Cures for Boredom Caused by the Writer's Strike

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past couple months you know how reduced the amount of quality written television coming out of the USA. Our favourite shows have been stopped in their tracks, some even forever (Scrubs for example) and it doesn't seem like coming to a conclusion any time soon. Salvation for me will come on January 29th when Lost returns but that only fills so much of a gap. I miss my shows and I got sick of reality television years ago so that doesn't help much. I support what the writers are doing and some of the striking writer's blogs make an entertaining point in the process. They even convinced me to send some pencils to evil studio executives. The coverage of the writers strike has been a sort of entertainment for me. It just seems interesting to me. All this talk of residuals and where the future of entertainment is and whether the internet will be a part of it keeps me glued to Google Reader.

So that brings me to my next paragraph. Alternatives to quality scripted television that has nothing to do with reality based programming;

Movies
There are some great movies coming out over the Australian Summer or American Winter depending on where you are. And here are some of my picks that are coming out at the cinemas.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
No Country For Old Men
Juno
I Am Legend
American Gangster
Cloverfield
Be Kind Rewind
Jumper
Semi-Pro
The Other Boleyn Girl

All movies I really am looking forward to and the good thing is they are spread out over the next couple of months so you get an even distribution of entertainment. Otherwise you can check out your local Video Store for the latest release DVD's. Or as many are these days searching for the desired movie followed by DVDrip into one of the many fine Bittorrent search engines out there. Here are some recommendations for DVD's released this year:

300
Knocked Up
The Simpsons Movie
Superbad
Ocean's 13
Transformers
Ratatouille
Futurama: Bender's Big Score
Sicko

For many more selections visit IMDb's Top 100 movies of the year by votes for ideas.

Games
Depending on whether you are into them or not games can provide hours of entertainment or limited batches of general interest. Here is a casual gamers guide to how to get some entertainment out of your television when there isn't any decent TV coming out of it. The computer you are using right now is a trojan horse for entertainment depending on it's power but most can be used to play flash based games through the internet. Console gaming is another way to interact with virtual worlds and the current players on the market for your dollar are Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3. Gamespot or IGN are excellent websites to come to terms with choosing one of these to take your mind off the writer's strike. And there there are the latest handhelds which are really nifty. Nintendo's DS or Sony's PSP. Both really cool in there own way but a matter of choice as usual.

Music
See Bittorrent

And of course than there is the internet where most of the boredom by the writer's strike can be cured. An endless sea of human procrastination the internet seems to never stop giving. With it's vast array of blogs and hydra of Bittorrent trackers where else do you really need to go? Social networking to Social bookmarking, Web 2.0 really bought us all together.

So until the writers get back on their typoewriters, A4, Macbooks, PC's or whatever the hell they use to get the ball re-rolling on the US TV juggernaut try and be entertained with what I have served you. I realize I did it in the most patronizing way possible but what do you expect writer's all over the world are in solidarity not to produce quality and who am I to buck that trend.

So until next time have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And let us pray that greedy studio execs get what they want for Christmas so they can give the writers what they want for the sake of TV-Viewerkind.

Ant out.