* Top 20 Geek Novels

* I just noticed that The Travel Channel is finally showing new episodes of AMERICAN CASINO on Wednesday nights at 8:00 p.m. (repeating at 11 that night). They promised new episodes when they first picked up the series in the spring, but then started with repeats. I forgot about it until just this past week.

* I’ve always wanted to figure out how to read a bar code. Now you can look at the bars and spit the numbers back out to your amazed friends.

* An MP3 thrown up on your website is NOT a podcast. It happens mostly with commercial interests who now do things like post part of their feature interviews in their original MP3 audio form. They call those podcasts. They’re not — they’re just isolated MP3 files you can download and listen to. A podcast needs an RSS feed and a series of releases. Otherwise, it’s just a free download.

* The only shopping I need to do on this upcoming holiday weekend: the second edition of the BABYLON 5 scriptbook series goes on sale Saturday at 6:00 p.m. (West Coast time). The sales pitch for it is hilarious.

* A town in Austria has the misfortune to be covered in darkness in the winter due to a mountain’s shadow. Now, they’re thinking of redirecting sunlight with mirrors to light up the town. It’s like something out of a Carl Barks UNCLE SCROOGE tale, isn’t it? (Via)

* The XBox 360 is an eBay specialty.

This is the forty-sixth DVD podcast:
Listen directly to the MP3 file (Roughly 7 minutes and 3.6 MB)

Vote for this podcast at PodcastAlley.com.

Read about this podcast in PODCASTING HACKS.

Where to find release lists:
DVDJournal’s release list
TVShowsonDVD.com - monthly release list

Where to find more information on these movies:
Internet Movie Database

You can also subscribe to the podcast, and not have to wait for me to remember this posting to listen to the podcast.

E-mail me or send voice comments to AUGIEDB *at* GMAIL *dot* COM. Or leave your comments in the comments section of this message.

• Michael Bublé Caught in the Act (CD/DVD combo; live performance) (Reprise)

I smell Christmas present here. . .

• John Mayer Trio Try! (recorded in Chicago; ICE #224) (Columbia)

Because he just never goes away, does he?

• Scott Stapp (ex-Creed) The Great Divide (Wind-Up)

Many wish he would go away. . .

• VA High School Reunion: A Tribute to Those Great Eighties Films! (covers of ’80s tunes from popular films; w/Kristin Hersch performing the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation,” Matthew Sweet covering Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” Frank Black doing Iggy Pop’s “Repo Man” and more; ICE #224) (American Laundromat/Face Down)

Sounds cool.

But the list from MoviePoopShoot.com misses the most exciting one of the week for me:

• Billy Joel: My Lives

This is the new four CD retrospective of his career, featuring a ton of material never before heard on any of Joel’s own catalog. It compiles a lot of singles, B-Sides, soundtrack contributions, and unreleased demos that have floated around but never been collected. You’ll be surprised to hear how songs like “For The Longest Time” really began as bits like “The Prime of Your Life.” And, perhaps best of all, the Disney Channel concert from Frankfurt, Germany is included as a DVD. This one includes my all time favorite version of “My Life,” and that comes from someone with a couple dozen bootlegs laying around from different stages of the man’s career.

You can get this on sale for about $35 at Best Buy and various places on-line today.

Yes, it’s a godawful cover image to use, but it’s something Billy Joel picked out, himself, that his daughter had done for him at some point.

This should go in a link dump, I know, but I can’t wait another day to share this with you:

William Shatner in the final round (Real Player format) of the $10,000 PYRAMID in 1974 gives and receives the clues. He then fails to clear the board.

Full list at DVDJournal.com. Highlights below:

8mm 2 (unrated) (2005)
8mm 2 (R-rated) (2005)

I find it weird that a Direct To DVD film is coming out in both an R and an Unrated version. Do they really expect that anyone who’s thinking of picking this thing up straight on video is going to be squeemish enough to buy the “R.” The only reason the movie companies cut movies to an “R” rating is so that theaters will carry them. There are no theaters with these direct releases, so why bother? Is it the fear of Wal Mart or something?

Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection (3-disc set)

I barely remember the animated series anymore. I was more interested in THE MAXX cartoon at the time. I remember I liked it somewhat, even if it seemed sorta random.

Alien vs. Predator: Unrated Collector’s Edition (2-disc set) (2004)

If this is the unrated edition, does that mean we’ll see explicit Alien On Predator love scenes?

CSI Miami: Season Three (7-disc set)

I include this one for Beau, whose hatred for the show is well nigh legendary by now.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Season One (2-disc set)

I started once writing a parody of this show in a comic book script format. I should get back to it. I’m done with the show. I feel like I’ve seen all it has to offer already, and that they’re just repeating themselves now. Plus, all the shortcomings of the show are the parts they highlight. It’s become a tedious exercise to watch it.

King Kong: Special Edition (2-disc set) (1933)
King Kong: Collector’s Edition (2-disc set) (1933)
The King Kong Collection (4-disc set)
King Kong (1976)
Kong: King of Atlantis
The Son of Kong (1933)
Mighty Joe Young (1949)

I promised you plenty of Kong action last week, didn’t I? Here you go. Feast, furry monkey fans.

Leave it to Beaver: Season One (3-disc set)

The classics don’t die, thankfully.

The Polar Express (widescreen) (2-disc set) (2004)
The Polar Express (widescreen) (2004)

Merry Creepily Animated Christmas!

Seinfeld: Season Five
Seinfeld: Season Six

This is the one with the pirate shirt. It’s everywhere in the promotions for the new discs. You can even get a replica pirate shirt in one of the special gift packs, if you’re really a nutty fan.

War of the Worlds: Limited Edition (widescreen) (2-disc set) (2005)
War of the Worlds (widescreen) (2005)

It’s the end of the world as Tom Cruise knows it. . .

The Warner Classics Mega Collection (237-disc set - not a typo)

Who’s adding this to their Amazon Wish List? Odds are, anyone who would be seriously interested in a set like this would already own a bunch of it. Amazon.com has the set for $1450. It sounds huge, but it’s not a bad price — something like $6 or $7 a disc. (It includes the 4-disc BEN HUR set.) It is available for the free shipping method, too, but it’ll take a few weeks for the set to ship.

Next week: Reissues of the Muppets movies begin. MR. & MRS. SMITH. THE FAMILY GUY Volume 3. THE TOMORROW PEOPLE. And more.

Update: TVShowonDVD.com also lists the AMERICAN IDOL discs as coming out this week. I didn’t see them in Best Buy this afternoon, but I also didn’t look very hard.

* Google Maps to Celebrity Homes. Pretty cool.

* We once had hours and hours and day and days of fun playing QUAKE 2. In part, this was because you didn’t need a video card to play it, so just about any computer could handle it. Nowadays, you can use the video card for Q2 and have fun with QUAKE 2 EVOLVED, a rewriting of the game code to include a more modern graphics engine.

* Sign up for your own WordPress blog. You don’t need a server to host your files anymore.

* The movie RENT that almost was: “They considered casting Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Usher, Christina Aguilera and Brittany Murphy in the central roles.”

* Oprah finally appears on Dave’s show next Thursday. She has something to promote, of course.

* Coming up later this morning: The week’s DVD and CD releases.

If you’re desperate to pick up an XBox 360 and need to know which Best Buy to find it at tomorrow, might I recommend this site? Just plug in your zip code and let it and Google Maps do the work for you.

From Columbia Records:

Don’t forget to watch Billy [sic] upcoming television appearances this week and next month! This Monday November 21 on Conan O’Brien, Friday, November 25, you can catch Billy on the Ellen Show, and a special performance on the Today Show on December 16!

Oddly enough, TiVo’s listings show his appearance on the Conan show to be for Friday, 02 December. (Thursday night late) Stay tuned.

* I take back any kind things I may have ever said about “kids these days.” Classics as IM messages? Civilization is dead.

* Install Linux on your iPod Nano and you could even play videos and iDoom on it.

* Hear your Christmas favorites performed by a Klezmer Orchestra. ( iTunes for $10 | Amazon for $17.50 ). Oy.

* Insane tech product of the day: The Treo Virtual Laser Keyboard. It shines lasers on a flat surface to resemble a keyboard, and then optically recognized the keys you type. (Via)

* Spin and draw.

You know who I hate more than the incessant spammers who clog my e-mail and the comments section of this very blog? Those people who fall for their crap. Those are the people that make spamming a worthwhile vocation. This blog gets 30 or more spam comments every day. Thankfully, they’re all filtered to where I can easily delete them without you ever seeing them. It frustrates me, though, that valid comments have to go through the same moderation process sometimes because of those idiot users who make the spammers money. UGH

You know what else annoys me about spam? It’s all for the same stuff, using the same subject headers, same descriptions, same format, etc. If I didn’t respond to it in my e-mail box the first 5,000 times (literally), what makes them think I’m going to have a change of heart today? I’m not going to the North Pole, using Hoodia (I don’t even know what that’s for, nor do I care to), bailing out your Nigerian freedom effort, or buying your Rolex. Get over it.

I half want to allow all spam comments to this post to go through, just to give you a taste of the action. However, most of the spam comments are for posts that are days, if not weeks, old.

Ironically, I can just about guarantee that any comment posted to this entry will be send to Moderation, flagged as possible spam. ARGH!

Here’s your Saturday Gotta Have It DVD thing: C’était un Rendezvous is a ten minute film made by a French director in the 1970s. He strapped a camera to the front of his Ferrari and drove it through the streets of Paris at up to 140 MPH. He didn’t get a permit. Everything you see is real. The poor guy couldn’t even get a green light. Every traffic light in the first half of the filme is red; he blows right through them all. Things get really scary about 3/4 of the way through, with pedestrians, traffic circles, and garbage trucks. Near the end, there are a lot of birds flapping desperately to get out of the way. I think I recognize a couple of the streets from RONIN, another great movie of the 90s that’s too often overlooked. Maybe it’s just a style thing.

Read all about the movie here. You can watch it on the web, or you can always buy the DVD that’s now available.

Needless to say, don’t try recreating this film at home.

(Via)

If you’re at all curious to see what a $100 laptop that can be powered by a handcrank looks like, look no further than this link. It runs Linux, too.

Perhaps even more interesting than the mere existance of the new teaser trailer for SUPERMAN RETURNS is the variety of formats it’s offered in. Apple’s handy QuickTime movie trailer site recently started carrying HDTV versions of most of the big release trailers as a matter of course, but the revolution continues to expand.

The SUPERMAN RETURNS teaser is available in Real, Windows Media, and QuickTime (regular size, and full screen) formats. But it also includes options for PSP and iPod formatting.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but sometimes confusing. The new wave of video formats is both high-bandwidth high-def video AND itty bitty miniature video for portable players.

OK, perhaps “popular demand” is overstating it a bit.

The truth is that I brought it back because I need the outlet to vent, not because I want to get in all the arguments. But Various and Sundry Politics is back up and running. There’s just too much stuff going on to ignore it completely, and the upcoming Christmas season means more nuttiness needs covering.

* Your second typing speed game of the week: Typer Shark. This one gives you mostly full words to spell. I topped out at 99 words per minute. My biggest problem so far is my inability to lose. . . I keep getting extra lives when it seems like I might lose another guy.

* Toyota wants to use a cheaper and smaller hybrid engine while doubling its hybrid car production. They’re aiming at 600,000 hybrid cars a year in 2008. That would be impressive.

* LOST producer/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach details three of his failed television pilots. It’s insanity in Hollywood. The names are changed, but all the details are there.

* Not shocking to anyone BUT Hollywood: People with TiVos (or DVRs, in general) watch more television.

* It’s good to see that some websites never die. That includes the uber-handy Lurker’s Guide to Babyon 5.