Category: Television

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I think I’m beginning to feel how my friend Jess feels. She’s the producer of the newscast in the club I’m in. I’m the producer of the game show. Both of our shows will be taped within two days of each other, so any stress we might be feeling is somewhat similar in strength, only separated by two days.

Most of the stuff I have to do pertains to printing out various pieces of paper, which I know I can do. Others pertain to getting things, which I also know I can do. I’ve got a pretty decent schedule lined up, so as long as I follow that, everything on it will get done with plenty of time to spare.

Here’s what’s different…talent. I’ve got my host and co-host, and she’s got her anchors, all people who are very reliable and hard working. However, I’ve also got three additional wild cards to look after. I call them wild cards because I don’t have any names or faces to put to them yet. They are the contestants for the show, and right up until before we start our actual shoot, I don’t know if they’ll show up. It’s happened before; a set of contestants got drunk the previous night, and decided they’d have hangovers rather than acting responsible. And there’s been others.

Most contestants we’ve had are reliable people. They show up, play the game, and enjoy the free food. But there’s been the unreliable ones. What’s worse is that right now we have nobody on the roster, so that’s getting to me a bit. If I don’t find someone by Wednesday, I’m going to have to really go looking for people. Maybe not even Wednesday, because that day, I have class until around 6:30pm, but which time dinner at the dining hall is only on for another 45 minutes. If it comes to that, though, I’ll just suck it up and go looking there.

I hope not, though. Between the beginning of the semester and now, we’ve had plenty sign up. Though, three can’t do it this weekend, since they all want to play together. So, I think there’s still more than enough on the list, but if they can’t do it, or not enough, then we’ve gotta search.

Then once I have them, they actually have to show up. Not only that, but I’ve got two other things to worry about on game day: making sure everything looks good, and then (for this show), I’ve got to direct it.

I’m pretty good now, but as the week goes on, I expect my stress level to rise. This is my first one without any help at all, so yea, it’s stressful.

Off to plan!

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Whatever I was going to write about tonight, forget about that. Tonight, I’ll be live-blogging (well, as live as I can get, looking at my TV) the Democratic debate on MSNBC.

I must say, from just a few minutes of watching it, wow. This is unlike any other debate I’ve ever seen. The others so far (both Dems and Republicans) have been solid, stagnant, and just downright yawn-worthy. This one on the other hand, you have Democrats sniping at Democrats, and a pretty active exchange between the moderator and the candidate. Doesn’t seem as though there are many standing rules in this one.

Unfortunately, I think that Tim Russert (the moderator) is having some trouble controlling the candidates, which might not bode well later in the night, when they’re all feeling a little heated. They’ve already exchanged some pretty heated remarks. For example, Mike Gravel lambasted everybody but Dodd and Biden for voting against a resolution calling the Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist organization, which Gravel is basically calling a prelude to a war with Iran.

Update 9:30pm EDT: Seems they’re a little more controlled on questions about if they’ll back Israel if they’d respond to a threat against their security. Also, I don’t think any of them are going to tonight, or ever, speak out against Israel, at least outright. They’d be dead-in-the water. if they do.

Update 9:32pm EDT: Richardson seems to be using the McCain rhetoric on the immigration issue. Didn’t really answer the question, which was about Sanctuary Cities, though. Good answer on it, Biden. The right answer, IMHO.

Obama didn’t really answer the question.

Don’t do it, Dodd……ooooh…not answering the question.

Kucinich isn’t afraid to answer Russert’s question…not my favorite answer, though.

Hilary kind of skirted around it. Not much different from Obama. Interesting explanation for why you wouldn’t stop Sanctuary Cities, though. She has a point that other illegals might not talk if they’d be afraid of being deported. They might be able to find other people, though? Who knows..

Gravel just went off on a tangent completely. Started talking about education or something. Didn’t even try blaming the feds.

Update 9:47PM: If Hilary’s plan really is what she says (I need to study it more before making a final decision), then kudos to that. It’s what I’ve been talking about here. Not exclusively either solution.

Update: 9:50PM: Edward’s solution sounds idealistic. I’m not sure what a President can do about his cabinet’s or VPs healthcare (probably little to nothing), but Congress isn’t going to vote out its own. Sounds good, but isn’t going to happen.

Update 9:54PM: Russert’s going after the candidate’s past management problems. This might get nasty. Don’t know if I like the accusatory tone he’s taking with them though. He’s supposed to be the moderator, not a judge.

Update 10:00PM: “Do you want your children read a book about same-sex princes?”

Edwards: Hard to tell his real answer. “I want my children to decide.”

Obama: More of less, I think, “Yes.”

Clinton: “Parents should decide. And all of you should vote for the hate crimes bill.”

Up to come…Social Security and Medicare.

Update 10:15PM: I’m sorry, I can’t really pay attention to all this economics talk, lol. Lets see…

Richardson: Don’t remove the cap. And the amendment to the constitution to balance the budget sounds stupid. The document is how to run the government, and to open up rights to people who are being denied them. Not for economic policy. That’s why we have a Congress and a process to create laws. Create a binding law in Congress to do it, not an amendment.

Edward’s argument on people making $50 million paying SS tax on only $97,000, while middle class people paying tax on all or almost all their money has some merit, though. Maybe what’d be better (and I though I heard Kucinich say this), but why not tax on a percentage? How about…just throwing out an arbitrary number…say 50%? That way, people making $20,000 are only paying taxes on 10, and people making $20 million, and paying on $10 million?

Of course, can’t do that, because the Republicans would say it’s redistributing the wealth, and vote against it.

Update 10:22PM: On to smoking now…Ban it in public places?

Hilary: Leave it local…no federal law.

Obama: The locals are doing a good job. If they can’t, then yes on federal.

Biden, Kucinich, Edwards and a couple others: YES!

Drinking age…lower?

Biden: No. Counterproductive, and there’s a problem with women drinking while carrying.

Dodd: No

Richardson: No. Need national commitment to rehabilitation.

Gravel: Yes.

Kucinich: Yes. Lets have confidence in young Americans.

Obama, Clinton, Edwards: No.

Lighting round time….lets see who gets under 30.

Obama: No.

Clinton: No.

Biden: He almost got by the challenge with a two word answer, lol.  And he got under it with a more complete one.

Kucinich: No.

Gravel: Yes.

Dodd: No.  So instead he’s going to go way over.

Obama again: Almost got it.

Richardson: No.  WAY OVER.

Ok, back to issues now.

Obama: We can’t get out magically.  Must do it in a way that makes sense.

And a weaving camera.  As a student of television production, that makes me laugh a little.

Update 10:42PM: I think Gravel is a little idealistic on wind power.  Never going to happen in so few years.

Sorry, kind of ignored the rest of the debate.  Was talking to someone on IM.  I like the last question about the baseball, though.

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I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on here before. But, it is true, I’m making a fan video, of the Stargate SG-1 type. More specifically, chronicling the Ori saga as we’ve seen thus far.

I think that the Ori saga has been a good one. If you need a new enemy, where do go but to people who really can claim a godship to millions? Unlike the Goa’uld, they’re not simple technologically superior. The Ori have the cosmic powers to back up their claims.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit of rookie to the Stargate universe, but I think the series was leading up to this. Yes, I know it was to end in both seasons 7 and 8, but I’m glad it didn’t, because this is clearly where it was leading. Unlike some other shows, the writers didn’t sit down and say, “Hey, lets give god-like powers to this group of people.” Ascension, and the abilities associated with it, had already been well established, since at least Season 3. So, it was nothing new, nothing just thrown in to get ratings.

So, I think it is appropriate to try and portray the Ori saga as I see it, because it’s really the climax of the story of the Alterans (both Ancients and Ori). Which is arguably the story of Stargate, SG-1, and Atlantis, since without the Alterans, there would be no Stargate, and thus no show.

Obviously, there won’t be any footage from the upcoming movie, since none has been released yet. It is my hope that by the time I’m done with this longer saga tribute, there will be a trailer (something better than the recent teaser). Then I’ll combine some of this footage and that footage to create my own trailer. Even if there is no official trailer, though, maybe I’ll still create my own trailer. We’ll see.

I’m must say, though, the pre-production process is nothing easy. Not that I though it’d be a walk in the park, given other video projects I’ve done (this will be far easier to do, than say, my independent study from last semester). Mostly, the process is mixing audio, that for which I think I’m nearly done. However, it’s also a process of ripping episodes from my DVD, and there’s a time-consuming process. It takes nearly two hours per episode, although I think that’s because I’m doing it in two passes. Might try for just one. I’ve got three episodes done, but have 12 left! That’s nearly a whole day.

I’m going to do one tonight while I’m sleeping, and maybe I can try for one in the morning during my first class. Then I can do one in the time between the first and second classes, and hopefully get to another during my second class. With any luck, I’ll have most of them done by tomorrow night. Then I can get to the fun part, putting it all together.

I’m not happy with having to use Windows Movie Maker for this, but as I’ve got nothing else, I have no other option. I hope that by the time I get this video done, I’ll have something better. Still deciding on whether to go all out and get Abode Premiere Pro, or stick with Elements until I get a better computer. We shall see.

That’s it for tonight. I was going to do something on Ahmadinejad’s visit, but I’ll wait until he’s actually here and said his bit before I form my response, which will be this week’s episode of Dymersion Video.

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I was just catching the end of Hannity and Colmes.  Hannity was promoting a video that’ll be on his other show on Sunday, saying it’ll EXPOSE THE HYPOCRISY OF GLOBAL WARMING TOTING LIBERALS!!!!!1  Colmes was trying to get Hannity to explain if the video is going to disprove human-influenced elements of global warming, and Colmes would not answer the question!  He just kept promoting the video.  I think it really shows who’s in charge of the show.

Why is it when liberals swerve around a question, a conservative will call them on it, and sometimes viciously.  But, Hannity can do refrain from answering a simple question?  There’s hypocrisy if I’ve seen it.  Yea, democrats attack people on swerving away from a question, too.  But, it seems that conservatives, especially Fox News conservatives, really go after people for it.  Can’t wait to see the video in any case.  Probably it’ll attack some rich person who’s an environmental preservation champion,  but lives in a mansion.  John Edwards by any chance?

On the home front, I’m now well settled back into my dorm.  There’s not so much hypocrisy going on here as there is incompetence.  For the second year in a row, I’ve been robbed of my payrate.  I was supposed to be making $9.65 an hour at my work.  Well, I have my supervisor sign my authorization form, and bring it to student employment.  They tell me I’m not hired.  Well, I know that’s not true, since my advisor sent in his paperwork, and told me so.  So, I go back to him and tell him what I was told.  He calls SE, and they tell him I’m not hired since I’ve gotten a raise?  “What raise?” he says.  “I’m hiring him at the same rate as the new lab assistant.  Some bologna about work study (which I now hate…I’d much rather be on operating fund).  So, after all that talk, I’m back at $9.00.

So, I got thinking the other night.  Who cares how much I’m making an hour?  With work study, I can’t make any more money than has been allocated, anyway.  What does it matter if I get to that amount on $9.00 an hour or $9.65 an hour?  Apparently, Student Employment does.  I just wish there was some way I could be put on operating fund.  Someone else can have my work study, I don’t care.  I just want to make $9.65 an hour, like was advertised for the position.  This is the second year you people have taken money away from me.  Try pulling that kind of thing in the so-called “real world,” and the labor boards would eat you up.

If getting “punk’d” out of pay wasn’t enough, the cable company decided they weren’t greedy enough already, and had to pull something, too.  Usually, they come to campus the first week to sell cable service to students.  Unlike UConn, we don’t have it incorporated into our tuition, though it’d undoubtedly be easier that way.  Last year, they were in the support services building (home to the infamous Student Employment).  This year, they had some really good deals, compared to previous years.  Well, what do I have to do to get these deals?  Not go to support services like last year, but to the parking lot of the baseball field.  Not, unlike most campuses, they baseball field isn’t on the main campus.  Instead, it’s over a mile away, separated by a major U.S. highway off-ramp.  Not that you’ll get killed passing it on foot, but come on!  If they want to get the most students for their time, they should actually be in a location that’ll get them out and buying cable!  Going to the baseball was stupid, although from what I overheard, it worked for the most part.  Luckily, I was able to get a ride there, so I now have cable.  But come on Charter, don’t be stupid again.  Not that I care anymore personally, since this is the last time I’ll have to get it myself.

Also, can’t wait for tomorrow.  New computer day!  Finally, I’ll have Firewire ports, and am looking into getting some kind of editing program.  Something better than Windows Movie Maker, anyway.  Probably it’ll be Adobe, but we’ll see.  Sony’s express Vegas program is looking pretty nice, too.  I am a little worried about how long this computer will last (since people seem to say it doesn’t live up to how much it costs), but I consider that the computer has had both memory and hard drive replaced in not too long of a period, and that gives me some hope.  Not that I like that two major hardware components were replaced in a relatively short time.  On the other hand, I know they were replaced with quality components, so we’ll see how things go.

Time to get ready for bed.

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I don’t know what Fox was playing at this time.  They’ve had some pretty stupid ideas, and although this one doesn’t quite take the cake, it comes close.

For those not in the know, it was a semi-reality series starring Lauren Jones, a model who used to work for Bob Barker, who wants to become an anchorwomen at KYTX in Tyler, Texas.  What’s stupid about the show is that you can’t just look for anchor talent, the same way you can like on American Idol.  Anyone who’s spent any decent amount of time in the industry knows no person will taken seriously as an anchor unless they’ve actually done some reporting.  You don’t automatically get the chair, you earn it.  So, to think that somebody can just go up and actually do it straight away is kind of ridiculous.

Well, it was canceled after one show, which is pretty typical with a lot of their shows: they just don’t make it.  Oh well, there’s always modeling or acting for her.

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I speak of this three-day mini-series as something of an outsider. I am not really religious, and so I hope that gives me something of a more objective viewpoint on the program.

For those who don’t know, “God’s Warriors” was a three-day mini-series by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the investigates fundamentalism in the three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I think I already know what most of the fundamentalists of each of these religions would say: that it was biased and hateful toward their religion. They might also say that overall, the program attacks religion.

I’m not so sure on that. Now, I know that CNN isn’t the most balanced of network’s, but what of the big three cable networks can say they are? Certainly not MSNBC or Fox News. On the other hand, I think that for the most part, it was pretty objective. It didn’t seem to try to promote any opinions about certain religions. And it gave both sides of the equation a voice. What I mean by that is while the fundamentalists got a chance to talk about what they do to promote a more conservative following of their religion, it also gave a chance for some of the more moderate, and even downright liberal, wings to say what they see as a theft of their faith by the other side. If anything, the program gave even more time to the fundamentalists.

If I do have any objections to the program, it’s some possibly unnecessary mixing of the true extremists (i.e. suicide bombers) with those that simply see the religion as a way of life. Even then, however, I do think they try to take some lengths to separate those two kinds of followers.

I’m not going to get into the nitpick details of each night. Just wanted to say that I personally found the mini-series a rather illuminating narrative.

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Update (Fri, 6/29): The anonymous contributor who wrote the bit about Nancy Benoit’s death seems to have spoken at last. He claims it was all a coincidence, so apparently I was wrong. But, was I? I still think that this contributor, whoever he or she is, is going to get a visit by Stamford police, once they’ve tracked the person down. At the very least, I feel they’ll get a statement from the person. If it goes further than that, we’ll find out.

I know I said I’d speak more about the Veep today, but that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Now, I’m not a professional wrestling watching guy. I’ve only seen it a few times, and really haven’t liked what I’ve seen. Steroid slurping guys beating each over the head, all for a pre-determined outcome just doesn’t do it for me. However, I can’t get past that many of them seem to have died because of what they do.

The latest death of a wrestler is that of Chris Benoit. This thing is a mystery like I’ve never seen. On the surface, it seems simple. Guy takes steroids, alcohol, and maybe drugs. Gets angry, or mentally diseased, kills wife and son, and then hangs himself. Simple, right? Case in the bag, right? Maybe not so much.

It’s now been revealed in the media (and anyone with a working knowledge of Wikipedia can look this up themselves), someone altered his Wikipedia article at 12:01am on Monday, 14 hours before the bodies were found. This is either the biggest the world has ever seen, or somebody else knows what’s going on. Now, I’m not going to second guess the police, but if someone did have knowledge of these deaths, the Stamford (, CT, where the posting took place from) police need to find out who it is. Even if it was just a coincidence, somebody in Stamford just found themselves in between a rock and a tight place. And no, it cannot have been Benoit who did it, as he hails from, and was found dead in, Georgia.

What with his doctor’s (who prescribed him testosterone) office being raided, and the new wife of Benoit’s wife’s ex-husband found dead 10 days before the Benoit family (though this is one that is more acceptable as a coincidence), the mystery just gets deeper. I think that we may find out someone knew something was wrong with the Benoit family. How much they knew, I can’t tell.

In all of this, I feel most sorry for the son, who has a severe medical condition, and which reportedly had his parents fighting over how to treat him. The son hardly deserved for his life to be cut short. It is a shame. Obviously, unless we find out something else, I don’t really feel sorry for Benoit.

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I never seem to get these up when I’d like. Anyway…

After seeing the GOP debate on CNN, I’m not sure I want to see the Democrat one. I heard it was a big shouting match, anymore. More than that, however, this debate was unfairly unbalanced, to say the least. The numbers are in, and show that the front runners – Giuliani, McCain, and Romney – got a significant amount more time to speak than the other candidates, suggesting that CNN was focused on them, which is a little unfair.  I’ve also read they did this for the Democrat debate, too.  This annoys me a little bit, since they should give everyone equal time to speak.  Though, to their credit, the candidates sometimes spoke after their time was up.  However, it seemed that Wolf Blitzer had some trouble controlling them, which could foreshadow what might happen in future debates.   I’m also not happy that Blitzer promised Mike Huckabee that he would get back to immigration and let Huckabee speak more on it, and then really never did.

Their positions on the issues don’t really surprise me, though it’s interesting to note how many on them are anti-evolution.  Obviously, the current idiot-in-chief is probably not a bit supporter himself, though I don’t think he makes it well known, nor do I seem to remember him ever doing so (though I didn’t follow these things are much back then).  I’m glad they stick to their convictions, but might want to choose not to bring it up in the general election, so that they can get as wide a base  of support as possible.  I think the issue the candidates disagreed on most, at least, how to handle it, was immigration.  On one hand, you have McCain and those like him, who are in support of the recently killed immigration bill.  On the other hand, you have some of the other candidates who’d probably like to see the borders closed.  I think immigration, more than anything else (except the war) will be the defining issue for the Republican primary.

I’m not sure that I’d vote for any Republican candidate for President after the crap we’ve been put through with the current, but I’m not really interested in any of the currents, at least at the moment.  Although, Ron Paul is an interesting character.  I shall be interested to see if he upgrades to the status of “front runner.”  I thought he performed well at the debate.