Is that the one with Rick Rockwell? I watched parts of the show because I saw him years ago at the Riviera in Vegas. He was the funniest damn stand-up that I'd ever seen.

Running good indeed. Safe House not so good, Mission Impossible better.

I mean the bachelor where 25 girls date one guy until he weeds through them and fake proposes marriage to the one at the end. Then, they break up later since who could possibly have known that 5 dates over 6 weeks would make it hard to pick a lifelong partner. The exception is Ryan and Trista who got married and have children. But like I said earlier I never watch the show.

Saw MI already and it was indeed better. At least I stayed awake today which is not far from my criteria for acceptable in the movie department on limited sleep.

Thank You. Maybe you can link this post to my dad who seems to be sad that I have yet to cure cancer or show a ton of interest in my 2 new sisters that are 40 years younger than me.

wow, the LC thread just got a lot more interesting. details?

It's not healthy to view online reviewers as "nobodies." First of all, there's the general karmic aspect of it. Secondly, they might seem to be nobodies to us, but they might be large frogs in some small pond or other, or even a very large pond about which we have no inkling. Lastly, even if they are reviewing in a blog or LiveJournal or similar and not simply adding a review to the book's Amazon page, it is unlikely that they are getting review copies or ARCs from publishers, but are rather shelling out their own money to buy and read the thing. On that level alone we should regard our customers kindly in the marketplace for books just as we do at the table, even if they happen to be blithering idiots.

But you're right to a point: to the extent that authors need to pay attention to marketing their work, they need to pay attention to positive reviews; but bad reviews are almost always better off ignored. One exception: if some reader's terrible review is at the top of the queue on the book's Amazon page, that can really hurt sales, and one might want to encourage one's friends to say nice things about the book so that the bad review is scrolled out of sight or at least not the first thing curious Web-surfers see. Apart from the Amazon thing, though, all publicity is good publicity. A book's being ripped apart in the New York Times Book Review will be bruising to the author's ego, but it will still result in sales.

On Lin:

Already tired of his schtick of thanking Jesus every time he does something. It's obnoxious as someone thanking Allah or Danny DeVito every time an event goes their way. It's also implying that Jesus is invested in one team and not another; meanwhile taking away all the hard work he has put in to become good at basketball.

Maybe it's Jesus that helps inspire him to put in all that hard work.

Because he can't rationally determine on his own that hard work is necessary for success, right?

Would like to see Dwight Howard start thanking Danny DeVito for everything.

(Lenny swimming in ocean at night w/ killer dolphins around while drinking from a bottle of liquor)

"Mmmmm! Alcohol and nightswimming, it's a winning combination!"

Yeah, this.

I wonder how much it relates to the above, but I'm quite ready for the Lin thing to be over, not more than 3 days after I was thinking the phenomenon was pretty cool. Now, honestly, I've reached the point where I'm openly rooting for him to fail. I reckon it's part the Jesus thing (grrr Harvard shoulda taught you that God doesn't exist!), part the fact that the Knicks winning streak with him starting is helping the Knicks to quickly catch to my team up in the standings, part that I read a few basketball forums/websites and am completely inundated with the hype, and, related to the last one, part being completely done with looking at words with "Lin" being highlighted in some cute way. The first time I saw "Linsanity", I thought it was cool, but by the 10,000th time of the week, not so much.

But here I am talking about it, so I guess I share 1/300millionth of the blame ...

I guess the good news is that Lin's week didn't start a month earlier, or he might have been voted to be an All-Star starter by like 100 million Chinese, like how Yao was for a couple of years, despite being injured throughout basically the entire season.

Well, if your Daddy wasn't so preoccupied with procreation maybe he'd have noticed that you can cure anything from heartbreak to the crack-o-dawn.

A couple thoughts on this:

1. I posted mostly to highlight the LOL of giving a bad review to a book because the delivery system (amazon) failed. That's like saying you really don't like your sweater from Gap because the UPS driver lit it on fire. Although I do recognize that in the eyes of many consumers, and maybe especially ebook consumers, the delivery system is a vital part of the product.

2. I don't necessarily agree with PJ's idea that customer reviews are from "nobodies" although I do discount a good number of reviews that seem to clearly miss the point. For example, a recent and favorable review set forth some basic facts about the book and just got them wrong. Returning to my hypothetical book about the poker pro, if would be like the review said "I really enjoyed the repeated scenes at the Canasta Parlor." So, to me, that review is worthy of some skepticism even though it was positive (and even though my biases want me to elevate that positive review despite its shortcomings).

3. I have refrained from posting comments/reviews of the books and haven't asked others to do so because I think that is a slippery slope. If we were relying on the income from the books to pay the mortgage, I might be more motivated to do so. Dunno. It has been tempting though.

In other news, a review from this morning stated that [insert insanely famous author's name, like someone you have all heard of] is now my wife's bitch. I think the books are good. I am pretty sure they didn't make anyone anyone's bitch.

So, yeah, LOLReviewaments.

Related to yesterday:
http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2012/0...ns-gifs#page/1

The Nation's Dave Zirin on why Jeremy Lin is not the new Tim Tebow

Bottom line, I find amazon/newegg/whatever user reviews as a whole to be incredibly useful when deciding what to buy. While I have a lot of contempt for the average person, 500 people rating a product is just going to result in some useful info about a product. Obviously parsing out the useless reviews (0/24 people found this review helpful, etc) is pretty easy to do, which then leaves you with a wide variety of opinions which give you a decent idea about the product you're buying.

I actually have gotten to the point where I'd never really bother to read a NYT book review or w/e just because I feel like that is more random than 500 average readers opinions in aggregate.

Basically I'd never buy a book that had an aggregate rating of 2.5 stars on amazon, even if some random reviewer said it was worthwhile.

Product reviews are totally different than book/movie/music reviews.

I find with something like books/music/movies, unless you're dealing with rampant fanboyism, the average consumer as a whole will put out a decent rating.

I throw user reviews out the window with something like Twilight, or Call of Duty 35 or w/e.

Do you think user reviews are totally useless in aggregate for standard games/movies/books/music?

Yes.

PJ, a little bird told me you might show up at the merce today? Any truth to the rumor?

The foraging sharks detect the faint taste of blood in the water...!

there might certain types of movies they are useless for (something like the tree of life comes to mind), but to dismiss them across the board would be folly. i bet there is positive correlation between yahoo user reviews and your reviews.

I don't care about that. There are people who review arts and entertainment for a living, and they do a very good job. To say it's just as valid when some doctor or accountant or teenager or truck driver writes an online "review" is to dismiss an entire profession.

Even if the amateur is accidentally right or I agree with them, doesn't make them any more qualified to critique these things.

Palo - not sure yet.

I never said just as valid. I said the average of crowd reviews does generally correlate with actual quality.

maybe i'm just biased but to me lin doesn't come across nearly as in your face as tebow. there are certain ways to talk about faith but tebow strikes me (and i'm sure most of you) as way over the top. there is a genuine humbleness in lin that is very likable regardless of your views of religion.

if lin ends up halfway decent and is here to stay, i think its better than even money he makes the all-star game next year because of the chinese votes. i think it's clear at this point the kid can ball but he has some huuuuge issues he needs to address, mainly that he is a turnover machine.

elo, anytime i ever bet on the pacers, they eff me over bad. i had them on a big teaser today. that said, i think they should be fine, but its not like the pacers or knicks have a chance against chicago or miami anyways.

But you're just talking about evaluation. I'm talking about the review. If A.O. Scott of the NYT liked a movie as much as Joe Dickballs, they have a correlation, but the reviews themselves will read totally differently. I give weight to Scott's but none to Joe's.