Achewood

Webcomics are a topic near and dear to my heart. The very first two webcomics I read were, like for a lot of people, PvP and Penny-arcade. These two comics are still around, their art has improved, their fan bases have grown and they basically defined the genre. One of the comics that I really love that I got into a little bit later was Achewood. Sadly it doesn't seem to possess that knack for staying power that these others have.

Achewood was always weird, I mean how do you describe to someone that you are laughing at a comic strip about some stuffed animals and a cat who wears a speedo and ray bans all the time? It was love or hate for a lot of people. It had a sort of avante garde, whimsical humor to it. It would create these ridiculous and often terrifying characters and places. It created a world where if you made a deal with the devil you could become a millionaire, first by your skills on the piano but later through your knack at making products that could only be sold in skymall. Where C.S. Lewis opened a door to the magical world of Narnia, Onstad opened a door to the secret menu at taco bell and an ebay only for the idiotically rich.

It was truly a magical time. But much like in the magical land of Narnia, all good things must end.

Where once was the childlike innocence of Phillip, there is only a dark cynicism of Roast Beef. Roast beef at first was originally depressing in a funny way, but it eventually gave way to being so depressing you start to worry about the guy making the comic. Wondering if each time he failed to update for a week or longer, he'd finally given up.

Yes there is still that knack for creating fantastical situations, for instance I am amused by the character Steve Denueve in the recent arc. I hold hope for Achewood returning to it's former glory in the same way I still secretly hope that Weezer will produce another decent album.

In that I really don't expect it to happen, but if it did it'd make me very, very happy.

CBS Could Use A Little Work In The Scheduling Department

How I Met Your Mother, at least to me, is the only reason to watch CBS apart from sports. It's consistently funny, has a ton of original humor and jokes, and also has four new episodes left for the end of the season.

Since January, showing new episodes has been sparse. While I understand the Olympics put a crimp in everyone's TV schedules, this year CBS has only shown 9 new episodes of the current season. When you factor in that there's been 17 weeks since the new year, something doesn't seem right.


This is how CBS makes decisions.

They've been hammering in reruns like nobody's business, which for a lot of fans of the show, is making every new episode feel lackluster or not as good as it could be. As someone who watched the whole series in one huge chunk, it flows together from episode to episode nicely, so having a constant break every other week in the schedule interferes with that.

There's also been concerns that not too many episodes focused on the overarching plot. Robin's relationship with Don is barely touched upon, and only 2 episodes this year have been about Ted's future. The whole season's been great, but just because you keep getting picked up for new seasons doesn't mean you have to drag it out.

I guess in the end, I'm not going to complain if CBS wants to show Slapsgiving 2 again like they did last night. But at the same time, I have DVDs I can watch if I want to do that, and I don't want to be left hanging. Maybe I should watch House when I know this is going to happen.

Thankfully, starting next week, CBS will air the remaining 4 episodes of the season for the month of May.

Community S1 E21: Contemporary American Poultry

Community is the best new show this season, and several years down the road I can see this show being talked about in the same vein of Arrested Development, in that it's innovative and balances its style of humor with a heavy splash of physical comedy. Oh, and nerds love it.

Thursday night's episode, "Contemporary American Poultry", starts off innocently enough with the study group with less concern on studying, and everything to get to the cafeteria in time for the best chicken fingers ever. This is also more important than Brita's dying cat. This is a great bit of work to do in a take as everyone but Brita and Shirley dart off like madmen:


"If it was cool to eat God, He'd be a chicken finger."

But getting in line it turns out the chicken fingers run out too quickly, and the fry cook, Star-Burns, is hoarding some for his friends. It's nice to see Star-Burns get a bit more screentime as he's sort of the show's only recurring villain, at least until Anthony Michael Hall comes back for more blood. Suddenly, Jeff gets a plan, and this is where coal starts getting shoved post-haste into the pop-culture train. Freeze-frame, and Abed narration.


"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be in a mafia movie."

From here's it's literally a direct Goodfellas parody. They get Star-Burns fired for hoarding chicken, and Abed gets the job. Abed makes a deal with Senor Chang, which the group doesn't like, but changes their minds quickly when the find out it was for a 10% bonus to everyone's tests. Everyone abandons Jeff and starts following Abed as the leader. The chicken operation starts to get serious now. Everything leading up to this point is masterfully orchestrated and shot so well that if it wasn't a socially awkward study group trying to create an empire based on chicken fingers, you might wonder what movie you were watching.



Everyone has a role in the chicken mafia. Abed makes the chicken, Troy smuggles it to Brita and Shirley for separation into individual boxes for their clients, then passes off to Annie. With this amount of power the group benefits insanely well. Pierce gets an entourage, Brita gets a hairdresser, Annie gets an expensive backpack, and Troy gets a pet monkey, named Annie's Boobs. But over time, Abed finds his team is starting to get unruly in that all their new amenities aren't good enough. In order to teach them a lesson, Abed takes away all their newfound toys, angering the group into seeking out Jeff and ending Abed's deep-fried reign of terror.


"He's gone from lovable Johnny 5 to evil HAL."

With the help of Star-Burns, Jeff gains a key to dismantle the fryer for good. He breaks into the kitchen at night, to see Abed frying up tater tots, and looking to find new ways to start the cycle of the mafia anew, since everyone is sick of chicken. While one-on-ones and inadvertent group hugs are the sort of thing that ends every episode, it's almost like Abed is trolling the characters by being able to easily drop whatever he's doing for something else. Jeff just wants to end it, Abed agrees, but only being allowed one movie reference at a time, Abed chooses to eat a final meal of chicken fingers in the style of 16 Candles.



This is the only episode so far that retained it's theme for almost the whole time. While the other episodes made movie or TV show references to tie the whole thing together at random intervals (usually the very beginning and the very end before the credits), this stayed the course of keeping all things mafia-related. When they are explaining how they smuggle chicken out of the cafeteria, it's mirroring a scene in Casino. When the group discovers their possessions are being destroyed, Layla plays loudly in the background to mirror Goodfellas. This episode knew what it set out for and rode the Absurdity Express to the bitter end, finishing it by going back to how life used to be, also known as Abed's standby of John Hughes.

The attention to detail is another element most people overlook. The board in the background with everyone's wants and needs is filled out for everyone and is hilarious if you pause and read it all. The main plot was set up perfectly, and nothing has changed with every element of the show, right down to the surroundings, being important and funny in their own way. Even the credit sequence was icing on the cake.


Troy attempts to make Abed look like the better fry cook candidate.

If you're a Goodfellas fan, this is probably going to be one of, if not your favorite episode this season. It's my #2, as nothing's topped Physical Education so far (like anything can top a naked Joel McHale). But each new episode amazes me with a different take on an old idea or sitcom cliche, and strives to fill a niche sense of humor possessed by us children of the 80s who spent the last 20 years filling their brain with TV and movies. If you're not watching it, you're missing out, plain and simple.

Link: Hulu: Community S1E21

Hulu is down?!

Ok so i am working from home today. One of the nice things about working from home is that when i eat lunch i can watch Hulu. I was looking forward to a little SG-1 and pasta and i got an error on every episode i tried to watch. The error is pictured below


I took a look in the Hulu forums and there are apparently a bunch of people all experiencing this issue. I could not find any mention of it anywhere else right now.

Edit: It is now working for me again. I wonder what happened?

Edit: I took another look at the forums and Hulu as responded and is fixing the issue

She's a brick... computer

There is nothing better than paying to have your technology get bricked. If you don’t know what “bricking” is it basically means that the tech is so messed up that without some serious intervention on the users part is now a sweet looking paper weight. Apple updates used to brick iPhones, Sony updates have bricked PS3s the list goes on. Now usually the number of bricks is small, obviously if all the devices got bricked it would be a massive massive issue for these companies, companies who you pay to use their services, services that require that you have the most up to date software, or at least pester you till you update. This is even more annoying when the bricking is the result of a Virus scanner.

McAfee released an update this week that targeted and deleted the “svchost.exe” file that, well, basically lets windows XP run. This issue did not affect vista or win7 computers but it did affect windows XP which is he Os with the highest number of users total, but also the OS that is used in most corporations. Mine for instance. Once the svchost is deleted the computer will no longer boot up and requires the user to manually, from the command prompt, copy the file off the recovery cd and back into its home.

Now for a single consumer, especially one that is not super tech savvy, this is a tough thing to do, but its even worse when a whole companies computers are taken out.

There are more than a few things wrong with this situation. For starters who the hell did McAfee not test the update on any XP machine. McAfee provides the anti-virus software for corporation that pay them a lot of money to protect those corporations computers system, most of those corporations are XP shops so how did it not cross at least someone at McAfee’s mind to maybe test the release on XP! If this type of thing happened to say AVG who gives away their software for free to consumers (don’t think they do for businesses) it would still be unacceptable, but at least you did not have to pay for it. I think what irks me the most about this, is that anti-virus is required, at least on a Windows machine (don’t even bother trying to bring up the Mac here, if Apple was the number 1 OS for corporations we would be seeing this problem with them as well) especially if the users of said machines might click on links in emails or any of the other ways to infect your computer these days. Running without anti-virus in a corporation is a great way to make every IT Managers worst nightmare come true.

McAfee says they have fixed this issue and pushed out an updated that does not target the svchost file, but it might be too little too late. We will have to see how this all shakes out but I would bet that some heads will roll over at McAfee, and I would bet a lot of the affected corporations will be switching over to one of McAfee competitors.

The New Who

I’ve finally got a chance to watch the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. I was sad to see David Tennant go, like everyone, but there was one thing that I was happy to see gone. ALL HIS BAGGAGE. The very mechanism of the doctor rejuvenating into a new being is such a great way to run a show like this. Once things get too dark and heavy from all the epic things that have built up, just hit the refresh button and get a shiny new doctor who only kind of remembers all that. This show is supposed to be upbeat and full of whimsy, and eventually Tennant was getting too depressing. Not the actor of course, just the way they were writing him. How many seasons did he spend bent out of shape over Rose?

Matt Smith himself, is believable as an alien. When he said “I am not people”, you don’t find it that hard to believe him. His eyebrows vaguely remind me of Odo from Deep Space 9, who once joked how hard forming the human nose was. While the Time Lords do appear human, it is never really said if that is only the way they present themselves to humans. It is somewhat charming to think that this young doctor, in making his human form kind of goofed on the eyebrows, and made himself look a little alien. He still manages to be cute though!

Without giving away too much, there was one new element to the show that I found interesting. A moment of filmmaking to show that he had just finally pieced a problem together, it almost reminded me of those moments in House when he looks off in the distance during a conversation having finally figured the whole medical mystery out. The camera snaked around from point to point, and you felt like you were getting a look into the doctor’s manic thought process.

I approve of the new companion too. Generally as long as they aren’t too useless I am happy, since I am not really the sort of Fan Girl who hate the companions because they are not me. My favorite was Donna Noble, so seeing another red head is good. The preview of the season to come clips had me excited for this new season and for this new Doctor.

Hulu to launch premium pay subscription

link

I personally love Hulu, but I can accept that they can't just make their money off kiva ads. (I still don't understand why the website started out with mostly just ads for charities, um aren't charities supposed to be using that money on something other than providing me with the latest ep of modern family?)

The fact that they will still provide the latest 5 episodes for free is great. This service will provide whole seasons, for an extra fee ($9.95 a month). Currently I mostly rely on Netflix Instant Watch for watching old episodes of TV shows, for a similar price. So I probably wouldn't opt in for Hulu Plus unless it ended up having a lot more shows than Netflix Instant Watch. As someone who loves watching TV shows in multi-episode sessions in order, this definitely could open up another option.

This would catch a lot of people as customers who are probably pirating TV shows too. As the success of Itunes has shown, if people can download something conveniently, without having to deal with torrents and all that, they will pay for it.*


*This blog does in no way condone pirating, but accepts that it is a thing that occurs in the real world.