TV Tropes: Waste An Afternoon

It's far too easy to get lost in the infinite links of TVTropes.org, which breaks down the myriad familiar tropes of popular storytelling. So naturally, I highly recommend it.

The hat trick of "Ten Minute Retirement" followed by "Foe Tossing Charge", leading to a "Slow Motion Fall" makes me laugh out loud.

See also "Big No", "Compressed Vice", "Alien Sky", "Zepplins From Another World", and the very true "Rule of Cool".

GarBadge: Smell Greatly

Think fast: can you spot what's wrong in the following sentences?

“With ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ we had such resistance from the fan base to changing it,” Ms. Hammer said of a series Sci Fi introduced in 2003, based on an ABC show from 1978-9.

“The upshot was, we ultimately won them over,” she added, and the series, scheduled to end on Friday, became one of the most successful on Sci Fi. It has inspired a spin-off, “Capricia,” to begin on Syfy in 2010.

If you think the second spelling of the network is a typo, consider the source: The New York fricken Times. Yessir, the SCI FI Channel is rebranding come July 7, ditching the iconic saturn logo and classic spelling in favor of a new name and wordmark.

I can't even count the ways this is stupid. The old logo, visible in the Times article, made for a perfect bug (the network logo on the bottom-right corner of the screen), felt both classic and modern, and made at least an ounce of goddamn sense. "SyFy" looks and feels like the kind of Web 2.0 encounter that makes me want to take a long hot shower to wash away the stink of inappropriate, cutesy, substance-less style.

I'm glad Battlestar Galactica will be over before this identity launches; better dead that branded with SyFy.

Think about it like this: "SCI FI" was recognizable and a good fit. Sure, it wasn't perfect, and probably scared a few people away. But the loaded term helped the network make an identity that fit itself and its viewers. Meanwhile, "SyFy" reads like a syphillus medication and reeks of current branding trends so as to make it indistinguishable from any of these companies. Seriously, can you imagine anyone thinking "Sci Fi is boring and geeky, but hey – I find this 'SyFy' strangely intriguing!"? I thought not.

But hey, if a new brand uses vowels sparingly and strangely, looks like it might sound like a word we recognize, and has a generic slogan set in a modern sans serif font, by golly it's got to be great.

Daft Tron

Somehow I missed the news that Daft Punk is going to score the new Tron sequel. Hot damn, that is awesome. The only downside is I have to wait until 2011 to see it.

Blast!

Resumé Item

For anyone who's interested, there's a little taste of what I do over at MTV.com (apologies for the ridiculous fact that you have to sit through an ad for one movie before you watch an ad for another). That behind-the-scenes piece was cut by one of our editors, and I did the online - adding final graphics and doing the color correction, cutting in the audio mix, and delivering the final tape.

More of our work will start hitting the web as the summer gets going, so there may be ore as the weather gets warmer...

[link courtesy of io9]

Wow

Holy Jesus.

This woman's octuplet-containg belly looks like a Stan Winston special effect or something. And yet, it is real.

On Ideas & Writing

Some solid advice from John August:

You’re not going to become best friends with every nice person you meet. You’re not going to write every good idea you have.

I've made this very decision myself in the past week or two, after I consciously "allowed" a few gems escape without writing them down.

A-Rod Juiced

Surprise! Yankee "star" player Alex Rodriguez just got outed for using steroids! He tested positive in 2003, the year he won the M.V.P. award which gave him the leverage to, as Will put it, "get the big contract with the Yanks AND TAKE THEM NOWHERE." That contract runs until 2019 (!), giving A-Fraud a possible net of $300 million.

Universe 16, Yankees 0. Karma's a bitch.

New Year: Status in Brief

It's rather obvious that TWGB has been on a bit of an, ah, hiatus, of late.

That will likely continue for a little longer yet. I've got some serious Life Projects that need attention, in addition to work and social time. So updates are going to be especially spotty for a while.

I am NOT stopping, I am NOT going away, but officially marking this as a slow period. Regular, worthwhile postings will resume on some sort of schedule once I get some of my personal backlog sorted out. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience, and please bear with me.

For those of you so inclined, I've started experimenting with Twitter, and may have some brief tidbits up there to supplement this site; you can find and follow me here.