Sunday, April 25, 2004

Today's (Short) Political Rant

There's an e-mail message making the rounds that points out that John Kerry's service record starts with the words, "I request duty in Vietnam," whereas George W. Bush's includes the line, "Do not volunteer for overseas duty."

Now, I happen to think that very little that either man did in the seventies is relevant to what kind of president he'd be in the next four years. In fact, I doubt there's a person in their (or my) age bracket who doesn't have a few 30-year-old deeds or statements that they should be ashamed of, and I'm suspicious of being urged to vote for or against someone because of what they did in 1971.

However, I do think that if those service records were reversed — if Bush had Kerry's and Kerry had Bush's — Bush supporters would be telling us the following: That Bush is a real man, Kerry is a wimp, and they don't need to know anything more about either candidate to know who to vote for.

• Posted at 11:09 PM · LINK

MP3 Solution

A week or three ago here, I asked if anyone could recommend an MP3 player with a harddisk that had a good pause/resume feature. (Among other needs, I wanted to be able to listen to recordings of Al Franken's new show, starting and stopping without losing my place.) I instantly received e-mails singing the praises of almost every model by every manufacturer out there, and I'm sure most of them would have been fine. But after studying several messages, especially those from a gent named Phil Merkel, I opted for the Archos 20 GB USB 2.0 MP3 Jukebox Recorder. The Archos is a little heavy, so it isn't ideal for carrying around when you jog or walk but it holds a ton of music and seems otherwise ideal...that is, if you make one little change.

When I first began researching this, I came across some poor reviews for this device, based largely on its internal software. Phil informed me that there's a terrific, free alternative. Some folks wrote an open source program called Rockbox which you can download here and load into your Archos Jukebox. It's simple to install and it corrects all the flaws the Archos people built into their product, making it into a wonderful little machine.

One other selling point for the Archos Jukebox is that it's cheap. If you click on this link, you can buy one from the Amazon folks for $179.88, which is a pretty good price, somewhat below what other online dealers charge. It can be even better because Amazon is currently offering a $50 rebate, bringing the actual price down to $129.88. There are online dealers asking a hundred bucks more than that, which reminds us that it pays to shop around. Anyway, so far, I'm pretty happy with my purchase.

• Posted at 11:46 AM · LINK

More Great Spammer Names

I just got one from Abase J. Ironical and another from Gambled M. Earplugs. My pal Nat Gertler says he just got one from Cretin K. Crossfire.

• Posted at 10:37 AM · LINK

Fat Cat on DVD

I'm getting e-mail asking me what's up with the announced (but not too clearly) release of Garfield and Friends on DVD. As you may recall, I recently posted a press release that said the first volume, collecting the first season of 13 episodes, would be out in July from Fox Home Video for $39.98. I also said — and I quote me — "I think the above may have the contents listing wrong." I said this because I'd been informed that they'd be releasing the first 24 half-hours, and it seemed to me that $39.98 was a more appropriate price for that.

Well, this announcement says that it's coming out July 27 for $39.98 and they list episode titles for 24 half-hours. Sharp-eyed folks will notice that the episode titles do not exactly match my list of what was in the first 24 half-hours. That's because my list was based on the original CBS runs, and a few things were switched around when the shows were released in syndication. The only special feature on this set is a trailer for the forthcoming Garfield live-action/CGI movie.

I notice that DVD Empire is taking advance orders for it but they think the list price is $29.95 and they've discounted it to $20.07. I have no idea what will happen if you order from them but if someone does, let me know.

Jerry Beck asked me to let him know which episodes have the interesting guest voice actors in them. This first release includes Chuck McCann, Stan Freberg, Pat Buttram, Dick Beals, Lennie Weinrib, Larry Storch, Jeff Altman, and Robin Leach. (The odd story of how Robin Leach wound up on the show is told here.) And of course, we have our regular cast of Thom Huge, Gregg Berger, Julie Payne, Howie Morris, Frank Welker and the late, lovely Lorenzo Music.

I'm also being asked when the next release will be, whether there will be special features on future volumes, and which theme song(s) will be on this one. I have no answers to any of those questions. All I know is that the concept here is that the entire run of 121 half-hours will be collected on five DVD sets, of which this is the first. How soon we'll see the next one may depend on how quickly this one gets snatched up.

• Posted at 2:05 AM · LINK

April 24, 2004 • Current • April 26, 2004