Apple's New Direction

On 3/25/19 Apple held an address outlining their new media services. Gaming? I now nothing. Magazines - I don't know why one would like to read New Yorker or Wired articles on small to tiny screens. The credit card thing sounds OK but not all that radical. At least they have a titanium card......
The TV part is kind of intriguing.
BUTIn the past, Apple has promoted the work done by the creatives who used their platform but in this latest keynote address it was all about Apple partnering with Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, HBO, CBS and other big boys.
There was no mention of how the little guy can use their distribution channels.
There was also no mention of horror.

Is Alex Jones an Operative of the Global Elites ?

As Alex Jones & his cabal at InfowWars continually hammer away against union & cooperation & promote division & balkanization, I wonder - Is the goal here to divide & conquer ?
After Napoleon swept through Europe, the kingdoms that didn't have a chance against his onslaught realized they had to organize within their culture. As technology advances, the world "shrinks". It is natural that humans homogenize and organize. Something's lost & something's gained.
But is Alex' plot at the instruction of the Global Elites? Is the strategy to divide society so the Bilderbergers can sweep in with their robots & drones to conquer the Earth?
Gotta ask yourself - how did Al get out of Bohemian Grove alive? How come he didn't become a human sacrifice?
There is no doubt his strategy of division, pill popping, paranoid survivalism and carrying on about supernatural malarkey is compelling - but what's the pupose? His constantly hammering away at the notion we should believe him and nobody else - well, that's just a core strategy of cults.
I cannot say. BiC doesn't have the kind of budget to crack the leviathan of InfoWars. But it's time to start asking these questions.

TV on the Honor System

Could there be another way to deliver TV content to the products (us)?
Instead of chopping up shows with commercials that people have been increasingly able to defeat and, online, can crash ones browser - how about giving the viewer a list of sponsors and maybe specific products - let the viewer purchase one or two - then, the sponsor would give the viewer a voucher he could use to download an uninterrupted show or even season of the shows.
I guess you'd have to figure out how much the sponsor usually receives from $ and unit sales. This method, however, would have the added effect of a confirmed sale and, issuing coupons, could confirm repeat sales.
The viewer would get a better experience and the sponsor would get better data.
I guess the only real drawback would be the viewer having to sit down and look thru the sponsors & their ads & buying shit online in advance.

Jill Stein Uncensored

This is pretty lame for PBS.

Rehash of a Rehash

Will Hollywood notice? Our major political parties don't seem to get it.
But Nightly Business Report reports that sequels just ain't getting it. Especially bad sequels.

There are a lot of sequels that do very, very well. It may just be a quality problem. If the movie doesn’t resonate, if it’s not a good movie, it may not be a — that people are biased against sequels, they may just be biased against bad movies.

So, try this, Hollywood - try being original.

HD 10180's Heroes

OK, Hollywood - another smash hit idea...
A mix of Third Rock From the Sun & Hogan's Heroes where a group of stereotyped Earthers are captured by a bungling alien race.
The potential for HIGHlarity would have no bounds. You could even have some Big Bang T
You will make bazillions of dollars - you're welcome.heory type nerds.

SSDY

Yes, friends, The Fishwarp is staying true to form and boycotting The Hamilton County Fair.
Actually a quick search indicates a local media blackout on the 160 year old event.
classy
This year, the Fishwarp's entertainment Facebook page is even boycotting the fair.
In all fairness today is going to be a rain out so maybe the 'Warp can pile on some doom & gloom...
The Hamilton County Fair runs through August 9th in historic Carthage & will have performances by Galaxy Girl, The Naked Karate Girls, The Millennium Robots, various crafting seminars & other cool poo.

Stereotype Much ?

This cracked me up. The news media shows us ancient stereotypes of various cultures and if we don't like a country - BAM - get out the black & white pics.
But our knee jerk reactionary disaster relief usually comes late & mostly benefits first world producers. A more long term supportive policy of 3rd world nations can help with things like enforcing building codes, building better infrastructure & such can lessen the impct of disasters, saving lives & money in the long run.
Of course seedy, opportunistic 3rd world governments give all of them a bad reputation sowe can't do that...

iZombie

This adaptation of a comic book smooshes up a number of zombie elements, probably the most interesting of which is the intelligent zombie trying to fit into the world of warmies & balancing her divergent interests. It's on the CW so you know it will be good. No, seriously, since it doesn't have love lorn vampires, it might actually be fun. It does appear to have about every other damn cliche going on.
Debuts March 17

ZOMNADO

OK grade Z horror movie makers, here's my idea. You can have it.
As people are opting more and more for cremation, the severity of a zombie apocalypse is quickly deteriorating to a 'zombie problem'.
But what if the ashes / cremains came back & blew in the wind like in dustbowl times and people couldn't keep them out of their homes, off their bodies & out of their noses, mouths and lungs. The powdered zed could wreak havoc on the warmie flesh bags from within.
And since people are so fond of dumping people's cremains into rivers, lakes & oceans, they could come in in liquified states via beaches, river beds and even through the plumbing.
When you combine this double whammy ~ boy fucking howdy ~ ZOMNADO !!.
you're welcome

Bakshi's Ass

Robert Crumb's bid for solidarity with Charlie Hebdo shows an extremely detailed illustration of Mohammed's butt. Crumb cautions that it is not the butt of a prophet but the butt of a film maker, however.
FWIW, Robert Rodriguez has taken on the task of creating a live action movie (that will undoubtedly use massive CG) of Fire & Ice, a collaboration of Frank Frazetta & Ralph Bakshi in 1983. Sony has purchased the film, so who knows WHAT will ranspire....

To find out more about Crumb's cartoon & his thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, click here

Humor in Disaster

As I have mentioned before, Horror Sells. Well, there's also humor in disaster. Heck, that's basically the whole idea behind slapstick. Take laurel & Hardy or the Three Stoofes, their pain & suffering was hilarious. In the past we enjoyed the humor of war. Hilarious romps in the South Pacific WWII in McHale's Navy, the raascally shenanigans Nazi POWs had in Hogan's Heroes, thie hyjinks of the Korean War in MASH, Viet Nam in Catch 22.
There's even more fun in apocalypse movies like This is the End & Shaun of the Dead.
Who can't forget the Cold War laugh riot, Dr Strangelove? The futuristic dark slapstick of Sleeper?
OK, so why the uproar about a comedy set in the Irish Potato Famine?
Monty Python set all sorts of humor against the backdrop of medieval poverty & desperation, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery & whatnot. What's changed?
Is it the rise of mamby pambyism or is it just plummeting self confidence fueled by 'liberal' self hatred?

TPB AFK

I guess Sony got pissed off after their servers got hacked & people downloaded some movies & stuff.

OGG

I like the concept of OGG. It provides a free way to display media on the intertubes. Kinda like PNG replacing GIF when Compuserve decided they wanted $$ for something people had been using freely for years. Similarly, the guy who came up with MP3 decided he wanted royalties years after the file format had become popular (years after it had been created & shelved), so OGG is the way to go if you aren't rolling in the bucks & don't want to use YouTube & their horrible compression.

Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.

While most browsers support OGG, Apple & Microsoft do not. There are plug ins for their browsers, however.
Well, there were. With Apple's 'upgrades' the OGG plug ins are now broken.
It wouldn't cost a thing for these behemoths to support the formats, Theora & Vorbis. I have read that Apple & Microsoft might fear patent challenges, but, apparently Google & Opera don't have those fears.
But Mozilla, Opera & Google don't have their own media file formats. I am sure that implementing support for these file formats would shutter both companies in a week.
Seriously, boys, just plug in the code & let it be. Your stuff is better but sometimes people just want to post videos of lamb chops in space.

The White Death

Here we go again. Fortunately the city of Cincinnati bought less salt this year.

Horror Sells

Horror sells late night shopping for cheap furniture.

Snubbed Again

oh, my minion, the devils at The City Bleat have snubbed this blog agin in their Best of Cincinnati farce.
Know this, Bleaters, my vengeance will be terrible.

Cincinnati by the Sea

While San Diego is known by many Ohioans as Dayton by the Sea, apparently Floridians find Cincinnati & San Diego so similar as to be interchangeable.
Note the last skyline shot in this intro. We're not in Ohio anymore…
HT to Paradox24

WCPO Jumps the Shark

Carol Williams endless warnings of, "it's not as safe as you think" have now gone into the realm of passenger rail. Apparently streetcars kill. But not in the hundred mile an hour screeching metal on metal way that would be cool - more like the the way fences lure motorists to their demise way. After dire warnings, the article does state that all the accidents they cite have been due to motorist error but Chairman Brinkman almost tearfully assures us that because of the streetcar, people will die. Never mind that without street rail, about a thousand people a year die in traffic accidents every year in Ohio.
I used to like charnel 9 but they have taken a jag that seems to have led them into the twilight zone. Well, what the hell. Horror sells.

CFD goes Vimeo

Fireline from CitiCable on Vimeo.

the sound effects crack me up, but it's cool that the Cincinnati Fire Department is communicating. The Fire Dept & other city services are reaching out to citizenry thru Nextdoor.