Empty Bookshelf Reviews

I actively subscribe to one magazine, Car & Driver. Generally, I’d stand behind it compared to the other of the “big four” car magazines (Road & Track, Motor Trend, and Automobile). It gets a bit silly sometimes, and the fact that their staff is made up mostly of former engineers is a bit too evident in some of their testing methodologies, but all things considered, that’s neither here nor there; simply enough, it’s a well-written magazine with lots of personality, which is an accomplishment considering they cover a usually slow-moving industry with potentially soul-less products. Similar to most any magazine between the letters to the editor and the feature-length stories, is a section devoted to sort of random, short news items devoted to the topic at hand, in this case, automobilia.

As a sidetrack, the whole celebrity gossip business bothers me. Similarly to how stars’ lives don’t affect the lives of the readers, the celebrity gossip business equally affects my corner of the world to that same degree (not at all, in other words). I’m not sure if that makes me somewhat of a hypocrite or not, but as usual, that won’t keep me from judging. The problems with it are obvious, and of course, they’re all compounded by the fact that people somehow get something out of knowing the “news,” gossip, rumors, etc. Of course, I know that “Hollywood” uses the celebrity press as much as possible and any publicity is good publicity (to an extent). I really don’t care the gender of whoever’s not-yet-born baby, and I don’t really “get” why other people care so much, but again, I’m not the first person taking this stance.

But how are these two sort of random snippets related? In the above-mentioned “short news items” section of May’s Car & Driver, there was a five sentence or so write-up of Joaquin Phoenix’s overturning of his Ford Escape Hybrid in California. I initially didn’t think twice about its inclusion; they had a picture of the wreck, a picture of the crowd (with the back of Mr. Phoenix’s head circled), and a slightly humorous superimposed image of Kermit the Frog over one of the accident-scene photos.

I didn’t realize that it was odd that pictures existed of the accident until I made the conclusion that they were probably taken by a papparazzi who had good luck that day. Yuck. Principles right out of the window. Had Joaquin Phoenix not been in the accident, of course it wouldn’t have been in the magazine, and had they written up some other random accident involving that same car, I wouldn’t have been remotely interested. I guess I finally “got” the appeal of celebrity gossip magazines.

In the end it’s weird. I’ll watch MTV Cribs, basically waiting for the part where they show the person’s garage/car collection and not think that I’m contributing to “celebrity culture,” though in this hindsight, I know that I very much am contributing. Likewise, about that wanting to know the gender of some pair of celebrities’ baby, I think I don’t care just because I’m not interested in that sort of thing (babies, in other words); I don’t care if such and such’s kid fell off of a jungle gym and broke his four-year-old hand. I have no interest in that parental, traditionally domestic sort of stuff. But I am interested in cars. The Bugatti 16.4 Veyron is currently the fastest, most expensive, most etc., production car. I’m interested in it, if only for those reasons. Unfortunately, in thinking about that little inclusion about Mr. Phoenix’s crash, I realized that I also know that David Beckham owns one. Is my life enhanced knowing details about the car? I’d say that as a car enthusiast, to some degree, yes it is. Is my life enhanced knowing that David Beckham owns one? Not in the slightest. But why would I subconsciously decide that that snippet is worth retaining? I don’t know. Why would I also know/remember that Bill Gates and Ralph Lauren both own the not-legal-to-drive-in-the-US-before-1999 Porsche 959? I guess cars replace relationship/baby/etc. gossip for me.

Sort of “Getting” the Appeal of Celebrity Gossip Magazines receives three stars due to the fact that I had thought I’d never understand it. It’s weird to think that celebrity culture really permeates everything, but in the same way that I’m still not interested in the whole celebrity babies/relationships/etc. stuff, I’m just as interested in the celebtiy car/home theater/etc. “news.” I’m not sure what the solution is; I can’t say that my life is any better in that I know Jerry Seinfeld’s favorite car is the Porsche 911, but I can’t help but be interested in knowing which of the countless models Porsche has made over the years he owns. I can’t help but want to know if his favorite is the same as mine.

iwry

This is a huge mega gauntlet review. I wanted to write a review of the first two albums above, kinda comparing them, etc., but then I realized that I had these rather interesting cover albums, and it would be a total shame if I didn’t write about them in some capacity (one of them being decidedly stranger than the other), so I’ve ballooned this up to epic scale. I’ve also kinda assumed that everyone is at least familiar with the more popular song titles.

AHHH! It’s like they’re staring straight into my soul!…. My Rubber soul!

Up first: Rubber Soul is quickly becoming one of my favorite Beatles albums, partially because of how underrated it is, but more because it is THE bridge between what the Beatles were and what they became, and also because of the amount of creativity and musicianship put into it. First off, to name the tracks that everyone should already know: Drive my Car, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Michelle (which somehow won the “Song of the Year” grammy for that year, even though there are plenty of songs on this album that are better, and it didn’t even hit number one on the singles charts… granted i don’t know the effect that it had on pop culture, but from a musical standpoint, I don’t get it… not that the Grammys judge anything by musical standards anyway), Girl, I’m Looking Through You, and In my Life. That’s a lot of songs that were major hit singles, although none of them ever hit the number one spot. Not only is that an impressive feat, but this was the second album they released that year, in addition to the movie “Help!”. With the exception of maybe 4 slow to moderately paced songs, all of the tracks are upbeat. All, except maybe one George Harrison-written song are catchy, and all contain at least two-part vocal harmonies, with most of them containing consistent three-part vocals. The tone as a whole, as well as the musicality, is consistent. In addition, this is the first of the albums to begin experimenting with other sounds, and more diverse lyrics. Norwegian Wood, with it’s sitar, and In My Life, with the sped up piano solo in the middle of it, giving it a baroque sound, are prime examples of advancements in both sound and lyrics beyond those of cheeky love songs. The album carries a romantically jaded lyrical tone to it, with songs about manipulation, death threats, and being in relationships you don’t want to be in. All in all, a very pleasurable and underrated album that paved the way to their first real change to the pop music scene, and the record that was voted the greatest album of all time by a crapload of magazines and music stations, (even though I find it to be highly spotty) Revolver.

The album gets four stars, due to the two or three lackluster songs in the bunch. The rest are gold, and work very well together. The songs form a coherent album, not just a collection of tracks that were thrown together to get past a deadline.

“Let It Be”, once again proving that the Beatles were good at not all being able to look in the same direction.

The “Let It Be” album is another that’s moving up on my list, and could very well be at the top. It’s at the opposite end of the spectrum entirely in terms of tone and presentation from Rubber Soul. Whereas all of Rubber Soul’s songs are tightly compacted, and cleanly put together, Let It Be plays like the closest thing they have to a concert album, mostly due to the fact that many tracks were live recordings, some from their famous rooftop concert, and others being raw takes from the studio. Wikipedia has a more detailed version of the story, including specifics of how each track was pieced together, but basically the story is that these tracks were going to be for a soundtrack to a documentary film that was being made about the making of a Beatles album called “Get Back”. The band was starting to have their fights though, and the material got shelved in order to put out the Abbey Road album. After they had been broken up for about a year, Phil Spector managed to piece together the audio clips from the various takes, and the album was released. Of particular interest (among the individual song details) is the details of the various guitar solos on the actual track “Let it Be”. I prefer the album version with the 1970 guitar solo over the single version, which is kinda weak as far as the guitar part goes. Anyway, the album is a lot of fun, and it has a very casual mood to it. There are audio clips of the band goofing off in between songs, certain tracks that are kinda “spur of the moment” messing around-type songs that fall apart after 40 seconds or so, but are still fun, and of course the famous closing line, “we’d like to thank you all, and we hope we passed the audition”, or something to that extent. Famous tracks include, “Let It Be” (obviously), “Across the Universe”, “The Long and Winding Road” (the most infamously criticized of the tracks, due to Phil Spector’s inserted overpowering and sappy orchestration), and “Get Back”. Other standout tracks include the band showing off their blues-rock influence with the live “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “One after 909″, and the last released of the McCartney-Lennon dual lead vocal tracks, “Two of Us”. The most interesting thing is how different the band sounds here than on any album between Rubber Soul and this one, with the possible exception of the White Album. Even though Sgt. Pepper is supposed to be fun, and Abbey Road and Revolver have some fun songs, it doesn’t seem like the band is enjoying itself, and that’s what really shows through here. Even though apparently they were at the peak of their fighting, the musicianship seems pure and easily accomplished, rather than worked on and overdubbed and experimented with. It seems spontaneous and lighthearted (with the exception of three tracks), and they again seem like a band that you would like to have playing at a party, rather than one who would rather be perfect and pristine. The other thing of note is that again, like many bands who go through big changes musically, if you play these two albums back to back (you can actually fit them both onto one CD) you wouldn’t realize that they could be the same band, especially considering that they were only four years apart…. just look at Scott Stapp.

“Let It Be” (the album) is an incredibly fun listen, mostly because you can hear the fun that the band (at least by all outward appearances) had while making it, and we’d all rather imagine them that way instead of arguing. The only weak spot is that although I really like “The Long and Winding Road” (and hate the acoustic version on the “Let It Be: Naked” album), it really has no place with the rest of the songs. The orchestration completely separates it from the tone of everything else, especially between the roots-rock of “One After 909″, and the folksy acoustic blues of “For You Blue”. It might have been better suited to end the album, after “Get Back”, especially knowing as Phil Spector did at the time that it was going to be the last Beatles album.

Onto the cover albums.

If this was 2003, it would be a perfect time for me to do the Sam voice. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over that sad time in my life. Ahh, what the hell,….”WHY CAN’T LUCY GO HOME WITH MEEEEEE!!!”

For the 2001 movie about a mentally handicapped Sean Penn raising his daughter Lucy, (Dakota Fanning), the producers wanted to get the most fitting of soundtrack material. Someone decided to make the movie heavy on the Beatles references, including the fact that Lucy is named after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, so it was a prerequisite that their songs be included. They had trouble getting the rights to the songs, or at least the original performances of them, so they worked around it by getting a bunch of musicians to play them, with Eddie Vedder, Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow being the highest profile names. The full track list can be found here. The album runs hot and cold, with the first three-fourths being well translated, and the second half going more for mood than preservation of the original intent. In fact, the only miscue before track 13 is “I’m Only Sleeping” by the Vines, and that’s mostly because the song is a weak one to begin with. Maybe the song fit thematically with the movie, but the skip button usually gets pushed when it comes on. The aforementioned three artists do perfectly competent (in Vedder’s case more like near perfect) recreations of the original versions of their respective songs. Rufus Wainwright, Stereophonics, Wallflowers, and Chocolate Genius (presenting a track that’s one of my favorites from the White Album), successfully update the songs with more contemporary instrumentation and vocal styles. Aimee Mann and Sean’s brother Michael blend their voices perfectly on the opener “Two of Us” (what I would consider, along with Rufus’ “Across the Universe” as the two standout tracks). Ben Folds iisn’t given enough to do with “Golden Slumbers” (the original goes on into two other songs, with a drum solo in the middle that he could’ve pulled off well… yes he does play the drums too… and bass… and probably a few other instruments), Ben Harper’s “Strawberry Fields” is light before turning into the noisiest of the tracks, and the Black Crowes’ track is perfectly forgettable. The album turns after track 12, with slow acoustic versions of “We Can Work It Out”, “Help”, and “Nowhere Man” by two people I’ve never heard of and Howie Day. Someone forgot that “Help” was urgent for a reason and that the best part of “Nowhere Man” was that the whole thing was sung in three parts, and not a whiny Bob Dylan impresion. The album finishes off with a simple, solemn, baritone version of “Let it Be” that gets the point and shows the hope-tinged sadness of the original. The worst track is Grandaddy’s “Revolution”, that changes the tune entirely and removes the bluesy synchopation that made both the album and the single version of the original worth listening to, in addition to singing with an apathetic tone instead of one of cynicism.

The I Am Sam Soundtrack is probably the best compliation of Beatles covers available, and I’m sure that there are people out there who like the tracks 13-16 but they aren’t me. Three stars for all of the aforementioned reasons.

George Martin: In My Life? More like George Martin:Sells His Soul to Crap all Over His Life’s Work and Make a Few Dollars…. BAHHH-ZING!

In case you couldn’t guess by the above caption, this album is a total wash and the only purpose it serves is for comic relief when telling other people about it, and the fact that anyone would want to make something like it, especially someone like George Martin. For those of you unfamiliar with the man, you can view a detailed biography here.
Basically, he produced every Beatles album from 1962 until 1969 (essentially just leaving off the Phil Spector-produced “Let It Be”), and is oftentimes called “The Fifth Beatle”, although I think that’s kinda lame… just like this album coincidentally. Anyway, this CD came out in 1998, when Martin decided that he wanted to go out on his own terms, with his last work. So of course, you’d think that he would try to get interesting musicians, and probably have the means with which to get them to do it. You would think that, but instead we get people like Goldie Hawn, Robin Williams & Bobby McFerrin, Phil Collins, Celine Dion, and of course Sean Connery and Jim Carrey. Yep. That’s who does the songs. Not only that, but they managed to make some very good songs into mostly terrible songs. Out of that list, you wouldn’t expect that the best one would be from Jim Carrey, but it is. His version of “I am the Walrus” was something that I would play for other people and not tell them who was singing it. Nobody could ever figure it out, because it sounds nothing like Jim Carrey, except for the few ad-libbed lines he threw in, and, in the most knowing line on the album, the part at the end where exclaims, “There! I’ve defiled a timeless piece of art! For my next trick I’ll paint a clown face on the Mona Lisa while using the Shroud of Turin as a dropcloth”. Celine Dion turns a rather bland song (“Here, There, and Everywhere”) into one of her terrible sappy love songs right up there with the Titanic song. Goldie Hawn destroys “A Hard Day’s Night” by making it a lounge ballad. Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin do a serviceable job with “Come Together”, but it’s completely overshadowed by Jim Carrey pretty much doing the same thing but better. Phil Collins provides a highlight with his full version of “Golden Slumbers” including an extended drum solo, something that Ben Folds should’ve been allowed to do. Sean Connery reads “In My Life” like he wants to be William Shatner, but with a Scottish accent. It’s okay, if you don’t care about the actual tune of the song. Other tracks of note are electric guitarist Jeff Beck playing the melody of “A Day in the Life” note-for-note without adding much else, classical guitarist John Williams outdoing Beck with his acoustic guitar version of “Here Comes the Sun”, and George Martin conducting a new version of the Pepperland Suite from the “Yellow Submarine” movie. Other tracks of ill-repute include Billy Connolly and his Scottish accent portraying a ringmaster for “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, and the biggest travesty of them all, making the decision to can the best part of the second best of the Beatles’ three-part harmony songs, “Because”, in favor of having electric violinist and fad at the time, Vanessa Mae give us her instrumental version. I believe that covers the entirety of the album. It’s a very obscure compilation that not that many people really know about, and it should be kept that way.

This album gets one star due to a few tracks that would be enjoyable to people who’ve never heard the original versions. Also, other tracks are guilty pleasures as you listen and wonder why anyone, especially someone with this much music industry power, would do something like this. Then you realize that in the liner notes he actually explained each decision individually. These explanations are worth about as much to me as the explanation for the movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“, the lowest regarded of anything even vaguely having to do with their music, and an entirely different subject that perhaps one day I’ll tell you all about.

I want to make this review as “non-braggy” as possible, so I’m gonna refrain from giving a list of famous people of whom I’ve been within 100 feet, but just to warn you all, to give examples, I’m still probably going to have to drop a few names.

A picture I took of Naomi Watts and Heath Ledger, back when they were still dating in 2003. Hopefully he didn’t break her nose like he did Jake Gyllenhaal’s.

So, I’m sure you’ve all heard me give examples or tell stories about “When I was in California”, and I’m sure you probably cringe every time I mention it. I actually do when I find myself saying that phrase. The problem is that for people that I haven’t talked to in a while, it makes good conversation, and is probably the most intersting thing I’ve done since senior year of high school. People (who haven’t heard it before) like to hear my “glamorous” stories about the time where I stood in a crowd of hundreds on Hollywood Boulevard, watching dozens of people take pictures of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston making kissy faces at each other at the premiere of her “instant classic” film “Along Came Polly”. Honestly, I was bored. Everyone around me is trying to get a glimpse across the street to the dimly lit figures about as big as if I hold my index finger an arm’s length away from my face and close one eye, and I’m there wondering what the big deal is. I suppose it’s good for “bragging” rights, as anyone who’s seen my “You can kind of make out the back of his crew cut” pictures of the event knows. Yeah, I took some pictures…. yeah, my lense doesn’t zoom…. It was my first time around at an event like that (it actually was the first night I had gone into the hollywood area) and I just happened to have my camera on me. But I was the tourist, and those other people lived there, so I’d hope that grants me a pardon. You’d think that after living in the area for more than I had at least, that the other onlookers would get tired of staring at people for no purpose other than that. Maybe there were a lot of other tourists in the group. I don’t know.

Moving on… working at the tv show that I worked at, I had daily run-ins with notable people… mostly b-list celebrities, and while I was excited going in to see what they looked like close up, most of the time it wasn’t a big deal or I was totally let down. The “beautiful people” as we’re led to believe, usually are no more or less attractive than any moderately attractive person you’d see in everyday life, and in fact, many times are less so. Elisha Cuthbert and Eliza Dushku are the biggest examples of this. Elisha Cuthbert (as well as Avril Levigne) is so remarkably short that you wouldn’t even recognize her if they walked past you. Eliza Dushku just wasn’t very attractive at all in person. Kelly Clarkson looks nothing at all like she does on TV or movies, or album covers without being very heavily made up.

The bottom line is that watching things like red carpet coverage where we learn to worship the idols of TV and film, we de-humanize them, and in that humanizing instance where they’re getting gas at the pump next to us you realize that they’re just above- average-looking people with a good amount of money, and unless they’re total coked out divas, or fried has-been rappers, they’re usually really normal and humble.

Meeting/Seeing celebrities gets two stars as the only real positive that can come of it is being able to tell other people and hope that they actually care (and don’t perceive you as unjustly gloating your “fortune”). Expectations usually will not be met because the media have set such a high standard, making people larger than life with us supposed to care about every little detail of their private lives. In the end, they’re just moderately attractive people who like to play dress-up, or dance around like idiots…. Rob Schneider, I’m looking in your direction on this last one.

I think this will be a mini-review, but often times, I start as a mini-review, but end up with more than enough for a full-on, double-quarter-pounder with cheese regular review. (Finished writing it: Well, so much for the mini-review…)

Let me pre-apologize for the computer-centric nature of this, but the “product” was a big enough let-down that being that I write reviews for a reviews website, I might as well weigh-in. Also, the offical name of the “product” isn’t “Dyne:bolic Media Studio LiveCD, it’s just Dyne:bolic, but that’s stupid so I’m including the rest of the name I assigned to it.

First, for those that probably stopped reading when I said “computer-centric:” a LiveCD is a CD you put in your computer as it starts up. Instead of Windows or Apple OS X loading from the hard drive, an operating system loads from the CD drive. This might not mean much to the non-computer people out there, but it allows for a completely different operating system to run on the same computer without anything being deleted (you just eject the CD when you’re done), overwritten, copied, or modified (unless that was your goal). With a LiveCD, you can start a computer whose Windows installation has gone the way of the buffalo and have practically full access to the files. If Windows needs to be re-installed, you can copy the relevant files to a USB key or (in some of the fancier liveCDs) even burn them to a CD-R. People who use computers for more abstract purposes (i.e. Linux users) use LiveCDs to sample new flavors of Linux before installing them. Windows has to no offical LiveCD version as few people would be compelled to buy the program if they could just copy it and take it to whichever computer they (or a friend of family member) would use. (Not that this isn’t rampant with regular Windows install CDs as it is).

Yeah, I can make up words too, Mr. “Hacktive.” KOFTOFTIC!! Take that dyne:bolic people.

In terms of troubleshooting, LiveCDs most useful aspect is that one can figure out if a problem is with the computer’s hardware or Windows. In fact, I troubleshooted the hell out of Adam’s computer when he was having network problems using a LiveCD version of Puppy Linux.

Anyway, Dyne:bolic is a linux-based LiveCD that portrays itself as a completely free, complete multimedia solution on a CD. You don’t install anything; you just put the CD in, start the computer, then you’re in a dreamworld of magic desktop filled with free software for internet broadcasting, audio and video editing, print editing, vector graphics (think Adobe Illustrator), raster graphics (think Adobe Photoshop), and more. It’s sounds great in theory. In fact, it sounds revolutionary in theory. In theory. The user interface is simple enough to figure out (it’s probably simpler to use than Windows, especially because it’s so specialized).

BUT, like a lot of the Linux theories, it’s better as just that, a theory. As you turn the computer on, you’re greeted with a prompt that says “boot:” and has instructions for choosing video modes or entering debug mode. Well, I guess I’d consider myself a power user, so I want to set the resolution to the optimum setting for the LCD screen in front of me. Skipping the intermediate step, you choose your resolution and the screen says “Could not find kernel” then it boots into the desktop, running at 800×600. This isn’t enough for power users, and video editing at 800×600 is practically useless as video from a full-resolution DV source will fill most of the space. Aside from the fact that a non-linux user would be dumbfounded by that “kernel error,” as a reasonably experienced (unfortunately, even with Linux) computer user, it’s bad user interface design if you display a serious-looking error, then have the computer seemingly do something unrelated (such as boot into the desktop). Does this mean that the kernel error wasn’t very serious? That I’ll be able to change resolutions once it’s booted?(you can’t) Who knows.

I’d give a a more thorough review, but trying it on various hardware,- I couldn’t get it to run higher than 800×600 and beyond that, the support for the CD was (dis)organized into a “cute” page with very little content, most focused on the individual included programs (which I could already find on the homepages of the included programs), but the not the actual CD itself.

I’m not sure if Dyne:bolic is a one man project, but if it is, it’s quite the accomplishment (in theory) for one person, but as the Linux community is so often to say, “Use this! Windows would never be this good, and you’re stupid if you don’t use flavor of the week. If it doesn’t work for you, then fix it yourself. It’s open source!” I know enough about Linux to say that the kernel error when choosing a resolution probably has something to do with the detection of the video card’s applicable settings (or settings in general), but that doesn’t mean I have the means to fix it. If other Linux-based LiveCD’s can work, this one should too, especially if it’s supposed to be so “ultimate.” I tried it with both ATi and nVidia videocards and had the same error. Linux etiquette says that I’m supposed to go to the forums or wiki if I have a problem, but I’d prefer my “amazing” solution to just work.If it’s a one man project, it’ll probably work fine on his hardware, so he probably has an Intel video card/onboard chip. But, of course, lots of people don’t have his exact setup, so maybe it’s the ultimate setup on his computer. But that’s about it.

The Dyne:bolic Media Studio LiveCD receives one-and-a-half stars due to it setting high expectations but failing to deliver on them. The concept (a standalone CD that turns any computer into a fully-featured media studio) is rock solid, but it’s unfortunately brought down by two of the pillars of Microsoft’s supposed FUD anti-Linux marketing: “questionable hardware support” and “lack of documentation”. Sure, it’s free, but that doesn’t make it better than commercial alternatives, even if they don’t come bundled on one standalone CD (that doesn’t completely work). Oh yeah, and the name stinks.

hmm, I didn’t have a solid plan when I started this review. I simultaneously wanted to do a running list of “‘the internet’ thinks this, ‘the internet’ thinks that” and a traditional intro, body, rating, conclusion review. Unfortunately I had neither enough entries for that running list or a fully fleshed out concept for the traditional review, so we get a questionably coherent mishmash of both.

hmm #2…I scrapped the list I had when I realized how long the traditional part was. The list wasn’t very good anyway. Anyway, enough meta.

Notice those quotes up there? The ones around The Internet? Those signify that we’re not talking about the actual internet. Nope, we’re not discussing millions of computers, countless low-level hardware thingies that are probably made by Cisco, nor little understood software and protocols that link all of it together. In fact, we’re not even talking about the 750ish million people that use the internet. We’re talking about those people, the one’s that both provide and fuel almost every stereotype about the modern “geek.”

The most famous parody/stereotype of “the internet.” It’s funny because it’s true.

“The Internet” is almost a collective consciousness; the phrase “all your base are belong to us” means less than nothing to those not part of “the internet.” But those in that club thinks (or at least thought at one point in time) that it is hilarious. “The Internet” loves being first to know about something that’s become “pop-culture,” and isn’t afraid to hold that against you. In fact, here’s a disturbingly complete list of pieces of internet culture. Some of them never caught on with the general public, but some will look quite familiar.

The anonymous nature of participation on the internet (no quotes) allows for those who care too much about something that is inconsequential to spend time (hours, days….years?) and defend their work because there’s someone else on “The Internet” that probably is working on something just like it. These two people will hate each other and will develop fanboys, the offical animal of “The Internet.”

Because the internet is so unfathomably large, there’s stuff about everything. Without going into history, the type of people who were first using the civilian internet, were (standby as I stereotype and generalize)…well, let’s call them the type of people who had the technical background or interest to have the means and abilities to connect to the internet. Stereotypically (and accurately), these aren’t the people to have “mainstream” interests. I’m not necessarily judging what those interests might be, but needless to say, the population at large doesn’t share those interests. Being that college campuses were some of the first places people could experience what would become “the internet,” students with the interest and ability to participate in the internet made some of the first “home pages,” sites dedicated to whatever their left of mainstream interest happened to be. Combine that with the fact that much of the internet traffic was coming from other college campuses, a huge social network of young people who normally weren’t part of a huge social network developed. Before “the internet,” college campuses also served as larger-scale examples of the comic book store phenomenon, with numerous people with non-mainstream interests meeting enough people with those same interests to create a community where discussions could take place about those interests beyond the “Comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, and etc. suck and so do you” stereotypically presented by the “mainstream.” Members of “the internet” would indignantly mention that I skipped the discussion of BBSes, IRC, usenet, and other things that our readership wouldn’t care about.

Oddly enough, “The Internet” doesn’t really have much to say about music. Sure, there are fansites, but if one were to list influential music websites that are just websites, pitchforkmedia.com will probably be the only he can think of. I’d guess that this is because the world of music is simply too huge and diverse; genres are so monolithic that there can’t be a general-purpose site serving all of it.

Oddly enough, considering how similar members of “the internet” are, they have no central meeting point. That doesn’t mean there aren’t sites “they” frequent. Fark, sort of a weird news aggregator, serves as the general news-gathering device. To be fair to Fark, I know of no one, member of “the internet” or not, who didn’t get a kick out of it, at least during their first visit. If they want more scathing humor that specializes in topics of which “the internet” is conscious, there’s Something Awful. Both Something Awful and Fark have Photoshop contests; naturally the two subcommunities hate each other. Usually the Something Awful’s Photoshop efforts go over Slashdot provides computer news and some of the most frustratingly inane arguing about each and every story without fail. The Internet Movie Database, originally “property” of “the internet” is very much a mainstream internet tool and continues to be “the internet’s” definitive source for movie info, while Roger Ebert, the unofficial official movie critic of “the internet”‘s already high profile has managed to rise since “the internet” adopted him. His stance on video games turned off many, but there’s no widely agreed upon second place critic for “the internet” to worship. Computer hardware is taken care of by Anandtech or Tom’s Hardware Guide (or any of the dozens of other hardware reviewing sites). Aint It Cool News continues to be “the internet’s” movie site and, like SlashDot is famous for its attracting of relentless fanboys of particular movie properties. TheForce.net provides Star Wars news (an interest/passion among much of “the internet”). I’m sure there’s an unoffical official site for every science fiction property (I’m condescendingly including LOST in there, 411mania and insidepulse are popular (though both have expanded to cover pop culture and more traditional “internet” interests). Simpsons fans have The Simpsons Archive where you can find “episode capsules” where you’ll learn more than every wanted to know about everything about each episode of the show. Wikipedia and Google had begun as jewels of “the internet,” but Google has long since become the standard for all users and Wikipedia, for better-or-worse, is in the process of becoming the standard for informal research (and formal research by those that don’t realize that an encyclopedia that has a more detailed entry for the Green Lantern than for the Watergate scandal might not be the best source of information).

The above wasn’t an all-encompassing tour of the popular destinations, but that’s a lot of them; each category could have more added and I glossed over some categories (such as shock sites, so it’s your own fault if you see something in three clicks that you wish you hadn’t).

“The Internet” receives two-and-a-half stars not due to its interests, but due to its attitudes. The ending of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back really captured the whole concept, with two guys previously unfamiliar with the idea of the internet going after (and beating up) everyone that trash talked them on a movie website, not unlike Aint It Cool News. Aside from the fact that much of “the internet” has become used to anonymous, consequence-free trash talking, the significance is that the “mainstream” still doesn’t understand the whole community, why anyone would visit, much less create, comment, or contribute to a websites devoted to, of all things, Star Wars action figures or the intricacies behind how the episodes on the Simpsons DVD’s aren’t 100% complete.

The Something Awful “Photoshop Phriday” examples came from the Paintings of Light competition parts 1 and 2.

Site note: to potentially get some commenting going on, you can now leave a comment without needing to fill-in an e-mail address. What’s that sound? Why, it’s the sound of accountability going out the window!

Hmmph. I never thought we’d be “pioneers” in this little internet endeavor, but I did think that, at the minimum, we’d bring something new to the table in some capacity. Well, now that we’re about two-and-a-half months into its existence, I’ve found that, no, we’re not even bringing anything new to the table.

It’s true.

The story goes something like this:
Nate’s friend Pete submits this very website into a “community-driven links database” called digg.com. The way it works is anyone can submit a link and its description, then the “community” rates and sort of reviews it. No, digg.com isn’t the source of the frustration; it’s not a “reviews” site by any stretch of the imagination. It provides a framework for categorizing and ranking links that usually have to do with technology, computers, science, etc.; that’s about it. Looking at what Nate’s friend submitted to digg, we see that four people “digg-ed” it and two people thought they had something worthwhile to add to the discussion. Mr. “schwit,” playing the typical “internet”-role, informed everyone (in the form of a question, of course) that this link (our site) has nothing to do with technology, while a second commenter, “JohnH,” trotted out the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, explaining that although “[we're] ok, [I] thought Lore did it better though: http://bookofratings.com.”

Please everyone, click that link, and just like me, die a little inside.

I had mentioned the existence of the “Lore”-person’s site to archives, and saw a very disturbing link to “buy the print version.” This led to the following e-mail to Nate and Adam on 1/1/06 (please note, I’m hilarious all the time, not just when writing reviews):

(Adam, this is a follow-up to a conversation about the below topic that I had with Nate” I’m sure you can follow without needing to have the conversation explained to you.)

Here’s the digg.com link.

This is the website: http://www.bookofratings.com/ It looks like he might’ve stopped updating in 2003.

It looks like this Lore person (he’s from San Francisco apparently) managed to actually publish a book of his reviews.

I’d wager that the “Editorial Review” was written by the author, but I won’t hold that against him. What I will hold against him is that fact that he’s practically completely beaten us to the punch and even (potentially/probably) made some money off of it. He even reviewed the seven deadly sins one by one (you can see it in the “look inside this book” on the amazon site).

I’m okay with the concept of someone else doing a “wacky, random, etc’” reviews website, but looking through the Amazon reader reviews I see: “Now a lot of you “simple minded” folk out there might not be interested due to Lore’s advanced and half made up vocabulary.” Now that’s just plain old reverse gimmick infringement. It doesn’t look like he reviews abstract concepts (“The Hype Surrounding This Week’s Trading Spouses,” Verbally Harassing Horses,” etc.”) but that’s probably just because I haven’t looked closely enough through his archives. The “Old Trading Cards I Bought at a Shop in San Francisco [Parts 1-3]” really seals our fates as imitators. Looking at the left of his reviews page, he has a list of other sites/projects. I’m afraid to click on them as I’m sure that one of them retells the story of his production of an action movie about Ben Franklin in 1999.

Now more than ever, we suck.

At the risk of simply repeating the rather straightforward e-mail…that’s right, reverse gimmick infringement. That way, we can blame him for copying us before we even did it. It doesn’t make much sense but it helps me sleep at night.

His reviews are all much shorter than ours, and it seems he likes reviewing things in list form (such as those baseball cards or “Aspects of Santa part 2″), but he always brings the funny. The reviews aren’t the most insightful, but that’s not his goal. For example, when reviewing “Stuff in the Airline Catalog,” one of the many items evaluated is an Authentic Pachinko Machine about which he says, “I’m just glad it’s authentic, because once I ordered a pachinko game and I forgot to check the “authentic” box and they sent me one of those little Cracker Jack toys where you have the get the little bee-bees on the puppy’s eyes or something and it lacked that authentic pachinko experience that I was hoping for.” To get an impression on the general length of his reviews, that’s the whole thing for the “pachinko machine,” but it was one of the six items in the “airline catalog” review. Disturbingly, it sounds just like something Nate or I would say, except this guy said it sometime before 2003, a good 3 years ago.

Nate mentioned that many of the reviews are focused on “internet-popular things,” and we usually avoid that stuff, but to be fair for each “Dungeons and Dragons“-related review, he has one like “Types of Band-Aids.” Because some none of you are looking to mesh his reviews with ours, he uses a traditional letter grading, making his “A+” equivalent to our….oh, nevermind.

Thinking You’re Doing Something Original receives half of one star due to the fact that not only is the internet unfathomably huge, it’s been huge for quite some time, and is getting, uh, huger, and that combination means that the likelihood of anyone doing something original dwindles each day. I mean, that’s fine, it’s progress and all, and don’t worry, we’re not going to be like Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State and being wacky/weird/random for the sake of originality, but I can’t help but think I won’t be at least a bit self-conscious about making sure I don’t review things that are already reviewed by our more trailblazing precursors. I’m sure that most people (meaning: our readership) probably don’t consider this to be too big a deal, but the amount of time it takes to write a what-we-hope-to-be-good review, much less maintain the website, it’s frustrating to see it sort of in someone else’s “been there, done that” category. Yeah, yeah, we know that we choose to spend the time writing, maintaining, etc., and we know that we’re only “busy” for the amount of time that we choose to spend, but still, it’s the principle of it. We get the half-star because our reviews aren’t one-trick ponies and we do evaluate serious things every now and then, something Mr. Lore seems to be too good for.

Time for a mini-review! (before I take on my semi-idol, Roger Ebert later in the week)

All things considered, this review will probably not actually earn “the seal”

So, we were playing football the day after Thanksgiving. There were about ten people there, which is a pleasantly complete number, as the field can be reasonably-sized, and there aren’t so many people that any serious medical emergencies ensue. All of the Goletz siblings were there: Greg, Dave, and Tim. The significance of that is Dave and Tim are no longer 6 years old. They’re both in/recently in high school and more importantly, quite good at football. So good in fact that after a loose ball (that actually wasn’t technically a loose ball, but I guess I yelled “pick it up!” with enough confidence that someone [Adam] actually thought it was a fumble and not an incomplete [short] pass), that Mr. Tim Goletz completely clobbered the “fumble” recoverer after he was already on the ground. Just like in the NFL.

All of this lead to the following conversation between Nate and me:

Nate: That’s weird, I don’t hear any Futurama quotes.
Me: What about anything from The Critic?
Nate: Nope. -Wait- Do I hear a Family Guy reference?
Me: No, I think that’s just some leaves rustling.
Nate: Yeah, it looks like Tim knocked the wind out of Adam.
Me: Ah. That’s why I don’t feel like I’m in the TV aisle of a DVD store.

Knocking the Wind Out of Adam receives three-and-a-half stars due to the change in the conversational landscape. It can’t be rated too highly because the condition (though temporary) is incredibly uncomfortable and is one of the more serious of the “un-serious” conditions. In all actuality, Adam didn’t have any TV quotes that day, but knocking the wind out of him would’ve changed that if he had. In even more actuality, I never had that conversation with Nate. But I could have.

Latino Heat will surely be missed, Esse.

Yesterday, Sunday, November 13th, WWE wrestler Eddie Guerrero died in his hotel room. I suppose this is a rather biased time to write a review of him, but I felt that with this outlet to speak my mind that I might share my thoughts on him.

I didn’t know him. I never met him. I didn’t even watch the DVD documentary about his life or any of his matches pre-WWF/E. In fact, I never even watched wrestling before he moved over from WCW, and when I did start watching, he was in a pointless story with the womanbeast Chyna. I am probably the least qualified person to write a review on him as a person, and a mediocre-ly qualified person to write about him as a performer, but I’m gonna throw some reflections out there.

I probably turned the TV off most of the time when he came on in the beginning of my wrestling-watching days… maybe it was the mullet, or the fact that he (the character) could somehow be in love with Chyna that turned me off. The first real impression that he made on me was at the end of his first run with the company. He was in a story where he was jealous of everything that Chyna was doing because she was in playboy. He didn’t want other people to see her naked, etc. (and somehow people actually did want to see her naked, making her issue a huge seller). There was a backstage segment in her dressing room or something, and she and Eddie began to have an argument. All of a sudden, he just became enraged. He started screaming and throwing things, and yelling and crying, improvising dialogue, and for a wrestling backstage segment, it may still be the best acting job I’ve ever seen. Of course I didn’t know at the time that he was having so many drug/alcohol problems that might have added something to the on-camera breakdown of the character.

He left or was fired from the company, depending on who’s telling you the story, and according to the Allentown Morning Call‘s obituary, had his marriage fall apart before crashing his car at 130 mph while on E. He was told he wasn’t going live, but remarkably got himself together, quit the bottle, quit the drugs, re-married his wife, was re-hired by the company, and had another kid. He would’ve celebrated 4 years of being sober on Tuesday, November 15th.

At this point, (when he first came back to the company in 2001) he’s still kinda a joke in my mind (not knowing all of the things that happened in the previous paragraph). He seems to be a drunk like Scott Hall, who’s a loser gone down the tubes who nobody is gonna remember. Like I said, I had no perspective. Anyway, he comes back and starts showing me matches of quality, innovations, athleticism and heart. An amazing ladder match on Monday Night Raw with moves nobody’d thought of before. And he’s starting to win me over. I find a couple of his old matches from WCW, and I realize what a performer and talented person he was. And he starts to break into the competition for the world title, winning over the fans in a huge way. My friend and I are in Los Angeles, watching a free TV royal rumble style match, and he’s keeping us on the edge of our seat fighting Olympic Champion Kurt Angle. They’re both hanging on the ropes, dangling over the edge, because if they let their feet hit, they’re eliminated, and they’re the last two people. Somehow after at least ten minutes with only the two of them, he wins out. This was (I think; putting things in chronological order isn’t my strongest suit, especially when it comes to wrestling) before what could very well be my best wrestling-related memory. I didn’t see Eddie win the title, with this guy, at the Los Angeles Ithaca College office, but I went with him to watch Wrestlemania XX a month later, when Eddie and Angle put on a “clinic” of a match, with Eddie outsmarting Angle to win. That would’ve been enough for the night. But to see another internet favorite, Chris Benoit, win the other championship at the end of the night, for the first time, after struggling through numerous companies, with Eddie along side of him throughout his whole career, and then have Eddie come out and the two of them raise their belts together is something I’ll never forget.

Watching the Chris Benoit DVD a year later, and seeing how deep this friendship was, how long they had been together, and seeing their early matches just made this moment resonate even more.

I’m a sap, I know. And it’s probably even sappier for me to be upset that a pro-wrestler died. People who say this, though, probably didn’t see me the day Phil Hartman died. Neither of these men had impacted science or world peace, or even a large percentage of the population. Like I said before, I didn’t know who they were as real people. I only knew the energy that they brought to TV, and I knew that things would never be the same without them. And I know, that like the memorium episode of Newsradio, chances are that I won’t be able to watch tonights tribute episode of RAW, or Friday night’s tribute Smackdown without shedding at least one tear. Maybe the website’s dictatorial ruler has other opinions, but that’s just me.

This was originally 4.5 but I decided to up it to 5, in memory of his signature move, the “Five Star Frogsplash”.

In the wake of his death, Eddie Guerrero gets 5 stars for enjoying a long, incredibly entertaining career, being a family man, managing to be one of the top wrestlers of his time, and successfully overcoming a devastingly sad stretch in his life to come back stronger than he was before, and more beloved by the fans. Listen tonight (Monday November 14th at 9 on USA network) or Friday (November 18th at 8 on UPN) to hear the thousands of people give their love to him.