Corcoran Brothers

Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he’s a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.

But they got, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Everybody’s got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don’t matter that you got not alot
So what,
They’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine.
And together we’ll be fine….

Because it takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Giggity. Giggity. Giggity. Nuff said.

I’m not talking rocking out when Toni Basil comes on the radio, what’s your internet ready guilty pleasure?

I will admit, after discussion with da kine , WWTDD is in my google reader, although that pink haired freak got to be too much.

Also, I have a strange love for LOLcats. I get my fill here. Fuck, I don’t even like cats. I try to get my dog Sly

to eat our cat Blackie (who is gray, not black, which is what you wind up with when you let a 2 year old name the animal.) WTF?

What’s your shameful internet secret pleasure? If you can’t reveal that, what’s the best lolcat caption you have for the awse picture?

Flash Gordon - new scifi series. Anyone catch it? Is it worth trying? I have not even seen a commercial for it. Seems foolish to me, but who thought BSG would be the best show on television*?

*according to da kine

Last night, I was trying to pull up some lyrics on my iTunes so I could sing/rap along with a Mos Def song (True Magic from the True Magic album, if you really need to know). I actually spent ca$h money on a program to automatically look up lyrics, so I figured it would no problem. The 10$US invested seemed a wise course of action since it took me - no shit - almost 20 hours to get the lyrics for 7 gigs wortha shit using Google and whatnot in 2005, and I now have over 50 gigs o’ shit. Wrong answer. The program I got fucks up 50% of the albums, so that the lyrics to every song on that album are attached to a song on that album, but not necessarily the one the lyrics actually belong to. I figured it would take me twice as long to go through and reorganize the lyrics to each song, so I just started deleting the lyrics to entire albums the moment I noticed they we wrong.

Based on my use of a Ricky Gervais-related wiki, I thought to myself, “Self, there must be a Wiki with lyrics that gets rid of all the rubbish that all those shitty commercial sites make you put up with.” I typed “Lyrics Wiki” into teh Googel, and hit this site.

Oh, my. How delicious. But that is just the beginning.

I started verifying my shit on LyricWiki, got lyrics that were far superior to the ones I had prior, and found lyrics that weren’t available before (singles and imports, specifically).

Then I looked for lyrics for my man Brudda Iz and there were basically some songs from soundtracks and what have you and squadoosh else. Upon further research, I realized that the Hawaiian section in general was lacking. Here is where the title comes into play.

A few months ago, I got sick of mouthing lyrics to Amy Hanaialii’s songs when I was listening to them on the olde iPod, so I tried to find the lyrics on teh intartubes. No luck. I went through boxes in dusty closets, found the CD jacket, and manually transcribed the lyrics as written in the liner notes…going so far as to spell check all the Hawaiian words which comprise, oh, 98% of the songs. Time invested for 13 songs? Maybe 2 hours. When I saw that there wasn’t shit for Hawaiian music on my new LyricWiki friend, I thought that I would do my part in that section and add the Amy lyrics that I had so painfully transcribed. Maybe it is my unfamiliarity with the Wiki concept, but it took me almost 40 minutes to add the Artist Name, Album Name, Song Titles, and lyrics for those 13 songs, but shit is looking good now.

What is all this about? I have spent several hours of my time transcribing lyrics, adding them to a database, and putting them out there for free, and what is the benefit to me? I have no fucking clue. Is this the definition of Web 2.0? I know I’ll do it again; I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll go through and check all my lyrics against those available on the site and add ones that I have which are lacking, but I don’t rightly know why. Is it a modification of the common good thing in biology? I am confused and have a few Bushmills in me, and need assistance. Does this mean I’m turning into a socialist or anarchist? Casey’s input will be valuable here.

Da Kine will be pissed, but here’s what is on the entertainment docket for the next two or three weeks.

1. Deadwood. All three seasons. The Queen just finished watching all three series of Veronica Mars (loving it btw. she’s so cute, she actually asked “isn’t there anything we can do about another season ?”) This will intermingle with the current “Rescue Me” and international Ruggah - I’m preparing for the rugby world cup.

2. All six series of the Black Adder. I want to see if it’s as funny now as it was when I was 21.

3. Opening Night new Harry Potter movie. I know, I know… trly teh ghey.

4. Finish re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Re-read HP and the Half-Blood Prince. Damn, I’m supah queeah for these books. On July 21st at Midnight, I’ll be buying my copy of Deathly Hallows from the local Borders. I’ll have my iPod cranked with some Ricky in case some douche wants to shout out spoilers. I won’t be dressed as a wizard, but I did think about it (I probably would have made a good Hagrid).  I should be finished by Saturday night if anyone wants to talk about it.

Then, maybe then, I’ll be able to squeeze in the third season of Battlestah Galacticah.<—here’s where Shane gets angry.

Kinyah !!!

Seamus and I have had many a conversation, probably adding up to several hours’ worth of minutes on the cellies, about what I term the “GMC (Great Media Convergence)”. I believe that hard entertainment media will be dead within 7-10 years. These dead media will include CDs, DVDs, and anything else that delivers programming to your house. I want to speed along the process, and I am a Tivo-brand loyalist, so following are my ramblings.

Amazon Unboxed is a new service whereby one can buy/rent movies and shows from Amazon through their Tivo and broadband connection. They select the purchase on the intartubes, pay for it through Amazon, and it is downloaded for them to view on their Tivo or computer, depending on their preference. Advantages include ease of use and video quality, while disadvantages include DL time and limited timeframe for viewing the ‘rentals’ before Tivo snatches it away from you.

Tivo has also come up with the “universal swivel search”, which is a way to search for programs from multiple sources, including TivoCasts (faux-Podcasts for Tivo only), Amazon Unboxed, and the normal TV. Getting warmer. Disadvantages again include DL time, but the advantage is that when you sit down to watch TV, you can interact solely with the TV.

Those two things out of the way, here’s my idear: why don’t networks and/or production companies deliver programming directly through Amazon and Tivo, sans DVDs, for permanent use as the consumer sees fit? Using torrent tech, they can upload a program to their servers, seed it for an appropriate amount of time, and then let the customers pass it around as needed. Revenue would come through embedded ads during programming and between acts. I have no business degree, but I can read the frakking newspaper. Google-style embedded ads and short ads with revenue sharing can get everyone the cash they need. Think about it: ESPN, CNN, Fox News, et al. all have mad scrolling shit at the bottom of the screen, and customers learn to pay minimal attention to it unless something catches their eye, kinda like ads nowadays anyways. Distribution costs can be minimized by using DivX or Xvid codecs and torrenting to limit bandwidth usage.

A walkthrough:

Kinyahbrutha goes to his Tivo and gets a series pass for International Rugby. Ding dong, Tri-Nations rugby comes up, and BBC puts four seeders up on their server, distributing a 700mb file in .avi format. Embedded ads include things of international/national interest (Coke, Pepsi, jeans) or specific interest to the target audience (rugby shit) as well as local ads keyed to IP addresses could all be run. Kinyahbrutha gets it through his Tivo box, which is running an RSS waiting for just this sort of thing (I think, my geekery is limited). An hour or so later, it is downloaded and he watches it through his new Divx-enabled Tivo (software upgrade only: free). During the hour-long program, Coke, Polo Jeans, and Jordan’s Furniture ads run along the bottom and during pauses in the game. If he is interested, he can click on the green “thumbs up” button (like he can do already) to find out more about stuff. Since he is using torrent, the program can promulgate indefinitely, bringing in more customers forced to watch the ads. A HUGE benefit to advertisers is that they get a real and accurate count of how many people have DLed their show. That isn’t to say everyone will watch it, but surveys can easily determine what percentage of people watch the shows they DL.

A non-Tivo example:

Kinshay subscribes to Charles In Charge via his FIOS. Nobody buys CIC DVDs, so this is an untapped marketplace. He dowloads five at a time and watches them over the course of a week, with ads geared specifically towards people who were 13-18 at the time of the show’s initial run. Since only gay people and weirdos like CIC, there aren’t many DLers, but who cares? The distributor doesn’t pay shit to deliver the product to the marketplace, and four slow seeders on the company’s server will be enough to keep it alive indefinitely. Win/win.

I honestly don’t think there is any technological hurdle that needs to be addressed; it is just a matter of figuring out how the ad money gets chopped up. Like cable, this will not kill broadcast TV, but instead it will add hundreds of thousands of paying customers who would normally be outside the area. I love Dr. Who, Sean loves Rugby, and Kinshay loves…dudes. Whatevs. We will get our programming by, like Malcolm X said, whatever means necessary. Why don’t the networks capture that markey and get paid for it? Nobody skips through 5-second ads, and while someone will surely hack their system to get rid of the scrolling ads, those people would be ganking this shit anyway.

Please start sharpshooting to address problems with the model, and I need someone with an MBA to write a business proposal for forwarding to the powers that be at the end. Next up: the 120-gig wireless single-DIN head unit. GMC, bitches!

Cousin Josh (Rachel’s side) is an entertainment lawyer in NYC. He represents these guys, who I never sought out, but did wind up “illegally” downloading their whole season. I haven’t watched it yet, but if this is any indication I will enjoy it. I am not saying you should illegally download it, as they made no money from it at Fuse. But, the dvd is coming out soon, and if you like it you could drop some cake.

BTW - We talked about it at his brothers wedding last night, which gave me license to throw the slow jerk on occasion, leading to much laughter to those in the know, and much consternation to many others.

I hate that for which I am about to sound like. Please read fully and with a grain of salt.

Love me some BBC America. NOTE - I am not some ego driven I am better than you, all American TV is rubbish Wanker. The only thing worse than those wankers are the “I am superior to you since I don’t own a tv” bitches.

That said, I started catching BBCA and enjoying it immensely . It started with MI-5, aka Spooks. This evolved into the crime shows, Wire in the Blood, Waking the Dead, at da kine’s insistence I have started the UK version of Buffy, HEX. And of course kin yah bruthah force feeding Ricky Gervais down you throat. I do think UK office was way better. I still watch American office it is funny, and really is a different show.

Life on Mars was quite good. Here is one of the main differences between the countries. Life on Mars had a total of 16 shows I think. The office 16 plus 2 xmas specials. Same for Extras. The they are done. Did what I had to say, all of it was good, don’t ruin it. I would really really look forward the the American version of Life on Mars, if they kept it to tops 20 episodes. (And if they went and got Dennis Franz (fataaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssss) from 10 years ago to play Gene Hunt.)

Besides cleaning up when on the good side, there are a could of other things I really appreciate, Character based stories over flash and glam. And the use of real looking people as characters. Sure a hottie lab tech or minor player may be ancillary to the case, but the main actors, while not downright ugly, would not be tv stars in the states. The women can have an extra 30 pounds on them and still be serious actors. (And look amazing, like real women look, they just don;t seem to be Hollywood hot.) It is slightly less noticeable with the guys, as most tv shows when they have 40 yr old guys, they tend to look 40 or so. Guys look either bland or just more distinguished with age. It is almost as if the actors were chosen for their ability, instead of bust size or 6 packs. I fear that Life on Mars’s WPC Annie Cartwright played by the lovely and slightly thick and way attractive body of Liz White will be cast in the US version by some airhead stick, hired more for waist and ass than ability.)

This being the case, or to spite my own praising point, 0ne does have to wonder do all English actors have to have some sort of odd skin bumps? The character driven aspects not enough to drive home the case that they have different acting requirements? Is your socialized medicine not getting it? You have to have these odd little deformation’s? Every single actor?

The crime dramas tend to write a bit two long, by about 20 minutes over required. But better development than quick cuts and special effects.

I still love fill up my TiVo with shows, all kinds, especially since I am ditching reruns this year, hence the branching out.

What shows do you love besides US primetime.?

BTW Firefox 2+ has added spell check for the text boxes, and I am not really drinking. Fear no though, Drunken posting is more like pharmaceutically enhanced posting with glaring right click spelling checks. We may have to rename to “Posting under the Influence.”

Add your thoughts of the state of TV in the comments. Who is planning to blow off engagements to watch Rescue me next week? WTF is this John from Cincinnati all about. If Tony Soprano getting whacked/Jail/ or made a NYC bitch rat? Anything foreign or not on the 3 major networks is up for debate.

I’ve been listening to the back catalog of Penn Radio podcasts (now dead). When asked why he always responds: “Never better, boss,” to a caller’s inquiry about his state of being, he said (and I paraphrase):

The past is a memory.

The future is a probability.

So I can truly say, always, that as of this moment, I’ve never been better.

This statement resonates on such a level that it approaches the sublime.

Penn is a mad Atheist, which I am not. He is a big-L Libertarian, whilst I am a small-l libertarian. He thinks the greatest book written in the English language is Moby Dick, and he is correct. We are similar in many ways, but different in others, but I have taken something he said and plan to use it as my response to inquiries about my well-being in the future because his formulation is so spot-on that it makes me almost emotional*.

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* My old answer to questions such as “How are you?” was:

“Every day is a good day.”

Many people take this to mean that if you aren’t dead, you are doing well. I let them think this because it is, in many ways, correct. In actuality, it is a koan that highlights the loss of ego. Every day is a good day: just maybe not for you. Someone is having a good day even if yours is shitty. Re: the title of the post.