This is blowing my mind. It turns out British stereotypes are TOTALLY TRUE?? The series starts in 1964 and follows the same group of British kids throughout their life, catching up with them ever seven years.

It is truly amazing to hear seven year old kids talk about how rich kids generally throw things at poor kids. And also how fourteen year olds would, if they could, vote for the Labour Party. Also there is this really weird scene where a dog catches and kills a rabbit?

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” is the premise the movies are based on — which is actually a Jesuit saying. It is so incredibly true. After a total of seventeen seconds on screen you can tell which kid is going to be an incredibly obnoxious lawyer, a creepy psycho, or a cat lady.

We’re only up to part two, but I can already recommend it — Netflix that joint.

Lately my Netflix has been slow to arrive — if they arrive at all. I’ve had to request replacements for both Superman Returns (eh) and Stranger than Ficton (!). This really isn’t that surprising since our mailman letter carrier, depending on his emotional state that day, leaves our mail on the porch, in the door, on the ground, and sometimes even in the mailbox.

Today I get three Netflix in the mail, including two copies of Stranger than Fiction: the original and the replacement. The both look like this:

Both of them had been opened and resealed with blue painters tape. The original disc was shipped 5/16 and the replacement was shipped 5/23. Both arrived yesterday (5/30). I’m so confused! Who opens Netflix that don’t belong to them and then sends them back in the mail? I mean you’ve already committed a felony, why not just keep the free DVD’s?

So listen up. If you’ve been stealing my Neflix: stop. Kthx bai.

So I am back on my (culturally insensitive) Star Trek Jihad. As netflixing all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager will take literally* six years, I’m asking for your help.

Does anyone have all seasons of ST:VOY for me to borrow? Thx.

*My new pastime is using “literally” when I mean “figuratively.” I love love love when people do this. And by love I mean hate.

I love Netflix and I talk about it a lot — because let’s face it, I love love love it. Sometimes I’ll hear about people who have broken up with Netflix because their relationship had grown cold and loveless. They’d get home from work, eat their teevee dinners and never touch one another. This breaks my heart people, breaks it right in two. To prevent this I’d like to share a couple ways you can turn your Netflix relationship from sad to fab!

Send it back

The first rule of hearting Netflix: SEND IT BACK. If Weekend at Bernie’s II: Cruise Control has been sitting under that copy of Sailing Magazine for the last eight days you need to send it back. If, some day in the future when oil has peaked and a killer comet is headed straight for us, you want to watch Weekend at Bernie’s II again you can always put it back on your queue. Don’t let it stop your flow like a tampon.

Never have three* at home

If you have all three netflix at home at the same time you have failed — as a person. Obviously you didn’t read rule number one and Bio Dome has been sitting on top of your dvd player for three weeks. Or maybe you are lazy. Regardless, you want to stagger your netflix arrivals so ever couple days you get a new red envelope in the mail. You never want four day gaps in between red envelopes.

*Or however big your queue is.

Know your mail schedule and watch for weekends

To prevent having three at home you need to know your mail schedule. My mail(wo)man picks up the mail at 1pm everyday, so netflix need to be in the box before then. Simple.

Mail is analog as shit fyi. It actually stops on Sundays. Remember this as your plan your netflix staggering. You’ll want enough to get you through the weekend but have one going out on Friday so you can get a new one on Monday.

Switch up genres — including TV shows

Nothing is worse than watching six Naomi Watts horror movies in a row — except for maybe just, like, seeing Tara Reid six times. You’ve got to have a good mix of genres in your queue to keep things interesting. The next six movies in my queue have the following genres: horror, documentary, classics, comedy, foreign, drama. SNAP!

TV shows are tricky. You can’t possibly watch all episodes of ST:TOS (Star Trek: The Original Series) in a row. Believe me, I’ve tried and failed like Lt. Reginald Barclay. Try alternating between a TV show you are hot on and other movies. This will keep you into your stories but won’t let you get bored.

Netflix.com the best website … ever?

Finally, get acquainted with the Netflix Friend Page. It’s called the Netflix Friend Page not because it contains detailed information about your Netflix friends — which it does — but because this page is your friend. Why trust an evil soulless algorithm to recommend movies to you when you (presumably) have friends? Checking out your friend’s queues is the single best way of finding awesome movies to watch.

Technorati Tags: netflix

WTF AWESOME!?

This morning I was, again, greeted by the cool pulsating glow of my best friend in the world Wii. “Oh shit!” I said, remembering that the Opera-made web browser was supposed to drop today. I’m not sure why I switched into a narrative right there, weird.

Anyway as is custom with downloading crap from the Wii Store I went through the following process:

• Step 1: try to connect to the Wii Store and fail.
• Step 2: reconnect to the Wii Store and succeed (after five minutes of waiting).
• Step 3: spend thirty minutes downloading whatever you need to download.

But huzzah of huzzahs I have the web browser and it might be … super awesome?

It seems to render things pretty fast, and since it uses the Opera engine it renders things as well as you could ask. Javascript seems to work well too: the slidy effect that happens when you click “touch” on Haduken (circa. 2006) worked great. I was able to log into gmail, myspace, and the admin panel for Haduken without issue. I did get an error of “unsupported protocol” while on myspace, but honestly that could be a zillion things. That place is a trash hole.

Television screens are pretty lowres and crappy for displaying awesome things like websites and facebook profiles, but Opera gives us two great tools to overcome this. First you get a cool zoom function. Point the Wiimote somewhere on the screen and hit the “+” button and BAM ZOOM. Most text, on my screen (30″ Sony CRT), is nearly legible. Zoomed in every thing reads like a piece of cake.

The second tool you get is “single column mode” which is activated by pressing “1.” Opera has had this in their browser for a while now and it is a neat feature. Basically it shrinks everything down into one column based on “source order.” For sites who have thought about how important source order can be for non-standard browsers, sites like Haduken.com, things look great and easy to read. Other sites may look like crap. YMMV.

My only two complaints thus far are a lack of tabs and the keyboard. Firefox tabs have really spoiled me and I almost don’t know how to browse the web without tabs. The keyboard (I think) is ABC order not QWERTY which is laaaaame. I mean come on.

I think I may actually use the browser on a regular basis. It is so convenient and easy to use. Plus, LBH, I am either watching netflix or playing the Wii and the browser is right there in front of me. I also might just leave my Wii on all the time, does anyone think that this could be a problem?

I’ll check back in a couple of weeks to see if I am actually using the Wii browser, or if it is more of a novelty.

Technorati Tags: nintendo, video games

Recently, maybe two days ago?, Netflix started sending an email to you every time one of your friends left a note about a movie. Seeing as how I do that for every movie I watch, I am worried people will start breaking up with me on Netflix because of incessant emails. So here is how you turn off those annoying emails:

1. Go to the Email Subscriptions page on Netflix (or just click that handy link).
2. Uncheck the box that says “Netflix Friends - Movie Notes”
3. … ?
4. Make millions.

So there you have it. Do that before breaking up with me, please? I live for Netflix friends.

Technorati Tags: netflix

1. Unlike lesser wives, she enjoys eating at Taco Bell.
2. Wearing a shirt and no pants is not acceptable to her.
3. Grammar humor is acceptable to her.
4. Even though she went to UofR she has “Go Hokies!” in her email signature.
5. She thinks this is hilarious.
6. She has a magna brain. It barely fits in her head.
7. Her netflix queue is typically awesome.
8. She is a Daughter of the Confederacy (probably (but she won’t look into it!??!)).
9. It is freezing in our house and the other week she had this amazing idea of putting both comforters on the bed. Not as in we both share both comforters; we each get our own comforter. It is amazing.
10. She is Twenty-Five!! Hollar!

I don’t know how you can resist a movie with a tagline like See Saw, I certainly couldn’t (at least I couldn’t resist it on Netflix). You have to have some major marketing cajones to go to press with such a succinctly punny tag. MY HAT IS OFF TO YOU LION’S GATE.

Saw is intense, like Se7en times two, like, 4ourteen or some shit. It’s like the new Se7en for those who aren’t fazed by that crazy hooker + medieval knife scenario, you know, the kids these days. As we’ve rolled along as a society I guess we’ve built up a tolerance to horror movies, so each and every subsequent horror movie must contain more gore, creep, and scares per square minute to keep up (with the kids these days).

Saw follows the same premise set down by Se7en — which is perhaps a premise set down by someone else: killer devises intricate and deadly scenarios to teach people with “problems” a “lesson.” Many people die in the process. It is a good premise and this instance is not without *twists*. Worth a netflix if you’ve got it.

The movie maintained a high level of Scarocity™ while not turning into a snuff film (which according to that wikipedia article, the existance of snuff films may just be an urban legend). Recent movies have resorted to the ol’ hey-I-am-scary-because-I-am-basically- depicting-the-realistic-torture-slash-murder-of-a-human-being trick — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) I’m looking in your direction. So good work Saw

I will say that I rarely see movies in theatres these days but if I do there is a good chance I’ll be watching a horror flick. There is something awesomely painful about willing submitting to a horror movie for a couple of hours in a big dark room.

So with that, here are some films that I enjoy and can call to mind at the moment:

• Se7evn
• Slugs
• Misery
• The Ring
• The Shinning
• House of 1000 Corpses
• The Devil’s Rejects
• 28 Days Later
• Descent
• Saw

PS. who is excited about Saw II and Saw III!?!??!

Technorati Tags: movies, murder, texas

WTF?

This isn’t even a whole DVD, as you probably can see.

This weekend I Netflix’d the Garbage Pail Kids Movie — it was something else. My mother never allowed me to own/purchase Garpage Pail Kids cards or see the movie. Now that I am released from her tyrannical iron fisted rule, I thought I would show her what for and watch the movie anyway. Let me just say, any movie presented by Topps Chewing Gum is bound to be awesome.

The Garbage Pail Kids are midgets. They are not kids — although there is one midget sized baby. There’s the Fonz who starts every sentence with “AYYEEEE,” the black guy from Miami Vice who farts a lot, some chick who snots everywhere, and so on. These midgets escape from the Garbage Pail to battle the evil guy who looks like AC Slater and his gang of goons: Fat Courtney Love and Guy With Silver Arm Band.

The hero, Sean Astin’s brother (seriously), falls in love with AC Slater’s gf Tangerine. Tangerine loves to make 80’s dance clothes! But how will our hero ever relate to the uber-hip Tangerine? Obviously he will get his cadre of Garbage Pail kids to work in sweat shop like conditions to make 80’s dance clothes. I know it is weird.

Then some stuff happens and the Kids end up in The State Home for the Ugly which is a prison for people/things afflicted by things like “too skinny,” “too fat,” and “Too Gross.” The GPK’s are thrown into the “Too Gross” cell which is right below the “Too Skinny.” Who would you throw into the “Too Skinny” cell? How about Abraham Lincoln? No joke, seriously.

Some more stuff happens and Tangerine has a fashion show which the GPK’s show up at and cause a ruckus. The end.

Seriously the 80’s were weird.

A couple days ago I netflix’d The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had been looking forward to watching the movie for quite a while because 1) the Hitchhiker books are pretty amazing, and 2) it had the guy from the office in it.

Well let me just say: don’t watch this movie.

Hey, I am an easy going guy. I typically like most movies. I even enjoyed watching I, Robot. I like both mindless movies and movies that make you think. I like old movies and new movies. I like animated movies and documentaries. I’m sayin’ I like movies here.

But don’t watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

HG collects the most notable quotes and inside jokes from the book and shakes them up a in jar. Then it spills them out on the ground and stomps on them. The writers/directors didn’t feel the need to explain any of them to those who may have not read the books. “Oh hey you guys know about 42 right? Oh thats a thing.” Or “hey mice are the smart ones, also we build planets!”

The whole endeavor is difficult to follow and confusing. Don’t watch it. Such a shame because Douglas Adams rocked.

Now that I am connected to an endless supply of movies via netflix via RMSzero, I have contemplated doing monthly(?) movie night/day.

Does anyone have interest in something like this?

Possible movie events after the jump

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