You Probably Never Saw This Coming . . .

Yes, I have a confession: I like watching Friends.

I could just end on that statement right there, drop the mic and walk off the stage. But I guess I can spare a few more words to explain. Ha!--A few? *ahem* Anyway ...

So, you see, recently Netflix decided to put all 10 seasons of the hit NBC show, Friends, up for streaming. And it's weird because I never actually liked the show at first. Nor did I have any friends who liked it, either. It was never really targeted for my demographic, appealing instead to the naive, vanilla-white college students where I went to school and whom all thought that they would move to the big city after graduation and live like these characters do. Only, I came from that big city -- and it looked nothing liked the one depicted on the show!

Friends is about six 20-somethings living in New York ('though filmed on a back lot in L.A., naturally), who stumble through every-day and often comedic encounters as they filter through life's ups and downs, break-ups, promotions, firings, relationships, etc. You know: the basic sitcom formula, but with very adult themes considering that the show was not centered around a core family in the traditional sense, but rather the familial bond made between friends living far from home in a large metropolis.

Kraam! Where are duh too snakes faycing each udder?

I've been cracking up all afternoon to Youtube videos of pop culture movies and video games being placed to musical renditions. This one, based on the John Milius "Conan the Barbarian" movie from the 80s, is my fave so far! It's set to the melody of Basil Poledouris's moving soundtrack to the film. And oh damn, it's HILARIOUS! Especially the fake Ahh-nuld accent:





"AND HEAR THE LAMENTATION OF THE WOMEN!!!"  LOL! I can't get enough of that. :)

Granted, it's funnier if you've watched the movie before. And even more so if, like me, you've seen it like a bajillion times.

I have a short work week, so my weekend begins tomorrow. Enjoy yourselves!

Ruff, Rugged and Roker

As in, Al Roker!

I caught this skit the other night on Saturday Night Live. Was pretty hilarious, especially when he slips from "gangsta Al" to "Today Show Al" and then back again. I don't know why, but that cracks me the hell up! And I usually don't find Keenan Thompson all that funny. Click on the clip below to watch for yourself:

So, About That Netbook Dilemma . . .

I spoke about it earlier this month, my decision to buy a portable computer but not knowing whether to go the Netbook or rather small laptop route? Click here if you need a refresher.

So, like I was pretty much already leaning toward in that entry . . . I ended up getting the Dell Inspiron 11z "mini" book. It just came via FedEx yesterday!

So far so good. It does everything your typical netbook does: plays movies on a widescreen display, surf the net, etc. Since it's a netbook, it can't play DVDs or load up CDs because -- hey, there's no optical drive! But there are ways and then there are WAYS around that, which I won't go into here.

It's smaller than your typical laptop, but has a bigger screen than your typical netbook: 11.6 inches, to be exact. Nice middle ground there, no? It weighs next to nothing, too! I don't have a postal scale so I can't tell for sure, but it feels just slightly above 3 pounds with the huge 6-cell power brick inserted into the back.

What else do I like about it? Hmm . . . well, for one, Windows 7 totally kicks ass! I wasn't so sure how I would weather the crossover from Windows XP, but I couldn't be happier. I'm so glad I didn't buy this back in the Vista days, though. Phew!

I actually purchased a MS Office license with the netbook, so I spent a few minutes registering that and then testing out the various programs like Word and Excel. Most netbooks come only with MS Works installed, if at all. But--and I shouldn't need to say this--Works sucks balls! I thought I would be able to handle it, but after giving it a test run in stores I have to say I was severely disappointed. I'll stick with Office for now, thank you.

The built-in webcam was a nice bonus feature I completely forgot about. Once again, Windows 7 made the whole process of recording and compiling videos a breeze. As evidenced by the rather bizarre and late-night vids I posted earlier. Again, sorry for that. I know the quality is horrible. I'll be looking in to fixing that over the weekend.

Funny thing about the vids. For some reason the audio synch was way off when I uploaded them on to my Youtube account. The audio's fine when I review the files on my desktop. But something screwy seems to happen when I upload the same files to Youtube. I'm not the first person to complain about this issue, though. Seems a lot of people who record their videos through integrated laptop or netbook cams experience the same synching problems. What's up with that?

I'm sure if I'd done some more research I would've figured it out. But screw that! I'm an impatient man when it comes to my gadgets. I needed answers NOW!!! I remember a video blogger I follow mentioning switching his account over to Vimeo. So this is what I did. And, voilà! The videos work, and the audio is in synch! So from now on until I learn better, Vimeo will be the repository of all my future inane video babblings.

Scared yet? Well, you should be.

During lunch today I went out and purchased a bluetooth mouse since the netbook has built-in bluetooth technology. I'm currently trying to decide between a bluetooth headphone set for watching movies on the plane vs. a traditional wired one. Either way, this time I'm going to go with actual foam cans instead of earbuds. I'm tired of the feeling of having hard plastic shoved inside my ear canals each time I want to just listen to music or watch a tv show. And, plus, they do a piss-poor job of canceling out the ambient engine noise on airplanes for some inexplicable reason. You would think with the speaker portion jammed so close to my eardrums, I wouldn't hear anything *but* the media I'm playing. But guess again.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll update this blog if any exciting developments occur with my new toy. It's good to live in the age of technology, ain't it?

I Just Luv Me Some Aisha Tyler!

Just finished watching her comedy show: Aisha Tyler Is Lit: Live At The Fillmore. She was absolutely hilarious! Her humor was quite impressive, especially since she carries it through for almost 90 minutes. A much truncated version was just aired on Comedy Central a week ago or so, but I've got the full uncut version on DVD. I highly recommend this to everyone, especially fans of Aisha.

Here's a hilarious music video of her song "No Ass At All" which was included at the beginning of the special. Check it out -- it had me rolling! :)