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TV, Movies, & Music
Sunday, December 11, 2005
How to get 50 free MP3s legally
Maybe this is old news but I’m a little slow. HA!
Long story short, I went with my girlfriend to the Historical Museum today. They have this nice Christmas display they run every year. Anyhoo, they were playing Christmas music and it was “Christmas Time is Here” from the Charlie Brown Christmas album.
It’s a great song and I really wanted to have it so I started digging around the net for it. I found out it’s in the eMusic.com library.
eMusic I think is the only pay music site on the net that actually uses normal non-DRMed MP3s. They do a monthly subscription model where you can download a preset number of songs. It varies but the cheapest plan is 9.99/mo for 40 downloads. That’s not too bad when you think about it. One cd will burn you 12-20bucks right? And it only has maybe 10 songs. I’d say 10 bucks for 40 tracks is a pretty good deal.
So I see they have a free trail membership where you can download 50 songs for free and keep them even if you cancel your subscriptions.
So, this is where I’m getting 50 free MP3s legally. I’ll be downloading the whole Charlie Brown Christmas album plus whatever else I find this week then cancel my subscription.
The only downfall to their service is the music quality. Songs are only encoded at 192kbps variable bit rate. Which is good enough for most people but it would be nice to have the option of getting nice 320kbps archive quality files.
But it’ll do just fine and I’ll be happy with what I get considering it’s free!
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Aurg! Reruns again!
Yesh not again… I’m addicted to the show “Lost” on ABC. They keep screwing with me and making me think there are new episodes on but in reality you get a rerun. The basic problem is they show previews for the new episode each week even if it’s going to be rerun next time and you have to wait two weeks.
It seems that most shows are nice enough to not show previews if the next time will be a rerun. Sort of a sublilimal message that next week is a rerun. I wish Lost would do that too.
Anyhoo, here’s the schedule for rest of the season. This is more for my reference then anything since I easily forget things. HEH!
april 20 - Outlaws (Rerun)
april 27 - Flashback Special
may 04 - The Greater Good (new)
may 11 - Born to Run (new)
may 18 - Exodus part 1 of season finale
may 25 - Exodus part 2 of season finale (2hrs)
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Johnny Carson dies
It’s another sad day for TV as former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson has passed away. He died this morning from complications of emphysema.
Johnny was before my time so I never really watched him on the Tonight Show but I still respect the man for being one of TVs great legends. To be on the Tonight Show for 30 years means you have to have done something right.
Goodbye Johnny! You’ll be sorely missed by many.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
The Not So Grand Olympic Games
Is it just me or has the Olympics just been a major bust?
First off I’m seriously disappointed as the coverage. NBC has been making a big deal about how great the coverage was going to be. Yet, every night all I see is swimming/diving and gymnastics. Not to say there is anything wrong with swimming. My girlfriend was a swimmer growing up and I do find it enjoyable to watch. Michael Phelps is an amazing swimmer by the way.
Probably 75% of the sports are currently in competition right now so there should be no excuse not to give them all air time. And by air time I mean at least 30 minutes of tv viewing time at night on broadcast, not the middle of the day on one of the half dozen cable channels they’re currently shoving junk they don’t really want to cover. That’s what really bugs the heck out of me. They are showing events during the day on these channels but go back to the usual lineups for those other channels at night. I’d rather see them show the normal lineup during the day then at night use all their channels to show Olympic coverage at the same time.
I want to watch events like shooting, archery, equestrian, fencing, kayaking/canoeing but they always hid them away in the afternoons on the cable channels. I’ve missed all these great events because America is so stupid and only wants to see the same old junk over and over.
Secondly, where the heck are all the spectators at? I swear I have yet to watch an event that doesn’t have 90% of the seats open! They need to do something about that because it’s just plain embarrassing for everyone. Not to mention how sad it must make the athletes. They’re at the Olympics for crying out loud! That’s the highest honor you can get I would think. I can’t imagine how disappointed they must be to walk out ready to compete and realize no one is there to watch them!
In general it’s just not been a very great Olympics in my opinion.
on 08/18/2004 at 09:57 PM
General • TV, Movies, & Music • (3) Comments • Permalink
Monday, July 19, 2004
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars
Sunday, October 17, 2004 at 9:00pm eastern to be exact!
Dedicated Farscape fans - 1
Money grubbing tv execs - 0
Excuse me while I go do a happy happy joy joy dance for a moment…
ok I’m back! 
Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars will be a 4 hour mini-series based upon what was planned for the 5th and final season of farscape. That was before the ass-hats at Sci-Fi went and cancelled it. The main goal though is that they are able to clean up the cliffhanger that was left at the end of season 4.
Not much about the story is known but as time goes I’m sure the plot will get leaked. Of course the obvious thing and in my mind all that I really care about is that Aeryn will have the baby. Probably not until the end of the mini-series but I don’t think they would skip this one crucial and important area. They know every fan wants to see that baby.
Anyways, I’m just really excited and can’t wait. It’s been over a year and a half since the series was cancelled. It was announced on Friday, September 6th, 2002 for those that didn’t know. This was in the middle of the 4th season and just a few months after SciFi had made a big announcement about being excited to renew for the 4th and 5th season, which would be the last.
In this time the fan base has done an amazing job at mobilizing and working to get the show back. They’ve spent both time and money, something like over $150,000.00 I’ve read. Several full page ads were bought in magazines and newspapers, radio and even tv spots were produced to get the word out. When the first groups mobilized I did help out a bit. I wrote letters to way to many tv execs and hung out in chat rooms for the first few months. After a while though I did pretty much give up hope. I still stopped by the SafeFarscape/WatchFarscape website every once in a while but that was about it.
So remember to watch starting Sunday, October 17, 2004 at 9:00pm eastern.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Return of The Family Guy
The New York Times has an article about The Family Guy returning. They make you register to read but it is free. In fact you can just fill in junk info (a fake name and email address) and click submit and then they’ll let you read the article.
Anyhoo… It gives some background on the show and the creator but that’s not that important. If you fan of the show you already know all of that! If you’re not I feel so sorry for you. It’s a great cartoon and you’re missing out. I have to be honest and say it’s actually better than the Simpsons. While there are plenty of lowbrow comedy moments that anyone will get the writers do have a tendency to use more jokes and gags that require a certain level of knowledge. They regularly make wise cracks about famous but not well known individuals. So younger audiences will still laugh but many probably don’t really know what the jokes about.
There are some quotes from a Fox executive about the show being revived and that’s really what I think is the important part of the article.
quote:
Network executives say scheduling played a role in the show’s initial failure. “It was moved around and put on Thursday night against `Friends,’ a difficult time period in which it never grew,” said Gail Berman, the Fox network’s president for entertainment. “But we loved the show’s irreverence. I thought it was wild. It’s very in-your-face humor. Very bold.”
I think this is probably the first time I’ve ever seen a TV exec almost admit that they might not have been right. I say that because Gail doesn’t outright say “We screwed up” but she make the point that they didn’t really give The Family Guy a good chance and in TV exec speak that does roughly translate to “We screwed up.”
So, it looks like The Family Guy will be back probably next summer. The article says early spring or summer 2005 so we can assume that it will be summer during the off season. You know they won’t put it with The Simpsons on Sunday where it belonged in the first place! If they did then they would be basically admitting they did screw up and you know no TV exec would allow that to happen. They’ll put it in some stupid mid-week timeslot that won’t give it good ratings.
Oh well enough of my ranting. I’m just glad to see the show come back. I guess I should go buy the DVDs sometime. There are two volumes out. There were only three season of the show so Volume one contains seasons one and two and Volume two has season three. They’re only like $40.00 each so it’s a great deal.
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Dead Like Me Season 2
Just a heads up that Showtime’s Dead Like Me season two starts July 25th.
I’m a major fan of the show. For being a show about death it’s very funny and enjoyable to watch. If you’ve never seen it I feel sorry for you. The plots are always good and the acting is great.
The basic story goes like this. Georgia Lass, played by Ellen Muth, was killed by a freak accident, a toilet seat falling from space. Instead of going to the great beyond she finds out she’s stuck on earth because she has to become a grim reaper! So the show is centered about Georgia and her new after-life.
They never really deal with any religion issues. Heaven, hell, God, etc are not discussed. As one of the characters explained to Georgia, it’s not for them to know. They’re job is to just collect the souls of the newly departed and guide them to their final destination. Not to say it wouldn’t hurt to have some discussion of religion but I do think it works better as a show not dealing with it and leaving it up the viewers to believe.
So, mark your calendars everyone. Season two starts July 25th at 10pm eastern on Showtime (channel 537 DirecTV). Don’t miss it!