Friday, August 31, 2007

TV Dead Pool Part II

Today I will pick which new CBS shows will likely live and which ones will die.

HIT "Cane" It seems like a TV show version of Scarface. Should be interesting.
HIT "Moonlight" Some show about vampires. It has a "Ghost Whisperer lead-in, so that might save it.
MISS "The Big Bang Theory" A sitcom about physicists. Were they looking over a list of occupations and trying to pick one that nobody made a TV show about? Did they ever consider there is a good reason a show has not been made about physicists?
MISS "Kid Nation" A reality show about kids running a town. People will turn in the first week out of morbid curiosity. Since charges aren't being filed against the producers, I'm going to assume that there was some off-camera adult supervision. In other words, the kids don't set fire to the town. Sorry folks....

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

TV Show Dead Pool

A dead pool is a game in which people try to guess which celebrities are going to die by the end of the calender year. The problem with that is if you win, you get investigated. So this year, Gloria Diaz and I will try to predict which of the new TV shows this season will be cancelled and which will be renewed next year.
"HIT" means that I believe that this show will still be on the air in September 2008. "MISS" means that I think that the show will be either canceled or on permanent hiatus. We have not see any of the pilot episodes yet, nor do we plan to see all of them. Our guesses are based purely on what we have seen or heard so far.

We'll start with Fox shows. We'll cover other networks in later posts.

HIT "Back to You" It has star power in the form of Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton. A sitcom about the news can have a lot of cerebral humor, which just might draw all the smart people away from the Internet for 30 minutes. And dumb people will tune in because they recognize the actors. Something for everybody!

HIT "K-Ville" A cop show set in New Orleans. This looks like a upbeat, yet gritty drama.

MISS "Don’t Forget the Lyrics" Game show where contestants must remember song lyrics. Good concept, but its competing against an NBC show with the same idea called "Singing Bee". Only one of the two shows is going to make it, and "Bee" is getting higher ratings.

MISS "Nashville" Country music version of "American Idol".Networks have an amazing knack for taking an idea that worked, then using it over and over again until viewers get fed up.

MISS "The Next Great American Band" It's like "American Idol", but with band instead of solo artists. See above.

Facts about incoming college freshmen

At the start of every academic year, college professors often have to be reminded that students would not remember events that did not take place in their lifetimes. They are given a list of freshman facts that will make most people feel old. Today's 18 year olds would have been born in 1988 and 1989. This is a list of fact about them that I came up with of the top of my head.

-"The Simpsons" have been on the air since they were babies
-Every president elected in their lifetimes has been named "Bush" or "Clinton".
-Kurt Cobain shot himself before they started kindergarten.
-Ayatollah Khomeini has been dead as long as they can remember.
-The first Stealth fighters were deployed before they were born.
-They do not remember when Iraq was a US ally.
-The Berlin Wall fell when they were still in the crib. The Soviet Union collapsed before they were potty trained.
-The "Madden Football" video game franchise has been around as long as they have been able to hold a controller.
-Prozac has always been available to them.
-DVDs hit the scene when they were in elementary school.
-9/11 occurred when they were in the 7th grade.
-Not only did they have computers in school, they had Mac and Windows PC's equipped with CD ROMs in kindergarten.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Blogger's block

Ok, so I haven't updated in a while. August is traditionally a slow news month. About the only interesting thing that has happened to me in recent weeks that I am free to talk about would be my cat getting sick. Stewie was lethargic (as opposed to just plain lazy) and wasn't using the litter box. I was worried. When Misty had plumbing problems, it turned out to be bladder stones, costing $600 to fix. The vet had him all day, waiting for him to pee. I wish he had that kind of control when he was on my carpet all those times. It turned out to be a urinary tract infection, and it only cost $94 to diagnose and cure. Stewie is now on an antibiotic, and is back to his normal, lazy self.