Borderline Fantastic

This week on CBS Sunday Morning they covered a couple of inventions/companies people have come up with. Things like pancake batter in a spray can and a traveling shoe shine business. The last one was a pan that is designed to maximize edges when making brownies. I’d seen this item before on random cable channel commercials. I never understood it, but I figured there must be a small market for it. That market just wasn’t me.

While they were interviewing the inventor, he threw out this stat: 80% of men like edge brownies, women are split 50/50. What?!? I thought I was completely normal as a middle brownie person. Apparently I’m in the minority, big time.

I’m curious to find if the stat is true. I want to find out if there are some other traits that determine an edge person or middle person. I also want to know if this is a ‘you complete me’ situation. Meaning that, since I’m a middle, perhaps my perfect mate is an edge person. In that case we wouldn’t get in to fights over brownies. But, thanks to this invention, we’d get into fights over which pan to use.

The Marriage Ref finally debuted on Sunday. After endless promotion during the Olympics that gave me no sense of what the show was going to be like. The only thing I got out of those ads was that Seinfeld was involved. The ads made it sound like it was all him, all the time. I knew he was just a producer and would appear on a few of the episodes. But that doesn’t sell tickets.

I didn’t actually DVR it on purpose. I was just in my habit of recording everything after the Olympics, just in case something ran over. Last night I finished the Closing Ceremonies and decided I’d rather watch How I Met Your Mother (it was an outstanding episode and is a topic in itself, if I wasn’t scared to analyze myself). I had seen that Megan posted how horrible The Marriage Ref had been, so I didn’t think it was pressing to watch. Shortly after starting HIMYM, my sister txt’d asking if I had watched it. She then said that it was good and was something that Evan and I could handle hosting. Well, I had to watch it then.

I watched it, it was good, I really cracked up a few times. Still, I felt like it had some issues that could be easily addressed.

Tom Papa – The Host. I saw him open for Seinfeld at PSU and I’ve seen him on many a late night show. At least with the late night shows, I can skip over him. I was actually surprised that he was decent. However, I’m not entirely convinced that a host is needed apart from the panel.

The Panel – In this format, with little time, and lots of cuts back and forth, three is too many. This could easily be accomplished with two people. Or have the host be part of and leader of the panel, rather than him lurking off to the side.

The Topics – If you watched, the topics were just outlandish. They weren’t things that might happen to any couple. These were issues where there was no question who was correct. I was hoping for some serious discussion to go along with the funny. Instead it was joke after joke. I was struggling to come up with an alternate viewpoint to at least make it interesting. Seinfeld hit on my point for the first one but he did it quickly and at the end. Sure, these topics are funny, but you have a panel of very funny people that could make a toothpaste cap issue hilarious. These topics didn’t need help being funny.

Now I’m upset. They settled for a good show but it could have been great. They did show clips of future shows and I’ll be in with guests like Larry David and Ricky Gervais. I also think it will usually be an hour long, which hopefully will allow for more depth. However, with a different panel every time, they won’t get a chance to settle in.

The Winter Olympics are all done. Time to take a look at the final ICH Standings. Only two other people made picks. Evan spent some time making his picks. I really just picked one country per discipline and picked that country for all the events. Check out February’s IDM featuring a recap of the Winter Olympics.

ICH Olympics

1. Vinny Vedecci – This season has had some potential decent recurring characters with the ESPN Classic and Greg the Alien bits.
2. Norm’s Moth Joke
3. Five Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen, But Really Should – Check out Pat’s other posts.
The rest are tied …
BS Report w/Adam Carolla – Carolla was fantastic on this week’s Real Time.
Even when he kissed her, he was looking over staring at her sister
Olympics: Day 5 – Norway

Audio: mp3
Running Time: 51:51
Hosts: Evan and Mike

Topics
Olympic Recap
Evan Welcomes Canadian Couch Surfers
Listener Mail – Mike’s friend who has never met Evan, has comment about Evan
Evan’s Parents Join Church Band – Bandmates are from a former One Hit Wonders
Evan travels to Austin and may have made a dream come true
Start to plan this summer’s stadiums
Mike & Mike are writing a book of rules for sports and life.

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Update: Evan found that US Bobsledder Steve Mesler is a UF Grad, which was the reason for the Gator flag we saw on TV. Oddly, the link Evan sent me about this only mentions this in the headline. I saw no mention of Mesler or UF in the article.

I have yet to travel outside the country. I’ve had my passport for a few years, just in case the chance came where I might go to Canada. It’s not a pressing issue, as there are plenty of places inside the country that I have yet to visit. Still, with the Olympics I am reminded of all the places I want to go.

1. Egypt – I’m a sucker for history, museums, and shiny things. Egypt gives me all of these in one place. I’ve also never ridden a camel.
2. Rome – See Egypt. For some reason Egypt just beats out Rome.
3. Scotland/Ireland – Maybe a surprise choice considering the first two things I thought of to do are golf and drink. I’d be curious to find some relatives. Oh, and castles!
4. Australia/New Zealand – Have you seen it? It just looks amazing. Kangaroos, reefs, and if I’m ever going to see an opera, shouldn’t I go to the Sydney Opera House?
5. Antarctica – Cooold. I can’t get enough of the cold, so I might as well really put that to the test. I’m not sure there is much going on down there but there must be something good.

If chocolate peanut butter eggs had a short catchy name, I think it would replace Lent.

I don’t know how I hadn’t seen this commercial before. This YouTube clip says it’s 2 years old.

I started DVR’ing CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago. I know, when did I get so old? My parents have DVR’d it for a while and I’d usually catch an interesting story or two each week and then just burn through the other stuff.

I wasn’t aware of this guy, Steve Hartman, who threw darts at a map of the US, then would travel to that city, get a phone book, and randomly point to a name and do a story on this person. It’s very cool and disappointing at the same time. I had this almost exact idea not too long ago. It had been a while since he did that, this time around he had NASA find spots on the globe and he did the same thing all over the world. He went to three places: India, Latvia, and Oman. All three were amazing stories. I guess this proves his theory is true all over the world.

I wanted to mention how it doesn’t make any sense that I can easily find the clip I want from CBS Sunday Morning, but when I see something hilarious on Letterman that I want to share it’s no where to be found. Wouldn’t want people to easily promote The Late Show.

1. Vinny Vedecci
2. Norm’s Moth Joke
3. Five Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen, But Really Should
4t. Hulu Desktop – I really wish Hulu would work on this a little bit. I have to restart it too often.
4t. Norway Olympic Updates: Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. I haven’t had time to keep updating, but I’ve been watching it all.

The Oscars are coming up quick, and I have managed to see more of the nominated movies then ever. From my least favorite to most favorite, these are the ten movies nominated for best picture. This list isn’t a representation of which movies I think are the best, just how much I liked them. If I was to rank them from best to worst, this list would be much different.

10. Avatar

This movie is fun, and very pretty. I do like it, but it didn’t really give me much desire to ever see it again. It deserves all of the attention it’s getting, but I can’t really call it a great film as in my opinion story is most important. I’ve seen this story in countless movies, few worth remembering. I can’t really fault Avatar for not being everything it isn’t, as it’s intention is not to be anything more. But I’m not terribly interested in the same old plot in a pretty new package. No one will argue that it’s a technically beautiful movie, with groundbreaking visuals. Beyond that, it doesn’t have much going for it.

9. An Educationмаси и столове

I don’t have much of an opinion on this movie. I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. It’s a sweet little story, with decent acting. It just doesn’t have anything that stuck out and grabbed me. It’s just kinda bland. But, coming of age stories are not usually that interesting to me. The little twist is not what I had expected, although I probably should have. It is neat in a way to see this sorta movie end in a way you don’t necessarily expect. You can’t really say that it has a happy ending, or a sad ending… It is in a way both. That’s what this movie is, it’s the average movie, not one side or the other of anything. I feel like Crazy Heart probably should have taken An Education’s nomination. This is the only nomination in Best Picture that I don’t necessarily agree with.

8. The Hurt Locker

The general idea of this movie was that once you have committed yourself to the life of a soldier, you can’t really find your way back to any other life. They did a pretty decent job at it too, and delivered some of the most intense and engrossing scenes of 2009. The movie lacks the drive I was hoping for, and about half an hour of the movie I felt was unnecessary and took away from it all. I feel this movie is really pushing to something great but doesn’t quite reach it. There are scenes in the movie that grabbed me in such a way that the world around me disappeared. But there is a good chunk of the movie that just made me roll my eyes. Of all of the movies up for the nomination, this one disappointed me the most.

7. District 9

This is a neat movie. It’s a sifi movie filled with political and social commentary, with an examination of human nature. The first two thirds of the movie is something special. It builds itself a fascinating world, a dense story and a rich atmosphere. It’s just as much a political drama as it is an action sifi. The last bit of the movie turns into a real let down. It seems like they had no idea how to resolve the movie they built so well. It just kinda gives up and quickly deteriorates into the usual shoot out action. That’s all fine and good, if that’s what the movie was about from the beginning, but in this situation it just feels like they ran out of ideas and settled for less.

6. Precious

I watched this twice so far. I watched it once, read the book, and watched it again. The book was not very long for how much power is in it. This gave the filmmakers an opportunity to not be forced to neglect any of the content. The characters and atmosphere are perfectly imagined, and they managed to amplify the power of the story. They take some very interesting direction approaches that I did not necessarily expect from this sort of the movie, it reminded me a lot of something Darren Aronofsky, although that is a stretch.

Stay tuned as I rank my top five movies up for Best Picture from 2009.