Friday, July 18, 2008

An Open Love Letter To Joss Whedon or Joss Whedon: How He Has It Right

As most of you know, I am a HUGE Firefly fan. It is one of my favorite shows...EVER! I fell in love with the show immediately upon viewing the pilot episode and I haven't looked back from Firefly fandom since. The best dream I ever had was when Capt. Malcolm Reynolds himself, asked me to join the crew of the Serenity after I graduated from college. The pain of waking up from that life was truly tragic. If there was anything as tragic as my dream being a dream, it is that the show was canceled after only one season, thanks to the idiots at Fox. Joss Whedon did not deserve to have his dream of the "Space Western" crushed so soon.

Speaking of Joss, I'm just going to come right out and say it, Joss Whedon is a f**king genius. You can quote me on that. Sorry for the profanity, but it's needed to stress the gravity of the word 'genius'. For a guy to create such complex worlds as the Buffverse, Angelverse, and Fireflyverse, is just incredible. Read more about his other work on Wikipedia here.

During the WGA strike, Joss (being the true creative force he is) couldn't stop the creative juices from flowing, so he and his pals decided to create an alternative form of entertainment. Enter, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog:



It is a hybrid of a comic book/sci-fi show/musical. Joss is no stranger to the music world. Two notable mentions, The Buffy Musical: Once More With Feeling and the Firefly theme song. Both are incredibly campy and incredibly good. Dr. Horrible feels like a natural branch from the Whedonverse.

Dr. Horrible is exclusively online and comes in three installments. The first two acts are already available online (click link above) and act three comes out tomorrow. Please go watch them over and over again, you won't be disappointed. Both Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are hilarious and I can't wait to see how he ends the story.

On a side note, and really the meaning of this post, I believe Joss Whedon has it right, in life I mean. The guy has surrounded himself with his friends and they all work to create really funny and really good entertainment. He has created his own production company, Mutant Enemy Productions which is responsible for some classic hits (Buffy, etc.), spends time writing awesome comic books, and is adored by millions of fans. The guy knows how to live and how to work. And he's pretty socially enlightened as well! He describes himself as a feminist and frequently features LGBT peoples in his work with complexity and understanding.

So, I salute your Joss. I hope to one day have it right like you. In the meantime I will continue to appreciate all your Joss-y goodness.

Firmly yours,
Karen

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Oh, Edward you flirt!



While googling today I found this absolutely ridiculous picture of Robert Pattinson, I just couldn't resist adding a caption.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Music Is Your Time Capsule

I am a music freak. Like most people my age, I can hardly go any where without having my entire collection of music at hand. Thanks to technology we can do this, at a reasonable price. My 30G iPod Video holds all my music, some videos, and backs up some old photos to boot and it only cost me about $250 two years ago.

Even though Apple is a huge ass and makes it hard for users to copy stuff OFF the iPod, iTunes is still a pretty awesome media player. The iTunes store and Amazon MP3 integration built into iTunes makes buying and playing MP3s easy and convenient. Even though you have other choices in media players (I also like Winamp I used it before iTunes came along my freshman year) that offer the same features, there is just something really simple about iTunes.

One cool thing I've noticed about iTunes is its capacity to serve as a time capsule for your life. When you enable the "Date Added" category column in your library you suddenly can track back through time. For example, if you and your best friend went on a road trip back during Fall 2004, you two probably downloaded some kick ass songs to make a sweet playlist. Or you went through a really heart smashing breakup that one summer and was hopelessly devoted to Taking Back Sunday. By sorting your songs with the "Date Added" feature, you can go back and look at what you listened to. You see, we forget a lot of things! Some times its really awesome to be reminded of how music touched and possibly even shaped our lives. There lies a little, subtle, story in that data. It's really quite neat!

In effort to not lose this information to a iPod crash, like what happened to my iPod mini back senior year. I decided to immortalize (digitally) my iPod data. Thanks to Google spreadsheets I am even able to publish it to the web. See it here! You can also see my music collection and be inspired!

I encourage all of you to back up your data, whether it be iPod data or just important things in your life. The Internet is such a wonderful thing and allows us to organize our lives in ways we only imagined a few years ago. Google in particular has made the transition to a digital life easier than ever.

For those who know me, really check out the list. It's at some parts kinda funny!