John C Woolsey, LEED AP » Entertainment

Another Move in the Media War

John — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:20:38 +0000

Caught this post on wired.com. I imagine this is another defensive maneuver on the part of the networks to retain control over when people consume which media. It’s not about controlling us, its about controlling ad revenue. Until the networks figure out that its inevitable they will retain their scheduled cable programs, poorly programmed DVR’s with limited space and no portability of the media we consume.

Meantime, with services like Hulu, Netflix and Slacker I am certainly thinking about canceling my cable.

The Last Birthday Celebration

John — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Last night we had our last birthday celebration for Christy’s 30th. We went out with her oldest sister and her husband and they took us to The Shout House in Downtown San Diego. It was fun, its a bar with a few musicians that perform improv’ requests from the audience. The main theme is dueling pianos and they have a lot of fun with the crowd. Even more so as the night goes on the crowd has had some time to marinate in various liquors. Christy put in a request for Eye of the Tiger and they got her up on stage to do the Rocky montage, shadow boxing and jumping rope. Then they sang happy birthday for her and gave her a couple of bumper stickers.

It was a fun night and I would recommend to anybody that is into musical improv’ and is comfortable with a little debauchery. I do suggest that if you go you keep in mind that the later it gets the crazier people get.

Knight Rider Was On Tonight

John — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:24:33 +0000

A couple years back Christy’s sister and her husband took us to a Toby Keith concert for Christy’s birthday. We aren’t big fans or anything, but it was playing and we thought it would be fun. Turned out to be the biggest ford commercial I had ever seen. He actually had the band set up around an F150 crew cab. Well, that concert was dethroned as the biggest Ford commercial by tonight’s Knight Rider. The new KITT is a Ford Mustang Cobra…thing. Pretty cool concept, questionable special effects and even more questionable acting.

So because it was a remake of really cheesy, but fun child hood show I thought it would have to have a cheese factor to be believable. Well they didn’t disappoint. It was silly cheesy and predictable, and a little off-putting in the beginning. We meet a couple of the main characters as one of them is rolling out of bed with two women and the other is leaving her lesbian lover that she just met naked under a sheet…wow! And for the record, every vehicle in the show was a Ford product! From the Mustang KITT to the old dump trucks on the road, all the non-fords were Ford owned (Volvo, Land Cruiser, Lincoln, etc.). Except one, the GMC Suburban the bad guys were driving when they were all together. For the record, it was the only vehicle in the show to get wrecked…and 3 people died in the wreck! No Fords were harmed during the filming of this commercial…er…uh…movie.

However, I still watched it all the way through. I was rewarded in the end by a special appearance by David Hasselhoff. Good stuff…

My Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

John — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:02:32 +0000

You saw them, see them again here. The brilliance of these adds and the money they spend probably has little to do with the one spot they have on the super bowl, but the hundreds of thousands of spots they get on blogs like this. So, here is my contribution to these two company’s ad campaigns:

eTrade & their other one is here

Fed Ex – they had to do well to follow this one

Knight Rider is Back?

John — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:03:52 +0000

Ok, so perhaps not ‘back’ but its going to be in the form of a television movie. I have little confidence in TV movies modeled after old shows that most college freshman have never heard of, but surely it will be as good as its predecessor was in the 80′s. Whats really fun is when one of the HD channels resurrects this childhood favorite from time to time. All those things the directors let slide because you would never notice back then jump out in big screen high def!