I worked as an extra on this past week’s episode of Cold Case. I didn’t see myself at all but I did see my car… waaaaaaaaaay in the back, haha.

A little over two weeks ago I bought Forza III for XBOX 360. I played it for about two hours before I had to go somewhere. When I came home I went to turn on my xbox and I got the dreaded red ring of death. It was quite frustrating to have that happen right after getting a new game, haha. Well I finally got it back the other day and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Forza. I don’t think I’ll be needing a Playstation 3 or waiting for Gran Turismo 5 anymore. It’s awesome.

And now on the topic of thanksgiving. I recently came to the conclusion that rule of law is the most taken-for-granted thing in America. Few people who grew up here know what it is like to live without it. Let me tell you that without rule of law, everything pretty much sucks and nothing can get better.

I’ve seen this first hand in Tajikistan, rated one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It’s a place where any sufficiently well-connected person can seize any kind of private property or business they want and where the most top level government officials funnel foreign investments directly into personal offshore accounts. Even people doing charitable work suffer the consequences. If you want to give something away for free, you’re gonna have to pay a bribe to somebody, somewhere.

So this year I’m especially thankful to be living in a place where we have a working legal system where at least theoretically, no one is above the law, not even the president.

Once again, happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

-Bryan

P.S. Dear Sarah Palin, if you didn’t want your pictures to be used “out of context” (ie. not the context you intended), you shouldn’t have gone and pursued fame. Every celebrity knows that the person who takes the picture owns the rights, not the person in the picture. Ain’t you ever heard of the paparazzi? Or could you not see them from Alaska? Haha. And to everybody else — never take a picture or video of anything you don’t want appearing on the Internet. Words to live by.

P.P.S. Dear Apple, I find it rather weaksauce that Safari’s spellchecking dictionary does not include the word “Tajikistan”, or “weaksauce”, for that matter.

Maybe the idea is that when you start a report with, “[Some Newspaper] is reporting that [So and So] is saying [such and such],” it absolves you of having to do any fact checking. After all, if you get something wrong, you can just claim that you were reporting what someone else reported! Is there any such thing as journalistic integrity anymore?

A big problem with this is the way the media will quickly latch onto a story and repeat what someone else has said — misinformation is often being fed under the guise of authority to an unsuspecting public who rightly assumes that someone should be checking all the facts before they make it to air.

Last night’s Colbert Report made fun of TV news coverage of a supposed CDC report stating that beer pong spreads herpes. Sensationalistic coverage about this supposed CDC report was spread to multiple sources without anyone bothering to check if such a report actually even existed (it doesn’t). This is a breakdown of journalistic integrity on many levels:

A related problem is one in which news outlets report basically straight off of press releases, without doing any fact checking of their own. This seems to happen especially often with health and safety related studies. Sometimes when you take a closer look at the actual study you find that these press releases are overhyped or even downright misleading. But who cares when scare tactics are so great at boosting ratings, right?

Press releases are not news, they are basically commercials. The Junkfood Science blog is pretty much dedicated to exposing this sort of misleading media reporting when it comes to food and health related issues, it’s worth checking in on, every once in a while.

I don’t know anything about macroeconomics but I do know about film making and thought it would be kind of interesting to compare and contrast the qualities of the videos themselves:

Like I said, I don’t really know much about macroeconomics so I’m not really going to try to compare and contrast their competing policies. Instead, I’m going to talk about what I do know about and compare and contrast the quality of the videos themselves and what it might mean.

Obama is probably the most image conscious and media savvy president we’ve ever had. You can tell that people really paid very careful attention to how the video was going to look, from the meticulous composition to the way the intensity of the “practical” lamp in the background is perfectly balanced so as to not overpower the foreground while providing a motivating light source, all signs point to much greater attention to detail than what you’d normally expect from TV news interviews. Steele’s video on the other hand looks more like a high school media club’s parody of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update”.

They both go for multiple camera angles, with Steele doing the classic TV pundit’s “turn and look” for emphasis, while Obama went for the much more cinematic medium shot and close up. And we see Obama going widescreen vs. Steele in the old-school 4:3.

My first reaction to that was to say that maybe this shows that the Republicans are just some old guys who are out of touch with the times, after all, Bush didn’t feel any need to shoot his weekly radio addresses on video, and his TV addresses were very straightforward, shot from just one shot from one angle with simplistic lighting and no editing. Maybe he was spending too much time (doing a bad job of) working to be bothered with getting into make up every week for a radio address?

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if Obama’s videos are looking a little bit too professional, and maybe a little bit too cinematic (or maybe like a commercial?). We are after all living in real life and not a movie, and I wonder if there is any substance behind all of this style? It’s really too early to say.

Even if Obama turns out to be all fake and a complete sham, it looks like the Republicans are failing miserably at trying to keep up in the fake sham game, which is pathetic in its own way. It is as if the Republicans are trying to project an image of being media savvy without actually trying to acquire any of that media savvy– so they just copy what they see the other guy doing. I can just picture a bunch of crusty old white guys sitting in a room thinking, “Hey, let’s get a black guy and multiple camera angles so we can do the multiple camera angle thing too and get some of that MTV generation’s attention!” and just missing the point completely.

So while I cannot tell you which of these two guys is right about what to do about the economy, two things that seem very clear to me are that for better or for worse, Obama is very meticulous about crafting his public image, and the Republicans, for better or for worse, are trying to keep up, and not doing a great job of it, either.

-Bryan

The end of the Super Bowl is being played as I type this but I was unable to watch most of the game as I was busy. Also I’ve been having a hard time following NFL football (and sports in general) as I’ve been without SportsCenter for the last three years.

However, one thing I can’t miss is the ads. In many ways, high-end television commercials represent the pinacle of the art and craft of cinematography. The biggest budgets (per minute of final product), the newest toys, and the highest emphasis on visuals out of any other kind of motion picture format. So for me, watching those commercials is like research on the latest trends of filmmaking.

Of course a lot of people just watch them for fun as well, so if you’re interested, they’ve got a bunch of Super Bowl XLIII ads up on Hulu.com.

UPDATE: They are also available on this YouTube playlist.

-Bryan

There has been a lot of speculation about the American version of Top Gear and whether or not it will be any good compared to the British version. There’s especially a lot of people wondering about the format of the show and if it will remain true to the original, and all of that.

Well, having just come back from the taping I have to say that Top Gear America is basically exactly the same format as Top Gear UK.

So I guess I’ll start out by running down the similarities:

• The Format: The format of the show is exactly the same. Three hosts plus one Stig. They did a head-to-head test of a couple of cars, had the Stig drive them around the track, and fought over which one was the best. They put a star in a reasonably priced car. They did “the news”, and they had a crazy Top Gear challenge where the hosts each had to buy a cheap used car and survive a series of challenges. It’s exactly the same show.
• The Studio: The look of the studio is very similar to the UK version. It’s a big warehouse with steel lighting trusses. The logo is the same, the general decor is very similar, and the general lighting scheme is for all intents and purposes, identical. It all looks very similar to the UK version and I think a lot of people wouldn’t notice if they secretly switched the two studios.

So what about the differences?

• The Hosts: Obviously it’s not the same three guys so it’s going to be different, but overall I think the chemistry between Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust and Eric Stromer was very good and a good fit for this show. But I got to be honest, the American hosts do not seem to be as articulate as their British counterparts. I do say this with some reservation though, as the American hosts are new and inexperienced while the British hosts have had a lot more practice with this format. Also I have read that the American version would involve more improv than the British version which is apparently all prepared ahead of time.
• The Feel: I guess this is a continuation of the hosts and the improv vs. rehearsed thing, and maybe it’s just because I was there, but the American hosts did seem to be more spontaneous than the British ones seem. I think with some time and as the new hosts become more comfortable they will become more articulate and still be able to maintain the loose, off the cuff style, and that this would sort of define the american-ness of the new version.
• The Track: The test track is completely different than the British one. I guess that’s not really a surprise though it would have been kind of cool to have an exact replica of the original track so that the times would be somewhat comparable.
• The Locations: This should go without saying but the American version is produced in Southern California, not England. Consequently, instead of all the shots in the pre-made sections having green hills and gray skies in the background, they all had brown hills and blue skies, haha.
• The Studio Audience: We’re way better looking and have straighter teeth than the British audience, haha

As far as I can tell, the studio audience portion of this show is being produced in exactly the same manner as the way they do it for the British version. So if you were worried about the format of the show changing, you definitely don’t have to worry about that, it is exactly the same show as the original version.

If you’re wondering about the hosts, well, they won’t be exactly the same, but I think that given a chance they will find their own groove. Although some of the most hardcore Top Gear fans and gearheads may feel the American hosts might be lacking in some technical areas, I think in the end, this show has a good shot of succeeding because it will appeal to a wide audience.

The general public will like the American version for the same reasons that the American computer nerds who have been illegally downloading the British version were drawn to the original. And the general public won’t be comparing the American version to the British one anyway because they are mostly unaware of the British version. So instead they’ll be comparing this show to other American car shows like Motor Week which is basically the kitchen appliance of TV shows.

So yeah, I think this show has a pretty good shot at succeeding. But I don’t know if I’ll take the time out to ever join the studio audience again. Although I was glad I got to satisfy my curiosity and get a good idea of how the show as going to come out, I don’t think I am willing to stand around for 5 hours for a future episode, haha.

-Bryan