Over the last decade or so the overall quality of product that Hollywood has been producing has reduced significantly. We’ve been given such a heavy dose of sequels, rebrands and cookie-cutter comedies that we as movie-going patrons have forgotten what a good movie actually is. Hollywood has force-fed us what they want us to have, and we’ve devoured it. Look at these upcoming releases: an X-Men sequel, Star Trek rebrand, Da Vinci Code prequel, Night at the Museum sequel and Terminator sequel — and that’s just this May. I kid you not!

So if everything that Hollywood is throwing at us is a rehashing of something we’ve already seen, why are we going to see it? It’s actually really simple: boobs, blood, booms and brainlessness. Everything Hollywood creates has copious amounts of these four things which translate into cold, hard cash. It’s no coincidence that all of the movies mentioned above are rated PG-13 or below (Terminator Salvation is not yet rated, but unconfirmed reports suggest a PG-13 rating). The highest sought demographic in any market, but especially Hollywood, are teenagers. So production companies figure out just how many boobs, blood, booms and brainlessness they can fit in while maintaining that coveted PG-13 rating so as to effectively rope in that sought demographic’ money. Want to know why there are fifteen versions of Saw, nine Step Up’s, a new Superbad copycat every summer and people like Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf have careers? Because teenagers spend $70 million on Fast and Furious on opening weekend.

It’s a vicious cycle. Hollywood creates the same few movies year after year, makes sure there is a good balance of boobs, blood, booms and brainlessness and teenagers go out and spend millions of their parents dollars seeing them. There’s no incentive to actually tell an original story because you can make much more money by remaking Friday the 13th for the tenth time.

So what’s wrong with Hollywood? We are. We’re the problem. We’re not demanding originality and creativity by actually going to see the few unique films that make the screen. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opened to a measly $26 million. How can that even compare to Fast and Furious? We’re to blame.

So let’s fix it. Let’s start championing originality and start loathing useless boobs, blood, booms and brainlessness. Next Friday instead of seeing Beyonce in Obsessed (which I’ll put money on today to win the weekend) go see The Soloist instead. Let’s take Hollywood back and maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to ask “what’s wrong with Hollywood” in another four years.

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I'm a PUMA and I'm awesome. At least I think I am.

GM collaborated with Segway on this project, basically for the hell of it. I mean, since the Segway really revolutionized walking and everyone desired one, logically we’d all want some strange gyroscopic roadster. Hopefully you can see the sarcasm dropping off that last sentence. Really though, there’s no way anyone is going to want a roughly $5000 thing that rides at 35 MPH and goes a whole 35 miles before needing to be recharged. And by no one, I really mean no one. What exactly is the market for this thing?

And furthermore, since I’m now funding GM’s existence, I demand that my money be better spent researching and developing better, more viable products — you know, the kind that people will actually buy. Either that or the next time GM decided they can’t afford to continue being in existence, because it will happen again, maybe the government should say “no. You guys go and see what bankruptcy feels like and maybe you won’t make things that are ridiculous.”

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Ace of Cakes has been on a number of years and I never cease to be amazed at the quality the bakery puts out. The cakes are really works of art that are meant to be eaten. But that’s not why Charm City Cakes is the coolest place on earth. No, the cakes have nothing to do with it.

I know you’re waiting in complete and utter anticipation here but I’m watching some NCAA basketball so deal with it. My attention is in two different places. And you’re going to have to wait. Can you tell I’m writing this as I think? Or am I not thinking at all? Anyway, the reason Charm City Cakes is the coolest place on earth is because of the people who work there. Too cliché? Get over it.

You totally wish your job was this awesome.

After the years Chef Duff has been on the Food Network and all the success and fame that comes with that, he still genuinely cares about all of his cakes and all of the people that work for him. His staff are the same fun loving, zany people that they were on the first episode. The place just looks like an awesome place to work. Sure there’s some high pressure and intense projects, but come on, they have some fun there too.

Charm City Cakes is the coolest place on earth because of the super awesome people who work there. That’s all I wanted to say. Thanks for letting me say it. And for putting up with my stream of consciousness. Now, if you want to buy me a Charm City Cake, hook a brother up with some bananas foster, blueberry muffin or smores. Thanks! Oh, and check out Mary Alice’s blog. You’ll be glad you did.

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It’s pretty easy to see why this video has spread so quickly: it’s hi-freaking-larious. But here’s the thing, this kid is never going to get a job. At least not a normal one. It’s the day of the digital trail. Everything that goes online is remembered, forever. This post, this post will be read by some bumbling moron a thousand years from now when crabs are doctors and robots have their own devil. You know what I’m talking about.

But seriously, this video is never going to go away. When this kid is in high school he’s going to get beat up because he’s the stoned dentist kid. If he’s lucky enough to bring a girl home to meet his parents, they won’t be showing baby pictures, they’ll be showing when David was a YouTube celebrity. Then, when it’s time for David to get a job, his potential employer will not want his drug using self anywhere near their company. He’s basically going to have to become an actor — this is totally the kind of thing that would get shown on someone’s first visit to the Tonight Show. If acting doesn’t work out, I guess he could always be a dentist. That’d kind of be fitting. Or a bounty hunter. He could always do that.

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The Dashboard has been a staple of OS X since 10.4 Tiger was released. It’s concept — that you can have different widgets that do different things — has been repeated all over the internet and now in Windows Vista. With the influx of Web 2.0 website offering basically the same functionality, the Dashboard has become outdated and, dare I say, useless. I can’t remember the last time I actually opened the Dashboard willingly — the occasional accidental F12 key strike does the trick — nor actually used a widget. 10.5 Leopard brought a new feature to the Dashboard, the ability to create your own widgets from any website you wanted using a button on Safari. I can safely say, I’ve never used this feature. It’s a good idea, but again, basically useless.

The problem is not the concept, that in and of itself is okay, the problem is usage. It’s a screen that runs in the background and, when pulled up, is ready to go. The problem here is that it sucks up memory causing the entire system to slow. The other problem — and here’s the kicker — is that why would I launch the Dashboard to see what time it is, look at my calendar, check a contact’s email address or see what the weather is when I can simply do that without launching the Dashboard. So maybe part of the problem is the concept after all.

So here’s what I propose: Apple cancel the Dashboard. 10.6 Snow Leopard is set to debut sometime next year and is not actually offering any new features, but rather a promise to slim down the operating system and make it run much more efficiently. Could there be a more perfect time to get rid of something that causes bloat and inefficiency? While people will miss MacWorld, and probably Christmas too, I’m not sure if I know many people who would miss the Dashboard.

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Then, once everyone was introduced, the Heroes writing staff decided it was time to show that all of these ‘heroes’ needed to come together in order to save the world. Visions of the future and the introduction of an villain lead to the season one slogan: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” The ‘heroes’ found themselves, came together, defeated the villain, lost some people along the way, and saved the world. Then came season two.

Season two started out with yet another chance to save the world, what with the butterfly effect and all. Season two also showed that not only was the villain from season one still alive, but a ton of new ‘heroes’ were waiting to be found. However, instead of focusing on these ‘heroes’ being ordinary people in extraordinary situations, their extraordinary abilities became much more ordinary. Season two was also interrupted by the Writers Strike. Instead of pausing the storyline mid-season, the Heroes team decided to wrap up the storyline early leaving a few large plot holes along the way — Peter’s Irish girlfriend anyone?

Season three promised villains deeper and darker than any yet to be introduced. But deeper and darker villains brought many more characters into the fold — so many that keeping track of all of them grew quite difficult. The line between good and evil was blurred at the beginning of the season leaving questions about who was a hero and who was a villain. All of this was set against another vision of the future that required the world to be saved. Basically, season three was repeating season one.

In tonight’s episode the lines were finally clearly drawn between who is a hero and who is a villain. There is still that pesky ’save the world’ issue lingering about though it looks like it’s going to be taking a backseat — which, given season two’s decisions, isn’t surprising.

I’ll be frank, the show has gotten bad. Really bad. Possibly jumped the shark bad. So bad I’m tempted to give up on the show altogether. However, one thing in the preview for next week is going to keep me watching. Evidently an eclipse is coming that’s going to remove the ‘heroes’ powers leaving them ‘normal’. Considering them having abilities has become ordinary, it looks like they could once again be put into an extraordinary situation. If this is the case, they might have a good thing going. If not, well, the show is no longer worth watching. I guess we’ll find out what happens next week.

Has Heroes jumped the shark? Is there still some good in it? Let me know in the comments.

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The world economy has crumbled over the last year as a result of many factors, some driven by you and me and some driven by the government, but the fact of the mater is the economy is in trouble. As a result hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs and/or foreclosed on their homes here in the US alone. Unfortunately the next few months will see the numbers continue to rise. Poverty is no longer segregated into pockets of neighborhoods or countries around the world, it can involve you, your neighbor, anyone. Poverty is now a bigger crisis then it ever has been before because of how extremely widespread it has begun.

Six months ago a majority of the worlds poverty could have been eliminated if the affluent countries of the world came together and attributed money to the problem. Unfortunately, in light of what’s happened economically, countries have come together to pump money into the world economies in order to prevent the problem from growing. While this might slow, and eventually correct the current situation, it doesn’t really do anything for someone that no longer has a job, has lost their house, or was living in poverty prior to the market meltdown. In fact, once we get out of the mess we’re now in, we’ll actually be right back where we were six months ago with regards to combating poverty.

What this means is we’re not going to be able to rely on the governments of the world to help solve this problem. We, as a global people, are going to have to take action into our own hands. We can each, individually, make a difference. Be it volunteering at local homeless shelters, working for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, or even sponsoring impoverished children through missions like Compassion International, you and I can effect change.

My hope is that as this economic situation has now touched virtually everyone in some form, poverty has now been made real to every citizen on the planet. As a result I hope that we collectively do what we can to eradicate the issue. One day we will be able to remove poverty from list of global issues, it will just require a bit of time and effort. Let’s make it happen.

What is something you can do to help eliminate poverty? Discuss it in the comments below.

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The first show is Saturday Night Live. To say SNL has writing issues is an understatement. The show has downright problems. In the two episodes that have aired so far there has been one sketch that was actually funny: the Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton season opener.

After watching the rest of the episode, and a majority of the one aired this past Saturday, it seems as if Tina Fey herself might have written this one. The SNL writing has been in trouble for a very long time and this season it just seems worse. It begs the question, will NBC grow a pair and clean out the write staff or *gasp* cancel the show?

The next show that makes me wonder what the writing team is thinking is Fringe. I’ve talked about Fringe before, it’s a great show that is part LOST and part X-Files. One of the main characters is a former mad scientist who has been locked up in a mental institution for the past 17 years. While most of the writing revolving this character is done well, there seems to be one “out” the team is using.

In the first episode Bishop, the character in question, wanted to use his lab from 17 years ago. Good thing it still exists! Harvard just decided to use it as storage. And by storage they meant cover the equipment with a tarp and put a few boxes in there. Convenient. In the second episode Bishop needed a file he left in his car. Well guess what? His car is in the same pad-locked garage it was 17 years ago! Again, how convenient? Finally, last night, Bishop needed a piece of equipment he hid in the wall of his former home. Well guess what. It was still there. But it wasn’t in a wall, it was in a dumbwaiter merely covered by a bookshelf. Do the writers really expect us to believe that the key to all of Bishop’s experiments are littered all over Boston and somehow completely untouched and right where they were left 17 years ago? Come on?

The final show I’ve watched so far this season has been Heroes. Cut to only 11 episodes last year because of the strike, it’s been a long time since Heroes has been on the air. But watching the two hour premiere on Monday, a few things struck me about one of the main characters, Peter.

Peter can absorb every power that he comes in contact with making him pretty much the most powerful “hero” of them all. Yet, somehow, Peter manages to constantly make poor decisions and, as a result, the world ends four to five years later. This season, future “Dark Peter” has come back from the future to prevent bad things from happening. But here’s what I don’t get: Dark Peter has a giant scar across his face. Lest we forget Peter has the ability to heal himself. Curious? Even more curious is that two of the powers Peter has absorbed involve being able to see the future. Given this, you would think Peter would know that his horrible choices have an effect down the road. Either that or the writers just assume we don’t remember these things.

None of these writing slips will cause me to stop watching the shows, well except maybe for SNL. But after waiting so long for good TV to come back on, I’d like to think the writers would be willing to not treat the audience like children and actually write the show without the sloppy “outs” they have been given themselves. Maybe it’s just been so long that I forgot this is the small screen norm and am being overly critical. If Toby shows up on The Office on Thursday I’ll know sloppy writing abounds.

What do you think? Have you noticed other instances of sloppy writing on TV so far this year? Leave it in the comments.

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But this isn’t going to be a review of iTunes 8 and the Genius feature. It’s a look at the name itself. I’ve got a huge problem with it. Other sites around the web are arguing over Apple’s use of the word “funnest” in their new iPod marketing, but I think the use of Genius is a much bigger mistake on Apple’s part.

Anyone who has ever walked into an Apple Store knows that the word Genius is not new to Apple. Apple uses the word to describe it’s tech support people. Computer broke? iPod showing the sad face? Go see a Genius at your local Genius Bar. Makes sense considering a genius should know what to do. Apple has effectively branded the word genius to demote support for your Mac. Now, with the launch of iTunes 8, they are telling us that it also means something that can pick songs for you. I mean, it’d be stupid to walk into the closest Apple Store, wait in line, and then ask a Genius to recommend some music for you. But maybe that’s what Apple want’s us all to do.

I might be looking too much into this, but I think Apple is making a mistake here. The iTunes feature could have easily been called something else leaving the Genius moniker for the support folks at the local store. What do you think? Did Apple make a mistake using the word Genius or am I just overreacting? Let me know in the comments.

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Warning: The content that follows will contain significant name dropping, product linking, and plenty of nerds. You have been warned.

Keynote

This year’s keynote speaker was Ken Levine, the guy who created and wrote BioShock. I was throughly looking forward to this because, having played BioShock, I thought it’d be pretty cool to hear about how this incredible game came be. Perhaps even how some of his high-philosophy story-line came about. When it came to it, Levine actually never mentioned BioShock by name and talked about his life to this point. He talked about finding his first group of real friends thanks to Dungeons and Dragons, a brief career in Hollywood, and finally coming to the realization that someone actually creates the video games he plays. The speech was sort of a rally cry for nerds everywhere. It was a good way to start the show.

Mike and Jerry

Mike Holkins and Jerry Krahulik are the brains behind Penny Arcade. Their alter-egos, Jonathan Gabriel and Tycho Brahe, are the main subject matter for the webcomic. They are, if you will, big time. At least until they start talking. They held two question and answer sessions where they answered everything honestly and hilariously. What I really liked about the two of them, other then the fact that they are as funny as their personas are in the comic, is that they are just as awe struck by everything as we are. They love video games and the comic is a result of that. Their “fame” is secondary and to them, fleeting. It could end at any moment as far as they’re concerned. Jerry said it’s a lot like running from lions, trying to hold off the end of the run as long as possible. They really seem down to earth, genuinely humble people. They set up an impromptu autograph session on the second to last day of the expo that Mike and I stumbled into. Instead of ending at 5pm, like the handwritten sign said, they waited until everyone in line got a chance to approach the table, something they clearly did not have to do. Through seeing them on stage, it’s clear to see they enjoy what they do and are grateful (and a little surprised) at the result.

Me and Felicia Day

The Guild

It’s no coincidence that I’m now segueing into talking about The Guild. Prior to attending PAX I was really looking forward to the screening of The Guild on the first night of the show. So excited that Mike and I entered the line almost two hours early to be sure we got a seat, which we did, in the second row. The Guild, which I’ve talked about before, is a web tv show about a guild of WoW players who decide to meet. The show was created by and stars Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh, who were both at the expo. I got to meet both of them at The Guild booth and, like Mike and Jerry, are very approachable and humble. Felicia Day, who also stared in the very funny and hugely popular Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, even embarrassed herself in the question and answer after the screening due to a slight slip of the tongue. It was pretty funny.

Wil Wheton

Admittedly I’m not geeky enough to know much about Wil Wheaton. I mean, I know that he was on StarTrek: TNG as a kid and he’s pretty funny on Twitter, but other than that I got nothing for you. He was the keynote speaker at PAX last year. This year, he was given his own panel. When asked how one man, even Wil Wheton, could have a “panel” he laughed and then said it’s because he’s awesome. Wil falls into the same category as all the rest I’ve talked about so far: humble, funny, and very happy with where they are in life. After Rickrolling us in dramatic fashion, Wil read some things he’s written and personally enjoys. He’s funny and pointed at the same time which is not an easy thing. I might have upped by nerd-cred by being there, but I am glad I sat in for the Wil Wheton Panel.

Line Up Room - Thousands of Geeks in One Place

People

It seemed that the kindness that seemingly emanated from Mike, Jerry, Felicia, Sandeep, and Wil was not limited to them. In fact, just about everyone was extremely friendly. A good deal of time at PAX is spent waiting in line surrounded by hundreds of other people (thousands in the Line Up Room). Despite being crammed in with other people, there is always someone willing to converse, play a game, or joke around. It definitely made waiting in all those lines much more pleasant.

Games

So PAX is a gaming conference, it’s fitting that I talk about games at some point. So I guess now will do. I’m a casual gammer. I play a few games a year. I read Destructoid and follow upcoming stuff, but I usually don’t go overboard with it. That said, there were a few titles that really excited me at PAX.

The first was Afro Samurai. This game, based on an anime on Adult Swim, features Samuel L Jackson as the Afro Samurai. It’s a cell-shadded game that looks really cool and plays like a typical button-mashing action game. Yes, I played this one. It was pretty fun. It’s clearly going to get a mature rating because, well, Samuel L Jackson is in it.

I attended the Ubisoft Demo that featured play throughs of both FarCry 2 and Prince of Persia. Both of these games look great. Prince of Persia has an art style that’s very unique and hard to describe. The game looks like a lot of fun, although I’ve not liked Prince of Persia games in the past, but we’ll see. FarCry 2 has a graphics and AI engine that is unrivaled. Fire spreads naturally, water ripples, you can see the heat of exhaust. It’s incredible. The game also looks hellishly difficult. The game developer, playing a production build of the game, kept dying. That game is going to be hard. What makes FarCry 2 stand out from other beautiful FPS games is it’s map editor. Usually a trivial feature, Ubisoft has raised the bar here. It’s really hard to describe. You just have to see it.

The final game I’m looking forward to is Fallout 3, which should be out sometime next month. This game is a mix FPS and third-person (and top-view if you want) that follows a survivor in the post-apocalyptic United States. It’s quest based and open ended. Weapons can be created from virtually anything found in the environment, which will have some very interesting results. This game looks to share a lot of similarities with FarCry 2 and BioShock. That’s a good thing.

Closing

It’s hard to summarize my PAX experience. It seems to trite to say it was great, or a lot of fun, even though it was both of those things. PAX is something that is hard to describe to someone who doesn’t play games but at the same time very easily relatable — as discovered by the people who shared our airport shuttle bus. PAX is the following:

If the Penny Arcade Expo has a star, it’s not Gabe or Tycho. It’s not special guests like MC Frontalot or Wil Wheaton. It’s not even veritable champions of nerdery like PAX ‘08 Omegathon winner Joey Gecko. No, it’s geeky culture itself. And when we gather to celebrate our own, wackiness invariably ensues.

That was GeekDadZ via Wil Wheaton’s recent post attempting to summarize PAX. PAX is about geeks. It’s for geeks. It is geeks. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to summarize. One thing is for sure, Mike and I will be back.

While I wrap up this marathon post, I’m going to add a gallery of pictures that we took at PAX featuring some of the crazy cosplayers. Check it out.

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