As much as I may diss non-Bocce sports, I've been getting sucked into the World Cup these past weeks. It helps to watch it with experts who are willing to explain the rules and nuances. At any rate, I just watched the end of the Australia v. Italy game, and, damn, the Aussies got plaaaaaaayed. Italy was able to get a penalty called in the last 20 seconds of the game, resulting in a goal kick that allowed them to win 1-0. It was totally a dive, and the ref bought it.

The opinion amond the better informed is that it's a good play. Drawing penalties is a tactic like any other, and this one was extremely well staged at a crucial point in the game. So, kudos to Italy. Just the same, I'd hate to be a shop window or easily overturned car in Sydney tonight.

And it ain't never coming back. Damn. I haven't been this bummed about teevee since Andy Richter ceased to control the universe.

So the new "Red America" blogger at the Washington Post likes "Red Dawn." I do, too, but for completely different reasons. Actually, two sets of completely different reasons. One is composed of pure nostalgia. Growing up on an Army base at the height of the Reagan Era, there was nothing cooler, nothing, than "Red Dawn." We would run around the playground every afternoon and weekend barking lines from the movie. I was nine--it's the kind of things nine-year-old boys do.

The other reason is that the movie is such a perfect little nugget of Reaganite paranoia, its socio-historical value cannot be denied. I mean, it's got everything. Gun worship, illegal-immigrant bashing, Soviet invasions, paranoia about Latin-American socialists, communist infiltration; it's all there. And (this is the good part) none of it came to pass. That's right, it's the perfect crystalized gem from an era whose right-wing hand-wringing turned out to be completely bogus.

In fact, there's a whole hidden story contained within the movie--it's the conservatives' collective vision of what was happening in Afghanistan at that time--the noble mujahideen fighting the godless Commies. You know, the same blokes what became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And they were casting them in this movie as red-blooded American kids. Wow.

I say rent it if you haven't seen it yet, no matter what you think of Patrick Swayze. Enshrined forever in DVD, it serves as a great reminder to those of us on the left--the right wingers were full of shit then, and they're full of shit now.

I have already established my belief, on the record, that "CSI: Miami" is the worst show on television. Some shows insult our intelligence--this one kicks our intelligence in the stomach, wrestles to the ground, and makes it eat bugs.

Fortunately, Raji has come up with a drinking game that helps take the badness away. It is a particularly good version because it focuses on the unholy awfulness that is David Caruso's portrayal of Horatio "H" Caine. Whipping off sunglasses is not acting, you twit! [glug] [glug] [glug]

Brown and bubbly? Really, Pepsi? Really? That's the big Super Bowl ad campaign? Maybe it's just me, but if you were to say something was brown and bubbly, I wouldn't immediately think of soda. Rather, it'd be something less...uh...tasty.

By the way, big ups to Ravi for his second quarter Cadillac spot. Nice work, man!

Not to tip my hand too much about the obsession I have with cartoons, but I did want to point out that Boondocks is frequently very good and that the Martin Luther King episode is brilliant. Brilliant enough, in fact, to have caused a controversy. Basically, in an alternate reality, MLK wakes from a coma in 2000 and, among other travails, gets called a traitor for saying that bombing Afghanistan is not a really Christian thing to do.

Sharpton's a tough guy to like or hate entirely. As much as I appreciated his honesty during the Democratic presidential primary, saying stuff that the rest of clowns may have believed but would actually commit to expressing, he's dead wrong on a lot of things, and he's dead wrong on the MLK episode. Steve Gilliard, to whose blog I've linked, is right. The comments also bring up a lot of really good and mostly supportive points about the show and the episode.

Also, check out the New Yorker's sniffy little review of the show from a few months ago (scroll to the bottom.) This appeared not long after McGruder knocked them for screwing up the interview they did with him. The review reads like a classic case of "not getting it and trashing it to look like you are sooooo beyond it." They'll be eating crow now.

So I was walking to work this morning, and, between 6th and 8th Avenue on 14th Street, I saw one of the largest collections of production trucks and trailers I've yet witnessed in the city. Literally both side of the street for a full block with the sidewalks jammed with gaffers, sound techs, grips, and other folks. As I've learned to do after stumbling across more than a few Law & Order shoots in the past few years, I went to the nearest tree or parking meter to check the permit and see what was up.

Love Monkey. Love Monkey? From what I've seen and read, it's a show about a guy looking for love. And there's music involved somehow. Lots of cross-promotion with studios. Very exciting from a "synergy" point of view. No idea if the show is any damn good or what.

Here's the thing: why so much stuff to produce a show about relationships? I mean, before he started making really crappy romantic comedies, Edward Burns made a really great one for what was probably a lot less than the cost of one day's worth of shooting for Love Monkey, from the look of it. I mean, there were lighting rigs of every possible description, tons of gear everywhere. It just defied belief. If this were some epic urban drama or something, yeah, the budget goes somewhere. But a guy who has trouble getting a date? You can shoot that on a frickin' shoestring. What the hell?

I have a feeling, and this might be five or so years premature, that the expansion of podcasting, vlogging, ultra-low-budget filmmaking, and as-yet undiscovered distribution and collaboration technology will allow people in the near future to produce series with the same content as Love Monkey for an infinitetessimal fraction of the cost.

Don't think so? Have you checked the cost of a good DV camera lately? Getting cheaper all the time. Same with audio equipment and just about anything else, especially with eBay on the scene for stuff that's maybe only a year or two out of date but ridiculously affordable. That goes for lighting, stands, you name it.

Actors? There are truly mind-blowing numbers of actors out there who will work on anything for scale or even nothing at all to get the exposure. Frankly, ditto for writers and directors, especially if all three groups are the core of the production team and are doing it for themselves.

Every piece of software you might need either exists or is in development as free software--just imagine what we'll have in five years. Same goes for the pipes--broadband is getting to be everywhere and podcasting/podcatching apps are becoming more and more refined. Mash up a podcatcher, BitTorrent, and a video player, and you've got the killer client--it already exists for Linux, and probably does elsewhere. Hell, the parts are so readily available that even I put together a simple app that does this. In five years, just imagine what will be on everyone's Video iPods.

For an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at the Orange project, a production based on Blender that is front-to-back open source. They're even releasing the animation files after they're done so we can all see how it was made and, perhaps, amke our on. All done on a shoestring in the Netherlands with work from guys recruited from the same software forums that I haunt. Even more exciting, their work is driving work on the software, which is then freely distributed back to the community. How much easier will the next Orange-like production be? And the next after that? Five years from now?

Does this mean the end of giant Love-Monkey productions? Hell, no, that's just beyond naive. And the vast majority of what will be produced by the amateurs will look like it's been produced by amateurs. But if, say, 20 percent of it is any good and there are thousands of productions simultaneously, what then? What if Google cooks up a way to insert keyword-driven ads into video streams, allowing little guys with just a few thousand viewers to keep production after production financed? What if the regular folks make their own Love Monkey, Battlestar Galactica, or Six Feet Under? There could be a change in the ecosystem, one that allows for the lumbering giants to continue to rule the sidewalks of Manhattan while the wily little producers are churning out great dramas in the apartments and workshops above them.

Stay tuned.

There are few things more uncomfortable for corporate America than a visit from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. That's why it warms the cockles of my heart to see that Sony is on his shit list for installing spyware rootkits with their music CDs. Go get 'em, Spitz.

In other music-industry-related news, take a peek at this Onion blurb. It's funny...until it becomes true. Just wait; it'll happen.