Month: October 2001 (Page 7 of 8)

The TLC show “Trading Spaces” is fascinating to me, sort of like watching a car accident is to some people. I want to look away from the hideous things they do to each others’ living rooms, but I can’t. On today’s show, they transformed someone’s basement rec room into the holodeck on Star Trek by masking off the white walls with varying widths of painter’s tape, then spraying the entire room, including the ceiling, a dark blue. Peel off the tape and you’re living inside Tron. Gak. I mean, who among us wants their neighbors to come in, make a bunch of furniture from old doors and burlap sacks, paint the walls weird colors, and leave to let us stew in the hideous mess they made?

I would like to know what percentage of those rooms are dismantled the minute the cameras turn off.

Latest commercial: The American Freedom Collection consists of two flags, one standard and one that says “God Bless America”; a sheet of flag cling stickers for windows; and an American flag pin. The entire package, not sold in stores, can be yours for the low low price of only $14.95, plus $4.95 shipping.

Oh my sweet lord.

Mac OS feature I wish Windows had (one of many): spring-loaded folders. If I have a file on my desktop, and I drag it over the My Documents folder, why can’t it open up so I can put the file in one of my many carefully-arranged subfolders?

This Entertainment Weekly ad for the new Superman prequel series “Smallville” is disturbing to me on many levels. (just a quick photo with my digital camera, so please excuse the bad quality)

Interesting article in the New York Times about artists’ ideas for what should be done with the World Trade Center site. (via Mike) I personally think making the site into a park would be giving up too much to the terrorists. Let something new and interesting be built there, something that preserves the business of New York City while saying, you want to knock us down? We’ll come back stronger than ever.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find Owen Wilson’s nose oddly fascinating?

Memo to producers of “Friends”:
You rode the Monica and Chandler relationship arc into the ground, and it appears you’re willing to do the same with the Ross/Rachel baby plot (unless Ross really isn’t the father, and you’re planning to trick us again, which would be mean). As my alter ego Chandler would say, could another sitcom baby plot be any more lame? At first I thought this would be a good way for Ross and Rachel to finally get back together for good, but they’ve both become so unlikable in the last year or so, I realized I didn’t want to see a whole season about them.

How about this – use this season to focus on your most overlooked characters: Phoebe and Joey. As the only two likeable characters left among the six, we deserve a little more time with them. Lisa Kudrow especially has done some amazing work sandwiched between the “A” plots – remember her fake seduction of Chandler? Fantastic. And I don’t mean a relationship storyline; just give them some interesting, funny stuff to do. Make this your last season, and make it good.

Thanks for your time.

Waredevil is a new web site update service, designed for people who don’t want to hire a full-time web designer. Wait, isn’t that what I do? And their lowest-price package, for fewer than 10 updates a month, is $499/month.

Excuse me…I need to call some clients and renegotiate.

Xkot created a new entry page for his forum, outlining some basic common sense rules of conduct for his online community. It’s an eloquent and beautifully simple document about how to act online (and in real life, for that matter). Go there now. As the inimitable George Costanza once said, “We’re living in a society!”

I love “The West Wing.” I really do. And maybe what they said last night will have an impact – that would be great. But it didn’t really advance the cause of those, like me, who defend the show when others call it preachy. That was the preachiest hour of TV I’ve about ever seen. It was even set up like a classroom, with the kids lobbing softballs at Josh Lyman and Toby Ziegler so they could hit them out of the park. (I would have enjoyed watching Stockard Channing’s first lady talk nonetheless, but I got a phone call from my brother in Florida.) I agree with Moira (who doesn’t even like the show) that the best thing they could have done is just gone on with the show’s regular arc. “Very Special Episodes” are for After School Specials – let’s leave them there.