My Take Radio

Accord­ing to Wikipedia G4 is the following: 

G4, also known as G4 TV, is an Amer­i­can cable and satellite-television chan­nel orig­i­nally geared pri­mar­ily toward view­ers aged 12–34, based on the world of video games. More recently, the chan­nel has diverted its focus to general-interest pro­gram­ming that mainly tar­gets view­ers aged 18–34, although one video game show is still offered on the channel. 

Based on the def­i­n­i­tion above, you would think that the main­stream pro­gram­ming they offer would at least have a sem­blance of video game rel­e­vance. Sadly, in order to cap­ture the 12–34 view­ing clus­ter they have resorted to hav­ing the “hot chick” and the “good look­ing guy” give snarky com­men­tary and per­form skits to relate to the gam­ing audi­ence. I have no issue with this strat­egy - EXCEPT that they have no real video game knowl­edge and are just really good at read­ing a teleprompter, or shall I say try­ing to read it (Olivia Munn, I am look­ing at you). I would rather have peo­ple that can be both eye candy and are intel­li­gent. Get us a knowl­edge­able staff that actu­ally adds dimen­sion to the show. 

(con­tinue reading…)

It seems that fans of the new “Real” 3D effect really will need to slap down the extra coin for a 3DTV. I was on one of my Best Buy excur­sions yes­ter­day and who do I bump into but Mr. My Take Radio him­self, Rich. Being the tech junkies that we are, we look at all the new home the­ater equip­ment and notice that the Mag­no­lia sec­tion had a 3D setup. We wanted to com­pare this one to our expe­ri­ence at the Sony store, espe­cially since the setup here was Pana­sonic (2009’s top 5 rated tele­vi­sions were from Pana­sonic or Sam­sung, no Sony mod­els). The pic­ture itself was of course beau­ti­ful but the 3D was severely lack­ing com­pared to what we had expe­ri­enced with the Sony model. First and fore­most, the Pana­sonic glasses felt cheap. The 3D lenses sit off of your face and they look and feel like a clip on. Worse than that, a lot of the 3D effects seemed to not come off the screen while oth­ers did. To Panasonic’s credit, the per­spec­tive effect was awe­some even when the 3D was not. If you move to a dif­fer­ent view­ing angle, the 3D effect adjusts to your posi­tion. The mis­take we made was that we thought the TV was a 3D TV; it was not. It was a Pana­sonic Plasma hooked to a Pana­sonic 3D Blu-Ray player. What we con­cluded this will mean is that peo­ple who for exam­ple have a PS3 and get the 3D firmware upgrade will have what I am call­ing a gimped 3D expe­ri­ence if they choose to not buy a 3D TV. I have said on the show that the TV in the Sony store was play­ing Lit­tleBig­Planet, a game not designed for 3D and the effect was quite pro­nounced. So as of right now, if you have a 3D player, but a 2D TV, you will not get as vivid an expe­ri­ence as some­one who has a 3DTV and a stan­dard player. Of course the opti­mal sit­u­a­tion would be to have both if you want to enjoy 3D, but I hope that future upgrades will make it so that any­one can truly enjoy 3D (if they want to) with any combination.

Josh Fuld– Author Of Bran­don Sparks & The Hid­den Sun , as well as a reg­u­lar caller and con­trib­u­tor to the show, wrote this very thought-out post regard­ing Blockbuster’s poten­tial demise and how they can evolve and improve with a new strat­egy. Have a look and share your thoughts. I per­son­ally think his sug­ges­tions are very sound and have the poten­tial to save this sto­ried franchise.

Block­buster, The Future of Entertainment?

There are thou­sands of Block­buster stores around the world that have become dinosaurs. They focus on movie and game rentals and sell movies at full retail. I believe that by har­ness­ing the power of the Block­buster brand and the fact that they have excel­lent cov­er­age nation­ally, Block­buster stores and Blockbuster.com could eas­ily become your favorite place to con­sume entertainment.

1. Blockbuster.com is a very pop­u­lar site. Yes it is not nearly as pop­u­lar as Net­flix, but that is not impor­tant. Blockbuster.com has a huge cus­tomer base and they need to revamp the sys­tem so that their cus­tomer base can pur­chase items at Block­buster retail stores using their online account. How do they do this? Read on…
2. Video kiosks (ala Jet Blue check in) should be set up in every store. Kiosks should be easy to use, have large screens and allow the cus­tomer to watch thou­sands of movie trail­ers, behind the scenes clips, as well as rent and pur­chase any item in the store. Users can log in to their Blockbuster.com accounts and pay using the credit card (or pay­pal) they have stored online, or they can pay at the reg­is­ter. The goal here is to com­bine the func­tion­al­ity and ease of shop­ping on the Inter­net with the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of hav­ing what you want right now.
3. Kiosk will print out a receipt with a num­ber. An employee will pick order and num­ber will be called out. Employee will ver­ify order vs receipt from kiosk. This is the same sys­tem chain restau­rants use, like Green Cac­tus or Baja Fresh.
4. Employee’s will pick all of the mer­chan­dise for the cus­tomer? How will this work? Block­buster will remove all (or most) of the phys­i­cal inven­tory from the store and put it all behind the counter. Video games and movies take up very lit­tle room, and extra stock could be kept in a back room along with larger items, such as video game con­soles and Tivos. Block­buster could adjust their inven­tory so instead of hav­ing 50 copies of Breakin’ 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo, they could have two copies in stock and reorder when needed.
5. What is Block­buster going to do with all of the freed up space? I’m glad you asked. They are going to enter­tain you. All of the walls will be cov­ered with large flat panel TVs that will broad­cast Block­buster News, a one-hour, daily review of every­thing going on in the world of movies, tv and video games. They will have video game con­soles with the newest releases so that you can play them. You get the picture.
6. Why would any­one use Net­flix when there will be Block­buster by Mail? If you already par­tic­i­pate in Blockbuster’s all you can eat rental pro­gram, you will be given an enve­lope with your order at check­out to mail in your rentals. If you are not part of this pro­gram, for a small fee, you can buy an enve­lope. This will save you an annoy­ing trip back to the store and Block­buster gets a lit­tle extra change for mak­ing your life easier.
7. What’s the best way to get more traf­fic into Block­buster store? Cheap new releases. In order to get more traf­fic, Block­buster should offer new release DVDs and Blu-rays at sig­nif­i­cant dis­count. This would be sim­i­lar to Best Buy’s Tues­day flyer pro­gram, but the movie’s should be cheaper. This will estab­lish Block­buster as the place to get new movies. Why let Best Buy dom­i­nate? Once Block­buster is get­ting more traf­fic, and peo­ple expe­ri­ence the new Block­buster, they are more likely to sign up for the rental program.
8. Have you ever been inside a Game Stop? It’s like going to a flea mar­ket. The employ­ees try to push prod­uct on you that you don’t want and try to scare you into their pre-order pro­gram. Why would a per­son ever shop at a Game Stop when they could expe­ri­ence the new Blockbuster?
9. Speak­ing of Game Stop, one way that Block­buster could really increase their traf­fic is by set­ting up a used game pro­gram. Game Stop pays next to noth­ing for games. Why not offer a lit­tle more as well as spe­cial dis­count and reward pro­grams for peo­ple who buy and sell used games. It seems like a no brainer.

Block­buster needs to trans­form itself from a place that rents movies to an enter­tain­ment des­ti­na­tion where peo­ple come for their enter­tain­ment news and to fully immerse them­selves in entertainment.

My Take Radio would like to con­grat­u­late the New York Yan­kees on their 27th World Series Cham­pi­onship.  As a fan of NY sports it’s great to see us get one more championship.

(Please note that I sup­port almost all NY teams with the excep­tion of the Knicks.)

Image Credit-Yahoo Sports

A Note From Rich-My other half decided to share her thoughts on comic con.

Enjoy her take

10. The kiosk hot dogs smell like stinky feet cheese.…please don’t eat them for fear of the H1N1 Virus…

9. We arrived late and missed Ric Flair.…for that we got The Bushwack­ers instead…BOO! Les­son learned: Go early next time.

8. Candice Michelle from WWE (oops not any more) is as annoy­ing IRL as she appears on tv…and her clothes do not match…

7. I found out that porn stars like Naughty By Nature because they put on a good show and per­form like they are on tour. Also, I made a men­tal note that their “line of busi­ness” appar­ently makes you sound like a 2 year old with high lev­els helium in their body, and makes me want to rip my ears off.

6. Thomas Jane’s pen­man­ship is that of a preschooler writ­ing with his/her feet using a paintbrush…and he is indeed a lunatic.

5. Dear Douchebag at the Twi­light table: EPIC FAIL for try­ing to tell me Chris­t­ian Ser­ratos was Kris­ten Stew­art as if I didn’t watch the movie 3 times. That my friend makes you an ass­hole — a blind one at that…so STFU before I power­bomb you through a table.

4.  Linda Hamil­ton likes touch­ing fans… to quote her”“It’s all about the con­nec­tion, man. I can’t keep my hands off these peo­ple,” Hamil­ton said. “
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/18/2009–10-18_geeks_unite_on_pier_94_in_manhattan_for_big_apple_comic_con.html#ixzz0UmpUfx8v

3. Women think that a super­hero cos­tume auto­mat­i­cally makes them look sexy, no mat­ter what. I think I actu­ally saw the Green Arrow’s cos­tume seams scream­ing in agony for help. Oh, and if it is a male char­ac­ter, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE IT A WOMAN’S COSTUME!!! It doesn’t make sense!!!

2. . It is a pre­req­ui­site to have at least one Impe­r­ial Storm Trooper present at all con­ven­tions. Appar­ently Emperor Pal­pa­tine has stock in Wizard.

1. I want the Bat­mo­bile for Christmas…and the site accepts Pay­pal. Do the math.

I should have made this post at the same time Slick made his but I didn’t get a chance to. I now present you with the 10 things I learned at the Big Apple Con.

10.Bathrooms at comic con­ven­tions are the worst known to man.I’d com­pare them to a bath­room at Penn Stattion

9.Dear fat kids please wear cos­tumes fit­ting your body type. Last time I check Venom could see his toes with­out suck­ing in his gut

8. Girls some­times make bet­ter male char­ac­ters then guys.

7.Thomas Jane has a potty mouth lol and he’s fuck­ing nuts.

6. For­mer play­boy mod­els, wrestling divas and b-movie babes all wear tight clothes and have leath­ery look­ing skin.

5. I can sneak up on Lou Fer­rigno and yell in his bad ear that he’s a douche and get away with it.

4. Virgil/ Vin­cent from WWE/WCW is a very nice guy

3. Pete Rose is a douche and Kane should find him at every show and choke slam him lol.

2.Comic Swag has really fallen off.

1.Hygiene is optional at comic con now a days. Noth­ing says nerds & geeks like cornchips and butt cheeks

10. Hell­boy is a woman.

9. Sakura from Naruto is really fat in real life.

8. Big fat guys make ter­ri­ble Venom cos­play­ers, espe­cially when they just put on a Todd McFar­lane mask and have no actual costume.

7. Pass on the con­ces­sion stand food, espe­cially when the hot dogs smell worse than your aver­age fanboy.

6. Peter May­hew gets no love.

5. Fat black women should not be allowed in the Green Lantern Core.

4. Twenty-Five years later, Jem is still truly out­ra­geous; truly, truly, truly outrageous.

3. The movie ver­sion of Sym­biote Spidey is a cam­era whore; he also likes to rub his ball­sack on people.

2. Never go to a con alone; there are way to many jokes that must be shared with friends. Also, you will get raped in all senses of the term.

1. Cobra Com­man­der is still a man; in fact, he is THE man.

Credit goes to my girl for email­ing me the article

Credit for the story goes to Giz­modo and the Bal­ti­more Sun News Paper

So these col­lege kids were robbed ear­lier in the week and one of them  heard some noises. Kid goes to inves­ti­gate with sword in hand and catches the thief right in the act. Thief lunged at the kid and got his ass sliced up and his hand nearly sev­ered. The thief is now very dead.

I am sure peo­ple would say that it may been exces­sive force but let’s be real here folks if you caught some­one in your house and you were armed and the sus­pect tried to attack you  you would do the same.

Fuck that guy for rob­bing a house right after being released. What would you have done. Share your thoughts in the com­ment section.

And so the 1st ver­sion of the  My Take Radio Web­site begins. I have been look­ing for tons of ways to make an offi­cial site for the show and thus far Word­Press has proven the most effective.This site will start tak­ing shape over the next few weeks. The best is yet to come. I am debat­ing adding older shows to this page.

–R