"Fun" at the library.

"Fun" at the library by bulletproofheeb

This Digital Life #1: RSS + Bittorrent = DVR

There are a lot of nice things about having a "Media Center PC" (MCPC).  I watch Netflix streaming movies on my TV, vodcasts and internet shows, I can read through the newest LOLcats on a big screen and of course it plays DVDs.  But one of the best features is that I can use it instead of a video recorder.  If I miss a show or simply don't want to watch it when it's on I can download it and watch it later.  And it's great to not be stuck watching it in front of my computer.  Another wonderful thing is that you get the show from the original airing station.  For example, if you watch Dr. Who or Primeval then you'll get it from the BBC or Sky network respectively and that means you are watching along with England, sometimes up to 2 season ahead of the state.

I swear by this system.  All it really does is make filters to watch for shows and then pulls them down all by itself.  I leave my filters running all the time so I don't have to worry about what is currently airing and when it'll start up agin.  What shows?  I am currently running the following filters:

• Doctor Who
• Eureka
• Fringe
• Heroes
• How I Met Your Mother
• Lost
• The Middleman (please get renewed!)
• Primeval
• Sarah Connor Chronicles
• Scrubs
• Smallville
• Torchwood (note to self, delete this filter)
• True Blood
• The Venture Brothers
• The Mentalist

Even if you don't have an MCPC this can still help you.  I'm going to show you how to make a list of TV shows you like and have them delivered in high quality right to the computer of your choice.  Here's what you'll need on your computer:

• uTorrent
• Some space to save shows.  Half hour shows are under 200 mg and hour long shows are under 400 mg for the most part.

1. Run uTorrent. uTorrent (pronounced "mu torrent") is a really good bittorrent manager.  The official download is an EXE that doesn't even need installing.
   
   
   
2. Click the RSS button.  It should be the third from the left.
   
   
3. You'll see a window to enter your feed.  This is a list of downlaodable shows that automatically updates as new shows are made available.  Fill it  out just like below:
   
   
   

   The feed is http://tvrss.net/feed/eztv/ and click "custom alias" and enter "EZTV", the web site that publishes the feed.
4. EZTV will appear at the bottom of the left side bar with the RSS icon next to it.  Click it and you should see a list of shows like so:
   
   
   
5. The last step is to create a filter for a show.  If you don't see an episode of the show you want there then you'll have to click Options: RSS Downloader (control + R).
   
   
   
   If you do see it then right click the show and click "Add to Favorites" and you'll get to the same window.
   
   
6. This window is how you make a filter to search for each show.  You can add new filters by right clicking shows or clicking the add button on the bottom to start from scratch.
   
   
   

   Important fields:
   

   • FILTER: The show title.  It must appear exactly as it's posted so watch for hyphens and spaces.  If it's a complicated show name (I'm looking at you, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) then you're safest bet is to click on it from the feed list and then the title fills it in correctly.
     
   • SAVE IN: You must give a default location in order for the show to start downloading automatically.  Otherwise it'll pop up asking where to save it and you'll have to be at your computer to start the download.
   • QUALITY: If you leave it on "ALL" then it will pull every copy of every episode if people put up different sources.  For a standard TV or monitor you'll want HDTV.  This is also the most common so every show has this format and looks better than cable.  If you want an actual High Def version then look at the listings and see which formats people are uploading in.
7. Minimize uTorrent.  It'll shrink to your taskbar and run on it's own.  Just make sure you're set up with upload and download caps.

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And that's it.  Shows usually show up within a couple of hour of air time so you'll have it the next morning with out fail.  It's saved to exactly where you want it and ready to watch.  Simple.  I have my hard drive set up with a main folder for all my television and then sub-folders for each show that I have saved by season.  Shows that I watch as the air are all sent to a "To Watch" folder.  For example:
            c:television\title of show

I use the RSS feed from EZTV.it but you can use any bittorrent site that has an RSS feed for TV shows, like Demonoid.

If your computer or laptop has an s-video out (most laptops now do) then you can plug it into your TV and watch on the big screen.  Don't have s-vid on your TV?  S-vid to composite adapters go for less than $10 (I think closer to $4).  And if you need help with hooking your computer up to your TV then leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.

Also, let me know what you think of this.  Easy to follow?  Work for you?  Have a better way?

Apple says "fuck you" to consumer rights.

So my phone contract rolls over in 6 months and I was toying with the idea of downgrading to an iPhone just as a peripheral toy.  No longer.  Apple has taken their lovely new MacBooks and told people who want to watch iTunes purchases:

1. Go fuck yourself
2. Fuck yourself harder
3. If you think you're done fucking yourself, well, you just didn't fuck yourself long enough

Yes, that's right.  The monopoly that is Apple has gone from shaking hands in a friendly way to bitch slapping customers so they drop their legal purchases like in that gum commercial.  They've put "copyright control" restrictions on the HD video out on the laptops.  That means if the laptop doesn't get a valid "I'm allowed to play this!" signal from the TV then it won't play.  Also, the laptop won't accept any sort of OK on iTunes purchases which means you can't watch movies on your laptop that's hooked up to a TV.  Also... there is no actual listing of acceptable hardware that you can watch your movies on and products aren't marked for compatibility.  Also, if they are compatible now the hardware companies can issue software updates to the laptop of DVD/blueray player to take that ability away.

Just to make things clear: If you have bought items on iTunes and want to watch them on a nice HD display there is a very good chance your TV will not let you:

In that case your best bet is to pirate your movies online.  Yes, even if you want to be a legal consumer your best bet is to stick with superior pirated goods.

Hey, didn't I just talk about this?  Well, now either watch the hardware sell poorly or iTunes sales to drop off as their laptops sell.
 

Netflix WTF -Lost Boys 2

I've been sitting on this review for a while so I might as well toss it out now.

Lost Boys 2

What is there to say about this movie? As you might know, my rating system is based on enjoyment of a movie as a whole on a scale of –5 to positive 5. It is possible for a movie to be hated as well as liked, hence the negative end of the spectrum. It is also possible for a good movie to not be enjoyable. In the case of something as campy as the Lost Boys series I knew that rating the film would not be a straightforward deal. How wrong I was.

This movie can be condensed to a couple of bullet points, none of which really have to do with the plot in any way. So let me break it down:

Points for:

• Boobs

• Corey Feldman is in it

• The vampires rip someone’s head off

Points against:

• It took my friends and I about 1/3 of the movie to realize the lead male and female characters were siblings rather than lovers

• Corey Feldman tries to do a Batman voice the entire movie

• Sometimes the characters tried to talk and it never really worked out

At this point the movie was at a flat 0 for me, which is something I have rarely encountered. I felt absolutely nothing at all. We were all talking and barely noticed the TV unless something loud occurred. But then…

 

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SETTING: BEACH-NIGHT

CAST: VAMPIRES AND LEAD MALE (IN PROCESS OF TURNING)

The vampires turn a beach party into a blood bath. They attack their unwitting human dates and blood flies everywhere. The lead male does not want to kill as this will further his transformation to vampire. Suddenly without warning…

Corey Feldman as Frog appears from over a hill, two sharp wooden sticks in hand.

FROG: Who ordered the stake?

The audience (my friends and I) go nuts. What a wonderful line! It’s terrible, it’s cheesy and it’s completely fitting.

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And that line is why this movie is rated: +.5

Fighting the Good Copyfight

Some of you who know me better know me as a pirate.  Not the rum-swilling, fancy coat wearing type (though also applicable) and not just the file copying variety but a full fledged Pirate Movement member.  A philosophical pirate if you will.  And the pirate movement is a real movement.  It's not just a bunch of people who want things for free and take them.  Those are called anarchists.  Pirates of the cultural and political breed have a purpose behind their actions.  And in this case it's about fighting to take back culture.  But let's start with some history.

Copyright, in it's modern incarnation, started with the Statute of Anne in 1709.  This gave exclusive copying and reproduction writes to printed works to the authors of said work, instead of publishers.  These rights were limited to 14 after publication.  After that all works went into the public domain.  This act changed the copyright game in two ways.

1. It gave authors the rights rather than publishers.
2. The main intent other than compensating the creator was to encourage new works and therefore expand on public domain contributions.

The really short version of history after this can be put into a few eras.  After this publishing companies and eventually movie studios actually wanted copyright to expire as soon as possible.  Shocking, no?  The reason is the faster things went into public domain the faster these places could reprint or film adaptations of a work.  It wasn't uncommon for movie studios to film recent plays from other countries because it took longer for anyone to notice copyright infringement had occurred.  When film was a new medium Edison held all the patents on it.  Well, a bunch of industry speculators decided to go far enough west that no one could touch them on piracy and use Edison's methods to make competing studios to Edison's own Black Mariah.  These people went so far west the got to California and founded Hollywood.

Once communication grew to the point that simply moving far away couldn't stop people from noticing copyright infringement these producers and distributors of media realized that there was more money to be had in owning rights than in stealing them.  If they couldn't make money from stealing other people's works then they could make money be ensuring no one stole from them.  So producers became right owners.  At this point, when it became more lucrative to own rights, sudden;y legislation started popping up to extend copyright lifespans.  At the forefront of this modern pro-copyright fight has been Disney.  Originally the character of Mickey Mouse was supposed to  become public domain sometime in the mid 80s but they passed a law to extend rights until the early 2000s. Then when that came close they pushed through more law so that now he's owned until 2019 (although there is some evidence that the Steamboat Willy version of Mickey Mouse is public domain ).  This is all very ironic since Disney has been screwed out of their first mascot by bad copyright choices as well  as basing most of their famous movies on public domain stories while still having yet to contribute anything back to the public domain.

When modern copyright first started it gave the creator rights for 14 years starting at the date of publication.  Now works can be held by the production company for 94 years after the death of the creator.  This is particularly distressing when you realize that the original goal of copyright (starting with the Statute of Anne) was to encourage people to write so that the public domain could expand.  At the time there was no long tail market so 14 years as an acceptable lifespan of a written work.  When the US colonies adopted similar law they did so with the idea of creating a thriving intellectual marketplace.  That is irony.

History lesson over.  Contemporary lesson begins.  Now that you have all that in context perhaps you can see what pirates are fighting for.  And by pirates I don't just mean file copiers.  I mean people who want ideas to be free after a reasonable commercial life.  People who see expanding legislation as a protective measure not just for companies but against citizens.  Pirates and copyfighters (copyright fight) are locked in a conflict over culture.  Can you imagine if fairy-tales were still copyrighted?  Disney would be nothing.  Because of both real and perceived copyright laws people are now being told at drugstores that they cannot make enlargements of 100 year old family portraits.  Hell, there are cases where photo counter workers are in such fear that they refuse to make copies of photos that the customer has taken because they might be professional.  It's strange how fear has always ruled the modern copyright industry, because copyright is now a moneymaking industry on it's own, though copying technology has almost always led to improved production for these same fearful tyrants of rights.

VCRs were fought when they first came out.  Movie companies feared it would be the end of theaters.  If you could watch a movie whenever you wanted at home, copied even, then no one would pay to see them ever again.  And now we have an enormous and thriving home movie market that rivals that of theaters but still pays the production companies.  They're reaping the benefits from two markets, one (movie production) was based on copyright infringement and the other (home theaters) they fought tooth and nail out of fear.  The same thing happened with audio cassettes.  And let's not forget Napster.  MP3s are encoded using a method that was made for compressing the audio tracks on DVDs.  Someone took that software (piracy) and made a method of encoding CDs (piracy).  Today iTunes and self-publishing albums have shifted the consumer music market, making more distribution and production cheaper, creating a more versatile product and making the end result both more lucrative to make and cheaper to buy.  Yet all of this started with piracy and the music industry is still throwing tantrums about this technology.  Still not fully accepted but getting there is the home-brew game industry.  You can see this by the Wiiware market and the XBox arcade where you can purchase games made by regular people.  On previous systems you had to violate warranty and possibly law to modify systems play these types of games.

The pattern throughout the history of copyright and advancement seems to be this:

1. An industry and market exists.
2. A small number of pirates use technology to make some sort of innovation.  This innovation fills a market demand that the industry is not meeting.
3. The industry sees the market they did not capture and moves to make money off of it, replacing the pirate market.

• END RESULT:  The original industry now has a larger stake in their market and the consumer has a better product.

That's changed of late.  The existing industries have become so aggressive that they try to kill this pattern of behaviour at step 2.  So now we see the following emerging trend:

1. An industry and market exists.
2. A small number of pirates use technology to make some sort of innovation.  This innovation fills a market demand that the industry is not meeting.
3. The industry fights back, introducing stricter laws, restrictive end user license agreements and media crippling DRM.
4. The pirates keep control of the new market and their numbers grow.
5. Steps 3 and 4 repeat ad infinitum.

• END RESULT:  The market is never brought into the mainstream so piracy starts to take away from the industries base of users.  In addition the regular consumer ends up getting a product that is increasingly faulty while pirates end up with a product that is increasingly superior.

That doesn't  look too good but that's how things are going.  We're entering markets where pirated goods are surpassing legitimate ones in quality.  Don't believe me?  How about another list:

• CDs  A while back Sony tried to DRM a bunch of CDs so people couldn't transfer them to MP3 players.  They ended up installing virii on a large number of computers and had to replace all infected CDs.  It was better to pirate the music even if you had purchased the CD rather than using the official product.
• DVDs Most DVDs have basic copy protection on them making it a pain to transfer a movie from DVD to, say, an iPhone.  However, you own that movie.  It's already a digital copy and should transfer with a single step.  But you're supposed to buy a DVD and a copy from iTunes.  It's better to rip the DVD yourself but while making a backup of your own movie is legal it is illegal to break through that basic copy protection.
• Downloadable TV shows  While sites like Hulu.com are making real progress in streaming TV shows it's still not completely convenient.  If you use bittorrent to download a TV show you can watch it on your laptop without an internet connection, put it on a DVD to see on your TV the way god intended or drop it on your iPhone for the road.  Not only that but shows tend to appear online within hours of air time rather than up to 8 days later.  What if you miss Heroes or House and want to watch it that night?  Hulu says you're boned but the open waters of bittorrent "piracy" can deliver that product in a superior format at higher quality with little wait.

 

Star Wars  Yes, Star Wars fits this same format, though on a much smaller scale.  Lucas made Star Wars, a great set of movies.  Think of that as the market: Star Wars is a market.  Well, to "improve" upon it he made the special editions.  Han shoots first and the fans rebel.  There was such an outcry that VHS and even Laserdisc rips started making the rounds.  Fans wanted Han as a scoundrel and there was to be no ghost of Hayden Christensen at the end of Return of the Jedi!  Lucas saw this and eventually re-re-re-released the movies on DVD with both the special version as well as the original.  The end result is more money to him and a better product back to the fans.  Piracy can be used as tool to fill in gaps for supply and demand.  And historically piracy either made up a small portion of consumers or evolved into a whole industry on it's own.

 

At this point in time the MPAA and RIAA have a guilty until proven innocent mentality.  They champion enforcement over innovation even at the expense of their consumer base and product quality.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is used as a blanket buzz-word to scare people.  That is the act that makes breaking copy protection a violation regardless of whether the user/owner has the right to the copy protected material.  That's like buying a house but then having to pay a toll at the doorway to each room you want to enter.  That's called bullshit.  It forces regular consumers to become criminals just to use the items they have purchased.  Maybe that means these laws that were meant to protect creators and enhance the public domain have strayed a little far from acceptable.  Out of fear Canadian law makers are claiming that bittorrent should be illegal but that's tantamount to saying the internet is legal but HTTP is not.  Artists are seeing less return on their music while producers see more at the same time that fans are being sued on the artist's behalf.

And that is what pirates and copyfighters are trying to fix.  By keeping the innovative side piracy alive we're pushing at laws and technology to help everyone enjoy their purchases more which in turn leads to more purchases.  There are things we're doing with media that we'd gladly pay for except no one offers it as a product.  I copy multi-DVD sets to my media center PC so I can watch season of shows at a time.  I trade movies and series online that have never been released to the public or even aired on TV.  I pull the DRM off audio books not to save money (they're library copies) but so I can put them on an iPod or my iRiver because the Microsoft DRM no longer works after I put an open source operating system on my MP3 player.  I sometimes download digital comics because I can then, under Fair Use, use the images to do illustrated reviews which in turn can increase buyer numbers.  It's not about stealing.  It's about improving the world.  US copyright was supposed to be a tool to encourage creators to add to the public domain by giving them rights for the main lifetime of their works.  Now copyright is a battle between consumers and options-holders while the creators are mostly pushed to the sidelines.  No one benefits from that situation except for middlemen right holders.  That's not how our idyllic intellectual market should work.

I hope that helps clarify why pirates aren't just thieves as well as why consumers are becoming thieves out of necessity.  It's a complicated battleground, part of it based in the court systems and part of it in the underground digital market. 

And guess what: I want to help everyone out on this rickety ground.  So I'm going to start up a series of blogs called This Digital Life.  I'll be telling you how to do things with technology that are (most likely) free and (hopefully) useful.  I'll tell you how to get a poor man's push-mail so you know when people have sent you mail without a computer or fancy phone at hand.  I'll show you how to create a free "personal assistant" to send you e-mail, twitters and texts to remind you to do things and keep track of your schedule, as well as take notes and remember things for you.  Oh, and it's run by e-mail or voice.  And because this all came to me over this copyfight article the first installment will tell you how to skip over Tivo, Hulu and commercials to get TV delivered to you. All the shows you want, anywhere you want, the same day as they air.  For free.  And it's (pretty) legal.

But to cap off this post here are some link you might want to go through to get more information on all of this as well as jump into the underground legal-illegal world of being a consumer.

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A great episode of the Canadian radio show Ideas entitled "Who Owns Ideas?"   Grab it while you can because their web site says: "The Best of Ideas podcast is updated every Monday. Please note: podcasts are archived for 4 weeks only. Due to copyright restrictions not all Ideas programs are available for podcast."
But don't worry.  Since I downloaded it to my computer I have a copy I can share if it's rotated off the site.  Just let me know you need it.

 

The Pirate's Dilemma  While at times a bit heavy handed or hokey this is still a great source to explain the copyfight landscape and get some historical background from real examples.  When you go to purchase it you can name any price, even $0 if that's all you can afford.  Buy it for free and then pay for a second copy if you love it.  Do take note of the self-defeating copyright notice inside the book and revel in the irony.  Revel!

FairUse4WM  This nifty little program will let you convert DRMed WMA and WMV media files to unprotected files.  This only works on media you have the licence to access.  Also, Microsoft stopped fighting the guy who made this.  This will let you free media you already have the right to from the following sources:

• Library audio books from many internet sources
• Amazon unboxed rentals that are set to expire or not be transferred
• Any other service that delivers controlled media through the Windows Media DRM

DVD Shrink   This will let you take a DVD and re-encode it.  You can shrink DVDs down to fit on a single layer DVD even if the original is dual layer and too big.  The up sides to this are letting you take off audio languages you don't want/need as well as making the copy region free so you can get foreign DVDs to work on your DVD player.  See, another market demand that was put in place by distributors to provide more licencing fees to them and an inferior product to you.

DVD Decrypter   Oh no!  The DVD you want to make region free is copy protected and DVD Shrink can't help you out!  Never fear.  This will analyze the protection scheme and create an image that you can then re-process in DVD Shrink or any other DVD program.

RipIt4Me Some studios are getting tricky and creating dead regions on DVDs so while DVD players don't notice them computers do and get hung up.  It's literally media made faulty.  This is yet another program that actually runs on top of DVD Decrypter that will drop out these dead spots and intentional disc errors.  It actually fixes media that was made faulty on purpose.

That's all for now.  Keep an eye out for the first in the This Digital Life series.  If there's anything you've heard of that you want to know how to do, drop me a line about it.  If there's something that you want but don't know if it can be done, let me know as well.  I'll be looking for topics to address and will keep the series of how-to's going as long as i have ideas and requests.

Next time - free high quality commercial free TV that you can have delivered to your computer.

Blacks and the Prop 8 vote

I was listening to my podcasts at work today and I came across an op-ed interview with Jasmyne Cannick.  She wrote an op-ed for the LA Times about why blacks voted in favour of banning gay marriage 2 to 1.  While she repeatedly claims to be writing from the perspective of a black lesbian she really writes as a black who happens to be a lesbian.  The difference?  She complains about not being accepted by the gay and lesbian community simply because she's black and they don't treat her differently than whites.

One phrase that she kept pushing in the interview was referring to "our civil rights movement" in terms of civil rights being an exclusively black issue.  The movement doesn't specifically reach out to her as a black person, but has been treating her like everyone else.  Like a normal human being.

Her main argument about how the gay and lesbian movement has been campaigning his that they are calling for civil rights.  This, of course, triggers memories of segregation and blacks not being able to have inter-racial marriages or (in some states) marry at all.  Since that civil rights movement was mobilized by church-going members of the African American community they equate civil rights with church and gay marriage doesn't mesh with that.  She goes on to state that civil rights, to blacks, strictly means in regard to the black church and will continue to mean this "til the end of time".  Finally, Cannick declares that in order to reach the black community about gay marriage it needs to be addressed as a religious issue.

Excuse me?  Why does the black community get exclusive claim on all civil rights?  Why do civil rights need to be argued in relative terms of religion?  HINT: key word is civil.  It seems that she's trying to take this concept of a basic human right and say that white gays and lesbians need to not use black words and then pander to a religious mentality.  This is absurd to the extreme.

The real kicker was when a caller from Arizona phoned in.  He stated that he is gay and Hispanic and does not see the logic of her argument at all.  From his point of view it seemed she was advocating one minority oppressing another.  He mentioned how it was absurd that she was saying it is fine for the blacks to argue against it in terms of biblical interpretation when whites justified slavery with the same argument.  Here's a bullet list of her response to these statements:

• She's "heard it all before"
• Voting for Obama is more important than gay marriage
• gay marriage is a "secondary issue"
• Neither the caller nor the gay and lesbian community can tell black people what their priorities should be unless they are black

My favourite line was when she admitted she was ashamed of the black response to proposition 8 but it was a "conversation for black folks amongst black folks".  Really.  But then she goes on.

• activists should have tried to get black people registered to vote and then brought up prop. 8 (one presumes in a religious argument)
• why didn't these activists go to non-gentrified neighborhoods like Watts and Compton?

Are you shitting me?  Cannick, did you not just bitch about people telling you what your priorities should be?  Are you now dictating other people's priorities?  Are you then challenging these people to canvas to people you have stated are motivated by biblical texts to be against their lifestyle?  Are you not worried that these people who want civil rights might be attacked for using the term civil rights and living "sinfully"?

My mind has been blown by this woman.  Civil rights can only be doled out to one ethnic group, homosexuals can't argue for civil rights unless they are A) black and B) base their arguments in terms of Christianity.  Gay rights activists have their priorities out of order but cannot confront you about what civil issues should be addressed because that would infringe on your priorities.  And while these activists have been arguing for gay marriage as a basic human right they really should have changed their entire perspective to make it about race.  Not only that, but their canvasing about the human right should also have really been about... race.

I think something in my head popped.  Because looking back all I see is someone arguing that they should be treated differently (and better, at that) because of their skin colour, that anyone talking to them dare not speak in anything other than statments revolving around their own religion and that civil rights don't apply to all people but only people with their own skin colour.

And that is how white people neglected to win over the black vote, according to Jasmyne Cannick.

LolHeroes - Season 3, episode 8

Well, this episode was downright painful. Since they know no one cares about this Villains plot they try to tie them all back into the first (the good) season. It doesn't really work because what we really need is a good PRESENT TENSE story. Heroes is jumping around more than Lost and make less sense. It's mess, it's trying really hard and, frankly, it's a little embarrassing. But don't take my word for it. Let's revue...

And that's all I've got for now.  There actually was a Knox/Parkman sub-plot that would have been 9 minutes but they cut it.  Knox is the one who gets strength from other people's fear.  Well, I'm sure that would have brought the turtle into the whole "I was really there in season 1" thing, making the episode 100000232% better.  Oh well.

Nothing like seeing your friends get beaten by the LAPD.

So last night I stayed up until 2 watching updates stream across the net of the two arrests during the "Stop Prop 8" protest in LA.  Why?  Because I know those guys through Buzznet.  If you've ever heard me talk about Mark, that's him sitting down in the first shot.  Well, it was messy and absurd but they are finally out on bail.  Last I heard it was the ridiculous sum of $20,000 for what should have been a $100-$500 bail.  Also, they were booked under a misdemeanor but told they were booked under a felony.  That probably has to do with the fact they were arrested for unruly behavior but that was later changed through MAGIC to battery of an officer.  Here's the media I picked up documenting their night.

Rick Loomis via LA Times


Rick Loomis via LA Times


via Getty Images


via Getty Images


via Getty Images


via Getty Images


From takemytaco


From takemytaco



And here's the Los Angeles Bail Schedule for 2008, since we all wanted to know what his real bail should have been.

johnnynotsid linked to pages 1, 21 and 22

 

Patrons I love

Patrons I love by bulletproofheeb

The same... but different.

The same... but different. by bulletproofheeb

Halloween 2008

Once again I went into NYC to be in the village parade.  It was great, though painfully crowded this year.

I'm not in that since I took the shot.  Here's me:

I did notice a lot while going through the parade.  The dos and don'ts of costumes has changed a bit.  While group costumes used to be verboten they are now OK when done well.

Thundercats


LEGOs


Alternative fuels


DaVinci and the Mona Lisa

And of course:

Group costumes are also very in right now:

Tetris

Ghostbusters


Ninja Turtles


A whole Jedi family!

However, there are certain things to be avoided.  OVEREXPOSURE is the key word with this. We saw a couple of Tony Starks

and that was cool but what wasn't was the overabundance of Jokers.  It's easy, takes no effort to make or wear and shows not imagination.  Fine, a few people went as Nurse Joker but that's still a wuss out.  The only Joker I would have accepted (and saw none of) would be a Police Joker with scars and no make-up.  If you're going as something that recent and that popular you need to really put some thought into it.  So for everyone who went as the Ledger Joker on Friday, you get a big thumbs down.

No shit.  Really?

The second costume group that gets a stern warning is anyone who is doing a political costume.

It's an election year so I expected more than usual (which is usually a lot) but a check?  That obvious?  That sucks.  There were large groups of people who simply wore campaign shirts while banging drums.  Shitty costumes.  Put some thought into it and make something creative.  It's going to be more entertaining and even more likely to get your point across:

Alternative fuels (again)

Superhero Union organizers.

Yes, there's some Obama stuff mixed in there but they had superheroes with superhero themed union messages. 

Another costume type that really needs to end is the "Slutty ____".  I don't care what you fill that blank in with, it's a crap costume.  You don't look cute.  You don't look sexy.  You look like a ____ themed prostitute.

This is New York.  If I wanted a "dead, scarred, child molesting" themed hooker I'd call around and find one.  Put on some pants and go find a real costume.  The only exception is if your subject is ACTUALLY slutty.

And even Jareth is wearing pants.

Ok, so maybe pants aren't mandatory.

So, next year's Halloween shall surely be upon us soon than we think.  Who should I go as?  Who should my wife go as?  We're still up in the air.  Our friends have claimed Raven, Flash, Hawk Girl.

Ideas?