Category: Current Affairs

A New Fear Awakens

December 2, 2015December 2, 2015by Jeff Taylor

I’m excited about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I have been since it was announced. And nothing I’ve seen since then has given me cause for concern.

There have been no pod races. No midiclorians. No one seems to have been told to act as wooden as possible.

So, I’m left with only excitement, or the ability to create brand new things to be worried about right out of my own little noggin. Which, of course, is what I just did. Just now. Five minutes ago. With no external prompting. And rather than keep this nonsense to myself, I want to share it with you.

I was thinking about Harrison Ford, and how exciting its been to see him in the trailers with Chewbacca and with all the younger, new characters. And then I was thinking how unlikely it was that Harrison Ford had signed on to a three-picture deal, which may or may not be accurate.

And then, I thought of 90210.

I was less excited when The CW brought us back to West Beverly High School than I am for Star Wars, but that may only be because it would seem strange to be this excited about that. I was, however, pretty excited.

Especially when I learned that Jennie Garth was coming back. There was going to be a tangible connection to Beverly Hills, 90210.

And then, they said Nat was coming back. And then. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Stop the clock! Shannen Doherty was coming back.

There were 1000 ways this could still be terrible, but the idea that they could convince Brenda to return from London was pretty amazing. No one thought that would ever happen.

In much the same way no one ever thought Harrison Ford would play Han Solo again. Largely because both Ford and Doherty (this marking the first time the two have been mentioned in the same sentence in the history of mankind) had said they would never go back to play those roles again.

Scoring Jennie Garth was cool, but it seemed about as hard to do as scoring Anthony Daniels.

Then, you know what happened? Probably not, because the Venn Diagram of Star Wars fans and 90210 fans has about three people in the intersecting segment. The show was almost entirely about the new kids at West Bev. Kelly had some stuff to do, and Brenda and Donna came back for brief story arcs, but after the first season, Kelly had less to do and the focus shifted entirely to Annie, and Dixon, and the rest of the gang.

And that’s when I realized that Star Wars was about to do that too.

I have no idea what The Force Awakens is about, on purpose. I don’t want to know. But it’s going to be about Finn, and Poe, and Rae and by episode VIII, someone may say, “Han had to go back to London to adopt a baby,” or something, and that will be that.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all lots of kids would be lucky to be adopted by Han Solo. And it’s most certainly necessary to continue the story in perpetuity like Disney plans.

But, I was suddenly filled with the fear that this transition would leave me wanting.

Which is a dumb thing to fear, because I have no power to change this one way or another and the story is what it is. But there it is anyway. Star Wars is about to go all 90210 on us.

You’ve been warned.

But don’t be afraid of that. Because fear is the path to the dark side.

Try not to be a moron

February 14, 2009by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

I have been following the ongoing drama of the possible Sirius XM bankruptcy/take over/whatever is going on with great interest. I have also been reading the comment threads following these articles and I am so annoyed by most of these people I’m about to scream. So, instead of going crazy there, I’m going to spread some common sense here.

1.) To all the people who point to the Howard Stern contract as the reason the company is in trouble. You are morons. Most of these comments come from people who don’t like Stern, and that’s fine. He’s certainly not for everyone, but he has been worth every penny the invested in him. When they signed him, Sirius had roughly 700,000 subscribers and XM had somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million. That was in January of 2006. By the middle of 2007 Sirius had around 7 million subscribers to XM’s 9 or so million. That type of growth is insane and there’s no way they get there without Stern. Like him or not, he has a following. Because of him, Sirius went from no name recognition and very few listeners to forcing a merger with XM.

2.) I bought Sirius for both my dad and brother last Christmas, 2007. They both love it. Their musical tastes could not be more divergent. When one product can completely satisfy two sets of tastes so far apart, it is a product with a HUGE upside. This company will be worth a lot in the long run.

3.) This is a brand new industry with insane start up costs. Not only the R&D to develop all the technology from the radios to the antennas to the satellites, but they had to launch satellites into space. Ive never done that, but I feel pretty confident in saying, “That ain’t cheap.” Plus, they have to provide content and talent. They have probably overpaid for some of their talent, but to lure people away from their current gigs and get some high profile people they needed to pay for it.

4.) Anyone who says people aren’t willing to pay for radio is also a moron. I don’t know anyone who has tried satellite radio and said, “no thanks, terrestrial is better. I prefer 30 minutes of commercials per hour.” They have 20 Million subscribers and their problem is not that they are losing subscribers. They’re still adding subscribers, just not as fast as they had been/would be if the economy wasn’t in the tank.

5.) The government dragged their feet on the merger for 18 months. It was a ridiculous waist of time and it hurt both companies. They needed to merge for cost purposes and because of the long merger process they spent 18 months spending money at a much higher rate than they would have if they had been allowed to merge earlier. The debt situation right now would not be this bad if they hadn’t been obstructed by this.

6.) If the economy wasn’t in such bad shape they wouldn’t have any trouble restructuring this debt.

Finally, the problem isn’t the product, or the willingness of people to pay for it. It’s basically timing. Whether they end up restructuring through Chapter 11, or whether there is some sort of deal worked out with Directv or Echostar, Sirius XM isn’t going anywhere.

Meatheads.

Not Necessarily the News

January 7, 2009by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

The news has been over run the last few days with stories about Jett Travolta’s death. It is a truly sad thing for his parents and sister to have to go through.

I cannot make the argument that this is not news. Deaths are almost always news worthy. The death of children even more so. And the death of a celebrity’s child trumps all of those things.

You know what isn’t news; when other celebrities give their condolences.

I have seen news stories about how Oprah, Tim Allen, Kate Hudson, Lisa Marie Presley, Forest Whitaker, Billy Ray Cyrus and one of the Backstreet Boys have all come out to express their condolences. They are not wrong for expressing their sympathies to the family. I’m not even saying their wrong for doing it publicly (I’m fairly certain most of these people can’t think of any other way to do anything).

I’m just saying it’s not news. Everyone feels sympathy for a family who has lost a loved one. The news is for things of vast import or rare events. Not for things that everyone is doing all the time.

It would have been news if one of these celebrities had come out and laughed at the Travoltas, or pointed and laughed. That would have been cruel and heartless, but it would have been news.

In your face, Galileo Galilei!

November 24, 2008by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

For those of you who are stuck with your the outmoded belief that the Catholic Church is horribly behind the times and culturally stagnant, I present for your approval irrefutable scientific proof that they are, in fact, “with it.”

While it took the Vatican somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 years to change their stance on Galileo’s outrageous stance that the Earth was not the center of the universe, it only took them, or at least their newspaper, 32 years to get over John Lennon’s statement that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.

[Insert sarcastic applause here]

This article isn’t nearly as funny as the headline

October 9, 2008by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

When I saw this Headline, Kirk Douglas Fired Up Over Blacklist, Slavery I wanted this to be an article about how Kirk Douglas had started an active campaign railing against these two threats to our modern world. It all had a very Grandpa Simpson quality to it.

Sadly, he’s mostly just answering questions about Spartacus.

Read it if you want to, but trust me, the image in your head is WAY funnier.

Burying the Lead

October 5, 2008by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

This article was front page on CNN.com this evening.

Midway through the article there is a link that says CNN Fact Check. If you click through that link CNN has done some investigative journalism to find out whether the charges leveled by Palin are accurate.

Correct me if I’m wrong Sandy, but shouldn’t the article read more like this.

Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of having links to a terrorist. That is a false accusation. While it is true that this guy lived on his street when he was 8 years old, there is no evidence that Senator Obama has a current relationship with this person. She is making reference to this relationship. We talked to this person, who said this, this person who said that. She’s completely full of shit.

While I like the fact that CNN is bothering to do this type of fact checking and reporting the fact that the accusation is false, I abhor the fact that if you just read the headline and the first few paragraphs you wouldn’t know that this accusation is false.

If you really want to know the full story you have to click through to another story entirely.

The headline should read Palin makes false accusations abotu Obama and the article that follows should have one paragraph about what she said and a full page about why it’s false.

People can come to all kinds of ridiculous conclusions when they are only given the lie. Funny that.

Does anyone know the answer to this question?

September 19, 2008by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

In light of all of the running and screaming that is going on on Wall Street I have a question that maybe someone can answer that has more knowledge of economics than I do (which would include most everyone). When the government sat down last weekend (and that’s another question, which member of the government make this decision?) and saw that Lehman Brothers, AIG, Meryll Lynch, and Fred’s Bank were all on the verge of collapse, how do they decide which ones to bail out and which ones to let collapse?

Is there a litmus test? Are there certain criteria that must be met before a company gets to survive? I’ve seen a lot of stories stating that this decision was made, but no one has said why one and not the other.

In my ignorance of this issue, I have this fear that the choice gets made because there is a relationship between the people running the ones who get saved and the people doing the saving. With no other information as to why, this is where my mind goes.

Can anyone confirm, or disconfirm this suspicion?

Journalisn’t

July 10, 2008by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

I happened across this on digg this morning.

Aside from my general cringiness at the thought of the 4th amendment being effed in the A, here’s my problem with this.

I happened to see this piece on Countdown the other day, and this piece accurately describes what happened on the show.

And that’s all it does.

This isn’t reporting. It’s transcribing. David Edwards and Muriel Kane watched Countdown and wrote down what was on it. There is no other source material, no opinions given. They watched TV and wrote down what they saw.

And it took two of them to do it.

I have not read anything else on The Raw Story, but if this is typical of what is on there, and based on my tendency to make snap judgments after only one exposure to something, I assume that it is, then I can’t imagine going to this site learn anything.

And, as my last point of annoyance, I found it because it had been dugg by almost 1000 people.

I would like to recommend that our newly all-powerful government add the 1000 people who dugg this thing, and the two people who copied it down from the TV and begin wire tapping their phones without warrants, because they are clearly a danger, if not to others, certainly to themselves.

Some may call me a cynic

September 25, 2007by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

I saw this story this morning. Who wants to bet me that this casino doesn’t end up on the south side in a black neighborhood.

They get all the good stuff. Casinos, liquor stores, no big grocery stores, crappy schools.

Billy Packer invades Canada

September 21, 2007by Jeff TaylorLeave a comment

It seems it doesn’t take very much to prove the ~~existence~~ expanding influence of the Packer Method . As just came across this article.

Canada doesn’t really need lessons in lying. They’ve been trying to tell us that Ham is bacon for decades, but true to their deceitful nature, they have found the one new, true method of fabrication the U.S. has to offer and have incorporated it into their own culture.

I never dreamed Billy Packer had this kind of reach.

Oh, Canada.