I have watched every episode of The Tonight Show since Jimmy Fallon took over. I understand the criticism of his work there... he's not the greatest comedian and his interviews tend to wander... but that's not the point. The guy just knows how to have fun and get his guests to have fun with him. And because of that, it's easy to tune in and let Jimmy take you away from the troubles of the day. And for that I love the guy. He never fails to make me laugh, and having The Roots as his house band guarantees that you're going to hear some good music to boot... even if you don't like the musical guest.

Fallon has a number of bits that I enjoy, but sitting at the top of the list is where Jimmy and The Roots get a musician to perform one of their hits... accompanied by instruments from a kid's classroom.

The result is funny... but the song is always great too! In catching up on shows I missed while I was away, I ran across his best one yet. Meghan Trainor showed up to sing her track All About That Bass.

It's fantastic...

If you missed it, here's a few of my other favorites. Including Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines...

And Carly Rae Jepsen singing Call Me Maybe...

And, of course, the time Sesame Street visited to sing their theme song. How anybody can watch this and not smile is beyond me...

   
And then there's The Roots. Holy crap are they talented. They can do anything having to do with music. And I've seen Questlove fill in on drums more than a couple times for visiting musicians. Flawlessly. I have no idea how he does it. Just massively great at his job, I guess.

If you're not a fan, here's a video where The Roots backed Miley Cyrus acapella on We Can't Stop...

   
So people can criticize Jimmy Fallon all they want, but there have been times where watching him on The Tonight Show has been the best part of my day.

I can't offer a better endorsement than that.

Last night while I was at dinner with Marty and his wife (of Banal Leakage fame), their friends had an extra ticket to the comic convention that's in town. I gratefully accepted it for one reason and one reason only... Erin Gray.

Most people will remember her as Colonel Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century a 1979-1981 sci-fi television series which featured Erin Gray in clothing so tight that she had to be sewn into them...

I was a mega-huge fan of the show... and Erin Gray was 98% of the reason for that. To have an opportunity to meet her in person? Not something I'm going to pass up!

She was incredibly nice... taking time to talk with fans a bit as they got their autographs and photos... and as beautiful as ever!

I'm still reeling that I got to have my picture taken with Colonel Wilma Deering!

The convention is much larger than I thought... but just as overly-crowded as San Diego's famous Comic-Con. It's insane how many people were trudging through the dealer's floor. And there were hundreds more people standing in line outside waiting to get in...

I didn't have any money to spend, so I was in-and-out for my Erin Gray meet-n-greet in under 30 minutes.

If I did have the money, it would have been cool to meet Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie. along with Erin Gray and Lynda Carter, she completes the holy trifecta of my boyhood television crushes.

Not a bad way to spend a morning in Salt Lake City.

But the night is yet to come...

Don't you dare despair... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• The Ramones! HOLY CRAP! If this is true... IF THIS IS TRUE... wow.

   
• Fun! Funko Pop! finally announced that they are releasing some Firefly characters in their line of vinyl pop culture figures...

I, of course, was compelled to pre-order my favorite character, Hoban Washburne, complete with one of his toy dinosaurs...

You can get your own over at ToyWiz.

   
• Dreamy! The entire Skyer album by the Swedish dream-pop group Postiljonen is achingly beautiful... but this song is just... beyond. How they managed to create such a lovely song around Whitney Houston's How Will I Know? is a mystery...

Though if forced to pick a favorite off the album, Plastic Panorama is absolute magic...

Of course, I'm a sucker for anything that quotes The Princess Bride.

   
• Cancelation. With quality television being a rare thing indeed now-a-days, I was disturbed to see that the A&E series Longmire has been canceled...

What's interesting in this case is that the show is being canceled despite pulling big ratings. The studio is shopping the show around to try and keep it on the air, which is encouraging, but it's hard to take news like this given the overwhelming amount of crap clogging network schedules.

   
• Roofs! If you have a head for heights, Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov have posted a stunning set of sphincter-puckering photos from Hong Kong on their website...

Actually, "stunning" is under-selling it.

   
• Diane! A big thank you to Diane Sawyer for five years anchoring ABC's World News Tonight. I've been tuning in throughout her run and have become a fan. I look forward to future appearances as a "special correspondent"...

The diversity was nice while it lasted. Now the "Big Three" networks are all once again being safely anchored by white guys.

   
And... my six-shooter has done ran out of Bullets.

Pull up a seat to the campfire... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Doctor! While I felt Peter Capaldi did a great job as the new Doctor Who, I was a bit disappointed in his debut episode. I'd like to blame it on all the build-up, hype, and anticipation pushing my expectations too high... but I honestly feel that had nothing to do with it. I was just bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. It was a boring episode.

I'd have thought they would start this series out with a bang, but that didn't happen... at least in my humble opinion. I don't know what they're waiting for, but here's hoping next episode ramps things up to where they need to be.

   
• Thrice! Did I mention that the latest FREE issue of Thrice Fiction has been released? Well it has! And you can download it at absolutely no charge from our website!

Plenty of good stuff to be found within. Hurry up and get your copy before we come to our senses and start charging thousands of dollars for it!

   
• Star-Lord! My man-crush on Chris Pratt continues. I love it when famous people use their celebrity as a force for good instead of being self-centered assholes like so many seem to be. And kudos to Marvel for not starting up a lawsuit when Chris visited a children's hospital in-character as Star-Lord...

Photo from @Twitter

What an awesome guy.

   
• Bunga! If you've got an upcoming journey to or through Europe, be forewarned that Iceland is ripe for yet another volcanic eruption. Mt. Bardarbunga is poised to blow. The potential for disaster being even larger than the previous explosion of Mt. Eyjafjallajokul that messed up travel plans for millions of passengers as flights were delayed and canceled left and right due to unsafe ash content in the air.

It's always something.

   
• Tom! I hate to be the All Thompson Twins All The Time Channel, but I'm a huge fan. And this is a really good interview...

Original Photo Uncredited

Can't. Wait.

   
• Human! And lastly... this video is titled Restore Your Faith in Humanity. It's aptly named...

   
Annnnnd... no more bullets for you. See you next week!

I was very, very sad to hear that Robin Williams died today.

I first became obsessed with his comedic antics on Mork and Mindy... then followed his career right up through The Crazy Ones, a fantastic television show that had the good sense to reign him in a bit, which is always when he's at his best.

But there's one role that will forever cement Robin Williams as a favorite performer of mine... The Genie on Alladin...

You will most definitely be missed, sir.

Usually I avoid mid-season television because it sucks copious amounts of ass. Customarily, it's the time of the year where shows that are too terrible for the New Fall Season are dumped. But that hasn't been true for years now. Plenty of good shows end up in the mid-season, as networks are finding out they can flourish when the competition is low...

Extant (Wednesdays 10pm on CBS)
Halle Berry plays an astronaut who arrives back on earth pregnant after 13 months in space. Alone. On a solo mission. As if that weren't enough intrigue... she is married to a robot scientist who has created them a robot son that's starting to act strangely. Not enough freaky for you? Halle's dead first husband keeps showing up. The show is well-written and acted, but the reason I am compelled to watch is that I'm dying to know how all this crazy shit is going to fit together. Is it going to be brilliant? Or is it going to be a steaming pile of crap like Lost?

   
Satisfaction (Thursdays 10pm on USA)
I don't even know why I tuned into this show because it's absolutely not the type of thing I'm interested in. But the previews looked unique, so I decided to give it a shot. Wow. What happens when a man with the perfect life finds out his wife is hiring a guy for sex? Surprisingly, the answer to his problems and the solution to his dissatisfaction with how things have turned out in his idyllic life. Satisfaction caught me completely by surprise, and I have high hopes they'll be able to push the premise in interesting directions.

   
The Strain (Sundays 10pm on FX)
Leave it to Guliermo Del Toro to create a modern vampire epic so good that it's hard to believe that it's on television. Blending just the right amount of horror and suspense with thrills and breakneck pacing, The Strain is an entertaining show that relies on using predictable elements in unpredictable ways. The result is well worth your valuable time, though it's hard to tell how long they're going to keep the premise feeling fresh.

   
Outlander (Saturdays 9pm on Starz)
Thanks to the unprecedented success of Game of Thrones on HBO, it only seems to reason that other premium-priced networks would be investigating fantasy dramas of their own. And Starz has landed on a series based on the very popular Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon. It's 1945 and a World War II nurse named Claire Randall has been transported back to Scotland in the year 1743. Though already married in 1945, she ends up forced to marry Jamie Fraser... a Scottish warrior fighting a war and traversing a dangerous world. Though the romance angle isn't really my thing, I have to admit the series in really well done. Here's hoping show-runner Ronald D. Moore doesn't fuck it up like he did Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.

   
And that's it so far. I'm still trying to decide on shows like Welcome to Sweden, Finding Carter, The Divide, and a few others.

Life is way too short to spend on bad television.

Sorry, I'm too busy to blog.

BUSY WATCHING THE HOTWIVES OF ORLANDO!

   
This parody of all those idiotic "Housewives" shows is über brilliant.

Watch the whole series for free on Hulu.

Today is going to be a little different.

I need you to watch a short 30-second commercial.

Please pay attention, because there will be a test afterwards...

Thanks for watching "Beggin' Party Poppers." Here we go...

1. How fucking lazy have we humans become when we can't be bothered to toss a dog treat in the air, but instead need a device to do it for us?
2. Do you think the fine people at Purina who developed this product know that "poppers" is a slang term given to a chemical called alkyl nitrite which is inhaled as an aphrodisiac... primarily by homosexuals to relax the anus and make anal sex more comfortable? Even if there aren't any gay men on the product development team, wouldn't you think there's be at least one of them who had a gay friend that likes to delight in torturing them by doing things like explaining what "poppers" are?
3. Assuming animals are capable of feeling shame, do you think that the dogs in this commercial should feel more or less embarrassed to be appearing in such a fucking stupid advertisement?
4. Does this entry make you more or less embarrassed to be a Blogography reader... or have you already hit rock-bottom in that department, so nothing I post here can make things worse?
5. If you had to guess as to what a "Beggin' Popper" tastes like... what would that be?

Thanks for playing!

When my television died a couple years ago, I didn't want to buy a new one because it was rumored that Apple was coming out with an iTV. So I borrowed a television from my brother until iTV was released. Needless to say, I'm still waiting. And then my brother's television blew up in a cloud of smoke (literally) earlier this week, leaving me television-less with no iTV to replace it. Time to buy a new TV, I guess.

I don't have hours to be researching televisions, so I went to Amazon, put in the specs I wanted (1080/60p, 33-43", Wi-Fi internet connectivity, web apps for Netflix and Amazon streaming, 2014 model) and got one result... the Sony KDL40W600B. I've had excellent luck with Sony gear in the past and the price was under my $500 budget, so I bought it...

Design & Construction
The screen size is 40' (diagonal) which is a good size for a smaller room like mine. Being Sony, the design is predictably clean and minimalistic. The narrow plastic bezel around the display is just under 5/8" wide, which is nice because the total set size is kept small... but it would be nice if it were a bit thicker as to minimize distraction around the screen while you watch. The metal stand stand is a little clunky-looking (reminds me of a cheap folding table) and a tad wobbly, but it gets the job done. The construction is... average... is the word I guess I'm looking for. It seems a bit cheap, plasticy, and of underwhelming quality for a Sony. Yet given the under $500 price tag it could have been much worse so I'm happy with it. Appearance-wise it doesn't look too cheap, so I guess it's not a big deal. The up-side of the minimal plastic construction is that the entire unit weighs a mere 15 pounds. Amazing, really. The lightweight build makes it ideal for hanging on a wall (and basic mounting hardware is included). SCORE: B-

User Interface & Remote
Proving for the millionth time that Apple is the only company who knows how to build a decent user interface and simplify a remote... Sony's KDL40W600B is pretty crappy in both arenas. The on-screen menus are poorly designed, inconsistent, laggy, and frustrating. Couple that with a shitty remote and using this TV is a near-painful experience. Once you get used to the baffling idiosyncrasies of the menu system they're serviceable, I guess, but the same cannot be said about the remote control. It fails in most every department. It's uncomfortable to hold. The Volume and Channel buttons are inexplicably at the very bottom, so you get thumb-sprain trying to reach them. For some stupid reason, the number keys (which are rarely used) are given a primo spot under the navigation keys. As if that wren't bad enough, the navigation keys are surrounded by six "function" buttons that are all-too-easy to press by accident when moving around the crappy menus. What a piece of shit. SCORE: D+

Inputs & Internet
The television comes with four... four... HDMI ports, which is pretty sweet. The down-side is that you only get one component video input. If you have a lot of pre-HDMI gear, that's probably a deal-breaker. Things are rounded out by a single composite video input (for that one piece of old, old gear you've got hanging around). On the audio side, you get a couple analog ports, a sub-woofer port, a headphone port, and a digital audio port). And lastly, for handling audio and video media, you also get two USB ports (v2, alas). Internet connectivity can be via the ethernet port or my must-have feature: WiFi. The WiFi set-up is dead simple because is can be automatically configured via your wireless router's WPS button (my Apple "Time Capsule" doesn't have a WPS button, but the "Connect Wireless Printer" option in the AirPort Utility worked perfectly). SCORE: A

Video
Ultimately, the only thing I really care about is the picture quality. Fortunately, this is where the KDL40W600B's LED LCD panel shines. The display is evenly lit, super-sharp, and gorgeous. The blacks are nice and dark which makes for beautiful contrast in the image. With some tweaking of the manual controls, I got the color just how I want it, and I couldn't be happier with the fidelity. I've seen some LED-based televisions that looked terrible when there was quick motion on the screen, but this Sony model has none of that thanks to a host of proprietary technologies onboard. The only down-side to having such terrific video is that non-HD content looks a bit crappy, but you can't fault Sony for that. I wanted very much to not get a 120hz (or higher) set, because I hate the artificial "look" of it. I thought that would be impossible, but this set was 60hz which was a huge plus for me. SCORE: A-

Audio
Given how thin and compact this set is, there's no room for a good set of speakers. This is just bizarre to me, because it seems like it would be a no-brainer to add 3 or 4 inches to the bottom of the set for a proper audio experience... but, alas, no. And it's not just Sony. A quick glance at other sets shows that they are the same way. It's as if all the manufacturers just decided to put shitty speakers in their televisions so they can sell you a separate soundbar to get the sound you want. And you will want it, because this is pretty pathetic. Overall sound is kind of tinny and weak. Even knowing this going in, I thought I'd be okay because my living room is fairly small. I was wrong. The audio is borderline unpleasant to listen to, so I'll end up getting add-on speakers when I can afford it. SCORE: D

Apps
I already have Apple TV, which I like a lot. But it doesn't have Amazon Prime Streaming, which sucks. There's stuff on there I want to watch while I work. So one of the requirements for my new television was that it be able to stream from Amazon, which the KDL40W600B can. It also streams from Netflix and a few other services. This is great and all, but they feel slow to navigate and a bit klutzy compared to how Apple does things (does Netflix REALLY have to ask me to choose "Netflix" or "Kids" EVERY DAMN TIME I OPEN IT? Put "Kids" in a separate app or something, because I don't give a shit about it and am tired of dealing with it). Apps are on the "Opera Browser" platform, which wouldn't be too bad except it's horribly slow and every time you dump out of them, you get an Opera TV Store advertisement. Check the weather? Opera ad. Look at Instagram? Opera ad. It's stupid and I got so sick of it that I stopped giving a crap about apps after my second day. For a set made in 2014, I'd expect much faster performance, much quicker load times, and a much better interface. Oh well. I can at least watch Amazon Prime Streaming, which is nice. SCORE: C

UltraViolet
Without a doubt one of the shittiest internet services ever created, UltraViolet is a studio-owned digital movie distributor. I fucking hate UltraViolet. It's never worked properly for me no matter what I've tried. Even so, I've got movie content in there... including five movies I got for free when I bought this television. But here's the thing... so far as I can tell, there is NO way to play UltraViolet on the KDL40W600B! They don't have an UltraViolet app. They don't have a CinemaNow app. They don't have a Vudu app. The do have a Flixster app, but I couldn't find a way to access my UltraViolet library from it. This is hilarious, given that Sony is a major player in the shitty UltraViolet consortium. So... if you've got a massive UltraViolet library, I hope you have a secondary device to watch them. SCORE: F- (if you give a crap)

Extras
There are a lot of extras on this set that I either don't understand or have no interest in using. The KDL40W600B is a "PlayStation Now" device, which means you can plug in a DuoShock controller and download games from the PlayStation library to play. It sounds like a cool idea, but I've read that the games are crazy-expensive to play, so I'll take a pass. One feature I thought I might use is that "Social View" overlay. It's supposed to be able to display stuff from your Twitter feed... except mine never did, no matter how many times I verified my Twitter account. Oh well. As for the rest? Meh. I'm sure there's some things that some people will find interesting, but I'm not really interested. SCORE: C

   
SONY KDL40W600B CONCLUSION
If you're looking for a (relatively) inexpensive television backed by Sony quality with terrific image quality, this may be it. Video is beautiful. Audio is pretty bad. Design is a bit on the cheap side, but looks pretty good. The remote is total shit. The user interface is almost as bad. Apps are painfully slow for a 2014 model television, but at least it can stream Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon without issue. There's a lot of extras and crap, but the ones I was interested in using seemed more trouble than they're worth. My reason for buying this set was to watch TV and streaming services, for which it's perfect, so I'm quite happy with my purchase.

If you're wanting more info, here's a link to the Sony KDL40W600B on Amazon.

I'm a big fan of the television show Community.

When NBC decided to cancel the show after its fifth season, I was understandably upset.

YAHOO! TO THE RESCUE! — Thanks, Yahoo!

In other entertainment news, a trailer for The Skeleton Twins was released today. It looks pretty great. If nothing else, the soundtrack sounds terrific...

Secret by OMD!

Holy crap does than bring back memories...

=sniff!=

I miss the 80's.