Where's my blog? Indy 4 So we did our pilgrimage to Indiana Jones 4 during opening weekend, and wow, that was the first time in a while where a movie felt like an event. Sitting and waiting in line for seats was a good chance to catch up on conversation. We talked about different hat styles and what's in or out of fashion. Apparently, there's a Darth Vader visor that people wear while driving instead of just sunglasses. It, like, covers your whole front of the face like a motorcycle helmet, but no helmet part. Have you seen those before? Are they supposed to be cool or tacky? It seems like some hats are already out of style like that safari outdoor one that covers your sideburns. What's interesting is that people are wearing baseball caps to a 10pm summer movie showing. People really love their hats. The theaters aren't cycling those same old slide shows when it comes to half-hour before trailer time. Now there's this full program of aggressive media marketing which includes movie trailers and interviews. I think it worked out pretty well, hyping up some movies and TV shows better than the standard preview intended for general audiences. I felt like I could possibly put some of that on Netflix instead of the regular trailers. How come I don't see this kind of quality when I have to sit through TV commercials? Oh yeah, I'm paying full price to see a movie, nevermind. Oh, and get this, they summarize all the ads for that half hour at the end of that program, like we're at some Jerry Springer "what did we learn today" moment. Heh. The movie itself was a fun experience considering that I knew NOTHING about the show except for the title, that any half-minute of trailer would have ruined that effect. I didn't even know which actors were in it until their names flashed on the screen, and then, depending on the name, I'd set my expectations. Some people say it was bleh, and others say it's comparable to the previous Indy flicks. But the plot definitely has a George Lucas (and Spielberg) influence, especially certain plot elements that, if they didn't champion the genre 20-30 years ago, they'd be accused of plagiarizing all the similar kinds of treasure hunting movies. TV.com activity In the tv.com world, I've been busy whittling down more duplicates. Magic Knight Rayearth got a nice overhauling, freeing up at least three duplicate guides. I had 12 on my foreground list; I think it's down to about 4 now, not counting MovieTome transfers. I also retired from three guides for shows I have close to zero percent interest in watching. At least their show-level cast lists are in good shape thanks to that cast reordering tool, although that tool does present other headaches. The Union's been dealing with some fun activities thanks to angelandspike, who managed to get staff to allocate and transfer movietome credits for one of the first major actors in movie history. Pretty cool. We started a thread for more transfers, hoping that will be a trend. We're also dealing with an interesting situation where two actors not only share the exact same stage name, but they also work on shows within the same production studio. Yet one of them claims to not be the other person, but an email posted last year says she worked on that other person's shows. Clones separated by birth? I have no idea! If only those two actors would be consistent and post resumes and photos, and then all would be clear. Jump to the TV.com Actor and Show Duplicate Assimilation Union I've hopefully saved the best for last when it comes to Cowboy Bebop and all those gun-totin' anime shows. Ten episodes in, and it's living up to the hype, and if it has enough family appeal, may have a good shot at cracking my top ten. What's your viewing habit? My "Plan to Watch" list is growing ridiculously large it made me think about how I should approach watching some of these show offerings: 1. TV.com Contributor view - look for quotes, notes, cast, and all sorts of things to contribute. Consider recaps. That seems to be my preferred habit for shows, but it also consumes a lot of energy, that I've slowed down on it. 2. Background filler view - having it play in the background while doing other chores and occasionally look up for a laugh. 3. Speed Racer view - put it on fast forward like a lecture to get through it and digest all I can in the shortened period so I can finish a boxset in a week. 4. Regular TV view - I remember these days. I still like this method, minus the commercials. Oh, I did get to see finales for Earl and the Office, and got some much needed chuckles from those on an otherwise really crappy May month. Question: Now that seasons are wrapping up, how are you approaching your TV and Boxset watching?

Do people channel surf anymore? My earliest channel surfing memories are of turning the UHF knobs as it streams through fuzzy static channels and rabbit earring until something kind of shows up and wow, it's usually something cool from hundreds of miles away! Then came the TV's with the first digital keypad and I'd be busy pressing 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, all the way up to 8-2, before it would refuse the entry, 'cause back then, TV manufacturers didn't think anyone would care to watch more than 82 possible channels. The remote control legitimized channel surfing. I remember the days when we'd press the same button over and over until some viral video like segment would show up for less than a minute and disappear to be surfed again. A good TV was one that changed channels the fastest, so satellite access was a losing proposition. Some remotes even had preprogrammed favorite channels button, so surfing became really convenient. People were concerned about couch potatoes back then, but I suppose that hasn't changed. Surfing took a backseat when TV listings started appearing on screen. Instead of watching clips of anything, I would be staring at a scrolling list, hoping that the channel I'm interested in would show up, but only to have to sit through useless information about channels I don't have, and then learn that the listings had moved onto to the next half-hour block. But hey that was common practice when the financial news shows were pulling the same shenanigans with the scrolling ticker tape. When that channel started having its own programming and then moved to Digital cable land, I didn't really miss that option. Tivo brought a decent revival of surfing. With hundreds of channels as opposed to tens, and the convenience of having a built-in video recorder and player, it was cool to watch two channels on the same television. But it also suffered from half of the shows being Unavailable unless I subscribed to triple digit premium services that would burn my budget faster than gas prices. One would think broadband would mean the end of the art of channel surfing. But while it becomes convenient to watch exactly what I want to see, I find that people are still wanting to watch whatever random crap is out there without any interest in the title, and only for the few seconds before moving on to something else.. I suppose if I wanted to relive old school channel surfing, I can just tune into local radio and bounce between my presets and scanning all the available stations that are within reach. It might mean having to listen to the same old sponsors to hock their donate a car program, weight loss pills, biased political ads, car insurance that doesn't mean jack if you're accident prone, or ads for television shows I can't watch while driving. But it does give a sample of programming that doesn't seem to be happening anymore on regular TV. Question: What are your favorite channel surfing memories? And do you still regularly channel surf?

Sweeps Month hasn't even started, but for the kinds of shows I enjoy on broadcast/cable TV, it's getting exciting. Doctor Who Season 4 just started on Sci-Fi channel, along with some Sarah Jane Adventures. It's a tall order to come up with as great a story arc like Doctor Who Season 3, but hey, self-contained episodes are fine too. Lost also resumes, and no matter how often I miss of the show, whatever few minutes I do watch, I always seem to get pulled right back in. My sister and her friends are really into BSG, even sharing the seemingly popular "What the frak" youtube video at a recent gathering. On the video world, we just finished Torchwood Season 1 on DVD, a decent season finale that seemed at times to pull some threads from the sci-fi anime world. I had been informed about the sexual orientation of one of the actors, just in time for one of the episodes to seal the deal. I can't wait for season 2 to come out on DVD. If only I could order BBC America and Disney a la carte, and toss out all the other cable channels, that would be so worth it. And of course, PBS. Thinking back and watching some of those old Britcoms still has me belly laughing. I'm also done with season 4 of Dragonball Z, whose theme song lyric graces my title this week. I watched this mostly fast-forward style; I also attempted to do that on a drama series, like Death Note, but it didn't work at all; too many words spoken and things to think about. But for something like DBZ with lots of fighting and combat, it seems to work fine. That kind of leaves a gap in my "what to watch next" block. It was only a month ago that I had about eight anime shows I was watching at the same time, and now it's down to two, and now one: Rumbling Hearts, which is the first anime I've seen where teens have actually slept together. Guess they have been watching Smallville or something. It reminds me a lot of St. Elmo's Fire; not the "girlfriend in a coma" premise, but the whole "we're no longer in high school anymore" feeling. I know some of the pre-tagging duplicates have been driving many of my Union buddies nuts, so I'm continuing on cleaning up those entries first. My hot list for pre-tagged ones is at: 12 foreground ones (announced at the union) and 22 background ones, not counting the big ones for Rockman, Yakitate, or Super Sentai. Although it doesn't help that MovieTome recently turned off Editing Cast/Crew for some unknown reason. Jump to the TV.com Actor and Show Duplicate Assimilation Union On the vaguely TV-related front, I am having a blast reading those Pigeon books (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus) by Mo Willems. If his writing for the TV series Codename: Kids Next Door is anything like that series, there is hope for US cartoons after all. Hope you enjoy sweeps month and find a series you can cheer for. If not, there are always sports teams, politics, and the Olympics. Oh wait, I'm being redundant. Question: Do you, or would you, buy boxsets for reality shows?

See dju010 blog See TheOldBill's blog It wasn't so long ago that someone created a US version of one of my Japanese anime guides and then proceeded to copy information over just because it had a different title on ColoursTV. My guide had a team of four folks who worked hard on filling recaps, summaries, and detailed cast lists of regularly 30-40 people times 2 language versions. After several months, we finally got the guide to go away. The editor who had pushed for the second guide was fairly bitter, labelling my guide as a duplicate, but staff supported my plea. I've been PM'ing staff on duplicate show guides to delete. I find that two editors have two guides that cover the exact same show and translation. That's worked pretty well, that is, until the current situation where staff wants to create duplicate guides for identically broadcast shows just because they are aired in the US with slight tweaks instead of the UK? Not only that, but they are doing the copying summaries, cast lists, and recaps from the existing guide? Why? It's the same show! This isn't the 1980's where they completely changed a show like Samurai Pizza Cats, Macross / Robotech, Super Sentai / Power Rangers. Why can't secondary airdates and channels be added to the guides? That would solve everything. It would allow users to select language and nation preferences on what would be listed first, and preserve all those useful episode Notes about cuts in language version. Guides would be far more comprehensive by saying "hey this show aired originally in Australia in 1998, but the Disney version aired in 2002" EDIT: If things continue the way they are, they might as well split up The Sopranos and Sex and the City for their syndicated versions as presented on TBS. I'm sure Ted Turner would love to influence TV.com in that direction. EDIT 2: Alternatively, just LEAVE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE and we'll take care of it. Many top 20 guides, including Naruto, support both versions happily; they even update to the US version with the airdates and titles! That's how you successfully run a multi-language version guide. Or just look at the ones I have. It works. Jump to the TV.com Actor and Show Duplicate Assimilation union Please PM staff on your opinions and spread the word.

I don't think staff will be fixing any friends blog issues anytime soon, so I'll probably just use my Contacts List for blopping. I am also considering the A-Z method instead of the chronological catch-up because of that, although that reminds me of The Far Side comic where Noah tells the animals to line up in alphabetical order, and the zebras think of the equivalent of "D'oh!" Consolidation update: Thanks to folks in the Union and other contributors, I was able to submit about 40 sets of duplicate names for deletion this past weekend, which is about a third of my hit list, excluding the big offenders. Some of the names have sat there over a year, so it was good to finally get them to a state where they can go away. Unfortunately the search bugs hit this past weekend in full force, so guides may not show the changes. I still have a large number of guides that I've pre-marked as duplicate before learning last week that folks aren't keen on that idea, but I still defend the practice as people are rapidly adopting doubles faster than moving duplicates. I noticed a lot more folks are picking up those pre-tags and consolidating them. That's nice, but please let me know if it's one of those that I might have been working on; would hate to see a line of rejections for "already submitted". Two of the major offending guides, Yakitate Japan, which alone has 30+, and Rockman EXE, which has 12+, have been claimed by editors that know what they are doing, so that's good news. On a related note, if you're allocating people with those Roman numeral designations, please write up short bios wherever you can. It's good to see John Adams (IV), but still a pain to guess which one. Also if your names are very popular, don't bother marking the duplicate outside of the Roman numeral, in case some new actor/crew needs to be added, there ya go. But what really needs to be fixed is the Search and then the MovieTome propagation, not to mention the ability to Add MovieTome credits. And then if staff could respond to the "delete a person" requests and send us PM's if no action will be taken at that time. Jump to the TV.com Actor and Show Duplicate Assimilation union I've also been adding Manga Corollaries to some of my guides. These are those notes that tell you when the storyline and plot elements from an anime show was actually based off of the comic book set, and whether there were significant differences in adaptation. I've found them to be useful and hope that becomes a continuing trend in making the best guides on the Internet. The Censor Bug is still annoying. A simple cosmetic changes such as turning Regular Episode to Special or fixing an airdate now becomes full-on recap editing. But what is also annoying is Word introducing its own form of spelling corrections, like "Haven Brothers diner, Rhode Island" somehow getting butchered up into "heaven brother dines, Rhodes islands." If that's going to happen, then maybe the recap CP award should be some high value and then allow CP-optional editing in the next hour from editors to correct for crap like that. I've also been focusing on filling in recent episodes of The Today Show, which regularly has a huge number of guest stars as well as correspondents. If your non-TV industry person needs those three appearances to justify a guide, try the talk shows, as they seem to bring in the same editors from related magazines and plenty of celebrities. The crediting of non-TV industry folks can be interesting. Is it really better to list "Kitty - offended mom" and "Angus - got bitten by alligator" or just that they were guests on the show? Question: Do you prefer TV shows with mostly new actors, experienced actors, or zero (reality) actors? Sometimes I like seeing the fresh faces, but it pains me to see them not learn on the job or have to wait a few seasons to see if they get better. Other times, I'd like to see veterans of the theater and musicals finally get their big break into television. And sometimes I just get impatient and demand quality, as in actors at the top of their game. I find most shows these days tend to have a wide array of new faces, and maybe the token veteran actor to connect with the old schoolers. Perhaps they just rely on an experienced writing staff instead? How about movies? Same idea? Finally, wanted to wish everyone doing taxes good luck and don't stress too much! :)

If you're on my friends list, and you've posted a blog recently, but it hasn't shown up on my recent blogs list, could you let me know? There seems to be a bug where adding friends using the PM link or the My Contacts page is not properly working. Thanks. Those who already are connected, check your blogs for the same issue with your friends? Hope everyone is doing well!

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ Happy Paddy Day! ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ I've put way too much energy into everything but my blog. The big item this week is Duplicate Shows, and opening up the Duplicates union to tackle discussion of shows that need help in there. If you edit a show, this is your chance to get some of that squared away, or at least get it debated on, before the powers that be take a swipe at it. Hopefully what I have makes sense. I threw in some examples. This isn't as fun as regular duplicates because many guides have editors and we get put under the heat for the guide's shape or lack of it. Big thanks to danbambridge who has been handling many of the recent consolidations of pro wrestlers. Jump to the TV.com Actor and Show Duplicate Assimilation union In other news, I wrote up four more Doodlebops recaps, and one for the latest Wiggles video (Pop Goes the Wiggles, which also features Paul Paddick playing a jack-in-the-box). Still got a full set of tapes to review for more missing episodes. Unfortunately with the poor man's tivo (videotapes), some videos have one episode I missed somewhere in the middle, and that means I can't reuse the tape. Got to catch a little more of the current season Lost but I still feel like I'm way behind on my boxsets. Something about 10-13 hours worth to watch is just overwhelming. Well of the ones I did see, I completed watching Season 1 of Dragonball Z Remastered. It's a lot of fun hearing the Japanese music version and subtitles. You can see where it got censored up for Cartoon Network broadcast or whether things are explained better in one version vs. another. The last disc I had to hear in Japanese only because it's a Bulma centered storyline, and a great opportunity to hear Hiromi Tsuru in action. I've also been watching a lot of the Scholastic 100 boxset. These are old fashioned animations of children's stories like Harry the Dirty Dog or Curious George Rides a Bicycle. I've gotten from the library before, but now I own it, whether I like it for not, but if it gets the little ones to read then that'll be good. Question: Name a boxset you've finished this year (watching every episode), and one that you want to see.

I was thinking about some of the new shows coming out, and one title caught my eye, well ear, because I was listening to the radio, and that's "Your momma don't dance and your daddy don't rock-n-roll." While this is yet another reality contest show, what I found interesting is that the TV series got named after the song. So I had to go back and think about TV series and movies that followed a similar trend. I'm not talking about shows where the song and movie were popularized together like 9 to 5, or White Christmas (oops scratch that...see comments below), or music video concerts, but where some producer needed a catchy title and resorted to quoting a song title/lyric. So far I've come up with: What's love got to do with it? - Well, this is fair because it's actually a Tina Turner biography. Same with La Bamba with Ritchie Valens or Walk the Line. One Tree Hill. - I know it's a catchy series, but what would it be if U2 didn't popularize the name? Californication - This show recently got sued by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The TV producers claim it's just a popular catchphrase. Um, okay. I guess the series isn't really about family values. Something to Talk About - Um it has Julia Roberts, and she did star in Pretty Woman which is also a movie based on a song. Well the latter did have an excellent soundtrack and made her a gazillion dollar star. Sweet Home Alabama - how many times do they play the Skynyrd song in this film? Bad Boys - It's a Jerry Bruckheimer clas$ic with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. American Pie - no chevys in the levee, or thoughts of suicide with this teenage sex comedy. Very few of these titles have become more famous than their pop song, at least with this generation. The rest just have me humming the theme song or pondering the title throughout the show, which distracts from the content. Question: Got any favorite movies or TV shows based off of song titles? Or what song would make a great TV series or movie title someday?

There's been discussion over whether editors should have private profiles here, and while most of it is over how we can better contact those editors in case of questions and MIA status, I've found an interesting coincidence that some of the actors that I edit have turned their MySpace profiles to private in the midst of my researching them. At first, I'm like D'oh, did I offend the person? Have I dug too deeply into their lives? But that really isn't a fair assumption. It's been public knowledge all this time, for everyone to see. It's still in the search engine. It seems ironic that a public figure would not want to take advantage of something like MySpace or Youtube for publicity, especially someone who hardly registers on the radar as a TV celebrity. After working so hard to get themselves on TV, now they don't want to be known? But perhaps it's because, like everyone, they want that guarded privacy to be able to just chat and goof off with their family and friends. Hey I'm all for that. Although as a side thing, I do like to learn about people's pets and see if they have a woof-woof like me. One solution is to maintain two profiles. Got the public one to make fans plenty happy as they add the person as a "friend". And then the private one for personal family and friends communication. Twice as much work but worth the boundary setting. So along those lines, it would be nice if actors kept up with their public blog and provided more outlets to voice news on their upcoming projects. Some actors do quite well on maintaining their official sites, and when I read through them, my respect for their media work usually grows, and I get excited sharing that on the blogs and subs here, and also someday meet them at some event. But other pages are so incomplete and full of Coming Soons that it's almost like some guides here and MIA editors. I have no clue what they have been doing; they haven't posted to their fan club e-mail lists in months and the only messages I see there are the few fans who say the same thing to every related group, and the spam invites from them biker chicks. I think it's a greatly missed opportunity for actors to not want to communicate with fans, even if it's a one-sided conversation in the form of a blog. Another option would be to get involved in TV.com and post subs or send PM's about correcting their data. This at least gives me the impression that they do care about how this site and others are representing them, and firms up a ton of items that might have been gathered from secondary sources and hearsay. It also sets the level of privacy on their public information that has embarrassed sites like wikipedia to the point of having to declare that they require sources for their information, something this site had required from the start. I feel honored when actual writers and actors have contacted me and set things right, well, when they do it nicely and professionally. Finally, getting involved here provides a channel in which they can communicate directly to staff and maybe get those coveted pictures, banners, and interviews added to their profiles. That boosts publicity and makes editors happy. And we all like that idea.

First, I would like to give thanks to deershadow for trusting me with Black Cat. It's a nice action packed series with a great Funimation dub. Some say it may be too anime/cartoon cliché, but that's part of the fun. I'm also recommending Director Winry's cut of Suzuka, a cute teenage romance anime with a plot that would make any romantic comedy movie proud. Jump to the Actor Duplicate Assimilation Board Thanks also to everyone who participated in nostalgia cartoon week. If today's voice actors could even come close to the sound effects of Don Messick, Mel Blanc, or Frank Welker, I'd be quite surprised. Of course no one would ever dare do that these days without embarrassing themselves at an audition. Maybe Dave Coulier since he was so fond of Bullwinkle, or that guy in Police Academy. Also, thank you all for answering about the blops and the PM's. Glad to know correspondence is still good and if not, there's a chance to improve it. Ever wonder how people get picked for the Community Spotlight? Read this forum thread Community Spotlight to make sure you are even in the running. Tired of having to clean out apostrophes, quotes, accent symbols, arrows, and hyphens that get flagged by the HTML bug error? Try using the (span)your text here(/span) tags (replace parentheses with the usual left and right arrows. In fact, just do the whole text that you're going to put in. It even works on episode titles. Hooray! I was pondering Lost's flash-forward tactic, now that they're committing the whole fourth season to it. It's one way to minimize spoilers to the when and how. We learn some folks are "safe" and get off the island, but that only brings anticipation on who's left that we care about. Kind of like watching Indiana Jones 4 or any movie where all the good bits are in the trailers. Has this what the Internet and broadband television brought us to? The followup show Eli Stone is starting to grow on me. Even though it's still a snoring lawyer show, it's obvious that it's trying to catch some Ally McBeal and Dream On vibes with the nostalgia daydreams. I dunno. I miss Life. No, I miss Veronica Mars. Question of the Blog: 1. We made use of the portable DVD player this month by hooking it up to the car stereo, and there was some nice movie quality sound. That got me thinking, if you got to listen to a movie and NOT be able to see it, which one would you pick? 2. Same question, but with a TV Series. Oh, and if you're vision impaired, a special thanks for taking the time to read my blog with whatever program you use to do it.