandwich. So maybe they deserve the credit for that minimalist masterpiece.

Steve: A couple of years ago, I decided to try out Burger King, and went to their website to find the nearest store. After 15 minutes of first trying to find the store locater and then trying to get it to work, I still had no idea where the nearest BK was. Instead, I got to wait 90 seconds for their animation to load, endure auto-playing audio, completely pointless spinning graphics, and relentless pop-ups demanding I play the stupid games they had wasted their money on.

Dude, that is way more effort than anyone should ever expend to find a Burger King. Actually, even typing a web address is more effort than anyone should ever expend to find a Burger King.

Steve: What are your thoughts on Carl's $6 burgers?

I haven't sampled one lately. I had one years ago when they introduced them and I was underwhelmed. There was more meat, but it still tasted like fast-food meat, so my verdict was why eat the bigger, less healthy version of something if it doesn't actually taste any better. But then again, that was back when my standards were higher.

By the way, re: the Burger King Steakhouse Mushroom Swiss catastrophe -- I'm not alone. I urge you to follow the link for a visual aid that will show you what I was talking about. I would have photographed the burger myself but I had left my cell phone in the car.

How Not to Eat Right

2008-12-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

For many years I ate very little fast food, mainly out of -- well, out of good taste, I guess. Which is not to say that I ate healthily, just that I got my junk food from places besides big fast food chains -- which is how I'm defining fast food here.

Lately, though, I frequently find myself requiring a quick, cheap meal from a place where I don't have to get out of my car. For many years after I first judged myself to be a burger connoisseur, I savagely hated McDonald's. For I time, I even preferred Burger King, based on the fact that they at least offered tomatoes in their flagship burger.

I started to be lured back to McDonald's by their cheap and enormous iced coffees, which turned out to be surprisingly decent. And after laughing at the commercials where people gushed over the juicy new Southern Style Chicken sandwich, I felt the urge to try it just to see how short it fell.

Then, something unexpected: the sandwich turned out to be good! It's the simplest thing, a piece of fried chicken on a bun with a couple of paltry slices of pickle. Not even any sauce. But the chicken was juicy, and the spices were tasty, and the pickle set things off just right.

It was a revelation. For the first time, the genius of McDonald's snapped into focus, and I started to admire it. Their food scientists have calculated the bare minimum number of elements required to come together and form a satisfying taste. There's a certain elegance to the minimalism. Of course, this is all providing that the materials themselves are fresh enough not to disgust you the moment they meet your mouth, but McDonald's has made an effort to clean up and revamp their restaurants in the past couple of years, and more often than not these days, the food is up to the task.

I've even become more susceptible to advertisements. A billboard dangled a picture of a Big Mac before me, and I thought, maybe I should give the Big Mac another try, and I got one, and it was inexplicably delicious. Not a great burger, but somehow it was exactly what it was supposed to be -- no more, no less, and completely distinctive.

I'm always intrigued when fast-food chains introduce premium level burgers (the first of which was Carl's Jr.'s vaunted Six Dollar Burger). You know they'll never live up to a fancy burger at a nice restaurant, but like lottery tickets, the lure of possibility is so strong that I always want to try them at least once.

Jack in the Box - Sirloin Cheeseburger

I go to Jack in the Box a lot because they have a pretty rich selection and it is the closest fast food chain to my workplace. There are lot of good chicken options, including the Fajita Pita sandwich if you're trying to not be too unhealthy, and the Sourdough Club or the Ciabatta sandwich if you're willing to compromise a bit (though you have to specially request grilled chicken on the Ciabatta sandwich these days).

I'd seen Jack boasting about his Sirloin burgers as his staff jeered childishly at competitors Angus meat, but I had never bought one before. One day I was feeling glum and decided to treat myself. For some people that means piling on to their credit card debt with something that is actually nice, but for me it apparently means allowing myself to buy a big burger at a fast-food chain.

The Sirloin Cheeseburger was great! JITB offers you a choice of onions (red or white) and cheese (American, swiss or cheddar). You get a good solid burger on a fresh bun with produce that is not at all depressing to look at or taste. The meat is tender and has flavor that doesn't feel completely grafted on with condiments after the fact. For fast food, I could ask for nothing more.

McDonald's - Angus Chipotle BBQ Cheeseburger

My first experience with McDonald's Angus burger was with the mushroom swiss option, and it was very disappointing. The mushroom and swiss was lackluster, it precluded the inclusion of any other produce, and the meat patty was large but flavorless except for the salt and pepper liberally sprinkled over it.

With the release of the Angus Chipotle BBQ option, I decided to give McDonald's another chance. I've now had this burger on two occasions. The first was consumed in a parking lot, sitting in my darkened car. There's a lot more going on in this burger, enough that judging the beef itself is more difficult. This time, though, it seemed passable, and the BBQ sauce, cheese, bacon and other stuff carried the day. The burger was surprisingly good. The second time I had one, I sat in the restaurant where I could clearly see the burger on my tray. It still tasted good, but the way the beef patty failed to fill out the bun made a poor visual impression.

Burger King - Steakhouse Mushroom Swiss Burger

I don't know what the hell is going on at Burger King these days. McDonald's is raising their game like crazy, and the King is apparently pouring his money into second rate marketing guys who slave away to create cute little quips to print on their packaging. Jack in the Box does a bit of this, but Jack has been effectively established as a character with a distinctive attitude, and so any smartass labeling comes from a recognizable brand identity. The creepy smiling King is a non-sequitur enigma, and so, too, are Burger King's attempts at cleverness, which are all over the map.

The French fry sleeve is hence labeled a "Frypod," and includes a notice near the bottom that "If you can read this, I'm not in your cupholder." Pre-checked boxes along the side imply that the food within has been confirmed to be Fresh, Hot, and Delicious. This touch comes off as a cruel slap in the face when the food itself is unmistakably hours-old, cold and mediocre. In the midst of filthy, dilapidated restaurants bearing the pink and turquoise decor of 1993 gone to ruin, soda machines bear cutesy recipes for mixing different sodas together. The burger wrapper urges you to take a moment to contemplate your burger before eating it, because it's better that way. Unfortunately, that is the worst advice you could possibly give someone who is about to consume a fast food burger. On the contrary, you should start eating immediately -- don't take even a moment to process the chasm between the delicious picture on the menu and the embarrassment on your tray. Even the perfectly decent Angus Chipotle BBQ burger suffers if you look at too long. Substitute a sandwich from Burger King, and that moment of anticipatory contemplation threatens to hurl you headlong into a depressive spiral, leaving you desperately wondering just how your life has come to this.

For their Steakhouse Burger, Burger King has chosen not to emulate its competitors thicker patties, but rather, to spread the meat around. It aims to impress not with thickness but diameter. To be sure, the patty more than fills out the bun. Unfortunately, it's rubbery and tastes only vaguely of beef. Chewing it is not unlike chewing some tofu-based meat substitute, and the flavor is equally authentic. The fried onion bits, which were what had intrigued me most about the sandwich, were soggy and lifeless. Also, I should know better than to get the mushroom-swiss option at a fast food chain, because that is apparently something no one can do right.

I left feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself. My previous encounter with Burger King, a disastrous encounter with a value-priced chicken sandwich, had kept me away for a good long while, but apparently had not taught me a clear enough lesson.

Wicker Men: The Death of a Hollywood Industry

2008-12-03T23:18:00.000-08:00

In our new short, learn the untold history of how the transition to sound cinema nearly destroyed the wicker furniture industry.

Watch Wicker: The Best Thing Ever in Funny Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

In case the Veoh player disagrees with your computer, you can also watch it at:

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Emergency Water Emergency

2008-12-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun thought puzzle activity. Let's do it together!

Let's say you had a big 2.5 gallon water jug, the kind you can keep perched on the shelf of your fridge with a pull-out spout for dispensing water. Let's say you kept it in a cabinet as your "emergency water supply" that you're supposed to have in case of earthquakes or whatever. Let's say one day you discover that the whole jug is practically empty and 2.5 gallons of water have gradually leaked out of it over an indeterminate number of months. Let's say you now want to make sure the mold on the water-damaged cabinet shelf is dead and will not continue to grow all over whatever you put back inside that cabinet. What might you do to clean this up?

Hard Bargains

2008-11-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

I need to get a new external hard drive for video editing purposes. I've never actually done the research for this before -- instead I just used the external drives we already had, and they turned out to work fine. Now I'm actually looking around and reading reviews online. It seemed like a lot of people had data-loss problems with Maxtor drives, which is the brand that Costco is stocking now, so I thought I would stick with Western Digital, which is the brand of our current external drives. The more research I do, though, the more I find reviews warning of WD drives failing as well. Maybe it's just the people whose drives fail who are more likely to write reviews. Does anyone have a hard drive brand that they trust and would recommend?

SNL: Nicholas Fehn

2008-11-19T16:02:00.000-08:00

I really like this Fred Armisen character.

Vlog Star #12: Good News, Manager

2008-11-18T23:21:00.000-08:00

And here, the first season of Vlog Star comes to an end. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have any feedback or thoughts on the series so far I'd love to hear it.

Good News, Manager | Vlog Star #12 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

Um, sorry about the sound. I knew there would be street noise but it's a bit worse than I'd expected. But I think the dialogue is still intelligible. Hope you'll agree.

I think the street noise is actually dampened in the YouTube version.

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion and Veoh

Vlog Star #11: Hit Me With Your Best Shot

2008-11-12T01:11:00.001-08:00

We've reached the penultimate episode of Vlog Star season one. Savor it while you still can.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot | Vlog Star #11 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion and Veoh

Vlog Star #10: Alexa's Vlog

2008-11-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, here it is.

Alexa's Vlog | Vlog Star #10 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

In case Vimeo does not play well or you prefer a different video player:

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion, Veoh and Crackle

Next Episode Coming Soon

2008-11-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you're all on pins and needles waiting for the next episode of Vlog Star, but it's been a busy week so I don't have it ready yet. Expect it sometime later this week.

Vlog Star #9: Professor YouTube

2008-10-29T01:19:00.000-07:00

Watch Professor YouTube | Vlog Star #9 in Funny Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch the rest of the Professor YouTube video here, or the rest of the Numa Numa video here.

YouTube, DailyMotion, Veoh and Crackle

62% More So-Called "Laughs"

2008-10-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

I guess the packaging designer didn't think the movie was very funny. How else to explain the sarcastic quote marks? I've never seen such a self-deprecating DVD cover. Have a little pride, guys. At least act like you're trying to sell this.

Fred's Map

2008-10-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

When Hulu was new, I wanted to play with embedding clips and never got around to it. You'll excuse me if I overdo it a little bit now that I've started.

I do like this clip, though.

30 Rock

2008-10-24T00:59:00.000-07:00

The first episode of 30 Rock's long awaited third season is up a week early on Hulu:

The episode revisits one of the show's (and, apparently, Tina Fey's) running themes, that of Liz Lemon's single-woman baby fever. It's a solid entry and a nice starting point, but not as funny as the many series highs. The Emmy-winning season 2 finale "Cooter" is an excellent (and funnier) episode still available on Hulu.

As long as I'm finally posting Hulu clips, here's one from Episode 210, one of my favorites from last season. Here, Liz becomes anxious when she doesn't hear back from the board of an apartment building she's interested in:

I wish I could also post the bizarre and wonderful musical number from the end of 210, but that clip isn't available and the full episodes don't go back that far.

And, of course, here is Alec Baldwin's tour-de-force from another favorite episode, "Rosemary's Baby."

Vlog Star #8: Skate Park, Part 2

2008-10-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Watch Skate Park, Part 2 | Vlog Star #8 in Funny Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion, Veoh and Crackle

Vlog Star #7: Skate Park

2008-10-15T10:46:00.001-07:00

Watch Skate Park | Vlog Star #7 in Funny Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com