::A Geek in Korea::

My daughter watches some fairly mind-numbing children’s programming. The educational programming is inoffensive and always cute, but does nothing to spark an imagination. Glow’s too young to watch anything really interesting, so usually when she’s in charge it’s endless replays of the same few movies she’s watched before. While I can appreciate the humor of a Pixar film, watching them a few times every week really wears me down. I went looking for a show we could watch together that I hadn’t seen that is entertaining enough that I don’t mind seeing, and was about the right age for her to find interesting, even if she didn’t understand it.

I discovered Adventure Time sometime last year, and the first time I watched the show failed to “stick”. However, I think there were simply a few things that I didn’t get, like “The Lumpy Space Princess” being intentionally annoying. Why would anyone watch this? However, I changed my mind after a few episodes showed how light-hearted it could be. I enjoyed it because it was throwing an unexpected twist on a D&D inspired trope, yet wasn’t so scary my daughter wouldn’t watch it. I thought it’d be a good match for my sense of humor.

Glow now requests we watch “Jake and Finn”, which are the names of the two main characters. Whenever there is a scary monster on the screen, I make sure she isn’t scared, but she hasn’t been so far. When the Korean speaking rainbow unicorn (Yeah, it’s that kind of show) showed up on an episode she watched for the first time, she was confused as to why it was speaking Korean, just like I was. I don’t think she really understands much yet, but the animation is bright and simple, so I don’t really mind her watching if she does learn a little English.

The show is extremely weird, occasionally pointless, but entertaining enough that I’d sit down and watch a few episodes without feeling annoyed. That’s about the best I can expect, so I’m happy I gave the show a second chance.

I was alerted through social networking circles that there was a simple plugin that would allow me to watch television online. I’m always willing to look into that kind of thing, but there is usually a significant downside to enabling such a service on your devices. Advertising, or a loss of privacy, some kind of trade off for the access.

Hola.org promises to unlock cites from across the web that are region locked, and “speed up” your internet access. You install a browser plugin, or an app, and it lets you access things that were otherwise off limits to people in different regions. It does other tricks, like local caching of files if you look into it, but the main thing is access to sites like Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora (Sadly, not Spotify).

It might as well promise you a unicorn that vomits Skittles too, but does it work? I gave it a shot, and told a coworker about it as well. We were able to successfully navigate and watch programs as if we were in the United States. I’m not sure I am willing to start a subscription to a paid service and have this act as my only sole way of accessing the content, but if it sticks around, I could foresee recommending and using this service often.

It works as advertised, it’s extremely simple to set up, and it lets me do something I would rather be doing than the alternatives anyway. If I get used to streaming content, and felt confident this wasn’t going to be blocked easily, I’d even be willing to subscribe to Netflix to get access to their exclusive content instead of just finding it in the wilds of the Internet.

If you want to watch some television, but can’t because of regional restrictions, I highly recommend checking this out. It’s awesome.

I’ve been on a drought for television discoveries. The office passes around series they think are worth viewing, but once everyone has caught up on the show’s I’ve been watching for years, there isn’t much left for me to see I have an interest in watching. For example, some of my coworkers discovered The Wire and Breaking Bad, which I recommended a very long time ago. Usually I just see what gets solid A/B ratings on The AV Club whenever I run out of things to watch.

Somewhere in the social media-verse I heard about “Justified“, and decided this would be the week I’d check it out. The show is a cop procedural drama with a US Marshal that is more likely to kill than capture his targets. It’s rare that I enjoy shows of this type. The writing is clever enough to keep my interest. It does tend to wrap up each case within an episode unlike, which means it is more predictable than an episode of The Wire. There are enough twists and surprises that things don’t end up where I expect them to most of the time.

There is a lot of “grey” to an episode of Justified, even when the good guys end up catching the bad, but it doesn’t get as dark as The Shield. (The Shield has the rare distinction of being so dark it left me physically nauseous at the end of some episodes.) Justified has “gone there” yet, but it sometimes stretches credibility at the lead character’s willingness to murder defendants. While the lead character is a repeat murderer, he does such a good job of being charming you can’t help but root for him as he stalks down his target, confronts him, and usually shoots him down in a Wild West style shoot out. It also takes place very the part of the country where I grew up, and the pilot shows racists and Nazis shoot outs. Yeah, seems just like home.

There are ongoing stories that might wind up turning into an over-arching plot, but I haven’t watched enough of the series yet to see if this develops fully. There are hits at different character’s pasts, and it’s clear that some of the ongoing momentum of the show is going to be spent exploring relationships that are well worn territory for “man dramas”, like a strained relationship the main character has with his father or his mean ex-wife. For a show that is full of those kind of cliches, it is surprising that I like it so much.

If you are like me and need something new to watch this winter, give it a try.

A Man of Wisdom

There is a new thick bacon for sale at Emart Traders. Per gram, it’s possibly the most delicious thing I’ve eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I picked it up as a replacement for the thinly sliced stuff that we had been purchasing until now. Initially, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to work this much thick bacon into several meals before it went bad, since we don’t eat samgyeopsal at home all that often. If I need to freeze bacon and thaw it throughout the month like I usually do, the individually wrapped packages would be a better purchase for a discrete number of meals. I usually have pork once every few weeks with my coworkers at a restaurant we’ve been visiting for the past year, so it’s not like I crave it that often. If I eat something too regularly, I’ll tire of it.

The question of, “Would there be enough meals with bacon to justify this purchase?” has been thoroughly answered. I’ve eaten it every day for breakfast when I have the time to prepare it (I always make breakfast for myself), and my daughter and I put it on a pizza we made together tonight as well. I’ve developed a musk of bacon around me, and I’d probably start consuming it as a snack if the oil didn’t get all over my hands. Despite this increased meat consumption, we’re not even half way through the pack! Verdict: Very good.

The image of Ron Swanson isn’t a mistake. I just got to the really good part of Parks and Recreation, and I’ve watched an entire season in the past few days. The first time I tried to watch the show, the first season wasn’t really different enough from The Office to justify it’s existence. I tried the first few episodes of the second season when I gave up on The Office a long time ago, but I was too swamped with other shows to keep with it when it was put on hiatus. Somewhere in the second season the formula greatly improved, and now in the third season the episodes don’t seem to miss.

I think the departure of super bland Mark was the point where the show really started to work for me. The only major problem I have with the writing is that Aubrey Plaza‘s character isn’t actually a character but an example of why the Bechdel Test exists.  She’s always defined by her relationships. She’s adorable, but seriously? Every episode she has to smile coyly? There are other women that are far better characters, with ambitions and dreams beyond men. Aziz Ansari is hilarious, cute, and non-threatening instead of being insufferable in the later seasons I’ve watched. I’m totally spoiler free for the rest of the episodes too, so I’m looking forward to catching up on this show.

Bacon and comedy. It’s not a bad combination. I recommend both.

The way one of these birds uses the word “cluck” as a pejorative seems edgy for Sesame Street. I did enjoy this little parody of Boardwalk Empire, but it isn’t made for children. It’s a pop culture driven parody for parents to say, “Oh, I get it! It’s like that show I watch with the gratuitous violence, nudity, and swearing, but about birds, how clever!” If you need pop culture to give you a reason to watch educational programming with your children, that says something about your priorities as a parent.

There are plenty of awful television shows for children, but you don’t need to model kids shows after the shows their parents watch, in my opinion. It does serve as link-bait, and does get people sharing the video, so if Sesame Street does a few of these to keep their viral relevancy, that’s just a symptom of what the culture driving current media consumption trends demands.

Is Sesame Street going to mirror the culture more in the future? Will there be a “The Walking Dead” parody soon?

I can’t always find television of the caliber I’d like in Korea. What can fill in the gaps? How about some somewhat cheesy superhero science fiction drama: Alphas.

Alphas is like “Heroes” except with a much smaller budget, but at the same time a lot less shitty writing (usually). The episodes play out like an X-files or Fringe episode, where there is a “Freak of the Week”, while there is also an over-arching plot that connects the different weekly adventures together loosely around a few character driven themes. Usually the different themes are poignant in that they interact with the cast in unique ways that make them develop their “abilities” to work as a cohesive team. The team starts as individuals and is drawn closer by a series of encounters with other people with super powers.

The drama between characters is never resolved completely within one show, so as you get to learn about each of the members of the Alphas team, you see how they grow. It’s really a very clever way of telling a story. I’m now invested in the Autistic character’s situation as he tries to earn his independence from his domineering mother, the single woman who tries to break free while her family tries to set her up for marriage, the FBI agent with rage issues (ICE from Arrested Development? NO WAY!) and so on. The initial setup for the team is that they are undergoing counselling for having superhuman abilities, then get drafted into a government agency to fight a terror group of random “Alpha” criminals that exploit their powers for personal gain or some kind of crusading cause of “Alpha rights”. The “Good Guys” weigh their choices about working for the government to catch others that have powers similar to their own, and there are different ways of handling each threat.

The series draws obvious inspiration from classic X-men story lines, but all the members of the team avoid wearing tights and running into a battle. Only two of the abilities relate to something that would be advantageous in combat anyway. All of the super powers, while fantastical, are usually borne out of some kind of oversimplification of a body process or lesser known social phenomenon. For example, a guy who has too much adrenaline and can “Hulk Out” for a few minutes with super strength, or someone that can mentally influence to tell the truth you by staring at your eyes. Others are totally ridiculous, like “seeing electronic messages” or “extremely sensitive senses” that let them hear heartbeats from outside a building characters that effectively remove the necessary “CSI” parts of a detective story since they simply look for something and find the next clue most of the time to keep the story going forward.

There are different cameos by the standard science fiction on basic cable stars. Brent Spiner (Data!), Rebecca Mader (on Lost), and Summer Glau (River, A Terminator) are well known actors in the science fiction genre, so why not have them drop in for a paycheck. Of course, the curse having of Summer Glau on might mean that this series has an untimely, brief, or totally unjustified end. The other actors in the main cast range from acceptable to entertaining, and while the “Team encounters yet another Alpha” shtick is going to run thin as they are supposed to be a rare thing, the way they hint at organizations manipulating the birth defects of people to gain an advantages in an impending Eugenics war is potentially an awesome idea to base a television program around.

I’m glad the show is going to return at the end of next month too. It’s not great television, but it’s watchable, and on a hot summer day where I have nothing better to do, that’s fine. Eventually I’ll start on the Matt Smith run on Doctor Who in anticipation of this fall’s return, but I have plenty of time still to work through all of that.

vs.

Why aren’t either of these at least 10 hours long? Both of these characters deserve a LOT worse.

[AV Club]

Cowboys? Alien gun totting cowboys? Wild West Who? My interest has been piqued. There was a lot in season 6 of new Doctor Who that I’ve forgotten. I’ll get back to rewatching it so I’m caught up for the series resuming this fall. The story last season began with a shock, and everything in the season was supposed to wind backwards to the beginning so that it would make sense, but wrapping things up coherently during the Moffat era is not really what Doctor Who seem to do.

The Silence of season 6 were very interesting villains as a horror concept, but nothing about their motivations or master plan ever made sense to me. It all seems like convoluted nonsense and filler. I like their “hook”, but their plans to ….do something… were incomprehensible. I liked the end of the series from what I recall for it’s surrealism, but if you asked me to explain why one thing led to another, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the motivations of almost anyone. There is a conspiracy wrapped up in brainwashing wrapped up in time travel wrapped up in ret-conning wrapped up in lies and poor continuity. Either that, or it’s all genius and I just haven’t seen all the story and it isn’t meant to make sense yet.

There were good episodes, terrible episodes, and a lot of cliffhangers, but I was entertained as long as I didn’t think about it and just “went along for the ride”. I’m interested in seeing where this season heads, but at least it looks gorgeous outside in the American southwest. I’m interested in watching Doctor Who, as long as this western influence isn’t from the movie, “Cowboys vs. Aliens” in any way.

Anyway, MORE PREVIEWS PLEASE!

I might be a little behind the curve in discovering Spaced, as it’s over a decade old, but I’ve really been enjoying this series. Besides the typical office fare that everyone watches, I discovered Spaced about a week ago and have made it through the first season. This is a rare sitcom I can tolerate.

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are two of the primary people involved in Spaced, and are also on Doug Loves Movies from time to time. They are very likable guys, and I like their work. I loved Shaun of the Dead, and this series definitely predates that but has a similar sense of humor. In some ways, this is a lot like “Clerks”, the series, with a group of slackers talking about trivial concerns, but it’s a lot less annoying than other shows that were on at the time like ”Friends”. The comedy still holds up, and because it doesn’t have a laugh track it is a lot more watchable. There are tons of inside jokes, Easter eggs in the scenes, and shout outs to geek culture. It’s something I wished I knew about at the time it was airing, but that was before things like “The Internet” and “Streaming Video” were practical.

Add this to the growing list of BBC programming (?) I enjoy: Spaced, Doctor Who, Sherlock, Qi.

I only watch a handful of American shows these days:  Community (NBC), Mad Men (AMC), The Walking Dead (AMC), Breaking Bad (AMC), and Game of Thrones (HBO).

Any recommendations from readers?

I was working in my room, listening to music, and occasionally dancing with my daughter in the evening on Wednesday. I had my back turned, sorting cards for my weekly game that was going to take place the following day when during the middle a song there was a “wha-thump” sound. It sounded like someone had dropped something from the floor above us, or that a piece of furniture had fallen over that my daughter was clawing all over. There wasn’t anything moving, or a smell of ozone, kind, but when I went to investigate the sound I realized that my monitor had been the source of the sound. The used monitor failed to turn back on, so I needed to buy a replacement. There was no service, or any other options.

This is the second monitor I’ve had die in the past year. I went from two large widescreen monitors to one, then zero. Complaining about losing two monitors is very much a first world problem, but it was a little annoying to need to go buy a replacement on my day off. I went to a few places before settling on a replacement, but it didn’t arrive until this morning. The stores for electronics all open at 10:00 AM or 10:30 AM, which wrecked my early morning shopping hopes, throwing some of my plans off later in the afternoon.

The monitor I ended up with was similar in size, but more feature filled than I actually wanted. I’m glad I have a rainy day fund for these little unexpected emergencies, because beyond a few basic features I didn’t really need to worry that much about how much it was going to cost me. I ended up with a monitor that can also act as a television, which might be relevant if our old television ever blows up. The monitor has a slightly better screen, higher resolution, or whatever else people do with televisions. I’m not really a lustful electronics consumer anymore, so I purchased something with a good service plan on sale and hope it lasts a few years before my entire system requires some other cord or cable and it can no longer be used.