Brand Loyalty

I am a huge brand loyalist. If I need a new TV or DVD player I will always buy Panasonic. I've bought four Dell computers. I waited for the Zune to come out rather than buy an iPod. I'm loyal to Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com...There's one thing though that I've never had any loyalty and that's my cellular service provider. I was with T-Mobile for many years, but I didn't have any qualms about switching to AT&T and now I'd like to switch to Verizon.

My contract is up in a couple of months and I am the very epitome of the target customer in the the current cell phone wars. I have done my research and it looks to me like the top three choices would be the Windows Phone 7 Series, the Google Nexus One, and the iPhone 4G, none of which are actually available yet. I'd stay with AT&T if they had subsidy on the Nexus One (but I'm not going to pay $529 for it). I might stay with AT&T if they came out with the iPhone 4G very soon though it will almost certainly cost at least $250. From what I've read it sounds like the Windows phone won't be out until next year so that's out entirely.

That leaves the Nexus One on Verizon, which, if Verizon subsidizes like T-Mobile did will be the best and cheapest option, but it was supposed to be available by now and it's not. So, Verizon, you have a chance to win me over, and I'm extremely brand loyal. Give me the Nexus One before the end of this month and I will not only buy it, immediately, paying the fee to break my contact with AT&T early, but I will most likely never change cellular providers again.

Twitter

Dear Twitter,

I resisted Twitter for a long time, mostly because I tend to be skeptical of things that are popular on general principal. I usually come around, and ultimately become such a devoted fan that when the majority moves on to the next new thing I remain a loyal fan. So, I've finally come around to Twitter, and I love it. Not only do I love Twitter but there are some other things that I'm now a fan of that I might not be were it not for Twitter.

First, there are podcasts in general and SModcast in particular. Of course, I've been a fan of Kevin Smith for 15 years and have even been intermittently active on the boards at View Askew. So, naturally, I was aware of SModcast, but I wasn't really a podcast listener so I didn't start listening until I started following Kevin Smith on Twitter (@ThatKevinSmith) and his tweets about SModcast peaked my curiosity. Very shortly after I started listening to SModcast two of my friends launched podcasts as well (@pitchersnpoets, and @Milk_of_Minutia) and now I'm actively seeking out new podcasts to listen to (in addition to these three).

Josh Lawson I also would probably not be a fan of (yet) if not for Twitter. I haven't really seen anything he's done. I keep meaning to watch Spaced, but I haven't yet. I follow him on Twitter though (because of @Alyssa_Milano and the Twitter phenomenon Follow Friday) and his Twitter feed is often hilarious. I feel a little wrong being a fan of someone based solely on their Twitter feed, but I'm a little bit in love with @joshlaw81 and I no nothing about him that I haven't read on Twitter.

What they say (you, know them, they're full of advise and gossip on all sorts of topics) is that celebrities...lets not use that word...entertainers like Twitter because it gives them an opportunity to communicate with their fan base directly and immediately which is cool especially for someone like me who geeks out over stuff a lot (hence this blog devoted to being a fan of things). Kevin Smith replies a lot to tweets from his fans (not to mine yet, but to many others), which is kind of to be expected as he's always maintained pretty close ties to his fan base, but he's not the only one that does.

Of all the things I am a fan of, and there are many or I wouldn't be doing this, perhaps prime among them is Sports Night. It's the perfect storm of brilliant writing (that's both funny and poignant) and amazing acting (that, again, is spot on with the comedic timing and hits all the emotional notes as well). I've purchased a ridiculous number of copies of Sports Night on DVD. I give them as gifts to people, I lend them out and then have to buy a new copy before I get them returned to me (there was a point when I had three copies of it for this reason but I'm back down to one copy now), and of course, when the anniversary edition came out I had to buy that. On one of my other blogs I reference my love of Sports Night in at least 6 posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), I frequently used quotes from it to illustrate points (at least
four times), and sometimes even put Sports Night references in the titles of posts (here and here). So, as you can see, I really love Sports Night. I'm a particular fan of the character of Jeremy and the actor who plays him (Joshua Malina), so imagine my excitement when I discovered that he's on Twitter (@JoshMalina), and that he too is often hilarious in his twitter feed, and that when I tweeted about how great he and his twitter feed are, he replied to me.

So, yeah, I'm all atwitter these days.

Love,
The Fan

Cop Out

I don't usually write "reviews" primarily because I have a tendency towards hyperbole when discussing things I like/dislike. For example, you might hear me say that Sports Night is the best television show in the history of the universe and if there is television in other universes it is likely way better than anything they have to offer as well. Or, I might say that I hate all reality television but I especially hate the Bachelor (with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns) and that they are holding a special place in hell for the creators of such a vapid and loathsome waste of airwaves (not to be confused with the special place in hell being held for the network executives who decided to shift away from scripted television to avoid the ramifications of a writers strike with which, by comparison, the hell for reality TV creators will seem like a paradise). Usually I end up looking back on my grandiose statements and wondering if I might have overstate my case (though I stand by these examples, of course). Fan mail is, after all, unapologetically approbative. In fan mail you don't have to qualify your praise or explain your adoration. The difference (between fan mail and reviews) is that my purpose, the purpose of fan mail, is not to influence others.

I read a couple of reviews of Cop Out recently and interestingly found myself disagreeing with both of them despite the fact that one was pro Cop Out and the other decidedly anti.

I, for the record, am pro Cop Out, but unlike Lindy West I find it has value beyond it's jokes. Since it wasn't written by Kevin Smith I don't feel the immediate need to defend the story (which West calls garbage), but that just means that when I do defend it I won't be seen as biased because I'm a fan of Kevin Smith. The plot may be formulaic but anyone who's ever taken a screenwriting class (or any kind of creative writing class) can tell you that all plots are formulaic. Anyone who's ever seen a movie or TV show with me will tell you that I'm well known for blurting out plot "twists" well in advance of their revelation because I'm a all too well versed in the formulas of story telling. So, yes, there's a formula, but that doesn't make it less entertaining, that doesn't make it a sub-par story (and it certainly doesn't make it garbage).

It's not the writing though, or not just the writing, that makes it such compelling movie. The best thing about the film is that it simultaneously pokes fun at and pays homage to its genre. Everything from the score to the religious adherence to the buddy cop story formula lets you know that the people involved are both laughing at and with their predecessors. And that's the way it should be. I shy away from pure satire (things like Scary Movie, Dance Flick, Epic Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, etc) because it too often feels...almost cruel. You have to be good-natured about about it if you're going to make fun of something, and Cop Out gets that.

I loved it, and since this is fan mail and not a review I'm going to dispense with the explanations right now. I just loved it.

Pitchers and Poets, and Rogues Baseball Index

I've been becoming enamored with twitter lately because my facebook feed has been overly dominated by updates on things like Mafia Wars and Farmville and today on my twitter feed I saw this tweet from James Van Der Beek (@vanderjames):

For my birthday, pick someone you know & make their day. Let them know you care & believe in their potential...

So, in honor of James Van Der Beek's birthday, I am writing today's fan mail to a good friend of mine. I don't think his potential (as a writer specifically) is in question, but I'm going to take the time to let him know I believe in it anyway. He's most prolific on the subject of baseball, he writes for Rogues Baseball Index and Pitchers and Poets, but it's hardly the only subject he can write eloquently about. I think he tends to get pigeon holed as a "sports" writer because he's so good at it, but if you ask me he's going to be one of the best novelists of the modern era. His short stories are amazing, and he knows his way around an open ending better than Hemingway. While I think he'd make a terrific sports writer, in fact he already makes a terrific sports writer, but I wanted to take this opportunity to let him know that I believe in his potential as a fiction writer.