Thu, April 9

Parks and Recreation—10:54 PM

So..... yeah.

My question is, how can a focus group be so right for all the wrong reasons?

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Unspoiled.com—11:19 AM

As a result of a recent news story, I was accidentally exposed to a rather significant spoiler in Monday night's House, which I had not watched at the time. (I won't reveal anything, because I know people who TiVo House and who have about 10,000 reasons to be too busy to watch it right away – okay, two reasons.)

Needless to say, this was devastating and horrifying. In a time-shifted world, where more and more TV is consumed on TiVo, iTunes, or network web sites, it's no longer valid to assume that a fact from the fictional universe is known just because the episode that includes it has been broadcast.

My proposal – because anyone can complain, but I am here to offer solutions, people! – is a web service, called unspoiled.com, where you sign up and you tell it which shows you regularly watch on TiVo (or, for plebians, some lesser service). Then, you go to unspoiled.com every day to read your news. It contains links to all the major newspapers, blogs, and other things you might want to read on the web, along with a little frame down one side with a list of recent episodes of your shows. In the frame, you uncheck any episode you've seen, and the system won't worry about spoilers from that episode. But any other spoilers will be filtered out of the news from the sites presented through unspoiled.com - either by redacting certain sentences, or just hiding the whole article (which would've been necessary in the case of the House spoiler).

The problem is, you need humans to read all those news sites and blogs and flag the appropriate stories. And these humans must have seen the episodes in question, so they know if there are any spoilers. Computers can do some of the work – customized keyword searches to flag stories that mention characters, actors, or show titles – but ultimately, a lot of humans are needed. So that's why this must be started up by someone with some funding to throw behind it, and that's not me. But anyone who wants it, the idea is for sale! Let's get on this.

And let's contact the owners of unspoiled.com, who are just fucking wasting it, and wrest it from their greasy hands. I checked unspoiled.org and unspoiled.net (also taken), but that's as far as I'm willing to bend on this. (Unspoiled.biz, I will see you in hell!)

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Thu, April 2

The Comedian Did It—9:58 AM

Our pal Joe points out an article in which The Weekly Standard complains that Jon Stewart (along with other "late-night comedians") makes more jokes about Republican candidates than Democratic ones. As if the only explanation for this could be mean-spirited partisanship on the comedians' part. What about my theory, for which I offer exactly as much credible evidence: that stupid and obnoxious people are easier to make fun of?

Take issue with Jon Stewart's slant if you want to; I'm not about to deny it. But good luck to your political movement if this is the kind of thinking that you're doing while the opposing party is in power:

I asked a well-respected academic political scientist what accounted for the sharp move in recent years [Obama's margin over McCain vs. Bush's over Kerry]. His answer: Comedy Central.

Really? REALLY?! Because when I used to bellyache about the way Bush v. Gore turned out, people told me it was Gore's fault for failing to connect with the electorate and open up enough of a lead that it could withstand a few irregularities in Florida. But now, with the campaign McCain ran, with Sarah Palin, with all of people's frustration with so many failed GOP policies, it's Jon Stewart's fault that McCain lost by 6 points? Like, it would have been dead even otherwise?

I mean, being me, and being on my side of things, this is great news. If conservatives prefer to whine about unfair treatment by late-night cable shows rather than revise their marketing and message to appeal to actual human non-millionaire voters, it just makes it a teensy bit less likely that the Democratic majority in Congress will be demolished next year. I'm all for that. But Jeebus, I feel sorry for them if that's where their focus is right now.

6 comments