Apparently Ed's "operator" was told to get out of the City building when Triumph and Conan were making an appearance... afraid of a little guerrilla competition, eh?

Sullivan Entertainment: Class Act

Ooo, wait. Can I get sued for that?



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Newsflash: Writing for TV Sucks

What we have here is an example of cause and effect!



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Sex and the City Prequels

I don't remember any blowjobs in Anne of Green Gables. I'll have to read it again.



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And Good Wives is full of limitless options "when anything is possible" - like choosing between getting married or dying of whatever Beth died of.

Stephen King: Television Magnet

Though apparently with a polarity too much like this critic's. King's foray into television is Kingdom Hospital, where the all the patients are DOA and the prescription for television boredom is for another injection of HORROR HORROR HORRORRRRR! OooOoo! Rowr! Boo! Agh! Reuters' prognosis is much kinder.



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Simpsons 101

Serious books on the Simpsons. Hm, I missed the gravy train. You see, up until about the seventh season, I would have challenged anyone to hit me with a Simpsons trivia question. I had a shameful database of yellow-headed information that would make a 15-year-old Dungeon Master jealous. Then the show started to suck and I stopped watching...



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"Fritz! They killed Fritz!"
Ralph Bakshi, the animator behind Fritz the Cat, the animated Lord of the Rings and the totally whacked Wizards -- featuring an army of goblins overwhelming elves in trench warfare by distracting them with Nazi propaganda films -- apparently was also the producer of the Spider-Man TV show. But the superhero biz always has a price:


"Can you imagine a young man staggering home from the studio burnt out every night of the week?" Bakshi recalls in a fit of laughter from his home in Silver City, N.M. "My girlfriend left me, my cocaine dealer left me ... I lost more girls to Spider-Man than I can count -- I wouldn't do it again no matter what I was paid."

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I hate it when my cocaine dealer leaves me.

Programming note: tonight's regularly scheduled programming will be preempted in order to bring you, Eeeeeevil!

I am speechless. How can they even pretend they're part of a democratic process?

The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's* activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.

If you're American and want to protest, go here. (From Palabris)



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Clive Thompson riffing on Hammy Hamster

Hot. I wish Hammy were here now - though I'd likely be surprised, and not in a good way, by his politics. My favourite was Matty Mouse's boat. Dude was always crashing that thing.



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What about GP's diving bell?

GP was the man. Er, well, guineau pig.

Loved that GP.

The diving bell!!! I can't believe I forgot. Is that show on TV still? I may get cable just to let my kid watch. Hell, it created me...

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The backdoor to becoming a novelist

Success eluded William Nicholson the novelist, until he became William Nicholson the screenwriter of films such as Gladiator and Shadowlands. Now he's writing novels again.

As a young man, Nicholson worked during the day as a BBC documentary filmmaker. In his free time, he wrote fiction. But his novels were repeatedly rejected, and when he finally got one published in 1979, it quickly became a bookstore remainder.

"I failed, I failed, I failed," Nicholson said during an interview at his pied-à-terre in central London. Considering he had a literature degree from Cambridge University, it was "heartbreaking."

That all changed when he began writing and producing TV dramas for the British Broadcasting Corp. Working as a collaborator, as opposed to a loner, and beginning with dramas about such real-life figures as "The Chronicles of Narnia" novelist C.S. Lewis, Nicholson soon found success.

The lesson here, kids? Never be afraid to sell out for a paycheque you really believe in. That, or: good things come to those who quit.



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Edited by author 03-10-2005 01:34 PM
And now there's absolutely no reason to watch this channel at all...

TVO is cancelling Imprint. Apparently it will be replaced by a show about eating sheep's eyes and bathing in cockroaches, tentatively titled: The Rita McNeill Variety Hour. (What do we pay taxes for? Roads?)



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