TheBostonStrangler

Father Christmas by the Kinks is my personal favorite.

I just watched the episode where Kim and Lindsay run over Millie's dog today and Mr. Fredericks starts dating Bill's mom - probably my favorite episode in the series. Brilliant stuff. Mr. Weir getting fired up over Mama's Got A Squeezebox is brilliant.

I just got back from the show as well. A very well-done effort, albeit a show that didn't seem to have one insane highlight to remember it by. Based on what I saw live, basically every match was good, but every ending felt just a bit rushed. Still, the crowd was wicked into it the entire time. Very nice show, and getting to see Joe win the title was a great moment.

I'll be there live with some friends. I haven't seen much TNA lately, but a chance to see Joe finally win the title is enough to get me to attend.

Superbad is what happens when you get really smart people together, and have them make a movie that has more or less no plot whatsoever. This is not a "good movie" by any stretch of the imagination. However, it is absolutely hilarious, and it does absolutely everything that it promises it'll do.

No Darjeeling yet, so I'll go with the first four: 1) Rushmore 2) Bottle Rocket 3) Royal Tenenbaums 4) Life Aquatic Rushmore is absolute brilliance. I've always thought that The Royal Tenenbaums was overrated - it's got some great stuff in it, no doubt. But it was a little too contrived for my tastes - too eventful, I guess. It just didn't seem to mesh with a guy whose first two movies were more understated. Bottle Rocket is brilliant, and would rank first if it wasn't for Rushmore's amazitude.

I liked some of what was going on tonight, particularly the House/Foreman dynamic. It was nice to see House legitimately confused and caught off-guard by Foreman ultimately liking the job. But I thought the stuff with the mirror patient and the contestants lacked the subtlety that the show usually has. It was blatant and helped turn them into one-note characters (particularly the plastic surgeon). The one exception I would have there would be Cutthroat Bitch - the stuff with her character helped change her into a deeper character. Still, I think that although parts of the episode were really heavy-handed, it sets up other parts of the show well for the long run. Not their best episode, but the good long-term planning behind it was evident.

One nominee I have for a song that is clearly not the worst song ever written, but a song I hate with a blinding passion: Free Falling by Tom Petty. Dear lord, do I hate that song. And I seem to be the only person on Earth who hates this song, so I continually get shit over hating this song. Oh well. Sorry that the song sucks. However, the absolute worst song I've ever heard is Sheryl Crow's cover of Sweet Child O' Mine. Look it up at your own discretion - I will never, ever link to that song. It's the worst trashing of a classic that I've ever heard, and I've heard Limp Bizkit's version of Behind Blue Eyes.

I mean, it's cool that it's Tony at all, but am I the only one who's a little bothered by the fact that Tony died on-screen in Season 5? And sure, there was a little bit of controversy over that, but considering he's been referenced as dead for the past couple seasons, it seems pretty unreasonable to do this. With that being said, Jack vs. Tony will indeed rock.

Unless there was some minute reference to it that I missed, no, it's been untouched. Hopefully they pull it out of hte vault a couple of years down the line for a real shock.

They needed to have some reason that they wouldn't have access to her mother's medical records, so Ukranian descent seems like as good a reason as any. It wasn't offputting or anything - a total non-issue for me. Good episode so far - should be interesting to see what Foreman's return is like for the dynamic.

The ALCS will be on FOX next week, and that'll pre-empt almost all of Fox's programming for the week, I assume. Thankfully, with the way the schedule is set up, it looks like the 23rd hits on the gap between the ALCS and World Series, or on a scheduled off-day, so we'll be good to go for House that day.

That seems pretty random, considering Prince's good history with the internet before, as well as his anti-record label sentiment over the past couple decades. I guess he's just all about having total control over his own music, and doesn't want anyone else to have it - the internet, record companies, anyone.

To be fair, the internet experience on the iPhone is significantly better than it is on most smartphones (in the limited hands-on time I've had with an iPhone). But I think the main point there is true - no one's buying the iPhone simply to use it as a cell phone. It's a device that allows you to make your pocket less cluttered with gadgets, and it succeeds admirably at that. And for any iPhone early adopters feeling screwed: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/ - a $100 credit at the Apple Store to all existing iPhone owners not covered by rebate plans.

I think Apple did a great job with their set of updates yesterday. Some people don't seem to be big fans, but I'm not quite sure why the criticism is there. The majority of the unhappiness seems to come from the fact that the iPod Touch doesn't have the storage capacity that the iPod Classics do. However, it's a simple question of storage capacity versus battery life and form factor. If you look at the battery comparisons between the flash-based Touch and the hard drive-based Classic, the Classic somehow gets better battery life despite having the moving parts of a hard drive. Quite simply, that means that the full-size screen, touch interface, advanced processor, and WiFi capabilities eat up a ton of battery life. If they wanted to put a hard drive into the Touch, they'd have to add an extremely large battery on top of that just to get it back to the already-modest battery capabilities of the current touch. It'd add to the cost, and it'd also make the unit significantly chunkier than it already is. With the limits of flash technology today, Apple had to make a choice, and they went with Flash. This decision makes a lot more sense when you look at the iPod Touch as a new line of iPods, instead of a continuation of the previous line. If you want a successor to the 5th gen iPods, that's what the Classic is there for. Tons of storage, an updated UI with a (supposedly just OK) version of CoverFlow, and battery life that blows away anything Apple's ever put out (40 hours of audio/7 hours of video for the 160GB model). Meanwhile, the Touch is in its first generation. It's not continuing on any traditions, unless you count the iPhone. And if you do count the iPhone, this is a clear evolution on storage size in a time period of less than three months. I'm sure that Apple will gladly up the storage capacity to 16 GB/32 GB as soon as the memory is cheap enough, viable enough, and widely available to satisfy the massive, massive demand that Apple has for flash memory. I would guess that towards the end of the first quarter of 2008, we'll see that bump. It's just like what happened with the first gen iPod: It had a small storage capacity, and after it had been developed a bit further and tech prices came down, fuller-featured models that satisfied the need for increased storage became available. Overall, the iPod line has never looked better. You've got a great ultra-portable entry choice with the Shuffle, a redesigned Nano capable of video for those who don't want to spend a ton, the Classic for people needing to satiate their desire to have their entire library on the go with them, and the iPod Touch/iPhone to split the high end market into people who want a phone, and people who don't. It's true that, as of now, there isn't one iPod that takes care of everyone perfectly all at once. But in a year or so, when flash memory prices drop, and 32 GB (or even 64 GB) Touches become available, that problem should go away.