The remodel is certainly impressive. The building itself was expanded to fill a city block and comprises the first four floors of the new Washington Mutual building. The original gallery space on the South end of the block hasn’t reopened yet and will soon feature special exhibits. The new Brotman Forum housed a brightly lit hanging Ford exhibit (see photo above) and served as a dance floor for an all night rave hosted by local djs.

The expansion of the galleries now gives the museum a more majestic feel, but it lost some of it’s intimate atmosphere. The techno beats and alcohol-soaked smell of humanity rising from the dance floor created an unusual ambiance for viewing art, but it was certainly an experience to be had. We had to leave by 2am to get the car out of the lot, leaving several galleries unexplored, so I look forward to a calmer return visit.

I think this is cool feature heading in the right direction, but the usability still has a long way to go. First, typing in a long feed url letter by letter into the remote is a pain, and once the url ran off the screen so we could not read what LeAnn was typing. Second, and surprisingly, playback lacks the ability to pause and bloop-bloop (rewind/fast-forward) that you would expect to be the same as watching TV recordings. Third, I couldn’t get it to access this video podcast, but I’m not sure if this is due to the fact that the site uses Feedburner.

Still, I think this is great step in bringing web 2.0 into the living room, and from what I’ve heard the Comcast DVR doesn’t yet have anything like this.

A couple of geeks are sitting around an Alienware pc playing Big Car Heist, the latest rpg from Punkster Games. One of them, Tim Wade, a.k.a. Pop-I, wonders if there are any hidden games to be unlocked. Mike Bradford, a.k.a Vitamin Be, discovers a hack that enables them to unlock a secret sex mini-game hidden in the code. They decide to publish their mod under the name “Soy macchiato” on the net. That’s when their troubles begin. Parents of young children across the country are outraged that their kids could access graphic sex on an “M” rated game, so they write angry letters to Punkster Games. Punkster agrees to change the rating to “X”, but the C.E.O., Peter Gaston, a.ka. Blue Crush, decides to get revenge. He invests some of his millions of dollars earned from pre-teen sales of Big Car Heist to pay off the F.B.I. to spy on Pop-I and Vitamin Be. Since Pop-I’s wireless network has an easily guessable password, the F.B.I. are able to monitor their web surfing habits. Pop-I is arrested for publishing a mod for Robotron and Vitamin Be escapes to work at a technical support desk in India. Also, all of the characters ride around on Segways and a climatic scene will involve the phrase “mod the planet.”

Angelina Jolie is rumored to be “interested,” but could not be reached for comment.