This is Azzizzi. I watch a lot of movies and TV on DVD. I like TV Tropes and I like commenting on them. Before I found the TV Tropes website, I was a fan of posting on a website called Nitpickers, which was a good place for posting goofs in movies and T Vs. The site is no longer maintained, but while it was still current, I managed to become one of the top 20 Nitpickers on the site with over 600 movie goofs to my credit. Because I watch a lot of movies and television and read a lot, I find this to be an extremely interesting and useful site. I tend to watch a lot of science fiction and being a vetaran of three branches of the US military, I watch a lot of military-related movies and shows.
When I watch TV or movies, I like to heckle the show as I'm watching it and point out any errors I find, especially in continuity or factual errors. I know this is annoying to some people, but I've been doing it for years and most people I watch TV with understand this and do it themselves.
About me:
- I'm a military veteran.
- I work in business management in Orange County, California.
- Two of my brothers are cartoonists. One worked on Kappa Mikey.
Favorite movies and TV shows:
- Band of Brothers - I think this is one of the best mini-series ever filmed.
- Battlestar Galactica - the original series and the new one and their spinoffs.
- Dune and Childrenof Dune - I like the miniseries that were made for the Sci-Fi channel.
- Twilight Zone - the original series.
- The Outer Limits - original and the remake.
- The Office
- MST 3 K - I have several of these on DVD. Sadly, when I watch movies or TV with friends, we tend to heckle and ad lib during the entire show with varying results.
- M*A*S*H - I watch this despite it being an anti-war mouthpiece for its writers. I laugh more at the TV view of the Army than I do at any of the jokes. The laugh track is annoying, though. It's used everywhere except the OR.
- I also think that if Hawkeye had been in the Army in Korea during the Korean War, he would have been hanged for treason on many counts.
- Lexx - the first three seasons, anyway. In Season 4, it got to be ridiculous and strayed from the original premise. It's like someone fired the writers and said, "I don't care what you do. Make me some episodes." A few notable examples:
- Xevivor - Xev is the star of a Survivor-inspired show. The outcome is predictable.
- Bad Carrot - Carrots are killing humans.
- Viva Lexx Vegas - Xev is in Las Vegas. She sees some women fighting in a cage on TV and wants to become a contestant.
- Lyekka vs. Japan - Giant woman attacks Japan in Godzilla fashion.
- Caprica - I just finished watching Season 1.5.
- TheWire - I'm not a fan of police shows, but a friend of mine referred this to me. I probably still wouldn't have watched it, except that he also loaned me the DV Ds. I've been watching it and I think the show is really good. Some of my favorite characters:
- Bubbles - he's like a ghetto entrepreneur.
- Omar - he may be gay, but he's a hell of a thug.
- Prez - he started off being a real turd, but got better.
This troper is an example of:
- Mildly Military - a veteran who follows the rules to the extent necessary to get the job done, but definitely not a rules guy.
- Pappa Wolf - don't mess with friends or family.
- Blingof War - can't help it that the modern military is fixated on increasing the number of ribbons, medals, and badges it hands out.
- Cool Garage - slot machines, drum kit, tanning bed, and more. The living room is even worse, with a PA system, stage lighting, and enough equipment for a seven-piece band.
- Broken Aesop - be careful what you try to teach someone. The lesson learned may not be what you intended to teach. A few examples:
- Growing up, my mother tried to teach me to be careful with my money by stealing it from me. Instead, I learned not to trust anything she said or did.
- In the Army, I had generally good experiences, but I also had sergeants who tried to teach me what it mean to be a good NCO. What I learned instead was that these guys were dicks. My reason was that a small lesson here and there was fine, but if you keep moving the goalposts in the name of teaching a lesson and there's never a right answer, you're being a dick. In one particular instance, I actually answered with, "Right. The lesson I learned here is that if I pick A, you say it's B and if I say it's B, you say it's A."
- Just be yourself seems to apply only if what you do is generally acceptable by everyone else.
- Truth in Television - The character of Michael Scott from The Office could have been based on a boss I once had. The number of similarities are incredible. Both were managers only in name, both were their own biggest fans, and they even had the same first name.
- Acceptable Targets - just about anyone is one of these, mostly based on your actions, especially self-induced stupidity and ignorance. I'm especially ammused by people who claim to advocate tolerance, then turn around and describe actions that are intolerant.
This troper is subverts the following tropes:
- You Fail Gun Safety Forever - weapons are tools that must be respected. Handle them carefully.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty - young troops need to be mentored. Being mean to them is someone else's job.
- Ambitionis Evil
- A-Cup Angst - I'm a fan of small boobies. Actually, the size of your boobies isn't as important as your personality. I've been known to end dates when they aren't working out and never call a woman back if she has major personality problems.
What I like about this website:
- There's always something new to read. It's constantly changing and being updated by people who watch the same things that I do and different things, too.
- I can contribute as much as I want and if I'm wrong or if someone disagrees (not always the same thing), we can discuss it.
- Wild mass guessing - some of the contributions are really good.
What I dislike on this website:
- When people use narmy natter to say nothing or to disagree, especially things like:
- To be fair or to tell the truth when used to disagree. Usually this is purposeless. I naturally assume someone is being fair and truthful when they say something and only think they're not being fair if their statements are based on an obvious personal bias.
- When someone uses an old cliche, like What part of __ didn't you undertand... especially when the person is wrong!
- When people can't see past their own beliefs and think everyone should believe the way they do, especially about religion, politics, and economics.
Recently watched:
- Mad Men: I've made it through about eight episodes. I think it's pretty good so far, if not a little slow. I like it that the show uses the social values of the time and doesn't try to modernize it to make it fit. Some examples:
- Women are treated poorly in the workplace, including the notion that women only work so/until they fine a husband.
- Pregnant women smoke and everyone smokes around children, including one pregnant woman who smokes and rocks a baby's crib with a cigarette in her hand.
- In one scene, a drunk man is about to get behind the wheel. Another guy sees him doing this and yells at him to turn on the headlights.
- A man observes another man's son misbehaving, so he slaps the kid in the face. The kid's father sees it and yells at the kid for misbehaving.
- The body types and clothing styles also fit, including many of the haircuts, frumpy, lumpy bras, and the hourglass figures of some of the women. One of the biggest distractions in other shows (MASH, for example), is the anachronistic hair in every episode.
- The Lucky Ones: A movie (with Tim Robbins, Rachel Mc Adams, and Michael Pena) about three soldiers home on leave from Iraq and the cross-country journey they take together. I liked this movie. I found a lot of the dialogue to be original and somewhat realistic. Some odd things about the movie:
- Soldiers on leave from Iraq get 15 days of leave. In this movie, they each got 30 days. This would have been true for Cheaver (Robbins) who was returning home for good, but the other two would have gotten 15 days.
- The soldiers are stranded in New York after a power outage. When soldiers come back from Iraq for leave, they take a charter plane, which goes to either Dallas or Atlanta. Being stranded the way they were in New York would have been impossible.
- When soldiers go on leave from Iraq, they're required to wear their uniforms until they get home. They're also required to e in uniform when they're returning from leave. And, they're not allowed to drink when they are on travel orders. They can drink when they get home, but not en route.
- Caprica Season 1.5. I like this show, but I have a few observations **Warning! Unmarked spoilers ahead!**:
- I know, based on the re-imaged series, that there's a certain level of spirituality that has to be involved in the series, but I don't really care for the character of Clarice Willow. I think she would have been better as a less prominent character, instead of bing in the limelight all the time. That's just my opinion, though. I don't know how I would have written it differently to make her any less prominent.
- In the fourth episode of Season 1.5, there's an element of Zoe seeing another version of herself similar to the way Baltar would see Number Six all the time throughout the BSG series. To me, this already seems like a repeat of what played out there, but in this instance, Zoe starts having memories of this (guardian angel?) person from way back to when she was a little girl and this person saved her from the fire she was in somehow? Maybe I didn't pay attention closely enough. Later, it's revealed that this is an avatar that Zoe created of herself and that Zoe is some kind of programming wizard who is so talented that she puts her dad to shame. I don't really care for that part of the storyline, but I did like how the season ended. I think they closed up a lot of loose ends in the last episode.
- In the final episode, when the Cylons are in the stadium and they're getting into their combat formations and stopping the bombs from being detonated, I thought this was a pretty cool sequence, especially the part where they Cylons all pile on top of the guy with the explosives strapped to himself.
Some pet-peeves:
- I'm pretty easy-going, but I have things that just bug me sometimes. Some examples appear below.
- I hate someone to try to manage my time for me. If you want me there at 3:00, tell me to be there at 3:00. If something starts at 3:00, but you want me to be there at 2:30, tell me that. Don't tell me it starts at 1:45 and make me sit around looking for you when you arrive at 2:30. I say this because that's exactly how a recent experience went.
- I don't like liver. Don't try to make me eat it. Don't cook it and say, "Here, you're going to love it." I won't taste it no matter what you say. When I tell you I won't eat liver, don't tell me, "You haven't had it the way I make it."
- You can tell me what you think. I'll listen to a healthy dose of that most of the time. You can ask me what I think. I'll usually tell you. Don't ever tell me what I think. Even if I've just told you what I think, I don't want to hear it second-hand. People tend to do this when they have a strong military or political opinion about something and think I have an opposite opinion, to include what I think should happen next. They're rarely right.
I'll come back later to post some examples of tropes that are related to myself.
