Thinking of unfriending? Today's the day

I have a friend who shares a "deep thought" of the day as a Facebook status update, which I never really understand. Guess I'm too shallow. Then there's another friend who drops tidbits about his travels across the country—he's a flight attendant—while leaving out all the good parts, like the name of the celebrity who just behaved badly on a flight. Should I unfriend these people? I can't in good conscience, because in these cases, they're actually my friends, not my "friends." Jimmy Kimmel recently told fans during his late-night show to "pull some weeds" on Nov. 17 for National UnFriend Day. He made some valid points and even enlisted William Shatner in the cause. Sure, I know there's some fat in those 395 "friends," but I can't let any of them go. Could you? And how will you explain to your cubicle mate/brother-in-law/fourth-grade pal that you're no longer friends?

The Great 'X-Files' Rewatch: season 1, episode 16, 'E.B.E.'

The opening sequence of "E.B.E." reminded me how eerily similar things are these days—at least government/war-wise—to the early '90s. That was the era of the first Gulf war—1990-91—the first time America really thought it was facing the threat of weapons of mass destruction since the Cold War (and subsequently, global terrorism, which came to a head two years later, when the World Trade Center was bombed the first time). I distinctly remember the nightly pictures of oil fields burning in the desert on the news—the Tom Brokaw broadcasts (love that guy) and the "Scud Stud," Arthur Kent, reporting from behind enemy lines. Of course, there was also the government led by Bush I, reassuring the public of our role as ally to the Middle East and the lofty goals for toppling Saddam Hussein (emphasis on the first syllable, of course, to make it sound like "Sodom"). And then, a bit after the hype had died down, the rumors of sick veterans and Gulf War Syndrome—and the subsequent coverup (well, that might be my X-Files-geek-conspiracy-theorist self speaking). Certainly, a lot to take in as a teenager.
  The "teaser" for the episode: An Iraqi fighter pilot radios in an unidentified flying object, experiences a blinding flash of white light, but is able to recover his systems and shoot the craft out of the sky. It lands near an American base. In rolls the X-Files theme. It struck me how ahead-of-the-times this tiny sequence was—how it felt like something the producers of 24 or Lost might have ginned up more than a decade later. This is "cinematic" television at its finest—before shows like Mad Men and The Walking Dead had even been glimmers of ideas.

Past masters the Beatles leap into present

If you run Safari on a Mac, and you never changed your home page from Apple.com, then you've been seeing the image above whenever you've logged in to the Internet today. Click the photo, and you're directed to another iconic image (posted after the jump) with copy that reads, "In 1964 the band that changed everything came to America. Now they're on iTunes."
  We thought this day would never come. Asked by Reuters just four months ago whether the Beatles catalog might eventually be sold through Apple's digital empire, Yoko Ono replied, "Don't hold your breath … for anything." So, why the change of heart? With the enigmatic Ono as the band's acting mouthpiece, we may never know. Still, the more important question may be: How will this affect the Beatles' legacy?

The Great 'X-Files' Rewatch: season 1, episode 15, 'Young at Heart'

First off, forgive the long absence of the GXFR. I moved and had no Internet for a while. But I'm back on track, so I can stream the full X-Files series once again via Netflix!
  Episode 15 of the first season of The X-Files series is called "Young at Heart"—somewhat erroneously, maybe. The "fountain of youth" theme really doesn't kick in until the end of episode. And it feels like a bit of a letdown when it does.
  It's another story stripped from Mulder's past (remember, "Fire" brought in a short-haired British chanteuse whom he'd been bedding in college). This one hits a little closer to home for Mulder, though. Having a clear shot at a murder suspect early in his career, a young Agent Mulder "plays it by the book" and doesn't off the suspect because there's a hostage involved. (Apparently, in the FBI handbook, you can't put a hostage's life in danger, if he/she is at gunpoint.) The suspect, John Barnett, then shoots the hostage and one of Mulder's fellow agents before being taken into custody—something for which Mulder has never forgiven himself.
  Barnett avoids the death penalty and is thrown in jail for life—and supposedly dies there of heart failure. But given the opening "teaser" sequence of the episode, the audience knows Barnett is still alive in some way (this isn't revealed until much later). We see him on a gurney, missing an arm, with a doctor above him, his cataract-covered eyes still blinking. Creepy shit.  

'The Walking Dead' recaps: season 1, episode 1, 'Days Gone By'

As you can imagine, AMC's new series The Walking Dead is right up this TV geek's alley: I have already tackled Lost's final season and am currently rewatching the entire X-Files series. Plus, in this show, there's a dude capping a child zombie in the opening sequence; gratuitous blood and violence; and sexy sexpots in sexy side-plots, which are sure to become full-on sackfests.
  The first episode follows an ordinary, average police officer (Rick Grimes) in small-town America, who gets shot in the line of duty and winds up in the hospital. When he wakes up from his painkiller/drug-induced haze, he finds himself in the midst of a zombie-filled apocalypse.
  Now, I'm not entirely sure what the timeline is between when he wakes up in the hospital and when zombieland went down, but either way, when we see that eaten-up body in the hospital hall, it is both frightening and ridiculous at once (like the whole Shaun of the Dead conundrum—should we laugh or should we be totally grossed out?). I haven't seen gore like that since The Hills Have Eyes (the original, not the shitty remake).

Cee-Lo Green tries new lyrics on Colbert

Stephen Colbert is all about free speech and artistic expression. So, he was treading lightly when he asked Cee-Lo Green to switch out the key words of his hit single "F--k You" when the Southern soul singer appeared on The Colbert Report on Tuesday night. Beef stew? Fox News? Neither really suits the song, which calls a cheating, gold-digging girl on the carpet for her bad behavior. But Green was a good sport and tested out the latter. Yeah, it's family friendly, and Green can make anything work with that velvety voice. But it's still wrong. Listen to the uncensored, NSFW version here.

'WaPo' dinosaurs learning to love the iPad

Oh boy, this is embarrassing. Print journalism legend and apparent technophobe Bob Woodward scratches his head over an iPad (they got the Washington Post on that thing?) and has to resort to asking even older-school newsman Ben Bradlee how the contraption works. It's all for a good cause, I guess: The paper's launching an iPad app, via this slick looking but painfully acted short video. Watch it above, and let me know if that Robert Redford reference isn't the most awkward "joke" you've heard in a long time.

PTC: Swear words on rise on broadcast TV

Just like the Parents Television Council never misses a televised dick joke, I try to keep up with the conservative finger-waggers, if only to take note of what I should probably be watching during prime time. The group did some in-house research (!) and found that profanity on broadcast TV has increased in the last five years by 69 percent. (Insert Beavis and/or Butt-head chuckle here.) The study says "bastard" is kind of out of favor these days (mentions of the word were down 37 percent), but "screw," "piss" and "boobs" are hot. So is "douche," up 83 percent (we probably have Two and a Half Men to thank for that stat), even though that word's already been declared overused to the point of meaninglessness. By far the leading potty words in this survey were "bleeped fuck," up more than 2,400 percent, and "bleeped shit," which increased by more than 750 percent. Fox is the worst offender, as usual. PTC head Tim Winter tells our sister pub The Hollywood Reporter that even more bad words are piling up this TV season and they're naughtier than ever. As with everything the PTC does, it's impossible to know the methodology (behind the madness), but it's fascinating to know there's somebody out there counting every time a TV character says "balls." Check out the full list and wonder with me what they mean by "other breasts" and "other genitals."

What other odd jobs can media execs try?

When publishing vet Cathie Black was tapped to be the next New York City schools chancellor, critics questioned her fitness for the job, considering she's an outsider to public education (and sent her own kids to boarding schools). But maybe there are jobs for media executives in public service that take their experience into account. How about putting Chuck Townsend in charge of the Staten Island Ferry? David Pecker for finance commissioner? Nominate your own choices in comments.

A big new battle begins in condom wars

[Warning: This post may not be suitable for readers uninterested in gratuitous wordplay.] Trojan's Magnum extra-large condoms—for those readers whose members are nationally endowed for the greater (sexual) arts—are getting some direct connie-petition from LifeStyles' new big-boy brand KYNG. On the latter's box, it literally says: "Compare to Magnum." Size, apparently, matters—especially when you're in the rubber business.
  Among other things, though, I'm trying to figure out the angle here. The whole "compare and contrast" idea seems like a bit of a tall feat to me. Does LifeStyles want you, in the heat of passion, to ask your mate whether she/he could go another round for the sake of market research? That might not go over so well. Either way, I must say this brand turf war is refreshing to see in the Age of the Euphemistic Sex-Product Ad. During most golf or football telecasts, you see a Cialis or Viagra commercial every 15 minutes, and of course, those ads do everything but get right to the, well, point. I don't know how many times I've seen the older couple sitting in the matching bathtubs, or the woman touching the man's shoulder in the kitchen (and the house's walls falling down).
  Let these condom companies set an example: "Tear down those [erected] walls of innuendo!"