MacWorld is usually a pretty fun and exciting time, when swanky new products are announced that I'll never buy. Usually it's two stupid announcements paired off with one really cool one, and then an iPod update.

But this MacWorld gave us a lot of fun stuff. At least one of those things, the overdue Google Map locator for iPhone, was free (unless you're an iPod touch user, in which case they'll extort you for $20) so I already got it. It's lovely. Now Google not only knows what I'm doing, they know where I'm doing it! Exciting.

The Time Capsule is cool, but the MacBook Air is of course the flagship announcement. Alex likens the mixed response to the release of the iPod, or at least to the original floppy-free iMac. But the floppy drive was way dead when I got my first bondi iMac. I very much doubt that real life will happen for a lot of people without an optical drive; Apple is taking a very Microsoft approach in which convergence happens fantastically and your life is totally easy as long as you drink ALL the Kool-Aid instead of picking and choosing the parts of the Apple Experience you want. I mean, why insert a CD/DVD when you can buy the album/movie on iTunes, right?

I'm sure there's plenty of speculation (there definitely is in my mind) that the recently-surfaced patent application for an iMac-like docking station that a thin laptop slides into has something to do with this. That would, of course, make things even more absolutely perfect. In fact, I could probably get behind that if the total package wasn't going to run somewhere in the neighborhood of eight zillion dollars.

And to wrap it all up, here's a video my friend sent me yesterday of David Lynch expounding on his iPhone opinions. I suppose I see his point, but here's a man who makes Movies with a capital M, whose films don't even belong on the television. I don't even like it when people are eating popcorn when I go see a Lynch movie. But the sad truth is, part of what makes David Lynch great is that he still carries around a lot of romantic notions about movies - and Stomp The Yard is not Blue Velvet. It's real sweet that the idea of someone watching a movie on a small-ass screen makes him sad, but the idea of someone watching the latest Uwe Boll movie at all kind of makes me sad, so to each his own.

Those who know me know that, while I resisted for a long time, my (former?) resemblance to a certain boy wizard got me all caught up in a bunch of books, movies, and Halloween costumes I'd previously sworn never to support.

The craziness continued last night with a midnight trip to the first ever showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I'm pretty sure it's my favorite of the books (until the next one when she kills that kid. don't cop out on me now Rowling), so I had high hopes. And a large beer. The giant Emagine theater wasn't showing anything else at midnight, but it was jam-packed. Summer, you know? No school. Loose curfews. It's not just a nerd thing anymore, it's Insane with a capital "You damn kids."

After getting there early enough to get our seat of choice, we encountered all manner of "This seat is saved" nonsense, which I sort of regret not stamping out (not here yet equals not here...), but we managed to get decent seats anyway.

As for the movie, it was great. I enjoyed it far more than the last one, which Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Steve Kloves packed full of the entire billion-page book. Goblet of Fire was like a guided tour on an express train: you saw absolutely everything but it just kind of whizzed by without you caring. Not so here: I'm sure fanboys (or, I'm a tiny bit ashamed to say, mostly fangirls) will be debating endlessly about whether they should have left X and taken out Y, but the story moved along well and actually had time to focus on a few things. The effects were probably better than ever, and the direction (by some guy named David Yates, who's doing the next one too) is sometimes very entertaining and interesting for Hollywood. Plus, action for Potter! Go get 'em you magical dog, you.

If you're not a fan, this really isn't the movie for you to see. It definitely isn't the pick-it-up-in-the-middle storyline of the bunch. If you are a fan, I'm sure you already have plans to go.

Some of you might be wondering... what's going on with that Mike character? Most of you likely are not, but I'll clue you in, in the form of an overdue and overlong blog post.

Toronto. It's a fine town, maybe a bit hip for me (does anyone over 40 even live in that town?). Erika has an office there, and occasionally goes for meetings. I go for a change of pace. Normally that means changing my office to the Soho Metropolitan for a few days, but this time it was the Drake, a "boutique" hotel in the art district. We were in the suite, which somehow managed to have nearly 400 square feet and almost no space to work. Still, I got a lot done while there. The restaurant is great, and they don't correct you when you correctly pronounce the name of your Scotch. A notable feature of the Drake: a unique room service menu from which you can order doohickeys. Dirty doohickeys. I washed my hands immediately after touching it, and of course sent a photo to Gavin. I missed the name of the band that played at dinner, but they did jazz-lounge versions of Metallica, Doors, Selecter, and Michael Jackson hits. Entertaining!



New Mexico. I took Friday off for travel, and didn't immediately make the connection that Matt, WIN's designer, was off as well on the launch day of the iPhone. Well... we managed, between Celly (I'd say I owe him a beer, but really Matt owes him a beer ;) ), smartphone email (which worked less and less over the course of the weekend, thanks to the AT&T Edge network clogging with Apple hordes), and the occasional airport wi-fi hotspot. So what's in New Mexico? Sand. A lot of it. Also, our friend Megan, a lot of clean air, and that infamous dry heat. We ate a lot of tacos, soaked in some hot mineral springs in the mountains outside Santa Fe, and visited Albuquerque's swell aquarium.



Detroit's Tastefest/Cityfest/whatever. They change the name every year. Free shows (so far I've seen Spoon and Weird Al Yankovic), demos from Erika and her Roller Derby crew, and overpriced beer and food from area restaurants, all in a closed-off couple of blocks in the New Center area. This is still going on, but my next trip down will be Sunday to see Cheap Trick! Woot!



Transformers. Those who see the twitter know... I paid to see my first ever Michael Bay special-effects blowout flick. Why? Because they invaded my childhood. You know, the part of my childhood that loved a blatantly commercial cartoon made to sell toys (that I also loved). It's not a bad flick. Pure popcorn, plenty of don't-think-about-that-too-much plot moments, and the voice of the original Optimus Prime. I didn't feel ripped off in the movie sense, the "stuff from childhood" sense, or most importantly, the Giant Robot sense.

The earthquake. This just happened. It wasn't really an earthquake, but I wondered for a second. So I stepped outside to find a backhoe thingy tearing down the house next door. It's sort of a half-house built parallel to my backyard instead of the rest of the houses on the street. It took forever to sell this weird anomoly but apparently the developer who bought it is finally getting down to business. Next steps: dig a hole and cut down some massive trees that hang precariously over my roof.



And now? Preparations are being made for something neat that's been a long time coming and that I can't wait to blog about next week.

Absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who reads Joystiq knows that video gamers all over have been waiting anxiously for Jack Thompson to jump on the Virginia Tech shooting, but now we have a world of Internet parrots and cinematic philistines going after a great movie over what probably amounts to a coincidence.

Apparently one of the "publicity shots" sent to NBC was of Cho Seung-Hui brandishing a hammer in a way that sort of resembles a shot of the main character in Park Chanwook's OldBoy. I say resembles because, uh, he has a hammer. Let's leave out a few things and go straight to the obvious conclusion: this movie caused the shootings! Feel better? I know I do. Never mind the parents of all those students, I can sleep better at night. Now let's step back and check on a few of those things we left out:

1. Most of the other pictures and videos in the rambling "manifesto" involved guns, the weapon he actually used to murder all those people. That's not me being anti-gun, just pro-hammer. I used one to hang art earlier this week. I have never used my gun to hang art.
   
2. As mentioned here, (warning: liberal pinko commie talk behind link) let's leave out the plot of the (not real) movie, which is a story of a 5-day revenge spree on a mob kidnapper who imprisoned the titular character for 15 years. It's just not parallel to a mentally unstable and dangerously immature kid with real problems shooting 32 innocent bystanders.
3. By jumping to ridiculous (to sane thinking people) conclusions, we leave out the most important thing of all: you're selling short the victims. How dare Dr. Phil and his ilk suggest that the innocent victims of a horrible act suffered because of a video game or movie? That infuriates me to no end, and it reeks of using the tragedy to further your own censorship agenda.

The final rambling thing this makes me think of: there are two alternatives for why the connection could have been made in the first place, and I don't like either:

1. People like Governor Arnie, Bruce Willis, and hell even Charles Bronson were made famous brandishing as many guns as possible, but you latch on to one picture of a hammer? Oh yeah, Korean. Gotcha. Can't believe I failed to see that. I'm not a fan of playing that card, but if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a racist.
   
2. If you were going to blame a movie that you can't confirm Cho saw, why pick Park's movie? Oh yeah, it's ultra-violent, foreign, and most other people haven't seen it either. Capitalize on fear of the unknown.
   

Regardless, it's a great movie by a great director. And it was made in a country where presumably they make movies. Here it seems like we just make scapegoats.

Read more at Vidiocy, great little run through the history of this debacle. via Eliot

I'll admit, that quote from Futurama is totally unrelated to anything, excepting what I had for lunch. But it does not have to to with the two things this post is about:

1. I went to see Grindhouse.
2. Matt redesigned TV Squad.

In both cases, mostly awesome. As far as Grindhouse goes, it's pretty long and has no intermission. Technically both of the films comprising this double-feature are full length, with fake movie trailers (by Tarantino/Rodriguez buddies Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, and Rob Zombie) between. The trailers, I have to say, might be the best part. But Rodriguez's flick, "Planet Terror," was a hoot and a half. Rose McGowan, Michael Biehn, Lost's Naveen Andrews, and some unadvertised guest stars (usual suspects for the territory) in a gross-out zombie extravaganza. Hard to beat. Tarantino went for a 70s chick-revenge flick pastiche that was cool mostly for Kurt Russell. Great car chase too, if you're willing to sit through days of useless Tarantino "I'm so awesome because I saw movie X" dialog to get there. The overall story is, if you feel that your love of 70s shlock horror is sacred and these guys are jerks for mainstreaming it, you probably won't feel any better when you see it. But if you just want to enjoy a true tribute, you'll have plenty of fun.

And as for TV Squad, well I don't have a whole lot to say. The design should speak for itself. TV Squad was one of the earliest sites to have a design at all (by Brian), which in those days meant taking the standard green WIN design (The CSS weblog is an example) and attaching colors and a logo to it. Nowadays, establishing individual blog branding is more on the forefront than before, when every site layout was part of the Weblogs, Inc. branding. So it's an exciting time, and you're going to see a few more very individual-looking sites out of us very soon.

I'm not exactly sure what Michigan did to upset the natural balance of the universe, but I'm pretty sure said universe (and whatever creator of it any Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Scientologists among us believe in) hates this place. Snow? Only people from here (and, admittedly, Wisconsin) think that's natural.

It could be Ted Nugent, possibly Michael Moore (I admit I used to like him but he's off the rocker lately), the Michigan Militia, or Kid Rock. It's probably not Bob Seger, as I hear he's a nice guy and always maintains safe boating practices.

Then againt, since Grindhouse opens tonight, I'll probably go if the weather's not too bad, and... there you have it. The weather is trying to prevent me going to the movies. So maybe it's not the universe or God or anything like that... it's Westinghouse. But you didn't hear it from me.

I'm not sure why I keep going back to the subject of music in commercials, maybe it's just the most infuriating thing I can think of. In the wake of more and more bands refusing to do commercials (see Trans Am throwing away a heap of money to do a Hummer ad), the Texas alt-country band Old 97s have vomited out a jingle for Chili's baby back ribs. It's such a crappy version of an Old 97s song that I thought, wow, what a crap soundalike. Tom Waits should sue. Unfortunately, not the case. A quick Googling gave me the Old 97s' myspace page, and this blog post. Modest Mouse shills for minivans and Target, Matador Records strike a deal with Best Buy, and Of Montreal pimps Outback Steakhouse. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a bizarro world. Of course, a week in the Pop Century hotel and anyone might end up feeling that way.

On another note, pertaining to stronger musical ethics than current indie rock, I went to see American Hardcore. The interviews were cool in places, especially seeing what some of the people looked like after 20 years of smashing things up. Most were spaced out or permanently slurry, except of course, Ian MacKaye and publicity whore Henry Rollins. The performance footage was cool as well; nothing on par with Decline of Western Civilization but there was some really great Minor Threat stuff. All in all, it could have been a little more hard-hitting and a little less of a lovefest. After all, it wasn't real pretty: Black Flag's Greg Ginn was a jerk who went through singers like most people change pants, Bad Brains turned into homophobic Rastas who ripped off half the public, and violence was more prevalent than actual music in the scene.

While I was out seeing the movie, my dog somehow got out of her crate and ate a heaping pile of her favorite snack that I won't let her have, chocolate. 24 hours later, she's still alive and eating, so hopefully permanent nerve damage is meaningless to someone so dumb.

A few days before the recent Blogsmith/WIN trip to New York, Netflix delivered us a bundle of THX1138. I remember watching this dystopian future (think Brave New World) once because of the George Lucas name, once in art school, and another couple times since. It's visually very interesting, and it's easy to see how the grimy futuristic textural realism evolved into the beaten up space ships of Star Wars. Maybe even more interesting is the audio, more an interesting collage of weird sound effects and quotable snippets than a normal movie. But something didn't quite seem right. The impact wasn't there. Then it hit me. George Lucas did a Star Wars-style special edition "enhancement" on THX, adding between-scene establishing shots that came right out of a computer. No, they don't kill the movie, but they are grossly out of place and have nothing to do with the oppressive and stark white of the sets you're looking at for the rest of the film.

More importantly, this is George Lucas going back to try and tweak an existing artistic triumph into perfection. Ironically, the point of the movie is that slick, machinelike, homogenous perfection is boring, lifeless, soul-sucking, and against human nature. So I can't say as I agree with his decision to once again foist cartoony slickness onto his movies. I hope American Graffiti isn't next, otherwise we may see Harrison Ford outrunning Tie Fighters in his muscle car. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses and all that.