HBO GO?

February 16th, 2010 § 2 Comments

Back in August, back when I had a functionality in me that left me able to write decent blog posts, and not just Twitter posts, I wrote a little piece called I Want My HBO, where I thought of a service called HBOnline where non-cable subscribers could get HBO content on their computer. It turns out, they had something in the works, but it’s nowhere close to what I’m looking for … yet.

HBO GO is what they’re calling it, and while I’ll admit that’s a catchier name, it also sounds like something you’d order at a sushi bar. Ehchbeeyogo?

But the real problem in their service as spelled out by their website at the moment is that you must be still attatched and suckling at the cable tv industry’s teat in order to get into HBO GO. This could change with the announcement that they’re going to make about the service tomorrow, (NYM via NYT) but I’m not holding my breath. I still don’t trust the telecoms not to have lifelong deals with HBO that are punishable by death if voided. If HBO thinks this kind of measure will stem the tide of piracy against them (see this wonderful essay from Astra Taylor from the new edition of literary journal The Baffler for more on piracy, and if you enjoy it, subscribe, damn it) they’re mistaken.*

HBO’s content, by and large, smashes the competition in the face with a brick. They used to be aware of this, you know:

So you lost The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and that show where the ladies loved their shoes and hated men; HBO, you’ve still got a lot to offer and a lot to get your superiority complex back about. True Blood is great fun, and it doesn’t even feel like a guilty pleasure anymore. Even though I hate on him, Bill Maher is one of the last frank and honest people on American television. The pretty funny Bored To Death is your weaker comedy show, because 1) you have the genius that is Larry David’s ever evolving Curb Your Enthusiasm, and 2) Eastbound & Down is just so amazingly fucked in the head I’m not sure what to classify it as. I know people that swear by Big Love, and you’ve got another David Simon masterpiece on deck, Treme. For once, it’s been proven that it can be a good thing to have the market cornered on old white guys, albeit geniuses who make you piss yourself in laughter or want to get piss drunk from thinking on how shitty the country can get. And I’m not even going to discuss the stuff that works for you that I just don’t think deserves it (Entourage, Hung, In Treatment, and Real Sports). But then again, you can’t be too great: you gave Joe Buck his own show. Also, you do reality tv right: by making documentaries.

Why did I just make a laundry list of reasons to fellate HBO execs for free on the side of the road? To remind them that they know how to do things differently, and to say, HEY, STOP MAKING THOSE WHO CAN’T STAND THE CABLE TV SERVICES HAVE TO PIRATE YOUR G.D. CONTENT!

*I can’t find the new Bill Maher comedy special from this past weekend at any online stomping grounds, so they’re getting better.

I want my HBO

August 29th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

So I recently read that a la carte cable channel bundling isn’t gonna happen. I can’t find where I found it being debated, so I link to a google news search for the last week in this topic’s debate. And the economics make sense, sort of, for why it’s not feasible.

Here’s an idea that I think should be able to work, and it could put pressure on the major networks or cable in general, to make content to compete with HBO:

HBOnline. $9.99/month for access to streaming HBO channels and a Hulu-like resource to get at the HBO OnDemand material. You could even download to iPod/iPhone if HBO & Apple, both known for thinking differently, could get their minds right. And yes, HBOnline doesn’t make sense if you speak it out literally, it’s just a logo kind of idea. Hell, even make a less expensive paywall’d Hulu channel for HBO content! Something.

As you may know, I havn’t had cable for a few months. I think this experiment dates back to March. And depending on which channel we’re talking about, the withdrawl has been nonexistent to harsh. For Countdown and Maddow (MSNBC) it’s not that bad, as they tend to post full episode video podcasts to iTunes, FOR FREE, an hour or so after the broadcast is finished. Most everything else hits the digital ether by the next morning at the latest, which means I can set it up and have stuff ready when I get home.

HBO, and especially Real Time with Bill Maher, on the other hand, drive me up the wall. I assume the wait until the Monday after the air date (a Friday night) has some origin in the fact that even internet bootleggers need weekends off too.

Also, the use of the word bootleggers has some grounding in the fact that I’m not paying HBO for anything. Not supporting the artist, either, as Maher hasn’t done a comedy club in NYC in a long long time. HBO clearly wants nothing to do with a la carte episodes on iTunes except when DVD’s are also out, but isn’t it about time for them to shift the paradigm on the TV world again? Curb’s coming back, and aside from that, and True Blood, which I’ve gotten into, I don’t see much reason why HBO will be getting press any time soon.

Bill Maher is losing it, and losing me.

May 30th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

maher_hooker

And it isn't even because of his love of HookerBarbie and her friends.

Right now, with marijuana legislation doing better than it has in years and a liberal president whose mistakes on human rights are really worth criticizing, Bill Maher really should be turning out a quality product. But instead, he continues to be an alienating woe-is-me-for-I’m-so-misunderstood fraction of a talk show host whose product isn’t even worth the time it takes to steal off the net and watch.

The main flaw of the last year or so of Maher’s act has been his kneejerk reaction to a joke bombing. He’s too quick to think it’s because he offended his audience of lily-livered liberals, rather than the fact that not ever joke gets a laugh — especially when you’re not as funny as you think you are. His continued antagonism with the crowd extends to the general american public, the easiest punching bag, and one that really doesn’t have the yuks built into it that it used to. Sure flyoverstateistan is pridefully unintelligent, but his interview with Sri Lankan musician MIA did little to educate the viewer about the Tamils and the troubles in Sri Lanka. The interview was such a dud for two reasons, Maher felt it imporant to insert interludes of “You Give The Public’s Intelligence Too Much Credit” all too frequent, and this made MIA whose interview history is sparse enough to make this completely throw any rhetorical rythym off.

The other real problem with the show is the insanely uneven right-leaning panel member casting. He actually brought John Bolton on this week and took him seriously, and a couple months ago he took Andrew Breitbart, right hand ring kisser to Drudge, onto the panel, and didn’t challenge Breitbart or Drudge at all. These defanged treatments of the day’s shitspinners really gives the intelligent audience little reason to defend Maher when his crusade against marriage gets brought up in conversations. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to hard to bring “both sides” of the debate to the table if the only right thinkers he can find are the shitforbrains-iest of them all.

Bill, remember that the minds like Savage and Taibbi whose on-the-ground reportage gave you some relevance. More of them, less of these half wits, and a bit less of your hatred of the populus and more ideas on how to help those who can’t help themselves. They gave Meet The Press to David Gregory, which was a fail. Real Time should be the Sunday Morning talk show of the Obama generation, a day and night ahead of our elders’ bullshit. Put the Real back in Real Time.

Dispatch From The Shallow End Of The Get Up

April 7th, 2009 § Leave a Comment

Tomorrow is April 8, and 1 week into the spookily titled The April Experiment. If you saw the Halloween 2008 episode of Bill Maher – and you remember how he said “Nancy Peloooooosi” in a spooky voice – you know how I stretch the R out in experiment.

Which is to say that while I am pushing myself to improve, I’m still an esoteric weirdo. One who tries to go to bed before 11pm in order to wake up at 6AM and then make it to the gym. I’ve done it three times in the 7 days since April started. Pretty happy with the way it’s going.

And in lieu of work, here are links and descripts to/of what is getting pixels on my screens lately:

The Required Reading, which I’m late to the game on plugging, is:

The Big Takeover, Matt Taibbi’s colossus of an article about the backstage dealings with the economy, a piece that makes me want to castrate Hank Paulson on live television.

And here is an interview-slash-feature about Taibbi’s work and his own backstory.

Trent Reznor talks to DiggNation about his experience running his own version of a record label.

Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks on Mos Def vs. Christopher Hitchens from the Maher from a week from Friday. The embedded video in his post is no longer functional. Here is a link to a YouTube of it. Here is where I say I’ve decided to no longer embed videos on the blog. Embedding clips is cute, but really, I’m not making videos, not yet at least, so why should a blog of my writing and linking feature clips, which at WordPress is something that doesn’t always work right, MSNBC’s faulty video embeds come to mind.

Also:

A big piece from Glenn Greenwald on the troubling matters coming from Obama’s DOJ.

The Brüno Trailer is fucking epic.

2DopeBoyz are getting their OkayPlayer on.

Flying Lotus and Blu hooked up for a collaboration.

And now, for thoughts, without links, about the two white rappers of the moment, who really do not need links. Asher Roth is new for rap, but comedy fans might know him by his real name Dane Cook. I’ll keep making that joke until I find the leak of his upcoming record and when it doesn’t gargle ass-crack sweat. Eminem’s return song/video came out today, it’s called “We Made You,” you can find the song and video if you google it, and to be honest it’s proof that Marshall Mathers refuses to change his schtick. He still uses that busted fake mid-east accent. He still rips on female celebs who won’t fuck him. He still dresses up like male celebs who are hasbeens, his not-so-distant-future territory. He takes no risks on the song, none. Personally, I think the era of the white rapper as being important without really bringing much of anything to the table is done. Then again, we’ll see how their upcoming records sell. My esteem for a country that puts Nic Cage’s Knowing at #1 for the weekend box office is so low that I could see both of their records moving units despite a lack of any reason for that happening other than melanin deficiencies.

• Regarding the Fate of Joseph I. Lieberman, Asshole-CT

November 17th, 2008 § Leave a Comment

First of all, I’d like to float a Lieberman idea I’ve been passing around for a while out onto the net: I want Jon Stewart, this country’s most prominent and beloved Jewish person, to publicly boot Joe Lieberman from the Jewish Community. It would be much more symbolic than the vote that would happen tomorrow, but at least it would give me a good laugh.

Jesse spoke on the Lieberman topic today and I thought I wanted to throw my two cents into this take a penny leave a penny tray we call the internet before the secret ballot vote re: Lieberman tomorrow.

If you didn’t already know what’s going on here, let me set the story by bringing up the other person in the 2008 Presidential Campaign who went from Obama Friend to Obama Backstabber: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama was with him for years, trusted him, even defended him in the shitstorm of GodDamnAmericaGate, for a while, even said he wouldn’t throw the dude under the bus. Then, when Wright continued to be a thorn in Obama’s side, Obama said enough’s enough, Screw You Trinity United, I’ma Goin’ Home.

And to this point, I think a similar parallel can be made for Obama’s connection to a guy, who if he shut his mouth during the recount, and if FL was run right, would probably be ending his second term as Vice President right about now. He and Lieberman liked each other enough so that Obama went down to campaign on Joe’s behalf the CT race when Lierberman was being ousted from the Dems.

So how did Joey support Obama when Barack ran for Pres? Well, he went all Wright and damned Obama on the trail by not only speaking at the RNC, but going on stage and on trail with McCain and Sarah Palin, standing behind Palin during Palling Around With Terrorists Gate, and even saying he thought the “Is Barack a Marxist?” question was, well, a question one should ask out loud to others, rather than never be said because it’s just bullshit.

Yet, Barack still seems to support Joe. Why? When Bill Maher was on Huffington’s hosted version of Maddow, he said that Barack has been one step ahead of liberals who think that he’s about to make a mistake. Maybe he’s smarter than the average liberal right now, but to me, that’s only if he’s not really saying what he thinks to the public, but in fact saying what’s politically expedient.

If Obama is telling the truth about his feelings towards punishing Lieberman, then … I think Barack may have a terminal blindspot when it comes to those he thinks he knows and how his religion might teach him redemption, even when people don’t deserve it. I honestly don’t think it will matter much if Joe Lieberman puts an R next to that “-CT,” if Barack can beat the Clintons, than Joe can be overcome.

But then again, maybe he thinks he has to publicly support Lieberman, that if he doesn’t he’ll be written up as Politics as Usual. My inner conspiracy theorist, who wishes that Nick at Nite would pick up The X-Files, thinks that Barack may be actually sending a behind closed doors message to the dems to sink Lieberman. That the HRC as Secretary of State thing is political camo, to distract the media from what would be their big story if not for the chance to talk about Bill and Barack and their feelings towards each other. This is more far fetched than my Jon Stewart vs. Joe Lieberman bit, so I think we’ll all have to admit that Barack might not be right about Joe. The difference between Lieberman and Wright, is that maybe just maybe, Lieberman can be useful to someone. It’s doubtful, but nothing’s impossible, only improbable.

Where Am I?

You are currently browsing entries tagged with bill maher at With A Passion.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.