Funniest Commercial Involving Petty Crooks

Sometimes I just must embed a video despite my better judgement.



This video almost made me wet my pants. It's a commercial It's in Thai but it has subtitles. Very funny. I suggest you watch whilst eating Yogurt (Yoghurt). Just stick with it. There is a payoff.

The spoiler is here, but you'll have to highlight it to see it:

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Yeah, these guys are breaking into a bank. They find the safe, open it, and find out there's no money. In fact, it's a freezer. All this takes place whilst security watches them on the surveillance camera. They look at it, and decide it's Yoghurt, and figure they might as well eat it which they do. Pan out to security guards doing a spit take, and further pan out to name of building which is "Sperm Bank"

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In This Weekend's News

I am disgusted with the Panthers. I am disgusted with the Panthers Management, for they are most of the reason I am disgusted with the Panthers. I won't bore you gentle readers with such a diatribe here, but it's posted over at my Panthers Hockey Message Board if you want to read it, though posting does require membership. Related to that, I've been invited to a NO TIME LIMIT meeting with the owner Alan Cohen (along with other season seatholders). I must assume my invitation was an error, but I've RSVP'd and am going. They have no idea what they're in for. I will be polite, professional, and brutally scathing. They shall wither before my causticity. May God have mercy on their souls because I shan't.

I have begun the slow process of selling my random computer items on E-bay. I've started with some low-end, cross-platform software. All bids start at a buck (99 cents) and have no reserve. The list of what will slowly appear there is at my website and if you see something, contact me directly. We can work something out before it goes on e-bay. Friends and family get items free or at embarrassingly low prices. A friend has already claimed my G5 so that's not listed; I'm shipping it off Monday. I took considerably less than I'd have gotten off E-bay but it's going to a good home, and that's more important to me than the extra money.

Yesterday I hung out with Timmy for the first time in awhile. He's still the same. Take that as you will.

I saw Adrian today and we had breakfast and went skating. The movie bit was cancelled because he had work to do. I had also seen him Thursday when he came and got the old TV in the guest room. My guest room now has HDTV -- see my previous post, item number six :)

We did stop, on the way back to his house, at the newly-reopened CompUSA (now a division of Tiger Direct). I gotta remember to let Tom know just for his amusement.

I cleaned Scooter's ears yesterday. I went to the grocery store, spent $50 and noticed I don't have anything to eat. Sucks to be me. The final four doesn't interest me this year, nor does the current NHL playoff picture though that may change. I am doing laundry, and I was going to go to the mall to kill time but I'm just not motivated. So I am blogging instead. Lame? Probably.

Lost Explained, Plumbers, Travertine Marble, and Macs

There have been so many theories on LOST, I've lost track. This one which I found via Stumble-Upon today is absolutely stellar. It works. Makes sense. It's a very long post so make sure you have time to read and think. It's got some holes but I really, really, like this one.

Today, the plumber came to fix the ballcock on my guest bathroom toilet. Actually he replaced the whole mechanism because it had a small leak. I only mention this because it's not often you get to say ballcock when there's not a dirty joke involved. I wish I could work in a badminton reference and say shuttlecock. I can't. So I won't say shuttlecock.

My shower work is done. My three day semi-expensive job turned into a ten day long ordeal. However, the old shower was ripped out. The leaky shower-pan was replaced -- and a good thing because it was developing a mould collection. The new shower has authentic travertine marble tiling. I like it except for the light fixture (which I'll replace) and the door (too short for my tastes). I am pleased, though. I missed being in my bathroom because it was just weird being the guest bathroom for so long.

My new Mac is chugging along nicely except for the firewire issue. What firewire issue you may ask. Well let me tell you then :) An edited version of what I sent to Apple's Engineering Department:

I thought it was just me having problems but then I've since had other friends with similar problems. We have a technology provider that deals directly with Apple an I spoke the Apple Rep. A few days later they called back and confirmed there ARE problems on a wide scale and they're "checking into the cause but are leaning towards the monitor having faulty hardware."

Now, on to the nitty-gritty. This bug manifests itself as follows.

To rule out other issues, ALL OTHER EXTERNAL DEVICES BOTH USB AND FIREWIRE (except mouse and keyboard obviously) were removed from the chain: CPU, Monitor, Hubs, everything.

This problem is specifically related to the 23" new cinema display and the firewire port/hub built in to the new Intel 2x4core3.2ghz. This machine is about a week old as is the monitor. Hot off the press. All external devices were previously plugged into a dual-core G5 with similar specifications and functioned normally.

What happened is that if you plug the monitor into the rear firewire ports an external firewire HD (800 or 400) will eventually overload the system and disable the entire firewire bus on ALL ports. I tried two different external firewire drives (on the 400 and 800 ports in front and back of the machine with NOTHING plugged into the monitor but the monitor plugged into the machine's rear port (tried both ports). I also tried various cables.

Apparently the internals of the machine have one shared bus and even though the system is powered it can't handle an external drive. The drive in question is one of the 1-TB Western Digitals (I'm not using their drivers -- just the default Apple stuff).

When you access the external drive and open it, you get the root directory for that drive, but then when you open a folder the drive over-spins and then powers down. Checking in System Profiler shows that the Firewire Bus cannot be read. All firewire devices stop working. You must POWER DOWN THE SYSTEM to recover. Moving down to 400 didn't help.

I tried this with two different Firewire Drives. Happily the data was not too badly damaged by the unexpected power down. DiskWarrior to the rescue.

At first I thought I had an isolated incident with my specific machine or monitor being bad which is when I slowly begin trying to isolate it by removing equipment from the equation. (I have firewire external Sony AIT, iOmega ZIP, Memorex DVD+RW drives in addition to the HD. Since USB is unaffected I left those out of the equation and unplugged).

So after narrowing it down to the monitor and hard drive, I went to Google (gotta love Google because it knows everything) and typed the error message about the bus being unreadable. There are *TONS* of matches and everyone is having firewire bus problems but nobody has apparently isolated it yet. But it's my observation and gut feeling that there is an endemic problem with the monitor's firewire using too much power from the machine *OR* the machine's firewire bus is insufficiently powered. The fact that it powered down the drive and rendered the bus dead supports this hypothesis. (Or, more likely, a combination of an issue between the Mac and the monitor.)

This information is VERY good and solid and tested carefully. It's not perfectly tested but Apple ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY has an issue. The hard drive worked fine on my G5 Mac (2x2ghz) in the same FW800 port with ALL the above devices attached. That rules out the machine handily.

Continued testing causes repeated bus power downs and will continue to damage my hard drive which is why I don't want to keep testing my drive.

It's some sport of an electrical issue with bus power over your firewire chain. I suspect that with all those ports on the machine plus the monitor added in, the stress is too much and it gives up.

I will, shortly, have a lot more Mac hardware for sale including (possibly) a Cinema Display, a Dual Processor G5, and more. Contact me for details.

Family Guy does Star Wars

In an earlier post I had said Family Guy jumped the shark, and true, it's been pretty sucky lately. But the new season première take on Star Wars was utterly, and completely brilliant. This may have been the best episode of the show. Ever.

It's a scarily faithful retelling of the original Star Wars (episode IV for the geeks) that begins with a hysterical crawl about Angelina Jolie. We have Darth Stewie, Leia (Lois), Han (Peter), Luke (Chris), Obi-Wan (Herbert, the pervert), C3P0 (Quagmire), R2D2 (Cleveland), Chewie (Brian) and the monster in the trash chute (Meg). We have cameos by just about everyone who's ever had a recurring role in Family Guy.

There's a great bit about John Williams, a funny thing with the couch, and watch out for the limp light sabre. This episode just really has a lot going for it. And the Asteroid Field. Yes. Definitely that. Lots of little cheap shots at Star Wars, done in an obvious fan-boy loving sort of way. There is more sexual innuendo in this episode than the entire last season combined. We finally learned why it's called a Tie Fighter. And there are cameos out the ass.

I cannot recommend this enough. It's a shame they'll break the two parter up, because it will lose a great deal if not seen as one continuous episode.

Man. It's amazing. A one hour animated Star Wars. It works, dammit. IT WORKS. I think I like it better than the real Star Wars.

Heroes vs Lost

I read this blog post today and it prompted me to write my own. The aforementioned blog discusses the merits of Heroes vs Lost. We all have our opinions, and as such I feel obligated to deliver mine.

But first let's discuss the shows. Lost has and always will have a cooler concept. The whole idea of being Lost somewhere in another time/place/dimension is creepy especially now that there's a few seasons behind us, I think it's safe to say Lost has a lot more promise. Heroes is, and only aspires to be, a comic book. There's nothing wrong with that at all. And, in fact, Heroes delivers what it pomises where as Lost has lost its way. That's not quite true actually, Lost has not become lost, but it has become inconsistent.

I am going to use the same grading scale as The Jay did in his blog and provide my own commentary and answers. Don't get me wrong, I loved Jay's post enough to make my own commentary. I just think his answers aren't all correct. Let's see how it works out.

Better Central Concept (Advantage – Lost): As I said above, Heroes is a comic book and aspires to be nothing more or less. That's not bad, but Lost aspires to be many things on many levels. We're discussing the concept and not the execution of the concept. That's a key difference and Jay blew it there.

Least Annoyingly Self-righteous Male Lead with a Background in Medicine and Emotionally Unavailable Fathers (Advantage – Lost): Wow, an easy one. I have to say Jack is less annoying than Peter because Peter is whiney and annoying whereas Jack is just annoying. They share self-doubt at times, though expressed in different ways. But if you wanted to have one guy at your back, I think we'd all pick Jack.

Hotter Resident Slamming Hottie (Advantage: Heroes): This isn’t a tough one, claims Jay but he blew the answer. Evangeline Lilly versus Hayden Panettiere -- you have got to go with Hayden because all guys really want a cheerleader even if she isn't quite 18 yet. This isn't about execution -- it's about desire. We've all had that cheerleader fantasy. Don't deny it. It's a guy thing. I gotta' teach this Jay guy about surveys. We're answering the questions honestly.

Cooler Mysteriously Creepy Older White Guy (Advantage: Lost): Locke was a top notch bad ass. I agree, Jay because Locke is the opposite of Bennet (H.R.G.) -- both are creepy and in retrospect HRG is a better guy. And it comes down to who would you trust? Bennet, of course. Which is why Locke wins hands down because we just haven't figured him out yet.

Cooler Long-haired, Bearded Rebel (Advantage: Lost): This is a no-brainer. Sawyer is in a class all by himself.

Better Villain (Advantage: Lost): Sylar is a psychopath and Ben is a psychopath. Sylar, however, is a boring psychopath whereas Ben is fucking creepy yet interesting. There's a fine line between evil and cliché and evil and fascinating. Sylar's a comic book character and we can't forget it, but with Ben it's hard to remember he's not real. Besides, Sylar looks like Peter Petrelli and Ben looks like Hannibal Lechter which is a double bonus.

Least Offensive Asian Stereotype (Advantage: Lost): I love Hiro Nakamura to death and he's so freaking cool but I keep thinking of some old stereotypical Asian cartoon character going "Meesta Magloo, Meesta Magloo." Whereas both Korean characters on Lost are just normal people who speak Korean. I have to give this to Lost even though I like Hiro better.

Most Interesting Set of Numbers (Advantage: Lost): Lost has “4 8 15 16 23 42”, and everyone wants to know what they mean. Heroes doesn't have numbers.

Least Offensive Middle Eastern Stereotype (Advantage: Heroes): Mohinder is boring and Sayid is really interesting. Yeah, we all get that. They are both stereotypes of a sort. But Mohinder is probably supposed to be Indian and he's not selling Slurpees and driving a cab, so that's a plus. Sayid is into that whole torture thing, something he excels at too. So, this is close but Mohinder is least likely to offend.

Cooler Silent African Dude (Advantage: Tie): I have no comment and agree with Jay. I'd give a slight edge to Eko only because he talked and as such we could learn about him.

Better Young Black Kid With Special Powers and Bad Dad’s (Advantage: Heroes): Hell yeah. This one's easy. Michael (Walt's dad) was irritating and I'm glad we've possibly seen the last of him. Micah's dad is not so interesting but he doesn't irritate me -- or maybe it's didn't now? But if you had to have a cool little kid brother, who would you pick? Micah or Walt? Right. Nobody picked Walt. Nobody.

Better Audience Desirability a.k.a. Which show would you rather be a character on? (Advantage: Heroes): Easy. If you're on Lost, you're a red-shirt and will die.

Better Blonde Femme Fatale / Least Useless Eye Candy (Advantage: Heroes): This category is also no-contest. Although one of my least favourite characters, Niki and Jessica are interesting and Lost's best effort was Shannon and now Juliette. Only Juliette doesn't interest me as eye candy, though her character is kinda' cool. I'm going with the Freud-experiment twins.

More Quotable One-Word Catchphrase (Advantage: Tie): Neither of these shows has anything worthwhile. However Heroes has a better tagline this year "Save the cheerleader, save the world." I'd give this to Heroes but it doesn't satisfy the question.

Most Annoying, Most Annoying Character (Advantage: Heroes): Jay blew this one. Charlie's a good actor, a complex character, and everybody's favourite little hobbit. Oh, shit, there aren't hobbits on the island? Damn. Well that mucks it up quite a bit. My problem with Heroes is there are so many characters I don't like: the cop, the twin-psycho bitch, and so on. Based on sheer quantity of irritating characters, this goes to Heroes.

Which show gives the better goods? (Advantage: Tie): Wow. A toughie. So many questions and so few answers. Heroes delivers more answers and replaces them with new questions while Lost just makes new questions and doesn't really answer many. This is a hard call because this is very personal and it's what makes a show work (or not) for a person.

So after reading all this you'd think, wow Eric prefers Lost over Heroes. That's what the numbers say. But, that shows you how valuable any survey really is. If I could watch one and only one of the two shows next season, I'd pick Heroes without a doubt. No hesitation. Numbers lie.

Mr. Wilberforce Clayborne Humphries Dies

One of the funniest actors in the Britcom genres, John Inman has died today at age 71. He is best known for the role of Mr. Humphries in the classic Are You Being Served? series on BBC television which ran for nearly 13 years. He and Mrs. Slocombe (Mollie Sugden) stole the show -- he of the effete mama's boy character and she of the double-entendre pussy joke run amok.

He was able to convey his very over-the-top character in a way that made you like him whilst laughing at him and with him at the same time. He was funny, had impeccable timing, and was what helped make this series a runaway success on both sides of the Atlantic. It spawned an ill-fated sequel (Grace and Favour) and even more ill-fated US knock-off and even an Australian spin-off.

He'll be missed by connoisseurs of the fine dry-witted Britcom. Rest in Peace Mr. Humphries.

Family Guy Jumps The Shark

Yes, it's happened. A show that was clever and witty, if not original has jumped the shark. I specifically point to the extended musical number with Stewie that was coupled with an old live-action dancer (Gene Kelly?). It was boring, contrived, and irrelevant.

To be funny you have to have a point of some sort or be going somewhere. I suppose Monty Python is proof I'm not totally right on this theory. But it doesn't change the fact the Shark Has Been Jumped.

It pains me to say it, but Family Guy's time has passed. It's over. Stick a fork in it, it's done. A few funny moments don't make a good show. They've stopped being creative and are relying solely on pop-culture references which simply isn't enough. And the episode really sucked.

Not that you care, but I posted a survey about me as a bulletin on MySpace while I was waiting for Blogger to update. And I ate a tube of Smarties. Yay.

Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't (Redux)

I had a post 8 December 2006 in which I quoted the old commercial: Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't (for Mounds & Almond Joy). The post had nothing to do with that commercial, but it's obviously a popular topic because not one single day has gone by where I don't have a hit relating to that quote.

So, in honour of those people who come here in search of that ubiquitous commercial, you can now see one version over on YouTube.

Queen and American Idol

First, there was the new Queen, see my review at: Queen + Paul Rodgers (Miami Concert Review w/set list) and now there's American Idol doing Queen. Many Queen fans expected a train wreck, and indeed a train wreck is what we got.

Fat Bottomed Girls: I never pictured this as a country song. I am not a country fan. "I didn't hate it" is the best I can say.
We Will Rock You: I'm not sure who he rocked but it wasn't me. I was not impressed.
Bohemian Rhapsody: As Simon said, "it didn't look good on paper" -- it wasn't. But it could have been much, much worse. Let us hope nobody ever tries to be Freddie -- because you can't.
Who Wants To Live Forever: Puke. Execution for this singer. Please.
Somebody to Love: Entirely forgettable. Thankfully forgettable. The singer looked like he was taking a dump while singing with his facial expressions. Distracting.
Innuendo: Whomever came up with this idea just ought to be shot. This just proves the judges aren't Queen fans. I hate the judges. Morons, the lot.
Crazy Little Thing Called Love: I actually liked this. Really. It was Elvis doing Queen but I enjoyed it. And I'd listen again.
Show Must Go On: She had a great voice but not for this song. At least she didn't embarrass herself.

Live Action Simpsons Video (Official)

The producers of The Simpsons have produced a live action opening sequence. Yes, a live human playing Bart, Lisa, Homer, and Marge. It was produced for Sky One TV in the UK to promote their airing of The Simpsons.

It's a fantastic video for the novelty value -- the actors look nothing like the characters except in very brief passing. But it's a hoot to watch. You have got to have a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brh6KRvQHBc
(Broadband recommended)

Family Guy

Okay, I've stalled long enough. It's time for a new post, and here it is. Today's subject ::drum roll:: is the TV show Family Guy. I'm new to the show, actually. I just started watching it this season, by accident. I am loathe to admit I like it, because it's very lowbrow, but, I like it. A lot.

In fact, I like Family Guy so much I went and bought both DVD sets of the first three seasons. I'm almost done the first four DVDs and can't wait to go into the next set.

It's the kind of show that should piss me off. It uses lots of pop culture references which are supposed to be funny even though they're just thrown in. It's the reason that, although I liked Shrek, it never quite rang true for me. I hate throw-away stuff like that. The Simpsons uses the same types of references and weaves them cleverly into the plot.

Yet, I have to say Family Guy makes me laugh, so I'm watching it. Even without the pop culture throw-away stuff, it's still got a lot going on. It's well written (mostly), well voiced, and pretty damned entertaining.

I like Brian the dog the best, but we'll get to that in a moment. I like Stewie as well. Chris is interestingly done. I find Peter to be the least interesting of the lot: he's like Homer Simpson but a lot more stoopid (sic).

Ah, Brian the dog. He reminds me of an ex-friend. He's got the same voice, the same mannerisms, and I didn't even notice until today. I was on I-75 going about 80mph towards Sunrise to meet some friend for lunch and a hockey game when I had an Epiphany. Yes, it was Eric J. Hedlund, also known as Ptomaine*, disguised as a dog. Scary but true. So now, I think I like the show even more.



* Ptomaine is pronounced "Toe-Main" and if in the very rare chance any of his current friends read this post, be sure and call him Ptomaine :) If you want to know what it means look in a dictionary. I'm not telling.

One Stop Short of Barking: Favourite Episodes of South Park

Wow. That's a long title. I'm sitting here convalescing and I decided to make a post about my favourite episode of South Park. There's quite a few good ones mixed in with the ones that blow chunks.

My favourite three episodes:
Scott Tennorman Must Die -- a true classic work of art
Xmas #1 -- The introduction of Mr. Hanky. I laughed until I couldn't breathe.
Kenny Dies -- the one where he REALLY dies. A good episode. Funny. And even touching.

I could discuss in detail, but I won't bore you.

Honourable mention:
South Park -- Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

Burn the celluloid:
Towlie -- when he gets introduced not only did the episode suck, the show jumped the shark.

PS: For 20 pence, can anyone correctly explain why I entitled this post the way I did?

-- E