The task of American TV binge-watching is not a small one, especially when competing with one’s better-half who is usually at least two shows ahead of me. The reality is, I’m losing the challenge of who can get through the shows the quickest. Lost big-time, in fact, with recent binge-watching of The King of Queens. It took my better-half less than a month to get through all nine seasons of that show. Lots of free time during Eurowasteland’s xmas vacation helped a bit, too. I know, I know. I know what you’re saying dear worst-reader. “Don’t you guys have anything better to do than watch mindless American TV?” Well, to be honest, as the minions and automatons of Germania and the western-world remain preoccupied with consuming-to-survive and/or procreating and/or subjecting themselves to hapless subjugation, my better-half and I live a life of semi forced and unforced early retirement. Put another way: once we’ve gotten through most of the daylight hours, completed most of our chores, popped open a bottle Tuscany joy after tee-time–where we plan our next vacation–there really isn’t much left to do. Ok. We could sex things up a bit more but to be honest, at my age, it’s a good thing that the storm & drang of gettin’ my nuts off is waning. But I’m off subject again. §I was trying to explain the pseudo-detriment of binge-watching American TV. Which brings me to the show Alpha House. I finished the second season last night–again losing to my better half who finished watching three nights before. And it is a pretty good show. I guess. But one thing stuck out after only watching the first few episodes. Are you ready for this? Alpha House is the best show yet where #americant conservatives and republicans might finally get the last laugh. Wait. What? Ok. Get this. Ever noticed how on #americant TV, of all the shows that make you laugh about politics and society, almost all the jokes are made at the cost of conservatives. Conservatives themselves, of course, are not funny. But making fun of them is hi-larry-us! Hence, #americant has shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, etc. Pretty funny shows–if you like that sort of thing. My problem with those shows is that once you’ve seen one of them you’ve seen them all. That’s the price of comedy that ONLY makes fun of someone. Since Jon Stewart and Colbert have quit–because I’m sure they were madly bored of making fun of stupid people–it’s time to rethink political comedy. But what’s still funny? What is there left to make fun of? Liberals have been laughing there asses off because conservatives make the better joke. Yet isn’t it time for conservatives to start making fun of liberals? Enter Alpha House. This has got to be the funniest conservative take on liberals–ever! Seriously. As I watched the show I couldn’t help but feel that conservatives wrote it, produced it, and even starred in it. The fact that Bezos owns it, and he also owns the Washington Post, well, I guess that can’t have anything to do with anything. Or? Then again, Alpha House might just be the first TV series with a particular political party being a native ad. But I digress. §Another subject itching me since I’m dealing with “streaming”. Would you believe that I’ve been an Amazon prime user for years but only recently started using it for movies and TV streaming? And now that I’ve (finally) discovered it, I’m kicking myself in the ass having used iTunes for all our digital media all this time? I can’t tell you how much iTunes sucks. In fact, the whole Apple echo system is starting to suck. And to think I wasted all those hours curating my iTunes library only to realise that it sucks! Ripping CDs or DVDs here and there, then buying superfluous software to expedite getting it all into iTunes… And for what? I bought a Raspberry Pi last fall in order to finally rip and watch Blurays. Plex media server along with Rasplex on the Raspberry Pi opened my eyes to a whole new world. No more meta-data-BS or mp4 codec krapp so that something would play in iTunes or on my friggin’ iPad. Heck, even my limited bandwidth at home works great with Prime. But get this. I gave up on German streaming years ago. Germans (distributors) are assholes about dubbing all their movies–unlike the Dutch or Scandinavians who all offer movies in OV (original version). But when you dub a film and then use that as a profit centre when selling movies on DVD or Bluray… that’s when you can kiss my ass. For you see, dear worst-reader, I have learned that not every DVD or Bluray is worth the money you pay for it. Indeed. And so. Before purchasing a disc that I will rip for my home media library, I always check the back of it for specs. Does the disc contain all applicable audio tracks? Does it have the worthwhile audio encoding, aka DTS, HD Audio, etc.? Some do, some don’t. This is where German distributors get in the way of progress. They will actually remove language and audio tracks from DVDs in order to save costs on dubbing and audio codec rights. A good source of DVD movies for the past year as been the German mega retailer Aldi. They sell DVDs of varying movies for around 8€–which is usally always a few buck cheaper than an iTunes download. But you have to look on the back of the DVD covers to make sure the OV is available. Can you believe that these jerk-offs will sell a US movie without the English version included. They’ll also sell one with the English version but they will not include high-end audio with it. Of course, Blurays are even worse because they are capable of having even more audio capability. I don’t know about you, but audio is really the only turn-on for me when it comes to home movies–as I have the audio equipment to play it. Aldi just started selling Bluray discs for about 10€. And, true to movie distributor greed-form, if you read the back of the disc covers, you’ll notice that only the German track includes the best audio codec. Which means, I won’t be buying Blurays from Aldi unless the proper codec is offered. Oh well. No fear. Back to buying my digital media from used sources or trading with friends. Because digital distributors are assholes. And they wonder why file sharing is so popular! §Btw, for those interested in whether or not I infringe on copyrights, I have a documented list of where all my digital media comes from. I also have the original physical discs stored away that I have ripped. §Ok. Wait. What was I worst-writing about? Oh yeah. Alpha House. Alpha House is an Amazon exclusive comedy but it is also much more. It is a propaganda show about #americant conservatism. Yeah, right. Rant on. -Tommi
worstwriter 