The last of three suggestions I got from Mark and Dave, a story rating system, is now implemented (the other 2 were changing the banner image and moving the Google Hits box). You'll see it on both the main page as well as the story pages in the post footer (where the "Submitted by" information is). Dave recommended having a way to rate stories, and ultimately I'll have a page that displays stories by rating. If you're feeling bored, feel free to go back into the archives and rate past stories as well. I plan to do so myself, though with 600+ stories it's a daunting task.

You can rate a story from 1 to 5 stars, but the rating that gets displayed will actually have greater granularity than that. For instance, after multiple ratings a story could have an average of 3.78 out of 5.00 stars.

Sample of what the rater looks like

As usual, Internet Explorer is not as cooperative as Firefox (or even IE 7?)...I've tweaked it some already but it is still quirky. Firefox handles the star rater perfectly, but in IE you may notice you have to move your mouse off of the stars in order for it to clear whatever you had moused over (in Firefox you can freely move between stars and the correct number of stars is selected). Also I've had the issue a few times where once a story already has a rating, in IE you can't rate it lower than that rating. Again, in Firefox there is no problem. Let me know if you have issues and I'll see if I can play with it some more, but the fact that it is working well in Firefox has me tempted to leave it alone.

A reminder, there's 3 ways to get to old stories. The best way is via the "Topics" link in the top navigation bar where you can browse all stories by topic. You can view stories using the "Older Articles" link at the bottom of the main page. And lastly, you can use the random story option by clicking the dice image in the top navigation and get sent to a random story.

This story has been making its way around the internet, and it's not only surprising, but it's also revealing of some stuff if it's true. Reportedly, Jon Lovitz clobbered Andy Dick in a comedy club because of his involvement in Phil Hartman's death. The details:

Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada, who witnessed the assault, said, "Jon picked Andy up by the head and smashed him into the bar four or five times, and blood started pouring out of his nose." Lovitz told Page Six, "All the comedians are glad I did it because this guy is a [bleep]hole."

Lovitz and Dick have been at loggerheads since a 1997 Christmas party at Hartman's house, five months before his troubled wife Brynn flipped out, fatally shooting Hartman, then killing herself. "Andy was doing cocaine, and he gave Brynn some after she had been sober for 10 years. Phil was furious about it - and then five months later he's dead," said Lovitz, adding that when he filled in on Hartman's "Newsradio" sitcom, "I told Andy, 'I wouldn't be here now if you hadn't given Brynn that cocaine.' "

Last year, Lovitz related, a drunken Dick strolled up to his table at Ago in West Hollywood, rudely downed his guests' peach liqueur drinks, and "looked at me and said, 'I put the "Phil Hartman hex" on you - you're the next one to die.' I said, 'What did you say?' and he repeated it. I wanted to punch his face in, but I don't hit women."

When the two ran into each other at the Laugh Factory last Wednesday, "I wanted him to say he was sorry for the 'Phil Hartman hex,' " Lovitz told us. "First he says, 'I don't remember saying that.' Then he leans in and says, 'You know why I said it? Because you said I killed Phil Hartman.' Which I never said. Then he asked me to be in his new movie.

"I grabbed him by the shirt and leaned him over and said, 'I don't want to be in your movie! I don't want to be in your life!' I pushed him against the rail. Then I pushed him again really hard. A security guard broke it up. I'm not proud of it...but he's a disgusting human being." Dick's rep said he had no comment.

Wow. I never knew about this, assuming it is true. But I'm inclined to believe that either these aren't all the details, or they're a twisted version of the details because I haven't seen it reported anywhere credible (no, I don't count the New York Post as credible).

This is borderline hilarious and really, despite the title, imagine taking just the movies 300 and Lord of the Rings, and mashing together their visuals and their audio. The result would be The Last Legion, a movie that's supposed to be the backstory to The Sword and the Stone. But I caught a couple of extra lines in the trailer that could be from Star Wars and Harry Potter too, which makes the whole thing even better.

Lines that sound like they're from 300: "If we stand against...many more will die" "Freedom's fate lies on one last legion. How many? Not as many as I'd thought."
Line that sounds like it's from Harry Potter: "A wizard will teach him."
Line that sounds like it's from LOTR: "the power to forge"
Line that sounds like it's from Star Wars: "And when the empire fell, the only hope..."

See the trailer for yourself:

This is too cool, and it really makes me wonder how long it took to put together. Someone took 3 instructional videos and combined them to create a song. The result is quite impressive:

The Dream Team (S4E5)

This week's episode was quite good. I was happy to finally see an episode with Billy in which he wasn't up to his usual antics. The fight between him and E was fantastic, as were all their comments while meeting with the guy later. It is really unfortunate that they're possibly going to be keeping him around now. Though it was a great curveball to throw E as he was just talking about how he only had to make it through a few more weeks of Walsh. Also, Walsh's tattoo was completely hilarious.

Billy wears his "Suits Suck" shirt at an opportune moment.

Ari's storyline was great. I'm very happy to see him and Lloyd interacting more, and his "plan" and resulting backfiring was funny. Him and Dana need to go at it more too. Drama and Turtle were off on their usual ridiculous adventures...these always end up being stupid, but entertaining too. Great quote of the episode: "No. Good news is when the wife tells you she wants to eat box on your birthday."

And, as could be expected since they mentioned the trailer is on YouTube, the official Medellin site went live. It's got the full trailer, which clocks in at a lengthy minute and 25 seconds. It's actually pretty cool, and better than the pretty lame glimpse we got in the last episode. Here's what the new site looks like...click the image to enlarge it, and click the link in the caption to go to the site:

The "official" Medellin website that was mentioned in the trailer is now up with content (synopsis, photos, interview with Vince)

Bonus pic, in case you didn't catch all of Billy Walsh's Medellin/Vince's face tattoo:

This was a review of Episode 47. See more reviews.

Underdog was one of those shows that was great to watch as a kid. From what I recall, both this show and Rocky and Bullwinkle were on Cartoon Network (or Fox) in short, 15-minute or less episodes, though I'm having trouble finding any complete information in Wikipedia or elsewhere despite a pretty detailed entry there. At any rate, it was all about silly animation, but funny stories. Now Underdog's being made into a movie. But the movie has hardly anything to do with the show, despite them even showing a clip of the show's Underdog in the movie trailer! Check out why they should name the movie something else:

The Underdog of the TV show (left) ≠ the Underdog from the upcoming movie (right)

Things from the show that don't appear to be in the movie (many of these gathered from the Wikipedia entry on the show:

• Underdog's alter ego is Shoeshine Boy, and that's his profession. He doesn't belong to a kid, and he's supposed to be a parody of Superman/Clark Kent.
• TV Underdog had to take pills to give him his powers, and his powers would wear off over time. Often this would be used as a vulnerability...he'd be trapped and without his pills to get back his super powers. Eventually they edited out those scenes in syndication because of the obvious drug parallel that might have been ok when the show first aired in the mid 60's. But his powers didn't come from a "freak accident" like in the movie.
• Underdog almost always spoke in rhyme, hence his usual line, "There's no need to fear, Underdog is here!" And, "When Polly's in trouble, I am not slow...So it's hip! hip! hip! and away I go!"
• Underdog wears pants. Because otherwise he's naked!
• Underdog wears boots
• Underdog has a very distinctive voice, and it's certainly not that of Earl from My Name is Earl.
• Underdog is usually cross-eyed...it's pretty distinctive
• The TV show was usually presented in parts, so you didn't get a complete story in one episode. Obviously you can't do that with a movie.
• The cheap animation was another distinctive trait...the movie is almost the polar opposite.

Really the only thing this has in common with the TV show is the red shirt with the white "U" on it. And here's some YouTube proof:

The classic TV show

The Underdog movie trailer

Do you use iGoogle? I do, and I loved when they added the themes that change during the course of the day. But it always bothered me that the page was devoid of any real color where the gadgets reside. So I made myself a gadget to add colors for both the page background and the gadgets themselves (basically color everything the iGoogle themes do not), and then made it flexible enough that you can either select colors from a dropdown menu or specify your own custom colors via hexadecimal values so you can truly make your page whatever color you want. Since no additional images are loaded, you won't get any slowdown in page load time. And it will work with iGoogle skins so you can still get the time of day or weather changes that Google offers in their themes.

Notice the bottom half of the picture has a Deep Blue background color with a Light Blue gadget color (click to enlarge)

To add the gadget, click here. When you add the gadget, click OK to give permission for the gadget to be inlined, so it can modify the page's colors. Then click on the down arrow in the gadget and choose "Edit settings" to get access to the color preferences.

If you use multiple tabs, you can actually add the gadget to each tab to create different color schemes. Just make sure to pick the right "Tab Number" under the settings to color in the correct tab.

Closeup of the gadget and its color effect

Let me know what you think and if you have any questions in the comments here.

Season 6 of Monk starts tonight on USA (8c). Monk was one of those shows I watched with only a passing interest, but was always good. I've never seen a bad episode of Monk, and it usually doesn't matter what the storyline is. It just seems like Tony Shaloub was born to play the role, and he is great at acting quirky and hilarious.



So now that I've got a DVR, I think I'm going to start watching this regularly (I still wish they'd put it somewhere other than Friday night though). The reason is I heard an interview with him on the radio this morning (on Q101's "Morning Fix" program) that was quite funny. They were calling the show the "anti-CSI," and he more or less agreed. Tony said he hates seeing computers in TV and movies with all the "clackety-clacking" and not knowing what's going on or getting bored when there's a lot of that going on. Though maybe he doesn't realize that most of the time there really *is* nothing meaningful going on :)

At any rate, the funniest part of the interview was his description of the first two episodes of this season (spoilers!) In the first episode, Sarah Silverman returns in a Monk-stalker role she's played before, but she does much more this time. And in the second episode, it's called something like "Mr. Monk meets a rapper" or something, and none other than Snoop Dogg is guest starring. He was laughing about it saying, "could you get any bigger opposites?"

Monk's the kind of show that just takes a couple of episodes to get familiar with his mannerisms, and then it's hilarious, consistently. Tony also said something like, "It's the TV show for people that don't watch TV." I wouldn't go that far, but I'd say it's very unique and definitely more character-driven than plot-driven, and it works incredibly well. If you've never seen the show, give it a shot. There's a reason it's won a lot of awards in a short amount of time.

He also mentioned how they don't like making pop culture references so the show doesn't appear dated when viewed later. You can listen to the whole interview in MP3 format here.

Photoshopped or not, this image dave sent me is pretty hilarious. It's a page out of a catalog for Chuck Norris Action Jeans, and the description is funny: "Developed by Chuck Norris for stunt fighting in action movies. These great looking western style jeans have a unique hidden gusset which allows greater movement without binding or ripping."

Mark submitted a link saying, "Here is the Sport's Guy's take on Entourage after season 1. I think it's especially relevant considering all of our posting about the show." And I agree...Dave and I have looked at this before, but I thought it'd be interesting to compare the impressions from just a few episodes of Season 1 to what has happened since.

Quotes from the article are indented, with my response following.

This isn't an unrealistic depiction of life for the young and famous in Hollywood; maybe they exaggerated some elements, but the essentials are here. Like the impeccable weather. A bottomless supply of hot chicks, party scenes and discernable locations. Sleazy agents. Insane characters. Random cameos. Sweeping self-importance mixed with a healthy dose of inanity. And so "Entourage" is like a poor man's version of the Manny Ramirez Era in Boston: The plusses outweigh the minuses, you're going to laugh a number of times, cringe a few other times, but overall, it's good to have around.

Definitely still holds true for this show in general.

E was the crucial role, the one part you couldn't screw up. Unless E evolves, the show can't evolve with him beyond the "eye candy with some laughs" stage. I'm sensing they want to progress beyond that, as evidenced by the final show, when E tested his friendship with Vince by demanding to become his manager. But without a good actor playing E, they're handcuffed. None of the other characters can go anywhere.

It turned out that E was believable enough, and his character was able to do some evolving, eventually becoming a producer!

Vince can't be anything beyond a supporting role, since he only cares about getting laid, getting high and becoming famous. But Grenier doesn't have any idea where to take him. In some scenes, he's manipulating the people around him; in other scenes, he's acting like a 13 year-old kid with ADD. With another actor, maybe he would have been a little more complex -- they could have explored the self-parody angle (like John C. Reilly in "Boogie Nights," or even Anna Faris with her Cameron Diaz parody in "Lost in Translation"). Grenier isn't talented enough to make Vince anything more than "likable and flighty." He's a dead end.

Half-true, though he's also managed to become more believeable. But there are still times where you wonder why he's suddenly acting like an idiot/small child. Or how cheesy he acts in Medellin. And yet he can be serious at times. So "likable and flighty" is still pretty true, though it's less flighty now.

Ari the Agent can't change ... nor would we want him to change. He's the highlight of every show, just a wicked amalgam of every fast-talking, insecure agent out here (supposedly modeled after Wahlberg's real-life agent, Ari Emanuel, to everyone's delight out here). The scene when he disrupts a rival agent's beach party was probably the single best moment of the season, not counting Vince's yoga girlfriend skinny-dipping in front of E. But Ari is much more effective in short doses, almost like a third-down sack specialist. You don't want them diluting his character; you want to keep looking forward to him every time he pops up on the screen. Let's hug it out, b---h.

(Note: I have the sinking feeling they're going to screw up a good thing here, much like when "90210" ruined a good thing and added Joe E. Tata to the opening credits. When you know Nat is contractually obligated to pop up once an episode and ask if someone wants a mega-burger, it just doesn't have the same impact. Same with revolving entire episodes around Ari. Let's hope they do the right thing next season.)

They did do the right thing, though it wasn't until the end of the season. Here's one place where the Sports Guy was wrong. You can't get enough Ari, and him driving the last few episodes of Season 2 made those more enjoyable than any other episode to date.

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