Barstool Cowboy opens with a monologue from our titular cowboy (Mick, played by Tim Woodward), explaining to us that he’s just been dumped. One of the reasons his ex gave for dumping him was that he spent too much time “hiding behind his beard,” so with some advice from fellow bar patrons, he shaves it off. Mick swears to avoid women and remain loyal only to his barstool for three solid months, but his vow lasts less than a day.

Less than twenty-four hours into his vow he meets Arcy (Rachel Lien), a nineteen-year-old art college student who, by chance, ends up outside Mick’s watering hole of choice. When Mick goes outside to see what Arcy (channeling Avril Lavigne) is up to, the two make a connection. At that point Mick leads her back into bar and begins buying drinks for his new underage friend.

For the next hour we get to watch this whirlwind romance develop. Arcy is attracted to Mick’s lifestyle. She wants to “follow him around all day long,” just to see what he does. Mick is attracted to Arcy because, well, she’s a hot college girl twenty-five years his junior who wants to hang out with him. Although the age different between the two is pointed out within the film (Arcy admits that she “doesn’t know who Mick Jagger is”), no one else within the confines of the film seem to think it’s weird not even the regulars at the local country and western bar, where Mick takes Arcy dancing.

The biggest problem with Barstool Cowboy is the lack of character development. On one hand you’ve got Mick, an unemployed “cowboy” whose lack of income doesn’t prevent him from renting a motel for a few days, paying $160 cash for three bottles of wine, or hanging out at the bar drinking for months at a time. On the other hand we have Arcy, who is either the world’s most adventurous college freshman or the dumbest. Within a few hours of meeting Mick, nineteen-year-old Arcy is skipping school, drinking beer, smoking dope, and sleeping in Mick’s bed (in that non-sexual way that Michael Jackson sleeps with children in the same bed). The relationship develops so fast in fact, that Arcy trusts Mick enough to sleep in his hotel room, and Mick trusts Arcy enough to leave her alone in his apartment. Boy have I been hanging out at the wrong bars! The biggest stumbling block is that we’re kind of left wondering why these two would want to spend more than five minutes in one another’s company, especially given the film’s ending.

Throughout its 90 minute running time, Barstool Cowboy actually gets quite a bit right. The story, such as it is, is well told. Many of the camera shots are imaginative and nicely framed. Throughout the story, we get glimpses of how Mick and Arcy can help one another grow (for example, Arcy expands Mick’s horizons by taking him to an Indian restaurant for dinner). For an indie film, Barstool Cowboy’s soundtrack is terrific. Many of the film’s songs are tightly woven into the film and are used to directly convey information to the audience.

Writer/director/producer Mark Thimijan’s Barstool Cowboy is a little rough around the edges but definitely worth catching, especially if you’ve ever sat at a barstool trying to forget about a woman.

I’ll drink to that.

On the web: http://www.barstoolcowboymovie.com

Last week I walked into a thrift store looking for some old computer parts and walked out with two new DVDs for my collection: Barbarian Queen, and Barbarian Queen II. I’ve never heard of these movies, none of my friends have ever heard of these movies … in fact, there’s only one reason I now own both of these barbarian chick flicks — $2.98 each, baby.

Each movie is wrapped in those classic fantasy-style paintings, with female barbarians swinging swords, posing in g-strings, and flexing muscles. The discs don’t contain many (read: any, other than trailers) extras, but then again, with almost three hours of barbarian dominatrixes roaming the Earth, who needs a commentary track?

Barbarian Queen begins with the destruction of Amathea’s village — on her wedding day, no less. The evil king’s soldiers capture prince Argan and take him back to their castle. We all know that nothing pisses of a woman more than fucking up her wedding plans, and before long Amathea has teamed up with three other surviving amazon hoochies and devises a plan to rescue Argan and kill the evil king. Armed with swords, horses, lip gloss, hair curlers, eye shadow, and some skimpy barbarian threads, princess Ho-Nan the Barbarian (as my wife dubbed her) and her entourage gallup into the forest to overthrow enemies at large.

By “her entourage”, of course I mean “all of their boobies”, which you get to see throughout the movie. Whether it’s being raped, being attacked, being tortured, or just being stripped, all four barbarian women manage to show their jigglies on screen at least once throughout various points of the movie.

If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you will giggle and sigh at the movie’s dialogue. “I’ll be no man’s slave and no man’s whore, and if I can’t kill them all, by the gods they’ll know I’ve tried.” If that line wasn’t dreamt up over a bag of Cheetos and one too many swigs of Dr. Peppers straight from the 2 liter bottle in the middle of an all-night D&D session, I don’t know what was. Wait, sure I do — the rest of the movie’s lines are just as bad.

Do you really want to know the plot? Chicks run around, losing their tops and although occasionally they overpower the manly guards, usually they just end up in whipping racks — topless again, of course. Everything you could ever want to see in a female barbarian movie shows up in Barbarian Queen — which makes the release of Barbarian Queen II even stranger.

Barbarian Queen II has about as much to do with the first film as Halloween III has to do with the rest of the Halloween series. Lana Clarkson reprises her role as Amathea in name only. Instead of an almost-married princess, in #2 Amathea is a noblewoman. After a run in with her brother in which he steals the crown, we soon find the barbarian queen back in the forest, once again rounding up fellow female barbarians in order to restore order to the throne and … yadda yadda yadda.

After some friendly topless mud wrestling, the barbarian queen and her female barbarian followers once again storm the castle. Just like the first movie, things don’t go well, and soon we’re right back to the barbarian queen being captured, tied up, and whipped — you’d almost think she liked it by now.

During their journey to right the wrongs of the world, the girls tops all end up off again somehow. Amathea finds a “sceptre of power” which made me giggle even more with all the other sexual jokes going on, but she is captured and returned to the rack and sentenced to death by torture. Whee! Eventually a knight comes into play and Amathea and the knight head back to the castle to fight evil one last time (this time with her top on … for a while, at least).

Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen II aren’t the worst movies I’ve ever seen. In fact, they aren’t even the worst movies I’ve seen this week. But they are pretty bad. If hoochie barbarian women galluping around the country side constantly losing their tops and fighting for what’s right while mumbling poorly written D&D influenced dialogue is your cup of tea (and you happen to run across these movies for $2.98 each), then pick them up I say. If Conan seemed cheezy to you, the Barbarian Queen duo are a big order of steamy nachos with double queso.

Update: Lana Clarkson, the star of Barbarian Queen I and II, was found dead at Phil Spector’s house in February of 2003. I’ve since sold these DVDs on eBay and made a “killer” (ahem) profit. Thanks, Phil!

Backyard Wrestling. You’ve seen the commercials — teenage males punching, kicking, smacking, smashing, flopping, throwing, jumping, flying, falling, burning, cutting, and occasionally, wrestling each other. These tapes are the fuel that parents, teachers, lawyers and churches use as evidence for the eternal “kids will imitate what they see on television” debate. Are these videos as extreme as the commercials make them out to be, or is it all just a bunch of hype? Read on to find out!

The Best of Backyard Wrestling begins with a stunt gone wrong. A kid, standing in the middle of the street, prepares to get “run over” by a car, driven by one of his “friends”. For the record, this video will certainly make you reevaluate your definition of the word “friends”, because MY “friends” don’t go around trying to hurt me, even when I probably deserve it. The car accellerates a little too fast, and the kid standing in the street goes from standing to airborn to windshield to ground in about two seconds. If this sounds shocking, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The next ten minutes of the video are a montage of what’s to come — mainly, lots of kids walking around, smacking each other with trash cans and bleeding a lot. There are shots of people jumping off roofs, breaking tables, and setting each other on fire. Video quality is what you would expect, and often worse. None of these guys are hiring film crews, this is all teenagers running around with camcorders trying their damnedest to capture the action.

During the opening footage you get to see a lot of different wrestling “rings” used in backyard wrestling. Rings, in backyard wrestling, include everything from actual wrestling/boxing rings in high school gyms, to backyards with (or without) ring ropes, trampolines, dirt, grass, or concrete. You name it, people probably get hurt on it on this video. Most of the rings have houses, trees, cars, streets, BBQ grills, lakes, streams, or other urban obstacles in the backyard. Crowds for the matches range anywhere from a dozen or so people to just the participants themselves. Occasionally, you’ll catch an observer walking or driving by, craning their head around and wondering what the hell all these kids are doing with light bulbs, tables, and fire …

The main film has some loose categories in which the film clips are divided up into. These categories include …

Light My Fire: Yes, just tons of footage of kids setting each other on fire. What kills me is the total lack of preperation these kids take. For example, in one shot, kids set a 4×8 sheet of plywood on fire, and then powerbomb a kid through the table. Of course, the flimsy wood breaks in half, and now the kid is basically engulfed in a flaming wood sandwich. He then starts freaking out, while all the other kids stand around with a “wow, we didn’t expect him to catch on fire!” look on their faces. After ripping off layers of clothes, the kid eventually rolls around enough to extinguish the flames. In clip after clip, kids set each other on fire and then act surprised to discover that (a) fire burns (b) burning hurts (c) things on fire continue to burn until you put them out (d) now is too late to think about fire extinguishers, water or blankets. Go figure.

Choose Your Weapon: You don’t think fists and boots are enough, do ya? This segment of the video has clips of kids getting pounded by golf clubs, tables, mallets, hammers, propane tanks, regular shovels, snow shovels, crutches, ladders, bicycles, guitars, cars, any type of scrap wood you can imagine, bales of hay, sheetrock, and of course, the obligatory trash cans (metal or plastic, your choice).

Groin Pains: Bob Saget and the rest of the crew at America’s Funniest Home Videos discovered this formula years ago — crotch shots are funny. Whether they’re being kicked, punched, smashed, stomped on or landed on, everyone likes to see gonad contact. There’s no shortage of these clips here. If ball-bashing is your thing, you’ll love this segment.

Have A Seat: This portion of the video contains clips of people getting hit with metal chairs. Unfortunately the kids in the video haven’t seemed to learned the exact techniques that the pro’s use, and consequently, lots of kids get hurt in this portion. Wheeeeeeee!

Three other sections include The Pain Game, a collection of clips of kids getting hurt, Cops In The Backyard, which is just one clip of some backyard wrestlers apparently getting arrested in a park, and Quick Chick Flick which has two or three random clips of some girls getting (slightly) involved in matches, and then one bikini match of a couple of girls in an inflatable pool. Forgettable.

The video also contains The Epic Battle, which is more memorable for it’s length than the actual wrestling. The match takes place in a parking lot. And on some stairs. And inside a school. And in the hallways. And in the gym. And in the locker room. And in a bathroom. And outside near a car. And on top of that same car. And on top of the car while it’s driving away. Finally, after a pile driver on top of the car’s hood, one wrestler finally pins the other.

The Best Of BackYard Wrestling on DVD not only contains the above program, but also Backyard Wrestling Babes and some Extra Features. The extra features include:

The Backyard Babes, Backyard Blunders, Sneak Preview, Forbidden Bonus Footage, Dungeon Deathmatch, Special Offer, and a special hidden area (whee). The Backyard Babes section contains short (like half a second) clips of the girls in the video (brief boobage nudity). Tylene Buck is pretty hot, but be prepared to use your pause button. The Sneak Preview contains trailers for their full length Backyard Wrestling Babes video, as well as a trailer for Backyard Wrestling II. The Special Offer is an address that you can send your name into a win a free copy of the video (you’re already watching it — why would you want it againf or free?). The hidden trash can icon is about ten seconds of a match where a guy loses his cool. That leaves us with Backyard Blunders, Forbidden Bonus Footage, and the Dungeon Deathmatch.

Backyard Blunders: This section contains three short clips which were also in the main video program. The majority of these clips contain things like tables not breaking, tables falling apart, people falling/missing their mark, a dog chasing the wrestlers in a dude’s backyard, things not breaking on cue, people falling off ladders, etc.

Forbidden Bonus Footage: This section contains three matches that were left off the video because they were too “graphic”. Match one mainly contains some kids using barbed wire. The second match contains more kids using barbed wire, but they’ve added light bulbs to the mix. Match three (which takes place in a driveway) adds chairs and trashcans to the mix. All of these get a little bloody.

Dungeon Deathmatch: This is the oddest clip of the whole video, in my opinion. Two wrestlers square off in one of their basements, and the violence is on! Busted lightbulbs and barbed wire are just the beginning. Eventually the two empty big bags of thumb tacks on the floor and suplex each other into the pile, with dozens of tacks stuck in their back and to their heads. One of their weirdest things about this match is, no one is watching. The only people present are the two wrestlers, and the cameraman.

The end of this video dedicates itself to all the “Blood, Sweat, and Chairs” poured into these video clips — and I’m guessing that plenty of all three went into the filming of this video. It’s a shame that the wrestlers basically get squat for their submissions and the company that puts this video out is getting rich off it, but hey that’s life I suppose. The president of Backyard Wrestling, Inc is probably driving a new Porsche off the sales of this video, while the wrestlers contained on this video are holding up a gold-painted hubcap with two straps hanging off it, pretending it’s “the championship belt”. I don’t know if these wrestlers will ever get the notice or reward they deserve. I don’t know if one of these guys will go on to become the next Mick Foley or the next hardcore champion, but I do know they’re working their asses off in backyards beating the hell out of each other, and this video opens a small window into that world.

The Aristocrats is an hour and a half long documentary about a single, filthy joke, one you probably haven’t heard and is most commonly told between commedians and other comedic insiders. Throughout the course of the film over a hundred of Hollywood’s most famous comedians tell the joke and talk about the history of the joke, where they first heard it and who they first heard tell it.

The joke on which the film is based on isn’t really that funny, but of course that’s not really the point of the film as even the world’s funniest joke would get old after hearing it a hundred times in a row. The joke is somewhat unique in design in that it allows for the performer to put his or her own personal spin on the joke — it’s compared to a jazz riff within the film. The joke starts and ends the same way each time, but the middle portion is always unique, and that’s part of what makes the film fun to watch. You’ll see everyone from Drew Carey to Andy Dick, Whoopi Goldberg, Jackie Martling, Howie Mandell and George Carlin and dozens more tell their versions of the joke.

More interesting than the joke itself is the way each performer crafts it into their own. The goal of the joke is to make the middle portion of it as vile and repulsive as possible — no bodily fluid or sexual act between family members (including the family pet) is off limit. Each time you think the joke cannot get any worse, it will, and those of you who only know Bob Saget from his work on America’s Funniest Home Videos and Full House will get a brief glimpse into his demented sense of humor.

The extras on The Aristocrats DVD are longer than the film itself, including even more footage of comics telling and retelling the joke, along with some of their other favorite jokes, cut footage, and more. Also included is a commentary track by directors Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller), which was quite informative and as rapid fire as the film itself. The commentary track justifies the appearance of each person in the film (some of which weren’t obvious to me) and clears up a a few parts that while maybe obvious to comedic insiders seemed a bit confusing to us movie-watching laymen.

Fans of comedy will enjoy this look into what makes commedians laugh. Definitely worth a watch for all fans of the art and craft of comedy. Those offended by descriptions of deviant sexual acts should steer far, far away.

April Fool’s Day is a classic horror film from the Golden Age of Slashers. Released in 1986, April Fool’s Day follows the routine formula that was popularized by Friday the 13th and duplicated hundreds of times throughout the decade: teens congregate, teens party, teens start getting killed, remaining teens try to escape and/or solve the murder before they’re next. And for most of them, they’re next.

In April Fool’s Day we meet Muffy, a popular high school senior who’s throwing a spring break party at her parents’ home located on an island. Her party loving friends arrive on the island by ferry on Friday, and are stuck there until the ferry returns for them Monday morning. When one of the teens goes missing and his body is spotted floating in the water, the rest of the partiers think a terrible accident must’ve occurred; shortly thereafter when they discover his severed head in a sack, they correctly deduce that his death was not an accident. Now it’s up to the teens to do their best to survive their weekend on the island. Some teens are luckier than others. Who survives is a surprise, and Muffy will ultimately deliver the biggest surprise of all.

April Fool’s Day builds to a plot twist that few people see coming and concludes with a final “gotcha” not unlike the final scene from the original Friday the 13th. This film will keep you on your toes. It’s a good slasher flick that I always liked, and I enjoyed going back and watching it again this week. It had been so long that I had forgotten many of the movie’s details, and I enjoyed it all over again. As a slasher film it follows the rules of the genre, and still manages to add something relatively new to it. (It’s not a completely new idea; the film borrows plot ideas from films like Murder by Death and And Then There Were None.) Still, it’s well done and has slightly more depth than many similar films.

What do you get the guy who has everything? This is a problem my father and I run into buying gifts for each other every year. While neither of us are rolling in cash, we both have a tendency to buy the things we want, leaving few gift ideas for each other when holidays roll around. The end result is, we often end up buying each other really unique gifts. For my birthday this year, dad bought me a YourBell. One thing I can definitely say is … I definitely didn’t have one already!

The YourBell, from BCS Ideas, is a replacement doorbell that plays MP3s (or WAV files) whenever someone rings your doorbell. YourBell retails for less than $100, comes in a variety of woods and stains, and easily connects to your pre-existing wiring.

Connecting the YourBell couldn’t be simpler. If you already have at least three wires going to your current door chime, you’ll be in business. Wiring diagrams and examples for almost any type of installation are included on the packaged CD. And, if you run into any kind of weird wiring issues (like I did), simply e-mail the company’s support e-mail address (again, locaed on the CD as well as the BCS website). Within 24 hours (over a holiday weekend) I received a response, more documentation, and the engineer’s home phone number if I needed more support. Talk about service!

Sound files are loaded onto the YourBell using an included program and USB cable. The software defaults into a wizard mode that walks you through the four or so steps to loading sounds on to your YourBell. If you load more than one sound, the YourBell will cycle through them one at a time. The documentation says that the YourBell holds “about four minutes worth of music.” The CD also contains freeware audio editing tools and a CD ripper, but I can’t imagine anyone buying an MP3-playing doorbell who doesn’t already own such programs. The installtion of the tools is optional so I’m not complaining.

The wiring from your wall connects to a small plug which itself plugs into the YourBell. The YourBell hangs on the wall like a picture frame, so removing it is a simple matter of disconnecting the rear plug and removing it from the wall. If you’re like me you’ll probably be reflashing songs on the thing on a weekly basis, so its nice to be able to easily remove the unit from the wall.

For our test run, my son chose Ghostbusters as our doorbell. Minutes later, cooler heads prevailed — now the unit blares the chorus from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” whenever someone rings our bell. Runners up included Men At Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?”, Guns and Roses’ “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and that annoying disco song, “Knock on Wood.”

So for that technology-lovin’ guy in your life who has everything (or for yourself!), I highly recommend the YourBell. Great concept, great product, great technical support. And I guarantee the person you’re about to buy one for doesn’t have one already.

Link: http://bcsideas.com/yourbell.htm

In 1998 I got both my first cell phone (a Nokia 5160) and my first PalmPilot (a Palm III). I fell in love with the mobile access a phone provided combined with the storage and utilities offered by a PDA. For the first time I felt as though I had the beginnings of a complete mobile office with me in my pockets at all times. Yes, pockets. In 1998 I also started wearing cargo pants. With a cell phone, PDA, digital camera, wallet and keys with me at all times, I needed all the pockets I could get.

Over the past couple of years I’ve watched these products slowly begin to overlap. When this happens, one of the technologies almost always suffers. “It’s a camera and a phone … but the camera sucks.” “My camcorder takes still pictures as well … but they suck.” “My phone has a calendar system included … but it sucks.” That’s a lot of sucking. In my mind I knew what I wanted — a cell phone combined with a PalmPilot, with complete functionality in both products.

Enter the Treo 650

I rarely buy products the minute they come out any more; I love new technology, but I hate paying to be a beta tester. After working the kinks out of their Treo 600, PalmOne released the Treo 650, a combination PalmPilot/Phone/Camera.

Key Features:

Large Color Screen
Combination Full Keyboard and Stylus
Full Cell Phone Functionality
Full PalmPilot Compatibility
Internet Access
640×480 Camera Phone
SD Ram Slot

First Impressions

The Treo’s list of features is mind boggling. This phone is not recommended for people who have trouble setting the time on their VCR — or really even for people who still own a VCR. There’s a learning curve to figuring out the ins and outs of the Treo. The battery life seems to last a week for moderate usage. The screen is very big and very bright, bigger and brighter than any phone but smaller than the one on my Palm Zire. The first thing I’ll need is a case — the phone slides comfortably into my front pocket, but I cannot hear it ringing in there. As a matter of fact, I can’t hear much of anything — my first goal is to find how to crank up every volume level on the phone. The mute switch on the top of the phone is new and handy. The phone is thinner than it looks in pictures.

Breakdown

The Unit as a Whole

After charging the unit I noticed a green blinking light. That light means, “hey — I’m working!” It’ll be on as long as your phone is on. Get used to it. Despite the poptart’ish shape of the unit, the Treo fits in your hand nicely both while talking on the phone or using its PDA features. The 650 includes a data cable for connecting to your PC’s USB port. Unlike my older Zire, the 650’s data cable includes a physical “Sync Button”.

Phone

My first impression of the Treo’s phone was, “it’s not loud enough.” Seriously, I simply could not hear people even after cranking the volume up to the maximum setting. (See 3rd Parties to the Rescue below.) Dialing is performed by either pressing “virtual” buttons on the phone’s touchscreen, or real buttons on the phone’s small but functional keyboard. I found the touchscreen worked best while driving, and works even better if you use the “corner” of your thumb. The 650 comes with a selection of “MIDI’ish” ring tones. Out of the box the 650 will not accept MP3’s as ringtones. (See 3rd Parties to the Rescue below.) If you previously owned a PalmPilot, all your old contacts will be imported into your dialing list the first time you sync your 650 to your computer. If you’ve been a good boy/girl and had everyone in different categories, this’ll work well. If you are like me and never sorted your contact list, you may suddenly see hundreds of people in your contact list. Fortunately, these can be easily sorted into categories.

PalmPilot

The Treo 650 is a powerful PalmPilot. Prior to this unit I had a Palm Zire 72, and before that I owned a Palm III. Every program I used on those other two units works on this one as well. My 650 shipped with version 4.1.4 of Palm’s familiar Desktop software. For new PDA owners, Palm Desktop allows read and write Palm data on their laptop. Your calendar, contact list, tasks and other vital information is sync’ed to and from your phone via this program, allowing you to do data entry on your computer (where it’s much faster and easier to do). I had several problems with my Zire (for example: I could never get photos taken on my phone and saved to an external memory card to sync up to my PC) that were all solved in the 650. If I noticed anything at all it was that most Palm programs are designed with a stylus and handwriting in mind. With the 650’s keyboard there is no more handwriting shortcuts, which means you’ll find yourself both holding the stylus and trying to type at the same time in many programs.

I had a few issues with running programs off an added memory card. From my experience, adding an SD Ram card is most useful for storing things like documents and audio/video files. Many programs simply weren’t written to run from a memory card and get confused when you ask them do so.

Camera

The Treo 650 comes with a 640×480 camera. That being said, it’s the best 640×480 camera I’ve seen to date. Although my Palm Zire’s camera had double the resolution (1280×1024), the pictures looked horrible at that resolution. Even when they were shrunk down to 640×480, the Treo’s camera still looks better. The 650 is capable of capturing both photos and videos. You can set the phone to default to a memory card which should work for just about any outing — a 512 meg card can store over 7,000 photos.

All pictures appear in Palm Desktop as well as a directory on your hard drive, making pulling pictures from the unit extremely simple and quick.

Bluetooth

When I bought my 650 I didn’t have any bluetooth devices so I disabled it. For Christmas, my wife bought me a wireless bluetooth headset. I enabled bluetooth on the phone and it saw the headset. That’s about all I can tell you — it works and was simple to set up.

Internet Access

The 650 comes with both an e-mail client and a web browser. When I purchased the phone I signed up for data access as well (not included in your regular phone service). For $40 (!) I got unlimited data access per month. The e-mail program works well, although I ended up checking most of my messages via webmail instead. The included web browser (Blazer) works as well, and has a few convenient features like easy to access favorites and the ability to view sites with a few different “modes” to make web surfing on a 320×320 screen slightly more bearable. If you have a need to be connected to the net while away from home, the Treo 650 will do it.

Out of the box, the 650 has no way to connect to WiFi networks (See 3rd Parties to the Rescue below), so at the time subscribing to Cingular’s data service for an additional $40 a month was the only way to get your Treo online.

3rd Parties to the Rescue

Although I fell in love with my 650 the moment I took it home, it still had a few flaws. I’ve been able to overcome each of these flaws through several third party programs. Some of these I’d almost consider mandatory for fellow 650 owners.

Volume

My biggest problem with the phone out of the box was that I couldn’t hear anything. Within minutes of owning the phone I was Googling for solutions and ran across VolumeCare ($15), which allows you to boost your 650’s volume level. You can even select different levels for your ring tone, speaker, mic, headset, and sound effects. Awesome, and much needed.

Ringtones

My second search focused on how to get this $500 multimedia phone to use MP3’s as ringtones. Phone Tecnician ($6) allows you to do just that, along with setting an MP3 for your SMS notification alert as well. Phone technician has a few other hacks which allow you to control that dang blinking LED and to blank your screen while you’re talking, saving battery life. There are other apps out there that do the same thing, but this one was $6 and works well. Another great program is Ringo ($30), which allows you to set specific ring tones (including MP3’s) for specific incoming callers, as well as displaying your friend’s pictures when they call and reading the numbers aloud (Voice Caller ID).

Palm File Browser

It makes no sense to me why I can’t browse every USB-connecting devices like a USB drive. With PC2PDA installed, you can. It’s a bit clunky to use; you’ll need to run an app on both your phone and your PC to get it to work, and the file copies aren’t as slick as most FTP clients, but moving files to/from your Treo works just fine.

WiFi

Last year a WiFi card was released for several PalmPilots, although it was announced it would not work on the 650. Then hackers made them work. You can get Palm WiFi cards for a little over $100, but if you’re really wanting something slick check out Enfora’s WiFi adapter ($129) for the 650. It slides on the back of your phone and enables WiFi access. A must for nerds like myself.

Voice Dialing

While not a must, it’s surprising that this feature wasn’t included as well. What’s not surprising is that Palm is now selling Voice Dialing by VoiceSignal for $19.95. As advertised, the software allows you to dial either names from your contact list or numbers using only your voice. Handy while driving.

Six Month Follow-up

I’ve owned my Treo 650 for a little over six months now. Acutally, that’s not true — I’m on my second 650. Two months ago, my phone came unhooked from my belt loop and fell from waist high down onto a tile floor, cracking the screen. I ordered a new screen from eBay for $100 in an attempt to replace it. I failed, and rendered my old Treo inoperable. It ended up being an expensive venture — the $400 I paid originally was with a two year service agreement. Without that, I paid and additional $650 for a replacement phone (not to mention the $100 for the additional screen). Ouch, ouch, and more ouch. Lesson learned. I am very, VERY careful with my Treo these days.

Screen-breakage aside, I’ve been pretty happy with the unit overall. VoiceDial and VolumeCare are mandatory purchases as far as I’m concerned. Voice dialing should have been built into this phone but wasn’t, and the phone simply isn’t loud enough for me to hear conversations if I’m in a car or in a restaurant (maybe that’s the idea).

Having many devices rolled into one is both a blessing and a curse. It’s great to have a camera, phone and PDA with me at all times; however, if my battery dies or the unit breaks (like when my screen broke) you lose access to all three devices at once. Really this is what’s kept me from using the unit as an MP3 players as often as I had originally hoped for.

My infatuation with the wireless access turned out to be short lived. The $40 “unlimited” data plan only included the receiving of data — sending data (including e-mails and posting on forums) turned out to be extra. When I saw additional charges lumped in on top of the “unlimited” plan, I cancelled it all. I don’t have any mission critical e-mails I need to receive, and I’ve found that when I’m near a wireless signal and need to check my e-mail my laptop is almost as convenient as the phone. Surfing the web via the Treo is pretty slow and rough on sites not designed for it. Some sites such as Google do have optimized pages for mobile devices, but whatever you’re searching for most likely won’t.

I love having the additional ram installed, but overall I’ve been disappointed on how few programs will run from it. Most of the programs I’ve tried need to be installed on the phone itself. The extra storage works well for photo, video, and MP3 storage, but I feel like I’m already beginning to run out of space on the phone itself when it comes to applications. With the memory card installed, I can take every Excel spreadsheet containing every movie, album and videogame I own with me — convenient for not buying dupes while out shopping.

Overall I am very pleased with my (now +$1,000) investment. I can’t imagine leaving the home without my Treo by my side.

The Super Card SD is a flashcart for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS. (I dont currently own a Nintendo DS, so for this review the Super Card SD was only tested on a Gameboy Advance.)

The difference between the Super Card line of flashcarts and most other carts is instead of having on board memory, the Super Card has a slot where either SD RAM or CF RAM (depending on the model purchased) can be inserted into the cart. Most GBA flashcarts start at 128 megabits of storage (32 megabytes) and cannot be expanded. For approximately the same price you can now get a Super Card and a 512 meg SD RAM cart (16x the amount of storage). However, like the old saying goes, size isnt everything.

The Super Card lets you do some pretty neat things with your Gameboy Advance. The Super Card home page (http://www.supercard.cn) has utilities that will let you read e-books, look at JPG pictures, and even watch videos (after converting them to GBA Media Format) on your GBA. The Super Card also has built in support for several types of emulation ROMs, including NES, GameGear/SMS, PC-Engine, and original Gameboy (but not GBC) games. The real (illegal) reason most people buy these cards is to allow them to play downloaded Gameboy Advance ROMs for free on their GBA.

Transfering GBA games to your Super Card is relatively simple. First, youll need some Gameboy Advance ROMs (Google). Next, youll need a way to read/write to your SD card. Third, youll need to install the Super Card Software, which you can download from the Super Card site. The rest is a piece of cake. The software will convert/patch your ROMs to work with the Super Card. Copying each game over only takes a matter of seconds. Turning on your GBA reveals a simple text menu, at which the games can be selected. After being patched and converted, the card also allows for save states, saving to/from the card, and dropping back to the menu without cycling the units power. Games can also be compressed on the SD card (trading free space for uncompressing load times), but with so many 4 meg games on a 256 meg, 512 meg or 1 gig card, I cant imagine needed to save space.

So whats not to like? Compatibility issues, for one. Several of the GBA ROMs I tried flat out wouldnt work. Some wouldnt run at all; others ran but with graphical glitches, or locked up during gameplay. The good news is the card is easily flashed with firmware upgrades which are continually improving compatibility, but that doesnt help you if the game you really want to play isnt currently supported.

The original Super Card SD (the one I ordered) is slightly longer than a real GBA cart, causing the cart to stick out the front of the cartridge slot a bit. The new Super Card Mini is the same size as a real GBA cart.

As the owner of an EZF Advance as well, Im torn between the two products. While the EZF offers more compatibility, the gigantic amount of storage possible on the Super Card is phenomenal. The native support for NES and SMS ROMs is nice as well. Its a good product; to be great, Super Card needs to improve its compatibility list.

For the past three months I’ve been dieting the old fashioned way — eating right, and exercising. But what if there were an easier way to shed a few unwanted pounds? What if, through the power of a miracle, you were able to magically shed up to ten pounds in two days? That’s what the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet promises purchasers. Normally one would think miracles would be limited to healing lepers, but no — for around $20, you can get your own liquid miracle. Please note that we were unable to test the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet on lepers. But how does the juice work when it comes to weight loss? Read on and find out!

A jug of the magical Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet elixer contains 32 ounces of juice which is to be diluted with another 32 ounces of water for a total of 64 ounces of drink. Those 64 ounces are to be consumed over 48 hours in four eight-ounce servings each day. Each glass of juice is 100 calories each — that’s 400 calories per day. You are not allowed to eat or drink anything else during the 48 hour period except water (of which they recommend an additional 32 ounces of each day).

Looking over the bottle’s ingredients doesn’t reveal any miracles. The juice contains a lot of fruit juice — apple juice, orange juice, grapefruit juice, pineapple juice, prune juice, and so on. I suspect there are also some appetite suppressants in the mix as well to keep you from clawing at your refrigerator all weekend long.

So, the “miracle” here is that by drinking only 400 calories of fruit juice per day for two days, you’ll lose weight. This is starting to sound a lot less like a miracle and a lot more like simple science.

So does it work? I suppose that depends on the answer you’re looking for. Is it possible to lose 5-10 pounds using the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet? You bet. Is it real weight loss? No, not really. It’s bodily fluids. This diet will make you lose 5-10 pounds through your poo poo and pee pee. I suppose if your weight problems are a result of the fact that you retain too much of those things, then this may be the long term diet approach for you. For the rest of us, the weight will be back a couple of days (and glasses of water) later.

My Personal Experience

I decided to try the Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet over a weekend. I was nervous about the experience. I was afraid I would be hungry — no, STARVING — and I had read other reviews of the diet that described explosive bowel movements, stomach cramping, vomiting, and other non-desirable effects.

I had the first glass of miracle juice around breakfast time. The diluted juice was much less tangy than I had expected, due to the watering down effect I suppose. I sipped the juice slowly, hanging on to each sip knowing that with the end of this drink came the end of my breakfast.

For the first day, the worst part was not the hunger, but the fear of hunger! I kept thinking that surely the previous day’s food would run out and the hunger pains would begin. Surprisingly, I felt fairly content at the end of the first day. If day two is anything like day one, this should be a piece of cake. Mmmmm. Cake.

Sunday morning, I began feeling a bit light headed. I thought my vision might be blurring, but it was hard to tell. After my my morning drink I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t feel very good. By noon I was starting to get cranky and irritable. This diet is a bad idea for those with small children. My headache did not go away after my lunch drink, and my wife began to worry about my blood sugar levels. We decided it might be a good idea to eat something with some protein in it, and so I scrambled an egg and ate that on a piece of toast. That did the trick for several hours — the headache and blurry vision went away, but returned later in the evening. With the evening drink I had another egg along with a spoonful of peanut butter. Each additional snack I had was 100 additional calories, bringing my weekend total to 1,000 instead of 800.

In 48 hours I lost a total of 6 pounds. By noon the following day I had put one of the two pounds back on, and by the following morning I had gained an additional two back.

Summary

The Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle Diet does what it says it will do — cause you to lose 6-10 pounds over a 48 hour period. The catch is, they don’t say how long the weight will stay gone (not long) and what you will have to go through (a liquid fast). I suppose if you make a bet with someone over whether or not you could lose five pounds over a weekend then this product might be useful to you, but those of us who are overweight should know by now that there is no such thing as a miracle when it comes to weight loss.

Notes

The diet suggests that you do not exercise or do anything too strenuous while drinking the juice. I agree with this. While on day one you may feel fine, on day two you could get into trouble real quick by over exerting yourself. I’ve also read several websites that suggest creating your own fruit juice instead of buying the official Hollywood juice. I can’t suggest that. I suspect that the official juice contains vitamins as well as some sort of appetite suppressant, things you wouldn’t get if you made your own. I was tempted too, but I went with the official stuff. If you make your own and try this, I’d love to know how it works out for you.

In the mid-1970s, Johnny Carson was the undisputed king of late night television. Carson’s Tonight Show was airing five nights a week, with reruns and highlights running Saturday nights. Desiring a break, Carson requested that his reruns not be run on the weekends but rather during the week, allowing him a few weeknights off. Desperate to fill the popular Saturday night time slot, NBC executives turned to Lorne Michaels, asking him to produce a 90-minute live comedy show. The rest, as they say, is history. Live From New York is the complete story of Saturday Night Live, from inception to the present day, as told by the people who lived it.

Like many others, I don’t remember life before Saturday Night Live. I was just two years old when the show debuted in October of 1975, and I’ve spent many, many Saturday nights since then watching and laughing along with the show.

Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live is more than a simple history lesson; it’s the complete story of Saturday Night Live as told by those involved in the show itself. Writers, producers, performers and even several of the show’s hosts share their tales with the authors, who then wove them together to present a pretty complete and encompassing view of both the shows origin and evolution. If you have ever wondered just what it takes to put ninety minutes of live comedy on every week for thirty years, this is the book for you.

Shales and Miller leave the story telling to the people who were there. The contributors’ stories have been broken up into small chunks, so you’ll hear each story from several different peoples points of view one paragraph at a time. For example, when you read the tale of Nora Dunn walking off the set in a protest against guest host Andrew Dice Clay, you’ll hear the story from Dunn, Clay, Lorne Michaels, and several other cast members as well.

Live From New York contains a lot of grit. Not only did it take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to launch the program, it also took a lot of booze, pot, and cocaine. As you make your way through the cast’s sordid tales, you’ll read about John Belushi busting into a room and snorting all of Al Franken’s cocaine, Lorraine Newman’s heroin addiction, and Chris Farley’s infamous tales of self-destruction. The book also covers the deaths of several cast members, including Belushi, Farley, character-comedian Phil Hartman and the brilliant Gilda Radner.

With such a wide range of personalities, clashes were inevitable. You’ll read about who was mean to Victoria Jackson, what made Eddie Murphy so mad that he refuses to talk about the show or participate in SNL reunions even to this day, why Norm McDonald was fired, why Jane Curtain didn’t hang out with the crew, why Janeane Garafalo thought the show was sexist, who got along with Lorne, who didn’t, and who thought Chevy Chase was a jerk (which turns out to be everybody ever involved with the show).

Compared to the cast from the show’s first two decades, the newer comics seem squeaky clean. Long gone are the days of snorting coke and backstage fistfights. Recent performers such as Will Farrell, Tina Fey and Chris Kattan pretty much just share stories of how great everybody is and what a great place it is to work. Let’s wait and see what they’re saying about the show a decade from now.

Despite interweaving hundreds of stories, the authors never lose site of the true subject of the book, the show itself. Despite rotating producers, writers and cast members, the show has trudged on for thirty years. The show has seen some highs and a lot of lows, the reasons for which (as well as a lot of finger pointing) are included as well. Because the book’s subject is the show, many specific events (like Phil Hartman’s death, for example) don’t get much individual attention. A few people mention it, its discussed, and the book moves on. If the book has a downside, its that there isn’t much analysis of the stories or events presented. People often present differing opinions and versions of stories throughout the book. Its up to the reader to sift through the material and come to his or her own conclusions.

Live From New York is the perfect book for those who love listening to DVD commentary tracks or who have dreamed of being a fly on the wall, peeking in to the secret world behind Saturday Night Live. After reading this book, you’ll never look at the show the same way again.