I am going to start doing more podcasts. My voice is an asset that I haven't developed as well as I should and podcasts are a great way to do it. You might have noticed that I've been a lot more consistent about posting around here over the last few months, this is due to some new mental processes and habits that I have gotten into that allow me to be more productive. Now it's time to move that productivity over into audio posts.

This podcast is one that I threw together last night. It sucks for a few reasons: there are glitches in the audio due to the crappy sound interface that I have on my main computer and, I'm just not used to having to prop up a conversation completely by myself. If you've ever talked to me, you know that I can dominate a conversation, but I still need something to lean on from time to time. Also, I never realized how slow I talk, it must be a really annoying to talk to me. Do I talk this slow normally? I'm posting this in all of its popping, stuttering, sucking glory just so that I have a reference point as my ability to produce these things quickly and effectively gets better. You know? You know? You know? You know?

This podcast is about a video making the rounds that I will heretofore refer to a "Souljah Girl" (SG). It's a video of a young girl that is clearly off her rocker antagonizing an old woman on a MARTA train here in Atlanta that has become the talk of the town and beyond. Her little "freestyle" is one of those things that you have to laugh at to keep from crying.

Reaction this debacle has been predictable and, as usual, I have found a lot of the (quite voluminous) commentary to be lacking in perspective. So without further ado, I present my two cents.

The Souljah Girl Podcast

UPDATE:* Looks like Souljah Girl is getting some help. Commentary from her family.

* I have this as an update on the initial publishing of this post because at the time I recorded the podcast I was not aware of this detail.

Iron Man - 4 out of 5

When I heard that an Iron Man film was going into production, I was a little worried. Ok, a lot worried. For a long time, Iron Man was my favorite comic book character. His throne was safe until Frank Miller totally kicked my ass with The Dark Knight Returns. Still, my worry wasn't so much about story, but about the suit itself. Iron Man's suit and capabilities were just exotic enough for somebody to try to create some computer generated abomination. As it turned out, my worries were for naught as Iron Man's transition to the big screen has to be one of the most triumphant ever.

No factor helps the film more than the casting of Robert Downey Jr. Downey completely owns this film - nailing the role of Tony Stark. The last couple of times I saw him were in Zodiac and A Scanner Darkly with him delivering memorable performances on both fronts, begging for a vehicle of his own. I can't say that playing a comic book superhero would be the turn that I expected, but he takes it and runs - errr - flies. The other star of the show is somebody that most people aren't familiar with, but has a long history of keeping movies requiring machines from turning into CG suckfests: Stan Winston. His Iron Man suit design is top notch.

I'm not going to get into a lot of detail, but I will say that the film does do the Iron Man myth justice. There were liberties taken with a few parts of the story, but they were acceptable given the task of fitting the genesis of a character with such a highly technical nature into a film for general consumption. Nowhere was there anything as ridiculous as turning Spiderman into a web generating mutant (a bastardization of the character that interestingly undermines the connection between Peter Parker and Tony Stark as highly intelligent teenagers). If you want to see a film right now that the whole family can enjoy without having to turn off part of your brain, Iron Man is the one to see.

Stay through the credits, there are a couple of cool things that come up.

Speed Racer - 3 out of 5

I'd like to say that you can enjoy the Wachowski Brothers new film, Speed Racer, without having to turn parts of your brain off (actually, if you're one for epileptic fits, Speed Racer might end up turning parts of your brain off for you without your consent). While the film is a triumph in technical film making producing a film-going experience that is unquestionably unique and awe-inspiring, it's clear that the proceedings are aimed at young kids and, as such, require much more a suspension of belief than the multi-layered Iron Man.

I was never a big fan of the cartoon, so I can't say much about how faithful the film is to the source material. I can say the film is way too long. I am not one to harp on running times, but two hours and fifteen minutes is overkill for the types of attention spans in play here. I was personally into the story the whole way through but there is such juvenile tedium revolving around Speed's (yes, that is his name) younger brother and pet monkey that those sequences alone might account for an extra thirty minutes of running time fat.

The funny thing is, the film has a flimsy story, but the Wachowski Brothers are intent on telling it in as cool a way as possible. They generally do okay here, but at various points they really get ahead of themselves. There is this one temporal trick that they used in their criminally underrated debut film Bound and later in The Matrix Reloaded where they have a character explain a situation in the future that you see play out as it is being described and when the description is over the film moves to the period after this event has completed. Its a cool trick, but it is really confusing if you don't know what's going on and was a bit much for this PG-rated popcorn flick.

As an aside, I will never understand why people spend all of this money on these computer generated effects just to slice and dice them with such spastic editing that it's not only hard to appreciate the digital handiwork, but next to impossible to figure out what's happening on screen. This was a big problem for me when watching Transformers and is even more so here because there is so much color and the shots are all pretty much in full focus. If this has something to do with the attention span of kids, I would humbly submit that the running time would be a much better pander to this sensibility than editing the film into a blur.

With all of that said, there is lots of technical brilliance in the production and the opening scene is particularly well-done. The CG effects are incredible and each sequence is bursting at the seams with creativity. It's not a complete exercise of simple form over function as there is a cynical commentary on corporatization of competition there if you want to see it, but it doesn't offer anything particularly poignant or insightful (and, like most of the film, doesn't seem to be targeted at anyone over twelve years old) so if you just relax and enjoy the two hour orgy of color for the raw escapism that it is, I think you'll have a good time. The revamped theme song - scored during the movie and played in full during the closing credits - is really really catchy.

American Idol Season 7 Top 4

Well it looks like my prediction of Syesha going home this week didn't pan out, but I suspect that's only because nobody could have seen Jason Castro totally screw the pooch like he did on Tuesday. What he did to I shot the sheriff should earn him an appointment in a military barber's chair.

Now that Castro is out of the way, things should play out according to plan. Syesha next, then Archie, with big Dave coming out on top. Anything else would be a major major upset. So much so that I take no pride in typing this.

And to answer a question that was posed to me, yes I like natural hair on black women. No, I don't hold perms against black women who choose to wear them. The overwhelming majority of women that I've dated have had perms. I don't judge people on one attribute. I just think that Syesha's is a cute girl and when her hair is frizzed out she is that much cuter to me.

It's sad that I'm just getting into Idol now. I had a good thing going earlier in the season that was into Idol and I blew it.

The Office S07E12

So things are getting really interesting at Dunder Mifflin. I don't know if I've said it here, but the thing about The Office that I like the most is the seemingly inevitable demise of Dunder Mifflin. The whole downsizing scenario that hung over the first season or so was great, but this Dunder Mifflin Infinity effort made possible by Ryan is that much more compelling to me because it represents an attempt to evolve. I love that kind of stuff.

Dwight / Andy / Angela is still a dud for me.

This episode has a great fake-out in that Jim gets reprimanded for slacking and we all think that it's Ryan making a power play but then we find out about Toby's complicity. Honestly, this feels a little out of character for Toby. I mean if he is willing to be civil after all of the mean and hurtful things that Micheal has done, why the hateration on Jim who hasn't really done anything? I understand the power of female curvature but come on.

What I like is how this incident speaks to the important management concept that Ryan should have learned in business school - procedural justice. Procedural justice is both the practice of making decisions in a fair and objective manner as well as the perception of decision making as such.

Jim can't help but be perplexed by his reprimand because 1) it is linked to his behavior instead of his productivity and 2) there doesn't seem to be any true benchmark for determining how his work is substandard. In the absence of data comparing him and his non-reprimanded coworkers to a benchmark it's reasonable for him to assume that this is being pulled from the nether regions of Ryan's anatomy. I'd like to see Jim's follow-up with Toby.

So Stanley finally gets an episode. A few posts back when I was talking about Karen the mulatto harlot, I forgot to mention Stanley the negro who refuses to be socialized into the ways of the office. Of course the real gold of this episode is that Micheal actually grows a pair and, in the process, becomes a better manager - at Toby's behest no less.

Watching the show, it's clear to me that Jim, Micheal, and Dwight represent a juxtaposition of management stereotypes. Dwight being the controlling fascist, Micheal the glimmering manifestation of the Peter Principle, and Jim being the cool guy with good ideas that doesn't understand - or is rather ambivalent to - the realities of managing people. Remember that episode where Jim screwed up the birthday parties and Micheal came in and was like "oh yeah I tried that, bad move." That was an interesting commentary on how even the incompetent guy that's done the job for a while can tell the bright newbie a thing or two.

Indeed.

I've had a lot of spare time lately so I've been doing a lot of reading, writing and work on the new site.

Here are some comments on the new site:

1) I ported all of the userids and passwords from the current site, so anyone that bothered to create an ID key will have a login. The new site allows me to assign registered users into groups, and based on groups I can give access to various bits of functionality and - more importantly - access to unfiltered posts.

2) Yes, the new site will filter profanity from my posts by default. I write a lot of about world events here so I'm trying to be a good web citizen and not put stuff up that might be too rough on a young tyke that trips over my site via Google. I have even gone another step and generated a PICS label to warn potential visitors.

3) As you know, there are few things that annoy me more than being forced to register in order to comment to a site. Unless comment spam reaches levels far beyond what they are today and become totally unmanageable. I will not do this. Even if that described scenario does come to fruition, it's still unlikely that I will do this because by then they'll probably be able to defeat CAPTCHAs and mandatory registrations as well.

4) Speaking of spam. I need to get the new site plumbing exposed to the Internet, so I set up a test site running the RZMCOM5 engine and I am linking to it here so that it can interact with a few spambots. Yes that is a snapshot of the new site. Please, no comments right now. Nothing on that site is final (especially the colors and graphics, though the layout shouldn't change much more) and it is just a tech demo designed to test the baysean filters that I have implemented in order to fight comment spam. If you created an ID key though, you should be able to log in and the program will probably crash because of a null reference exception (the new user objects have firstname and lastname values in addition to the userid, ported accounts have null values here).

5) I also have the demo up to take a look at memory usage. I make heavy use of the .NET Enterprise Library Caching Block and the site that I rolled up is completely running out of the cache save the comments (long story). There is a pretty significant amount of data pushing the site so I'm trying to see how it scales. This should be interesting as my design is very unconventional and could either be a coup or suck royally. Either way is fine though because the current site performs about as poorly as it possibly could so sucking royally should still bring improvement - especially if it brings an aspect of database independence.

6) I played around with the ASP.NET AJAX library and implemented a few things on the site using the update panel - the login box and post search box. The post search box works well, but there are big URL issues there. I'm a stickler for allowing users to link to search results but, in the case of searching posts for text, I don't know if it's that big of a deal. Regardless, as of now the URL can be completely disconnected from what's in the viewport and I don't like that. I will try to keep the search box on the main page though.

7) My plan is for the new site to validate XHTML 1.0 strict. We'll see how that goes.

8) As you sort of see on the demo pages, the new site will have a file / photo gallery and online calendar. Access to both will be mitigated by the rights given to an individual user. This is so the tip of the iceberg. My vision of a Life Management application is slowly coming into realization and it couldn't happen a millisecond too soon.

It's no secret that I'm lukewarm on the game of basketball, as a player and as a spectator but, in the course of the last week, a lot has changed.

My souring on basketball came back in the mid 90s when the Hawks hired Lenny Wilkens who clearly believed that there was only room for one person whose last name is phonetically pronounced "Wilkens" in this city. I was a young guy then, and trading Dominique was an almost unforgivable sin in my book. Watching Danny Manning - the guy who we got in return - play with the heart of the pre-reformed Grinch in the playoffs that year, I had had it.

I followed the Hawks and even managed to go to the game where WIlkens broke the NBA record for wins as a coach, I was generally turned off. The fact that I graduated from high school around the same time and would be away from regular Physical Education classes would take me away from playing the game as well.

Last Saturday I was invited to play a game of basketball with the faculty and staff of the Georgia State School of Music against a team of students from the department. This was the first time I had been on a basketball court in years and the first time I had played full court since my days prowling Run 'N Shoot as a teen. This rust was compounded by the fact that the average age of my team was about 35 and the average age of the opposition was something like 20. Even worse was the fact that they had twelve players and we had nine.

As it turned out, the old boys did alright. We lost the game by one point (60-59, playing to 60) but had tons of chances to win. This game was part of my current initiative to get in better shape, and it really showed how out of shape I am. I don't know if I've ever felt as old as I did late in the game when their team scored a basket and I looked down the court at what looked at the time like the length of an airport runway. I'm working on it though, and even in the nascent stages of this process I am already feeling much better all around.

I think I'll start checking out a basketball when I hit the gym.

- So Friday night the hottest ticket in the ATL made its way into my possession. Celtics vs. Hawks - Game 6. This was only my second Hawks game at Phillips Arena and man, that place was about to explode. There is nothing like being in a city used to a really crappy sports franchise when that franchise turns the corner. I've been here when the Braves ('91) and the Falcons ('98) unexpectedly turned the corner to play in the championship games of their respective leagues and what I saw in Phillips arena was every bit as electric as those two years.

The odds seem pretty steep that they could pull off a miracle run like our other franchises, but anything can happen so I'll root for the boys as long as they are standing. Here's to the Hawks showing those old fogeys in Boston what the kids showed us last weekend.

GO HAWKS!!!!

Ok I slipped getting my TV roundup out so I'm going to have to double up The Office between now and the next episode.

American Idol Season 7 Top 5

FINALLY Brooke is ghost! C Ya! Syesha was back with the straight hair again though so all was not right in the world. It would seem like next week would be Syesha's to lose given her pretty regular status as one of the lowest vote getters, but that depends on how Brooke's voters decide to redistribute themselves. The now-horseless Voteforthworst crowd will probably go for the mediocre Jason Castro and I'd guess that the others would move toward David Cook and then David Archuleta with Syesha benefitting the least, unless her being the only remaining woman counts for more than I am guessing.

This contest will end in a pretty anti-climatic way as it would be a tremendous upset for David Cook to lose. The real horse race is for second place and I see David Archuleta taking that spot with Mr. Castro in third and Syesha pulling up the rear.

The Office S04E11

I was kind of lukewarm to the first few post-strike episodes, but now things are spinning up like crazy. Apparently they are trying to go out with a bang in the finale. For me, the show is at its best when it's dealing with the realities and insanities of corporate America. This is what I have picked up on so far.

1) Ryan / Jim stress
This was one of those things that has been bubbling under for a minute: when Ryan took Jim's seat upon the office merger, then with Ryan trying to holler at Karen (lame), then with Ryan trying to holler at Pam (using a super lame approach I might add). One interesting aspect of The Office is that it happens on a real-life time scale - so if an episode airs in December, the proceedings take place in December. I had to look back and see what episodes aired in December to see if I had missed something pertaining to the Christmas party that Ryan refers to. I like this thread, and actually like the huge leap of an idea of seeing Jim working with the executive suits.

2) Ryan character development

If this were 24, there would be a near certainty that Ryan is on the verge of getting killed. When the 24 writers are about to off jackass characters, you start learning more about them and they become more relatable. Now we see that Ryan is coming apart at the seams. Apparently life as an executive in New York is going to his head and he has a bit of a monkey on his back. This really works toward setting the scenario speculated above.

3) The "Taking Jim Down a Peg" campaign continues

If things keep going like this, J may never make it to corporate.

4) Toby

Jeez, is dude a lame or what?

James has an interesting post on downtown panhandling and Five Points (hey that's my old loft building in the Wikipedia article!). I was going to respond to the post in his comments, but my response got so long that I figured I'd put it here.

The Homeless

First off, I set forth my panhandling position on this site four years ago to the day and I also elaborated on this issue in my ATL podcast back in 05. To briefly recap, I got over the panhandling thing years ago. I have lived and worked downtown for almost ten years and walk among plenty of homeless people whenever I leave the house. Right now, I don't know what's worse, the fact that these people are homeless, or the fact that so many people feel like they are entitled to be shielded from the reality of urban homelessness when they enter urban centers. It is incredible how disrespectful some of us can be to a person simply asking for change.

Or worse. I was once at Supreme Fish Delight on Auburn Ave. (how many strange stories have I started like that) when a group of middle aged women ran into the restaurant screaming and yelling for help. As soon as they saw me, the only man in the restaurant, they ran toward me. At this point, I didn't know what to think as this wasn't a typical response to a robbery or accident. Once they got behind me, the source of their fear stumbled through the door - a clearly mentally deranged homeless man wandering aimlessly in a zombie-like stupor. I tried my best to contain my laughter as the cashier sternly told the intruder to leave, which he did promptly.

I guess I can see how these women could be scared. I mean a dude whose brain is so mushed that he mumbles a bunch of non-words, stumbles instead of walks, and holds his arms in front of himself like a Praying Mantis that happens to be black wouldn't be a settling sight for the average uninitiated tourist. However, this guy - like the overwhelming majority of the homeless downtown - was completely harmless and would respond to a simple "leave me alone." Contrary to popular belief, ignoring beggars is much less effective than looking them in the eye and firmly telling them that you have nothing for them. These people are human beings and, amazingly enough, common courtesy will go a way to getting you on your way. There are absolutely outliers, but I can't recall any sort of problem with a homeless person in years once I figured out how to best communicate with them. So many times I have gotten responses like "God bless you sir, and thank you for at least looking at me when you spoke."

Five Points

I guess I have a completely different view of Five Points. James mentions how the little plaza outside of the old World of Coke is dead during the week. To the extent that this is true, it's to be expected since the World of Coke is now gone and there is nothing over there outside of the Braves shuttle. Also, the fountain - like all others in the city - is shut down so the draw isn't quite what it used to be. Still, on the weekends and lunch time during the week - when the Underground is at its peak utilization - you'll see plenty of people out there regardless of the absence of the WoC. I saw at least ten people lounging there today during lunch, and I took a really early lunch.

However, if the diversity of the crowd is the concern, that could be an issue. At least on the weekends. The tourist trap nature of the Underground brings lots of outsiders, but more of the regulars are black and I think that's just being accepted as the way it's going to be. I talk to plenty of white tourists in the area (I must have some "ask me for directions" pheromone in my chemical composition) and they are almost always positive about the area - going out of their way to say so - so it can't be all bad. It also seems like those night clubs do okay, but I say that as a guy who doesn't go to clubs but walks past the Underground late at night fairly frequently.

Anyhow, my Downtown Unification Theory has always been that if Five Points is going to be what it should - that would be a hub of downtown activity - connecting it to Centennial Park is the key. The problem with doing this via Marietta Street is that there are several buildings there that darken the path at night (State Bar, AJC, Telecom Tower, DFACS, HUD, etc) and offer little value to the visitor during the day. Luckie Street could also serve this purpose but at LEAST two of the parking lots there would have to be replaced by buildings that contain some sort of restaurants or entertainment. Right now the street lining is too perforated and not inviting enough for any tourist to really want to explore it much further than the Super 8 Motel. If the lot across from 123 Luckie were replaced with a nice development putting more stuff to do on the street that would be a big improvement.

Luckie could provide a corridor from Centennial Park to Woodruff Park, and decent storefronts down Peachtree (which it arguably has now, but most places close when the students aren't around) could push people to the Underground. It would also put Broad Street - one of the jewels of the Fairlie Poplar District (a jewel unto itself) - in play on the weekends, though the business owners there seem to clean up so much during the week that they may not care about weekend business. Even still, there is lots of room for Forsyth to accommodate people as well on the way to the Five Points MARTA station. A key to this happening would be some decent storefronts in the Grant Building.

This also puts Auburn Ave. in play potentially, but there is too much dead space between Peachtree and the Auburn Ave. Research Library. GSU may be able to fix some of that since it recently acquired the Suntrust Building and will raze the unsightly annex building, but still you've got nothing but dead buildings for two blocks after that which are guaranteed to keep people from venturing down that way. A possible fix for this is to develop Decatur St. and push people to Auburn Ave. via Piedmont or Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. Though here Grady presents a problem with the numerous parking decks and generally depressing environment. With that taken into consideration, Ellis Street could be an option too.

Bah, there are plenty of things that could be done. My core idea here is that people need relatively uninterrupted stretches of restaurants and hotels and shops to encourage them to keep moving from one area to another. To me, the big problem with Five Points is that it's isolated by the two dead blocks running west of Forsyth Street that would otherwise create a clean connection to the CNN Center and Centennial Park. This is also a problem running east to Auburn Avenue as much of the legacy GSU campus is just as non-functioning for pedestrians as the buildings on Marietta. I have a few other ideas on what could be done there but this post has already gone way too long and I think that I've given the gist of my position. I'd love to serve on a committee or two regarding this, Central Atlanta Progress did a study on this a while back (I'll try to find and link to it later), and while I had issues, there were definitely good perspectives and suggestions - especially pertaining to the "Gulch."

Let's keep this conversation going, because there definitely is a will to see something happen.

American Idol Season 7 Top 6

Not only was I wrong about Brooke going home last week, she isn't even in the bottom two this week after forgetting the freaking words to her song! Even worse, Syesha was in the bottom two after what appeared to be a great performance (didn't really get a chance to check it out last night). Now I might be a little biased toward Syesha as I think that she is gorgeous. Those of you who know me best know why. Here's a hint, whoever it is that gets her to run out there with that wig/perm needs to be publicly tarred, feathered, and forced to listen to William Hung CDs for a week.

Just after I typed that last paragraph I decided to see who the official vote for the worst contestant was and surprise surprise. Now it all makes sense. Well... part of it anyway.

I swear for as long as I watch this show, I just can't not feel uncomfortable when they do their little musical numbers pimping Ford cards. Here is a relatively painless one. Check out the related videos at your risk.

The Office S04E10

The Office didn't do a whole lot for me last week. I have to wonder how much Micheal's schtick can last. I already knew how his whole "search for love" was going to play out about five minutes into the episode. Don't get me wrong, the show is still great due to an excellent all around cast and writing but, Micheal Scott? Stay off the lake friend.

The subplot with the parking lot was generally lame for me as well until the payoff. Okay, the set up of the office park tenants as "five families" was clever, but that's about it. I can't remember another time in the show's run when Kevin was really humanized. Now that I think about it, that's pretty much par for the course when dealing with the fat bald guy. Oh yeah, Andy's post-meeting dance was priceless.

Creed was his normal creepy self. If you haven't read his supremely in-character blog, you should give it a gander. Some people don't know this but his character is actually a self parody. Creed Bratton is a real guy who played in a pretty successful band called The Grass Roots in the 60s and plays himself on the show. His history with the band is discussed in the Booze Cruise episode. He only gets a few lines per show, but they are almost always golden. I wouldn't be surprised if he writes the blog himself.

The Jim and Pam bit was nice, but after three full seasons of them dilly dallying around, please forgive me if I don't get all sentimental about what's being foreshadowed. Deep down I see some drama coming here. Or is it that I just want to see drama? Whatever the case, the walking scene was perfectly written, shot, and acted - like the large majority of this series that I've come to love.

- Check out my current playlist to get a feeling of my mood as of late:



- Only recently have I had a chance to spend any real time in the area east of downtown struck by the tornado a few weeks back and, man, Cabbagetown took a serious hit. So did Oakland cemetary. The pictures on the news really do no justice to the amount of damage done over there. Only a few days ago did the Equitable building get its windows replaced and the Peachtree Plaza still has uncharacteristically dark patches blotting its facade.

* Some people didn't get my tornado NWH reference. I should know by now to link anything that a reader may have a question about but sometimes I just get lazy. So here you go (NSFW):

We was out of town when that sh*t happened
and for even more NWH fun:
What's up with the hats?

- I've been spending a lot of my free time (I've had a lot of it lately) as of late working on upgrading this site. It's no secret that this is a project that has taken no small amount of time, and if I wanted I could release it today with pretty much all of the functionality but I don't want to do that because I need to hold on to that sense of relief for when I've actually accomplished something. It sucks that it has taken so long, but the upgrade has come to represent something considerably more than a blog engine update. It represents the culmination of a vision that I've been chiseling over the years. Today I was working on a baysean spam filter but I think that might have to get futured.

- I am working on a podcast pertaining to a subject that I think is very misunderstood - Affirmative Action. Pundits and politicians so frequently misrepresent AA (both pro and con) and very few people I know with strong opinions on it really have any ideas outside of the talking points of their side so I am taking it upon myself as an HR nut to have an even-handed discussion of the issue. I was hoping to have it up by now but there were a couple of books that I wanted to read before I put it up. I don't expect them to change my assessment, but even in knowing their positions I want to review the arguments in case any worthwhile information can be added to the post.

- I've been doing a little amateur plumbing as of late as the custodian here seems to be breaking more stuff than he fixes these days. One of my faucets had low water pressure and, as it turned out, the aerator was clogged by this white chalky stuff. I'm assuming that this is the same stuff I see flaking around in water once it comes out of the tap and that this type of thing happens often, but I felt a sense of pride in solving the problem. Problem solving without a compiler... what a concept.

I also unclogged a really badly clogged sink. It took about a bottle and a half of Drain O and much strategic jetting of the faucet but now I can let the faucet run for more than ten seconds without the sink overflowing. Again, a simple thing, but gratifying.

Now if I can just get that kitchen sink leak fixed...

- The Braves are finally starting to look up. Jair Jurrgens is looking like the truth. Chipper is looking like his future Hall of Famer self and so does Smoltz. I don't know what's up with booing Andruw though.

So while I was sitting working on the new site I checked out American Idol and Hell's Kitchen. I figured that now was a good time for a TV roundup.

American Idol

If there is any justice, Brooke will go home. She was atrocious and I did catch enough of the show last week to know that she was in the bottom 3. Mariah is way out of her league and she was exposed. I remember seeing her audition and wondering what the judges saw in her.

The best vocal of the night for me by far was Syesha. She has an incredible voice and thank God she dropped that perm/wig/wtf from last week and let the fro glow. From what I have seen so far, quality voices abound this year. The small Asian girl that recently got kicked off sounded great, I just don't think she had total command yet. Clearly David is the Blake of this season. I actually get a little of a Daughtry vibe from him too though he seems to have more humility. I think I have to watch one more week before I can really peg a favorite.

The Office

So The Office is FINALLY back on the air and they came back with a Micheal and Jan Smörgåsbord. This was perfect as the big pre-strike cliffhanger was how they would hold out after the deposition. Apparently not by much.

One thread that I really like about season 4 is the de-perfectication of Jim. For some reason the fact that he stuck around the office and abused Dwight for years simply because he was too much of a lame to tell Pam how he felt AND that he had the audacity to bring Karen back from Stamford and paraded her in Pam's face hasn't dented his character's luster with much of the fan base (hard to get past an abnormally tall frame and a baby face). Now that the show is a bona fide cash cow, it looks like the writers are taking more aggressive steps to expose his character flaws - hopefully with the intent to create some real drama between him and Pam. Not that she doesn't deserve a little drama for her role in Jim's shenanigans.

Speaking of Karen, am I the only one that looked at her coming between Jim and Pam and saw the old jezebel / "mulatto harlot" stereotype (think Lydia the housekeeper in The Birth of a Nation)? I highly doubt that was the purpose, but after reading a few message boards related to the show during season 3 I was taken aback at the vitriol aimed toward Karen's character. I'm aware that she is supposed to be Italian in the show but Rasheeda Jones is bi-racial (by way of Quincy Jones and a white supermodel) and I couldn't shake the thought. After a bit of meta-cognition I've decided to write it off as a case of knowing too much for my own good. I could go on a similar tangent with the way that Jan's chartacter has developed but I'll save that analysis too.

I don't know what to make on the whole Dwight / Andy / Angela thing. The situation was set up brilliantly but I'm still waiting for a payoff, I have faith that it will be delivered.

For the record, Creed is my favorite character.

Also, Hunter's song is as perfect an example of callback humor as I've ever seen. Each new episode is funny on it's own, but incredibly rewarding for those of us who know the entire story.

Hell's Kitchen

I love cooking and Gordon Ramsey so I'm all about Hell's Kitchen. I prefer him on Kitchen Nightmares as the situation appears to be a little less under his control but Hell's Kitchen is fine. I'm so glad that Jason's cartoonishly sexist ass got voted off. He sounds like a 4th grader with his whole "man this" "woman that" talk. Dude, just shut up and cook. Oh, you can't do that. See ya sucka.