Posts

Posted on

A full moon in the middle of the day!

Some friends and I went out for dinner last night at a Thai restaurant and when ordering an entree there, you get to specify which level of spiciness you want: Low, Medium, Hot, Thai Hot, or Challenging. Matthew felt brave enough to order pad thai at the challenging level and, well, he really wanted to get ice cream after we were done eating.

“Is there a Dairy Queen around here?” I did a web search for “nearest dairy queen” on my phone and the first one listed was… 0.0 miles away. It was the building next door, but none of us noticed when we got there. Thus, we walked out of the restaurant, turned right, walked across two parking lots and then into the DQ.

After we got our ice cream, we sat down in the sun room area: all windows and glass ceilings. Matthew told us he’d love to have a porch like that so he could just lay down and work on an all-over tan. “Through the glass?” Well, you could lay down on top of the glass roof instead.

We started joking about that concept (walk out onto the porch and see a “moon” overhead…), then I thought about Matthew’s Thai food and blurted out, “It’s an eclipse! And look, there are some solar flares!”

Posted on

You think The Glass House is really that bad?

People all over the Internet are ranting about this show, saying it’s the worst reality TV show that’s ever been produced. I would beg to differ, but I don’t need to beg on this point. They’re wrong and I’ll tell you why.

I’d like to introduce Exhibit A, which was on the air for exactly one episode: “Who’s Your Daddy?” The only reason I know about its existence is because one of the guys working on Beauty and the Geek had just finished working on that show. He thought it was kind of sweet and touching, but that’s what happens when you work behind the scenes. So what ended up on the screen?

I may be off a little on the specifics—it’s only been over seven years since I heard about it—but the premise was that some girl who’d been adopted as a child was put in a mansion with a bunch of older guys. During the course of the show, she had to figure out which of them was her biological father. Seriously. That was the premise.

The reason I think it was on TV for an episode is because I remember coming home from the mansion and learning the title of our show was “Beauty and the Geek” (it was “Working Title” until they put us in seclusion). That play on words plus the fact that “Who’s Your Daddy?” did so poorly… I figured we’d probably get canned after one episode, too. Thankfully, I was wrong, but that’s beside the point.

My point is that The Glass House is not the worst reality TV show that’s ever been produced. Just because it’s the worst you’ve seen doesn’t make it the worst altogether. If you don’t believe me, here’s Exhibit B: a blog entry about a movie called “Wildfire: The Arabian Heart”. Most of you haven’t heard of it before, right? It’s actually the second review that I wrote about it and has links to websites like Blockbuster and IMDB.com, where plenty of other people talk about how it’s the worst movie that’s ever been produced. Go ahead, read through the comments a little and I’ll let you decide whether it sounds better or worse than Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. And with that, I rest my case.

Posted on

Exposed in The Glass House

Apparently, I managed to sneak another 30 seconds into my 15 minutes of reality TV fame. The Glass House has a live web feed that runs for a couple hours after the show airs on Mondays, then one hour on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I wasn’t watching it today, so when I got a call from my friend Marie this afternoon, I was completely shocked to hear that I was a topic of conversation during their live broadcast.

A little twist the producers developed for the show is its social media presence. People vote online for different stuff, but there are also a bunch of Twitter hash tags they’re using so you can contact the contestants and/or producers. One of those hash tags is #AskThePlayers—during each live feed, one or two questions are chosen online by the viewers and presented by Ori (a faceless voice that gives instructions, reveals the results of online polling and occasionally drinks during the live feeds… she said so herself).

When #AskThePlayers first started, I tweeted a question about if the contestants could have any super power, what would it be and why? You know, one of those things I didn’t take very seriously, but thought, “What the hell, why not?” As it turned out, the producers took the question more seriously than I did because that was their question today. (If you want to go straight to the question, skip ahead to minute 43. If you want to see a Tom Cruise impersonator who looks kinda like Tom Cruise and kinda like Edward Norton, start from the beginning.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc779nYpOM8&list=UUNPnv5zxz-CXdQITiNkjoLA&index=1&feature=plcp

Ori said the audience was voting on two questions and the first one was mine. After she introduced both, Steph asked what the name from the first one was. I make a point to conceal my identity on Twitter as much as possible, so my username is @shawnbakken. (I think my favorite part of that whole exchange was how Ori did a decent job of pronouncing my name the first time, but when Steph asked her to repeat it, Ori mispronounced “Shawn”. Yep, definitely drinking on the job.)

When Steph realized it was me, she started getting excited, everyone was asking if I was a friend and she told them that I was in Mensa and on Season 1 of Beauty and the Geek. Steph was waving at the camera to say hi, but of course, they still had to tally the results of the online poll. (The consensus of the contestants was to talk about super powers, but those damn audience members…) After a long, quiet moment—very long and very quiet—my username and question popped up on a giant TV screen. Stephanie found it particularly awesome, which made two of us, and eventually all of the girls started saying hi to me on a live web feed. Yep, definitely awesome.

Sad to say, Steph messed up when she gave her answer. The superpower she wanted was telekinesis so she could levitate, move stuff around and… read minds. She wanted to go all “Jean Grey” on it (a character from Marvel Comics also known as Marvel Girl and Phoenix), but Jean Grey’s mental abilities include telepathy, the ability to read minds. Yay for comic books, boo for stumbling over super powers!

Once everyone had answered their questions, a bunch of people said thanks again, the big gay guy said “I love Mensa, too!”, the big black guy said “I’m not gonna flirt with you, but I’ll say ‘What’s up?'”, some of the girls were happy to flirt with me… yep, definitely awesome. And I missed it. Thank God for someone posting the clip on YouTube or I would have been reeeeeeally depressed.

And remember what I said about the social media presence? Earlier tonight, there were two tweets from The Glass House with my name on them: one was a shout-out from Steph; the other was a thank you from Joy, a girl who’s posed in Playboy six times (and was also happy to flirt with me). Lemme tell ya, seeing my name on a live web feed today was a pretty cool thirty seconds of fame, but after reading tweets like theirs, those thirty seconds seem way cooler.
___________________________________

Addendum: In retrospect, I want to mention something about Erica since her “super power” was to be a tween vampire so she’d have great skin, sparkle in the sunlight, etc. I imagine this elicited one of two responses from home viewers: “She likes Twilight!” or “What kind of a crappy answer is that?” Combining said crappy answer with the stuffed cat that she carries all over the place, she seems like kind of a ditzy blond who isn’t really a threat to anyone on the show, which is exactly what she wants you to think.

According to her bio on The Glass House’s website, Erica graduated from Ohio State with a 4.0 GPA, worked in finance for three years, got good grades in law school before dropping out at the beginning of her second year… she’s a smart girl. Really smart.

Alex said he was going to try to be the most evil reality TV star ever before getting kicked out of the house. Apparently, his interpretation of “evil reality TV star” was to be a major dick to everyone, meaning he should have done some research about reality TV beforehand. No, the best evil people are quiet, work behind the scenes and are very manipulative. Kinda like… what Erica is doing. I’m not trying to say that she’s going to become more malicious over time, just noting that her super power should have been something more like a master of disguise.

Posted on

Why redesign the website?

Apparently, my blog design’s creator decided to make a new version of the old program—the one I was using will stop working the next time WordPress gets updated—so I installed Version II and decided to play with some of the features. Sure, I could have been sleeping for the last two hours instead of choosing what color I should use for the background, but sleep is overrated. Way overrazzzzzzzzzz…

Posted on

Gloves are off! Bring on The Glass House!

ABC developed a new reality show called The Glass House that’s coming to a TV near you! Well, yours or a neighbor’s… unless you watch your favorite shows online, in which case it’ll be on your monitor… then again, you might not own a TV, computer and don’t live near anyone… how the hell are you reading this?!

The show actually led to a lawsuit from CBS because they claim GH resembles its long-running reality show, Big Brother, just a liiiiittle too much. It doesn’t seem like the lawsuit will prevent it from airing, so websites about the show have been springing up all across the Interwebs.

One of those sites, teamsteph.net, was created by some of my friends in Mensa because Steph is a member as well. (They decided to jump into the pool of social media hip-deep by creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account, too.) Personally, I’ve met Steph before, but don’t know her very well. However, she’s a close friend of some close friends, so I was happy to join the group and offer support and/or reality show-based insights.

Apparently, at least one person took objection to their preparation before the show hit the airwaves. Major objection. The blogger behind “Fat Grandma’s Glass House” went on a tear about how the creation of Team Steph was sabotaging her chances to win already. I’d include a link to that site, but 1) I can put a picture of the blog post on here instead, and 2) I don’t want to drive web traffic toward a person who probably hates my guts.

Note that this is an audience-driven reality show where people get to vote online about a bunch of stuff that will affect what happens in the Glass House. What really drove “Fat Grandma” around the bend was Team Steph posting suggestions about how people should vote, choices that they thought would benefit her on the show. That’s the summary—I’ll let you read the entire rant on your own.

Anyway, when I found out about said rant, I decided to go to the website and add my own two cents, which promptly became four cents, then eight… probably a full quarter by the time she said she was done responding to me. Yeah, it was kind of an extensive exchange.

So the reason for this blog entry isn’t bragging rights. It could be, but it isn’t. See, I’ve been known to adopt the role of “Douchey McDouchebaggerson” in the past and I’m wondering if I was making legitimate points or if it just sounds like I was being a dick. I think I’m right, but all of you would look at things a little more objectively than me under the circumstances. Thusly and therefore, if you’re in the mood to do some more reading, head over to the next page and see what you think. (The picture is a full-sized webpage, so you can click on it to zoom in… you know, in case you want to be able to actually read it.) Continue reading “Gloves are off! Bring on The Glass House!”