Tube-Socks Full of Wood Screws

I've watched a bit of TV in my day, and with that comes commercial watching. Most commercials make me want to claw my eyes out, or are just not noticeable. Sometimes, though, there are well-crafted, funny (because commercials have to be funny. It's a rule), commercials. Once commercials become serialized, it gets even better. This time, I'm specifically talking about the Alltel commercials.

I don't like Alltel. I do like their marketing consultants though. They done good. The Chad vs. The Other Nerds campaign is one of my favorite commerical series these days. When it first started, the Sprint Kid (yellow shirt, in the back of that promotional photo) was the funniest (and the quietest -- it's always the quiet ones). Well, turns out, the Sprint Kid went to High School with me.

His name is Mike Busch. He is one year older. I never knew him in high school, but when this was brought to my attention, I looked him up. He's in there.

He won me over when he threatened to beat Chad with a tube-sock full of wood screws. Not wooden screws. Wood screws. Those things are very pointy and made of metal. The thought of this relatively harmless kid threatening that extreme level of violence on someone over a cell phone is comedic genius... then, as if that weren't enough, when his nerd-buddies look at him in shock, he tires to justify it by saying his dad's a carpenter. Awesome.

Well, I'm not sure what happened after that. Maybe the wood-screws line was ad-libbed and someone at Alltel didn't like that. Maybe Mike's moving on to bigger and better things, but he's not the Sprint guy anymore. Now they've got some afro-totin' stoner fuck who doesn't have the same delivery that Mike had. It's depressing.

Since he dissappeared, I've been trying to find Mr. Busch on IMDB or TV.com. Turns out, I was spelling his name incorrectly (I thought it was Bush). My theory was that since he was no longer in the Alltel commercials, he was moving up the ladder and the next rung was either being the dead body or finding the dead body on Law & Order or CSI. Well, I was close.

He was a ghost on Ghost Whisperer.

So, maybe he is moving up in the world. I still expect to see him in something when the fall season starts up. He's already done a little bit, which I have not seen yet. See his resume here.

Mike, you made Alltel bearable. I'm sorry to see you leave that series. You would've made the wizard commercials even better.

Through the Oily Mess, a Little Clarity Comes.

Okay, kiddies, here we go.

Read this and this.

Done? Okay.

Let's. Get. Political.
(First to tell me what that sentence is a parody of gets a prize.)

I used to like John McCain. I don't know if I would've ever voted for him for president, but I didn't have a problem with him. That all changed in May of 2005. He was the commencement speaker at the University of Oklahoma, that year, and I had the "honor" of seeing him speak (the reason why I was there will remain a mystery).

Since that day, I've been trying to find a transcript or a video of his speech. I have yet to find it. You could say that it's a right-wing conspiracy to cover up what he said that day, or you could say I suck at Internet searches. Personally, I believe both. To paraphrase what he said though, "It's great that you've achieved all these accomplishments, but there's a war on, so they don't really mean anything."

It wasn't just cynical old me who was dumbfounded by that. I looked around as he was giving his speech and most people had a look on their faces as if to say, "Uh... what, now?" Commencement speeches are supposed to be inspiring, not defeating and, oh yeah, politically charged.

So, okay. I don't like McCain. Now he's running for president again, and I'll admit that I'm biased, but a lot of the things he says are pretty ridiculous. Not Bush-grade ridiculous, but pretty close. Today, his big point was about offshore drilling.

If you read the article above, you know that off-shore drilling is exactly what it sounds like. Drilling for oil, off the shores of the United States. Most reasonable people think that's a bad idea. A leak could occur, and cause a spill, and ruin the environment.

This is why McCain's willing to risk it (and, one should note, flip-flop on his stance from eight years ago): "And with gasoline running at more than $4 a barrel ... a gallon ... I wish ... $4 a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians."

Far-off plans, Mr. McCain? Did you read the second article I posted? Honda announced yesterday, before McCain's comments, today, that they are test marketing the hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity in California. The article says they will roll out a "few dozen" units, this year, and 200 more over the next three.

Right now, only rich people can afford them (Jamie Lee Curtis is getting one), but if they test well and become popular (Toyota Prius, anyone?), Honda will be able to improve on the technology and make it more affordable to us common folk.

Other companies are developing hydrogen-powered cars, too. GM is further behind, but chugging along on their hydrogen car. I don't have other information right now, but the point is: it's coming.

And, it's clean. Conventional cars emit carbon monoxide and other nasty gasses. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars emit water. Steam. It'd be as if a teapot was glued to the back of your car. Actually, I don't think it's even that dramatic (maybe in the winter). IT'S CLEAN.

So, my point is this: instead of pouring money into something that's potentially hazardous, and really only delays the inevitable, why don't we just suck it up for a few years until hydrogen fuel-cells are affordable and start to become ubiquitous? Pour all that money that would go into off-shore drilling into making sure that American companies can catch up to foreign companies and get this technology rolling (bad pun, sorry). To me, it makes total sense.

I know oil companies are big, and persuasive, but so are automotive companies. Maybe they're all in cahoots. I don't know. I'm still pretty sure that all of the ideas for this kind of stuff existed 60 years ago and the oil companies have been sitting on it until the time was right where they could maximize their profits from it (and from oil). I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm willing so suck it up for a few years until I can afford a hydrogen fuel-cell car. I'm sure if you asked a lot of other people, they'd say the same thing.

Except oil execs.

And John McCain.

(I didn't go into Obama's counter-idea because I don't understand it, very well, right now -- not that ignorance has deterred me in the past, but gimme a break, okay? :))

Concernity: The Aftermath

I got a response back from Discernity. It's nice, and polite. If my service outtage, and all the problems that came with trying to get it fixed, had dragged on longer, it wouldn't be enough, but for now, I am appeased.

Here's the response:

Hello,

My name is Karen Christenson. I apologize
for the lack of follow through that you received from us here at Discernity. You are absolutely correct in feeling dissatisfied and I will work diligently to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It was I who left you a message on Monday letting you know that we wouldn’t be able to correct your TV issue until Tuesday. Due to an unexpected turn of events, we have had to employ a new team of technicians to service the Cleveland area. They are doing their absolute best in catching up on service issues left unattended but that does not excuse the fact that they didn’t leave you a door hanger or a copy of the work order to let you know they were
there.

I know you understand when using a new staff, it takes a little bit of time to make sure that policies are being followed accordingly. I appreciate your letter and I will contact the parties to rectify the issues you brought to our attention.

Because of customers like you, it allows us to see where we need to make improvements.

Should you have any other issues or concerns, please feel free to contact
me.

All My Best,

Karen Christenson

Well, played, Ms. Christenson. Well played.

Further, my letter was copied to the owner of my building (and two others in Cleveland), and Warehouse District Cable credited my account. So, I'm claiming victory on this one.

That's all I've got for today. Two posts in three days. Consider yourself lucky. :)

Concernity

Howdy.

It's been a while. I know I've neglected you, but I've been busy. Of course, you could always write to me in the comments... that would definitely ensure that I update regularly. You scratch my back, I'll bombard you with thoughts from my head. That's the deal. :)

I'm kidding. I'll post more regularly; I promise. I'm cooking up two, shorter (I hope), stories, so look for those, soon.

Today, though, join me on a crusade. Or, at the very least, a rant.

You know that I live in downtown Cleveland. Well, in the building in which I live, they are wired for DirecTV. Best I can figure, a company wired the whole building so that hundreds of TVs could be run off of just a couple sattelite dishes. The company that does this is called Discernity (ah! Now the title makes sense!). It's a set up that allows the property owner to make money off of TV service, and I'm not really clear past that. What it means to me, is this: I pay two different entities for this service, and I talk to two different entities when there's a problem.

The part of this cluster-fuck that I want to focus on is the support side. One must call Discernity directly when something goes wrong. Only, one doesn't call Discernity. One calls an answering service that attempts to connect the caller to a Discernity technician. First RED FLAG. If the operator can't get a hold of one of the technicians, he or she leaves a message for the tech to call the user (me) back. That's all well and good, but you have better odds winning Russian Roullette than getting a call back from these people. Second RED FLAG.

I'm sure you gathered, by now, that I had a problem that needed to be fixed. My service was interrupted sometime on Friday, June 6, and it wasn't fixed until TUESDAY, June 10. That, isn't neccessarily a problem, but here's the email I sent to their customer service manager, which details the whole thing.

To whom it may concern,

Last Friday, sometime before 6:30PM Eastern, our DirecTV service was lost.

I placed a call to Discernity on Saturday at 11am, and was led to believe that a technician would come out that day to look at it. After four more calls, that day, to Discernity, I finally reached someone who told me that no one would be out until Monday. I was not told this during my initial call.

Once Monday came, I called Discernity, again, to get an estimated time of arrival for the technician. No one was to be home, and I wanted to make sure the staff at the apartment would know when to let the tech into the apartment. After four calls, I received a voicemail stating that the technician wasn't coming in, today, so I was pushed back until Tuesday. There was no reason given for this. For all I know, the technician just didn't feel like coming in.

On Tuesday, I called again to get an ETA for the technician. I was told that he would arrive between 12 and 4PM, so I informed the apartment staff. I also asked Discernity to inform me when the work was completed. I never received that call. When I returned home, I had to reset all of my receivers to discover that it was, in fact fixed. I was never informed by anyone that the work was completed.

I then called Discernity again, to find out what the problem was. No one ever returned my call. I got a hold of a tech on Wednesday, and she told me she would find out what went wrong and tell me, but I have yet to hear back.

I am glad that my service is restored, but I am sorely disappointed with the level of support I received. I understand there were issues in other parts of your coverage area over the weekend, but a call back to let me know this, plus a follow-up later would have gone a long way. Also, if one technician calls off, and your support for an area is crippled because of this, that tells me that you are severely understaffed.

I work in the support field myself. I know that if I treated my users the way I was treated over the past four days, and if my users were rendered incapacitated for that long, I would lose my job. I did not have a problem with your service until this week. I like DirecTV. I'd like to continue to enjoy it. While I know you can't guarantee that service will never be interrupted again, I would like some reassurance that you will be better prepared to address the issue and keep me (and other customers) aprised of your efforts, in the future.

It's all about follow up, folks. If you keep someone informed about the progress of fixing their issue, even if little progress has been made, it goes a long way.

Do you think I was overreacting? Drop a comment and let me know what you think. Also, feel free to share your customer service woes. Every company seems so obssessed with customer service, these days, but things like this make me laugh at that "obsession."

And, finally, just be wary of Discernity. They are in a few other areas in the midwest, at least (their locations are on the website).

This is Cleveland

It was a beautiful day, today, so I went up to the roof of my building to take these photos so I could share them. Click on them. They're big photos.

This is where I live. Tell me this isn't worth trying to save.

I love my city.

You Can't Beat the 23.

Yesterday, in northeast Ohio, chaos struck. Streets were clogged with traffic. People waited in long lines for sustenance. Tempers flared. People were arrested. Kids ran out into traffic. Entire towns were brought to their knees.

What, you ask, could manifest this terrorist's wet dream so easily and completely?

Pizza.

Papa John's Pizza, specifically.

Yeah, you definitely need the back-story on this one.

During the Cleveland Cavaliers and Washington (D.C.) Wizards NBA Playoff match up, many Wizards were gunning for LeBron James, the oldest-looking 23-year old on the planet -- oh, and he's good at basketball, too. Anyway, apparently one or two people got a little overzealous, and actually struck James. He complained about it to reporters, later, because no foul was called.

This prompted many people to label James a "whiner." Call me crazy, but I think one's voice has to reach a certain pitch or octave before it can be considered whining... and LeBron is incapable of that high a pitch. He's got a really deep voice, is what I'm saying. But, whatever. I'm digressing the hell out of this.


After the "whining," Papa John's, in Washington, D.C., thought it would be funny to print up some T-shirts that said "CRYBABY" on them, with James' number, 23. I actually think that is kind of funny. No one else did. Clevelanders got pissed. They called local stores and threatened boycotts.


Papa John's corporate responded, and as an apology, all Northeast Ohio Papa John's stores would sell large, one-topping pizzas for twenty-three cents on Thursday, May 8.

Think about that for just a minute: A meal for four, for less than a quarter.

No one anticipated what would happen, next.

Not being in the business of selling cold pizza for breakfast, Papa John's stores don't usually open until the afternoon. By 9am, yesterday, people were already in line by the scores. There were over 100 people at one location before 10am, at which point that store decided to open early.

It gets better.

By lunch time, there were over 1,000 people in line at another store. Parking was gone. People had to park three blocks away. Traffic was gridlocked.

By dinner, it got even worse. 1,900 people at one store. The cops had been brought in long before that to direct traffic and keep crowds under control. Those in line quickly accosted anyone who tried to line-jump.

At some point in there, one of those line-jumpers tried to accost back and got arrested for disorderly conduct. Arrested. For pizza.

At 6pm, barricades were put up at a store because too many children were running into the street. What is it about pizza that seems to make children frantically suicidal? Someone should do a study...

Businesses close enough to a Papa John's store felt the impact, too. Apparently the wall of people was so great, that not a soul could enter their establishments to buy something other than pizza, which prompted this salvo:

By 11pm, it was all over. The pizza was gone. The greater Cleveland area slowly recovered from the calamity. We will soldier on, but we will never forget. We will never be the same again.

We will never forget that you can't beat the 23.

(Editor's note: Apparently, you can beat the 23. The Celtics have done it twice in a row, now.)

One Last Trip to Ceres, Part II, the Next Day, the Sequel

Here's Part II of the best story ever written about space since Sunday, April 20, 2008.

Here's a first for Cleveland Rising: an update to a previous story! J.J. Abrams has said some things that leave me with mixed feelings about the new Star Trek movie. The one that makes me feel good is that ILM is doing the VFX. ILM and Star Trek go well together. So, at least it'll look good.

Lastly, here are some things I hope to write about, or have already written and plan to release here:

• The Death of the Music Industry
• The Evolution of Film and Television in the 21st Century (or, The Death of the Visual Entertainment Industry)
• More Cleveland projects, like: the new convention center, the re-location of the Port of Cleveland, and more!
• We know Artificial Intelligence will kill us all and we continue to pursue it.
• More original stories!
• Action Figure Adventures: Special Edition!

Keep visiting...

One Last Trip to Ceres

I have less about an hour before it's not the weekend any more, so to keep my promise to all four of you who read this, you're getting part one of my story, tonight.

Normally, there won't be anything you have to read before reading something I've written, but, see, I wrote this whole page of exposition that didn't really fit in the story. So, rather than delete the whole thing, I wanted to post it. It's a little background on the universe this story takes place in.

One other disclaimer: this story is in its raw form. I did very little re-writing. I wanted it that way because I want to hear your feedback in the comments. Remember what I said in my first post? Well, whether you like it or don't, tell me why. Help me get better.

Here's a little bit of exposition..

Since the completion of the International Space Station in 2010, the governmental space agencies of the world had made great strides in space exploration. Private spaceflight was also booming and proved to be an industry that was quite lucrative for those involved, whether they contracted to government agencies or focused on the private sector. In fact, it was probably more successful than the government programs.

The great success of private spaceflight was accompanied, shortly after, by crime and piracy. While that can be a story in and of itself, needless to say, private and government vessels were soon armed to protect themselves in the depths of interplanetary space.

In the years of exploration, trade and turmoil, considered to be the Golden Age of human spaceflight, Earth’s governments recognized the need for ships that could defend themselves and other vessels, continue exploration, and supply its outlying facilities. A substantial fleet was built that could do all of those things. The vanguard of the old Fleet, the Challenger, was the last of its generation. Challenger was one part explorer, one part work horse and one part defender. Those who served aboard her were regarded as world heroes.

Nearly one hundred years since the last piece of the ISS was locked into place, after this age of exploration and excitement, the world’s space programs had stranded themselves on a plateau. Budgets were being cut. Interest was waning. Those stationed on Earth’s outposts in orbit, on the moon and the few facilities even further out in the Solar system, wondered what their fate would be.

It wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. It wasn’t good, either. Most of the “inner core” facilities would be maintained. The cutbacks only really affected Earth’s small fleet of exploration vessels and those outposts in the far reaches of the system.

At this point, the Mars Science Platform was dismantled. Old, large ships of the past were being decommissioned and sold off to make way for smaller, cheaper single-mission vessels. The government was re-tooling its role in space to focus on defense, and leave exploration up to private companies. It seemed to make sense and it was cheaper. All that remained was the evacuation of Ceres Base in the asteroid belt so it could be sold to a private company.

Due to miscommunication in schedules for the decommissioning of old ships and the completion of new ships, Earth endured a period where private ships, contracted by the government, were the lifeline to Ceres.

Because it was the most prestigious vessel, Challenger was saved from sharing the fate of its sister ships. A private foundation raised the money to turn it into a museum, to preserve that age which seemed to be fading away. While the ship had not been turned into a museum, yet, it had been dry-docked for over a year. Some would consider this an honor. A tribute to the past. Others, though, thought it was an insult to an Old Dame who still had a lot left to give.

So, if that interests you, and you wonder what could possibly happen in a universe like that, click here and read the first part of my crappy little story.

Or, click here: One Last Trip to Ceres, Part I

Part II will follow sometime soon.

This One's For the Fanboys(and girls). So Say We All.

I haven't written in over a week.

I'm not apologizing or anything. I'm just stating the obvious. I've been busy. I didn't have anything to say. My story wasn't done yet. It'll happen. :)

On the story front, it's done. I'm going to have the first part posted soon. This weekend, if I have anything to say anything about it. So, that's that.

Today, though, we're going to talk about Battlestar Galactica. Rather, my friend Marc is going to talk about it. BSG's fourth and final season started two weeks ago. Marc has written a five-part essay about the themes of the show, and what that could mean going into this last season. A warning: if you don't watch the show regularly, read the essays at your own risk.

Here they are:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Also, set a side some time to read it. It's brilliant, but it's long. If you watch the show, and enjoy the show, you'll appreciate Marc's analysis. It brought to light some things that I've missed or forgotten over the last five years.

Look for part 1 of MY story (which is, as yet, untitled) this weekend.

I promise.

Really.

(05 01 2008 Update: I fixed the links to Marc's article. They were frakked up. It wasn't my fault. :))

To Boldly Go... Ruin Star Trek

I was going to wait to spring upon you that I like Star Trek, but I guess I kinda did, the other day. Anyway, this is something I have to get off my chest.

Star Trek is not a comedy.

Apparently, J.J. Abrams missed that memo. He must've missed it because he didn't pass it along to his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, either.

You're probably not familiar with Orci and Kurtzman's work. I mention them together because their resumes are i-fucking-dentical. I was going to try to display that here, but instead go here and here to see their credits on imdb.com. Go ahead. I'll wait.

...

See? Exactly the same. Exactly as stupid. You may notice that they wrote Transformers, which "graced" theater screens, last summer. Now, I don't know how much of what we actually ended up seeing was what they wrote and how much of it was Michael Bay. I'll be the first to blame Bay for Transformers. In fact, look for a future article called "Michael Bay Raped My Childhood." Bay may have trumped Kurtzman and Orci and re-wrote a lot of it, but they never protested. They didn't take their names off the script.

From a financial stand point, I guess that makes sense, but, I can't imagine two credible writers being morally okay with leaving their names on something like Transformers. Given their resumes, though (identical! I still can't get over that. It's creepy!), I argue that not only are they okay with poorly written, juvenile tripe, but that they set out to accomplish that in the first place.

Normally, I wouldn't care. There's a "Scary Movie" or "Epic Movie" or the like every month, practically, and I just shrug it off and keep rolling. Transformers hurt, though. Those of us who were little six-year-old boys during the Transformers hey-day were promised a lot of things by Kurtzorci (that's my name for them, since they're identical) that they did't follow through on.

Okay, I've digressed quite a bit. My point is, they've already got a mountain of crap under their collective belt. They've already proven, to me, that they can't treat a beloved franchise with the respect and dignity it deserves. How can we trust them to handle, properly, a franchise that's even more beloved and venerable (yes, Star Trek is. I'm serious)?

Maybe, hope lies in J.J. Abrams? Lost is pretty good, right (I don't watch it, but I hear it's good...)? Maybe he'll pull a Bay, and re-write a lot of Kurtzorci's work... except in a good way? Maybe he'll save it.

'Fraid not.

Remember: I said Abrams missed the memo that Star Trek is not a comedy. Turns out, three of the six major characters are being played by actors that, as far as I can tell, have only ever had comedic roles in... comedies. John Cho is playing Sulu. He's most well-known as Harold from Harold & Kumar. Comedy. Simon Pegg is playing Scotty. He's best known from Hot Fuzz and Sean of the Dead and most recently starred in Run, Fat Boy, Run. Comedy, comedy, comedy. Anton Yelchin is playing Chekov. He was most recently in Charlie Bartlett. Comedy.

Lastly, there's Karl Urban playing Dr. McCoy. He's not a comedy actor, but he did play "Vaako" in The Chronicles of Riddick, which was inadvertantly hilarious. So, I'm counting him, too. Actually, I'm not, but I think that anyone associated with Riddick shouldn't be allowed to work for at least ten years. It's only been four.

That's not everyone. I don't know anything about the guy playing Kirk or some of the other actors. I like that Zachary Quinto is playing Spock. He plays Sylar on Heroes. He's a good actor. He could do comedy, I'm sure, but he's not known for it.

So, there could be some good things about it. For now I'm suspending my disbelief on continuity and things like that because I don't know anything about the story. I will go see it, but with great reluctance. I just worry that with a producer who, despite his other potentially good work, seems to be ignoring fundemental elements of the franchise, in one hand, and a pair of writers who have, together, undisputedly man-handled another franchise, in the other hand, all we'll be left with, as fans, are two handfulls of mistreated American pop-culture.

At best we'll get something like the Brady Bunch movie. At worst, we'll get Harold and Kumar Save the Galaxy, or better yet: Star Trek Movie (see what I did there?).

Star Trek deserves better.