Dave Chappelle and Fan Entitlement

It had occurred to me earlier this evening that I hadn't heard too much about of Dave Chappelle in a long time, and I decided to look him up on the IMDB. I hadn't been living under a rock when he had his much publicized parting from Comedy Central, but I had thought that he had still done a few projects over the years, and it turns out that I was mistaken.

Anyway, while I was there, I happened to start reading threads that people had started about him.

Now first, don't do that. While it is moderated, it is like a cleaned up version of Youtube comments, which means that a lot of stupidity remains.

Case in point, a thread calling his a coward for abandoning his fans.

There is a huge difference between saying "I'd like to see Dave Chappelle start doing tv again," and saying "Dave Chappelle is a coward who is letting down his fans."

Because really, Dave Chappelle doesn't owe you or me anything. If he doesn't want to do television or make movies anymore, then he is free to do so. If he wants to retire to Ohio and raise a family outside the scrutiny of TMZ, then he is entitled to do so, and he doesn't have to explain himself to anyone.

He made a decision, like Bill Watterson did, to pull back from the limelight and do what he wants to do with the rest of his life, and while I miss seeing him do standup on TV, I respect the decision he's made.

If you were his fan, don't be an ass and demand that he entertain you so more. If he wants to come back and do something, he will. Until then, be patient.

BAH! I Hate The New Blogger Interface

While I was gone, Google got around to pushing me into their new interface, and I have just one question: Why Google why?

Who told you it was a good idea to change a very user friendly and, at times, aesthetically pleasing interface into a flat, characterless slate that just sucks my will to use it.

I should have known this was coming after the relatively recent changes to the commenting system, since those areas are now awful looking too.

Maybe there is something I've missed in the change, like maybe there are new classes in the CSS to play with to really start personalizing things.

As it stands now, this new Blogger interface is entirely uninspiring. I know some of you have been inflicted with it too. I just wish I could go back to the way it was before.

I was never one of those people who arbitrarily complained about change, but I honestly don't see what the benefit of this particular change is.

Video: Donald Glover Talk About Home Depot

This reminds me of when I was a kid. The specific incident never happened to me, but it is flavored with the kind of stuff that happened to me when I was a kid.

The New York Times Takes A Dump On Game of Thrones Again

I think it takes a particular kind of arrogance to tell the readers of a review that they are basically too stupid to be able to follow the plot lines of a narrative work because there are a lot of major and minor characters.

But the New York Times has done this not once, but twice regarding the Game of Thrones on HBO.

Last year, Ginia Bellafante said the following:

Keeping track of the principals alone feels as though it requires the focused memory of someone who can play bridge at a Warren Buffett level of adeptness. In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, :If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of Sex and the City".

And this year, Neil Genzlinger took an equally vicious slash at New York Times readers who may have wanted to join the fun this year:

The character board for the series on HBO’s Web site has 49 head shots on it. Thinking of jumping into the new season without having seen the first? Don’t even try; your brain doesn’t have that many neurons.

Because it isn't the fact that they don't like it, because hey, we are all entitled to our opinion, and he is getting paid to share his. No, it is the dismissive attitude that the critic is using to paint Game of Thrones as this thing that only geeks... no, scratch that... something only this small subset of geeks could ever like.

It is part of the reason Roger Ebert's dismissal of video games irks me as well... because there is this attitude that anyone who likes them is dumb or wasting their lives. That's what these reviews in the Times reek of.

It's as if somewhere down the line, editorially they've just decided that fantasy is juvenile and should be treated as such. A commenter on the Io9/Geek With Curves article discussing the NYT review got right to the point of these reviews: "in short, 'if you're a basement dwelling NERD, go right ahead. the rest of us ADULTS have more important and artful things to watch, harumph.' "

The reason why I like Game of Thrones isn't the setting. It could take place during the Second World War, the High Middle Ages, in Japan, in the far future, and it would still be compelling. The setting is made for the struggles of its characters, it is true, but with tweaks, it could take place almost anywhere, any time. It is the characters themselves, in both the books and as portrayed on the small screen, that make it compelling in many of the ways other shows championed by critics (including at the New York Times) are.

Using the genre trappings of a series to utterly dismiss it is the worst kind of criticism, since it is based not on the content. You couldn't write a book report with that kind of superficiality, but apparently reviewers for one of the most prominent papers in history can get away with it.

Goodbye IMDB Hit List

For many years, the Internet Movie Database has had the Hit List, a series of links on the front page to articles on blogs and larger sites which would be of interest to the general population of the IMDB. It was always fun reading through the links and finding new perspectives on things.

Well, yesterday, Associate Editor Heather Campbell announced that the Hit List would be no more, since there are now services which automatically provide content for them to share.

Having had two articles on the Hit List, I can say that it does provide quite a boost to traffic, and even when I was not on the receiving end of that bounce, it was always nice to go to the site every weekday and be presented with new perspectives and interesting articles from around the web.

I will truly miss the Hit List. Presenting the links on Facebook and Twitter just can't compete with that.

If You Didn't Think Abercrombie & Finch Were Assholes Before...

Behold the new level of dickheadedness they've attained.

I knew they were trying to cultivate the whole Aryan vibe and everything, but this is ridiculous.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with them.

Mass Effect 3 And The Culture Of Entitlement

Before you get worried, there are no spoilers here since I haven't played the game, however, I am going to be swearing quite a bit, so if you don't like that kind of language, then this post isn't going to be for you.

Basically there is a group of players that were dissatisfied with the ending of Mass Effect 3 and they have been very vocal about it.

Some of them have also been, what is the word... ah, douchebags too.

Firstly, there is an individual who is bringing a claim about the game to the Federal Trade Commission because they didn't like the ending. Like the FTC doesn't have better things to do with its time and taxpayer money than investigate that. It just seems petty on so many levels.

And Amazon started giving refunds to people who completed the game and didn't like the ending. There isn't a technical problem with the game, it isn't defective... they just didn't like the narrative choices that Bioware had made for the ending of their storyline. They loved the game except for 10-15 minutes at the end. For a company whose bread and butter is selling narrative works, this is a horrible precedent to set, because basically what they are saying is, if you didn't like a movie, game or book they've sold you, you can get a refund I guess.

So spoiled assholes who feel so entitled that they can't bear to deal with any minor disappointment in their lives while experiencing narrative fiction in its many forms can now just line up after essentially renting various things for free and then send them back on Amazon's rather gracious dime.

Guess what? Everyone is disappointed by the ending of something they've watched, played or read. Most people deal with that with a modicum of maturity and just shrug about it and get on with the rest of their lives or at most (or like me) bitch about it with people in real life or online.

For example, I hated the ending of Final Fantasy VII. I mean I absolutely loathe it. Hate it, hate it, HATE IT. I am not understating it. However, after I had played the game and dealt with my abject disappointment in that ending, at no point did it ever occur to me that I should demand a refund. Or complain to the FTC that it did not meet my expectations (which it didn't).

And I didn't return my copy of Matrix Revolutions to Blockbuster because I hated the ending. I guess I could and should have.

Because maybe I have antiquated notions about buying things... that if you've bought something and you've used it and there is nothing technically wrong with it, then you really don't have cause to return it. Trying to get a full refund for a game that you've played all the way through the end of is akin to eating a full meal and then trying to get the meal for free because the restaurant didn't offer you a mint at the end.

I just think it is a childish move, and remember, this is coming from someone who defends gaming whenever he can. But I don't like this culture of whining and I don't like the precedent that these actions are setting.

Honestly, if the ending of a game or a movie can so irrevocably change your life for the negative, then perhaps fiction isn't for you.