TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Amy has no idea who that guy is and Monique forgot to tell her. Last week comedian Amy Schumer participated in a very awkward interview with Mamamia , Columnist/Journalist/Senior Editor (sorry I'm not sure which job description is most appropriate) Monique Bowley . The interview went so badly that Monique simply had to just own it and write about just how badly it went , and podcast about it as well. Even better the whole interview was captured on video which you can watch below as a precursor to my thoughts on the aftermath.

I first wrote about the 26 part TV series, Beware the Batman in my Animation and Video blog when the initial trailer was released back in June of 2013. At the time I was underwhelmed with the shows CGI and almost immaculate Gotham City streets. For some reason the show was only ever aired at odd times on late night TV here in Australia, which seems to have been it's fate for the second half of the series in the USA too. As a result I only ever caught two or three episodes before the show disappeared. Apparently being declared a financial failure by Cartoon Network .

This past weekend was the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con, pretty much the Mecca of comic book and comic book movie fandom. Few other comic conventions attract as much world wide attention and non so much as the legendary Hall H panels for major studios like Warner Bros. Marvel, Fox, Disney and others. Each year exclusive Con only trailers and other footage is shown for upcoming movies and each year some douche with a smart phone camera films it and posts their low quality, hand held shit online, probably for the views and attention or just because they can. Honestly, I don't really care why because I'll watch it anyway.

For many of us outside the USA the Confederate flag brings to mind only one thing, The Dukes of Hazard and, specifically the show's iconic car, The General Lee. It was a fun TV show from our childhood that somehow taught strong family values whilst thumbing its nose at a mildly corrupt Police force and causing thousands of dollars damage to Police vehicles. Back when the original show was hugely popular no one ever thought about the implied racism of the Confederate (or 'rebel') flag. Other than a severe lack of ethnic diversity in the cast, not uncommon for shows of that era, no one associated the show or the flag with racism. It's not surprising that several of the shows stars have spoken up (once again) supporting the flag and the values they feel it represents.

A talking desk that makes you stand. The development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is falling down a slippery slope and gaining momentum very fast. That slope is turning common everyday things into robots of a kind. It begins innocently enough with Siri, Apple's iPhone assistant that you can talk to and even have 'her' do small phone related tasks. From there it jumps to social robots like Jibo , Pepper and Robotbase's Personal robot .

I must admit I was expecting a much funnier book from Helen Razor and Bernard Keane given Helen's background in comedy and Bernard's background in politics (how can anyone write about politics seriously?). Their book, A Short History of Stupid , The Decline of Reason and Why Public Debate Makes Us Want to Scream , is a collection of essays that serve as a reality check for life with an awareness that we're all being manipulated by spin to varying degrees. For me it finally answers the question of why TV news desks cross live to a reporter who is standing nowhere of significance to the report they are about to give. Apparently it's to give the daily news report that feeling of 'things are happening now' in a world where you can follow what's happening now live on the internet. It's a desperate attempt to say TV news reports are still relevant and current - even if the live cross is actually meaningless. On the whole this was a very good read that...

Tomorrowland is a movie I didn't know I wanted to see until I saw the first teaser trailer with only a few seconds of footage. That was enough to show that this film had a different idea about future tech compared to any other science fiction film I'd seen before it. The thing is, whilst people of my generation and after may not have seen this future before, chances are your parents and grandparents will find it some what familiar. The Tomorrowland of this film is based upon the one Walt Disney envisioned back in the 1950's and 60's and later  turned into a theme park. It reflects the optimism held for the future that my generation really only experienced in cartoon re-runs of The Jetsons .