All posts by Mike Elgum

Misc

Public Private Parts

35 Comments

Why oh why would anyone want a public hangout – private? This is odd, next we will have to have our privates out in public when doing our private business.

A take-down notice? Pretty serious for an innocuous speech he was trying to make public via a public Google hangout. This sure is a heck of a puzzle. What, by George, is he trying to hide? This was a completely (mostly) unedited and in context video, an anomaly for this site. Why would someone want to hide what they said under no duress? Quite a conundrum.

I said don't look
I said don’t look

Seems to me the public has a right to know why the  beloved Shannon Morse was removed from a program. Seems to me that Father Robert explained eloquently that there was a meeting of the top people at TWiT, probably Padre, Leo, Lisa, and Jeff_N to decide Shannon’s fate. They didn’t think she should be at the meeting which makes total sense; why include her when they had experts at the meeting.

“We sat down and realized we were misusing her.” Uh huh, sure. So they all sat on a couch somewhere and realized they were misusing her. What does that even mean? I reckon they were saving money by firing her and just having a Priest who works free host. A pattern of cost saving that goes back to firing a real editor and replacing him with whoever was around. They wanted her on a show that “specifically fits her talents and her passions.” I guess she is passionate about reviewing Asus keyboards. Great Job with that!

Padre explains why Shannon Morse is No Longer hosting Coding101

By the way, we learned in a previous post, when the eyeballs do a left eye roll a person is accessing his front brain creative lobe. The creative lobe used in lying and not memory recall.

This site is hosted in Europe, or somewhere crazy like that, and if our host makes us take down the video below, we will but we think we have a case why it should stay up. I guess we may as well mention Shannon’s Patreon again. Looks like it will be a success and should close out at a respectable per-show amount.

Now Padre has something to do this weekend. Get that keyboard out and start typing in Scandinavian.

Misc

A nightmare comes true

17 Comments

Many have already noted that one of the great—if not the greatest Twitter account of our time—has been silenced. The prolific opponents of free speech on the Internet have finally silenced the one voice that chronicled the abusive behavior of the TWiT moderators and the appalling actions of #Soup.

@LeoLaporteSucks will sing no more

Next they come for you
Next they come for you

How sad, the hollow heroes of the Anti-SOPA cause and the protesters  of the-right-to-be-forgotten have joined forces to gag someone whose sole purpose was making known the Soup-sanctioned moderator ridicule bestowed on his fans who dared to hold opinions different from his own.

We need to cheer a society where knowing the email address of a vice president at Twitter, Inc. is enough to censor voices you dislike. The ridicule #TotalDrama heaps on the CEHo is possibly unwarranted. Perhaps a career in silencing political satire is her true calling. Her outrageous salary (BTW, Soup: We know why you need a lower bottomline for TWiT…very clever) may be justified if she worked for a major studio; banning and harassing reviewers who do not like her client’s movies.

Anyway, they don’t have machine guns and Islamic Fundamentalist views, so this quieting will unfortunately go unnoticed. Especially when it is the greatest hypocrite of our age fastening the muzzle.

Misc

Sorry, Jeff

4 Comments

I am sorry, Jeff Jarvis. I rewatched your speech on trolling and realized that even a joke can be taken too far. #TotalDrama should be silenced for their jokes.

Also, your rape joke cracked me up. On behalf of women and children whose lives and innocence were ripped from them, on behalf of the victims of brutal rapes throughout history, on behalf of the women whose lives were ruined after suffering date rape, I say to you, Jeff, lol great joke, +1.

Rape LOL?
Rape LOL?

PS. Congrats to #Soup on the Kevin Spacey win. I can’t believe the prick didn’t thank his very, very good friend. Who will win best #drama?

Misc

Exclusive Interview With Sarah Lane

21 Comments
The lovely & talented & happy Sarah Lane
The lovely & talented & happy Sarah Lane

#TotalDrama knows what the fans want and we went after it: The exclusive one on one interview with the wonderful Sarah Lane. And we delivered, the only negative is we could not actually get Sarah Lane, but we did not let that stop us. Here is how the interview would have transpired. It is a long piece so we put in a ‘Continue reading’ button you will need to click to expand the page for the entire interview:

Sightclass Coffee, Where SF players drink green tea
Sightclass Coffee, Where SF players drink green tea

I sat at Sightglass Coffee nervously awaiting her arrival. The world was spinning in anticipation. I fought my nerves and poured over my notes, I was looking up every thirty seconds to see if she was here. Then it happened, the door opened. The room brightened and a smell of spring flowers overtook the SF watering hole. Her hair flowed down the side of her face like spun gold and her eyes danced making the afternoon sun shimmer in jealousy. She walked toward my small table and eased herself into the seat opposite myself. I was a wreck until a warm hand rested on mine and she said her first words, “chill dog.”

TD: Oh my god, I love your hair, Sara

SL: It’s Sarah with an “H” and thank you

TD: Before we talk about the big news and your future plans we have to ask some questions about the past. Tell me about the past year.

SL: [Grumbles] It was difficult. When #Soup threw away TNT it was a real slap in the face to everyone working there. TNT was the best thing to come out of the network that was separate from #Soup. All the speeches about how he wanted to make TWiT less about him now rang hollow. It was clear he would never get over his narcissism.

TD: Was that the moment you sent out your resumes or was it when he accused you of sabotage?

SL: Look; I knew what was up when he made Elgum “a star.” He lost touch with reality, but the thing that set me off was the Richardyea incident. If you watch the video and focus on me you can see my heart breaking, after that there was nothing left at TWiT. After that, the show cancellations, the treatment of Amber and Shannon, none of it meant much because TWiT was already dead.

A young girl came by asking Sarah for her autograph and Sarah graciously asked if she could pause the interview and spend a few minutes with the fan. Since it augmented my time with her I agreed.

TD: Why was that incident so difficult?
Continue reading Exclusive Interview With Sarah Lane →

Misc

Geekbeat does the impossible

2 Comments

It has been noted that since its inception, the TWiT network has not had one black woman on as a guest—let alone a host. #Soup has stated that he gives Jason a long list every week of black people and women to contact to be guests. He has also said he would “looooooooove” to get a black woman as a host.

Ladies and gentlemen, Geekbeat.tv does the impossible:

Could it be? It seems it is possible.
Could it be? It seems it is possible.

I watched her: very sweet, smart and fluent in tech. And her name is Sherri Smith. Maybe there is one more out there? Naaaaah, impossible! Let us go another six years without one African-American woman on the network.

We are not saying that anyone is racist, just incredibly stupid. If there is a diversity problem in the industry then you do something about it. You will only exacerbate the problem by hiring family, girlfriends and former co-workers.
Do you people see how that deepens the problem? You have dozens of hosts and employees; make an effort!

Misc

The Wake of the Dark Triangle

1 Comment

The tragedy surrounding major disasters is often not truly measurable until months or even years later. Who can wipe the image  of the malformed Chernobyl newborns from their memory, babies born decades after the nuclear accident?

A Dark (Triangle) Day
A Dark (Triangle) Day

So, too, the fall-out from the Dark Triangle Incident remains to this day. It has been 77 days since that black event and one needs only to walk on the filthy floors of the SHiThouse to feel the aftershock.  Like all things TWiT, women took the brunt of the blow. Our findings confirm that no female employee has felt safe wearing a skirt or dress since that day. It made no difference if it would be a mini, knee length, pleated, A-line, draping , flounced or pleated—Nada. An unnamed woman had this to say, “My sister worked at a fully-nude strip club where men would stare, touch and grab their dark triangles all day, but even my sister did not feel as violated as when his eyes travel up our legs to our dark triangles.”

There was a positive outcome that should not be overlooked. Thousands of Google keyword searches for “Sarah Lane Underwear” yielded an unexpected result: Underwear companies took note and now the amoral company has a new sponsor.

Way too big for me, thank you very much
Way too big for me, thank you very much

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That is the lovely and talented Sarah Lane herself; forced into a life of selling panties—not that we’re complaining.

I may buy those if we could get them modeled.
What are these silly things for?

There is an irony of ironies in this twist of fate. #TotalDrama has often published reports detailing the hypocrisy of Laporte and the companies he pitches for. Zip Recruiter, Financial Capital and BarkBox are services this man would not waste his time with or money on. Now we have Sarah hawking something most doubt she uses: underwear. #Totaldrama reached out to the maven of all things Sarah, RichrdYea, who had this to say, “Sarah uses this product about as much as #Soup uses a napkin.”

It seems Sarah is not a fan of wasting money on a garment as silly as this with no real purpose. As you all know, #TotalDrama is nothing if not understanding and forgiving, so we have decided to let this transgression slide. As a matter of fact, if TWiT cons her into modeling them for next week’s episode, our feud with TWiT is over.

*Note* Non-employees, who were unaware of the incident have worn skirts in the building. We stand by our assertion that no employee dared to dress in a skirt.

Misc

Bald-Faced Liar

10 Comments

The #soupguzzler is a big spender and spares no expense for you, the fans—or so he claims. In actuality, he is what doctors call full of shit. Now that he is done paying for the hosts’ flights (the check is in the mail) for New Year’s Eve, he is sending a team down to CES.

The team is made up of Richard DeBartolo, Father Robert Ballecer and Scott Wilkinson.

On the job for AVS Forum
On the job for AVS Forum
Covering C.E.S. since the 40's
Covering CES since the ’70s
Wasting the churches money at CES for over a decade
Wasting the church’s money at CES for over a decade

Upon further scrutiny, it seems as if these three pawns of the Great Pretender are all heading to CES on someone else’s dime: Scott is punching his ticket for AVS forum for the [sic] 20th year in a row; Dickie D is making tracks for ABC for the [sic] 33rd year in a row; and Padre is being flown out by the Church of Saint Jude for the [sic] 10th year in a row. Looks like we found a question for this week’s Inside TWiT to go along with “2014 ad revenue” questions.

For those of you looking for CES coverage we recommend GeekBeat’s live coverage.  CNeT will usually put out some good videos and Molly Wood is doing pretty good twitter coverage.