Musical Three-Minute Eggs

Lately I've been listening to, as much as I can, all the songs in my iTunes library that I haven't played all year. (Oh, good lord, another year is almost down the tubes...) In order to get as many as I can out of the way, I put them all in a playlist and then put it in order of time (length of the track). That meant a lot of very quick tracks, such as those little interludes (musical, spoken word, whatever) that artists like Janet Jackson put in between songs, or old WAV files such as lines from cartoons, went first, in very rapid order.

The other day I got to the 3:00 mark -- all the songs that, according to the mp3 info, are exactly three minutes long. (We interrupt this story for a DISCLAIMER! With mp3s sometimes being obtained from various sources, there can be a bit of blank space before or after a song, so you may not hear exactly three minutes of music. We now return you to our previously scheduled programming.) This reminded me of something my former boyfriend used to do. He told me that, in order to make soft-boiled eggs, they had to boil for three minutes. So he would play the song "When Will I See You Again" by the Three Degrees, because it was exactly three minutes long. That gave me the idea for this post: the list of 3:00 songs in my iTunes library. And while I don't have that Three Degrees song, I do have a cover, as you can see...

When Will I See You Again - Erasure
You've Really Got A Hold On Me - The Miracles
Children Of The Revolution - Bono, Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer
Hello - Kelly Clarkson
Sing - Kristin Chenoweth
The Way You Look Tonight - Olivia Newton-John
Dance To The Music - Sly & The Family Stone
Every Little Bit Hurts - Brenda Holloway
She Tracks My Tears (mashup) Smokey Robinson & The Miracles/The La's
Darts Of Pleasure - Franz Ferdinand
Christmas in Hollis - Run-D.M.C.
Paid To Smile - The Lemonheads
Burning Man - Third Eye Blind
The Fool On The Hill - The Beatles
Shoplifters Of The World Unite - The Smiths
Do You Know The Way To San Jose - Dionne Warwick
Shiver - Maroon 5
Your Wonderful, Sweet, Sweet Love - The Supremes
The Right Thing To Do - Carly Simon
Vacation - The Go-Go's
The Ballad Of John & Yoko - The Beatles
Now That You Got It - Gwen Stefani
Promises, Promises - Dionne Warwick
The Christmas Waltz - Kristin Chenoweth
Favorite T - The Lemonheads
Candyman - Jason Nevins feat. Greg Nice
The Christmas Song - Ella Fitzgerald
It Takes Two - Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston
Kill The Pain - INXS
Liar Liar - Debbie Harry
For One Night Only - Bodyrockers
Everything Is Everything - Phoenix
Rushing - Moby
Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group
Give A Little More - Maroon 5
Never Can Say Goodbye - Gloria Gaynor
Airplanes - B.o.B (feat. Hayley Williams of Paramore)
Santa Stole My Lady - Fitz & The Tantrums
Somewhere Along The Way - Nat King Cole
Give Love On Christmas Day - The Jackson 5
Little Of Your Time (Of Montreal Remix) - Maroon 5
Sleigh Ride - Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra
Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane
Baby Come Home - Scissor Sisters

My Week In TV - 11/9/14

This week there were no new episodes of The Flash or Agents of SHIELD on Tuesday. ABC ran some hour-long special about Marvel Comics and their TV and movie forays, followed by election coverage. No idea why the CW had a repeat. But many of the episodes more than made up for it...

Gotham: The best episode of the series thus far. Not perfect. Still some wonky scripting and acting (I'm looking at you, woman who plays Barbara, Gordon's girlfriend) but much tighter. There was no weekly crime to solve, the entire episode focused on the aftermath of the Penguin's public appearance at Jim Gordon's arrest. I was hoping they'd keep this tighter focus but, instead, I've read in the past week of the forthcoming introductions of yet another two future Batman villains.

Arrow: The episode was titled "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak." Fun episode. Love her. (Her mother, not so much.)

American Horror Story: Freak Show: Wow, did this episode go places! Big revelations and plot turns, and guys in tighty-whities! I actually watched it a second time.

The Big Bang Theory: Big sweet moment when Amy starts to tell Sheldon something important and, after a minute, he stops here with "I love you too." Awwwwwwww.

Bones: I am beginning to wonder if I really need to keep watching this show. It's not awful but it's really rather standard. And with Thursday being a big TV night, maybe I can just let it go, or at least just watch episodes On Demand when I'm not watching anything else.

Scandal: I feel like this show is going in circles at times with the whole B613 thing. Someone needs to be stopped and other characters plot to stop them. And I can't fathom a seemingly smart White House chief of staff, who's played plenty of dirty tricks over the years, being stupid enough to get involved with a guy AFTER he learns the guy's a prostitute, start paying him for their "dates" and even shell out money for a place in lieu of hotel rooms. Shouldn't he suspect someone might be setting him up for something?

How To Get Away With Murder: After this one, only two episodes remain until we, the viewers, learn who actually killed Sam. So then all that's left is to find out how they get away with it? And this has me wondering what will happen in Season 2? I wonder if this show is sustainable?

The Simpsons: "Simpsorama," the crossover with Futurama. Sooooooo much better than the Family Guy crossover. Bender is sent back in time to kill Homer Simpson (as it turns out, because of something Bart did that led to creatures destroying New New York in the 31st century). Lisa: "Why must you kill my dad? Especially when cheeseburgers are doing the work for you?"

Family Guy: Another one I'm starting to tire of. Used to be kind of a guilty pleasure, although I don't really believe in that concept, but now it's more guilty than pleasure.

My Week In TV - 11/2/14

Going back to listing these in chronological order, just because...and Family Guy was a repeat again.

Gotham: Another stupid "crime of the week" along with the usual goings-on amongst the regular characters, same major mediocrity -- up until the moment Jim Gordon is being arrested for the murder of Oswald Cobblepot, at the same moment Oswald himself waltzes into the station to reveal that he's alive after all.

The Flash/Arrow: I have a feeling I'll keep lumping these together. This week on The Flash Felicity from Arrow visited Barry Allen (who, you may remember, was introduced last year on Arrow), with the last scene between them taking place on her train going back home. The next night she wasn't on Arrow at all until almost the very end, when she walked in and asked "What did I miss?" wearing the same clothing she wore on the train. Good continuity. Meanwhile, remember the complaint I referred to last time? Here it is: each week the villain was someone who had powers, received in the same explosion that caused Barry's transformation into the Flash. Well, in this episode we were introduced to Leonard Snart, a.k.a. Captain Cold, the first of Flash's "Rogues." He has no superpowers, only a weapon that creates ice, but his real skill is his intelligence, which allowed him to get away with a number of crimes prior to acquiring that cold gun. More of this, less of the so-called "freak of the week" crooks.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: A U.S. Senator uses a Hydra attack on the UN (made to look like SHIELD's doing) as a reason to propose a major offensive against SHIELD. Convienently, his brother is SHIELD agent-turned-Hydra traitor Grant Ward, now held prisoner by SHIELD. A family reunion soon, I'm sure.

American Horror Story: Freak Show: Remember those stories that had Krusty being killed off on The Simpsons? Wrong series, wrong clown. Also, we said goodbye to Patti LaBelle after only two episodes.

The Big Bang Theory: Guest-starring Billy Bob Thornton. He did quite well. I think he could have a future in acting.

Bones: A murder at a forensic scientists' convention. Oddly enough, I happened upon some other show during some remote-clicking that also featured a forensic scientists' convention. I can't remember which show it was, though, thus making this anecdote less interesting.

Scandal: This sentence, describing part of the plot of this episode, demonstrates that sometimes Wikipedia is a mess: "When a former Republican president dies, Olivia represents the allegedly assassinator, Leonard Carnihan; who claims to be innocent and he claims to prove it by matching the bullet used in the assassination to his gun." There's more, but I think I've proven my point.

How To Get Away With Murder: I'm not sure which had me more amused, Asher's dancing (and even sort of twerking) at the start of the episode or the revelation of the woman he hooked up with at the end, both of which took place the day/night of Sam's murder.

The Simpsons: They actually did a somewhat topical story, as Mr. Burns begins fracking, using Homer to persuade the town to sell their mineral rights to Burns (for $5,000 per person), until about the 47th time Marge says "Our water was ON FIRE!" and it finally gets through to her husband. Not bad, as later episodes go.

The Goatee Template

This is a thing?

And this question and answer...I can't even...

The Mess That Is...The 76ers (And The NBA)

I'm a little shocked that I feel the need to rant about the 76ers. Basketball is my fourth favorite of the four major pro sports. So I don't watch Sixers games or other NBA games nearly as much as I watch MLB, NHL or NFL games. But this is brought on by a tool named Scott O'Neil. He's the team's CEO. He was interviewed on WIP-FM, the main sports talk radio station, Saturday morning. I was not up early enough to hear that, but I heard a few lines that were excerpted for the station's sports updates at :20 and :40 each hour. In one of them he commented that the Sixers were "fun to watch," that he had fun watching the game the previous night.

Really.

In that game, Friday at Milwaukee, the Sixers trailed 82-81 with 8:21 left in the fourth quarter. And didn't score again. Not a single point. The lowly Bucks scored the final 11 points of the game to finish off a completely forgettable 93-81 win. The 76ers missed their last 14 shots from the field and, during those amazing final 501 seconds, didn't get to the free throw line once. After Saturday night's loss in the home opener, they're now 0-3 to start the season.

But Scott O'Neil thought it was fun.

This comment came a day after he decided to take some verbal jabs at Larry Brown, the coach of the team the last time the Sixers were actually any good, because Brown had the temerity to criticize the team's current approach to building a team: by destroying it completely.

Their strategy the last year-plus has been to get rid of just about every half-decent veteran player they had, ditching high salaries and acquiring draft picks and woefully inadequate, untalented replacements, in order to turn into a mediocre team into one that is not remotely capable of winning, trying to maximize their chances of getting the top pick in the NBA draft. Last season they finished 19-63, second worst in the NBA, but only got the third pick in the draft thanks to the league's lottery system of allocating the top picks.

The draft is the other part of the strategy: picking players with an eye to improving years down the road, instead of players who might help the team now. As a result, for two years in a row the Sixers picked players who were injured in college, and wouldn't be fully recovered for months. In the case of Nerlens Noel the Sixers had him sit out the entire 2013-14 season. This year's top pick, Joel Embiid, seems to be on the same slow track. (Added to the Andrew Bynum disaster, this would make three consecutive years that the 76ers' key summer acquisition would fail to play a single game in the following season.) Also, another draft acquisition (Dario Saric) is under contract with a team in Turkey and can't play in the NBA for at least a year, possibly two.

The end result is a team that will struggle to reach last season's 19-win mark, looking to get yet another top pick, and then hoping that their young talent will flourish. And, with money to spend because they're well under the salary cap, the 76ers hope that will entice quality free agents to sign with them, and voila! they're one the best teams in the league, fighting for a championship.

That's all well and good. But they're charging full price for the tickets they're selling for the slop they put on the court last year, and this year, and probably next year as well. Scott O'Neil doesn't have to pay to watch this dreck so he can have all the fun he wants. The average fan? Not so much.

And this is the NBA's fault. Because of the way the league operates, with ridiculously complex rules for the salary cap and free agency, and a draft system that, even with the lottery in place, still encourages teams to essentially lose on purpose, the only way for most teams to become true contenders is to follow the slash-and-burn process the 76ers are currently undertaking. It's a joke.

Here's a prime example of the cap idiocy: last week the 76ers and New York Knicks made a trade. In addition to a couple of future draft picks (the 76ers may now have 76 picks over the next few seasons; you normally get two per year, one in each of the two rounds), the Sixers acquired a player, Travis Outlaw, from New York and sent one of their players, Arnett Moultrie, to New York.

After the trade, the Sixers cut Outlaw. The Knicks cut Moultrie. Because of the salary cap complications, the Knicks couldn't just cut Outlaw themselves They had to trade him so they could keep another player on the roster.

It's the same stupidity on draft night. Unlike the NFL, where teams will trade up in the draft before the pick comes up, in order to draft a player they want, NBA teams draft players first, and then trade them. It's lunacy. Players get drafted, march up to the podium to pose for pics with the commissioner and put on a cap with their new team's logo. Five minutes later they're on some other team.

76ers fans, to be sure, support what the team is doing. They want a team that can legitimately compete for the NBA title. I can't blame them. But I also can't be bothered to watch any of their games, unless there's absolutely nothing else interesting on TV or someone gives me a free ticket.

Why Will This Man Get Counseling?

I don't even know who he is, but it's been reported that he's going to get counseling.

Why?

Because his "reality" TV show has been canceled.

Awwwww.

"Utopia" was going to go on for a full year, during which these people were supposed to create their own society. This article pretty much explains why, and also reveals that the show's host, for some reason, was the cartoonist Dan Piraro, of "Bizarro" fame. But no one was interested, so it's been canceled, and this was my favorite part of the story in that first link above:

The show’s online live feeds will also shut down later today, though it’s highly unlikely they will show the cast being informed of the show’s cancellation.

Awwwwwwwwwww.

The cast is expected to receive post-production counseling before being returned to their regular lives.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.