Bunny Blog

This comes to the attention of Bunny Blog via my colleague Nahil, who shared this article on Slate with me via various acts of Facebookery.

The problem of charging iPods seems to my relatively armchair self to be something far too much of the world is devoting time to finding innovative solutions for. For perspective, I’ve owned an MP3 player nonstop since the introduction of the Diamond Rio. I love music and listen to it constantly, and I defy you to find too many photos of me in which a pair of slim headphones is NOT around my neck with a grey wire leading into my pocket. Somehow, only about twice in my iPod ownership have I ever exclaimed “damn, the battery’s dead!” and not been able to do something about it fairly quickly.

You mean to tell me you’ve got your life together enough that you have the discipline to jog or bike regularly enough that you need music to relieve the monotony but you can’t apply the same regimen to charging a device with a 10-hour battery? And you further mean to tell me that of all the things you hope to bring to human understanding with a scientific inquiry into the nature of breast movement the one you remain extra excited for is the ability to charge an iPod?

Steve Jobs, you claim to be making computing devices sexy. But those devices are bleeding the sex out of the rest of our lives.

Yep, that’s right — Travel and Adventure!!

This email blast I just got from Spirit Airlines is pretty racy:

Obviously they’re playing on the alternate meaning of T&A, but they’re playing it smart. If anybody gets angry, they can calmly reply “What? We had no idea it meant that!”

Even Virgin America, which brands itself as the new “hip and cool and sexy” airline, doesn’t go that far. Spirit, on the other hand, had a Mother’s Day sale entitled “MILF.” As in, “Mothers I’d Like to Fly.” In an email Spirit has said these promotions are “designed to be entertaining, humorous, and of course, impactful.” And you know what? I think they’re dead on.

Okay, so normally I stay out of politics.

I do occasionally, weigh in on matters of policy, such as my near-constant assertion that many of our cities, Los Angeles included, would be far better off if lawmakers would wise up and pass some legislation to create a government-sanctioned Batman. The fact that I was mugged with a shiny gun to my temple by a pair of punks last December and went through the most horrendous ordeal of the cops failing to show up, finally showing up, failing to care, calling me to say they’d recovered some of my stuff, mysteriously having no knowledge of finding my stuff when I went to claim it (you KEPT it Detective, you and I both know it) and in all ways failing me in my hour of need only strengthens that.

But I keep my politics to myself. HOWEVER, this photo of Senator Obama “clinching” the democratic nomination (which graced the front page of the LA Times) scared the living crap out of me.

Something about that smile… I can’t quite put my finger on it… Wait. What does Batman do when he can’t quite figure out who someone reminds him of? He usually gets out a red pen and traces over the photo… OH HOLY CRAP!

See what happens when we don’t have Batman?!!

In all seriousness, the good senator would make a fantastic Joker. What a dead-on perfect smile structure.

And guess who wrote it? Us!

Creative Cow was so impressed with our spoof trailer for the movie “P2″ that they asked us to write an article about it for their website. For those of you who don’t know, Creative Cow is an amazing user’s group, forum, and magazine for media producers and artists, and we’re very very proud to be featured in one of the very places we’ve turned to for help so many times for technical questions.

For any of you who have ever wondered about how we make things over here at PB, the following article gets pretty dang explicit.

P2 is a movie about getting stuck in a parking garage and being held captive by a deranged parking attendant. Our spoof is about getting stuck in a parking garage and being held captive by a deranged tapeless HD camera.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/spice_doug/P2.php

Disfigured, the independent feature that we did title design for last year, has gotten picked up for distribution by Cinema Libre. The movie is about an anorexic woman who tries to join a support group for overweight people, and the tumultuous friendship that she develops with the only woman in the group who will stick up for her. It’s a surprisingly funny and touching film, and I’m really glad it’s going out to a wider audience. So congrats to writer/director Glenn gers, and everyone else who worked on the film.

Here are the stars doing a little distribution dance:

CW’s new program “Online Nation,” featuring “the best of user-generated web videos, was the first show of the year to get cancelled. One of our clips here at Psychic Bunny, “Frotuma” was on the final episode. Sigh, so sad.

Even more sad was that a video by my sketch comedy group, Six Finger Fist, was set to air later in the season. That video was “The Good, The Bad, and The Cuddly,” and now no one will ever get to see it. Well, unless they go online.

Which is the point of a few bloggers who have tried to figure out why the show has such dismal ratings. Steve Briant at ReelPop says that online “you’re in control. The you is the most important part, and Online Nation removed “you” entirely.” You can read the whole post here.

I watched the few episodes of the show that were on, though, and I thought they were a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of “Robot Chicken,” in that they took the best parts of online video, cut out all the boring parts, and strung it along in a very frenetic crazy way. The hosts were very scripted and dull, and obviously weren’t allowed much freedom. But I think overall the concept worked.

This other blog says the whole concept of watching YouTube videos online has repeatedly failed. Why, though? People watch a lot of TV online– shouldn’t they want to watch internet videos on TV?

I personally just think they didn’t brand the show well enough. America’s Funniest Home Videos is basically the same kind of thing, but you know exactly what kind of videos you’re going to be watching– people getting kicked in the pants, pets being adorable, wedding mishaps, etc. And it’s been on the air for YEARS. Online Nation from the outside looked like it was going to be a completely sterile show.

But then when you actually watch it, it’s this CRAZY mixed up mash of totally random videos. It’s a lot more like Robot Chicken, and if the hosts had been as crazy as the videos, and the advertising just as crazy, I think the show would have been more successful. The craziness, from my POV, should have been the selling point of the show.