cory anotado

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

This is the next in a series of posts giving my top five of everything: top five authors, movies, books, fonts, colors… anything and everything I can think of. Most of these lists, unless otherwise specified, aren’t in any particular order. Here’s the next list: my top five mash-ups. For the uninitiated, a mash-up is a song created from the elements of two or more songs. I enjoy them for the musical intuition and skill it takes to create one. (I’ve tried, to disastrous results.)

Cory’s Top Five Mash-Ups

1. Low Groove (Flo Rida vs. Earth, Wind and Fire) by Party Ben. My theory: putting lousy rap songs to vastly superior 70s-era funk or disco will always equal something awesome. This makes Flo Rida’s annoying, unbearable “Low” not just tolerable, but rather awesome.

2. Single Ladies (In Mayberry) (Beyoncé vs. The Andy Griffith Show) by Party Ben. Now, this is a mash-up. Here’s the formula: take two songs which could very well be considered polar opposites, and jam them together like uncomfortable cousins at a staged wedding. Bonus points: mash up the video. Give this one a listen, and you’ll be simultaneously tickled pink and bewildered. (And if you haven’t already figured this one out: Party Ben’s one of the best and most popular mash-up artists on the intertubes. Get to know his work; it is the best.)

3. Sweet Home Country Grammar (Nelly vs. Lynyrd Skynyrd) by DJ Mei-Lwun. Here’s another great example of taking two songs which are basically polar opposites and mashing them up together. The reason I like songs like this is that, on a very deep and metaphorical level, it can show that people’s differences only separate them so much, and that if used properly, differences can bring people together. (That’s a little too deep for something as silly as mash-ups. I apologize.)

4. Yeah In The Sun (Weezer vs. Usher, Ludacris and Lil Jon) by DJ Mike. The entire Jay-Zeezer album (which is Jay Z’s Black Album remixed with Weezer’s Blue Album) is a wonderful experiment that stands up to the test of time, mainly because the Black Album is amazing, and the Blue Album is one of Weezer’s finest. Mix them together skillfully, as DJ Mike did, and you have yourself a fine album. The mash-up I’m focusing on, however, is a bonus track on the Jay-Zeezer album, and it’s Island in the Sun by Weezer, mashed up with Usher’s Yeah song. It’s a jammin’ tune. (Peace up, A-Town down.)

5. Jam on Sesame Street (The Sesame Street Theme vs. Newcleus). To end this top-five, I’m throwing a new favorite that I haven’t gotten sick of yet. Take the hot 80s flow of rap group Newcleus and mix it with a sped-up version of the theme to the children’s show Sesame Street (which I still consider sacred ground; no one fucks with Sesame Street without respect and reverence. Those puppets taught me how to read, damnit) and you’ve got a real cool jam that is difficult to not dance to.

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

This is the next in a series of posts giving my top five of everything: top five authors, movies, books, fonts, colors… anything and everything I can think of. Most of these lists, unless otherwise specified, aren’t in any particular order. Here’s the next list: my top five podcasts. All links head to iTunes, so if you don’t have iTunes, then don’t click the links.

Cory’s Top Five Podcasts

1. The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC’s most logical and smartest host (just barely eking out Keith Olbermann), Rachel Maddow’s full show appears on a one-day delay on iTunes. Full show. 40-some odd minutes. For free. That shit is insane. Thank you, MSNBC.

2. The Preston and Steve Show. Preston and Steve are two of the funniest morning DJs in the world. Howard Stern is lame, fuck Danny Bonaduce and any other morning show on radio, despite what you think, is inferior to the Preston and Steve show. If you disagree with me, subscribe to Preston and Steve for a week. Listen to the show and, if after 5 days, you don’t love this show, then I will give you a cheesesteak for your valiant efforts.

3. Old Jews Telling Jokes. I am extremely not Jewish, but I still find Old Jews Telling Jokes very funny. There’s no surprise about what this podcast is about: it’s a bunch of old Jewish people, backed with years of telling their corny jokes, in front of a plain white background, telling the corny jokes they’ve told for years and years. And yet, something about an old geezer telling an extremely dirty joke? Never gets old.

4. The Onion News Network. This shouldn’t even need to be said. Consistently rated five stars on iTunes, the Onion News Network is truly America’s finest news source. Taking satire further than satire has ever been taken before, it’s refreshing to see someone stick it to not just cable news, but morning shows, government access and sports news, all in one podcast. It’s a must-watch.

5. This American Life. The greatest magazine show in the history of media. It’s like 20/20, but better, more touching, more… pertinent. Ira Glass has his timing down pat, the stories selected always fit the theme of the show, and the themes of every episode are engaging and intriguing. This is another one of those “if you’ve never listened before, listen a couple times” and I guarantee, you will love it.

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

The History of Game Shows is an ongoing series of articles about the history of game shows from 1500 to the present. This week’s article is about the popular game show, Family Feud.

At the very least catch phrase fodder for American pop culture, Family Feud is one of the staples of game shows in America today. Originally a spin-off of the bonus round from Match Game, Family Feud has been surveying 100 people, with the top 5 answers on the board, for over 30 years.

1973’s Match Game was, in 2 words, da bomb. The combination of host Gene Rayburn, the massive amount of celebrities, and of course, the dirty questions, made for a ratings smash. One of the regular celebrities, Richard Dawson, shows an incredible amount of competence in playing the game, plus a charisma and likability that made for excellent television. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, always the forward thinkers, decided to convert the Super Match portion of the Match Game into a new show, and cast Dickie Dawson in the starring role.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

I’m an avid TV watcher. Yes, I like game shows, but my love of game shows is only a subsection of the half-hour joys of bite-size narrative digested weekly or daily.

As an aside, I once had a theory that movies and TV used to go through cycles: TV shows would generally be terrible while movies would be great, then once movies as a whole started to suck, those writers would move to TV and TV would get better, and on and on. I can’t prove that and I don’t have data to start, but it’s an interesting theory nonetheless.

My viewing habits, however, are piss-poor for such a TV fan. The cable I have is about to bite the dust (the cable box works when it feels like it) and I don’t want to have to go all the way upstairs just to watch some TV.

So, I’m investing my time in watching TV online. Everyone’s talking about how watching shows online is the wave of the future or what have you, and I’m more than happy to surf that crest. However, what’s the best place to watch shows online? I put different network’s offerings to the test to see where I can get my fix easiest. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m running a MacBook with Mac OS 10.5.7, with 1 GB memory and a 2.16 GHz processor, and I’m piping all this through a Verizon DSL line that isn’t very fast.

CBS.com/video is the Columbia Broadcasting System’s foray into online video. My experience with CBS wasn’t bad. Video won’t work with AdBlock Plus activated, and there’s no idea how loaded the video is (no indication on the play bar, no “buffering” indicator… nothing). Generally, starting the video and pausing it allows the video to load enough that, after a few minutes or so, the video starts to play. The commercials are unobtrusive and video quality is good, but no options exist for better (or worse) quality. They even have a 1080p HD channel, but neither my processor nor my connection could handle it. Their selection includes recent episodes from the entire CBS primetime lineup (I can watch the last full episode of How I Met Your Mother, the entirety of the 9th season of CSI, and episodes of 60 Minutes ranging as far back as January), recent episodes from the CBS daytime lineup (which is why I can watch The Price is Right and my girlfriend can catch up with the last two weeks of the Young and the Restless), episodes and clips from CBS’s late night shows and even classic full classic shows such as the Twilight Zone, the Love Boat and Family Ties. Overall, a pleasant experience.

NBC.com/video/library has a wide variety of videos available, and their video site is very well organized. No wonder NBC.com won the Webby Award for Broadband website. Full episodes include full runs of Miami Vice, Quantom Leap, and the most of the current seasons of shows like Kath & Kim, Southland and The Office, as well as recent episodes of Leno (soon to be Conan, fortunately) and Fallon. Their player is solidly built with some flaws. Just like CBS, there’s no way to know how much of the video is loaded at any given time. Also like CBS, there’s no quality settings. A fun feature of the NBC player was the almost instant access to any other show or episode via their ribbon-like interface at the bottom of each player page. By default, it gives you the option of different DVD-like “chapters” (which are portions between commercial breaks), but you can also browse other full episodes or other shows all together. When an episode ends, it’ll play another video or give you suggested options of what to watch next. That’s a handy feature for the bored viewer. On the thumbs down side, the way the advertisements work is a kind of a dealbreaker for me; I don’t like my advertisements to obtrude so much. The advertisements sometimes are larger than the video, a large pet peeve for me.

ABC.com has only one feature going for it: automatic quality scaling. If your internet’s bandwidth starts to lag, the sound and video quality degrades so the stream can continue downloading. If your bandwidth picks up, the quality gets better. How does it do that? Well, in order to watch shows from ABC.com, you have to install a plug-in in order to watch it, which is annoying since everyone else allows you to watch shows via Flash. The fullscreen viewer is ugly, and the advertisements are intrusive and don’t automatically advance. Just to watch videos from ABC.com is a pain in the ass: video automatically plays when you login, and to watch full episodes, you have to open a pop-up window. To watch Scrubs online, ABC.com opens about 3 different pop-up windows just to get to the episode selection screen. Easily, the most annoying of the Big Three networks. As a matter of fact, instead of watching the Scrubs finale on ABC.com, I shelled out the $3.98 to download the shows from iTunes. Took longer to watch, but so very hassle-free, it was completely worth it. I’d rather watch Oprah eat a bushel of lobster in a bikini than have to watch TV on ABC.com ever again.

What’s my final verdict? Obviously, it’ll depend on what show you want to watch. In terms of user experience, you’ll get the most bang for your bandwidth at NBC’s website. CBS’s comes in a close second (and those HD videos, if you can get them to stream, are jaw-droppingly gorgeous), while ABC’s a distant 5th, behind not watching TV and gouging my eyes with soup spoons.