Blog: Entertainment

But everything we know isn't always true when you analyze statistics properly. Matt Bailey of SiteLogic uses the red-shirt phenomenon as an example to illustrate good statistical analysis, discovering that almost as many red-shirts died on the Enterprise as on planets, and most of those deaths occurred in groups. Most of all, he discovered that when Captain Kirk becomes romantically involved with a local alien woman, the red shirt survival rate skyrockets.

The article even includes a funny parody of classic lame PowerPoint statistical presentation.

Avenue Q is my favorite musical. I saw it twice early in its run, with the original cast, and have the soundtrack which I know by heart. Recently I took Stefanie to see it for her birthday, since she never had.

I had a great time all over again, but couldn't help noticing the changes from the original. A few made sense, like adding a brief reprise of "It Sucks To Be Me" sung by Princeton at the start of Act Two. A few didn't, like cutting a bridge section from "Schadenfreude". None of these made the musical any less enjoyable, though one was really jarring.

Christmas Eve and Brian are really thin.

In the original, Christmas Eve was a fairly heavy woman. She was fun and spunky but not glamorous. And this is the way the character ought to be. After all, this character isn't an intern at a publishing house who spends hours a day at the gym. She's not expected to be part of the Manhattan culture of fashion obsession. She's a recent immigrant living in Brooklyn with an unemployed fiancee, so she should look more like an average American.

Brian, too, is supposed to be kind of a schlub. He's a class clown who presumably got by in childhood by being funny, not by being trim and athletic. And the original actors playing these characters fit the profile - or at least formed my opinion of the characters. Now, they've been replaced by people of significantly smaller size, and it's strange.

There's a great science fiction Western TV show called Firefly that was canceled after one season. One of the characters, Kaylee Frye, is the ship's mechanic and a hopeless romantic who has a tough time getting men to notice her. Jewel Staite, the actress, is by no means unattractive or even very heavy (many fans spoke about having crushes on her, on online message boards), but nonetheless part of her character is about not having a model physique. In fact, she was asked to gain 20 pounds to play the role in the original show.

But after its cancellation, they produced a feature film, Serenity, and to the surprise of many, Jewel and the rest of the cast had lost a huge amount of weight. Suddenly the Kaylee of the original show wasn't there, replaced by someone with the same face but such a different body it was difficult to see the character the same way.

Did Avenue Q's success create pressure to have actors that look more like other shows'? Did the Hollywood producers and directors require the cast to look thinner? Or, was it just circumstance? Jewel Staite is normally thinner than Keylee, so maybe she simply didn't want to put the pounds back on for the movie. Maybe the best replacement actors for Ann Harada and Jordan Gelber happened to be a lot thinner. Either way, these examples bring the skewed expectations of thinness in entertainment to the forefront, where we might not normally perceive their existence.

Episodes take weeks or more to write and produce, so the writers likely based this one on the book, which came out six weeks ago. But it's surely just randomness that I saw the show days after hearing Levy speak. After all, if the two events hadn't coincided in time, I probably wouldn't have written a blog post about this. The fact that I did makes it noticed, and noticing coincidence makes us see the clusters all the more clearly even when they occur randomly.

The villain Potter lives by the jungle rules of business where financial capital trumps all, and tells George he is worthless because he has no stocks or bonds; while George devotes his life to helping others and receives kindness, loyalty, and even money in return. The town without George's forging of ties is a hostile place where Bert arrests Violet and people don't talk to one another; with it, every man and woman comes over to sing Auld Lang Syne to the Baileys.

"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends." - Clarence Oddbody, AS1

This film is also one of the best examples of the value of the public domain; a relative flop at the box office, it languished in obscurity for decades before being reintroduced by PBS stations in the 1970s precisely because its copyright had expired and was therefore free to show (Ebert). Had today's laws been in effect in 1946 when Capra made the film, it would have stayed unknown until at least 2061 (70 years after Capra's death in 1991). How many other films like It's a Wonderful Life may never be shown and even be lost forever?

(P.S.: sadly, It's a Wonderful Life is probably still under copyright, after all.)

First, on The Apprentice, Donald Trump showed what he really values by firing the guy who tried to nobly put himself on the line for his team and earn their respect, but instead got criticized for being stupid. This move was only stupid because Trump said it was. Trump wants everyone to do anything to win, take any advantage, stoop to any level, because that's how he is. But in most parts of the real world to be successful you also have to build relationships and trust. Trump sees that as weakness. Either that, or he's just doing whatever will get the highest ratings. Either way, not cool.

And then there was the CSI: New York premiere. CSI: Miami is brightly lit with intense colors, but CSI: New York is deliberately desaturated so that the city looks dull and gray. IT'S NOT A GRAY CITY! Right now, in the real New York, the sun is shining and the landscape is bright and beautiful. The distortion on the show is so pronounced that I can't help but keep noticing it in scene after scene. I may not even be able to watch this show.