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Holly and I were looking for a good chaser movie after watching the Dark Knight a couple weeks ago. As anyone who's seen Dark Knight will tell you, it's a great film, but extremely intense and a tough act to follow. Since anything in the suspense or drama genre just wouldn't work, we decided to take a gamble on a film that was in an entirely different direction.

If you haven't seen The Matador this will be completely out of context and probably downright odd. There's just a certain build-up in the character development that makes this scene exponentially more enjoyable for those who have seen the film. It feels perfectly natural by that point. So if you HAVEN'T seen this movie and like offbeat stuff I highly recommend checking the movie out. It's a very entertaining little flick with a lot more heart (and creative cinematography) than I ever anticipated. I honestly think it was my favorite movie I saw that night (and that's saying something.)

Most currently running TV shows are trying to put together just a handful of episodes to temporarily tie up their strike-interrupted seasons until they can relaunch with a fresh start next fall. But one of my favorite shows is just prepping to launch its fourth and final season next week.

Now I know I'm an unabashed geek. But I honestly never had any intention of watching the 'new' Battlestar Galactica series. It just didn't sound like something that would interest me at all and I never watched it the original mini-series or the first 2 seasons. However, after hearing numerous people (especially a few non-geeks) raving about how good it was I finally broke down and started to watch it (from the start) early last year. If you have the time, I highly recommend renting the Season 1 DVD (personal friends can also just ask to borrow the copy I have on Divx.) The original 3-hour mini-series alone is incredible and will almost certainly have you salivating for more.

The New Battlestar Galactica - Free videos are just a click away

I don't use it nearly enough (they still need to get a downloadable version of their content you can subscribe too, plus a deeper backlog of previous seasons shows) BUT Hulu really is pretty slick. I logged into today and it was featuring one of my favorite movies of all time on the front page.

My parents have been in Georgia for the last week attending a big RV expo. Our family has always enjoyed camping. We started out in little pop-ups for most of my childhood years before graduating on to our first motorhome during the 90s (a 30', Class-A, 1984 Southwind.)

But while we all loved the commodious space of the motorhome (it even served as a pseudo-apartment for me during my college years when I came home on weekends) a rocky relationship gradually developed whenever we tried to actually take it anywhere. The breaking point came after a big family trip out to Colorado. We drove all the way across OK, KS and eastern CO with no alternator, charing the battery with an A/C battery charger running off the generator while driving - and that was just the start of our problems. Not long after that experience, my parents opted for the mechanical ease-of-maintenance of a very nice 32' Class C model.

This RV has served the family very well over the last ~7-8 years (including another big trip out to Montana and Colorado, this time trouble free.) But over time my parents started to miss the wide open views and additional seating (especially for football season) that comes with a Class A. So when they headed over to the RV expo in Georgia we all had a feeling they might end up coming home with a different rig. Sure enough, they've picked up a sweet new ride.

And while I'm extremely happy for them and can't wait to go to some football games and trips in it, this was all really just a big excuse for me to share the following cheesy clip I just watched on one of my favorite TV shows. I can't wait to do this with their new motorhome.

Filed this right next to Ninja Warrior and Takeshi's Castle (and that's just for starters) under 'yet another reason why I wish I had access to Japanese cable.'

How exactly do you guestimate the bounce you need on something like that?

Just as I was starting to embrace several new shows last season, the strike hit and potentially killed any momentum of my emerging favorites. For the first time in history, geeky shows (or at least shows catering to geeks at heart) were becoming all the rage thanks to the cult success of many current shows and their following on the web.

The Big Bang Theory (nerds to the extreme on primetime)

A lot of established shows are supposedly working on a few episodes for later this spring that would have originally served as their mid-season finales. But those will now be their end-of-season finales. It'll be interesting to see what new shows warrant that investment and attention.

Fortunately my Discovery/History/Travel Channel favorites continue to plug on, unaffected by the long hiccup that was the strike. No Reservations has started a new season. Mythbusters continues to crank out new episodes periodically. And Deadliest Catch is about to launch its new season. I'm also holding out a little hope that Entourage will remain on schedule for its anticipated late-Spring release.

There's a reason for my periodic TV musings which I'll try to expound upon at a later date.

As I sit here casually watching the Daytona 500, I find myself enjoying the commercials as much as the race itself. And as I noticed the name of the series, the Nextel Cup (formerly the Winston Cup) has now evolved into the Sprint Cup it made me think back to this great old Nextel commercial.

And it's a cheesy ripoff of its slightly less cheesy older sibling . . . which is why I probably find the spinoff more entertaining. Unlike it's predecessor, it openly embraces its over the top nature, flaunting it without a hint of shame. It also features the only man in television capable of delivering the following lines with such blindingly obnoxious charisma.

Endless Caruso One Liners

And yes I know this is old, but I still find it funny.
*puts on sunglasses*
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!

The opening to this commercial (which you've all seen no doubt) really rings true.

Even though I'm a bit of a nightowl, I've never really watched much of the late night talkshows over the years. The one exception for me has always been Late Night with Conan O'Brien. While I never really go out of my way to watch it, I appreciate Conan's quick wit and the show's more off-kilter sense of humor. If I catch a funny bit while flipping through I'll stop and watch, but it has never been must-see TV for me.

However, knowing that they were going to re-launch the show without writers (while the CBS competitors of Letterman and Ferguson now have their writing team back in place) piqued my interest. Having to come up with material for a show that's on five nights a weeks is a tall order for even a team of professional writers - much less one host (and one would presume, a team of non-writers like producers, studio crew, etc.)

Still, I had high hopes for Conan and thus far he hasn't disappointed. While the show will clearly be struggling to find ways to fill the one hour timeslot (especially since they can't re-use old, recurring skits/bits for some reason) he's acquitted himself well thus far. Last night's jaunt into the catwalk, the pre-recorded bits, and the (now recurring) ring spinning bit went over well.

I'm pulling for him because I know it's a nearly impossible task. But if the strike doesn't end soon they'll run out of ideas in a hurry.

I'm excited to see an icon of 80s American television returning. But I'm not sure if the new American Gladiators will be able to re-capture the same magic we saw in the original. Moments like this will be difficult to match.

Even though she's too young to get it, Laney and I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas together tonight. She enjoyed the fact that it was a cartoon, but kept asking where Santa was. I tried to explain a couple times that this wasn't about Santa, but just let it drop. She'll understand one day.

I still wanted her to be exposed to it though. It's just one of those icons which needs to be passed down to each new generation. The soundtrack alone will guarantee its immortality, but I still enjoy the simple themes and droll humor.

The show did remind me of a more recent spin on the animation though. In order to enjoy the following you need to be a pretty big fan of the show Scrubs, otherwise don't bother.

This is one of the few commercials I've seen in awhile that actually made me laugh out loud when I first saw it a couple weeks ago.

And I'm already sick of the Garmin.com commercials.

I know I already posted about this once, but I finally got my invite today and I'm really impressed with the Hulu service. This model definitely has a lot of potential although I'd love to see it take the next step and go out of the browser and gain something like full Media Center integration and/or downloads to portable media players.

Hulu actually has a pretty good selection of full-length episodes of some of Fox and NBC's most popular shows. But as I was stumbling through the inventory, I came across this Oscar-winning title (and the temptation to embed a full length movie was too great.)

I like a lot of the Pixar-inspired movies which are pretty much the norm these days. But sitting here watching Disney's original Robin Hood with Laney makes me miss the old hand drawn animation from ye olden days.

I also miss the music. I'm not talking about the grand, Broadway-friendly productions from the late 80s and early/mid 90s (although I certainly respect those for being great musicals.) I'm talking about the simple old songs that weren't written with any grand intentions in mind. They were just there to set the mood and support the story and didn't mind coming off as chintzy (even if they really weren't.)

A few of the songs from Robin Hood epitomize this for me. Tunes like Whistle Stop (long before the Hamster Dance perverted it), Oo-De-Lally, and Not in Nottingham. I particularly enjoy the irony that you've got a Texan as the main singer/narrator and several Southern/Western accents as major characters in a story that's supposed to be set in 11th century England. But since we've got animals playing the roles of humans I guess this isn't an instance to be a stickler for details.

Like a lot of kids who grew up in the 80s I was a huge NBA fan.

Besides the usual childhood appeal of sports though, it was also a matter of timing. The 80s ushered in the start of a golden era of such magnitude for the league that for the next 1.5 decades the NBA often rivaled the NFL in terms of cultural awareness. With two star-laden dynasties battling it out for supremacy each year (three if you count the Pistons of the late 80s), as well as a league full of charismatic players it was easy to see the appeal. It was competitive and entertaining with star power of the highest order (and major TV coverage to boot.)

As the league transitioned from the Lakers/Celtics/Pistons-led era of the 80s to the Bulls-dominated era of the 90s, the exposure ramped up even more as the greatest player of all time took center stage. I was still a fan during much of this era. But the total dominance of Jordan and the Bulls eventually left me feeling a bit cold toward the league. I didn't dislike Jordan or the Bulls. I think dynasties are good for sports. People need something to champion (or pull against.) But I also think it's FAR more engaging when a dynasty has a worthy rival to create drama. Other than the occasional Rockets or Jazz team, the Bulls did not have that consistent counterbalance throughout their great run. And because Jordan and the Bulls absorbed so much of the limelight it never allowed for a new generation of personalities to gain a cultural following like you had in the 80s. This is what eventually led to the massive dropoff in the league's profile in the post-Jordan era.

And even though the league has made tremendous strides in recent years, it's a problem the NBA is still trying to overcome. That's why I've personally found the TV spots for the NBA 'Amazing' campaign to be so compelling. Rather than trying to be too hip of flashy, the simple elegance of the spots remind me of a time when the league was exactly that - a league people cared about because of the personalities and the competition. The SportsCenter snapshot view of the world we're now accustomed to desensitizes these aspects. It's refreshing to see a more simplistic summation of the game.

I'll be curious to see how this whole Hulu venture pans out. The media companies are throwing a whole lot of different business models at the wall right now to see what sticks. This one sounds like it might actually have potential if they play their cards right.

Hulu is NBC and Fox's supposed "YouTube" killer - even though it doesn't actually include user-generated content (if anything it might eventually be more directly in competition with other premium content providers like Itunes rather than YouTube.) A lot of articles I've read today have slighted Hulu on the omission of user-generated video. But I think that's entirely the point. User-generated content has its place and is definitely here to stay. But long-form, quality content from studios and media companies isn't going anywhere either and still has broader appeal. They can choose to try to fight it out on YouTube side-by-side with people hand-farting the Flintstones themesong. Or they can take their content (and ad revenue) and try to setup their own shop. If content is king, they may be making the correct choice.

The Hulu site itself is still in beta and will likely remain that way for awhile. But its content is already starting to pop-up on partner sites like Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, etc. Pretty much all the usual suspects except Google/YouTube.

I'm still hoping we'll eventually get to the point where we can get ad-supported content for download to portable devices. But nobody seems quite ready to make that jump yet. I'm also eager to see if they can develop a Media Center plugin for this content. It would seem an ideal match.

Not that I've uploaded a lot of YouTube videos or anything. Most of my videos were intended for embedding purposes for sharing with family and friends, so I knew they weren't going to get a lot of views. But I was curious to see what sort of content I could upload that would get a decent amount of attention.

The subject I chose to test with was one that I noticed appealed to a lot of people for nostalgia purposes. As a parent with a young child I've now logged many an hour in the living room while Sesame Street is on the television. While I don't usually watch whole episodes, the show always intercuts older segments which sometimes catch my attention as they'll often go back as far as my own childhood years. Occasionally I'd see a segment that would jog my memory and make me jump on YouTube just to see if it was there. Anybody else remember this extremely funky tune?

I was floored by the volume of Sesame Street videos on YouTube (currently 10,000+.) Obviously there was a lot more demand than I expected. The problem suddenly became finding something that wasn't already on YouTube. As Laney was watching an episode one day, a segment featuring an older song (clearly from the Frank Oz years) came on and buried itself into my subconscious. Much to my chagrin, I was still singing it in my head the next morning (the chorus was so catchy in a broadway sort of way.) I figured I'd see if it was anywhere else on the web. Amazingly, it wasn't (at least not a decent copy.) So I decided to record the episode on my computer the next time it came on.

I uploaded the segment a couple months ago. It already has over 6,000 views. I realize that's small potatoes compared to a ton of other videos. But considering it's just a relatively obscure segment (and I'm not an established YouTube'r with a large following) I thought that was fairly decent since the people viewing it most likely had to be seeking out this specific video via a search at YouTube or Google. This also reinforces the notion that a huge chunk of YouTube's most popular content is copyrighted material (although in this case PBS obviously doesn't mind given how many of their videos are on YouTube.)

And for the record, here's the video. It's a segment featuring the song "Bert's Blanket."

I already spend too much time watching TV as it is. Why must you continue to make new, shows to draw me in even more?

Let's see, I already watch the following religiously:

• Mythbusters: What's not to love for a geek like me? This has been one of my favorite shows for the last few years. I haven't missed an episode since the first time I saw it.
  

• Deadliest Catch: I got hooked on this one earlier this year. I'm not sure why I find it so fascinating as it's virtually the same thing every episode (oooooh look, big waves, crab.) But I can't get enough. Fortunately this show is obviously much more seasonal.

• Dirty Jobs: I've watched this one off and on for awhile, but really got hooked on it this summer. The fact that it has a huge backlog of episodes I haven't seen yet makes it a particularly potent time sink.

Now throw in the following shows which I've started to watch of late:

• Survivorman: I've watched Discovery's own alternative Man vs Wild before, but just couldn't get into it. This show, however, is much more engrossing. The host Les seems more genuine in his desire to inform while entertaining. He doesn't seem like he's blatantly trying to pander to shock value. It's more like extreme camping and I'm just along for the ride . . . watching comfortably from my couch while he slowly starves before being forced into eating bark and termites.
  

• Build it Bigger: Discovery's learned well the lesson that people identify with personalities, even on non-fiction programming. As a result, they've put a new front-man on a previously existing show (Extreme Engineering) and it's suddenly one of Discovery's latest success stories. I also get a chuckle out of how Toyota has gone over-the-top in their product placement on the program so as to compete with Ford's similar product-placement on spokesperson Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs.

As if those shows weren't enough I now feel myself being sucked in by a couple more:

• Last One Standing: A bunch of athletic westerners being thrown into the ring to square off against primitive, tribal warriors in their physically-demanding native challenges? Where do I sign up for this testosterone-fest? I've only seen one episode so far, but it's already on the record list. *sigh*
  

• Storm Chasers: Yeah, yeah. This kind of stuff is more limited in its appeal to weather geeks like me and can already be found on the Weather Channel. But which network do you think is going to make a more entertaining program? The Weather Channel or the marketing geniuses behind the Discovery Channel? Fortunately this one is only supposed to be a 4-episode series. But that's how most of the shows above started off as well . . .