Veronica Mars

My favorite new TV show this year, by far, has been Veronica Mars. I didn’t quite catch on to this show until sometime in February when I downloaded the entire season up to that point from a torrent. From the pilot episode on I was completely hooked and absolutely immersed myself in the show over the next week or so frantically trying to catch up to the current episodes. 

There is a lot of cool stuff going on with this show. Firstly, in many ways Veronica Mars is a piece of Film Noir. Much as BTVS took the stereotypical blonde-haired woman who is killed in an alley in horror films and turned her into a kick ass empowered fighting machine; Veronica Mars reinvents Noir by reversing genders by making the main protagonist female and the “woman of questionable virtue” a male. I am also very curious to see some research into how VM relates to detective fiction in general and especially the works of Jorge Luis Borges. 

There is more to say, but I have an entire summer to do that. 

60 Second Stories

I just wanted to announce to you all that the first 60-second digital camera story contest is now under way.  A few friends are involved in the judging so I figured I'd pass the word on. 

We need more stories in our lives, yet we don’t have much time for them. Most digital cameras and webcams allow you to take one minute of video and audio at resolutions suitable for the web. The solution: 60 second stories, of course.

We are pleased to announce the 60 second story competition. 60 second stories are works of fiction recorded by their authors as digital videos, less than one minute in duration. Files size must be 5MB, and work must be submitted under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Entries are being accepted from now until June 8th, 2005.

There will one grand-prize winner, who will receive a one-minute supply of exotic chocolate, a one inch by one inch book of the winning work published by Spineless Books, and other one minute pleasures. The winner and fourteen runners-up will be published in the “Fifteen Minutes of Fame,” a permanent web shrine to the 60 second story form. The judges of the competition include internet writers William Gillespie, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Dirk Stratton, Jill Walker and Rob Wittig.

See 60secondstory.contagiousmedia.org for the details, to watch some 60-second stories, and to submit your own.

These Are The Voyages...

Never before has a Star Trek finale personally offended me, but the finale of Enterprise, which aired last week, was one of the worst hours of television I have ever witnessed. I have not really paid that much attention to Enterprise in the past few years, the craptacular first few years really turned me off, but it was incredibly insulting to have the finale of the show be essentially an amendment to a god-awful season seven Next Generation episode. Plus, it stars Troi and Riker, my two least favorite characters on Trek ever.

So, as I stated above, this episode takes place during TNG episode The Pegasus. Why? That is another awful season seven episode when the show was spiralling down the tubes of suck.

They could not even get the sets right for the Enterprise-D scenes either. As some smart fans noted on tvtome, the turbo lift used for the Enterprise-D is actually the one from the Enterprise-E. The scenes from Ten-Forward were mostly stock footage from the season three The Price…which is from four years before this episode!

I will not even go into the semi-emotional Vulcan and how pointless it was to SPOILER ALERT and such. If this is the end of Trek for a while, I say good riddance! Maybe I should check out another Trek alum’s new show.

Walden 1996

These are pictures from when I was a Walden Pond in 1996.  This was our final family vacation also.  We went to my Father’s parents home in New Hampshire and then to Boston.  After being subjected to Basketball (ugh) games and other family vacation crap I dragged my family to Salem and then to Walden Pond.  Sadly, it was raining by the time we got to Walden (of course) and we only stayed for a little while.  I was never a big fan of vacations with the family anyway.  One of these years, I will have to get back up there to visit again.