Kindling a fire in the Amazon

One of the worst-held secrets in the tech industry came out this week with Amazon unveiling the (unfortunately named) Kindle Fire. It will be interesting to see whether Amazon, with their pre-existing and successful ecosystem already in place, can compete with the iPad (in ways RIM and others couldn't), or indeed whether this device is even intended to do so in the first place. At half the iPad's size and missing some features (like a camera), one can argue this point. However, that's a discussion for another time. I'd like to discuss the other Kindle devices they're coming out with.

Full disclosure: I own a Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch. I understand that some Kindle users can be just as fanboyish as the worst Apple user but I'm trying to be allegiance-agnostic: I didn't buy the Nook out of hatred for Amazon, or indeed love for B&N. I'm a big fan of Amazon's, actually, and the Kindle is a fantastic device. It's just that, at the time of purchase, all the reviews pointed to the Nook being a great device, the Kindle's equal, if not superior. What clinched it for me is the touchscreen on the Nook. Everyone has realized what Amazon hadn't: keyboards aren't cool. Amazon has just realized this themselves because their upcoming Kindles have eschewed keyboards also, joining the rest of the world (except poor, misguided RIM) in the 21^st century.

I'm always interested in new technology and competition, as it forces everyone to up their game. I just hope Amazon isn't making a mistake by suddenly coming out with way too many varieties of the Kindle, leading to customer confusion. Let's run through them:

• The Kindle we all know is being renamed the Kindle Keyboard. It comes in an ad-supported wifi and non-ad wifi/3G version.
• Then there's the Kindle Touch coming out, similarly with an ad and non-ad version for wifi and wifi/3G.
• There's also one simply called Kindle, again with ad and non-ad versions but only for wifi. This simple Kindle is a kind of budget version, with no touch screen, but has 5 navigation buttons. I can't imagine the hassle involved without a proper input method - I'd rather have a physical keyboard than no touch and 5 buttons! This Kindle has less memory and worse battery life than the others, to keep costs low.
• Finally, the Kindle Fire. 

So I count 10 different flavours, sure to confuse customers. If you're reading this blog, I assume you have some sense about you but let's face it: most people don't know much and purchase items with no research. They'll waltz into Best Buy and let an equally know-nothing sales rep talk them into buying something neither of them knows anything about. I think it would have been best if Amazon streamlined their Kindles to the Touch device only, keeping a cheaper ad-supported wifi version and a pricier non-ad wifi/3G version, while still coming out with the Fire (I'm really interested in seeing this machine in action).

It's not like Amazon needs more help selling Kindles. At least I don't think so, since Amazon doesn't release sales info to the public. But I assume they're selling very well, so why introduce a huge gamut of products? I think it's a misstep.

But that's just me, I could be wrong. They might set the e-book industry on "fire". See what I did there? Wordplay. :D

Good night, M. Night: Shyamalan's Futility

I unfortunately had the mispleasure of seeing M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender recently. I knew it would be awful but I was unprepared at just how awful it was.

I'd seen the animated series upon which the movie is based. The show is rich in storytelling, characters and imagination. It's great for all ages and pretty epic. The movie is none of that. I don't want to spend too much time criticizing the movie, but M. Night has successfully stripped away everything that made the show exciting and charming and instead made a movie consisting exclusively of poorly delivered exposition where stuff just seems to...happen...randomly, from one scene to the next. Just awful.

All this got me thinking, how does this man still get to make movies. And more than that, why do studios allow him to put his name above the title, as if he's a selling point. At this point, his name deters people from seeing his movies. Does his output still make money worldwide? Is that why he's allowed to continue, unchecked?

I had some time on my hands so I put together a list of the movies he's directed, versus their Rotten Tomatoes score, worldwide box office take, budget, and profit to the studio (which roughly amounts to 55% of the worldwide box office). Finding advertising budgets was the most difficult part, but I did my best internet sleuthing to come up with my figures.

To wit:

Movie	RT rating	Worldwide gross	Budget (production + marketing)	Studio's take	Profit
Wide Awake (1998)	41%	$1,288,000	$6M	$0.7M	($5.3M)
The Sixth Sense (1999)	85%	$672.8M	$65M	$370.0M	$305.0M
Unbreakable (2000)	68%	$248.1M	$101.5M	$136.5M	$35.0M
Signs (2002)	74%	$408.2M	$110.7M	$224.5M	$113.8M
The Village (2004)	43%	$256.7M	$116.0M	$141.2M	$25.1M
Lady in the Water (2006)	23%	$72.8M	$150.0M	$40.0M	($110.0M)
The Happening (2008)	18%	$163.4M	$130.0M	$89.9M	($49.1M)
The Last Airbender (2010)	6%	$319.7M	$280.0M	$175.8M	($104.2M)

I rounded the figures to the nearest tenth of a million. So there you have it, his last 3 movies have cost the studios around $250M. Incredible. Is it any wonder that each of those 3 movies was produced by a different studio? Nobody wants anything to do with him after a flop. Looks like Night is running out of studios to burn.

One thing I learned about movies from this exercise is that marketing budgets are often almost equal to production budgets. Most astounding is The Last Airbender's advertising budget: of that $280M total budget, $130M of it was for marketing.

Wow.

Is it any wonder why this man has no future credits listed on his IMDb page?

Double, double, toil and trouble-some bus passenger

Long have I railed against buses and all the ills they introduce into the world. Never mind the diseased poles and infectious people whose mere breath carries with it sicknesses untold. And worse still, the evil bus drivers who delight in speeding off even though they could have easily slowed down to pick you up. But I digress. I am not here to discuss the actual bus system today. Nay, I issue this missive against the 40-something Greek lady who takes the #33 in the mornings.

Since moving to my current location, my bus situation is great. I have two buses I can take straight downtown in around 25 minutes, and both are generally pretty empty so I'm always guaranteed a seat. The easier of the two buses to catch, the 33, always comes right on time at the stop a mere handful of meters from my building. But then...there's this woman...Surely a coven someplace is missing their High Priestess.

First, the pettiness. She has this giant, black, weeping willow of a hairstyle and she's often dressed in dark garb. I'm surprised she even takes the bus to work - her broom must be in the shop.

Anyway, this woman immediately proceeds to take out her Motorola RAZR from her purse and dial. (Hey lady, 2006 called to say that even in 2006, the RAZR was old news.) She calls someone and talks. And talks and talks and talks for the entire duration of the ride. Can somebody tell me who she's talking to at 8:30 in the morning, EVERY morning?! I keep thinking of the poor soul on the other side.

...Phone ringing...

Person on other side of phone: Oh dammit, Baba-Yaga is calling me again. It's so damned early! But if I don't answer, she'll just keep calling. Awww fine.... Hello? Yes, I understand, your mother sucks, your boss is an idiot, you're overworked, blah blah blah...

BUT (yes, there is a but to this story), since the new year, I've noticed a sadness that has crept into this woman. She no longer talks on the phone every morning for half an hour. Lately, she has either been reading, or just sitting quietly.

My theory?

The person on the other line made a new year's resolution to sleep more.

Why, hello there, Kevin...

Among classic stories that have gained in stature over time, the George Takei/Kevin tale needs no introduction.

What's that? It does? Fine. Let me introduce it.

The year was 2004. A few young geeks like us go down to Toronto for their annual FanExpo nerd convention. Imagine a huge convention center, full of toys, comics, t-shirts, games, dvds, and all manner of other geeky things you can imagine. Tens of thousands of people shuffling about, just itching to drop cash on useless collectibles, and get autographs and photos of scifi actors.

The crowd was thick around George Takei's table. We showed up just as he ended his autograph session. He stood and made his way through the crowd when he spotted a fresh faced Asian boy - our very own Kevin - and said "Hello there" in his inimitable voice. We were thrilled! At the time this all seemed totally innocuous...

...and then 1 year later, he came out of the closet. Suddenly, Takei's comment to Kevin had disturbing (but not unwelcome? :P) undertones. Was Takei hitting on Kevin but nobody knew it?

Over time, this story, like most good stories, became embellished. It went from, "Hello there" to "Why, hello there, Kevin" (he somehow gained knowledge of Kevin's name - more on this later), to finally "Why, hello there, Kevin - I'm staying in room 215 of the adjacent hotel". We all had a good laugh.

Fast forward to last night's Halloween episode of NBC's excellent comedy, "Community". For some reason, George Takei is bookending the episode with a voice-over. Why? Because he's awesome. But at the end of the episode, with no context at all, Takei says the following:

"I'm George Takei, and if your name is Kevin, here's a little freebie for your cell phone:
'Hi, Kevin can't come to the phone, he's on a spaceship with me, George Takei. Please leave a message.'
You're welcome, Kevins."

I think what happened here is obvious. Takei couldn't get Kevin out of his head and, from that day forth, spent insane manpower and money tracking him down, but all he could find was a first name: Kevin. So when given this opportunity, he cleverly slipped in a message on a nationally broadcast sitcom, in hopes that the true Kevin, our Kevin, would hear it and come a-callin'.

Kevin, the universe wants you and Takei together!

A little more judicious with the comments, please

I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing this phenomenon on Facebook. Have you ever noticed that when girls post a shot of themselves, there's an automatic string of comments from her female friends saying "you're beautiful" or "ur so hawt" and things like that? The pics are usually them in a dress and they're usually alone, in some kind of phony glamour shot, often fishing for compliments, I feel. Maybe not. I don't know.

What I do know is that these comments are often not justified. It's like these girls' girlfriends feel it's their duty to automatically post compliments about how gorgeous their friend is when clearly they're not.

Ladies, at the risk of sounding like a jerk (too late?), if you only have girls telling you you're good-looking, it could go either way.

I'm just saying when your girlfriends tell you how great you look, there's a chance they're lying to you.

My ears, my precious ears...

The other day, I heard something on the radio that was described as a song. It wasn't described as such by me, but the mere fact that it was playing on the radio, a medium designed to perpetrate songs, must mean this sonic nightmare can only be categorized as such.

A few seconds in, I recognized it as a new Black Eyed Peas single called "Imma Be". How did I know that's the title? Well, only because they repeat that phrase about ohhhh 105 times!

Has anyone heard this formless, meandering mess? It's ridiculous. At first, I was upset that a whole load of n'importe quoi could make it to the airwaves. If it had been me who came up with this song, it would be ridiculous. But no, if Will.I.Am poops out this drivel, it's a masterpiece.

But then it hit me. The Black Eyed Peas are in on the joke. They are indeed capable of catchy hooks so this song strikes me as purposefully uncatchy, crafted to be terrible just to see how far they can push the envelope before someone calls them out on their BS.

I have a vision of Will.I.Am, Fergie, and the other two nameless goobers who collect paycheques sitting around a room and just wondering aloud:
"What if we just say 'I'm going to be', followed by a load of nonsense of things we will be doing?"
"I like it but let's shorten that down to 'Imma bee', then use an image of a bee on the single's cover."
"Brilliant," they all say in unison, as they light cigars with $100 bills and pour Dom Perignon into diamond-studded gold chalices.

It's as if this new song is a parody of their other inane fare, like "My Humps". Hey, Peas, I get it. You're mocking yourselves and us, while at the same time trying to see if your joke of a song can pass as legit. Well, I refuse to let you have your cake and eat it too.

Self-parody in what appears to be an earnest release must be some form of avant-garde, meta-music but it still doesn't change the fact that much like the Dwarves of Moria digging too deeply, you've unwittingly unleashed an unspeakable horror upon an unsuspecting public. For shame...