The future of this blog

While I am still keeping this blog, the latest posts can be found at alexisgentry.net/blog. I really like the WordPress themes and layouts more than the Blogger ones, so I'm going to be updating that blog more frequently than this one. Eventually, I'll re-post things here, but that blog is the best way to hear about all the random things floating around in my head.

Trey and Matt Interview

http://www.reason.com/news/show/116787.html

My friend Jason sent this to me. It's an interview from Reason, a liberatarian magazine, with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. In it, the two discuss free speech, religion, and even their beef with Family Guy. Check it out.

Behind the Scenes of "The Breakfast Monkey"

Are you a fan of My Chemical Romance? Have you watched the animatic for "The Breakfast Monkey" a zillion times on YouTube and always wondered how it came to be? Well wonder no more, my friends. In this super rare clip, you can hear about the making of this great show that almost was right from Gerard and co-creator Joe Boyle.

A huge thank you to bladeyoustain for putting this up.

TV Blog Updates

For anyone who hasn't checked out the brand new TrashwireTV blog, head on over to trashwire.tv/blog to check it out. I've been updating it like crazy lately with information and reviews of all the latest and greatest trashy reality shows. I'd love to hear your feedback about it.

Parallels Blows My Mind

If you're not a Mac user or a bit of a geek, you probably won't care about this post. You can amuse yourself elsewhere, perhaps by reading my comments about VH1's new reality series, I Love New York. If you are a Mac user or a geek, then stick around.

I got a MacBook about four months ago and I loved it right away. For one, it looks cool and the glossy screen produces some really beautiful images. It's also thin and portable and the battery lasts a lot longer than my other laptops. My very first computer was a Mac (a Performa 575 way back in 1993) and I've liked their operating systems ever since. While there was a long period in middle school and high school when I had PCs, I switched back to Mac in college and got an iBook. It was a great computer, incredibly light and portable, so I took to to class with me and used it constantly. It was also affordable thanks to Apple's educational discount. The only problem with my little iBook was that there were some programs I just couldn't run on the Mac OS. Our school would give us software for classes, have us access and download things online, or use files and applications that were for Windows only and either involved a zillion steps and extra money to run on a Mac, or were just plain out of bounds to Mac users.

When I heard that the new Mac laptops with Intel chips were going to be able to run Windows, I was intrigued. Macs have been running Windows for years through the use of programs like VirtualPC, but all the reports were saying that with the new Intel Macs, you could run Windows without some of the limits of those programs. I started hearing a lot about Parallels Desktop, an application that let Mac users run both the Mac OS and Windows at the same time and switch back and forth between the two. I was way psyched. The program I use to edit Trashwire.com is only available for Windows, so anything that let me run that from my new MacBook was right up my alley.

I got Parallels and installed it and Windows XP. From the second I accessed Windows and saw that familiar Start Menu at the bottom of the screen, I was excited. I played around with Parallels and switched between the windowed mode and the full-screen mode, which makes your Mac desktop look like any PC desktop. It was super cool. My PC programs all worked with ease and I could share files between my Mac and Windows through shared folders.

I was convinced that Parallels was already one of the coolest things I'd ever seen when I picked up a copy of Macworld and saw that there was a new improvement in the works for the already amazing software. With the new beta, you can now run Windows in Coherence Mode. In this mode, you don't even have to switch back and forth between the two operatins systems, it puts open Windows applications and folders right in with your Mac applications and folders. This means that I can have an open window with my sitebuilder application right next to my open Mac web browser and I can even drag and drop things between them. This is awesome because it eliminates the need for shared folders. I can just open the folder I want in Windows and drop something right in from my Mac. No more moving the file to a shared folder, switching to Windows, moving the file from the shared folder and then using it. I takes way less time and creates way less clutter.

The whole thing is amazing to me and I'm convinced the people who make Parallels must be aliens or people from the future or something. Why hasn't anyone made things this easy before? There was an episode of South Park where Randy was tring to explain the Wal-Mart business model to Stan and he said, "It's simple economics, son. I don't understand it at all...but...God I love it!" That's the way I feel about Parallels. I have no idea how it works, but damn am I happy that it does work. If I had to pick my favorite technological breakthrough of 2006, I'd pick Parallels Desktop for giving me the ability to have the computer I really want and not panic about limited applications for its operating system. I hate to sound like a Mac whore, but now that there's Parallels, why would anyone ever want to buy a PC again?

The Future of Trashwire.com

First of all, happy new year!

We're planning some really big stuff for 2007, so be sure to stay tuned for updates and announcements.

The first big project we're in the process of solidifying is the launch of TrashwireTV. TrashwireTV is the new show we are developing for Denver Open Media. It will combine sketches, news, movie reviews and much more. We'll also be launching a new site for the show, which will feature episodes, behind-the-scenes info, and extras. It will also feature a blog about the episodes and about our favorite trashy TV shows. The new site is up, so feel free to browse. You can access it at http://trashwire.tv and you can view the blog at http://trashwire.tv/blog.

Next, we are looking to expand Trashwire and add some new writers. If you're interested in becoming a writer for Trashwire, please use the contact form to send us an email. We're looking for fun people with a good sense of humor who love writing about all aspects of pop culture. We would really like to add a web video section, so we're also looking for people who make web videos too. If you're a creative person and you want a place to publish your work, send us an email.

We'd love to hear your feedback on the new updates as they arrive. Send us your comments on the contact page or friend us on MySpace.

With your help, we can make 2007 the year of Trashwire.com!

Quote that I loved

“Online gambling is the heroin of our time.”

I heard a woman on the E! THS Investigates special say this. The special was about the positive and negative values of the internet. Because it was E!, they tried to make it all sound as interesting and scandalous as possible. This woman talked about how she was addicted to online gambling and how it ruined her life. The story was kind of boring, she pissed all her family’s money away and now she feels bad about it, but then she dropped this little gem into the interview.

My question was this: isn’t heroin the heroin of our time? It’s not like heroin suddenly disappeared and now people are addicted to online gambling instead. You don’t see grunge musicians nodding out after a night of online gambling. Nicole Richie isn’t getting arrested for posession of online gambling materials. So, nothing is really the heroin of our time except for... well, heroin.

Beyond Jumping the Shark

Those of you who could actually get through an episode of Flavor of Love without puking will be pleased to hear that everyone's favorite Head-Bitch-In-Charge is back with her very own reality dating show. That's right, New York (real name Tiffany Patterson), the psychotic diva from both seasons one and two of Flavor of Love is back on VH1 and looking for love once again. Her new series, I Love New York, puts her in a house with 20 single guys who compete for her affection.

I have to say, you'd think that being totally rejected by Flavor Flav twice on national TV would be enough to make a person realize how repulsive they really were, but apparently New York didn't get that memo. Instead, she and her freakish mother (who, I'm convinced, is actually a man) will go through the whole trashy charade again. Yes, trash fans, even her horrible mother will be back this season. Make sure you keep your vomit buckets ready. New York's self-absorbed chatter and psychotic diva rants will surely make our list of trash TV highlights this year.

Still, I think the real fascinating question here is this... just how many times can VH1 spin off a show? If you recall, the entire Flavor Flav dating show phenomenon started way back in 2004 with The Surreal Life. That show lead to the unholy union of Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielson. Later, their relationship spawned Strange Love, a reality-romance series about Flav's attempts to woo Nielson. As if that wasn't enough, when Flav and Brigitte split, VH1 introduced a new show, the original Flavor of Love. After the first season of that show yielded no long-term love interest for Flav, VH1 decided to bring it back again in another quest to find Flav a woman. All this might leave you wondering just why VH1 has taken such an interest in the love life of the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Hype Man". Now VH1 has once again introduced a spin off in the Flavor Flav love saga, bringing us the latest reality abortion, I Love New York.

Seriously, VH1, why are you doing this?! This goes so far over the line of jumping the shark that I think a new term needs to be coined for this scheme of running a concept so far into the ground. Clearly, this network does not know when it's time to let an idea die. All this is made even more hilarious by the fact that infamous "clock ceremony" line from Flavor of Love was "you know what time it is." Please, VH1, just let this whole Flavor Flav thing go and come up with something else. You know it's gotten pretty bad because this is coming from Trashwire.com. We have very strong stomachs for trashy TV, but this is testing even our tolerance. Keeping the cameras rolling as a girl took a shit on the carpet during the second season of Flavor of Love was one thing, but now we're so desparate for crap reality that we need to create and entire series where we find a man for someone who isn't even famous enough to qualify as a d-lister?! When will it end?!

It's so horrible that we just can't resist it and we'll be there watching on January 8th a 9PM EST when I Love New York premieres on VH1.

Click HERE for more information about the show and to watch episodes and extras from VSpot on VH1.com.

Starting '07 off with a bang...

2007 is sure to be a major year for the trash reality show. The old favorites are going to be back and there are going to be some new ones that look very promising. There are two that start in the next few weeks that I'm super excited for...

The first is The Surreal Life Fame Games. This will, no doubt, be awesome because it's basically Surreal Life All-Stars, except no one on that show is really an all-star. Some of your favorite d-listers are back including Vanilla Ice. The previews alone are amazing and there is sure to be some crazy stuff going down. Apparently the cast must compete to see who is more famous and the person who is least famous every week gets voted off.

Next is a new show, Armed and Famous. This show takes celebrities like Jack Osbourne and LaToya Jackson and turns them into law enforcement officers in a small town. They get guns and badges and they go around arresting people. This is amazing because it combines The Surreal Life and Cops, two trash TV classics.

Those are my two big picks so far, but I'm sure as 2007 rolls on I'll have a lot more shows to look out for. Stay tuned to Trashwire.