John Barrowman (AKA Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame), shows Maria Von Trapp wannabes how it’s done…

So, I used to think that John Barrowman was a bit cute. I was pretty fond of him as Captain Jack in Doctor Who, and loved his sass (and his ass, I suppose!). I don’t know HOW I missed the fact that he had bits to perform on “How do you solve a problem called Maria” – yet another UK reality-talent show, basically a public audition for the role of Maria in The Sound Of Music. Anyway, someone directed me towards this video, where all of the auditionees have to snog him to see how they react to theatrical intimacy (cause it’d be such a chore – he’s a REALLY unattractive man – NOT!)

So here it is for your enjoyment, some scrumdiddly-umptious John Barrowman girlie-porn. The really good bit comes at about the 2 minute mark… mmmmm…

Every time I hear the word “sauna”, I always think of my mum, and her story about when my folks were visiting Finland before any of their kids were born. As she tells it (and Finnish readers, forgive me if I take creative licence here), rather than the fast car or big house or flashy computer being the status symbol, the Finnish way to show prosperity is to have a nice hot sauna.

And to boast about the fact. And to compare the heat of your sauna to others’ saunas.

I was sent the link to this outfit, Taps4Less, which makes all kinds of bathroom fittings etc. They have weird designer taps of all kinds of whacky shapes:

But they also sell self-contained saunas – check it out!

Now I just need to convince my flatmate that we need one! Might not be that hard, considering how we’re feeling the cold in Edinburgh at the moment…

Katee Sackhoff – David Lee Roth’s lovechild?

I was flouncing (as Joss puts it) around the internet the other day, and I realised an uncanny resemblance between Katee Sackhoff, who plays Kara “Starbuck” Thrace in the new series of Battlestar Galactica, and David Lee Roth, one-time lead singer of Van Halen.

The resemblance is actually quite striking – same cheeks, same mouth, same nose, similar eyes.

Not to cast aspersions on Katee’s mum or anything, but the timing’s about right too, Katee was born in 1980, around the height of Van Halen/David Lee Roth fame…

Just sayin, is all…

Ungrateful Universal has unleashed the Fan-Art Sniffer Dogs.

You’ve heard me blog incessantly about Firefly and Serenity. You’ve heard me gush about how amazing the show is, and how powerful the fanbase is. We (the fans) often pat ourselves on the back for our part in bringing Firefly to the silver screen. Different fans have done their parts in different ways. Me, I blog. I gush. I’ve decided to call it “blushing”.

Other people, like the very talented Susan (aka 11th Hour) choose to promote by creating artwork inspired by the show. Susan has designed some of the most recognisable fanart in the Firefly community. She’s designed posters, fliers, stickers, teeshirts, mugs, you name it. One of her most valuable contribution to the community has been her range of “guerilla marketing” designs, available for free download from her website – Browncoats across the world have downloaded her designs, printed them off and handed them out at appropriate events, stuck them on the back of toilet doors (Remember that time in Sydney, JenskiJen and Kaylene?), even stuck these little tidbits discreetly, tastefully, on public transport systems:

Our beloved 11th Hour is well respected, and has spent years providing free marketing for the Firefly franchise, first for Fox to promote the Firefly DVD Boxset, and then for Universal, promoting the release of the movie, Serenity.

Universal had managed to build up fairly decent street cred with the fans. They’d encouraged us to do our part in guerilla marketing, and we’d done so with gusto. 11th Hour had really gone to town for them, for all of us.

But now it appears that Universal has milked Serenity for all it’s worth. Perhaps they reckon they’ve come to the end of the S-Shaped curve of buyer take-up, and think that the next way to cash in on the movie (that we helped to promote) is by prosecuting the fans who led the grass-roots movement to continue promoting the movie and show.

Yep, 11th Hour has been issued with a Cease & Desist order, part of which demands that,

“…no later than close of business on October 30, 2006, 11th Hour Art agree in writing to permanently cease and desist from the advertising, promoting, marketing, sale or distribution of any products bearing or referring to Universal Property”

Since when do you reward your fans who are only out to promote the show (and we do recognise that the only way the show’s making money these days is by selling DVDs, and we actively promote that!) with cease and desist orders, AND demand that they pay over US$8,000 in restitution?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand all the issues here. Many items sold in browncoats’ CafePress stores may infringe copyright, if you use your imagination, or are feeling particularly belligerant (it still irritates me that Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is copyrighted. Three words should not be able to constitute a copyrighted item.) But turning a blind eye while they wanted us to promote the movie for them, and then hitting those Browncoats with home-grown merch stores with demands for cash along with the Cease and Desist, I think it’s just the height of rude. How about a little warning, a little, “thanks for all you’ve done, but it’s time we protect our license now, so you’re gonna have to stop”?

Of course Universal has the right to protect their license. Noone’s arguing that. But the way they’ve done it is underhand, ungracious, and downright mean.

Honestly, this has me SO upset. I’d have thought that, despite the technical illegality of some Browncoat’s art, they’d show a little gratitude to those who fought long and hard supporting this franchise.

I swear, IP laws worldwide need to be seriously looked at, or the marketing departments of Big Media need to tell their legal pitbulls to back off, cause the world is changing, and fans are mobilising into a powerful force, if only they’d let us do our work.

Grr, Arg. (at least I know that Mutant Enemy won’t sue me for using their catchphrase… I hope)

Edited quickly to add:

Apparently I’m not the only blogger to be talking about this – read this article by a webjournalist called Devin. I’ve really not paid much attention to this guy in the past, and though he seems to dislike us, he makes the odd valid point. A lot of the fan art out there DOES infringe copyright. But this only makes the case stronger for a massive Intellectual Property law overhaul, allowing for fairer use.

And I also wanted to quote what Joss Whedon said to us via one of the few webforums he posts on, Whedonesque.com

3rd October, 2005 – shortly after the release of Serenity

So I was flouncing (that’s lurking but fancier) about WHEDONESQUE (for which I have forgotten my password yet again) and I couldn’t help but see the little CHUD.com hate-bomb that Devin wrote. I don’t mind that he doesn’t love the film, but things like “It failed in a big way” and “It’s over” are about as charming — and journalistic — as “I was right.” I am being totally realistic when I say the weekend grosses did not meet expectations — but those expectations were based on models that don’t apply to this situation because, seriously, nothing does. The industry is not calling this a failure, just a slightly soft version of a normal opening in a generally weak weekend.

Now I did meet Devin, and he’s not a dumb guy. But he seems to have a real animus against you Browncoats, and that’s the thing I wanted to comment on, ’cause that doesn’t sit well with me. He actually blames you guys for making sci-fi fans stay away from the movie. Says you should be ashamed for having adopted a name, that you will start finger-pointing and bickering now that you’ve ’caused’ the ‘failure’ of your film. He blames other things as well — the title, the ads — but that’s fine. If one –ONE — of you guys reads that column and takes it to heart I’ll not sleep. You guys did an amazing thing this weekend — and the exit polls showed how much you guys were out there, and how much business you dragged in with you. Not to mention everything you did for the months – sorry, YEARS — before it opened. I’m crazy proud of you. Yes, there is an exclusionary element to some fandom that is inevitable, but this group has fought that as well or better as any, and maybe I’m a nerd, but being compared to a Trekker (or even a TrekkIE) doesn’t offend me a bit.

We all know this remains an uphill battle. We all know that next weekend is crucial — and a lot of it will rest on us. A lot will rest on the studio reaching people we can’t. And factors we can’t see coming. But I don’t especially appreciate people calling Time of Death while I’m still operating. I don’t like smug defeatism. And nobody disses the ‘coats without me wading in. That’s all.

Joss Whedon, October 3rd, 2005

I love Joss. I may sound like a Whedon evangelist most of the time, but I still love him.

Being a tourist is easier with guests

A very close friend from way back came to visit me this weekend. Imogen and I met in our very first Economics lecture at Uni, began chatting because we both had the same French stationary which you can ONLY get in France – turns out we’d both been on exchanges in France, and we’ve been fast friends since.

But fast only in the sense that we’ve remained good friends since then – not fast as in “fastened”, because since uni, Imogen and I have found the whole living-in-the-same-timezone thing to be a bit challenging. She moved to Canberra (butt-hole of the universe, no offence intended to my lovely sister in law who’s a Canberra native, a veritable blossoming flower amongst the weeds), then I moved to China, moved back to Oz again shortly before Imogen moved to France, and then finally I moved to Edinburgh.

The result of this is that we’ve not seen each other for 18 months. But Imogen is one of those priceless friends who, no matter how long it is between emails, you just stay friends with no matter what.

Anyhow, the point of all this is that when I have a friend visiting from out of town, it forces me to get out of the house on weekends and do all those touristy things I’ve been putting off for ages, and take lots of photos of this incredible city, which I feel the urge to share with y’all now:

You’ve seen this before, but not with these colours! This is one of my favorite places in Edinburgh, looking at the Scot Monument from Waverley Bridge, with the Princes Street Gardens in the foreground.

Here’s a closeup of the Scott Monument. Looks like a church spire, sans church…

Imogen and Me, enjoying the mildness of the weather and the gorgeous setting. I love this city, I really do.

I think this church is a Church of Scotland, and usually I’d not be taking photos of Churches, but I’ve always loved the spire on this one, nice and rounded. And who could resist this sunset silhouette?

Take care kittens,
Charlotte

Why do they vote out the good acts?

So tonight was the first of the X-Factor live shows for 2006. You may remember last year I confessed a guilty love for the X-Factor, and expressed my outrage at Brenda – my favorite contestant – being voted out. Well now, it’s happened again. The act that I’d had my eye on since the very first audition is out. The Unconventionals gave the unequivocal best performance of the show – they’re this wonderfully unpretentious 6 piece group, all with voices which blow the rest of the singers out of the competition. You should hear them acapella – just amazing, and fantastic, interesting vocal arrangements which they do themselves.

But according to the phone voting polls, they were one of the two lowest scoring acts. Dionne, being just another boring girlie singer, was chosen by Simon-No-Taste-Cowell to stay in the competition. Simon Cowell – I don’t have a secret crush on him anymore, I think his comments to The Unconventionals was WAY out of line – he said they were messy, and that 2/3rds of them were singing out of tune. Simon Cowell, who probably wouldn’t be able to recognise, let alone sing a concert A if his life depended on it. The Unconventionals tuning was SPOT on. I say this without bragging, but I have perfect pitch. They were PERFECT. Simon was wrong, smug, and utterly obnoxious, and I hereby renounce him as my secret crush.

What gets me is that even the British Gaming Industry was giving pretty good odds to The Unconventionals. So why were they in the Bottom Two, when they were the Golden Children of the show?

Here’s my theory – most people text in their votes on their mobile phones, and the count is done automatically. Has anyone ever tried to SPELL “unconventionals” on their mobile phone? I had to erase it and start again several times (yes, I voted for them – it’s called putting your money where your mouth is!!) and TRAIN my phone how to spell it (didn’t like the s on the end). Even then, I realised that I’d voted wrong, and had to re-vote. I think when they look at all the phone votes they had over the next week, they’ll find ten thousand or so MIS-SPELLED votes for these guys.

I truly hope they release an album, I’ll be looking out for it!

The new genre of TV show which focusses on the Entertainment Industry

Something interesting is happening to the TV that’s coming out of LA. After a few excruciating years of Big Brother, Survivor and all the other reality shows which have been dulling our minds, the wave of Reality TV has FINALLY broken, and over the past year or two, a couple of things have rolled in to take its place:

1) TV shows about the entertainment industry – things like Entourage (a TV show about a film star who keeps his childhood friends from the Bronx close, which helps keep him grounded), and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – a show about a Saturday Night Live sketch show.

2) Fictional reality web-based entertainment – this one’s a bit more complicated. With the ever increasing popularity of YouTube – as evidenced by its recent purchase by Google for USD1.6b – web stars have been born, discovered and made famous by their video-blogging (vlogging!). The YouTube community is complex and varied, and would require a whole other blog entry to explain, but let’s focus on the facet of the community which has most been talked about in the press recently – the vloggers. Vlogging has got to be one of the duller sides of YouTube, where people plomp themselves down infront of their webcams, and moan on incoherently about their lives, or about other people’s videos. *yawn*

You may have heard about the whole LonelyGirl15 debacle, where for months and months, this lass who called herself LonelyGirl15 got infront of her webcam every couple of days and rabbited on about her life. She had MILLIONS of viewers, who lapped it up just like the latest episode of Big Brother. In fact, I’d hazard that the reason Reality shows have died out on network TV is because their audience has moved to the YouTube vloggers, who can provide bite sized, ad-free reality TV-on-demand.

However, it turned out that LonelyGirl15 was nothing but a creation, that LonelyGirl15 herself was an actress, and it was all some sort of bid to gain advertising revenue. And LonelyGirl’s not the only one.

Last night I finally caved and clicked on one of the videos which had been featured on YouTube for ages, by a couple of guys who call themselves “Nobody’s Watching”. Thus ensued a good half hour of confusion for me, cause I could have sworn that one of them was the actor who played Billy from Battlestar Galactica, but on the Nobody’s Watching website, he introduces himself as Will. Will – William – Billy – Geddit? They are in fact, actors – Paul Campbell (Billy from BSG) and Taran Killam, who play grassroots YouTube film makers who dream of becoming TV stars/writers, and want to get a show picked up by NBC. See the confusion? But it doesn’t end there.

These guys really did pitch a show to the WB, they made the Pilot and everything! Here’s the first part of it:

The rest of it is in two pieces, here and here. It’s a half hour pilot in 3 ten minute sections, so set aside some time for it, it’s actually really good.

Anyway as I was saying, they’d pitched this pilot to NBC, but it got knocked back. So they decided to pitch it to the web viewers on YouTube, and lo-and-behold, they’re webstars. I gather that they’re re-pitching it to NBC – and the writer of Scrubs is involved – they have a relatively good chance to get it picked up.

So they’re actors who want to make it big in TV and initially fail, playing two guys from Ohio who want to make it big in television and succeed. The characters start out on YouTube and then make it big with the studios. The actors start out with the studios but fail, then make it big on YouTube, and then have a better chance with the studios. Are you confused yet?

Welcome to Web 2.0!

See, what gets me about all this is that in the past, we see something on TV and we (generally) know whether it’s real or not. YouTube used to be a haven for TV By The People. Now we have no idea whether a semi-slickly made video is by a talented amateur movie maker, or a film studio trying to make something that just LOOKS like it’s made by a talented amateur movie maker.

I find this whole phenomenon just FASCINATING. The inter-web-net in general – SO interesting. Did you know that firms are HIRING professional, full time bloggers? How good would that be, to be paid to blog on a permanent basis? You may have noticed that I’ve caved, and have set myself up a little Google AdSense account, and am now advertising scintillating products such as “DIY blogs” etc. Part of what I love about Google AdSense is seeing just what sort of ads it comes up with to complement each blog entry.

If it makes me enough money to pay for my web hosting bills (now due! Feel free to click on my ads!), then I’ll hold on to it. If not, we’ll return to our previous pristine ad-free condition.

Global warming nightmares

I had the most upsetting dream last night. Vivid and clear and horrifying. I dream a lot, and I’ve never chosen to share with you before, but I thought that this one bore repeating, if only to express the images that I have in my head…

I dreamed that I was in a car with a few people, and Webmaster Matt’s ex-flatmate Peter was driving. We were driving over the Forth Road Bridge, which links Edinburgh to Fife over the Firth of Forth. It’s quite a long bridge, over a vast stretch of an inlet from the North Sea:

Anyway, I dreamt that we were driving along in torrential rain, and the waters under the bridge were so high, they were lapping the bottom of the bridge. Then the water started getting choppier and choppier, until there were these massive waves rearing up over the sides. Sometimes they’d splash over a little, but we didn’t get wet. But then the wave started getting higher and higher, bigger and bigger, we knew it was just a matter of time before it broke over the bridge. Trying to get it down while it’s still in my head, it kinda looked like this (please excuse my dodgy photoshop skills!):

Then as we got just past the second pylon, the water from the wave started to overflow onto the bridge, though the wave hadn’t broken yet – just a trickle of water first, but then before we knew it, the water was up to halfway up the doors of the car. We were wailing and screaming, and yelling at Peter to “keep driving, keep driving!”

He kept on going, and because of the angle of the wave, the last part of the bridge wasn’t under water yet, so Peter just kept on driving up into the hills until we were above the level of the top of the wave. We stopped the car and got out to have a look, and I swear I don’t ever remember such a terrifying sight coming out of my imagination – the wave surged a few times, and then slowly, inexorably broke over the bridge, sweeping away all the cars which were still trapped on it.

We looked further up the inlet, and we saw that across the firth, they were pulling big tidal gates closed to try and stop the water, and let it out at a slower rate (the flooding wasn’t coming from the ocean, it was coming as part of a flash flood from the rain out of the Highlands). But the big booms weren’t strong enough to stop the water, and instead of making it better, it actually made it worse – the water began to riseup behind the booms, building up and building up, but the then finally the booms couldn’t take it any more and they broke apart, and a massive wave, bigger and faster than the first, came rushing down the firth towards the bridge.

One moment, the bridge was there, and the next it was engulfed in this white spray a kilometre high, and then when the wave passed, the bridge was just… gone.

I think that this whole climate change thing has me a little spooked, to say the least…

When the West Wing ended last year, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself for intelligent TV. Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant show, political fantasy la-la land for liberals the world over, I was in heaven. I’d have voted for Jed Bartlett in a second. Why can’t we have politicians like that, for real?

But I digress. The end of the West Wing was the end of an era, much like when Angel ended. With Buffy, Angel and Firefly We’d had a total of 12 and a half glorious seasons of Joss Whedon – the golden days of Camelot – and then there was little to fill the gap, except perhaps Battlestar Galactica and the West Wing.

I’d not even considered that Aaron Sorkin (the writer and creator of West Wing) might “pull a Joss”. That is, go on to create another show for me to fall in love with. Well, I think he might have done just that. I just watched the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and I can say, this will be one to keep in your RSS feed, TiVo, VCR, whatever.

It’s a show about a political satire comedy sketch TV show which has been losing its satire and becoming just as plasticcy and ho-hum as most of the other programming out there. In the opening minutes of the first episode of Studio 60, the fictional show’s producer walks onto the set in the middle of a live broadcast and starts mouthing off in true Aaron Sorkin style about what a pile of dogshit the show and the network in general have become, pandering to religious zealots, and creating theme tunes to a war overseas which makes no sense. This ballsy, gutsy rant made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I was sold on this show.

Folk in the US – watch this show. Others who can obtain by more nefarious means – do so. Spread the word, cause this show from the same stable as the West Wing (with a few welcome familiar faces – Bradley Whitford who played Josh Lyman, and CJ’s beau whose real or character’s name I can never remember) is gonna make you happy.

Instead of writing political lefty fantasy in Washington, Sorkin’s writing clever entertainment fantasy in Los Angeles, and you’re gonna love it!