It was gone for a few months, but those pesky buggers are back. Damn you comment spam.

It went crazy last sometime last year with a dozen gambling related sites from Blackjack and Texas Holdem.

Now it seems to be back with a vengeance with damn Viagra and Cialis and other erectile dysfunction aids, and I find myself deleting hundreds of comments weekly, damn it.

Obviously, the default anti-spam measures that come included in MT 3.2 are slowly losing its effectiveness, and it's time to resort to altnerative options. I found two new plugins which I'm sure will do the trick.

The RealCommentThrottle plugin imposes a limit on the number of comments a blog can accept per hour and per day. All subsequent comments are rejected until the period of time is over.

MT-Moderate is a simple plugin forces comments made to older posts to be moderated. I know there are definitely drawbacks to this option, since "real" visitors are now guilty until proven innocent-- which definately ruins the experience of blogging-- but the significant amount of comment-spam is leaving me no option.

Six Apart Guide to Comment Spam - [sixapart.com]

This movie rocks.

I don't know if it's because of (a) my love for Natalie Portman, (b) my love for mass transit systems, or (c) the witty script in this film, but I highly enjoyed this movie.

For once it's a movie that I had high expections, and came out of the movie feeling satisfied.

Here's a brief synopsis from IMDB:

The futuristic tale unfolds in a Great Britain that's a fascist state. A freedom fighter known as V (Weaving) uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressive society. He rescues a young woman (Portman) from the secret police, and she becomes his unlikely ally.

I have never encountered the graphic novels which inspired the movie, however, the plot is very similar to the classic novel, 1984, where a totaliarian society exists based on fear, oppression, propaganda.

What is great about this movie (aside from points A, B, and C) is that it reminds is to question our logic, question the things we hear in the media, question for government accountability (I sound like Stephen Harper) because seriously, the events that occurred in V for Vendetta, and even in 1984, is not far from reality and can happen.

On an unrelated topic, this movie, according to Jason, was postponed from release due to the attacks in the London Underground back last July.

Also, what I find funny, it was intended to be a futuristic film, however, there were nothing radical in terms of technology depicted in the film. I recall the reference "[something occurred] back in 2015."

V for Vendetta- [imdb.com]

Breaking news from the Waterloo front:

Bubble Tease, our commonplace for so-so Asian food at the University Plaza, was caught in a fire on Wednesday morning, according to my beloved Leo.

The fire was believed to be caused by electrical equipment in the restaurant, and it is unknown to me whether neighbouring units, the Vietnamese Pho restaurant, and the Eden Salon suffered damages.

No one was reportedly hurt.

Bubble Tease is expected to be closed for a month-- which means Leo will never be working at the place again, since he will be a big-boy graduate.

It looks like no soju, flaming lamborghinis, and battered squid for UW students for the remainder of the term.

Tear. I really miss gross Bubble Tease squid.

David Copperfield was in town last weekend for what he creatively entitled, David Copperfield: An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion. Bowie and I decided to empty our wallets and hopped down to the Hummingbird to experience him live instead of the usual TLC.

The performance was purely what I expected, and he definitely made people wow and gasp. Some stunts were familiar to me, while some were not. He pretty much covered all his usual grounds from the usual, making things disappear and reappear (i.e. cars, himself), send people off to a place far away (i.e. Hawaii), mind-read people, (i.e. through cards), provided some comedy relief, and as always, charmed some ladies.

Watching it live was definitely more enlightening that watching it on TV (obviously), because I definitely found some flaws in the performance that you simply wouldn't catch on screen.

For the record, Copperfield didn't make any mistakes during his performance per se. However, it was definitely not as smooth sailing as I would have imagined--it just wasn't meticulously executed.

From my understanding, every successful performance by an illusionist/magician is mainly judged by their effort to convince the audience that his or her assistants are in fact chosen at random. I'm sure we've all heard the famous line prior to every magic performance "have you met or spoken before?"--just to loosely confirm to the audience about the random nature of selecting someone.

After the performance, though, I am not convinced that the people were "randomly" picked from the audience. Many of the tricks can easily be explained if in fact the assistants were not random. In attempt to persuade people about his random selection, Copperfield flew a frisbee into the audience and said that the first person to catch the frisbee was to come on stage to help him in his tricks.

However, after Copperfield spun the frisbee, I often saw the disc being passed from one person to the other. Surely, there may be some people who are too shy to participate, however, I still think that the random selection is really sketchy.

Here's another thing, I found him to be awfully narcissistic. During his brief break between performances, we had to watch a small montage that showed what people thought of about David Copperfield-- almost like retarded testimonials for ab machines. There was all this zooming text on screen about how great he is, and I was seriously turned off by it.

I already know he's great, that's why I bought a ticket to support him. I don't need to watch no tasteless Copperfield ego-booster.

I also get a vibe he's really a ladies' man-- a really raunchy ladies' man. Really. For one thing, there was a lot of ass-grabbing during the show.

I bet he gets a lot of sex. He is an illusionist right?

This is probably the most brain-rotting show in primetime this season.

But I love it.

Do you remember the more thought-provoking big-cash game shows were back a few years ago? Shows like Millionaire, Weakest Link, Greed and Twenty One at least attempted quiz contestants in order to achieve the grand prize. But now in 2006, people increasingly don't want to use their brains (i.e. me), and voila, a game show is born.

Originated from Australia, Deal or No Deal emerged on North American TV sets back in during the holiday season just for several weeks. The show then returned after the coverage of the Torino Olympic Games-- since the now desperate NBC needs a real ratings booster.

A side comment: have you noticed how NBC shows kinda suck lately? Aside from maybe The Office, all the rest is a bunch of crap. Even Will and Grace is awfully tiring.

Bring back Friends!

So yes, Deal or No Deal is quite an exciting game. And watching our beloved Canadian Howie Mandel is surprisingly pleasant-- except for the wya he asks the contestant "Deal or No Deal?" All of you might remember him in Bobby's World as himself both in animation and in his real form superimposed in an animation. Anyways, I don't know if it's because there is some really soft lighting in that Deal or No Deal studio, but this guy seems to look better and better as he ages.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's hot. I think he's hot like Martha Stewart is hot. Hmm, am I digging myself into a deeper hole?

Anyways, he can pull off a bald head, and he's got that trendy soul patch thing going on. But of course, if Howie doesn't suit your fancy, there are also 27 models for your pickin's (Howie actually announces each models' names).

So now go forth, and least try to watch one episode. I'll be hooked-- or maybe not, maybe it's just me and my retardedness.

Deal or No Deal airs on NBC (simulcast on CH), weeknights at 8 pm.

Deal or No Deal - [wikipedia.org]
Deal or No Deal - [nbc.com]
Howie Mandel - [wikipedia.org]

I had to quickly venture to Indigo Bay and Bloor during the lunch hour to find this impossibly hard-to-find book for my cousin. There are many scattered throughout the city, but few in prestine condition.

Anyways, I stood waiting for the lights to turn green at Yonge & Bloor to find that the pseudo landmark up the block, Masonic Temple, (home to the former show Open Mike with Mike Bullard) no longer shows the geometric CTV logo, but MTV.

After checking my Bloglines, I discovered tgat MTV Canada is being relauched under the CTV banner (unlike the previous partnership, Craig Media-- home of the defunct Toronto 1.) Anyways, MTV Canada will be headquatered in Toronto (not Vancouver, like previously) at the Masonic Temple. The artist's concept is shown.

It looks Muchmusic has some competition once again-- and rightly so, since Muchmusic is really a bunch of crap these days. In fact, it's like the whole channel should be featured on Fromage.

Have you guys seen Much 911? Have you seen their infamous "sequence change" footage? You know, when the screen flashes "Much 911", and you can hear the 9-1-1 phone touch tone.

So irritating!

I do have a guilty pleasure for Video on Trial though. It's just mindless fun.

Back to MTV. MT is quite a nice building, but maybe not as cool as the ChumCity Building. But one thing that will suck for MTV Canada is that Masonic Temple does not have street traffic! That part of Yonge Street (at Davenport) is definitely not like Queen Street. But then at the same time, MT doesn't have those street windows that tempt onlookers to peek inside.

According to Wikipedia, MTV Canada will host a "flagship program" MTV Live in the location, which I can assume to be more or less like MuchOnDemand.

Perhaps more exciting times ahead for music youth culture programming? Let's hope so.

Maybe the competition "invisible hand" will wave goodbye to crap like The ItList, the stomach-upsetting Much VJ Search.

MTV Canada - [wikipedia.org]
Masonic Temple embraces MTV - [blogto.com]

Do you remember that episode of Saved by the Bell when the "hotties" at Bayside went to this murder mystery dinner? I remember Whenever the storm hits, the lights would go out, and we then discover that someone dies-- one by one. For some weird reason, I recall there was a French maid there, who accused Zack as being a "murdurwurrr." (It's supposed to be a French accent.)

I also remember Married... With Children had a similar episode. It's funny how early 90's sitcoms all pretty much copied each other.

These sitcoms since then have sparked my interest to go to a murder mystery dinner (because deep down inside wanted to be Zack Morris). Anyways however, I didn't even know they existed until probably two summers ago, when we thought that it would be cool to walk on Yonge from Dundas to just north of Eglinton-- where we had dinner.

I know, you must think we're idiots, however, it was actually a really pleasant walk, especially since there's always shops to see, or things to look at. I believe this was still when Eugene worked at the Rosedale Starbucks.

I digress. On our long walk, we discovered Mysteriously Yours, a murder mystery dinner place, which is located on Yonge between Davisville and Eglinton stations. This weekend, we finally made an effort to check it out. The current showing is called "Last Will and Videotape." Just right after dinner, the characters emerge and begin to interact with the us-- just to give us an understanding about each of them, and how they're like. The detective then leads the case, and asks each suspect questions. From the clues, obviously, you pick up what you know, and solve the case.

In Last Will and Videotape, the billionaire is dead, and he recently revised his will. The murder happened during his 106th birthday and was caught on tape. This production is similar to the sitcoms, because it's pretty much a comedy murder mystery, but with music! There was quite a bit of interactions with the audience, many of which played minor roles-- but I think even more interaction would've been nice.

Overall, it was a good experience, and I totally recommend to at least check it out just once. It's is, however, a little pricey-- at 50 bucks a pop (tax included). It could be one of those things you can say you've done, and scatch it off the "to-do" list.

Just don't expect it to be as cool as when Zack did it in Saved by the Bell.

Mysteriously Yours... Mystery Dinner Theatre in Toronto - [mysteriouslyyours.com]