Here’s the dealio. After Veronica Mars was canceled, I gave up television for awhile. I even stopped watching shows I used to like. You’d think I would find my productivity go up, but alas, I discovered THE INTERNETS.

Things a TV addict can find on the internets:

• Funny or Die: a Youtube-like website featuring actual funny. I’m a bit of a Charlyne Yi addict, so the fact that she’s a part of many of the videos on FOD is a big draw for me.
• alluc.org: although the legality (and morality) are a bit questionable, alluc is great for bbc/ch4 addicts like myself. My college doesn’t offer BBC America (and really, there is no ch4 America), and after watching them on sketchy Japanese websites, I end up buying all the series’ I like anyway. The mere existence of the internet requires that I a) avoid blogs (hi, impossible) or b) find a way to watch the shows I like. Stupid blogs. We should get rid of ‘em. The way alluc.org works is by hosting the links to off-site videos. On the sites they link to, the videos remain untagged and cloaked under a different name (i.e. the latest Dr. Who episode, “The Fires of Pompeii” is on one site labeled “Video of my trip to Rome to visit David“), as to avoid being detected by network bots. Alluc.org gets away with it because they issue a disclaimer every time you click one of the links: “By clicking on ‘continue to content’ you will be redirected to the episode of your choice. We have to point this out to make sure we can’t be held liable for content uploaded by others.” So far the German-run website has been able to evade legal action.
• hulu.com: great-quality, legal, free, full episodes of current and former tv shows from Fox, NBC, SciFi, FX, The WB, Bravo, and USA, among others.  After a seven-second “Brought to you by” voice-over, the episode of your choice begins, and is only interrupted 5 times for 15-30 second commercials in a 45-minute show. Hulu gets it’s revenue from advertisers, but it also helps the networks out by putting up only a few seasons of TV shows to prompt addicts into buying the other seasons (and sometimes even the season they’ve already seen) on DVD. Hulu has caused me to spend over $200 in TV on DVD, so it seems their scheme is working. Favorites of mine on the site include Roswell and Buffy.
• io9: a new Gawker Media blog focusing on science fiction. My favorite of the daily features is “Morning Spoilers.” Every morning they post rumors and pictures from scifi TV shows and movies. Nowhere else can you find Doctor Who, Iron Man, Dollhouse, and Wall-E spoilers all in one place.

So no. TV is not worth watching any more, because the few shows on-air that are still good (30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, The Office) can all be found online the next morning, with fewer commercials, and on demand. I watched TV for the first time in 3 weeks this past Thursday, due to the 30 Rock/The Office premiere. And I was disappointed by both.

Shows I’ve been watching a lot lately:

• Torchwood
• Doctor Who
• The IT Crowd
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Roswell
• How I Met Your Mother (despite the gimmick casting)
• Freaks and Geeks
• My So-Called Life

Confession: I watch One Tree Hill.
- This stems from my obsessions with SoapNet and teen dramas, but morphed into a regular habit because of the new season
Suggestion: You should check it out.

The new season fast-forwarded to post-college

- which means all of the minor characters (portrayed by horrible actors) have been eliminated.
- also, no more petty high-school drama, it’s more coming-of-age …drama
- it’s more relatable and diverse:
- Mouth is having a hard time with his first professional job
- Lucas is trying to meld his old and new lives (and is so far successful, but the future does not look good)
- Brooke is juggling an overbearing mother and adulthood
- Peyton is struggling to prove herself worthy in an industry full of more experienced peers
- Nathan and Hayley are trying to raise a son, start a career (Hayley is a new teacher), and deal with crushed dreams (Nathan can’t play basketball due to an injury)

But the best reason of all:
KFed may be a regular!

Seriously, guys, KFED. KEVIN. FEDERLINE.

I’m back. Half heartedly, but back nonetheless. I went through a lot of stress over the summer, and my creativity took a major hit. I stopped sewing, I stopped creating things on Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign, I stopped modding my computer. I stopped wanting to do anything fun. I didn’t, of course, have time for fun, what with stage managing two shows, working full time, and dealing with living back with my parents for awhile. But whining isn’t going to solve anything.

Like that fact would stop me!

I’d like to blame a good bit of my stress on three factors:

1. Summer television: Holy shit. What a fucking joke. Can we just eliminate the season of summer for the sake of television addicts everywhere?
   1. Also: reruns. I’ve seen every fucking episode of Dark Angel at least 3 times each. And Family Guy. If networks keep up this evil scheme, what will I have to do on the internet? I can’t waste time watching episodes of Nip/Tuck online (ARRR!) if I’ve seen each episode twice! That’d be far too much time wasting, even for me, the girl who watches fucking every episode of I Love New York no matter how emotionally distraught it causes me.
      1. Side note: Dear television execs: bring back Buffy reruns. I can never get enough of those. Thank you kindly, Eliza
2. The (untimely) death of Veronica Mars: It still breaks my heart to see pictures of the show (note to self: probably would be a good idea to take down the picture of Logan crying on V’s shoulder that’s hanging above your bed). We all know how well I took the “finale.”
3. The end of my childhood: no, I am not exaggerating. My childhood ended on July 7, 2007 with these words: “All was well.” If you don’t get the reference, it’s fine. We just can’t be friends any more. I know, we had some good times, but it’s over. As is my innocence. Everything ended on that day. Except our friendship; that ended on this day.

So here we are. Back to blogging.

To kick this off, I’ve compiled a list of the television I’m watching (and liking – that is, I’m watching The Hills, but I’m not liking it, so it will not be seen on this list).

Sundays: Nothing. Sundays suck. I’ve stopped watching Desperate Housewives, Family Guy doesn’t hold me long enough (I blame the internet!), and I’m too lazy to start watching something new.

Mondays: How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Aliens in America, and Heroes. HIMYM and AiA conflict with Chuck, so I have been watching Chuck online.

Tuesdays: Law & Order: SVU. That’s it! I know! Tuesdays suck too.

Wednesdays: Gossip Girl and Private Practice. They’re on at the same time, so I usually choose GG, since PP is online the next day and GG isn’t on until Saturdays.

Thursdays: The Office and Grey’s Anatomy. They also conflict, but I watch GA at a friend’s house every Thursday at 11pm. We drink and cry and laugh. Mostly laugh, though, ’cause the writing this season sucks.

Fridays: Moonlight. LOGAN. LOGAN. LOGAN. Fuck yes.

Now you know how I spend my free time.

Grey’s Anatomy – The worst. Awful. Unbelievably so. Ugh. What’s to keep me coming back next season? NOTHING.

Veronica Mars – Pretty good (the first hour was excellent), but depressing. Not only because the show might be axed, but also because everything fell apart at the end, and nothing good happened. NO HOPE.

The Office - The best. The show was depressing as a whole, but the ending… oh, the ending. For the entire episode I was completely worried it would end on an awful note like last season, but No! It was beautiful. I cried tears of joy.

More after the jump…

Ugly Betty – Not bad, as modern soaps go. Just the right mix of melodrama, comedy, and cliffhanger.

How I Met Your Mother – It didn’t feel like a season finale, but I suppose it was the end to a chapter. No one cares about Lily and Marshall’s wedding, honestly. It’s all about Ted and Robin. I thought I’d be upset by the breakup, but it really was the only direction the writers could go. Their relationship was dragging the show down, and it needs some new characters.

Heroes - Epic, as expected. I suppose meeting expectations cancels out the epic-ness, but it was definitely epic.

Lost – Not as good as the critics said it would be, but seeing Mikhail’s eye was pretty awesome. Oh, question: Why the fuck did you, Lost writers, think it was okay to mess with us, Dom fans? Eye candy… dead… oy.

Desperate Housewives – On the terrible side. Wow. Bree’s faking preggers to protect her actually preggers daughter. Hoo, I’m so tuning in for the season premiere! Well, of course I am, but I won’t think of it all summer. Of course I will, but not because of the (shitty) finale.

Gilmore Girls – Quite appropriate, although it would have been fun if they brought back Dean. He was such a huge part of the show, and he was completely forgotten. It’s okay though, These past few seasons (all of the college years, really, save a few episodes in her freshman year) sucked pretty hard. I can understand if they can’t quite make the stretch into really good.

Hidden Palms – 1×1 “Pilot”

This show belongs on abcfamily (look at that hip lowercase! wow!). It’s awful. Oh dear, a boy saw his father commit suicide, went to rehab, then moved to a rich neighborhood. The seperates-it-from-the-OC-twist? Things aren’t as they appear (according to the pilot, also seen in the casting of Leslie Jordan as a woman).

I honestly did have (stupidly) high hopes for this, as the boy from Phantom of the Megaplex stars.  I was disappointed from the beginning, although the chemist-towel girl character intrigues me.  The scene in which Johnny analyzes Greta is ridiculously cliche, something I don’t mind in TV. Then, in a crazy twist, she does the same thing to him, except this time she’s soaking wet! Cliches can be entertaining.

I think it’s hysterical, by the way, that Zach from the OC is on this show as the (evil?) Seth character. He looks remarkably different with short hair.

And GASP! A rich-people party on the first night? In the first episode? This does not remind me of any show ever. Especially not one featuring a damaged new kid and his snarky sidekick.

So tonight I finally watched the “series finale” (according to the CW) of Veronica Mars. I can’t handle writing much about it, but “Weevils Wobble” was absolutely amazing, but “The Bitch Is Back” was pretty terrible. If that was the series finale, I’m fucking pissed the hell off. Three motherfucking years of LoVe, and they’re not together in the end? Yeah, I know it wasn’t written to be the series finale, but they need to do more. Give us actual closure, ’cause right now, I feel like I’m going to puke. Oh, and thanks for using “It Never Rains in Southern California” for the end scene. That song is absolutely ruined for me. From now on, I’ll just cry when it’s played.  And really, couldn’t you have at least thrown ONE JOKE into the last five minutes of the episode?

Some quick positive notes: Thank god Parker is gone. She was really just a Meg clone, sent to fill the need for a girlfriend for a damaged rich boy. I yelled “CW!” when Weidman came into the shot, I laughed hysterically and clapped about the Amish family living in 3b comment, and I cried tears of joy when Logan went out to beat up Piz.

Speaking of, I really wish it had been Piz that did the tape. They needed to get him off the fucking show. Like Veronica goes through the whole Castle mystery, and in the end, it was Piz, and she falls into the arms of Logan and cries. Or, something completely different could happen and Logan ends up crying in V’s arms (See picture in a past VM entry… too nauseated to look up which one). Also, Duncan should have come back for the Kane’s house scene. That would have been wicked kick-ass. He just dropped off the face of the earth, never to be mentioned again.

On a related note, I’m completely in denial that it’s over. I’ve convinced myself that the reason they haven’t announced the official axing is that they’re going to use it after “PCD Presents” finales, which will probably be around Christmas. Or, they’ll use it some other way. Maybe on a different channel. But it’s not over. The powers that be (this entire ordeal, by the way, is reminding me of Buffy, which is why I have Powers That Be on my mind) would not allow The CW to advertise the episode as “season finale” if they didn’t mean it. Oh, and I also cannot possibly deal with it being over. If I’m to face it, I may turn to casual sex to comfort myself, and in 2 years I’ll birth a crack baby.

Seriously. Off to vomit. I’d include a picture in this post, but I’ve really got to puke.

 I wrote about a new blog, Jezebel, a couple of posts ago, and after I read this attack on Jezebel on the f-word (via Jezebel) today, I wanted to reply. Finding where to comment was ridiculously difficult, but I did. They receive comments through an email system, and they post all comments on one page, if they deem them “interesting.” I was in a writing mood at the time, so it got a little lengthy. The entry from the f-word and my reply are after the jump.

Imagine taking the very worst of those magazine’s supposedly aimed at women and distilling it in a big vat of misogynist nonsense and then unloading it onto the web. Welcome to Jezebel, the new “women’s” blog from Gawker.

I think the view Gawker has of women is very neatly summed up when they mention “Nebraska” and feel the need to add “(a state)”… I wish I was making this up.

So what is it that us women are interested in then? Mainly relationships – other peoples it seems, a good two-thirds of stories are about celebrity relationships. Personally I am interested in celebrity relationships – I’m interested in how they’re portrayed in the media and how they highlight gender issues that “ordinary” people may be experiencing.

For instance Anne Heche’s divorce – we’re told she’s a poor cook while he looks up internet porn while he’s meant to be looking after their child. Those are some really interesting issues. As a woman – what do you do if you discover your partner uses large amounts of pornography? How does it affect your relationship, how does it make you feel and how do you react if there’s a risk of children finding it? And these days a lot of women and even more men have very limited kitchen skills. The wide availability of pre-prepared food may appear to be making life easier but if it generates a generation who are effectively unable to prepare fresh food from fresh ingredients, then that has serious implications for our health and wellbeing.

Sadly that’s not the Jezebel response. They’ve gone with “Sounds like a normal marriage to us!” Never mind that more men than women admit to poor culinary skills. And remember ladies – all men look at porn, just get used to it.

As for the rest of it, try these extracts for size…

“Does this mean we can stop coloring our hair?”

When were we supposed to start? Did I miss a meeting?

“Guess those fake breasts paid off!”

Since when was cosmetic surgery a business plan?

“You can never be subtle enough when it comes to reminding a guy where his vagina is coming from”

Any sentence with the words ‘his vagina’ needs a re-think doesn’t it?

“Conventional wisdom holds that women’s magazines aren’t as good as men’s magazines.”

At what? And who writes half the crap in so-called women’s magazines? Men! I don’t think the author of this piece has subscribed to BUST yet…

“Males of the species: Now, sadly, even more irrelevant.”

Speak for yourselves, the men in my life are very relevant thanks. Of course the article is about fertility treatment. Because remember ladies – life is about baby-making!

“We thought feminism was supposed to be straightforward.”

Who told you that? It’s as diverse as, erm, the women who definitely WON’T be reading your stupid website!

 

Re: Jezebel

If Kate Smurthwaite had taken the time to read the “Jezebel Manifesto,” she might not have taken such a ridiculous stance on the new blog.

From the “Manifesto”:

“Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke.”

They’re not interested in providing in-depth analysis on Ann Heche’s divorce, and I don’t think readers are going to Jezebel to hear it. Smurthwaite seems to assume that any feminism-inspired blog has to stick to her own brand of feminism, one which not everyone may enjoy. Celebrity gossip is a large part of our culture, and as such, we have many blogs about it. We do not, however, have many humorous feminist outlooks on the matter. I enjoy Jezebel because of it’s subtle sass. I’m saddened that Smurthwaite cannot understand the humor in “We thought feminism was supposed to be straightforward,” or “Guess those fake breasts paid off!”

Her responses to the quotes (which are, of course, taken out of context) are generally summaries of the ideas Jezebel was trying to get across (“Since when was cosmetic surgery a business plan?”). Smurthwaite’s final response, however, was the most hysterical.    In reference to: “We thought feminism was supposed to be straightforward,” she replied, “Who told you that? It’s as diverse as, erm, the women who definitely WON’T be reading your stupid website!” This one sentence is dripping with so much irony and hypocrisy, I found myself laughing aloud. It’s apparent she missed the sarcasm in Jezebel’s remark, but to angrily reply that feminism is diverse – oh, that takes the cake. Your entire piece was raving about how wrong Jezebel’s take on feminism is, yet you decide to lecture them on the complexity of feminism.

I quite enjoy reading feminist analyses of the cultural affect celebrity relationships have on society, but I get plenty of that. I read Jezebel for the intelligent sarcasm and subtle humor. It’s too bad that Jezebel is just too clever for Kate Smurthwaite.

Today at work I went a little blog crazy. Through a series of blogs (about 10) I came to LOLPresident. I’m pretty tired of LOL(blank)’s, as most of them r teh suxxorz. Occasionally, however, I come across a great one (an especially cute kitten, an exceptionally well-captioned image), such as this or, to the point of this entry, this one:

I’ve found a new hometab!

Jezebel: Celebrity. Sex. Fashion. Without Airbrushing.

It’s fucking awesome.

“To put it simply, Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women’s magazine we’d want to read, a magazine that would never actually see glossy paper because big-name advertisers and the publishers who kowtow to them don’t much like it when you point out the vulgarity of a $2000 handbag. Women deserve some of the blame here: if men ever bought $2000 handbags, Esquire and GQ might be as bad — and profitable — as Glamour and Vogue.“

It’s celebrity gossip, feminist articles, and sassy reporting all rolled into a pretty interface!

I’m obsessed with Batman. I even have a tattoo of the Bat-Symbol on my hip. I’m really excited about the next movie, The Dark Knight. I’ve been reading blogs, searching forums, and surin’ the webernets in earnest to find out anything I can. Today I found out about the first released picture of The Joker, played by Heath Ledger. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this casting, but after his performances in recent movies, I’m looking forward to it.

How awesome does that look? Pretty motherfucking awesome. I’m so ridiculously pumped.