The blog has been a bit slow lately because I've been finishing up a job and, well, lazy. I've also been kicking myself for a terrible stock move. Thankfully, it wasn't one in which I lost a lot of money; it was one in which I could have made a lot of money but didn't have faith in my research.
I bought an August $23 dollar call for Akamai Technologies and sold it a day later because the stock dropped a lot and I doubted myself. Here's the graph with handy locaters for where I bought and sold.
As of now, I cost myself around 350 dollars on the botched sale. I know, not a lot for some of you high rollers out there but better than the return I've gotten on the items that I bought instead. Anyway, I recently cashed out one of my options for a decent profit and I'm breaking even overall now that my TMO Options, which plummeted at the end of the year, has bounced back a bit. Still, that one option has basically wiped out the gains in my other stocks/options.
I've yet to really reinvest this year but when I do, I'm definitely switching to E-Trade or another site. They've made some changes to Sharebuilder but the options are still terrible - the prices listed on your portfolio page often doesn't change for weeks.
Is it me or are cell phones making technology worse? Yahoo Mail just got updated and it's the latest in a long line of sites that has made itself simpler and less appealing to the eye in order to function better on cell phones. Telecommunication has taken a step back, switching from phone calls to text messages. Twitter has replaced individual blogs with blurbs. Whodathunkit?
In an unrelated thought, Adrian Wojnarowski has a great article on Lebron James's uniform switch. He talks about how the move wasn't to honor Michael but to chase Kobe for the lead in jersey sales (Kobe went to #1 when he switched to #24). I really hope that's true because to move to #6 is a slap in the face to Bill Russell. Sadly, it's a slap that I could see Lebron making since he's much more the businessman like Jordan and is seemingly unwilling to really take a stand politically ala Russell. Sadly, the most influential quote out of an athlete in the last few decades is His Airness's line on why he didn't endorse a candidate, "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
I'm sure Lebron is a good buy but between his corny antics and his icon-chasing ways, I really can't stand him. I know, as a Celtics fan, that I shouldn't say this but I'd much rather see the Lakers win the title than the Cavs. Let Ron Ron, not Lebron, get his first title. Granted, I'm not sure it will even get that far; I don't think the Cavs are going to beat the Orlando Magic.
I've promoted the site "Unhappy Hipsters" before but there are a bunch of new updates there that made me laugh, including this one that actually made me laugh out loud.
Found this on The Playlist. This is kind of an interesting show. It is a kind of oddball talk show with the man who is best known as running on stage with Bob Dylan at the Grammys with "Soy Bomb" written on his chest. Anyway, the show is set up as a fake psych session, the "host" being the therapist, asking completely random questions (and a few pointed ones). It's kind of interesting to watch Portnoy and the guests try to make up questions and answers. It's almost like watching a creative writing assignment unfold in front of you. The show is on Hulu but I think it could make for an interesting late night show on some cable channel like Bravo.
All work and sleeping late makes SoulHonky.com a dull blog.
Might be a slow week on the ol' blog. I'm starting a new episode at work and trying to make it so that March doesn't get wasted like the first two months of this year. Still trying to plot out the pilot I'm working on. I'm trying to write a procedural but I keep delving deeper into involved sub-plots that would make the show more of a serialized show. Ah well. Hopefully I'll write the second act tonight and while I do, I might be listening to this album from Panthu du Prince.
The Crazies is a mediocre movie which means, in terms of the Zombie genre, it's slightly above average. The film has a couple of great scenes and a decent number of scares but it just kind of rambles about and there isn't really a main focus to give the film any momentum. People just kind of go from one dark place (where they inexplicably split up) to the next (where they decide to leave their pregnant wife by herself). There was probably three film's worth of intriguing concepts in the film but the movie didn't really make anything out of them, usually just getting one "He's behind you!" moment and then moving on. There was also a lot of "sit back, hide, and watch" moments; for a large part of the second act, it was almost like I was watching someone else watch a horror movie.
The acting was solid with Joe Anderson possibly outshining Timothy Olyphant, especially in one pitch perfect moment that I don't want to ruin. Olyphant was solid, as always, but I'd like to see him break out of the Deadwood typecasting he's found himself in and try to flash some personality ala his role in "Go".
The film looked very nice but I often felt like the film focused too much on cinematography and it deadened some of the scares. It's the kind of film that might have been scarier with a lower budget feel to it.
As I walked out after the movie, a lot of people seemed to like the film but I wouldn't really recommend it. The Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic scores are probably right - fans of the genre will think it's a 71% film while non-fans will probably see it as 56% (or maybe even a bit lower). Personally, I'd say it's a film best "discovered" on the movie channels on TV. The lower expectations, the better.
The Playlist gave a great link to a site that shows what happens when NSFW meets WTF?! It's the trailer for the new Showgirls 2, a film that supposedly cost 25 million to make. It looks like it cost 25 bucks and they couldn't even afford towels to dry up the water from previous takes (You'll get that if you watch even the first few seconds of the trailer.) Apparently the site has gotten too much traffic but this is a film that has the potential to match "The Room" as one of the great disasters of modern cinema. Or, it could just be incredibly boring, which the trailer is despite all the boobage.
The Hollywood Reporter's blog has a nice roundup of the new dramas coming this fall, although I haven't found part 1 of the article yet. Anyway, there are, as should be expected, a lot of "Mentalist" rip-offs, some more acronyms for CBS, and a lot of cop shows. Thankfully, none of the shows are like the idea I'm currently working on although there are a few that come dangerously close. I've revamped the idea so it's moved away from Michael Chiklis's family of superheroes show. One of my heroes also has supermemory, which is what one show this season is about, but I'm betting my girl is different. Also, I just don't see how a great memory is really a great concept for a full hour drama.
With all of the new cop shows, I've been considering working on "The Lost Angels" again. It's a spoof of TV detective shows and films but I haven't figured out if I want to make it a straight spoof or just a satire. Granted, the terrible reviews of "Cop Out" probably won't help me sell the satire angle, especially since the script it was based on was once considered one of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. You should check out the bad reviews at Rotten Tomatoes; seems like a lot of critics have been waiting for a chance to rip Kevin Smith a new one. My guess is that the movie, like most of his work, is stupid but with enough sporadic laughs that the fanboys will still love him while others are left underwhelmed.
Other than that, I've just been sitting back and thinking about whether a prequel to Entourage would work. Maybe it's just for a few episodes but I think the show would be a lot better off if they spent some time in this next season, going back to when Vince first came out to Hollywood or when Drama was living the high life as the star of Viking Quest. I think it would be a better direction than their current one, with E getting married and everyone basically doing nothing. Turtle could struggle living off of Vince's much shorter coattails, Vince could have to deal with the crap that all wanna be actors deal with, Ari could be Ari. It worked for the West Wing and I think more shows might be wise to take a page from reboot craze in the film world to try it with their programs. I was thinking about maybe trying to write a spec but I'd need to do some research. I'm sure Ari's mentioned where he first noticed Vince but I don't remember and couldn't find it on the web.
That's all I got for now. Not great but hey, at least it's better than this.
Well here is what I think could be the final scriptosode of Best Apocalypse Ever. It's not that the story is finished, it's just that these are the only three ideas that I had for this and I'm not sure how much time I'm going to spend on thinking of another adventure for these three to get into. WIth a little reworking, this could be a decent first act for a script but I have no idea where I'd go.
Are there actually zombies? Do they just wander the Earth running into other people? Does everyone just wake up?
There are a lot of possibilities; none of which I'm all that interested in right now. Maybe if I come up with something, I'll do it but right now this could be the end of Helen, Ashley, and Alex.
TV Networks president Van Toffler reiterated the network's devotion to millennials (a.k.a Generation Y), but also made it clear that Generation X shouldn't let the door hit them on the way out.
"We're pushing Generation X out," Toffler said. "We're slaves to our different audiences, for MTV that's millennials, who are vastly different than Generation X; they're definitely less cynical -- they're more civic minded."
As evidence of the fine taste of this benevolent new generational breed, Toffler cited ... "Jersey Shore."
The network president said, "Millennials are really about authentic reality and family" and that MTV "played up the camaraderie and family elements [on 'Jersey Shore']" to appeal to them.
This is actually a perfectly played hand because I'd say it's sad that this guy buys his own brand of bullshit but then that would just paint me as cynical and prove him right. Also, I have a feeling that this might be a nicer way for him to kick the once promising, now lackluster Gen X out of the basement and into the real world. He could have been more honest and said, "Gen X is a bunch of 30-somethings who don't buy the products are advertisers are selling. Don't blame me that they haven't gotten off the MTV teet and found actual grown-up programming to watch. It's not our fault that they were raised by Sega and are now pacified by Wii. Well, not entirely. Whatever; we should have been done with them about 5 years ago."
Well, I planned on putting together a legit post for this week's Tryout but then I saw the list of new releases this week and knew I would never get through them. This week sees new music from: Alkaline Trio, All Time High, Brian Jonestown Massacre, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, K-OS, Lifehouse, Kidz In The Hall, Joanna Newsom, The Streets, Marina & The Diamonds, The Brunettes, Toro Y Moi, and Xiu Xiu. There was also albums I missed like Local Natives, Scanners, Mumford & Sons, and Yeasayer.
In the end, I decided to go with the new Pitchfork darlings Local Natives.
