Media Thoughts

Superbowl HD TV
I watched the Superbowl on Sunday. First game I have watched in years. Well, I have watched the game for years, but mostly to see the half time show or the commercials. This year, I actually watched some of the game, and this is what struck me: the game was broadcast in HD TV, and half the shots seemed to be obscured and blurred by rain. Now, I would hate to have a 56 inch television, all of the HD connections to have a crisp picture, and then get an obscured picture because the camera guys at CBS were not cleaning their lenses. Or maybe they did clean them, and the blurriness was from them cleaning them. It just made me laugh.

TV Dumb
I am TV dumb. I heard an advertisement for a new television. I could tell it was a good one, but there were three several letter acronyms that were foreign to me. In short, the add fell short because I didn't know what they were selling. I have a normal television – no cable, no satellite, just good ol' rabbit ears. When I am at a friend's house with his/her entertainment center, I don't know how to turn it on. I don't know how to pause television. At first, I did not know it was possible to pause television. So I am officially too dumb to watch television anymore. A sad state for me.

Pirates of the Caribbean
In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Captain Jack was turned into an undead (or whatever it is called) after he stole a piece of Aztec gold. The question I always had was, "Why didn't Elizabeth suffer the same fate?" She stole the gold. Makes no sense to me.

Dr. Doolittle
Dr. Doolittle, the original movie, not the Eddie Murphy remake which I did not see. In it, there is a scene with a fox. I can't remember what happened in the scene, but it looks like the fox was actually a real fox which was stuffed. It always disturbed me that one of the props may have been a stuffed fox, yet the movie was about a guy who loved animals. There were inconsistencies in moral viewpoints, if nothing else.

Star Wars
When I watched Star Wars, I thought that was the name of the movie. Now it is "A New Hope." Or some people call it Star Wars IV. I am not sure there was a roman numeral when it first came out. As I recall, there was a movie that came out, must have been ten years ago – something like "The Maddening of King Richard III." Okay, it may not have been Richard III; it could have been Henry III. Anyway, they changed the name of the movie before releasing it, because, in part, they were worried people would think it was a sequel and not see it because they did not see the first two parts.

Back to Star Wars. I can't show inconsistencies in Star Wars, not because they don't exist, but because I can't see any. But I have seen a list somewhere. And there were loads of them. I am sure the same can be said of the Harry Potter series. If you have rabid fans, you get people who look frame-by-frame. Remember the word "sex" in the clouds for The Lion King (I don't remember what scene and never saw it, but plenty of people did). Same thing.

Poe Tricks
Hidden meanings have been around for centuries. In two of Edgar Allen Poe's later poems, "A Valentine" and "An Enigma", you can find hidden names by reading the first letter of line 1, second letter of line 2, and so on (you cannot do this with what is on the web, as the spacing for the lines has changed). "A Valentine" spells the name of Frances Sargent Osgood, while "An Enigma" spells Sarah Anna Lewis, both poets whose work Poe reviewed. "A Valentine" contains the line: "Search well the measure- The words- the syllables!" And "An Enigma" ends with "Of the dear names that lie concealed within."

Top Yahoo Searches
I know Google beats Yahoo, not only for their willingness to repress the Chinese, but also because the search features are way cooler. But here is Yahoo's top ten "celebrity searches":

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Shakira
4. Jessica Simpson
5. Paris Hilton
6. American Idol
7. Beyonce Knowles
8. Chris Brown
9. Pamela Anderson
10. Lindsay Lohan

I did not know what WWE was – I thought it was a person. It is wrestling. And I did not know Chris Brown – there are a lot of Chris Browns, actually. I am guessing this is the R&B star, but perhaps he was helped by the cornerback (that is a type of football player).