The GirlAlive Blog » Movies and TV and Stuff

Things I’m Happy About Today

girlalive — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 15:11:25 +0000

I have a new hamster. Her name is Luna. Her middle name is Tic. She’s bitey and aggressive and mean, but also hilarious and adorable and entertaining and beautiful. Here is a picture of Luna baring her teeth in anger because she hates the camera.

And here is a picture of Luna running back to her nest in the back of the cage to get away from the evil camera. (So you can see a little of her grey and blonde coloring.)

So yeah. My new hamster is anti-social and not nearly as cuddly and affectionate as Jayne was. But I like her anyway. She actually runs inside the wheel and she climbs up the walls and across the ceiling, so she’s endlessly entertaining. I missed having a hamster.
Jeff Zucker has been fired from NBC. Hooray! He’s an incompetent moron, and I hate when incompetent morons have jobs and I do not.
I finished the web site for my editing services. I’m willing to read and correct all your stuff for dirt cheap. Let my desperation work for you.
James Wormworth has been named the new permanent drummer for Conan’s new show. Now, many think that this is negative news because Max Weinberg is not joining Conan’s new show. But I don’t mind, and James Wormworth accepted me as a facebook friend, so I’m choosing to just be really happy for him. Cause he’s awesome.
Stephen Colbert testified in front of congress yesterday. It just made me happy because he was saying the same things about illegal immigration that I have: how about just giving people the option to be legal immigrants instead?
I got some new books at the charity shop. Husband gave me enough money for four books! He’s a really good husband, and is constantly nicer to me than I really deserve.
I’m scheduled for surgery to remove my ovary monster. I’ll be getting rid of that stupid thing in October. Hooray! And they’ll hopefully do it laproscopically this time, so I won’t be in the hospital for more than maybe overnight. I’ll find out more about that in about a week.
Julia Nunes made a video of my favorite song of hers. She’s awesome!

Things I’m less happy about:

I still have no money.
I didn’t get a book review posted today. I’m lame.
Spike pig is starting to show his age. He’s five years old, which is heading towards elderly for a guinea pig. *sadface*

Overall, there are still quite a lot of reasons for me to be happy today.

[edit] One more reason to be happy: Charlieissocoollike is doing this right now! That’s so awesome! I’m so completely ~~jealous~~ happy for him and excited to see his contributions![/edit]

A thing of beauty

girlalive — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:06:13 +0000

I know I’ve talked before about Twiglets and how they are made of Satan’s poop (also known as Marmite). Additionally, there has been a fake feud going on between Justin Bieber and Conan O’Brien, which has been hilarious. Like, I normally would hate a teenybopper Canadian like Bieber, but he is actually kind of funny (his music is cheesy pop crap, but he seems like a nice kid). So this video made me all kinds of happy.

Conan + TBS = Awesome

girlalive — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:21:12 +0000

Conan is going to TBS. I’m sure you all expected to say something about this a lot sooner. First, let me say that I love this decision. Conan gets ownership of his own show, and he has a 5-year contract and TBS will give him the freedom to do whatever the heck he wants on his new show. What gets me is the responses from other people on imwithcoco.com. (I would do drawings of the angry commenters, but I’m tired and it’s getting late.)

WHY WOULD HE GO ON CABLE? CABLE IS CRAP.

Um, no. Cable is about the same as network tv these days. Cable channels make their own shows and people watch them, just like network tv. Ever hear of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? They do okay with late night shows on cable. Is it really a step down to go from the worst network to a pretty good cable station? I don’t think so.

WHY DIDN’T HE SIGN WITH FOX?

Fox would not give him show ownership or a nationwide audience. They were dragging their feet and making it very difficult for Conan to trust them. Fox has a habit of the same kind of random show cancelling as NBC, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing that he’s not going to Fox.

OMG! I DON’T HAVE CABLE! I’LL NEVER SEE CONAN AGAIN! I HATE HIM NOW!

If you’re posting on Facebook, there’s some compelling evidence that you have an internet connection. If you’re in the US it’ll likely be on Hulu or on TBS.com. Or you could always get cable. It’s not like it’s that difficult. Craig Ferguson isn’t broadcast in the UK, yet I see his show pretty much every day on YouTube. If you’re panicking because you don’t have cable you’re either a luddite or a drama queen.

CONAN’S A HYPOCRITE! HOW COULD HE STEAL GEORGE LOPEZ’S TIMESLOT?

You cannot steal that which is freely given. Moving to 12:00 was George Lopez’s own idea, and Conan did not agree to even talk about TBS until George Lopez himself called and talked him into it. George Lopez has been struggling to pull in a small fragment of the late night audience. Even with a move from 11 to 12, Lopez will probably see an increase in his ratings once he has Conan as his lead-in. He genuinely wants to move to 12 to make room for Conan. It’s a whole nother situation.

In short, if you’re going to call yourself a fan of Conan you should remember that he told you to work hard, be kind, and stop being cynical. If you’re not enough of a fan to remember that, maybe you at least remember him telling you, “Keep cool my babies!”

I wish I was able to go to his live show. I’ve seen a few clips and it looks completely awesome. If it is a hint of what is to come on TBS, his new show in November will be like all the very best stuff he did on Late Night and The Tonight Show.

Without Leno, Conan had good ratings

girlalive — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:13:12 +0000

I’m just making a small aside here for a minute to apply some numbers and facts to the statement that Leno made about Conan having poor ratings back when he did his Oprah interview. I bring this up because some people actually believed him that Conan was failing. Let me show you an interesting chart.

Conan consistently beat Letterman in the ratings, and he was in fact gaining more of an audience in early September. Then The Jay Leno Show premiered on the 14th of September. Conan’s ratings continued upward for about a week, while people checked out Leno’s new show. Then the ratings plummetted downward when everyone stopped watching Leno. The truth is that Conan was on a trend of beating Letterman soundly until his lead-in changed and it was only after the Jay Leno Show started running at 10 that Letterman ever beat him in the ratings.

Don’t forget, the Jay Leno Show was cancelled because the affiliates complained that no one was watching the local news anymore. As Andy Richter pointed out on Regis and Kelly, the local news didn’t suddenly get bad. The primetime lead in was crap. Most people weren’t watching, and the few that were turned off their tvs and went to bed before the news. And yet Leno tried to say that Conan damaged the Tonight Show with poor ratings, even though it is fairly obvious that the poor ratings are directly due to Leno.

I still think that Leno is not entirely the bad guy in this. He’s selfish, and he’s a liar, and his word means nothing. But let’s not forget that the real villain behind this is Jeff Zucker. He has no background in scripted entertainment and he doesn’t belong at the head of NBC. He singlehandedly drove the former number 1 network down to number 4, where it has been since 2005. He is an incompetent moron. He should not be wearing a suit and giving orders from a big corner office. He should be wearing a paper hat and operating a deep fryer.

Who struck out?

girlalive — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:00:45 +0000

In a recent radio interview, Jay Leno addressed the issue of people boycotting his show in the wake of the Conan O’Brien fiasco. He said, “You don’t boo the next batter up just because the last batter struck out.” Really? Let’s look at a replay and see how that game really went.

(Sorry, dad, but Jay keeps digging himself deeper and acting like an ass.)

FYI – Twitpic sucks

girlalive — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:29:22 +0000

If you are on the Twitter like me, and you follow celebrities, you know that they like to take pictures and post them. Unfortunately, nearly all of them use an application called TwitPic. It sucks. For weeks and months at a time, whenever I click on a twitpic link, this is all I get:

Page Load Error

I originally twittered to @twitpic whenever this happened, since their own web site was invariably a Page Load Error. It would work sporadically for a week or two, then die again.

New strategy. Whenever someone posts a twitpic and it is broken, I am replying to that tweet with all my anguish over the fact that I can’t see the picture. Please, people, stop using twitpic. Working perfectly 12% of the time is not nearly good enough. There are plenty of other twitter picture posting options. Use YFrog. Use tweetphoto. Anything else. Just please stop using Twitpic. IT DOESN’T WORK.

Everytime you post a twitpic, God kills a puppy.

Alana

P.S. If you want to join me in this fight against stuff that doesn’t work right, here is a besmallened link for this blog post so that you can tell other twitterers that everytime they post a broken twitpic, God kills a puppy. http://bit.ly/c23xCS