/dev/null/kevin

What do you think, Han Solo action figure #7, should we add Star Wars to our Netflix queue?

Since I complain about a lot of things I figured I should give credit to some good customer support from the Warner Brothers movie studio. 

I bought Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on DVD last week.  I noted that it included a free digital download of the movie.  Yes, it requires windows and WMP, but free is free (or at least I already paid for it).  I entered by key and watched the download start, but just a few minutes in the downloading software hung.

Experienced people can see where this story is going.  On my second attempt to download the software I was told that my access key had already been used.  D'oh!  Worst fears realized.

Checking the support site they said I could call them during regular business hours (I was doing this on a Sunday).  There was also an email submission form for problems.  I sent the email, expecting to hear nothing, but only a few minutes later I received what I thought was just an auto-responder message.  Turns out it was a real response and they had reset my key!

Take 3 of the download worked perfectly.  All of this on a Sunday afternoon!  So congratulations, Warner Brothers DVD people on an excellent job!

As a Star Wars fan, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time.  I got to sit down and watch Star Wars with my daughter on my lap.  She loved it.  I loved watching it with her and answering her questions (she had many).  Afterwards she wanted to play with my Star Wars toys vintage collectables.  And, yes, I did show her Daddy in the movie.  She wants me to wear that costume for Halloween.

She cannot escape her destiny:

She's four years old and is really into characters and plots now.  No more Dora, Blue's Clues and Wiggles.  Now it's High School Musical (1 & 2) and many new books.  She can handle the idea of death without getting scared and she also knows that everything on TV is "pretend."  It helps that I tell her what's going to happen so she's prepared.  Still, some concepts were hard to explain.  The Force, Obi-Wan dead, but not really.  I didn't want to call him a ghost so he's just "living inside the Force" now.  She also didn't like Alderaan betting blown up.  I had to compare that to the Big Bad Wolf blowing down the pigs' houses.

She liked Princess Leia because she's into the whole Princess thing (thanks, Disney), but that's also got her interested in the first place.  I think her only disappointment in Star Wars was that Princess Leia didn't do anything during the final battle.  Where is she?  What's she looking at?  Where's her spaceship?  Time for some Nancy Drew books now and some Buffy videos in a few years.  Maybe some Xena. 

She wants to watch "the second movie" but I may wait a bit.  It's a bit darker.

Beware!  The Sci-Fi Channel is releasing yet another snake movie!  MegaSnake must be the twelfth stupid snake movie, following in the lame footsteps of movies like Snakehead Terror, Python, King Cobra, Komodo vs Cobra, and Snake King.

I can only imagine that the "creative" minds over at the Sci-Fi channel have this in their office to determine the next original movie.

Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie Idea Generator 

While checking to see if this review of the Bratz movie was still up (it's not), I noticed that Yahoo! Movies was telling me that "You'll probably like this movie."  Really?  What did I ever do to give you that idea?

Since I don't like being told what I should like, I exercised my web-2.0-given rights and gave the movie an "F" rating.  Yahoo didn't care and still told me that I would like this movie.  Note: While I haven't seen this movie I'm pretty sure I would hate it.

 What up, Yahoo?  I pretty sure I won't be using your recommendations any time soon.

This review for the movie Bratz may still be on Yahoo, but in case it's been removed, here it is.  It really is the most helpful, and accurate, review.

Here it is, the movie poster for Star Trek XI.  And what an impressive poster it is.  It's got stars on it, and I think they're trekking somewhere.  Wow.  I think this poster cost $5,000,000 to make.  Move over Santa and Jesus!  Next (next!) Christmas I've got a date with a young Vulcan named Spock who cuts open people's brains and steals their hero powers.  Update: Nimoy, too!

I hate spoilers.  I don't like having movies, TV shows (or books, Harry Potter leakers) ruined for me and will do everything possible to avoid anything that could reveal major plot points.  Even in the way back days of USENET, I would avoid discussions of upcoming shows.  I also don't watch movie previews of movies I know I want to see.  The same goes for the "scenes from next week" at the end of some TV shows.  The people who make those teasers and trailers don't care about what they spoil; they're job is just to get you to watch it.  I won't even watch the beginning credits of the new Battlestar Galactica because it contains spoilers.

My problem is that almost anything can be a spoiler.  I have a pretty good memory, and a fairly logical mind, so it doesn't take much for me to connect things together.  Show me someone in a certain situation and I can pretty much guess how they're going to get into it.

With so many "web 2.0" feeds and instant communication, avoiding spoilers is harder than ever.  I am on the west coast, so huge plot details appear in my RSS reader before I even see some shows.  I found out who won the first season of Survivor while I was online years ago.  Recently, I actually deleted quite a few RSS feeds in anticipation for the inevitable Harry Potter leak that was to come (and it happened within hours of me doing so).

I had the season finale of Heroes spoiled for me due to a careless Twitter tweet.  The worst spoilers are the careless ones.  People who don't think before they speak (or tweet).

Sometimes people try to be clever and just give a little "hint" at a spoiler.  Don't.  Telling me that "you'll never see the surprise ending coming" means that I will.  Telling someone there is a surprise ending spoils the surprise.  Saying the ending made you happy or sad ruins the surprise.  Pretty much anything you say will spoil the ending.  So shut up! 

What really confuses me are people seek out spoilers!  People watch Entertainment Tonight, read TV Guide, or visit Ain't It Cool to get every piece of gossip and news about something coming out (TV Guide is really bad because they get advanced viewings of everything and then write articles like the shows have already aired).  Then people spread those spoilers carelessly because they assume everyone already know this stuff (bastards).  And then do you know what these spoiler-mongers do after the movie comes out or the TV show airs?  They will complain about it and say thing like "I could see the ending coming" or "it was too predictable."  Of course, dummy!  You read the script Harry Knowles posted!

So, in conclusion, seek out spoilers if you must, but don't assume that anyone else wants to know what you do.  I don't.

For this post only I am disabling comments just in case some jerk wants to put some spoilers in the comments.