Sunday, August 24, 2014

My passionate love affair with Cable TV continues...

R.I.P. Walter White...













I wish The Emmy's were on tonight, instead of Monday night, but I'll let it slide since the 49ers beat San Diego 21-7!

So many great shows this past year.

"Ozymandias" Breaking Bad:
Was there a more riveting episode in TV this year! I think I stopped breathing while watching it. And how was Gilligan able to slip in the comical scene with Walter pushing his $ through the desert. Definitely the best drama.











True Detective:
Then came True Detective, the show that plucked me out of my state of mourning for the end of Breaking Bad. "The McConaissance" (aka Matthew McConaughey) deserves the emmy. He gave a true "performance" and what a performance it was. Rust Cohle will go down as one of the great TV characters. And Woody Harrelson NEVER disappoints. These two along with the beautiful cinematography and great music are enough to make me overlook the poorly written female characters (well almost, I guess, since I just mentioned it).

Here are the 10 greatest Rust Cohle lines. 











And....here's Taran Killam on SNL spoofing McConaughey's Oscar acceptance speech.

Silicon Valley:
If you've lived in the SF Bay Area in the past 10-15 years, especially if you've dabbled in the tech world, you must watch this show. It nails Palo Alto, the West-Coast start-up culture and venture capitalists. R.I.P. Christopher Evan Welch, who played Peter Gregory (the pseudo Bill Thiel/Bill Gates caricature). So funny.












Other random thoughts:


  • Billy Bob Thorton and Allison Tolman were fantastic in Fargo. No offense to Colin Hanks, but I wish Allison Tolman's character had solved the crime.
  • I CAN... NOT...STAND Ray Donovan. Jon Voigt, stop overacting. And enough with the misogyny.
  • Tatiana Maslany, why haven't you been nominated as Best Actress? You should win this category for Orphan Black, hands down!
  • Jon Hamm, Elizabeth Moss, and John Slattery, when are you going to win Emmy's for your work on Mad Men?
  • The Americans, season 2 was fantastic!
  • Sherlock, why did I just find you on PBS? Benedict Cumberbatch (love that name) is terrific as Holmes. 

So I will be watching The Emmy's to see what everyone's wearing, and to listen to the acceptance speeches. I'll be in front of my TV on time. After all, when one resigns from one's job, one should definitely leave work no later than 6pm the last week of one's job. No doubt.











Sunday, August 10, 2014

Sure, Steve Jobs had vision, but Star Trek...


Kirk holding a "communicator"

I'm not here to debate Steve Job's genius. His intellect and knack for sensing what the "hoi poloi" would treasure have been well documented (here's one such NYTimes article). Don Draper (Mad Men reference), a fictional advertising genius, often says people don't know what they want until you tell them. Jobs certainly dazzled the world for years.

I'm simply stating it's remarkable how may Star Trek gadgets have been realized. Perhaps he (as well as the other tech giants out there) was a Trekkie, or sci-fi buff.  Note the following:

  • Kirk and crew relied on their communicators (aka flip phones/iphone). 
  • Later on in the series they spoke into their communicator badges. A CA company called Vocera is actually working on a similar device that can be pinned to your shirt.
     
  • They had GPS. How else could Scottie locate and beam up his crew mates!
  • Uhuru used a blue-tooth device as the Communication Officer. 
  • They used ichat/skype. 
  • Picard used a an "ipad". And for that matter the etch-a-sketch was really an ipad. 
  • Tri-corders were really hand-held devices for sensor scanning and data analysis.
  • Scottie used voice activation and talked to his computer much like Apple Siri or Google Now.  
  • They used portable digital storage (usb flash drives). 
Beam me up Scottie!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

I love Stephen Colbert......






















See below. He must be a good Dad..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/01/stephen-colbert-ask-a-grown-man-video_n_5641575.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063