NCIS got back.

Before I get to the meat of this post I noticed something in the first two episodes of Season 6 of NCIS in relation to some factual errors, which I think are intentional for military safety and or legal mumbo jumbo. First in the closing of season 5 they announced the team would be broken up and Tony would be assigned to the Ronald Reagan an Aircraft Carrier (which is number CVN 76). In the season 6 opener, which is some 4 months later, they mention he was transferred to anothercarrier "The Seahawk" (which is a fictional ship for the purpose of the series). In one scene in Abby's lab she is looking at a post card from Tony. I had to pause my tape (as I was out that night at auditions) to check out what the postcard said, she flips it over to show the picture of a ship which is labeled "USS SEAHAWK CVN 65" OK but there really is a CVN 65 and it is The Enterprise. I got a kick out of that.Well now this week they have Tony still on the "Seahawk" and in some cool shots of showing the ship, including the flight deck showing the fan tail where the huge ship number is. This one is 74, upon checking CVN 74 is the USS John C. Stennis. Now they have used the name Skyhawk before, but you can't always see the identifying marks. Oh well before I go to far and forget my original intention for this post I have noticed they show plenty of bare backs in this show.

From an earlier episode in season 4? when McGee goes down to Abby's lab and sees Abby (Pauley Perrette) changing into her Goth clothes, here is what he sees.



And on the Season 6 Opener Ziva (Cote de Pablo) did a lounge act number in this nice slinky number.



Yup Ziva has a real nice rear end.

Getting Psyched for NCIS Night.

I decided I needed to get psyched for NCIS on Tuesday, since the DVDSpot.com news was sooooo horrible. But the Refugee site is building up fast. As one of the posts on the old site said something to the effect "Rome was destoryed in a day" (or"Fell in one day"). So I thought I'd cheer myself up by looking for a babe to post a pic of. So How about a pic of Pauley Perrette who Plays Abby Sciuto on NCIS. I found this one with a google search. It came from a myspace page that claims to be Pauley herself. Well I'm not 100% sold on that since many people try to impersonate celebs on myspace. Some celebs are there but I'm not sure if this one is the real McCoy. I'm almost tempted to try to "friend" her to find out, but how would I know? I know she used to have a personal blog, and then an official blog on CBS.com well about a year ago, both were abandoned due to wacko stalker type people. She might think I was one, oh well, I guess I'll never know. Now I'm not even sure if it is her in the pic, if it is her maybe she'll see this and let me know? Ha! RIGHT!Here is "Pauley" with Hugh Hefner. As a Playboy Bunny? Whaaaaaah? Hubba Hubba!

Why CNET Why?

It was a sad Monday today 29 September, 2008. A beloved website designed to keep track of DVD collections was given the old heave-ho by the corporate weasels that had bought it about a year or so ago. I am talking about one of the best, if not the best, DVD collection tracking websites. DVDSpot.com was an excellent resource of DVDs that are available world-wide. Each entry for a particular title had just about any and all information you would want to have for a DVD release (so long as it was a legitimate release, no bootlegs or pirated copies were allowed). I have yet to find a compatible collection website for other hobbies, or even for DVDs. There are a few that come close, but I really loved the feel of The DVDSpot.

Well during the day on Monday 29 September, the following message was posted on the main home page of my beloved DVD tracking website from the current corporate owners of the site CNET.com. Red text on a bright yellow background.


"On Wednesday October 15th DVDSpot will be closed permanently. This decision was made to allow us to focus on other great web properties. We sincerely appreciate everyone's contribution to the DVDSpot community and hope you enjoyed the free services it provided. We understand many people will not want to lose their personal collection data, so we remind you that you can export that data to file by going to Membership Tools while logged in and clicking the Export to File button. This will create a file with all movies in your Owned and Watched lists. Also keep in mind the editor system for approving DVD additions and edits has been disabled, so no new or edited DVDs will be added."

To say that this angered many of the regular users would be an understatement. The site also has a forum board, that I visit and participate in on a daily (when I can) basis. It has many people who share a common interest, the collection and watching of movies and TV shows on DVD.


Similar sites and forum boards have come and gone. One that stood out was called Guzzlefish.com (a petstore website occupies that domain name now), even though it had a neometal/punk type feel to it, the GF site was a useful site. Unfortunately I didn't take full advantage of it when it was around. It had categories for music and the VHS format in addition to DVDs. I took a break from it for a year or so, returned (never completely filled out my music collection or videos) and then 6 months to a year or so later it was gone. For a while there was a forum board website called Guzzlefish Forums Refugee which was an attempt to give former members a nostalgic feel on a different site. Well the traffic on that site died down and so did the site. Now the url to that site, which was somebodies personal ID name from the old GuzzleFish site, is some sort of personal website of some guy (I guess the same guy) and his hobbies which I think include hunting and para-military groups or something. DVDSpot.com has followed in the website death march.

Good news is that some of the die hard moderators who helped on the DVDSpot have started a new Refugee Forum for DVDSpot members at bulletpointreview.com. Many of the regular DVDSpot folks had been old GuzzleFish folks so a lot of them have tried all sorts of sites. Most agree that The Spot was the best. Others have said that DVDProfiler is better, well it does have the offline aspect to it, in addition to the online database. There is also DVDAFicianado.com (DVDAF.com) which not as many like, mostly because it is slow to get updates, hard to make additions (or wait for approval to make the additions) and it looks awful. A semi-recent update made it even more unbareable to use.

Well I guess it's back to the slide rule, colored construction paper and paste.

Primeval: A reason or two to watch it

Lately on Saturday evenings on BBC America (in the 9:00 hour when TORCHWOOD used to show) I've been watching PRIMEVAL which is similar in the fact that there is a temporal portal nearby. The big difference is the rift in Primeval is actually many portals and they appear and disappear randomly, where as Torchwood there is just one time rift and it isn't the only plot devise. The ads for Primeval describe it as TORCHWOOD meets JURASSIC PARK and they are sort of right. Anyway it is a show I really enjoy and will have to get the DVD of it soon. The region 1 version of Series 1 & 2 comes out soon.

After I started seeing promos for Primeval I felt I had to watch it. One of the many reasons to watch is Hannah Spearritt.



Well worth the admission price I'd say.

Oh and in case you weren't convinced that chasing dinosaurs and fictional predatory creatures from the future was worth watching the show. Early on they showed us this;


Sorry guys Hannah doesn't run around half naked every week. They haven't shown her like that much any more and BBC America is now into Season (Series as they say in the UK) 2. In the UK they are gearing up for Series 3, which means it will be next fall when we see it in the states I suppose. Meanwhile over at TORCHWOOD they have started filimg series 3 which BBC will start in the spring of 09 and I would guess BBC America would start a few weeks to about a month later.

Monster Ark on Sci-Fi Channel

Where do I start with this? I watched the movie Monster Ark on the Sci-Fi Channel. It sounded a little better than it ended up. It was OK but it could be considered a modern B-Movie about ancient history and archaeology ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of the selling features is it stars Renée O'Connor of Xena: Warrior Princess fame (she will join her Hercules/ Xena co-stars in an up coming movie for next year called Bitch Slap)


WARNING: This Review contains Spoilers!

OK in a nutshell after discovering an ancient Biblical scroll (which turns out to be the "Original" copy of the book of Genesis) in the same area the Dead Sea Scrolls were found an archaeology professor teams up with his ex-wife (O'Connor) to find Noah's First Ark that's right according to the text before the famous flood adventure Noah was sent on a mission from God. This first ark of Noah's was to transport and destroy (or eternally imprison) an evil creature. Well guess what? These archaeology folks unleash this evil creature back into the world, and have to track it down.

I thought Renée O'Connor was OK in this, but I don't think she really fit the part. At first I thought it should have been played by a slightly older actress. She is mid to late 30s and I thought the character should have been late 40s.


This film would have been a little better if they had cut out some blatant Raiders of the Lost Ark ideas. I won't give the exact details but what do the words: Map Room/ use a staff to find hidden room, topple a giant statue to knock a hole in a wall and crate up an ancient power source and put into storage, make you think of?

To make the young guys drool the movie also has Amanda Crew in it as one of the professor's graduate students. Normally I wouldn't mind what she was wearing, usually shorts and a t-shirt or sleeveless shirt, however, in many of the areas of the world where they were supposed to be - Iraq for one - she was dressed way to skimpy.


Even with ripping off Raiders I liked this film. It was OK, but it is a B-Grade film. You also have to do some big suspending of your disbelief, even though the film is a little preachy about personal beliefs. Things like being able to just up and go to the next area you want from an ancient map, even within areas of Iraq the US military has problems patrolling, deciphering an ancient text that is slightly different from previous similar documets, being able to decipher more of the document overnight when it took 3 weeks to figure out only about 1/2 of it previously, being escorted by a military detachment and being able to tell the commanding officer "lets go here" with no problems,

I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

NOTE: The Renée O'Connor pics are from Xena: Warrior Princess episodes. Yes the Indiana Jones like one too. Oh The Amanda Crew pic? That came from IMDB.com.

100th UGH!

A couple of days ago it was the Seattle Mariners who got the dubious dishonor of getting their 100th loss of the season. Well after last night's rained-out "Fan Appreciation" game (in DC which was to be vs. The Florida Marlins) was canceled before it had a chance to start, the Washington Nationals went to Philli and got their 100th loss of the season. Last season all the naysayers were saying the Nats would lose 100 games that season well last year they only lost 89 and were in 4th not 5th place. Well this season they are still in last (5th place) and will finish with a minimum of 100 losses with 102 maximum loses (Last night's rained out game means they will only have 161 games played not 162)


Rigth now the Mariners have 101 loses with 2 more games to play I guess, I know the nationals play the PITA Phillies two more times. Hopefully the Nats can pull one or two wins this weekend. The only other team in danger of losing 100 games is the San Diego Padres, at 97 loses but with just 2 more games they squeak under 100.

September Gone?

Holy "Bleep" Batman September is almost over and I didn't do diddly squat with this. OK I did update my "CDs" Listened to sidebar, and I think a blog link or two. other than that Mrs. Lincoln...

Moving ON, IN or OUT?

Wow almost the end of August and I haven't updated here. That is mostly because of my move at the beginning of the month. All my time has been devoted to unpacking, well and also some rehearsing and performances of My Emperor's New Clothes. Did I mention that here? Well if not I guess I will someday in reminiscing about it. Anywho, due to scheduling errors and my cell phone being packed away in the moving truck I still don't have my cable/internet hooked up. Technically my cable should have been transferred to my apartment as a simple move, but I think the Comcast boneheads screwed it up. I know the guy I was going to have do the work, that my apartment complex uses was going to have me cancel my older cable and then start fresh. I ended up calling Comcast directly to get a clearer idea of what my new service would be, even though it will cost me slightly more than what the other guy was quoting. Why can't they offer the price he was offering? Anyway it is supposed to be just a simple transfer the cable and add the internet and now add a landline phone (apparently the 3-in-1 package costs the same as just having the twofer of cable and internet, weird).

Well next Tuesday (26 August) is when Comcast is supposed to come by and install the internet and phone line and transfer the cable. Hopefully things will be OK then and I can forget about all these problems. Good thing I have credit on my Comcast account, but unfortunately I have the credit because I overpaid last time. UGH! Another weird thing is when I try to check things online it seems that my old account was plain canceled not transferred so if that is really the case I am more steamed, but since things should be fixed on Tuesday I should be fine after that.

Left Turns, Alternate Realities and Stuff

Last week I watched the Doctor Who episode Left Turn on Sci-Fi Channel. Without giving too much away and without giving a full blown review I will just say it was about alternate realities. The episode had sort of a Sliding Doors feel to it, taking a left turn instead of a right turn. See what happens when you do that? I really should get around to doing more reviewing here when I get the chance. I really haven't of late due to equal parts apartment hunting and sheer laziness. I have succeeded in both. I am super lazy and found an apartment.

This weeks episode of Doctor Who is part one of the season 4 finale. From what I've seen and heard it is a recent past companionsfest. As with many episodes of this latest incarnation of the good doctor I am both looking forward to it and dreading it. Looking forward to it because I'm a Whovian (or Wholigan) and dreading it because they are bound to have overdone something and not done enough of something else.

Books, Books, Books And More Books!

Recently I had been having problems with one of the book tracking sites I use, bibliophil.org. First I was having problems logging in, it turns out I was trying to use what I thought was my password except I had an extra character. UGH all these passwords for every single little website. Then their forums go down, well actually it has been taken down now due to problems with hackers and spammers. No problem I rarely use the forum anyway, but the list I tend to refer to now and then, although not very often.

Anyway I had intended to use listal.com as an alternate several months back, but haven't gotten around to populating it too much. There you can also track Movies, TV Shows, CDs and I think make lists of stuff. Then the realization that I didn't have a reliable back-up to my collection as listed on bibliophil sort of sucked. To complicate matters some (besides the fact that I don't have ALL my books listed on any site) the bibliophil site was down for at least a day, maybe it was down for longer, I'm not sure.

Well the time came to search for another reliable book tracking site (similar to my fave DVD site DVDSpot.com, and the long gone GuzzleFish.com Multi-media site) I found an article or two and a blog post or three for possible sites and of course kept running into my longtime book site enemy LibraryThing.com but I don't like that site. The main reason I don't like it is, it is only free if you have less than 200 books to list. If you have more than 200 books you need to upgrade to a paid membership ($10 yearly or $20 Lifetime I think). I also kept running into some of these book community trading/book club sites that would be cool if I wanted to trade books around, but I'm a selfish bastard and want to keep my books. I suppose for some of my books I may sometime trade, give away or sell them, but I don't want that as my main focus.

Long story short I found a site that suits my needs and is similar in someways to bibliophil.org, except it seems to be more reliable and probably gets updated faster. It is called Goodreads.com and it seems to be pretty user friendly. The community aspect of it reminds me of the early days of amazon.com when they had a forums/community section. You can explore the world of books, browse other members collections, contact them, make friends socialize or do whatever bookwise. I LIKE IT! I think I will still keep my bibliophil list active as long as they are still around, or I grow tired of them. LOL.

So in short some collecting sites.

BOOKS:
Goodreads.com - Very Good site for collectors.
bibliophil.org - OK site for collectors.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site. Seems to cater to those who want a community atmosphere.
LibraryThing.com - OK book site for people with small collections or those who trade their books often.

CDS/Music:
rateyourmusic.com - OK site for tracking CD and Record collections. Mostly alternative and specialized genres, but good for overall. Sometimes the moderators are picky about what gets added or how to do it.
CDComplete.com - Barebones CD tracking site, not updated very often, needs major improvements and needs to become more user-friendly.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.

DVDS:
DVDSpot.com - Excellent collection tracking site for DVD collections. This is the creme of the crop in my opinion. The moderators have some strange attitudes, but then you don't have to visit the forums if you don't want. LOL! This site is my litmus/acid test for all other collection tracking sites. Very user friendly and the people there are very helpful.
listal.com - OK fair to midlin site.
DVDAficionado - Was a decent DVD collection tracking site, but is slow to update. A fairly recent update to the site has made it super ridiculous. It isn't as user-friendly as it once was (it was never really great in that department). The front index page doesn't look like a site that would be for DVD collecting, I don't know what to expect from it. Well that is what happens to sites that are run by huge mega corporations.
GuzzleFish.com - Dead and Gone but not forgotten. This site was a great CD,DVD,Record,Video Game collection tracking site, it might have done comics too I forget.