Quote of the Week: Dan, somebody’s going to have to stick their finger up your butt and I think we’d both prefer it to be Jillian. (Dr. Sands, Mercy)
Song of the Week: Informer – Snow (How I Met Your Mother)
Big News of the Week: TV at Great Prices: To avoid having to talk about Tiger Woods again, I have moved the Deal of the Week up because Amazon is currently is having a TV on DVD sale with sets at the lowest I have ever seen anywhere. Here are some shows that I highly recommend that should please any television fan on your Christmas list, or just want it for yourself (click here for the full list of almost 300 deals, and not these prices are only for a limited time and most of the series sets have equally low individual seasons):
The Big Bang Theory: Always a good episode whenever there is a heavy dose of Penny and Sheldon interaction and Sheldon teaching Penny physics that failed as bad as I expected (hopefully there is an upcoming episode where Penny tries to teach Sheldon something which on paper should be even funnier). You can download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes.
Castle: The last time I wrote about this show I complained how whenever an actor I know shows up I instantly figure out they are the killer. And wouldn’t you know it, this episode had two (Riley Finn, the second Buffy alum in a row, and Shawn Hunter) and neither turned out to do the crime. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Castle on iTunes. Also be sure to check out my chat with Stana Katic.
Mercy: I liked at her Veterans meeting, everyone else there looked disheveled and dressing one step above a homeless person, but Ronnie struts in looking absurdly hot in a designer coat. Gotta love television. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Mercy on iTunes.
Real World-Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins: Well that sucked. How can you go so slow on the balance stage that five people can pass you, even after falling off and having a one stage lead. Hopefully the show puts a moratorium on inviting Kenny, Evan and Johnny because they have made their last couple challenges lame. You can stream recent episodes over at mtv.com. You can also download Real World-Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins on iTunes.
Survivor: Samoa: Now that is balls. Russell pulls out the hidden immunity idol and puts it around his neck and then doesn’t even play it. They should have voted him out just for that. They should do more of these double eliminations (with two separate tribal and immunity challenges instead of the two for ones like they have done in the past) as it can beat the doldrums that some of the later episodes have in a season when there are fewer people around. You can stream recent episodes over at cbs.com.
Community: That may have been the greater brawl in the history of television and almost as gay as the one my high school production of West Side Story, where I played Hispanic #3, staged. And yes you read my role right, I didn’t go to the most diverse school in the country. You can stream current episodes on Hulu. You can also download Community on iTunes.
Free Download of the Week: Holiday Sampler (iTunes): Last week I pointed you to Amazon’s 25 Days of Christmas Music and now iTunes if getting in the giving spirit with this twenty song sampler featuring holiday cheer from Weezer, Sarah McLachlan, Musiq Soulchild, Barry Manilow, and Stephan Colbert. Yes Stephan Colbert singing Another Christmas Song (that’s the title of the song).
Video of the Week: It is disappointed that Adam Sandler didn’t put out a proper video for any of his three versions of The Chanukah Song, but this Neil Diamond version more than makes up for it. Here’s hoping Neil gets around to recording the full trilogy.
Next Week Pick of the Week: Survivor, Thursday at 8:00 on CBS: Thanks to Russell, this season started out very exciting, but thanks to the ineptitude of Galu, it went downhill after the merge as none of them realized that Russell was getting them to vote out their own until they realized that they no longer had the majority. Hopefully Jaison and/or Mick wise up and we get some fireworks in the final two episodes and not just lie down and let Russell walk away with a million dollars.
Five years ago this month I downloaded iTunes for the first time and one of the cool features is that it keeps track of how many times a song is played. Well cool until you look at your top twenty-five and realize that a Rihanna song has been played way too often. You can blame most of the songs on this list for being either well liked by the Party Shuffle Genie or songs for whatever reason being in multiple playlists and naturally songs from the past five years dominate. I did fudge the list a little deleting repeat artists, mash-ups and songs that have been in recent quizzes (like Rihanna), but all the songs here are in my top thirty-five. As always you need to put both artist and title in the comments section (or you can e-mail me) and if you are correct I will un-bold it and give you credit. The Lyrics Quiz is for entertainment purposes only so please do not use anything besides your own meandering mind to help you up with the answers. Now onto the quiz:
1. Drug dealer buys Jordan’s, crackheads buy crack, and the White Man gets paid off all of that. (All Falls Down - Kanye West; guessed by Slaygal1981) 2. I never knew that everything was falling threw. That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue to turn and run when all I needed was the truth. (Over My Head (Cable Car) - The Fray; guessed by Erica) 3. King of the town, yeah I’ve been that. You know I click-clack where you and your men’s at. Do the Smurf, do the Wop, Baseball Bat. Rooftop like we bringing ‘88 back. (Made You Look - Nas; guessed by KK) 4. Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds of my wallet and it stayed pretty good. Still amazed I didn’t lose it on the roof of the place when I was drunk and I was thinking of you. 5. We had nothing I had do something so I’m knocking on heaven’s door like I’m Bob Dylan. 6. Light up; light up, as if you have a choice. Even if you cannot hear my voice, I’ll be right beside you my dear. (Run - Snow Patrol; guessed by Erica) 7. Hear voices I don’t want to understand. My car keys are jingling in my hand. My high heels are clicking towards your door. 8. You stand in the line just to hit a new low. You fakin’ a smile with a coffee to go. (Bad Day - Daniel Powder; guessed by Angie) 9. We hit the bottom, I thought it was my fault, and in a way I guess it was. I’m just now finding out what it was all about. 10. I worry I weigh three times my body. I worry I throw my fear around. (Clarity - John Mayer; guessed by Angie) 11. Jealousy, turning saints into the sea. Turning through sick lullabies. Choking on your alibis. (Mr. Brightside - The Killers; guessed by Erica) 12. Old friend calls and tells us where to meet. Plane takes off from Baltimore and touches down on Bourbon Street. 13. Nobody ever said it would be so hard; I’m going back to the start. (The Scientist - Coldplay; guessed by KK) 14. I know that we don’t talk. I’m sick of it all. Can you hear me when I sing? You’re the reason I sing. You’re the reason why the opera is in me. (Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own - U2; guessed by Slaygal1981) 15. All the husbands, all the sons, all the lovers gone they make no difference, no difference in the end. Still hear the woman say “you’re daddy died a hero.” 16. When you’d cry I wipe away all of your tears. When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears. (My Immortal - Evanescence; guessed by Erica) 17. You should love it way more than you hate it. You mad; I thought you’d be happy I made it. 18. Baby burst into the world, never given a chance. Then they asked what went wrong when you never had it right. (Desperately Wanting - Better Than Ezra; guessed by Slaygal1981) 19. All I think about is keys and G’s. Imagine that, me working at Micky D’s. (New Jack Hustler - Ice-T; guessed by Slaygal1981) 20. With the sure shot, sure to make the bodies drop. Drop and don't copy yo, don't call this a co-opt. (Bulls on Parade - Rage Against the Machine; guessed by Slaygal1981) 21. Though it’s been a while now I can still feel so much pain. Like the knife that cut you the wounds heals, but that scar, that scar remains. (Every Rose Has its Thorn - Poison; guessed by Angie) 22. I got a plan to get us out of here. Been working at a convenient store, managed to save just a little bit of money. (Fast Car - Tracy Chapman; guessed by Angie) 23. Do you really have everything you want? You can’t ever give something you ain’t got. You can’t run away from yourself. (Are You Happy Now? - Michelle Branch; guessed by Angie) 24. What’s cooler than being cool? (Hey Ya! - Outkast; guessed by Erica) 25. To all your friends, you’re delirious so consumed in all your doom. (Beautiful - Christina Aguilera; guessed by Erica)
Quietly a couple weeks ago Amazon launched its own music download store, the aptly title Amazon MP3 store. This is noteworthy compared to the other online music stores that still get crushed by iTunes is that Amazon MP3 is the first online store that offers DRM-free songs from major record labels. For you non computer geeks out there DRM (Digital Rights Media) is what keeps you from putting songs you download from iTunes on other MP3 players, tells you how many computers you can put the song or how many times you can burn a song to CD. So songs downloaded from Amazon MP3 are free for you to do whatever you want with them like the ones you downloaded from Napster years ago. Granted this also means they have significantly less number of songs than any other music store. Here is what Amazon says about its new store:
Amazon MP3 offers Earth's biggest selection of a la carte, DRM-free MP3 music downloads. With over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels, Amazon MP3 complements Amazon.com’s existing selection of over 1 million CDs to offer customers more selection of physical and digital music than any other retailer.
Every song and album on Amazon MP3 is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software. This means that Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, and burn songs to CDs.
Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the 2 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 best-selling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 best-selling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise.
Every song on Amazon MP3 is encoded at 256 kilobits per second, which gives customers high audio quality at a manageable file size.
For those of you like me that like to dip their toes in the pool before diving in, the store is offering a free download of Energy by The Apples in Stereo where you can test out their product without actually spending the money. It only take a couple minutes to set thing up, it is no way as near as frustrating as the Unbox set up and download, and you should have the song playing within five minutes.
For anyone who is interested I will keep a link to Amazon MP3 on my sidebar for easy access from the 9th Green (full disclosure: I get a whopping 20% commission, granted that is only 20 cents per song, but I would be able to buy that gumball I’ve been eyeballing) and you can always buy the songs through the album ad for Amazon I post in every music review. And since the songs are DRM-free and sometimes cheaper (DRM-Free songs on iTunes are $1.29 per song), it is always worth looking to see if Amazon has it first before buying from iTunes. For fun below is a widget featuring songs from my list of 100 Best Songs of 2006 below (for those keeping track at home, only 22 songs on the list are available through Amazon MP3):
So I was perusing the iTunes for new stuff like I do every Tuesday and was extremely surprised to see Chuck front and center when I flipped the the TV section. And NBC other debut last night, Journeyman also popped up on the site. But, unless I am blind, I did not see the second season premiere of Heroes there. But the inclusion of Chuck and Journeyman of course is surprising because NBC said a couple weeks ago they were not renewing their contract with iTunes which ends in December. And since it ended in December NBC said they would not be adding any new shows because they didn't want to pull the shows from the site mid-season. But there are Chuck and Journeyman, complete with the option of buying a season pass. So either NBC and iTunes kissed and made up like I predicted it would before the television season started or someone made an extremely huge mistake. If they did make up, I wonder which side caved because, as I am writing this, I have not seen any news reports on it. Either way, if you are interested in buying either show, click the link below:
I was going to save my Heroes commentary for my 57 Channels post this weekend, but since I wrote it last night after the show and have this very special two day post, here it is a couple days earlier:
Heroes: Darn you Heroes for once again teasing me that you killed off Absorbing Guy just to reveal once again that he wasn’t in fact dead like everyone thinks. For the love of good acting, the next time you kill him off make sure he stays dead. Of course it would be pretty apropos if Kristen Bell is the one that finally does the deed by having one of the best actors today kill off one of the worst. But anyways.
Horrible acting aside, I could also complain how uninteresting the Spanish people are or how they have created so many Heroes that they have already started to recycling abilities (flight) but I want to talk about how funny the premiere was. No seriously, I think I laughed more during Heroes that I did How I Met Your Mother (you will have to wait until this weekend on my thoughts there except what was with all the bad hair on that show last night?), The Big Bang Theory, and Chuck combined. First, despite starting to be grating during the end of last season, Hero meeting his hero, who just happened to be a drunk British guy. Yeah the premise sounds like a cheesy blockbuster film that should star Martin Laurence or Tom Cruise, yet somehow the actor somehow made it work. Then there was Noah’s boss whom I hope turns out to be a hero himself and much like Samson have his powers being drawn from his moustache. And I’m not even sure why I found it funny but the Bennett family dinner, complete with Mr. Muggles, was so inane I just busted out laughing during the whole scene.
Sigh, when is Kristen Bell going to showing up again?
Big News of the Week: You Can See the Latest NBC Shows at Blockbuster but not iTunes: Two big news items from NBC this week and I’ll start with the smaller item. Starting this Tuesday you can rent from Blockbuster stores as well as thru their online service a DVD that includes the first episodes of Chuck, Journeyman, and Life as well as a preview of Bionic Woman. If I am not mistaken, they did a similar thing last year on Netflix for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and we all know how that turned out. I always found this an odd marketing strategies as it may decrease initial rating which may hurt on the fence viewers who may not turn into the second episode fearing it would be canceled.
The bigger news is that NBC Universal has decided not to renew their contract that ends at the end of this year. And since the contract ends in the middle of the television schedule NBC has decided not to have any more new shows added to the iTunes library. I can’t say I’m too surprised by this because it seemed a little odd that it cost the same, $1.99, to buy three minute music videos, twenty minute sitcoms, and forty minute dramas. But I won’t be at all surprised if Apple unveils a pricing plan before then as Universal Music Group (are they related to NBC), the biggest record company, said they are pulling out also.
But the biggest surprise for me in this news was that NBC accounted for forty percent of all television downloads considering how they are supposedly the fourth network interims of rating. This just goes to show how big a sham the Neilson Ratings are. You are trying to tell me that a network is by far has the biggest segment of downloads, which are based on actual numbers would be all the way down at fourth in a glorified poll that are the Neilson Ratings. Seriously, what is the Neilson’s margin of error, 10%? Actually, that is a good question; does anyone know what the actual margin of error is for the Neilson Ratings? It is pretty shady that they don’t have that listed anywhere.
I have had the 9th Green Reader’s Poll up on my sidebar for album a month so I think I am going to take it down at the end of the month. If you have not taken it yet, please do so in the next week. It should only take a minute or so. And a big thanks to everyone who as already taken. Also this is your last chance to join my fantasy Dillon Panthers Football league. The live draft will take part on Yahoo this Tuesday at 9:00 PM EST. Drop me an e-mail (see sidebar) if you are interested in participating and I will give you the league ID and password.
Greek: I don’t know way, but the line Ashleigh said about needing more sleep because she was growing out her bangs out had me laughing all week. And even though they weren’t as cool as Crucifictorious but Darwin Lied was a pretty ingenious band name for a religious band. Which brings me to the best part of the episode, a new courtship for Casey in Dale. Now I know longer had to decide to root for Tool #1 (Even) or Tool #2 (Cappie) and can now root for a Dale-Casey hook-up. Speaking of hook-ups, what is with all the infidelity? Not really all the infidelity, but how all these characters can look past their partner’s infidelity so quickly? Download the current season of Greek on iTunes.
Rescue Me: You know the sign of a great character is when you start to smile just at the sight of them like with the captain’s daughter. Let’s hope the rest of the season (all two episodes) features more Amy Sedaris and less Gina Gershon.
Pick of the Week: MTV Music Video Awards, Sunday at 9:00 on MTV: I was actually excited when the show was announced, but two reasons why I was excited (Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, have both dropped out and were replaced by T-Pain and Akon. What’s worse there is a rumor that the big “surprise” opening this year will be Britney Spears. Or as Kevin Federline will call the performance, Exhibit T in his full custody battle case. Expect a much smaller even this year as previous VMA’s had clocked in at five hours between pre, post, and the big show but is down to three hours with the pre-show starting at 8:00.
I had this up last week and I though I would put it in this post again to give something to play with as I’ll be taking tomorrow off. Below is a widget where you can vote for the Most Anticipated New Shows of Fall 2007. You can simply give it up or down votes or go to the UnSpun website and rank them in order or add new shows that aren’t on the list yet.
Scooter’s Note: I wrote up the recap of the Family Television Awards last night but before I get to that I have a big announcement that I found out today: Veronica Mars is now available on iTunes. You can only download season three at the moment but you can buy the season pass for 34.99 and new episodes will automatically download the following day. So click the name and you will be taken to the Veronica Mars page in iTunes and even if you have seen all the episodes be sure to stop by and say how much you love the show and ask for the first two seasons. Now back to your regularly scheduled post.
Much like Pavlov’s Dog, last night I plopped down on my couch, turned on The CW for another round of witty banter of Veronica Mars. Only that witty banter was replace by cheesy award show banter of the Family Television Awards. Because what better time to show an award show for the family that after the kids should be in bed. The show was hosted by the dude from 7th Heaven and Haylie Duff, better known as Hilary’s sister. Actually she may be only known as Hilary’s sister. Oddly enough Veronica Mars, a show that has its fair share of rapes, murders, underage sex and drinking actually won an award. Here some other thought on the show (and please don’t ask why I continued to watch even after finding out there was no Veronica Mars): - Jennifer Love Hewitt won for Best Actress for her work on Ghost Whisperer. No seriously she won an acting award.
- Howie Mandel wins for Best Realty/Game Show Host for Deal or No Deal and was actually funny during his acceptance speech. I remember my parents telling tales when I was younger saying he was funny at on time, but it was weird seeing it for my self.
- Everybody Hates Chris wins for Best Comedy. And really who wouldn’t want their kids to learn a new racial slur every episode (that’s why I watch). Sadly Chris Rock didn’t show up.
- Ugly Betty wins two awards; the show took home Best New Show while the ugly chick also won something I think it was the Best New Actress.
- Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni win for Best Parent/Kid Combo or something leading to the best part of the night where Colantoni takes off his jacket and drapes it on the stair for Kristen. Classy. And then during the acceptance speech Enrico reminds Kristen that he’s not her dad in real life. Good clean family fun.
- The guy who plays Monk wins Best Actor but is home sick. Judd Hirsh had some good laughs pointing out that the guy who plays the germ-a-phobe Monk was sick.
- High School Musical wins for Best Movie/Musical. I still have yet to see it for fear that Chris Hansen may show up if I do.
- Numbers wins for Best Drama. Never seen it.
- The Ron Clark Story wins for Best Movie/Drama and the award is appropriately picked up by Ron Clark. For those that missed it’s the real story of a teacher who leaves his cushy suburban teaching job to teach at a school in Harlem. The movie stared Chandler Bing (is it too soon to start calling him Matt Albi?).
- The show ends with Dancing with C-Listers wining Best Reality Show. Really chicks wearing next to nothing and prone to wardrobe malfunction while being groped by dudes is considered family friendly?
And for all you conspiracy theorists who think The CW is anti-Veronica Mars by pre-empting the show yesterday as well as next week for the Victoria Secrets Fashion Show keep in mind The CW may gave exchanged showing the awards if they gave an award to Veronica Mars even though, let’s face it, it’s not all that family friendly and my theory is a little bolstered by the facy the award they won was nowhere to be seen in the press release the family council sent out for the awards. Also there that breaking news with the show being one of only two shows from the network on iTunes. Personally I’m pretty confident on a fourth season.
Finally my constant emails have been answered and now I can actually download my favorite episodes of Laguna Beach into iTunes. Okay that opening was a bit of sarcasm but sadly for those that can’t get enough of the drama, MTV, along with Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, are starting to put up selective show in iTunes at $1.99 an episode. It should be interesting to see if any of the shows sell well because these channels are known for showing the episodes ad nausea. If someone misses The Gauntlet 2 tonight, are they really going drop two dollars when the show will be repeated about twenty times before the next episode air? And most of the shows are already available on DVD and I’m not sure who would want to buy a specifics episode instead of buying a whole season of the show on DVD except if you are a fanatic of someone who was Punk’d. Comedy Central actually seems to try to combat that by having episodes of Drawn Together up on iTunes days before they debut on the channel. Here’s a list of new shows available threw iTunes (to access, click the SNL ad in the sidebar and click on the TV Shows tab)
Comedy Central: South Park Seasons 1&2 Drawn Together Seasons 1&2 Best of Comedy Central Stand-Up
Nickelodeon: Spongebob Squarepants Season 1 Dora the Explorer Season 1 Zoey 101 Seasons 1&2
MTV: Beavis and Butthead (selections from the Mike Judge Collection vol. 1) Laguna Beach Season 1 Wonder Showzen Season 1 Gauntlent 2 My Super Sweet 16 Seasons 1&2 (possibly the worst show ever to air on TV) Jackass vol. 1 Punk’d Seasons 1-3
The N: South of Nowhere Season 1
Speaking of iTunes I was surprised last week when I opened up my feed that tells me what the top 25 most downloaded songs were when it had multiple songs by people I’ve never heard of. So I opened up the music store to investigate only to find all of the songs were part of a made for TV musical on the Disney channel. Over a week later, half of the top ten downloaded songs are still from the soundtrack, and as a whole, High School Musical Soundtrack has had a stranglehold as the number one most downloaded album. I think it’s safe to say the music business is still in a downswing if a made for TV musical from a cable channel is dominating thing. For those interesting in discovering real music, iTunes is offering a video from The Today Show of new artist KT Tunstall who has an album, Eyes to the Telescope, coming out next Tuesday. It's somewhat hard to find, but if you wait in the main music store page, there should be an ad that comes up at the very top of the page.
Years ago, a wise man once told me “Video killed the radio star.” Well I’m here to give a new pronouncement, that Podcast killed the video star. It was an easy killing as videos have been in a decline since the late 90’s. MTV and VH1 rarely show them anymore. MTV2 and FUSE both focus on the agro-teenage boy demographic (i.e. trite rock and bling-bling rap), so to see videos, you are denigrated to having to find them on the web, typically with low quality.
As for Podcasts, I for along time thought that, like TIVO, I just wasn’t cool enough to use it. I had heard its name for a couple months but I wasn’t exactly sure what they were. But then a couple weeks ago, iTunes began offering up Podcasts, most (if not all) for free. My interest was peaked and when I opened the Podcast section on iTunes, I turned into a kind in a candy store. My eyes were open wide. They had Podcasts for everything you could think of: Sports, Music, News, Politics (for the right and left), Comedy, Technology, Education, even the Queer Eyes have their own podcast handing out gay tips. Today on one of my podcast subscriptions I heard a mash-up combining Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone and The Eagles One of These Nights (beacuse who wouldn't want to spend One of These Nights with Kelly). Now that’s worth the price of admission right there. And of course the price of admission is free.
And the Buggles prediction has come full circle because Podcasts are essentially radio broadcast for the internet. And unlike the radio, you can find something that interested as my radio plays very little in the way of diversity. And if you already have a Podcast, you can publish it through iTunes. Don’t expect a Scooter McGavin podcast anytime because I’m sure that I’m definitely not cool enough to do it.
There are a few Lyric Quiz songs that still have gone un-guessed, so I though I’d put up a couple hints.
1. The lead singers wife and child were prominently featured on their Live 8 performance. 6. This song was featured in the movie City of Angels. 13. Next line: She had hair so long that it looked like weave, now she cut all off, now she looks like Eve. 15. This artist is no stranger to helpful causes as he helped found Farm Aid. 16. Stevie Nicks is featured in this song but the group is not Fleetwood Mac. 18. Mos Def is featured in the video for this song but doesn’t rap on it. 19. This band features members from two huge bands of the 90’s. 20. She is a British singer who was severely overlooked in America. 23. At the time of this song, this rapper had a DJ. 25. They were the only rap act at Live Aid and wore a specific type of shoes during that performance.
The NY Times reported the other day about the songs that George W. Bush has on his iPod. Since the article, White House Letter: President Bush's iPod (free sign up required), said he still has a lot of space left, I thought I would be nice enough to give him some suggestions he might want to add taken from my own personal iPod:
For those interested, Eisley, who new album I recently reviewed, is currently the single of the week on iTunes. If you already have iTunes you can check out Telecope Eyes here. If you don't have iTunes, check out the link on the left. Might as well check it out, it's free. iTunes has had a pretty good track record with their singles of the week, I have about 15-20 song that are on heavy rotation on my iPod.
of almost 300 deals, and not these prices are only for a limited time and most of the series sets have equally low individual seasons):
