I quit watching regular television long ago. I have virtually never regretted this decision. I have a couple good friends, notably Sandor, who tell me what's good and hook me up with DVDs from time to time. About a year and a half ago when I was at his place, he showed me the Firefly set, and told me about how cool they were. We forgot to take it with us when we left, and consequently forgot all about it. When we visited last May, he raved about it again. We took it with us this time, with his wife explaining that it pained her to let it leave the apartment.

For those that don't know the history of the show, it's basically a Western set in space. Think Star Wars, but with Han Solo as the main character. Only it's better than that. But the show only lasted around a dozen episodes due to the gross incompetence of the people who pick what goes on TV. For instance, the pilot was shown last, and a number of the shows were out of sequence.

Vrusczyk and I, of course, loved the show. Apparently, when it was released on DVD, it did astounding business. But it was over far too soon - 14 or so episodes. Perhaps it was cancelled because it was expensive, or because the morons in Fox TV mishandled it. I think it was because the show was intelligent. Check it out for yourself.

This is a glaring example of why I quit watching TV. Instead of Firefly, you get CSI. I watched 5 minutes of CSI, in which I identified 3 factual errors (including 'the terminal velocity of a human falling is 32 feet per second squared' ) and then turned the TV off laughing.

So, why am I blogging about a TV show? It's now a movie, and hopefully I'm going to a pre-screening on Monday (Ok, ok, I'm blogging the thing to get tickets, but, hey, I win major points with vrusczyk for having a blog that lets us get early tickets - we'll be out of the country for the first 9 days the movie is out, so we won't get to see it. Plus, we can taunt Sandor once we've seen it.)

Anyway, here's the obligatory plug:

Joss Whedon, the OscarR - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family -squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

I don't think the plug does it justice. I've seen a few minutes here and there of Angel at the gym and, well, Joss saved his brains for Firefly. . .

So now, hopefully, I'm off to the movies on Monday, and on the way, I'll have to think about creative advertising, which certainly this is for Serenity. Loosely in that vein, I've been thinking of what sort of other cool free stuff AoPS could develop. I'm starting to think that developing things like the Forum are the best form of advertising, because not only do they bring people to the site, but more importantly, they are simply worth doing in the first place. Most advertising consists of pushing your product on the observer. It's much more satisfying, as someone who runs a business, to create something of value that brings people to you. I think about advertising far too infrequently, but I think this is a good thought. . .