What is the matter with HBO?

[Pekka]

I wonder how actors feel though.. I mean I'd suppose in general you'd want to be in movies. Movies that have good script, not necessarily huge movies but those you feel are good movies yourself. Then of course the ones that are hits and gives the nice cheque.

But what about TV then.. I bet it's like getting to the top tier if you get into HBO series and play one of the bigger roles.

[Kontiki]

Pekka, take two minutes and set your bloody roster already!

[Pekka]

Uhmm.. ready?

[Kontiki]

You have a centre, LW, RW and goal spot open and plenty of people to fill them. Or is it a strategic decision not to play Koivu or Sykora or Rucinsky or Joseph (alright, I can see that one) or Satan or.....

[Pekka]

What do you mean open?

[Pekka]

I've got Crosbey C, LW and RW, both Ds and Goalie spot all filled?

[Kontiki]

You can play two people at each position every day. You're only using one of each of the positions I've listed. Just change a player's status to from "BN" to "LW" (for example) to make him active.

[Pekka]

two each? #"¤/&("&!"#%!/&"%!)¤"/#&.. I'm the stupidest manager there is. Assumed the rules, turned otu to be different. OK ok ok.. I'll add some players

[Pekka]

OK done. this is a much better game like this though, now that I Think about it.. makes sense.

[Kontiki]

Good stuff.

I also want to make sure you know that in order to get points, you players need to be playing that day. I noticed that yesterday the only guy who was actually playing for you, Zubov, was sitting on the bench while you had your other two defensemen, who were not playing, set up. I figured this was just an oversight on your part, but remember that they need to actually have an opponent listed beside their name on any given day for them to be playing in real life and therefore eligible to get points. So, you missed out on Zubov's two assists and two power play assists (and -1 rating) yesterday.

[Pekka]

yeah I know, that was me not checking it out.

[Kontiki]

No worries. You actually have a pretty solid team, and as long as you check in once in a while, you won't stay at the bottom of the league for long. As I said before, you can really just check in once a week, set your roster for the next seven days and be fine. Some of us (myself included) get a little more involved on a daily basis.

Please let me know if you ever have any more questions or aren't sure about how something works.

[joncha]

You couldn't have waited until next week to tell him this?

[chequita guevara]

Rome

[RGBVideo]

Whenever the topic of ancient Rome came up, my history teacher used to repeat to us (usually taking an example out of 1950s movies or, say medieval drawings of notable Christian people who lived during the days of the Roman Empire rather than the interpretations of this modern world) that depictions of ancient Rome tell much more about their own times instead of the original Roman times. HBO's Rome reminded me of that phrase, for it is the very definition of it. I watched the first episode since I had heard some good things about it in here. I was not impressed. I decided to give it another chance the day after and watched it again, this time taking notes and trying to analyze the episode a bit better while watching in order to see was there anything to like or hate in it or was I just having a bad day.

You know how (bad) historical fiction writers usually try to push invididual history into their own moulds of dramatical moral stories, desperately trying to make the historical facts fit in to their own narrow characters in the story? The great thing about Rome is that at the very start of the show (within the opening monologue) you'll realize that unlike previous generations, they're not going to even bother with those things called "facts", instead just taking some guys' names off the history books and making a dramatic story out of them. "All right, we'll start by describing the formation of the first triumvirate! Pompeius and Caesar -- Crassus who? Oh he didn't fit into our storyline, so we just cut him out".

You know what made the movie Gladiator popular? Directors of this TV series made their own conclusions. The opening scene was about a chaotic preparation for battle -- lots of big guns. About a minute and the battle starts -- we see lots of blood. In the middle of that scene, we jump into a mother giving birth in some building -- her having a very firm and upward pair of tits for a woman supposedly in her ninth month. What I'm going at is the episode's composition. If you review the episode and check from what scenes it is built from, you'll notice that every one of the scenes has a visual focus on either (1) big guns (2) blood spilled or (3) boobies (the scenes following each other usually in that order). When you closely follow the progression of storyline you realize that the story development is often heavily compromised so the director could enter a scene which contains either 1, 2 or 3. Popular history for big boys.

I could go on, but I don't want to see any tldr-comments. **** that show.