Jim Connelly

The Weekly ‘Loper – July 16, 2006

July 16, 2006 by Jim Connelly

While you were wondering when you were going to get indicted for Tax Evasion because they couldn’t pin anything else on you, here’s what we were looking at:

Hyping The Music, One Song At A Time – Communities that form around online blogs are different — smaller, but more passionate — than communities that formed around radio stations.
The Perfect DVR – My Wish List For the Ultimate Television Machine – Kirk tosses out a wish list for what will tempt him to dumpt his venerable Series 1 TiVo.
Only Spielberg Can Mess With His Movies, Dammit! – A judge rules that self-selected censors can’t remove the good bits from movies prior to renting them to the public.
More Fun In The New World – How will AT&T’s foray into the online concert world fare? Hopefully, it will work better than the phone “service” they provide me.
ABC: Always Being Clueless – Yeah, because the viewing public is clamoring for DVRs with disabled fast-forward buttons . . .
Baby Eisner Is Losing His Grip On Reality – Two words: Baby NASCAR.
Fools Go Forth: Digital Distribution And Artist Compensation – Since digital distribution is significantly different from physical distribution, how long will it take artists to rebel against digital distribution deals that are essentially the same as the physical deals?
That’s What I Like: Marketplace – Kassia finds an actual reason to listen to NPR: a show that is smart, educational, and has some snark.

ABC: Always Being Clueless

July 12, 2006 by Jim Connelly

ABC, the network that has been at war with DVR owners for the past several yearrs may be going nuclear. According to at least one report, they are in talks with cable & satellite companies to disable the fast-forward button on future DVRs. Somehow, I doubt this is one of the features that Kirk had in mind when he wrote about his ideal DVR.

Even better, they claim that consumers will be OK with this, that people don’t actually want to fast-forward through the commercials. That the only reason they use DVRs is for the time-shifting aspects. And that we’d all be willing to put up with commercials to continue to time-shift, so there would be no backlash whatsoever.

Holy Jesus Frack! Do these people even use DVRs? There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin.

Only Spielberg Can Mess With His Movies, Dammit!

July 11, 2006 by Jim Connelly

In a bit of good news for censorship foes, a Federal judge in Denver has ruled that retailers who were “sanitizing” films by removing all of the good parts prior to selling them to a probably-witting niche were also violating copyright laws.

This case has been in motion since 2002, when CleanFlicks tried to twist the First Amendment by claiming that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to these films prior to sending them out to the public. The judge, however, saw right through that bullshit:

Should Episodes of Chappelle’s Show Have Stayed Lost?

July 10, 2006 by Jim Connelly

I never really got the whole Dave Chappelle thing. During the height of the frenzy, when he was selling skizillions of DVDs, I watched a few episodes, but it never really stuck with me the way that other sketch comedy has. Given the fact that plenty of people whose taste I respect like him, I’m perfectly willing to say that is a defect on my part. Just add it to the list.

However, I found his whole abandonment of his megastardom fascinating, and a bit refreshing. It seemed to be part and parcel of whatever anger fueled his comedy in the first place, and it actually made him more interesting to me.

Of course, what’s “interesting” to me was a goddamn nightmare for Comedy Central, who have plenty of experience dealing with badly-behaving geniuses (Matt and Trey!), but probably never had to deal with someone who just left all of the money on the table.

The Weekly ‘Loper – July 9, 2006

July 9, 2006 by Jim Connelly

While you were BBQing tequilia-marinated chicken during a 4th of July thunderstorm in Seattle, here’s what we were looking at:

How iTunes Can Help The Publishing Industry – Simple: combine the ubiquity of the seemingly indestructible Portable Document Format with the ease of iTunes.
How About Independence From Demagogues? What better way to celebrate our nation’s 230th B-Day than a with a rant about asswipe Congresspeople trying to whip up their base in an election year? Well, for starters, with that BBQ chicken.
New Online Media Sharing Service, New Model, Same Problems – What if you got paid for those crazy wacky homemade videos that you keep uploading to the Web? eefoof is willing to do just that. Cool! Er, that is if enough people find your video. Good luck with that. Also, have we really run out of even brand-new madeup words for Websites? Is any random combination of vowels and consonants now good enough?
How The Pilot That Nobody Watched Got Itself Seen By Everybody – Or “Everybody’s Watching Nobody’s Watching.”
The Universal Plan To Save CD Sales – I’ve got a plan: lower your prices and release better music!
That’s What I Like: SubEthaEdit – If you thought that SubEthaEdit was how the Galactica communicated with its Viper pilots, Kirk & Kassia will set you straight with this explanation about a powerful writing collaboration tool.
Emmy Noms: Two-and-A-Half Cracksmoking Monkeys? – BTW, no disrespect meant towards Martin Sheen, who’s always owned that role, it’s just that he wasn’t in West Wing enough this season to deserve a nomination, that’s all. On the other hand: Charlie Sheen? Are you fracking kidding me?

Emmy Noms: Two-and-A-Half Cracksmoking Monkeys?

July 8, 2006 by Jim Connelly

When the Emmy nominations came out this week, I was in Vegas, trying to remember under what circumstances one might hit on a soft 18, so I really haven’t had a chance to see them.

But I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what happened with their new vetting and voting process, as well as what the fallout might have been from the fact that this is the first year that they are only sending out DVDs, and not VHS tapes. My hope has been that that these two factors will combine to create a whole new cool slew of nominees, and not the same old crap.

So I’m going to wander over to the offical Emmy site, and pick a category . . . hmm, what to choose, what to choose? . . . Oh, I know! This has been touted as the year that comedy roared back with a vengance, so I’ll bet that the nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series is nothing but winners! Let’s check that, shall we?

How About Independence From Demagogues?

July 4, 2006 by Jim Connelly

In case you are wondering how much the Republicans are going to try to use the evil boogeyman of Hollywood as a way to try to whip up their base in a desperate attempt to keep the House this fall, then look no further than this amazing quote, from House Majority Whip Roy Blunt:

“This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence,” Blunt said in a letter to MPAA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman.

All this is due to the fact that the MPAA had the temerity to give a PG to a film about a football coach, and how his faith sustains him. Apparently, the filmmakers claim that the MPAA originally said the the PG was given due to the religious content, and then changed their story. The MPAA says that ain’t so.

I say that the filmmakers smell a potentially box-office boosting controversy and the Congresspeople smell a potentially ballot-box boosting issue.

Video iPod Delay May Be a Bad Thing After All

June 30, 2006 by Jim Connelly

A while back, when the first reports of the delay for the “true Video” iPod surfaced, I argued that it might not be such a bad thing for Apple if there were a few months between new iPods.

It seemed to me that there was a possibility of market fatigue with all of the iPods already out there, as well as a bit of a backlash by consumers who discovered that the 60GB iPod that they had just purchased to watch episodes of Battlestar Galactica on a cross-country flight wasn’t the “true” video iPod.

However, there are fresh reports of even longer delays, and we may look back at these delays as the tipping point where the iPod stopped being the center of the universe and started being just another cool gadget.

Tom, Thanks For Not Suing The Chili Peppers!!

June 29, 2006 by Jim Connelly

An Open Letter To Tom Petty,

Tom, you still don’t know me, but earlier this month I asked you to not sue the Red Hot Chili Peppers for their purported plagarism of your song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”

And once again, you’ve provided another example of your ongoing menschdom (menschiosity? menschitude?) by telling Rolling Stone that suing is the furthest thing from your mind:

New York Times Blog Not An Online Video Milestone

June 28, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Came across a small piece on the CBS news site that made me laugh. It was essentially touting the fact that New York Times TV Critic Virginia Heffernan now has a blog dedicated to web video.

That’s not what made me laugh: I’ve read Heffernan’s writing ever since her Salon days, and it’s great that she’s leaping into this frontier. I’ll even betcha that it was something she asked for rather than was assigned.

What made me laugh was this bit of old-media-on-old media-puffery, courtesy of the CBS News website: