Josh Benner

Author: the Josh Benner Blog

  • Review: the Hangover 2

    With the immense popularity of the Hangover, its sequel which hit the screens this week could not have been anything other than a box office smash hit. Many wondered if it could possibly live up to the original, and while I knew that this was not going to occur, I at least expected there to be a few scenes in the Hangover 2 that had the audience rolling. Unfortunately, the humor was not even in the same realm as the original Hangover.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sequel that had the same plot as its original. I have also never walked out on a movie, I didn’t with this one either, but two thirds of the way into the movie, when it was obvious how it was going to end, and as I came to the stark realization of, ”This movie is not funny, and that is something that is not suddenly going to change,” I strongly considered leaving.

    I really wanted to like this movie, it simply had no redeeming qualities. It was much darker than the original. In the original Hangover, part of the charm was the weirdness of Alan’s character, played by Zach Galifianakis. For the first half of the Hangover 2, I felt that they were trying to have bizarre comments and actions of Galifianakis comedically carry the movie. Even as much as I like Galifianakis, I don’t feel that can work for a major comedy. It certainly did not work for this one.

    Some people will disagree with me, and I have even heard people say it was almost as good as the original.

    Could they be right? No.

    This movie had so much hype and people were so excited to see the sequel to the beloved Hangover, that for many, the opinions of this movie are skewed. It’s also important to consider the context in which people watched this movie. Across the country, moviegoers packed theatres, and eagerly watched this movie, ready to laugh. In that type of festive atmosphere, and in a crowd, it is much, MUCH easier to find something funny than it would if a person were to rent a movie and watch a DVD alone.

    To that end, people who have seen this may recall laughing and having a good experience, but I firmly believe that is much more a product of the festive theatre environment than it is of this movie actually being funny.

    I think the reasons people are saying this movie was good are from a subconscious desire to be seen as normal instead of out of an objectively favorable view of the movie. Plain and simple, the Hangover 2 was horrible. I don’t know how much more clearly I can express that opinion. It is not worth seeing. And in the coming weeks when the initially large theatre crowds wane, it will become abundantly more clear over time just how unfunny this movie was.

    As I have already said, the sequel has the same plot as the original. The only real difference is that the original was funny.

    jrb

  • OSU football scandal deepens

    No one likes a snitch. At the very least, this is what the movie Goodfellas taught us.

    Last night, it was reported in the Ohio State University newspaper that former Buckeye wide receiver Roy Small admitted to selling personal effects including as Big Ten Championship rings while he was a student at Ohio State, which is a violation of NCAA rules.

    When it rains it pours.

    In the article, Small talks about how numerous players were doing the same things as him, as well as getting discounts on cars, and while they were aware of the NCAA rules, he claims that they did not care.

    This is just another installment in a saga of rules violations for the Ohio State football program that dates back to the end of last football season. But why would Small talk now?

    I really hate it when former college athletes start running their mouths after they have left the program. With the issues already sounding the Ohio State football program, this just makes things look worse, and to what ends?

    Ray Small broke the rules and he got away with it. He will never be punished for what he did. But now, a couple of years removed from being in the program, he takes it upon himself to say that he and numerous other players were all selling items and breaking rules. Why? All that this does is hurts the people who are currently in the program.

    Just so he can get a couple of minutes in the lime light that he was never going to get on the football field because he was a mediocre wide receiver who didn’t know how to field punts and who could be considered a poor man’s Devier Posey, he has to turn into a rat and bring more scrutiny on the program.

    If Jim Tressel would have resigned from the beginning, I think this story would carry significantly less weight. Ever since it has come to light that Tressel had been aware of players selling memorabilia and getting discounts which were in violation of NCAA rules, I believe that he should have resigned. I do not have anything against Tressel, certainly I know he’s a great coach, but with remaining as coach, the credibility of the football program is getting pounded.

    jrb

  • Tressel should resign

    I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I believe that Jim Tressel should have resigned last night. His actions and Ohio State’s handling of this are an embarrasment. He lied, he broke the rules, he went against the honor to which he holds his own players, he failed to adequately own up to his mistakes yesterday, he failed to apologize for what he did. I’ve never been embarrassed to be an Ohio State fan before this event. This is unacceptable. He didn’t break the rules once, he broke them every day by knowing the right thing to do and refusing to do it. He lied about it multiple times, and lied as recently as yesterday when he said he hadn’t known to whom to go and implying that he was bound by confidentiality (neither of which being true.)

    jrb

  • Write now, Tweet later: with Buffer

    Came across a new site today for a service called Buffer. And so far, I like it.

    Buffer is a site that allows you to Tweet, and then add a timestamp to the Tweet so that it doesn’t necessarily have to post right when you create it.

    Why would anyone care to do this?

    Well because there are some people who might have several good ideas for Tweets at once, and if they string a bunch of random updates together simultaneously, it can just be white noise to your followers. With Buffer, you can create all of those brilliant Tweets now, but then use the service to space out when they actually post to Twitter.

    That way, you’re not overwhelming your followers. Or, if you’re on death row, you can send Buffer tweets right before they strap you down to the lethal injection table and be like:

    12:05am: “Wow, that was another great episode of Conan. lmao”

    and then

    12:35am: “jk, I was already dead by then, LoLz”

    Part of the idea is that if you can space your Tweets out, ideally you can post at times where the Tweets will have a higher impact.

    At 5pm, it automatically updates by posting to Twitter. Simple.

    The service runs on a freemium model. For no cost, you can do two Tweets a day (or have 5 tweets in your buffer). There are monthly rates of $5 and $20, each giving different premium services.

    Constructive criticisms:

    1. No smartphone app. I realize that the entire point of Buffer is so you can produce Tweets at a computer and then set them to post later, but if that’s useful, I don’t see why the idea to post Tweets to an Android or iPhone app that will post to Twitter later is also useful. It’s not a deal breaker, but I hope an app is forthcoming (although I do expect basically any site that offers any service that has ever been created to have its own app).

    2. This is a little bit more of an issue. Once you’ve logged in to Buffer, You type your Tweets in the “My buffer” section, however to change the time that the Tweet posts, you go to the “account”section. I don’t understand why you can’t just look at the Tweet in the “My buffer” section, where it SHOWS you the time, and change it through that page. #imjustsaying

    3. Unless I missed something, I don’t see a place where you can set a date for a different Tweet to post. Everything is set to post within a 24 hour period. I feel like if you’re going to have advanced Tweet writing, then the functionality to do stuff, days, weeks, centuries in advance is necessary.

    Buffer, I bestow you with probably the greatest offer I can give to a webstie: I am adding the Buffer blog to my rss reader.

    for more information on Buffer, visit their website: http://bufferapp.com

    I learned about this website from Hacker News. Thanks Hacker News.

    Here’s their website: http://news.ycombinator.com/

  • Facebook ads extra layer of security

    Facebook announced today that they are going to be unveiling a couple of new security features for the site. One of the features is becoming increasingly common with websites where users login and it will prompt additional infromation from users if Facebook believes a person may not be legitimately logging onto the site.

    Given that Mark Zuckerberg’s own fanpage was hacked yesterday, new security is always a good thing.

    Let’s say that you live in Florida and logged in to Facebook from Florida this morning and that all of a sudden, someone from London trys to login to your Facebook. The site will prompt for additional information for you to verify that you’re you.

    Sometimes sites will use those annoying text boxes where you have to type the letters you see.

    That is called a captcha and it is meant more to verify that it is a human loging in, not so much that it is the legitimate owner of the account, as the Facebook blog notes.

    Facebook has come up witha pretty clever way for you to verify yourself. They are going to show you a set of photos of a Facebook friend and make sure that you can recognize the person.

    The advantage of this over a captcha is that any person can type in a captcha. It’s a matter of simply decyphering the letters. While anyone can figure out the captcha, people aren’t necessarily going to know your Facebook friends.

    Certainly this is not full proof. What if a friend of yours is hacking into your Facebook and the does know the friends who Facebook is using to verify your identity? That is a legitimate question and I don’t think Facebook has a very good answer for it. Ultimately, I think that the resonse would essentially be, “Well it’s still better than what we’ve had up to this point.”

    And that’s true. Another potential problem could be

    Facebook then said that they have to protect your information so that they can have it all to themselves to shamelessly sell. (ok, they didn’t actually say that).

    jrb