What Happened To Community?

One of my favourite shows of the last couple years has been Community.  It was unique and never seemed to fall into the usual sitcom routines.  Sure it had some ridiculously wacky plots sometimes, but those always to pay off and served a purpose. But after seeing the first few episodes of the new season, I've noticed that it's style is gone and mostly so is the comedy.  How does the best show on TV become just another mediocre show so quickly?  Those wacky situations seem to be done every episode just for the sake of trying to be ridiculous.  It's been failing... hard.  If I wanted to see a barely funny show that used all the sitcom cliches available while sacrificing comedy for some misguided attempt at cramming in a bunch of emotional moments between characters, I'd watch NEARLY EVERY OTHER SHOW.

What Really Grinds My Gears

You know what really grinds my gears? Guys who use a straw brooms to deliver their shots in curling.  You don't need that archaic thing.  If you have to use a special broom that you can lay flat on the ice, at least use a synthetic one so you aren't leaving your crap all over the ice... Ice that's only moderately clean on the best of days.  Just because you've used it since 1978, doesn't mean you should keep using it.  No one thinks you look cool with it.  You look like a fool.

The opinions in the preceding post may have been magnified by a getting our ass handed to us tonight.  But I assure you that the principle of the matter would be the same on any given evening.

Thoughts on the Brier Final

I didn't watch the entire Brier final on Sunday, but I saw enough.  I'm glad to see Northern Ontario win for 2 reasons: It's nice to see someone other than the usual 3 win it and also it justifies the continuation of having a Northern Ontario team, from a competitive point of view anyway.

But the final wasn't exactly an exciting match to watch.  NO went up by 3 early on, and given how good and competitive the teams are, chances were slim to none that Manitoba would catch up.  It's a bit of a flaw in the game as it is right now... And early lead of more than one usually will mean a certain outcome, especially with the top teams consistently curling in the upper 80% to 90% range.  The free guard zone rule has given the "slim" chance for a comeback, which is better than the "none"-only option.

What's the solution for more comeback opportunities?  I have no idea.  More free guards?  Maybe.  But they should start thinking on rule tweaks, if they haven't already.  Or else, with the athletes getting better and better all the time, we may just end up with robo-curling.

Maybe they should start having big tournaments on crappy club ice.

My SimCity Non-Experience

Despite the fact that there was plenty of warning that EA's attempt at an always-online DRM scheme would create nothing but problems, I went ahead and bought the new SimCity anyway.  Because... well, it's SimCity.

I wasn't able to play it last night, due to overloaded servers.  I was able to pop on at lunch time to finally do the tutorial city.  But tonight, server congestion seems even worse.  I get a message that says it's too busy along with a countdown clock of 19 minutes saying that's when it will attempt to log in again.

The situation is just so mind mindbogglingly ridiculous that I don't even know what to say at this point.  I guess the message here is, according to EA, the only way to stop piracy is to stop everyone from playing games.