And so it goes.
On January 22nd, we’re poised to lose Conan O’Brien as a fixture of late-night television – at least for a time, if NBC’s proposed contract settlement is carried out. (It’s been said that they’ll ban Conan from hosting a new show for anywhere from 1-1/2 to over 3 years, evil bastards.) It’s a poignant thing, what feels like an end of an era. After all, Late Night With Conan O’Brien debuted when I was just entering the 8th grade, and I remember it being a minor mark of bad-assery if you were able to sneak out and watch it after your parents went to bed. (Hey, this was 1993. No one had the internet and we took our small rebellions where we could get them!)
Myself, I didn’t really discover my interest in the show until the late ’90s, when I was a little more worldly and appreciative of the ribald humor. And even though he’s 17 years my senior, Conan always felt like that massively cool (yet utterly dorky) older brother who was whip-smart, humorously self-deprecating, and would do just about anything for a laugh. And it was that perfect blend of brilliance and dweebery that made him so endearing to so many in my generation. You know, my grandparents always preferred David Letterman. My parents were occasional watchers of Jay Leno. But Conan – he belonged to us. We of the “X and Y” generations – the ones who prefer our humor with an equal dash of snark and smarts, and an extra dose of jackassery. And what can I say? I feel an especial kinship to the man, given that we’re both tall, Irish gingers who are practically translucent. ;-)
Heh … I just re-read what I wrote and it almost sounds like I’m giving a eulogy. But it doesn’t feel so far from the mark. Honestly, I never thought The Tonight Show was right for Conan. It was too steeped in certain expectations and traditions – and above all else, too damn early in the schedule. Talk about crampin’ mah style! After all, Late Night was the reliable show you could turn on after a night of watching bad movies over beers with good friends. It was just late enough to fall asleep to, and just early enough so you could watch the whole thing and still have hope for a reasonable amount of sleep before an early morning class or commute. While Conan certainly had the moxie to reinvigorate The Tonight Show back to its Carson-esque glory, who knows if it would have worked out – even had dumb ol’ Leno actually retired as promised.
Speaking of which, many people are looking to Leno as the bad guy in this equation, and I’m not sure what I feel. It was a shitty stunt to pull – to decide in 2008 that instead of moving on, he’d start hosing his own talk show as a lead-in to the Conan-helmed Tonight Show. But I suppose we can’t fault him completely for the abysmal ratings that his 10pm spin-off received, which effectively led to a domino effect against the rest of the late-night lineup. Still, why is NBC being Leno’s bitch? Why are they so dead-set on keeping him happy? Why not put him on a six month hiatus and see if Conan’s ratings improved without Leno mucking up the lead-in? It seems like so much could have been done without resorting to NBC’s attempts to “demote” Conan to his previous time-slot. I agree with his statement – which I’ve heard had Conan in tears while writing it – in which he asserted that changing The Tonight Show’s format and schedule would effectively destroy the show. It could have been heading for destruction (maybe even cancellation) anyway, but Conan is a resilient fellow who pulled Late Night out of creative and ratings-based slumps before. I’ll bet he could have done it again. But I guess now we’ll never know.
So I’m with Coco – whatever that means, at this point. Boycotting Jay Leno? No problem, I never watch him to begin with. But what’s left to do? Hope that Conan finds a loophole in the settlement that would maybe permit him to produce a web-based show until the dust settles? It could be a brilliant maneuver, and I’m sure that sites like Funny Or Die would love to partner with him to produce something groundbreaking and awesome. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see. But one thing’s for certain … The jolly red giant may be lost, but not gone forever.
Happy (belated) new year, everyone! I can hardly believe that half of January has whisked by already. My days have been filled up with moving preparations and the act thereof, and now I’m happily settled into my new apartment which is literally a stone’s throw from the last. (I stayed in the same complex, just went with a smaller unit to save some much-needed cashola.) With the economy looking to be grim as ever in the first year of the newly minted decade, I’ve been searching my noggin for ideas on how to bring in a little extra for ye olde piggy bank. If you’ve any suggestions, let me know! Just keep ‘em clean – street walking is hardly as glamorous as Julia Roberts and Richard Gere would have us believe. Not that I would know or anything. 
Speaking of looking for lust in all the wrong places, some of you may have heard about the hullabaloo over an online dating website’s recent decision to dump 5000+ members because they “let themselves go” over the holidays. Nothing like some superficial rejection to ring in the new year, amirite? The Beautiful People dating site, which goes out of its way to market itself as an exclusive community with a “strict ban on ugly people”, decided that a number of its members were no longer worthy enough to suck in the rarefied interwebz air of its elite ranks, after said members updated their profiles with post-holiday pictures showing apparent weight gain.
In order to gain access to this mecca of superficial snobbery, you have to upload a photo with your sign-up form, and current members are given 48 hours to rate your image to determine whether or not you are indeed beautiful enough to gain full membership to the site. And the verbiage during the sign-up process even goes so far as to guarantee that your dates will always be beautiful. O RLY? First of all, how does this website check the validity of the photos? It’s ridiculously simple to find pictures of attractive people online – just take a casual stroll through photo albums on Flickr, Facebook, Deviant Art, and similar sites, select one that isn’t too posed and could pass for something candid, and you’re good to go.
Secondly, how can you possibly market an international website that makes claims that its members are all incredibly attractive? By whose measuring stick? The site operates in 10 different languages and has members from all over the world – a world where standards of beauty tend to vary widely. Though unsurprisingly, the highest numbers of member casualties came from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada – suggesting that those three countries likely make up the bulk of membership. In that case, one can get a pretty fair representative idea of what the standards of so-called “beauty” are amongst the majority of members. Rail thin (yet buxom) women of the bland American model/actress variety, and men with perfect six packs and perma-tans, still glassy-eyed from their last frat party. Ugh.
Now there are some who might argue that plenty of “exclusive dating communities” already exist, and indeed, they do. You have sites aimed at those of certain religious faiths, ethnicities, income levels, etc. However, those sites tend to be pretty objective. If you practice the Jewish faith, you qualify for a Jewish dating site. If you’re Latino, you don’t need to be “voted in” by other Latinos. But beauty, to borrow a very cliched phrase, truly IS in the eye of the beholder. And honestly, how desperate for acceptance must you be to let your photo be paraded out in front of a group of Certified Beautiful People to see if you’re worthy of being including in their hallowed halls?
It’s stuff like this that people will point to – those skeptics who insist on thinking of online dating as unsavory and a waste of time. But I’ve been a champion of being open-minded about meeting people online since dinosaurs roamed the earth (i.e., 1999). I suppose I have positive influences though; my mom met my step-dad less than 2 weeks after she got online for the first time in her life. Still, for those of you who may have considered trying online dating in the new year, don’t let the Beautiful People rejects and their holler-than-thou brethren scare you off. There are still several quality, non-judgmental dating sites out there – OKCupid, Match.com, and eHarmony are just a few. I do wish there was something more geared toward folks of the geeky/nerdy variety, and I’ve seen a site or two that purports to cater to that niche, but they were unimpressive at best. Maybe I’ll start one myself, eh? I could even outlaw profile pictures altogether and find other creative ways to pre-select prospective members:
Did you enjoy the Star Wars prequels?
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Who’s hotter – Xena or Sydney Bristow?
Best. Idea. Ever!
“All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?”
{The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby}
Holy hell … I just spent far more time than I care to admit on Take It Back (the final quest of the main Fallout 3 game), and the stress was such that I’m seriously considering drowning my frustration in booze and women. Now I’ve played the game before, but it’s been a year or so, and in that time I’d managed to soothe the memory from my mind of what a FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS this mission is. Not because it’s difficult, no. But because Liberty Prime – the giant robot whose sole purpose it is to clear away electronic barriers and kill everything in sight in order to allow you to finish the storyline – is the glitchiest piece of fail in the entire game. Due to bugs related to quest triggers and clipping path issues, it’s very likely that you’ll find yourself hopelessly stuck on the bridge to the Jefferson Memorial, unable to advance because the lumbering douchebox won’t move his buns o’ steel. And unless you’re a chronic save-gamer, you may find yourself well and truly fucked.
Liberty Prime: One Bad-Ass Mutha-StuckaHere are just a few of the happenstances that can cause problems:
- He’s stuck in/behind the landscape
- He got turned around
- You ran ahead on the bridge
- You shot at him and now you’re his main target
- You fast-traveled away from the Citadel when he was being “launched”
- And so on …
As I was struggling with figuring out a solution, I remembered that last time I finally gave up and turned off clipping via the console, which allowed me to pass all the barriers and reach the final destination. However, I wanted to do it the right way this time, as I wasn’t sure if Broken Steel (the add-on pack that activates right after the main game ends) would work correctly if the events didn’t unfold the way they were supposed to. So after searching through 23 pages of related threads on the Bethesda forum, my irritation turned to chagrin when I realized that this time my problem was that I had killed the dude whose presence actually triggers the robot to move. Fuckin’ A!
Barring the fact that someone that vital to the final quest should not be able to be killed, I had to admit that my murderous killing spree in the Citadel (brought on by a case of Adamantium Rage, no doubt!) was pretty damn fun, and because I tend to quick-save, I had been overwriting my save points for hours. *Facepalm* I was just about to give up and relog a ridiculously old save when I realized – amidst my stumbling around the Citadel grounds in grumbly abandon – that the fella in question (Paladin Vargas) was lying just outside the Citadel door. Utilizing the “grab” function (which I’d never used otherwise, as it always seemed completely pointless), I hauled his body over to Liberty Prime, and wouldn’t you know it … The metal gladiator of death FINALLY started moving.
[Cue the "Hallelujah" chorus here!]
So for any of you who may have found yourself in similarly dire straits – and of course, I’ve tested this only on the PC version – either be careful who you kill, or be prepared to go hunting for Vargas’ body in order to trigger Prime across the bridge (which may prove impossible if you turned him into an Ash Pile, at which time you’d have to utilize the Resurrect cheat). I know quite a few of my readers are Fallout 3 junkies as well, so I hope this is useful to someone! And for those who have asked, I finished 2 of the 5 DLCs – Operation: Anchorage and Point Lookout. The former was very combat-heavy and thus a lot of fun (and it also provides the strongest armor in the game upon completion), whereas the latter added about 6 – 8 hours of gameplay, provided that you wander around discovering all the locations and side quests. I mistakenly tripped the final main quest before I meant to, so now that Broken Steel has activated, I plan on going back and doing The Pitt and Mothership Zeta, as well as some of the side quests I know I missed. Now if only I could find something to spend my 20K stash of bottle caps on! I suppose there’s always that wench back in Megaton … 
