Here I Go ... On the Road Again: Weekend Report, Simpsons, Console Wars Redux, and MORE

So this weekend I did something a little different ...

I drove to San Diego.

Yep, up until now I had never driven that far myself, so I was a little reluctant to hop into my car and head down to la casa del Aksel on somewhat short notice. But, I didn't have much else going on, I had been considering doing something different over the weekend, and I figured I might as well ...

So Saturday evening I hopped into the Alero, popped in Tenacious D's self-titled album, looked over a comically thick stack of Mapquest-ed directions, and set off into the great unknown. First stop: Newport Beach - The "OC" as the kids call it - to meet up with Colonel B-rad for some dinner and catchin' up. After checking out Bradd's place and having some quality eats, it was time to head out again and continue the seeminly endless trek to San Diego, or more precisely Chula Vista, where the one and only Aksel calls home once again after a few years in Boston following our time at BU. Though tired from the long road, Aksel and I hit up SD's famous Gaslamp District for a bit and took in the scene. The next day, we did a mini-tour and took in the Hotel Coronado and Balboa Park, then headed back to the Axe-man's house for a hearty home-cooked meal that was also an early birthday celebration for my old college roommate. Finally, I headed out, filled up on gas, and began the long journey home to LA, through traffic that alternated between brisk and total stop-and-go. Suffice to say, it was a good three hour or so drive back to Burbank. While driving that far isn't so bad with a few people, doing so alone on the dar, black void that is the southern California freeway system is a pretty draining experience. With little to see on either side of the road, and endless starts and stops in the traffic flow, you start to feel like you're a rat caught in a neverending maze. But, aside from the long drive both ways, it was an excellent trip, and it was great to get away and do something a bit different, and see some sights in and around San Diego - which is a city that is truly pretty amazing to see and experience, definitely one of the more picturesque places I've been in da good ol' U-S-and A. The gaslamp district is one of the msot hopping places I've seen, and the parks and coastlines are pretty amazing - walking around the grounds of the Coronado, I felt like I was on the set of some 1970's TV show or something, as everything had a very un-modern, Nixon-era feel to it, but the whole thing was pretty cool and fun to see. And may I say thanks to Aksel and his parents for some great hospitality and food. Good times! Plus I even got in a quick visit to the OC to see Bradd, so, bonus.

Okay ... so, anyways ...

- Due to my weekend excursion, I didn't get a chance to see my anticipated movie of the week - Stranger Than Fiction. But I'll have to catch up on that because this coming weekend brings two long-anticipated film debuts - For Your Consideration and Casino Royale.

For my money, I don't get why more people aren't buzzing about For Your Consideration. Christopher Guest's mockumentaries are some of the funniest movies of the last 10 years -- Best in Show, Waiting For Guffman, and my personal fave, A Mighty Wind, are so, so good, and with the same main cast back, PLUS Ricky Gervais, this is about as good of a sure-thing as you'll get. I fear a box office bomb though, as the ad campaign seems to be nonexistant, and what trailers I have seen haven't done much of a job of making the movie look funny. I am 95% confident though that the trailers are not indicative of much, and that this movie will rule. I mean the movie within a movie of For Your Consideration is called "Home For Purim." Now THAT is hilarious in and of itself.

As for Bond, to be honest I never really had a problem with the Brosnan bond movies ... to me the 007 franchise is kind of a lightweight excuse for some good, fun, campy, over the top spy movies. But now they want us to take Bond seriously again, ala Batman Begins ... and so, alright, I'm willing to bite, this new Bond does seem pretty kickass. But, on the other hand, what makes it Bond? If he doesn't have the gadgets and snappy one-liners then what distinguished him from Jack Bauer or Jason Bourne? I guess his sheer British-ness will be what makes this Bond stand out ...? My one problem with the Bond franchise though is the lack of continuity. I mean take this latest flick - we have a new Bond, a new "origin" so to speak, yet Judy Dench is back in the same role as previous Bond films? This kind of continuity-based anachronism makes my head spin. That's what was so fulfilling about Batman Begins for us Schumacker-haters ... it blatantly wiped the filmic slate clean and rebooted the franchise, mining material from the comics and getting back to a darker version of the character. Casino Royale seems to be doing the same thing, but is there even a Bond continuity to reboot? I'd love if this new movie would start a trend of a more tightly-woven mythology - it's the only way to avoid having James Bond become a cartoon character - we have to know things about him that carry over from movie to movie - who is this guy and what makes him tick? Does he have one true love? One arch enemy? Without that sense of context, it's no wonder that the last round of Bond films became so over the top - there was no concrete character stuff to build upon. In any case, looking forward to the new movie and excited about the positive reviews thus far ...

TV STUFF:

THE SIMPSONS

- Last night had to be a somewhat sobering night for us true-blue SIMPSONS fans. I know for me, I eagerly watched my recorded Simpsons ep after getting home from San Diego last night, hopeful that the show would rebound from last week's mediocre Treehouse of Horror and start up some momentum for the movie, which was set to be previewed during the ep.

First of all, the ep itself started off okay, with a few funny jokes including a clever parody of army recruitment videos / commercials. Things went waaaay downhill from there though, and as soon as Homer joined the army there was nary a laugh to be had amidst more of last week's heavy-handed and unfunny political commentary and yet another "Homer-gets-a-random-new-job" storyline in the same mold as about 5 trillion previous episodes'. Not very encouraging at all ...

My Grade: C -

And then, the preview for the movie ... I mean, well, obviously its hard to gage anything about a movie set to be released next summer via a short 30 second teaser. But, that being said ... this preview was anything but buzz-worthy. After an odd parody of 3-D cartoons (that barely even looked 3-D), we got a somewhat crudely-animated piece of physical comedy involving Homer. Now, I don't want CGI Simpsons or anything, but is it too much to ask for the movie to at least look on par with Futurama-level animation? And finally, the preview really gave no sense of bigness or scale to the movie - give me something to be excited about here. I mean, man, I just so, so so don't want this to be a disappointment ... get Matt Groening doing script rewrites ASAP, and hire some decent animators!!!

And one final Simpsons thought: Despite being a wildly over the top cartoon, there's no question in my mind that the show, in its prime, was the most REAL show on TV. What made the Simpons GREAT was that no matter how absurd it got, it always managed to hit on real social and moral truths. I just hope that the movie remembers that fact.

And yes, The Simpsons, seasons 2 to 10 give or take, is the greatest TV comedy of all time, bar none.

As for last night's FAMILY GUY ...

Yet again I am forced to wonder - holy crap, what the hell happened to this show? For two years it was the funniest thing on TV, now you can practically hear the "this is worse than the time when ..." jokes coming a mile away. Last night's ep, as per usual lately, had one or two decent laughs but, mostly, kind of sucked. Kind of sad that after flashing to Peter at work, I had no clue where he worked or that he even had a job, since the show has strayed so far from coherant plots that we never see Peter at work, rarely see Chris in school, and Meg has pretty much just become a walking one-joke punchline. Wow, what a waste of Dru Barrymore as a one-note stupid blonde that Brian the dog embarrasingly dates. Yes, there were some good jokes, but more bad ones.

My Grade: C+

QUICK TV NOTES:

- Last week's SMALLVILLE was pretty good, liked the Venom-like subplot with Green Arrow (the entire ep was kind of a big Denny O'Neil tribute). My one thing is that Lana continues to be pretty annoying, and there's no way I can buy a Martha Kent-Lionel Luthor romance. Good stuff between Clark and Ollie though.

- I actually was a fan of last week's STUDIO 60. Despite still being way too preachy, I do get a kick out of the writing if only for its stylistic bite. Curious about this week's followup. I'm also happy to hear about the show's full season pickup-- I have this feeling like if Sorkin is allowed to just get out all of his pent up preachiness now, he can get back to just telling good character-based stories with sharp but not ham-fisted commentary on the state of TV.

- The Office is handling the whole merger storyline pretty well ... last week's ep was funny (STAM-FORD, CONNECT-I-CUT!), but not quite as laugh out loud hilarious as some of this week's earlier eps. Still pound for pound though the best comedy going right now, even if it is seemingly in a weekly struggle to balance out its comedic sensibilities with its burgeoning status as a wannabe comic-soap opera in the vein of more traditional sitcoms like Friends. I can only hope that the show stays strong and resists that pull ...

- Ahhh, still must catch up on last week's Veronica Mars ...

- What is FOX thinking with THE OC? First it's moved to Wednesdays, now it's back to Thursdays? All I know is, doing a last minute back to back airing of new episodes cannot be good for confused fans who want to know why they seem to be missing vital story info when they tune in this week. Oh, right, there's barely any of those fans left. Since the quality of the show seems to be on upswing, I blame FOX's typically shoddy marketing and scheduling depts for once again failing to drum up publicity for a key show on its primetime schedule. And yet, in the midst of all this, the OC has been pretty darn entertaining so far. Not great or anything, but much better than Season 3 quality, that's for sure. I'm still on board ...

OTHER STUFF:

- This week is friggin' HUGE in the world of videogames. The PS3 launches at an unprecedentedly high price point of $600 for the top-line model, and $500 for the midgrade console. These type of prices have not been seen in videogame land since the heyday of the NeoGeo, 3-DO, and CDI ... and we all know what happened to those overpriced oddities (though Neo Geo is kind of a whole different animal .... Of course, the Sony of 2006 is ten times more business saavy than the Phillips of 1994 or so, but still ... Man, this is going to be interesting ... It's funny, too, because I feel like Sony's rival Apple has inadvertantly helped out Sony, by creating the i-pod induced trend of forcing consumers to pay ridiculously high prices for the latest consumer electronic fad of the moment. I mean, pre iPod would you have paid $200 for walkman? Hells no. Now, Sony wants you to pay abusurd amounts of cash for a system that doesn't yet even have a killer app, while Microsoft is trotting out potential Game of the Year candidate Gears of War, Nintendo is readying its cheap and attractive box o' innovation, the Wii, with Mario and Zelda in tow, and hell, even Sony's own Playstation 2, that little old LAST-gen console, is rolling out one last round of big-guns, including Final Fantasy 12.

My prediction is that Sony will do modest holiday numbers, but due to limited available quantities of PS3's, the PERCEPTION will be created that it is a hot item. Make or break time will be in early-mid 2007. If Blu-Ray as a format fails, I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony release a scaled-back PS3 sans Blu Ray drive and much cheaper to boot, though doing so would take a huge gulp of pride-swallowing on Sony's part. I think in the grand scheme of technological innovations, the whole blu-ray / hd-dvd thing is prob not going to be a mass market success anytime soon, and in the world of gaming there is just too much other stuff that will take priority - from fast online play to downloadable vintage libraries. So the real test will be in the next year, when Sony releases some killer app exclusives (cough*Metal Gear*cough) and really makes its true push ... I think Nintendo is doing a lot of things right with the Wii (aside from the dumb name) ... but yeah, launching with a new Mario and Zelda game does not hurt at all. The price is definitely right, so I think a lot of people may take the plunge and sample Nintendo's latest (where is the marketing though?). But, it remains to be seen if a generation of kids raised on Grand Theft Auto will succumb to the simple pleasures of guiding a cartoonish plumber through a whimsical land of anthropmorphic mushrooms. So yeah, is the Wii simply a nostalgia act for a Nintendo that has yet to really reclaim the third party support that gave Nintendo the edge in the 8 and 16 bit years?

As for me, I figure the latest Final Fantasy should keep me busy playin' the old PS2 for, oh, the next five years or so ... Seeing as how this is the first real FF game to come out in my post-collegiate life, I honestly have no idea how I'll ever find time to get through this. I still have unplayed Devil May Cry 3 SE and Okami sitting unplayed on my shelf, and a barely completed Psychonauts still begiing to be conquered. But here's a lesson for all the movie studios that can't even seem to make ONE decent sequel to a hit film ... since the late 1980's, Square Soft has churned out TWELVE Final Fantasy games, each one of them a classic and among the best games released that year (okay, I'll admit, 8 was slightly below par). But still, the artistry and magic that Square puts into each FF game is simply breathtaking, and cracking open part 12 and hearing that classic hemesong play over the stunning title credits was as much a moment for me as hearing the Superman theme ring out in Superman Returns or hearing the Bond theme play will be upon seeing Casino Royale. But man, the working life sucks! How am I supposed to stay up until 4 am playing videogames now? Laaame ...

- But yeah, where is the real rivalry? Three next-gen systems, and not a bit of the old 16 bit / 32 bit era mud-slinging in sight. Man, remember the classic ads of the early Nintendo-Sega wars and then of the Sony-Sega rivalry? Talk about intense, as a kid in middle school, proclaiming loyalty to Nintendo or Sega was like choosing sides in the freakin' Civil War.

-- Alright, enough nerd talk. I am out for now. Glad I managed to get in a fun-filled weekend and hoping that there's even bigger and better things around the corner.