Miscellaneous

This is why I don’t watch live television anymore. After TiVo/DVR technology and DVD, I rarely, if ever, watch live television unless it involves sporting events, and tonight, NBC reminded me why. My roommate and I sat down to watch NBC’s broadcast of The Incredibles, one of the few good movies I don’t already own. Things were going fine, until the movie got within 35 minutes of the ending.

NBC proceeded to jump into two to three minute commercial breaks every SIX F**KING minutes. Literally, ever six to seven minutes (I think they made it up with a five minute stint at one point before I started counting), NBC would launch into a commercial break, completely disrupting the flow of the movie. This, people, is why network stations are struggling so much. They are so focused on their advertisers that they neglect their end customers – the viewers. Sure, NBC has a business to run, but a broadcaster’s job is to deliver quality entertaining, and NBC has clearly forgotten this. Their respect for the viewer obsolete, why should I respect or give my business (i.e. my eyes to their advertisements) to a company that does not treat me with any?

Maybe this explains why every upcoming episode of “E.R.” is the “must see” episode of the season…

Okay, here’s what I have to say about marching bands: I don’t see the point. First off, I’ll note that I’m from the northwest, not exactly an area known for its marching bands or its interest in them. Apparently, in some parts of the United States, marching bands are big things, but up here, they aren’t anything spectacular. At football game halftimes, why would I want to listen to a barely audible band that walks around doing sluggish designs, et cetera, et cetera?

However, in this Cal vs. Washington State game, the marching band does something really, really awesome. In a homage to video games, they simulate – with their collective bodies – several classic video games. Which video games? Let us list them: Pong, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, and various Mario stages. Don’t believe me? Watch the video below…

Thanks to the 1,500+ who took my horror movie survey last month! I’ll publish the results soon (there are some obvious results and a few surprises), but I just wanted to say congratulations to Karen Mead of Wingdale, New York, as she is the winner of the six horror DVDs. Karen, I’ll be sending out the prize package this weekend.

Check back soon, as I’ll be launching a new survey with new DVD giveaways shortly. For other movie contests, including El Cantante, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and other DVD giveaways, please visit my movie contests page. I currently have 12 different giveaways running (and ending soon).

This isn’t movie news, but this is local news for me… local news I can’t help but share with my readers. Down in Tacoma, Washington, a man found himself frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t get the last lug nut off one of his tires of his Lincoln Continental, so much so that he decided to grab his trusty 12-gauge shotgun, stand at about arm’s length away from the car and pull the trigger.

Now, as this man apparently didn’t know, firing buckshot at a rather solid object usually results in some of that buckshot bouncing back in the direction it came. It’s simple cause and effect, the theory of momentum, et cetera, et cetera. A mixture of buckshot and debris reflected off his car and struck him badly in both his legs, causing “severe but not life threatening” injuries (okay, so he didn’t almost kill himself, but that made for a more dramatic title). While his legs got the worst of it, he got hit as high as his chain.

Alcohol was not involved.

Now, I’ve never had to remove a tire or a wheel and have never tried to remove lug nuts, but I didn’t even know that using a shotgun was an option. I mean, how f**king stupid can you get?

*Image from The Huffington Post.

I launched the original Erik’s Movie Blog in May, 2007 and it has developed a small but loyal reader base. It has always been my intention to combine my blog with my full movie review website, Movie-Source.com, which is a database full of past, present and upcoming movies, with reviews, film trailers, previews, image galleries and more. Unfortunately, the development of merging the sites have taken longer than planned, but it’s only a matter of time now – by the end of the year, expect great things.

This new movie blog is a first step toward a new, premiere website, and I felt it was time to launch this even if the rest of the website isn’t complete yet. Why? Because driving traffic and search engine presence to Blogger is silly when I’m going to have start all over anyway…

So, as of this moment, no new posts will be written on Blogger, though I will keep that site active as many of the articles on that blog are quite popular (relatively speaking). Please change your bookmarks, your RSS feeds and so on and so forth now!