heroes

(subject line is because Miss S already stole my preferred subject line of: Herro New York![*])

For those of you who watch that "free to air" TV thing (which, I am led to believe, is just like Bittorrent, but with interspersed 30 second short films featuring the most obvious product placement ever) - keep an eye out next year for a show called "Heroes". The rest of you can find it, like I did, on the intertubes.

How to explain Heroes? How about - it's a show with comic book sensibilities, about people with super powers popping up amongst the population. It's a show with comic book sensibilities about superheroes (although not costumed, and often not entirely aware) that both I (comic book nerd) and Miss S (who doesn't like comics, and particularly doesn't like superhero comics) totally fell in love with before the first episode had finished. It's got fabulous characters, it's got great acting, it's shot in a wonderful style, it's creepy at times, it's laugh-out-loud funny at others, and it has an amazing sense of foreboding hanging over the story.

I should point out - we are not talking about TV for children here. It's got drugs, it's got some gory violence. It also wears it's influences on it's sleeve. We're talking comics, we're talking the X-Men, Buffy, the X-Files, the works. The glory of it is that they've managed to make something really really neat, while at the same time not being ashamed to nod to those influences.

And to make it even better - it's rating it's socks off in the US, which means we'll actually get to see at least the full first season. With Studio 60 about to be cancelled (to be honest, I'm not surprised - it's just not good enough, consistently), it's nice to see good TV avoid the fate of Firefly, The Inside, and all those other shows which last just long enough to get interesting before they're cancelled.

Trust me, you want to watch this. Last the first episode long enough to also fall in love with Hiro.

The opening scrolly text of episode 1 is as good an introduction as anything.

In recent days, a seemingly random
group of individuals has emerged with
what can only be described as
"special" abilities.

Although unaware of it now, these
individuals will not only save the
world, but change it forever. This
transformation from ordinary to
extraordinary will not occur overnight.
Every story has a beginning.

Volume One of their epic tale
begins here...




[*] This will probably make you laugh, once you've seen the show. It seems to have become our wake-up and opening-a-phone-call line of choice. Yes, oh yes, we are that nerdy.

lies make baby jesus cry

Family First in hacker attack

Well, if by "hacker attack", you mean "they had an open form that encouraged you to post blog entries", then, sure.

The journalist in question (Jane Holroyd) got spun, plain and simple. Poor work on her part.

"It is day one of an election campaign and it is interesting that you found out before Family First found out," [party spokeswoman Felicity Dargan] told Theage.com.au.
"It shouldn't happen in politics. It's just not necessary."

Then don't create a webpage that allows anyone to post entries, you fools.

Perhaps the reason the age found out before you is because you're idiots? Just a thought.

Kyle and Damien have more.

(A pity - I was going to post something from "Jamie Packer" thanking Senator Fielding for the several billion dollars I now have to spend on increasing my gambling empire, but it got yanked first)

the glass house

I can't say I watched it often, nor can I claim to be surprised (a little birdy told me this was going to happen, a couple of weeks ago):

THE ABC last night axed its popular and irreverent television comedy show, The Glass House, which has been at the centre of a storm over allegations of anti-Howard Government bias.
...
The decision to axe The Glass House came despite the show achieving its highest ratings since it first went to air in 2001 - with average audiences of 728,000.
The program regularly outrated commercial programs in the same time slot and this year won a peak audience of almost 860,000 viewers.

What a shock. The Culture Warriors on the right strike again. All Must Conform To The Glorious New Order.

How much longer will Clarke and Dawe last? Any bets?

vote clem... or maybe not

Wow. Liberal candidate "clem newton-brown" (as he shall be known from now on) is right there wif da kids. he's posted a movie to youtube explaining why you should vote for him as a local councillor. unfortunately, he's running for state parliment.

Mary Bolling has the video, and more.

You should be warned in advance, though - this video features background music that will cause your brain to bleed from the ears.

(no subject)

THE Liberal Party is considering a preference deal with the Greens, despite issuing warnings to any Victorian considering voting for the minor party.

...

Mr Baillieu would not say whether he found the Greens (whose policies include provision for medically supervised heroin injecting spaces) or Family First (anti-abortion with a strong Christian base) more offensive to Liberal Party philosophies.

ahahahahaha

Christ. One day into the official campaign, and Baillieu already looks like an idiot. In this case, during an interview he attempted to pass off bracksbrokenpromises.com.au as some sort of independent thing.
Pity about the domain being registered by the Victorian Liberals and the website featuring a tagline saying "Authorised by" the state director of the Liberal Party. Even more of a pity for Baillieu, during an interview with 3AW's Neil Mitchell, Mitchell knew this, and made Ted look like a shifty little doofus. The transcript's on the Age politics blog.

In this case the people responsible actually authorised the site correctly. I'd not be at all suprised to see dodgy attempts at negative sites "anonymously" popping up. If you see something dodgy, don't forget to check the 'whois' entry for the domain to see who registered it. There's plenty of web-based interfaces for this - for instance, this one.

this is going to make a few people very very happy.

First up - The Daily Show is back on youtube. Apparently Comedy Central and youtube came to a deal.

But that's not the big news. The big one is that if you go to the Comedy Central website, you can view the entire previous day's show online. This is so unbelievably awesome. Pity their video viewer still sucks, but hey, that's something you can live with. [Update: Go here for the list of videos. It looks like they have Monday and Tuesday's shows up at the moment. It's not clear if this is just for this week, or is an ongoing thing - I hope it's ongoing. That would rock. They are also posting all of The Colbert Report, just to make it even more awesome.]

Finally - Maureen Dowd's cover story in Rolling Stone, on Stewart and Colbert: America's Anchors.