Check this out. Fox sent me a promo item for Buffy, Season 5 in the mail today.

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I really, really, really hate the flu! You know...the kind when all your muscles hurt all over as though you just spent an entire day in the gym. It hurts to get out of bed, and it hurts to walk. Sucky thing is, I have no food in the house and I need to go to the store to get some or I'll die. People will look at me as though I'm a freak because I'll be shuffling around the store.

Dear Flu, I hate you.

The Smurfs are 3 apples tall. Not mini apples, not crabapples, 3 regular sized apples tall. Yesterday, we got into a disagreement at work about this, and I said 3 apples while everyone else said anywhere from an inch to 4 inches. I guess I know my Smurfs the best.

I'm in loooooove, with my new DVD recorder. I ordered the Panasonic E80 back in September, but it just arrived yesterday (it was backordered). This is the coolest thing ever. It comes with an 80 gig hard drive, which allows me to record to the drive and play something at the same time. I can play back a different show than what's being recorded, or the same show! last night I was watching something on tape and I finished at 8:30. That would have been a problem before, because I was taping something from 8-9 and 9-10. With the DVD recorder I could finish the tape at 8:30, then start watching the show I was taping from 8-9 while it was still recording. At 9 it started taping my other show while I finished the first one. I finished watching both shows at 10:15; a week ago I would have waited to start watching the 8-9 show at 10, when they were both finished. I tell ya, these hard drive based recorders are the coolest things, and now I have a second DVD player as well.

Oh, if you went to that website you may have seen the price; $1999.95. I paid HALF of that when I ordered the player, and saved another $100 because of a promotion, and got 6 DVD-RAM discs (they're $10 each). I don't know why they would put such an insane price on their website. It's just stupid.

So, the other day the Kids in the Hall magnets came! Here's a sample of what they look like (taken from a digital file):

Click for a bigger pic

Pretty cool, huh? The REAL magnets look a lot nicer. They're all shiney and stuff.

I love Moby. Not in a gay way, in a "his music rocks" way. I just picked up his latest CD "Moby 18 B Sides," and it's great. His reject stuff is pretty damn good. Honestly, I think I like some of the tracks better than some of the stuff that made "18." I picked it up for $15 at A&B Sound...but get this; it comes with a bonus DVD! I haven't put the DVD into the player yet, but it sounds LOADED. There's a full, live concert on there, music videos for some of the "18" tracks, plus various mixes and other songs. If this is the music industry's answer to piracy....it's working! Keep these things coming! My God, this will entertain me for hours and hours. Just when I was crying out for new music to listen to, Moby has fallen into my lap.

If you dig Moby at all, pick this up. Hell of a good deal!

Okay, I have a new Chainz score! I couldn't beat my previous score for a long, long time. I came close, but couldn't do it. Sam got over a million points...much better than my score.

Check this baby out!
2,164,128! Level 13.

Who rocks?! GORD ROCKS!

Beat THAT, Sammy!

Okay, I'm addicted to this online game called "Chainz." It's easy to play; just make a link of 3 or more chains and they go and more chains appear up top. It's simple, and fun to play.

http://www.mumbojumbo.com/web/chainz/index.html

My high score is 881,325 on level 9.

20th Century Fox must have seen the boxers and panties and wanted to get a mention on the "Blog no one reads" because today they sent this:

It's a TV dinner tray with little ads for some of their TV product. The paper in the middle reads, "Fox Home Entertainment is serving up sumptuous TV on DVD releases for the holidays. It's what's for dinner!"

Okay, now go and buy some Fox DVDs; they send me cool toys.

Dear diary, today I got panties sent to me in the mail.

Stop thinking those bad things about me! I didn't pay for these, they were free, and no, I haven't tried them on (I don't think they will fit anyway). The BBC (yup, those crazy Brits) sent me a promo package for their DVD, Coupling: Season 2 which came out the end of Oct. Inside the package was a pair of panties:

And a pair of boxers:

Last year they sent out a glass and two condoms! Pretty crazy promo material lemme tell you. I get a lot of this stuff sent to me. Some of it is cool, and some of it is just plan odd. One of my friends suggested I start an art exhibition called, "Free Shit I Got" and put it on display for everyone to see. I just might do that...

Okay, so tonight I went over to my friend Sam's house for dinner with some friends. It was snowing and the roads were crappy and on the way home I was sooooo close to getting into an accident. LESS THAN A FOOT (30 cm)!

I was driving along minding my own business when the car in front of me started sliding while breaking for a traffic circle. I tapped on the breaks and started to slide. There was TONS of room between the other car and myself, but I kept sliding and sliding and sliding. All I could say was "Awww shit." 6 years ago I was in an accident in my mom's car and the thing JUST came off my insurance, and here I was sliding towards a car I was going to hit. He was turned a bit to enter into the traffic circle so I was going to hit the side of his car with mine and cost myself thousands of dollars of pain. I didn't care about myself because I was going too slow to hurt myself or anyone else, but the cars were going to hit. I started to turn the wheel and somehow, at the very last moment, the tires caught traction and I was able to miss hitting the guy in front of me.

I'm going to buy nice winter tires. I fully expected to hit that car, so I figure getting out of it was a fluke this time, but next time I'm not going to be so lucky. Yes...I'm going to buy a nice set of winter tires.

This morning I woke up and headed to Warner Bro. I had a tour spot for 9:30 to get a fancy tour of the WB lot. The tour was 2:15 and cost $32. When I got there I saw a sign that said, "Do you have more time to spare and REALLY like movies and TV? If you do, sign up for our 5 hour tour - only $95!" Okay, that's like going to the store to buy a movie and discovering the super duper tricked out special edition is also on sale. How could you possibly buy the regular version of the movie when you know there's a super awesome version out there? I signed up for the 5 hour tour which started at 10:30.

We gathered in the VIP Tour Room, a small area with a store and costumes from a few movies and TV shows. I met Jenny and Chuck while waiting for the tour to start. They also had a couple of The Hollywood Reporter that my article was in, so it was neat to see it in print. There were 10 of us total, with Janice as our tour guide. We headed out the doors and onto the cart thing to take us around.

Not 10 feet from where we started I spotted John Wells. You might not recognize his name, but I'm sure you'll know his work. Wells was/is the executive producer on: ER,The West Wing, Third Watch, Citizen Baines and Presidio Med. You might wonder how I know who he is; I saw him on the bonus material on the ER season 1 DVD set. Janis took us to the Warner Bros museum where they have some props and costumes from shows and movies on the main level, and the entire upstairs is filled with Harry Potter material. The "highlight" of the Harry Potter section was the sorting hat. A security guard would have you sit in the chair and he'd place the hat on your head; a voice would come on and sort you into one of the groups in the movie. I chatted with one of the security guards and he told me the sorting hat drives him insane. There are only 6 things it says, and he's heard them all hundreds of times. Poor guy.

We left the museum and walked to the foley stage. Foley is where they record all the sounds we hear in the movies and TV shows. You know the sounds of footsteps, doors, chairs moving...those aren't recorded while the actors are speaking, the sounds are added later. We watched as two middle-aged men clomped around on wood, providing the sounds of people walking in the background of a TV show. They work in a mid-sized room filled with various props, recording all the sounds for shows and movies. It takes them half a day to do a 22 min episode. From there we went to the Eastwood scoring stage. The score is the instrumental part of a movie or TV show. The stage is considered one of the best to record on because of the setup and the materials it's made out of. A few years ago the stage was set to be torn down when Clint Eastwood stepped up and paid to renovate it, so now it bears his name. From the scoring stage we walked to a large room filled with massive panels and a huge movie screen. This was where they did the final mix for TV shows and movies, taking the score, dialog, looped dialog (recorded in a studio to replace the actors on set) music and sound effects and mixing it into the final version we hear on TV or in the theater. This was a very impressive setup.

Janice hearded us back onto the cart and we took off to see the Warner Bros backlot. The backlot is made up of simulated streets or buildings, and is used on a large number of TV shows and movies. Lois and Clark, ER, A.I., Spider-Man and Gremlins are just some of the productions that use the streets at WB. We walked around a bit, but it wasn't very interesting; it's just a street. Back on the bus where we went to the jungle backlot used for The Last Samurai (a new Tom Cruise movie), The Waltons and other productions, then we went to a large backlot which is used for Gilmore Girls. We walked around and saw the house the Gilmore girls call home, one of their friend's houses, and other houses used in a variety of productions. Back on the cart and off to the set of Drew Carey. Nothing was filming, but we hung out in the audience area and looked at the sets. From there we went to another set, this one was for All About the Andersons, a new show I've never heard of. It stars Anthony Anderson, one of Jim Carrey's sons in Me, Myself and Irene. Janice then took us to the set of ER, the area outside the hospital doors.

We were getting hungry, so it was off to the Commissary for some chow. This is the place that pretty much everyone eats at, but I didn't see any stars. After we left Janice said that Noah Wyle (ER) was sitting outside eating lunch. Damn, I missed seeing him! After lunch we went to see the prop area where they store tons of props that productions can rent. They had everything there, from funky tables and chairs to large egyptian cats made from styrofoam. Each prop has a barcode that tells you what production it was used on, how much the prop is worth and what it rents for. Props typically rent for 10% of the value of the prop per week. We headed to the craft area where they make things out of plastic. Building sidings, palm trees, bricks, "marble" statues...whatever. After that we went downstairs to check out this MASSIVE printer. I think it was 75' long, and prints on almost anything. They were printing out huge vinyl posters promoting the upcoming </i>Looney Tunes: Back in Action</i> movie. We also saw where they create backdrops for movies; they were working on a bunch for a new movie that's shooting at Paramount called Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's supposed to be the next big movie, like Harry Potter.

Our last stop was at the costume department. The manager of the department came into a fitting room to talk to us and explain all about the costume designers job. Then we left the room and headed down to the storage area. It was a MASSIVE room with tons and tons and tons of clothes and shoes in it. We saw some costumes from Red Planet, Babylon 5, Demolition Man and tons of other movies. The Warner Bros archives people come through and snag things for the archives once a movie is done shooting; anything they don't want comes here. Really neat stuff, and it was nice that the manager took time to come and talk to us about her area.

Oops, somewhere in there we went to the Gilmore Girls house. I think it's where her parents live....I've never seen the show to know.

The tour ended (6 hours!!) and I went to Warner Home Video to hang with my friend and talk about DVDs. She's the head of their TV area, and super cool. Warner has some good stuff in the works for 2004. I also called my buddy at Paramount to see about getting a tour of the studio. He's going to be there tomorrow so he can show me around in the morning.

I left there and headed to find a phone to call my friend Jeremy. We met at VSDA in July and he lives in LA. I called him, but he's going to a church thing tonight but we might meet up after. I think I'm going to head back to Hollywood & Highland and go to CPK for dinner. I love that place. Mmmmm....

The movie was pretty cool. I cabbed it over to the WGA Theater (Writer's Guild Association) and saw the fanc red carpet. Jeff wasn't there yet, but there were all the camera people ready and waiting. I found Sean and Deborah from Lions Gate and chatted with them for a bit, then I went inside. They had free food and drinks which was nice since I hadn't had anything to eat yet. The WGA Theater is a bit different from normal theaters; it's nice! No concession stand, and the people there were all respectful so the place was really clean. Jeff showed up along with Robert Forster (he was in the movie). A couple of the other actors were supposed to show up, but they didn't for some reason. So we all went into the theater to watch the movie.

While he was introducing the movie, Jeff cracked some jokes. He seems like a pretty laid-back guy...pretty cool. The movie is about a guy, Tepper, who finds a wallet while walking home. There's no ID in there, just a membership card (he was a fireman) a phone number and a lottery ticket. The guy calls the number and leaves a message saying he found the wallet and to give him a call. There's a lottery drawing going on and Tepper decides to check the ticket in the wallet. You got it; the ticket turns out to be worth $6 million. The number is for the brother in law of the person who owns the wallet, Avery Phillips. Avery is going to stop by later and pick the wallet up. Well, Avery stops by and interrupts the poker game that Tepper and his friends are having and is asked to join in. I won't get into any more of the plot, but it's a pretty decent movie. Probst did a good job; he wrote and directed the movie.

After the movie people were chillin' in the lobby, chatting about the movie. Jeff was being interviewed, but I spotted Colby, the runner-up from Survivor Australia. I guess Colby and Jeff are friends and they hang out together. There was another dude that looked familiar as well. I'm sure he's an actor, but I have no idea what his name is, or what he's been in, and no one could help me. I ended up chatting for a couple of minutes with Jeff. He seems like a really cool guy. he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans...nothing fancy at all. The event was winding down so I caught a cab back to the hotel.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Warner Bros for a 2 hour tour of the studio. It costs $35, but whatever. I think in the afternoon I'll head to Universal Studios, but I haven't really decided. I'm supposed to meet up with Jeremy Dunn, a dude I hung out with at VSDA in July.

Okay, so the conference is over!

I got there early and hung out before registration began. I met Randy Salas from the Star Tribune before the conference started and we talked about the website and DVDs in general. Really nice guy.

Randy and I headed upstairs to register and we ran into a bunch of PR people and other studio folk. It was nice to put faces to names and voices and I had some good conversations before heading downstairs to the first panel.

The first panel was all about newer shows that have been released on DVD. The panel was made up of people from Disney, Warner Bros, HBO, Fox, and...Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy). It was a good panel, and listening to Peter from Fox speak, it's obvious why Fox puts out such amazing releases. This man knows the ins and outs of what consumers want, and what makes a good DVD release. He's brilliant!

After the panel I chatted with Seth for a bit. He remembered me from the interview I did with him for the first season release of Family Guy. We headed upstairs for lunch, and to listen to Joel Surnow do his keynote address. I sat with the cool people at the Fox table, including Seth. Joel Surnow is a pretty funny guy. He didn't talk for long, but he said that he's planning on making a series of 24 direct to video stories, based around other characters. He views 24 more as a format than a TV series, which is interesting. Hey, I'll watch realtime dramas, just bring them on!

After lunch (which was very good) Seth took off along with my other Fox friends, and I headed back downstairs for my panel. I sat and chatted with Sam from Rhino (he's the product manager) and David, the president of Anchor Bay. They both share the same PR company, and the PR person had given them notes as to what to say. Man, I was just winging it and they had a PR person giving them notes! So, the big moment came and we went up on stage to do our panel. I was nervous for the first bit, but it was all good. My panel was made up of Lions Gate, Columbia Tristar, Paul Brownstein (a DVD producer of older shows), Rhino, Anchor Bay and Warner Bros (one of my buddies). One of the questions we were asked was "If a company is looking to license a show, where do they go to find out who owns the title?" I jumped in and said they should check the 'net, and that TVShowsOnDVD.com provides somewhat accurate information as to who owns the rights to certain shows. David from Anchor Bay said they check the 'net as well. Back in July when I met David at VSDA he told me that they love my website and check it all the time, specifically to find out who owns the rights to a couple of shows they were looking into licensing. I chimed in and said, "David, what website do you go to?" He responded with, "TVShowsOnDVD.com, it's a great website." Then Sam from Rhino jumps in there and talks for 2 minutes about how great my website is, giving people the URL a couple of times! I meant to promote my site a little bit, but I didn't expect Sam to start talking about how great it was. I think I might have blushed a little bit. It was pretty funny when some of the studio people started taking jabs at each other. Paul went a little overboard and attacked Columbia Tristar. I had some things to say to CTS, but I didn't think a public forum like that was the place to do it.

There was another networking session afterwards and I had a ton of people come up to me asking for cards or saying how much they liked my site. It felt really good to have all these industry people complimenting me on my work. I made a lot of really good contacts there, but I missed out on some others :(

The final session was dealing with kids titles coming to DVD. Paramount, Artisan and Warner Bros were on the panel. They talked about some of the issues facing the kids titles, like having adult fans that want season sets of cartoons while still catering to parents that want to pick up a disc of random episodes for their kids. The Artisan guy said that VHS is still very strong for kids titles.

After the conference I was talking to my friend from Paramount about some things when he offered me a ride back to my hotel. Ohhh yeah, no cab fare. So we're driving along Sunset Blvd and I see this dude that looks exactly like Seth Green standing on a corner talking on a cell phone. I'll count that as a possible Seth Green sighting.

Oh yeah, LA is F*ckin' HOT! 100F!! I think I wrecked a shirt with sweat. No, seriously!

Well, tonight I'm off to the premiere of Finder's Fee which was written and directed by Jeff Probst, the host of Survivor. This is the premiere, complete with a red carpet, so there will be cameras and stuff at the event.

So, last night I went to Hollywood & Highland, a multi-level shopping center. It's different from the malls we have in Edmonton because it's all outside (leave a store and you're outside). This is the complex that's sorta attached to the Chinese Theater you always hear about, and the Kodak Theater. It's a cool area with neat stores and places to eat.

I went to eat dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (the cool kids call it "CPK," sorta like how we call Boston Pizza "BPs") where I had a nice pepperoni pizza. I left there and walked across the "mall" to Brookstone where I picked up my Roomba! Ohhh Roomba, you'll keep my apartment so clean. I went back to my hotel and went to bed.

So, I'm about to head over to the Wyndham Bel Age hotel for the conference. Should be fun!

So, I made it to LA. I'm glad I printed off all those papers for the immigration people; she looked at them and let me through. PHEW! The flights were alright, and I arrived in one piece. I went to pick my car up at Thrifty. When I got there the guy said all he had was a Kia for $26.99/day, but if I wanted I could upgrade to a Seibring for $75 more (total). I wasn't going to fit into a Kia, so I decided to upgrade. He printed everything up and it came to $300!!!!! Sorry, but there's NO WAY I'm paying $300 to drive a car for 4 days. NO FREAKIN' WAY! So I told him to stuff it, and then all of a sudden he had a different car he could put me in for the same price as a Kia. The dude was trying to stick me in a car I wouldn't fit in so I'd upgrade to something more expensive. I saw through his little game and walked out. I caught the SuperShuttle to my hotel and paid $18 (including tip). I doubt my cab rides are going to cost me $282 more...so I'll come out ahead. If that guy had only played it straight with me I would have had a rental car and he would have had a customer.

So my hotel is a few blocks from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Today I stepped on such famous people as Greta Garbo, Monty Hall and Sylvester Stallone. I'm crushing your star!! I'm also a few blocks away from a Brookstone, which means I'm picking up a Roomba! I have to figure out a way to get it home in my suitcase...but that's minor. I might just stuff clothes into my carry-on so it fits in my suitcase.

Here's what I have lined up for my time in LA: Wednesday I have the conference from 9-5, then I'll come back to the hotel, shower and get ready to head to the premiere of "Finder's Fee." Thursday I'm signed up for a tour of the WB lot from 9:30-11:45, then I might hit Universal Studios. I figure I should do some siteseeing while I'm here, and it sounds like they have some cool new things there. Thursday night I think I'll meet up with Jeremey Dunn, a dude I met in Las Vegas in July. Friday morning is free, so I'll try and schedule something with a studio (maybe Paramount...) and then Friday afternoon I'll be heading to 20th Century Fox for a special tour of their lot. They don't give public tours anymore, so I'm getting a speeeecial tour. I want to see something cool, dammit!!

Well, that sums it up for now. I'm going to print off the KiTH press release for tomorrow, then walk to Mann's theater, then grab some food and pick up my Roomba!

Later...

I'm quoted in a new article from the Hollywood Reporter. I think it's still a bit odd to see myself quoted in articles like this. I remember being sooo nervous during my first few, and now I could care less. This author of this one was really scatter-brained; it was funny.


I'm off to LA tomorrow to take part in the TV DVD conference that's being put on by Video Store Magazine. I'm a panelist...yup...people that run companies, and Gord, the guy that runs a DVD site. I'm on a panel with the president of Anchor Bay, product manager at Rhino, Senior VP at Lions Gate, Senior VP at Columbia TriStar...and me. I'll wear my suit so I look like I fit in. Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy" and the two creators of "24" will also be there. Should be a good time. I'll take lots of photos with my new digital camera.

Oh, I'm also going to a Hollywood premiere. Jeff Probst (Survivor) wrote and directed a movie, "Finder's Fee." I'll wear my suit to that and hopefully someone will think I'm important. I'll sign autographs if someone asks. "To my number 1 fan, Love Gordo"

Well, I left the house today and went and picked up a new toy. I've been thinking about getting a digital camera for awhile, but we have some nice ones at work that I can use whenever I want, so I've been holding off. With my trip to LA coming up in a few days I decided to pick one up. I've always been a fan of Nikon cameras (I have an SLR and we have Nikon digital cameras at work) so I decided to get the Nikon SQ. It's a bit odd looking, but it's a nice little camera. I wanted something that could fit into my pocket easily, but also take nice photos, so the SQ sounded like the camera for me. Here's the first picture I took on it:

Those are the DVDs sitting on my floor that need to be put away. I had to buy another bookcase and I'm in the (slow) process of moving them all around.

I'm still working on the words for the Kids in the Hall magnets. I took some words out and put others in. Hopefully I'll finalize the words tomorrow and put them into the template. The guy at the magnetic poetry company hasn't sent us the official template, so there's the possiblity I'll be wasting my time putting them in the test template I have. Grrrr, doesn't he know we're on a tight deadline for this stuff?! He's forgotten to send stuff before, and it sorta pisses me off.

Tonight was a weird night of TV watching for me. First, it was a couple of episodes of "The Sopranos," watching people get whacked, nudity and more violence...then I started watching classic Looney Tunes cartoons. Quite the difference between those two shows.

Warner Bros has put out an awesome package of their classic cartoons. The "Golden Collection" contains 56 cartoons on 4 discs along with commentary tracks and featurettes. They've restored the footage and it looks very, very nice. The first cartoon contained a lot of noise and I was a bit worried, but the cartoons after that were just great. If you like old cartoons you should pick up this set.