Saturday, June 18, 2011

x-good

and we wonder why hollywood keeps putting out crap movies.  well wonder no more.  one look at the stats on this page and you'll understand.

click on this and dispair:

Monday, June 06, 2011

excessive

i know this is really nothing new - but i was struck by this experience this morning and felt the need to rant.

after link-jumping i ended up seeing a link for 'the five bands to see at bonnaroo'.  i'm always curious to keep up with music trends and i'd never heard of the bonnaroo festival in tennessee, so i clicked to check out the "article."

i know websites use advertising to make money and i know they've long been using the trick of splitting up content over multiple pages to be able to present more page views and potentially make more ad revenue - but i've never seen it so blatantly done (and if that's simply because i'm not visiting the right sites im happy to remain ignorant).

but this is time magazine.  take a look at this page the link brought me to (this is the entire page, including the below the fold area):


the highlighted portion is the actual text of the article with the information you're looking for.  however this first page does nothing except regurgitate what you already know from the headline - so essentially it's useless.  in fact, the last sentence in that second paragraph is:

"Here are five Bonnaroo shows you don't want to miss"

wtf? so to even start to get the information promised by the headline on the page ("Five Bands to See At Bonnaroo"), you have to click through to the next page.  meaning this first page, with it's two paragraphs of text representing perhaps 10% of it's real estate, is completely useless.

this page literally is nothing more than an excuse to present a ridiculous amount of ads and self-promotion copy.  the 'tags' section below the headline takes up almost as much (and more prominently placed), space than the body of the article.

absolutely amazing.

and the end result?  i wrote this blog post instead and never even bothered to click through to actually find the information.  so everyone loses.



Sunday, June 05, 2011

I really enjoyed the new X-Men movie, so it saddens (though doesn't surprise), me that it only did fair business in it's opening weekend.

Still, I hope it's quality and approach to this type of material is noticed and appreciated.  My friend Michael said it much more eloquently in this excerpt of his review of the film (scroll down for the review):
"By making a character-driven film Matthew Vaughn has created a new high-water mark for non-gritty superhero storytelling. Instead of focusing on the effects and the action, the people become real and we can engage at a deeper and more interesting level than before. That’s not to say that the effects and action aren’t themselves fantastic, but the spectacle was always in service of the story and the story in service of the characters. I hope to see more spectacle films, especially ensemble superhero films (*cough*AVENGERS*cough*) follow his lead."



Tuesday, May 24, 2011

stuck in time

just listened to huey lewis and the news 'stuck with you' - and it occurred to me how things you wouldn't even think about will date something.

the song is about all the things in life that bind a couple together - like a shared address, friends and, according to the song, "the same phone number."

how quaint.

i've lived with a few different girlfriends and i think the last time we actually shared a phone number (aka "landline"), was in the 90s.

of course, what's probably more dating is that i was listening to a song that was a hit in 1986.