This post is inspired by the number one prompt this week from Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: “Write about an experience you have had with a celebrity.”

My father works in broadcast television.  Something like 17 years ago, he and one of his friends founded a company called VideoLink.  VideoLink provides satellite and fiber-optic transmission services for live TV production (that is a gross over-simplification, but it is not important to the post).  They started with one little, hole-in-the-wall studio in Watertown, MA (just outside of Boston) and have now grown to having facilities in Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia along with four satellite trucks.  In the early days, I used to work for my father almost every weekend, then as the company grew I got replaced more and more.  Then I got old enough that I was useful again every now and then.  In any event, working for my father allowed me to meet some pretty interesting people.

This story is from 2001.  If my memory and wikipedia are correct, it was March 6 to be exact.  Well, it all really started the day before.  It was a relatively normal day except that my father was staying a little late at the office.  He called me and asked me to find him a nice photo of a beach.  So I hopped on the computer (I don’t remember if we were still on dial-up or not at that point) and started searching for beach photos.  At the same time it was snowing like crazy outside.  I had no idea what the photo was for, but when I found one I emailed it off to him and that was that.

When my father finally got home that night I think we had already known that there was not going to be any school the next day.  My father got in and asked if I would come to work with him the next day to take some still photos of the shoot that they would be doing.  He also told me what was going on, Aerosmith was going to be in the studio doing promotion for the release of their album: Just Push Play.  They were scheduled to be live on TRL on MTV with Carson Daily, but the snow storm closed the airports and they couldn’t fly out of Boston.

Since the band was stuck in Boston they would still go live on TRL but  from boston.  The beach photo was going to be green screened in behind the band and they lounged around and then Carson would ask them about the release of the album.  At this point they ran outside and got on a dogsled and sledded to a record store to deliver the albums.

Well, for starters, Boston is under quite a bit of snow now so everything is closed.  They had to call all over the city to find a record store that was willing to open to do the shoot.  Then we had to call as many people as we could so that there would be a crowd of fans at the record store and at the studio for when they left on the dogsled.  Of course they also needed to find a dogsled as well.  It is quite amazing what you can do on short notice.  It was all organized by the morning!

So, I spent the day following Aerosmith around and dogsledding with them.  The photos I took do exist somewhere, probably in the archives at VideoLink.  At the time I was shooting on film, so I don’t have access to files right now.  While we were shooting one of the dogsled scenes I actually got to talk to Steven Tyler.  I don’t really remember what he said to me.  after that though, they almost ran over my dad with the dogsled and he ended up with a pretty good gash in his leg.

In all, it was probably one of the best snow days that I have ever had.  I mean, I got to meet Aerosmith.  I know that I have an autographed CD back at my parent’s house.  Pretty cool.

I am sure that by now almost everyone has heard or seen the Discovery Channel’s commercials with the “I Love the World” or “Boom-de-ah-da” song.  If you haven’t, you might just want to check it out below (I even linked a version with lyrics so that you can sing along!):

From the first time that I heard this advertisement I think that I have had the song stuck in my head.  I suppose that is exactly what the Discovery Networks are going for!  I don’t think that I needed a catchy tune to get me to watch the Discovery Channel because they have a lot of fascinating programs and I find that every time I turn it on I get sucked into whatever is on.  There are a few programs that I avoid, but generally I find it intriguing.

So, I suppose this ad really illustrates the power of a well developed song.  When you think about it, this song is not even a very complicated or interesting song.  The verses are “short and sweet” and the chorus is so simple that anyone could sing it.  The melody is catchy and easy, and I would bet that like me, once you have heard it, you go through your day: “boom-de-ah-da boom-de-ah-da boom-de-ah-da boom-de-ah-da!”

The funniest thing about this catchy little tune is that it has spawned many people to create their own renditions based on the things that they do.  If I was really gung-ho about it and if I had a video camera I might consider making one around the theatre.  For now though, I have been content surfing YouTube to see what people have come up with.  There are certainly plenty to choose from.  Though not musical, this song has even made it into the web comic XKCD:

XKCD Loves the Discovery Channel

So, do you love the whole world?  Will you now be humming this song to yourself all day?  I hope so!  How do you “boom-de-ah-da”?!

Warning this post may contain spoilers!

I have been watching Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse on Fox and personally I have found it to be an interesting and exciting series.  Unfortunately, I feel like it came to an abrupt end much like Whedon’s last series Firefly, at least it was not cut off mid-season.  Thanks to my DVR I got to watch the series finale only a little bit after it was aired.

My first real issue with the series finale was that it was really the second half of a two parter but the first half was never aired in the United States.  The worst thing about this was that there was really no way to know that there was a missing episode.  I had no reason to look it up before watching the Finale and feeling like something was missing.  Thanks to the episode guide on Wikipedia I was able to discover enough info about the missing episode to find it and download it.  I don’t claim to know how the TV networks make decisions, but not airing half of an episode seems like a silly thing to do.  I actually discovered that there are two missing episodes, but the other one, the original pilot, didn’t seem worth going after.

I think that my biggest gripe with the end of the series is that it seemed rushed and forced.  This may be due to the fact that the series may not have been ending on Whedon’s terms since Fox decided to cancel it after the second season.  It seemed like a very odd jump to end up years in the future, very incongruous with the way that we were left in the second to last episode.  I feel like it almost created as many new questions as it answered, the most obvious of these would probably have been answered by the missing episode.

In general I enjoyed the series and I would definitely recommend it.  I hear that the missing episodes exist on the DVD/BluRay releases so that may be a better way to watch.  I always felt like I wanted to see the next episode, and I am kinda bummed out that it is over so soon.

In general I tend to find ways to keep busy. Between work, cooking, eating, skiing in the winter, hiking and camping in the summer it doesn’t really leave that much time. However, it seems that the number of TV commitments that I have continues to grow. Working in theatre, I am usually at work when the primetime shows are on, so having a DVR is kinda handy. Additionally, watching shows on the DVR is so great because you don’t have to watch all the commercials.

The question is, how do you deal with all the shows you want to watch? The list of shows that gets recorded on my DVR is pretty long. I am mostly a Sci-Fi person, so Battlestar Galactica, Stargate and the likes take up lots of my time. Then of course there is Dollhouse, House, Ugly Betty, Mythbusters, Project Runway, Hell’s Kitchen, and the list goes on. Even with some shows having come to an end (like BSG), they are quickly replaced by new shows like Caprica or ABC’s V.

…and how late 2009 tries to kill the A Cappella genre of music.

So I finally have had the chance to start watching NBC’s new show, “The Sing Off” over the past couple nights. I probably wouldn’t have watched it except that my father called me up and told me that his company, VideoLink, shot all the Boston footage of the group from Tufts University, the Beelzebubs. I still have yet to watch the final episode, but it has kinda been a relative love-hate relationship between me and the show, and I am not sure that I would watch it again if they do another season.

Lets start with the fact that this is a show about singing and singing groups. Each episode is two hours long and each group only got maybe two minutes for each song (and they only did one song each in the first episode. You hear more music in an hour of American Idol (once you get through the first couple rounds) than in this show. These a cappella groups worked really hard and some travelled pretty far to get to the show and they are singing a maximum of four minutes each in a two hour show. That would be 32 minutes of singing in 120 minutes of show (if all eight groups performed two songs). What is up with that? We want to watch the show for the music, not the stories and the talking.