Category: Found

Discoveries, finds, or otherwise identified.

Categories
Found

Not Quite Drowned Alive

Not Really Drowned Alive

Onlookers

Watching The Action

Today, we decided to take in the performance art spectacle du jour – David Blaine’s desire to stay submerged outside Lincoln Center for seven days. Who can resist when [his hands look corpse-like](http://www.deeperblue.net/article.php/726/23/1)?

Being at the scene is about what you would expect – it’s a large number of people standing around this large sphere of water, not really sure how they should react or respond. There was no line to go up and press palms against the glass when we were there, which is probably for the best. All in all, a decent way to blow fifteen minutes, gawking and wondering if anyone actually thinks it’s entertaining in the traditional sense of the word.

Coming up on Monday, another lovely event: [the protest against Eugene Mirman](http://eugenemirman.com/appearances.html). Expect a picture flood from that.

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Found

Slow Country

VJ Army/Pop’n Navy users may be noticing the site is terribly slow.

There are a few causes for this – explosive growth in the user base in the past few weeks, my rather poorly optimized code – but there’s also an issue with the kernel on the box the site is hosted on. We’re working on it as best we can, but unfortunately, performance is wavering. I appreciate any patience you can manage to hold on to while we try to resolve this.

Blog will continue running at regular speed.

Categories
Found

TARred And Feathered

I have had one general rule for television for as long as I can remember: I don’t “do” reality television. After watching the threshhold of watchable television get violated by the likes of VH1 (*Surreal Life* and all spinoffs thereof), NBC (*Biggest Loser*, *Fear Factor*), Fox (pretty much everything they’ve done), and MTV (*Osbournes*, *Newlyweds*, *Super Sweet 16*, anything involving *Real World* or *Road Rules*), I could only take so much.
And besides: what about these shows are truly ‘reality’, in any sense of the word? Flava Flav having to narrow down 25 catfighting women to one he wants to date isn’t reality. A guy pretending to be a millionaire isn’t reality. Reality TV such as this thrives on heavily edited conflict and personality clashes. It just isn’t my thing.

But like all rules, there eventually comes a conflict. And so when I’m randomly surfing past GSN and I happen on a reality show that doesn’t annoy me, and in fact compels me to keep watching, I’m immediately stuck in a dilemma:

Can a reality show that is largely just a competition, with only a small amount of personality clashes, win me over? Which will win, the side of me that hates reality TV, or the side of me that loves game shows and competition?

The show won. I swallowed my pride and began watching [The Amazing Race](http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race9/).

And today, one thing became painfully clear: when I get into a show, I go all-out.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no hiding – I’m [going to TARCon9](http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3139163). (And so is Katie.)

Anyone else want to go?