loonyblog.

I took today off to wait around for the cable guy to show up…again. And yet again, despite having both a technician and foreman come out here, I am without internet access or cable. So now I’m told I need a crew chief to come out here, and the earliest I can get one of those guys? Why, that would be Monday, of course. Monday. Monday. MONDAY. Ugh.

Being without cable is really starting to annoy me. I watched Buffy last night in beautiful static-vision, and tonight I’m looking forward to doing the same thing with Angel. And don’t even get me started on my rip roarin’ 9600 baud connection here. Thanks to some f@$%kwit who sent a 3 MB file to news@shacknews.com I was unable to check my e-mail all day (I’ve since managed to delete that one message off the server). And I’m getting really nicely acquainted with the bugs in Apple’s Bluetooth implementation.

I’m at two months of free cable and climbing, but at this point I just don’t care. I want my cable back! I’m ready to go out and buy a thousand feet of coaxial cable and just run a line from my old apartment (hey, it is just three blocks away).

Ahhh! It’s terribly frustrating. At least I was able to get lots of other stuff done around the apartment…lord knows there’s lots to do. I finished wiring my A/V setup, switched around the fridge door (the building people installed it going the wrong way and it was driving us nuts), unpacked a few boxes, and lots of other small things. All this was done when I wasn’t on hold with Time Warner, of course, and that really was a significant portion of my day.

The Real Cancun flopped at the box office this past weekend, much to the surprise of everyone involved. Apparently people aren’t willing to shell out $10 to see “Girls Gone Wild” in a movie theater. But hey, don’t worry…we’ll soon have an entire channel’s worth of reality programming.

Um…whee?

Apple has finally launched their iTunes Music Store. When I first fired the thing up yesterday afternoon I was totally unable to get anything to work, presumably because their servers were being hammered, but today it works great.

For the unaware, here’s the general idea: you browse the store like you would your own collection, and can purchase songs for $0.99 and whole albums for $9.99 (two disc sets are around $19). After you’ve bought it, it’s more or less yours, and you can put it on an iPod, or burn it to CD. No monthly fees, no expiration dates, nothing.

I only rarely buy new CDs, but I have to admit, this is pretty cool. Ever since I got my iPod and a computer with a seriously huge hard drive, I’ve been convinced that CDs suck…this pretty much cements it. As I’ve seen from my insane packing experience, CDs take up space, and they can be scratched or cracked, and generally speaking they’re overpriced as well. With Apple’s music service, I can bypass that whole burden and get straight to the music right now, and it’s legal to boot.

But of course, I really don’t buy music very often. The selection on the iTunes Music Store (couldn’t they come up with a better name than that?) is pretty good from my casual stroll around the listings. There’s an impressive selection of Tori Amos and Pink Floyd, although since I pretty much own all that there’s no reason for me to buy any of it. I like the idea of being able to buy a single track off a CD single though, as you can with certain releases. I mean, how cool would it be to buy just the b-side tracks off of singles for $0.99 a piece? And unlike Amazon or any other online retailer, therea are 30 second clips from every song that’s available for purchase, with no exceptions. That rules.

I also like the idea of being able to make my own “greatest hits” compilation. In order for this to work there has to be enough music from a particular artist, and that doesn’t look possible quite yet with most bands. But if you want your own David Bowie or Bob Dylan collection, you’re in luck, as there are plenty available from each.

One criticism I’ve read online is that there aren’t any songs from indie labels. I can’t imagine that being a long-time thing. In order to launch they needed mainstream music and lots of it. Now they can concentrate on building their catalog, and I’m sure indie labels will get in on the action. If they really want to be cool, they can go the MP3.com route and let anyone who wants to sell their music. By leveling the playing field, they could really give new bands great exposure.

My one real complaint is that there aren’t any reviews of albums on here. I’m a total review junkie, and whether I’m reading ShackReviews before buying a game or movie reviews at NetFlix or book and movie reviews at Amazon, I always like to know what other people think about the stuff I’m about to pay for. There’s a rudimentary recommendation system in place, but reviews would be much more helpful.

Beyond that, I’m sold on the thing. The next time I buy music (whenever that may be) it’s safe to assume that if I can, I’ll get it off of iTunes.

Yep, we’ve moved. Yay!

The apartment is of course a mass of unpacked boxes (it looks sort of like a poorly made first person shooter, actually) but it’s a start, and it’s going to take a long time to get everything put away.

In the meantime, I’d be happy if I was able to get cable or internet access, which I still don’t have thanks to a series of incredibly frustrating events. I successfully got online last night using my cell phone via Bluetooth, although that was at a whopping 9600 kpbs. But it did work, so that’s good enough to check my e-mail (even if it did take 10 minutes to download 100 e-mails). And tonight I plan on firing up a text-only web browser (either Opera with images turned off or good ol’ Lynx) to try and surf that way. It’s a pain in the ass to do now, since I should have my nice beefy broadband connection, but if I’m somewhere on the road it’s actually quite cool to be able to check my e-mail or fire up ICQ. Hopefully that will be resolved soon though, because being without Internet access makes me all jittery.

Last night on my way downtown, I stopped in the GameStop up here by Times Square. One of the great things about PC games (and to a lesser extent, Mac games as well) is that if you’re willing to wait long enough, you can pick brand new games up for a fraction of their original price. Since I usually have a pretty extensive backlog of games anyway, my days of buying PC games upon their initial release have pretty much gone away.

So I went bargain bin browsing last night. Since I’m moving this weekend (and still quite addicted to HOMM IV), I didn’t pick anything up, but I did see a few notable items there. Glancing through the bargain area, I spotted Majesty for a mere $9.99. Actually, it was Majesty Gold, which includes both the original game and its add-on pack. I was just thinking about this game, thanks to the pretty impressive teaser image for the sequel that was released this week. I think I’m going to pick this one up pretty soon. At that price it’s a steal.

I also looked at a few other games I’ve been waiting to hit the sweet spot price wise…Dungeon Siege has dipped below $30, although I think I’ll wait for it to slide a bit more before picking that up…Stronghold has gotten pretty reasonably priced, as has Stronghold Crusader, its standalone expansion. I’m very curious about these two, but I’m not sure which one to pick up. I’ve heard Crusader is the better of the two, but at the same time I’m not sure if that’s the one I want to start with. GoGamer sells the Stronghold Deluxe Edition, which includes both games for around $30, so that might be the way to go there. I’m also keeping a close eye on Medieval: Total War, as I really liked Shogun: Total War before it. But that one I think I’ll wait a while longer on, until I can pick it up for really cheap.

But all of this is unecessary at the moment, of course, as I’m still playing HOMM, and I’ve got .hack for me when I’m ready to move on.

Anyone interested in politics or journalism should pay a trip to Deep Throat Uncovered, the official site of the University of Illinois’ four-year investigation to reveal who was the mysterious informant known only as Deep Throat.

It’s a great site, and loaded with info on how they eventually came to decide that Fred Fielding was the mystery man, and why everyone else was rejected. But there’s one person missing from their list of suspects…I’m talking about a young, brash lawyer and speech writer for Nixon, who has effectively covered his tracks over the years by creating a persona so outlandish that nobody (save for myself!) would ever think to point their finger at him.

That’s right, I’m talking about Ben Stein.

Oh sure, he’s created an image over the years of a non-smoking, non-drinking stiff-as-a-board academic, but underneath it all, I’m convinced, lies the calculating mind of one of the biggest political masterminds the world has ever known. Trust me here, people. Ben Stein is Deep Throat. He knew things could only go badly after Watergate, and he saw the perfect opportunity to get out while he could. Then, in a masterful stroke, he re-appeared a decade later as an actor playing a bit part in a John Hughes movie to throw everyone off his trail. And now, as the world turns their heads towards Fred Fielding, Ben Stein can rest easy knowing nobody would ever suspect the truth.

But hey - maybe he is just a harmless game-show host and minor celebrity. But then, they said the same thing about Chuck Barris, and we all know the real story there.

A mysterious CD arrived yesterday here at netomat…it was sent from Digital River, which is a reasonably well-known e-commerce company, but it was totally unsolicited.

But here’s where it gets really weird. There’s no accompanying text of any kind in the package (it’s just a nondescript CD mailer envelope), and the CD itself just says “V Communications” in white. Upon putting the CD in the drive, I was surprised to see it had the cryptic title of “62100824″, and as for its actual contents? There’s just one file, labeled “PartitionCommander801.exe”. Very strange. It seems unlikely that it’s a virus, but why on earth would anyone send such a suspicious package? Even if we had asked for this, I can’t imagine we’d trust it enough to run the file on here. Unless it’s some kind of Geek Porn, there’s no logical reason for this.

Here’s something I want…

As I’ve said before, when I move, I intend to use my cell phone as my only phone line. Since this is one of those new fangled Bluetooth phones, I want a way to use my existing telephone as a headset for when I’m at home. I like the feel of my current corded and wireless phones, and within my apartment, I’d like to be able to use those instead of my small cell phone. This is something that is theoretically possible with Bluetooth, but alas, such a product does not exist, or at least if it does, I haven’t been able to find it. Yet.

I suppose one has to admire the advertising campaign that’s currently in full force online for The Real Cancun. It is many things, but as this banner ad plainly shows, subtlety has left the building. And that’s nothing compared to the Flash T&A shows going on over at Ain’t it Cool News.

But like I said, there’s something admirable here. While some movies have coyly attempted to sneak some T&A into their advertising, this movie gets it right up in front, and lets you know that this is all you’re going to get from this movie. And I respect that.

The movie itself, as its official site pretty much makes clear, really doesn’t offer anything more than that. Like a studio version of Girls Gone Wild, this movie, from the people who brought you MTV’s The Real World, follows a bunch of young, sexy college students as they get liquored up and party on Spring Break. But what I found surprising, and didn’t know until I read this article from Time Magazine, is that this movie is about this year’s spring break, not last year’s. Which means it wasn’t just shot recently, it was shot and edited in a month. Good gravy! (”Thanks, it’s just brown and water.”)

I can’t say any reality show to date has appealed to me, and this movie certainly doesn’t. And of course, this thing ain’t winning any Oscars (unlike another recent documentary) but to be shot, edited and released in a month, is pretty damn impressive. Hopefully this won’t start a new flood of super-rushed movies. Can you imagine what it would be like if the average production time for a movie was six weeks? On the other hand, improv-movies don’t have to suck, but then the director’s usually given plenty of time to edit it together. Apparently Christopher Guest whittled A Mighty Wind down to 87 minutes from 50 to 80 hours of original footage. Just imagine what he would have done if he only had a month to do that. My guess is it would be twelve hours long and harder to sit through than the director’s cut of Gods and Generals will be when it’s released (supposedly that’s going to be as much as six hours long, which is excruciating since the movie’s not supposed to be very good in the first place).

But I guess the final word on this movie comes from AICN’s Harry Knowles, who says in his review of the flick that it’s a “limp flaccid covered cock of a movie.” Now that I respect.

Anyone who moderately knows me well will tell you that I’m quite a fiend for movie trailers. I’m a movie nut, of course, but I’m also a trailer nut. I watch every trailer I can get my hands on, and I do it so much that I’m actually a paid Quicktime user. So here’s a rundown of some of the latest notable trailers I’ve seen:

Underworld: This is a really poorly made trailer, but the movie looks quite cool nonetheless. It’s clearly influenced by recent action flicks like Blade II, but there’s nothing wrong with that (I for one really enjoyed Blade II). But it’s still a crappy trailer. What saves it is the pretty clever concept of the movie (it’s Romeo & Juliet with vampires and werewolves) and of course Kate Beckinsdale running around in skintight leather. You can’t go wrong there.

The Matrix Reloaded: I just can’t get excited about this movie. I didn’t like the first one, and this looks like more of the same. Like the original, I’m sure it will be cool visually, but I’m also sure it’ll be loaded with the same lame story and characters, with serious overacting from the talented people involved. Great quality on the trailer though. I wish everyone released them like this.

Timeline: This is one of those trailers that’s terribly encoded, and sounds like it’s being played from inside a fishbowl. That said, it doesn’t look half bad. The book was great (or at least a lot of fun), and Richard Donner’s a solid action director, so I have high hopes for this one.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: I didn’t even bother downloading this one at first because, well…it’s based on a freaking ride at Disney World! But nonetheless, I was persuaded by some of the other things I’ve read about it online, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like a fun movie. It’s got a decent cast, and while I certainly won’t see this while it’s in theaters, or probably even bother renting it, it looks enjoyable enough that I might TiVo it some day.

New Suit: I’d never heard of this movie when I downloaded the trailer, but it looks remarkably fun. It’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” told in Hollywood, and its premise is outlandish enough to actually happen. There’s a good cast here, which features Heather Donahue from The Blair Witch Project (and more recently Taken) as well as Dan Hedaya who’s always fun (when he’s not in total caricature mode, that is).

The Italian Job: There’s not a whole lot here I haven’t seen a dozen times before, but this looks like a good time nonetheless, thanks to a great cast that includes Donald Sutherland, Edward Norton and Charlize Theron.

So that’s it for now. There’s a ton more sitting on my hard drive, of course, but that’s a good chunk of the notable ones. If you’re like me and want to keep on top of these things, visit Movie List daily.