Hulu forces me to choose between commercials for KitKat or Reeses... then, after I finally choose one so I can get to my fucking show... THEY SHOW ME A COMMERCIAL ABOUT BOTH BECAUSE "I DESERVE BOTH!"
Fuck Hulu for wasting my time with a non-choice. And definitely fuck the assholes at KitKat and Reese's for coming up with a stupid-as-shit ad campaign which wastes people's fucking time and actually makes me hate products I used to love.
Fire your fucking advertising agency for being obscenely fucking stupid. Who thought this was a good idea?
The sun may be shining outside where I'm at, but I'm not out enjoying it as I should be... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Breakfast! The season finale of Saturday Night Live was fairly mediocre... despite having Natasha Lyonne hosting and great send-offs for Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, and Pete Davidson (and apparently Kyle Mooney is leaving as well?). HOWEVER... it introduced me to Japanese Breakfast, a band I never knew existed but fell in love with immediately. This has to be one of my favorite SNL performances ever...
• The Valet! I'm a huge fan of Eugenio Derbez, and his new movie The Valet on Hulu is great. At first I worried that it wasn't taking advantage of his talents, but boy did he bring it in the end...
Worth your valuable time. And we're also getting a second season of his show "Acapulco," which is something else you should be watching.
• Baymax! My favorite animated character since Stitch from Lelo & Stitch and Sully from Monsters, Inc. has his own show...
And how great is it that they kept the other characters from Big Hero 6 to be in it as well?
• Umbrella Academy 3! I've been in awe at just how good the Netflix adaptation of the Umbrella Academy comics have been... actually improving on the material in some ways. And now we're at Season 03 and it's looking as cool and bonkers as ever...
With Netflix being an absolute shit-show as of late, and their tradition of killing shows after 2 or 3 seasons, I'm more than a little worried about getting Season 04.
• She-Hulk! This is what happens when a show looks like it has a very good chance of exceeding your expectations. People of earth, I give you She-Hulk: Attorney at Law...
• Marvel! And now that Ms. Marvel is nearly upon us, Marvel Studios is giving us a bigger taste of what's to come...
I. Cannot. Wait.
If nothing else, casting Tatiana Maslany in the lead is 100% pure win.
• Heartstopper Redux! And lastly, the news I've been waiting for ever since I watched the show... Netflix has renewed Heartstopper for two seasons...
While this is incredible news... had they waited any longer, the actors would be getting too old to play their characters... it's also a bit disappointing. From my estimation, they'll need four seasons to get through all the graphic novel material which has defined Nick & Charlie's relationship, so why not renew for three? And boy oh boy do I hope that they fold in more material for Charlie's sister, Tori (or, better yet) give her a series of her own and adapt Solitaire). In any event, not all the news coming out of Netflix is bad, it seems.
And now I need to get outside and tie up some of my flowers before they take over my yard!
I subscribe to (or have access to) several streaming services. This makes for a monotonous slog to open up app after app looking for something good to watch. AppleTV and GoogleTV help to remedy this by curating a mix of new content and content recommendations based on the services you have and what you watch. It's been fantastically helpful, and I love it.
At least I did when it worked.
But now all the streaming services have profiles which fuck up the process. Instead of clicking on the movie or show you want to watch on AppleTV or GoogleTV and have it start playing on the streaming service that it comes from... you instead get cock-blocked by profiles, which look like this...
There are some streaming services which are able to bring up the content you clicked on after you're done dicking around with the profiles bullshit. But many of them do not. Instead you're taken to the streaming service home page and have to hunt down what you clicked on. Assuming you can remember what that is, which I often don't because television is what I watch when I want to turn off my brain. Not when I want to remember stuff.
I hate profiles with the burning fury of a thousand suns, even when I am NOT clicking through from AppleTV or GoogleTV. You get asked when you pull up the app directly too. I live alone. I don't have kids. I don't want to add a new profile. SO FUCK OFF ALREADY! Is it really necessary to flash this crap at me every damn time?!?
And it gets worse.
Netflix is so damn shitty about this crap that I will be watching a show downstairs in my living room, go upstairs to my bedroom to finish watching it, ONLY TO HAVE MY PROFILE FAIL TO LOAD AFTER I FUCKING CLICK ON IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER! Which means I have to create a second profile for my bedroom...
"b" is for bedroom... and I picked the first profile avatar that was available because I just don't give a shit
AND THEN when I watch upstairs, I have to fast-forward to the spot I left off downstairs because the saved point is saved to my downstairs profile. AND THEN since I finished the movie upstairs, the movie will show up in my "Finish Watching..." the next time I open up Netflix downstairs.
Bad enough to have to deal with this shit when you don't want to... but the fact that it fails so fucking badly at doing the one fucking thing that it's supposed to be doing... well... fuck off, Nextflix and your shitty AppleTV app.
Look, I get it. Some families love this feature. Mom has a profile. Dad has a profile. The kids have a profile. But why in the hell is it forced on me? It only causes problems and screws up the enjoyment of the content because I'm immediately angry at having to deal with this bullshit. Just give me a damn preference option to never have profiles show up ever again.
Given the money I and other single people have paid to these streaming service, they owe us at least that much. Especially since it demostrates that we're not sharing our login and password with other people and don't need profiles. You definitely owe us for that.
Disney released the pricing details for the new Disney+ service... their absolute must-have streaming channel thanks to their new Marvel Studios and Star Wars shows that are in development. You can get it bundled with ESPN+ and Hulu Basic for $13. Since I will never watch ESPN+, I will go ala carte and save a dollar...
I am mortified that I'll be paying FIFTY-FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH PLUS TAX for my television. That's a stupid amount of money. But TV is one of the few things I pay for where I actually get my money's worth, even at $55. If I divide that by the number of hours I spend watching my favorite shows it's shockingly cheap. Going to movies or concerts is out of control expensive now, so this is a far more economical form of entertainment.
It's also $20 cheaper than the $75 plus tax I was paying for satellite + Hulu + Netflix, so I guess that's something.
It's taken some getting used to though.
Shows on Sling are great because the enhanced "virtual DVR" keeps up with the shows I record exactly like my old DVR did. I can even skip commercials. Hulu is a bit less helpful because I don't pay for their "Live" version that has a DVR... it's and additional $40 a month! A price I'd gladly pay over the $30 for Sling Blue because it has local channels... but it doesn't have Comedy Central, and I don't know if I can give it up because their app is a bit weird on my television.
I gotta have my The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Television may be a pricey indulgence, but it's quickly becoming one of the few indulgences I can afford. I was looking at the possibility of taking week's vacation somewhere and was mortified at the cost of lodging now-a-days. Insane. Used to be you could get a decent hotel for $100 a night or less. Now you're lucky to find something decent for $300 a night. At least at the places I'm interested in going.
Oh well. I'm getting less and less enamored with travel anyway. I do enough of it for work, so maybe that's enough?
Sling Blue comes with The Travel Channel, after all.
I used to love going out to the movies. Then it got ridiculously expensive and you basically end up paying obscene amounts of money to watch people text on their mobile phones... or listen to them talk... or endure their kids acting like idiots. So you spend even more money to go to the VIP theater so the experience is at least tolerable. And that's an expense I'm just not going to make unless it's a movie I'm dying to see (like anything from Marvel Studios).
So, by not going to the movies, I'm saving $12 for a ticket plus $8 for popcorn and a drink... that's $20, which is how much it costs to just buy most movies on iTunes now-a-days. Or, if you're patient, you can always wait and rent it for $5 or see if it shows up on HBO or something.
More and more I'm getting my entertainment from my television, but that too is quickly getting crazy-expensive.
DirecTV is pricey and I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it. I pay $53.57 per month for the bare minimum they offer just to get Seattle-local networks and a bunch of stuff I never watch (the big exception being HGTV). This is better than it used to be. Since I'm an AT&T wireless subscriber, the $53.57 reflects a $25 bundle credit. I remain incensed that I can't just pick and choose the networks I want to see. I will never, ever watch Fox "News," so why the fuck am I paying for it?
The obvious option here is to go 100% streaming...
Interesting to note that Hulu has actually lowered their ad-supported pricing...
What I don't like about cutting the cord is that some networks withhold streaming their shows on Hulu for a while. As an example... Home Town has started its second season on HGTV, but only the first season is available on Hulu just now. For many programs, this wouldn't be a big deal... but for shows I really like, it's an issue.
Right now, receiving local channels from Seattle is worth the cost to me. But eventually my feelings may change. Saving $200+ a year on entertainment is no small amount of money.
Sorry, I'm too busy to blog.
BUSY WATCHING THE HOTWIVES OF ORLANDO!
This parody of all those idiotic "Housewives" shows is über brilliant.
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