23 Jun 2001
Belly Button
Belly Button. This is quite possibly the scariest ad I’ve ever seen (my initial reaction was like that of the little boy in the commercial). Talking (singing) belly buttons? Was the ad agency behind this commercial smoking crack? Watching a few too many reruns of the Gong Show?
22 Jun 2001
Big Brother, the back seat driver
Big Brother, the back seat driver. A Connecticut man is suing a local car rental company after a $450 speeding fine, registered by the car’s internal GPS system, appeared on his credit card.
22 Jun 2001
Murder in Small Town X
Murder in Small Town X. After mistaking it from the TV ads as just another cheesy movie of the week, I finally discovered that this new FOX show is quite possibly the coolest reality show/game show concept I’ve ever heard of: 10 strangers are dropped off in a small town populated by improv actors and are challenged to solve a fictional murder. Each week, one contestant becomes the next “murder victim,” until the last player is left to solve the crime. Forget eating bugs, this is the show I’d want to be on.
22 Jun 2001
Online mini golf
Online mini golf. Very smooth action. Can you beat my score of 10 over par?
20 Jun 2001
Conservatives blast PBS for film on Scouts’ gay ban. I was looking forward to seeing this, but when I checked on my TiVo this morning, it said that it wasn’t recorded because there was no signal from the channel. Did my PBS affiliate decide at the last moment to black it out? It was on the schedule…
20 Jun 2001
Have TiVo hackers gone too far?
Have TiVo hackers gone too far?. Forget the rumored financial difficulties, this will either give TiVo a much needed boost in publicity or help them go out of business a whole lot faster (entertainment industry lawsuits anyone?).
While having on-demand MPEG streams of the shows saved on my TiVo would be nice, I’m too much of a wuss to attempt all the hardware modification needed to trick out my box. I’d be happy just being able to add/modify recording requests through the web. Competitor ReplayTV offers that ability, but in a compromised way: you visit their website and log in with your customer ID. Then, any additions you make to your recording schedule are downloaded to your ReplayTV box during its nightly call for programming data. TiVo also makes nightly calls, so you’d think they could offer that service; but really how useful would it be if you didn’t have realtime access to the schedule on your TiVo box?
20 Jun 2001
Pic of the moment.
One of my co-workers recently had toe surgery and now has to wear sandals for a few weeks. She also has to wrap the toes daily with bandage tape. And somehow I managed to convince her to let me put them up on my website.
19 Jun 2001
The Real World hits 10
The Real World hits 10. It seems like just yesterday I watched the first season and saw my first actual gay person on TV. As role models go, Norm was fairly well-behaved and political (and, I can finally admit to myself 10 years later, cute).
There’s a fairly bland article marking the 10th anniversary in this month’s OUT, featuring the highly interest tidbit that out of the 35,000 or so people who annually try out for The Real World, only about 200 are openly gay. Wouldn’t you think there’d be more loud and proud out gay men and women lining up for a chance at fame through the show? If I auditioned for the show, I couldn’t imagine not being out.
Speaking of The Real World and gay cast members, here’s what they’re all up to now.