Sunday Burst of Awesome (and spectacular FAIL)

Oddities and Awesome abound! As do, unfortunately, colossal screwups.

:: In the Awesome department, if you ever wondered what it’s like taping The Price is Right — more specifically, the mechanics of moving all that crap onstage around — this video sums it up nicely.

Somehow, as a kid, I always envisioned that soundstage as being absolutely immense. It always seemed to me like they were taping that show in the Astrodome or something.

Link via.

:: Here’s a wonderful defense of Love Actually, in response to the same loopy-headed article I frothed about last week.

And you know what? Mustering the courage to say “Hey, i have some feelings for you” is not some inconsequential thing. As anyone who’s ever been at the beginning of an affair knows, getting the nerve up to say “Want to take this further?” is a huge deal! It’s hard, it’s terrifying, and when it’s over, you either live to romance another day, or the relationship ends. That’s what Love Actually is about. Those terrifying moments before the proclamation. It isn’t about afterward, where reality lives. It’s about the beginning of the feeling of love.

I said on Twitter the other day that I have come to see the Keira Knightley storyline in that movie as a kind-of Rorschach test. People who hate the movie often seem to completely get that storyline wrong. Mark doesn’t go profess his love to her in hopes that she will leave her husband; he knows she won’t. He goes to get it all out, and admit his feelings as explanation and atonement for his having not been terribly nice to her until then. How people miss this is absolutely beyond me.

:: Finally, the FAIL of the week. I was thoroughly gobsmacked by this. You know those little decals that lots of people put on the back windows of their cars? The ones that depict their family’s composition, with stick-figure parents and kids and dogs and cats and stuff? Well, the fine folks at ThinkGeek came up with Star Trek versions of those. Which is kind of a nifty idea. They even include aliens. Only…well, here’s the set:

Take a close look at Lt. Uhura. Notice anything distinctive about the way they depict her in decal form? I congratulate Nichelle Nichols and Zoe Saldana on their mutual designation by ThinkGeek as Honorary White People!

I can only shake my head at shit like this. It’s maddening. It can’t be any kind of production issue, since they managed to get the skin tones of the aliens right. And they made the tribble brown. But the black human woman? The one who was played by a real life black woman? They whitewashed her, but good.

Unbelievable. Although actually, the sad thing is…it’s not that unbelievable, really.

More next week, maybe.

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