Posts Tagged ‘Media and Entertainment’

John Spencer passes away

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

A certain downer last night when I heard that John Spencer, the man who plays Leo McGarry on “The West Wing”, died of a heart attack.

I always enjoyed his acting, and from what I’ve read about him, he seemed to be a decent enough guy. The kind of person you wouldn’t mind sitting and having a drink with. Funny I say that too, considering his character was a recovered alcoholic. Of course, those who watch the show know that John’s character also had a heart attack, which ironically is how John actually passed away.

No word on how many more episodes were already recorded with him acting.

Insanity, productivity, profanity

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005

Damn, got caught up in doing nothing again and forgot to post. I also forgot to eat, breathe, sleep and pay my water bill. However, at the same time I learn to survive in a vacuum, generate all the energy I need to sustain myself from a 60 watt light bulb and bathe myself like a feline, so I guess I’m still doing okay. I’ll leave it to you to sort the bullshit from the truth, but one certainly outweighs the other.

Now then, how about we talk about what’s really been going on?

Work over the past few weeks has been quite productive. Two sites I’ve done have gone live in the last seven days in fact: the brand spankin’ new New York City Streets Renaissance and a new face for Lime Brokerage. The latter will probably see more updates sooner than the former. I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to be delivering on sites again.

Also, after many years of walking past the Angelika theater and staring at the marquees I finally managed to make a visit for a film. Teresa and I checked out The Squid and the Whale, a lovely little tale about casual cursing, divorce, bloody noses, limp handshakes and problems with drinking and sperm. Yes, I’m making it sound much weirder than it actually is, but I liked it. I felt some real visceral reactions from the performances — Jeff Daniels’ actually made me want to reach out and choke his character at times for all his myopic arrogance. If you’ve got 81 minutes and ten bucks, I highly suggest going out to see it.

Et tu, David?

Friday, August 5th, 2005

Not to say that this is totally unexpected, but it’s totally unexpected! According to one Charlie Murphy, it looks like Chappelle’s Show is over and out:

“I don’t think Dave is going to do it anymore,” Murphy told the Post. “We shot about eight shows for the third season, and they’re hilarious. They’ll be released on DVD, I’m sure. But that’s it.”

And here I was hoping the man would be in my fall idiot-box viewing. Ah well, looks like it’s about time I invested in the DVDs.

Municipal WiFi and banning the Broadcast flag

Monday, June 27th, 2005

Some more tech and media related legislation is making the rounds rounds through congress. John McCain and Frank Lautenberg have drafted a bill to allow communities to set up municipal WiFi networks (also here), which of course the broadband providers would rather not happen. To quote:

“Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries,” McCain said. This, of course, flies in the face of legislation from other Republicans, including Texas Rep. Pete Sessions (a former SBC exec) and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who are working to ban municipal WiFi networks altogether.

On the other end of the spectrum is the vile Broadcast Flag, which the MPAA wants to get buried into the law books so they can tell you how long you’re allowed to keep that episode of the Simpsons you’ve recorded on your TiVo can stay there, among other general nastiness. Thankfully is has died on the vine once again, but this is not the last we’ll hear of it.

Help save public broadcasting!

Monday, June 20th, 2005

Those in power at the moment would love to see the fine public institutions of NPR and PBS neutered by slashing their public funding by some $200 million. This is crushing to those who turn to these sources for real fair and balanced news reporting, not to mention the educational and cultural programing that puts many for-pay broadcasters to shame.

Please, please, please sign the MoveOn petition and let your outrage be heard. They’re only about 150,000 names away from their 1 million name goal. Let’s see that grand number dwarfed by the masses who love their real fair and balanced media.