Bandoman

https://www.bestduckingstamps.com/

I would buy a print of the duck hunting hunters stamp. The current bid on the original is $15,100

Jay G.

Web Exclusive premiering the local car commercial they wrote:

story

That's the Judy Garland Museum and Zumbrota Ford this year. Apparently Minnesota is really into this show! What will be the third connection?!

whotony

That is just so good.
My wife is up in Minneapolis now I wonder if that’s playing all over that area.

Jay G.

I'm guessing the ad will run late night, at least in unedited form. Timing the ad in the video, it starts at 3:40 mark and ends at 5:08, so about 88 seconds, meaning they'd need a 90 second ad slot to air it in.

Looking up the dealership, the bulk of their other ads are 30 seconds long:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...PApYpCs-gGpW1h

So the LTW script ad is 3x longer then their typical ad, and so likely at least 3x as expensive to run. They could offset the extra cost a bit by running it late at night.

Maybe after they air the full length version a few times, they can cut a 30 second version.

On the other hand, this ad may be best if it stayed as a "late night find," like only people who are up at 3am watching an old re-run of I Love Lucy see it, and the next morning wonder if they actually dreamed it.

Decker

New web feature

Jay G.

Chex Quest still has a dedicated fanbase. There's an HD remaster on Steam, sponsored by Chex Mix this time round, so snack related.
https://www.chexmix.com/chexquest/

Prior to that, there were fan enhancements to Chex Quest 1 & 2:
The Ultimate Chex Quest: A Total Conversion For DooM Legacy

Also, one of the developers that worked on the first 2 made Chex Quest 3 in their spare time:
Charles Jacobi - Gamer's Page

Jay G.

A bit late, but John did a rant about how bad The Da Vinci Code is:

Also, official trailer for season 9, which premieres February 20th.

slop101

I stopped watching this a while ago - it just became a real fucking drag, with bad news after bad news, with little to no brigh-spots or real solutions offered.

jpcamb

Same, I was hoping for an improvement in tone after Biden got elected but it is just too damn bleak and smarmy. I have no issue with him calling Biden or anyone out on stuff but it's just so frigging depressing watching this show. At least I got to see the marble races because of John.

johnnysd

Agree. It started out as pretty centrist and very funny to very left snarky and depressing.

Decker

Reminder: Season 9 premieres tonight! 😁

brainee

Good news! It looks like John Oliver's plot to create hyperinflation for the giant frog leg statue has failed. It's on sale, but you have to wait until October for the stock to replenish.

Paff

I knew from the moment he showed the ad that he'd bring one out by the end of the show. All three was a slight surprise, but not much of one.

Paff

So after being off for a couple of weeks (and with all that's occurred in politics), John Oliver comes back to tell us....Law & Order is not a realistic police/courtroom drama.

It's too bad he didn't have a show back in 1980. He could have explained to the world that California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers do NOT spend most of their time setting up BMX tracks for kids or organizing roller discos.

Count Dooku

A little more to what he was saying than just that.

Bandoman

They spend weeks, if not months, gathering facts and documents for the feature. So he's not always talking about the most recent news, but he's always relevant.

I've never watched an episode of Law & Order and I've been curious given its popularity and figured I'd give it a shot someday. Now I have absolutely no desire to see it ever.

Paff

You're missing out. If you watch "classic" L&O (I've never been fan of SVU or the other shows in the franchise), it's a very entertaining police and courtroom drama. The recent reboot of the show was hit or miss, with the emphasis definitely on "miss", but it had a great run from the late 90s to the mid 2000s. Any episode where Jerry Orbach plays Detective Lennie Briscoe (not because of him per se, just that during his stretch on the show, it seemed to be running on all cylinders even with a rotating group of other regulars) will probably hold your attention for an hour.

I'll have to watch Oliver's segment again, because honestly, I didn't even see what his point was. It was one of the more rambling and directionless pieces he's done. Because he fully admits right up front that true police and prosecutor work is indeed very boring. Of course artistic license is applied to make it more compelling entertainment. He also showed a segment from a recent episode where the show acknowledges the negative current image of the police, and how it felt shoehorned into the show. So really, what does he even want the producers of the show to do then? And by the way the show has, despite Oliver's claims, not avoided the subjects of racism within the police department, physical abuse and coerced confessions, and judicial misconduct. It just tends to avoid tying those things in to the main characters of the show (usually when someone is involved in shady police work, it's a one-off character who gets their comeuppance by the end of the episode), because they want us to tune in every week.

Now, I do admit I would very much like to see a show about the Innocence Project, and I agree it would be tough to get it to air as it's an idea that will make police and prosecutors look very bad indeed and there would be immense pressure from police unions and other prominent figures to keep it off the air. So fine, don't take it to NBC. I'm sure someone will take a chance on a show like that if it's made well and is entertaining.

whotony

I thought the segment was a commentary on how often the police departments use a tv show as a basis for information on what they should do.

Count Dooku

For the vast majority of Americans, their understanding of police investigation procedures and the criminal justice system is shaped by what they see on TV. For example, google the CSI effect.

The position that TV isn't real, and that people know these are fictional stories, is just poppycock because the shows go out of their way to tell their viewers that these are depictions of reality and that the shows are claim to be realistic. Think about how much your own understanding of the past or historical events is shaped or even defined by the "realistic" depictions you have seen in movies.

So the point is that the Law and Order franchise, which everyone but Bandoman has binge-watched at some time or another, repeatedly and consistently presents viewers with an intentionally skewed vision of police practices, while insisting that it is realistic, and so people believe it.

The result, for example, is that when a segment of the population starts protesting about (let's say) racist police practices, people who have been convinced by Law and Order to identify law enforcement as the good guys, who care deeply about justice and fairness, just gape in disbelief.
Or a rape victim, who has been conditioned to expect empathy and determination from a police detective, is instead faced with someone who is poorly trained and indifferent. And so instead of finding justice, a traumatized victim is just re-traumatized by the people who are supposed to be helping her.

The media indoctrinate the masses into accepting that the hegemonic role of law enforcement in our society is just fine, because law enforcement can be trusted. And anyone who questions that trust is . . . un-American, a socialist, the enemy of the people?



People will say that L&O includes stories about bad cops, but they are always the anomaly, the proverbial bad apple.
And just like that, when stories about "bad" cops come out in reality, it is dismissed as just "bad apples." But (and this is astounding to me) everyone ignores what the proverb about bad apples actually says.

It's funny because this summer I did a daily binge of the first twelve seasons of SVU with Stabler and Benson, which I had never watched before. Stabler, the hero, is very often a shitty cop. Over and over, he drags a suspect into interrogation, completely convinced in his heart and gut that the guy is guilty, and no matter how much the suspect protests their innocence, Stabler works to coerce a confession with threats and lies and intimidation, and sometimes violence. Until the captain shows up with "evidence from the lab" that exonerates the guy, and they "cut him loose." But there is never a moment of reflection on Stabler's tactics --on how he was 100% wrong but certain he was 100% right, and would have railroaded someone into prison based on a coerced confession. They just move on with the investigation and their search for justice for the victim because those heroic blue lives only care about the pursuit of truth and justice.

BDB

I know one of the factors in the show was specifically around SVU, and how many women when they report sexual abuse expect to get the same results as on SVU, esp if they watch it, but in reality nothing close to this happens.

Paff

But if SVU (which again, I don't watch, so it's hard for me to discuss) depicted the way rape victims are really treated by the police, it would only lead to less reporting from victims, and that's not good either.

I guess my rebuttal to John Oliver is that we should be striving to make real cops act like what we see on cop shows, instead of making cop shows reflect the way cops really behave. I see his point, that if we air the reality of police, it might make the public more aware and press law enforcement for change. But it also would not make good television and people would likely tune out.

One thing I did learn though, was that "Bloody Christmas" was a real event, not just something created by James Ellroy in LA Confidential.

Jay G.

Well.... except for the part where they brutalize a suspect, but it's ok because the cop knows in their gut that they're guilty.

If the shows were advocating for change you may have a point, but the issue is that people watch L&O and think that real cops already act like what we see on cop shows, so no need for reforms, change, etc. , especially as those reforms are demonized on the show as doing nothing but stopping the "good" cops/lawyers from putting the "bad" suspect away.

I mean, they showed a clip of them griping about unconstitutional stop-and-frisk being banned. You know, the act of just stopping a random person for no reason, no actual wrong-doing, no probable cause, and frisking them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-a..._New_York_City

Count Dooku

Sometimes people will discuss a problem without being able to provide a solution to it, but still discuss it to create awareness of the problem. Part of the solution you want Oliver to provide is making people aware of how they are being manipulated. And then if they understand how their perception of policing has been shaped by unrealistic representations on TV, they will be more receptive to the need for change that you say we need.

cultshock

Me neither, I have zero interest in those types of shows, I'd rather watch paint dry, but I'm not surprised to see that they are basically propaganda. I liked Oliver's desciption, "Advertisements for a defective product."