Don’t be blue, we have blu-ray

Dan drooled over Blu-ray first, Sallie just commented in Italics. 

Blu-ray I believe is French for “Looks better than real life.” I’m not even joking, some of these movies, I take my glasses off and they adjust for me. 

Blu-ray and HD DVD were in a short-lived war. Microsoft was pulling for the HD DVD whereas Sony wanted Blu-ray. 

Here’s the breakdown. A 3 ½ inch floppy hold about 240 MB (megabytes) of information. A CD ROM holds about 1,047 MB worth of information. Then an average DVD holds about 4,700 MB worth of information. The main competitor of Blu-ray, HD DVD, packed on a whopping 30720 MB worth of information. Still following? Boring I know. 

None of this actually matters that much. But the pictures sure are purdy.

Then there’s the Blu-ray. This disgusting piece of technology holds 25 GB, or for those without a converter (or any idea what a byte is) that is 25600 MB. That means, one Blu-ray disk can hold as much information as 106.67 floppy disks. That’s a lot of floppy!

And Dan loooooves his floppy.

So rational people argued that there is nothing that is going to be able to fill a Blu-ray for many years to come and we should just go with the cheaper option of the HD DVD. 

Screw those people. The masses want bigger and better even if we can’t use it. Hell yeah give me a Terabyte of hard drive. That car can go 150 mph, I’ll take it. This meal comes with two sides! Pack ‘em on.  

We’re Americans. We love the best, brightest, and largest. Microsoft should’ve known that because they’re Americans! 

What does this mean? Well for those of us that have plunged into the High Definition Television market and have a Blu-ray player, that means we are getting ridiculous amounts of data shoved on one disk for our movie enjoyment. We get better picture, better sound, and more features. Hell, sometimes they throw in a copy of the normal DVD with the Blu-ray just so you can compare how crappy you never knew your life was before. 

A few days after we got our blu-ray player and first few discs, I also got new glasses. My mind was doubly blown by the clarity.

Now that’s not saying by default every Blu-ray you have looks better than the original. It all depends on what cameras were used when filming, how large the budget was, etc. 

For instance, 28 Days Later is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. We bought the Blu-ray hoping to see high definition blood and guts and Britons on our screen. Instead, it looked exactly how it did on DVD because this movie was filmed on an Indie budget, with just OK cameras. 

But then you get a gem like The Dark Knight or I Am Legend and you swear that you are cruising through the empty streets of New York with Will Smith and his dog. 

My personal favorite, so far, is the Planet Earth series. The wide shots, expansive scenes and vibrant colors are almost a little too much in high def. I’m constantly saying “is that real?!” whenever I watch a disc. And the animals are cute.

Now the issue is: How long will Blu-ray last. More than likely, within the next five years, the format won’t be supported for movie and will go to full downloads in high definition. I don’t want it to happen because I care about having the hard disk in my hand, but I suppose if the Blu-ray Swan Song must happen, then it will be replaced by bigger and better.  

Check out this blog in five years, when I rant on about how Blu-ray doesn’t look good enough. 

Californication

Obviously, this blog has been slumbering for quite some time.It takes something pretty overpowering to wake the beast up. This time? Californication.

This isn’t your Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication. Let’s say the Red Hot Chili Peppers are a PG-13 blockbuster. Their hits are great, don’t get me wrong, but definitely geared toward all audiences. The Californication we’re talking about is so raunchy that if you watch it with people you aren’t completely comfortable around, you’ll be begging to be the person who makes the popcorn just to get out of the room.

As a kid, my brother and I played The X-Files. We’d run around New Orleans collecting dirt samples in old film canisters for evidence, climb trees to observe our foes and tune our walkie-talkies perfectly so we could pretend that we were on the same wavelength as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. 

No one is on the same wavelength as Scully and Mulder, although high five for trying. There were many times when I was Mulder and had no Scully. Essentially, I was a lonely guy in a basement office that searched for UFOs and ghosts. Sad face. :(

The closest I ever got was my red hair. The closest my brother ever got was…Frank Moody.

The closest I ever got was Sallie Hickle. Wait a minute… I’m married to a Scully… and a Ginny Weasley in one. I win!

Frank Moody, Californication’s protagonist, is a whiskey-drinking, pack-a-day-smoking fuck-up of writer with a serious (unintentional) inclination for underage girls. In the first season of the show, we meet Frank in quite the state. His ex-lover/never-quite-wife is seemingly happily in love with the whitest of white bread, a stark contrast to Frank’s rich rye. We find out soon enough that Frank and his ex-lover, Karen van der Beek, have a 12-year-old daughter named Becca who is wise beyond her years. To add insult to injury, Frank’s hit a bit of a dry spell in his writing and his agent is so entrenched in the affair that he’s having with his Suicide Girl secretary that he hardly has the time or attention span for anything else.

Really Frank’s dry spell lasts about two episodes and about a half a dozen girls. Then he pretends to have a dry spell out of spite. Really he’s just a drinker with a badass problem. If I weren’t married, I would gladly be a Frank Moody. God forbid I ever get divorced, because Frank Moody just isn’t as cool of a character when he’s a divorcee. 

There are a variety of things that make this show great, not least of which is the fact that Fox Mulder is gracing the public with his televised glory once again. 

I don’t understand why his big-screen career never took off. He’s just so great. Honestly, I wish I could put him in a cage, take him for walks, and love him forever. 

But seriously, Californication is an incredible show that takes precious time in developing its characters. Each person is entirely more complicated than his or her character would leave the audience to believe on first impression, which makes the season finale even more shocking. If you have a soft spot in your heart for Fox Mulder, underage sex, rampant alcoholism, drug use, witty banter, bi-curiosity, diamonds in the rough, unsung heroes or people vomiting on fine art, add Californication to your must-see TV list.

Well hell, with that description, I’d say this is the family television show of the decade. 


Dan's comments are in bold, Sallie's are normal text. 

We're Back

Yeah, that's right. For the first time since 2008 Inexperienced Popculture is coming back.

We've been disgusted by the lack of knowledge within the world of pop-culture so we're back to educate and make the world a better place. 

We're going to hit you up once a week starting tomorrow. Be ready, Sal and Dan are about to kick some pop-culture a$$.