Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and John McCain as... John McCain

Presenting their own program on QVC (as opposed to 30 minutes of prime time on three channels as Obama did), Palin (Fey) and McCain (McCain) present some bargains connected with their campaign.  

My favorite was the "Palin 2012" t-shirt.  Although the 12 commemorative plates about the town meetings Obama and McCain did were amusing too (they were blank!).

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Will Ferrell as George Bush

The fifth Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. This include George Bush and John McCain. Funny as always.

Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live

Yes! Sarah Palin finally appeared as herself! It was a little difficult to tell her apart from Tina Fey sometimes. She was also a little stiff, although so were Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin.

I Still Think Dancing with the Stars is Fixed!

OK. So Cloris didn't go. Rocco had the lowest score, but he wasn't sent home because Misty had ruptured her Achilles tendon.

My previous post had two scenarios:

1. Cloris went even though there was no reason to send anyone home. This meant I was right. But it didn't happen.
2. Rocco was sent home - this didn't happen either (although he was singled out with the lowest score). This would have meant I was dead wrong, but it didn't happen either.
   

Why weren't the votes carried over? I believe that is what happen before. My paranoid mind now thinks that Cloris will be marked VERY low by the judges next week.

Conspiracy theory lives another week! (Although it IS looking a little ill.)

Is Dancing with the Stars Fixed?

It's probably not - it would be a PR disaster if it came out that ABC were fixing a competition - but a thought did occur to me that there is something strange going on. And ABC want to get rid of Cloris Leachman.

First of all, since Misty May-Treanor's injury has put her out of the competition, the "normal" thing to do would be to have no-one kicked off this week and carry the votes over to next week. This has happened before with Dancing with the Stars, and with American Idol too.

Secondly, although Cloris doesn't really dance but sort of march around the dance floor, she has consistently got 15 or 16. Rocco DiSpirito, however, put in a typical performance last night (no rhythm, unsure of steps) and got 20 points - more than he deserved I think. That means that if Rocco gets 10% of the viewers votes, Cloris would have to get 12.5% (by my guestimate) to stay on the show. Not inconceivable (she did a similar thing when Ted and Kim were voted off) but still difficult.

Why do ABC want to get rid of Cloris? Well, the act is getting a little tired and it's starting to distract from the dancing. There seems to be a polarization of views - some love her, and some, well, don't.

Now - here's my conspiracy:

1. The judges were deliberately generous with Rocco.
2. ABC are waiting to see the results of the viewers vote. If Cloris gets enough points to knock Rocco out, they'll carry over to next week. If she doesn't, she will go tonight.

If, however, Rocco goes tonight, then I need to see my therapist.

What do you think?

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in the VP Debate

This is the funniest so far I think. Despite not having a lot to work with I thought they did a good job with Joe Biden, Queen Latifah was excellent as Gwen Ifill and Tina Fey was amazing as Sarah Palin (although she did sound Irish occasionally).

Here's the SNL sketch of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate.

What people are looking for on a Monday

So, Monday morning. I discover that Heather Locklear has been arrested on suspicion of DUI, that people are concerned about the financial bailout plan, there is actually something called "Brazilian fart porn" (amazing), there is an internet hoax about Eminem dying and that it's hard to spell Rosh Hashanah.

The top search terms on google are at google.com/trends.

1. financialservices.house.gov
2. achewood
3. heather locklear
4. xbox live
5. order gifts online
6. eagles bears
7. rosh hashanah
8. jewish new year
9. jack wagner
10. robin bain
11. wachovia wells fargo
12. fistula
13. cadbury recall
14. brazilian fart porn
15. heather locklear mug shot
16. laura bush killing a man in texas
17. bermuda triangle
18. wachovia buyout
19. roshashana
20. eid 2008
21. burundanga
22. nickelback gotta be somebody
23. eid al fitr
24. wachovia bank failure
25. richie sambora
26. ryan reynolds
27. mtu settings
28. flat belly diet
29. creative labs x dock wireless music system for ipod
30. eid ul fitr 2008
31. new moon
32. freebies
33. speaker.gov
34. xbox live mtu failed
35. free stuff
36. entourage season 5 episode 4
37. hail to the redskins song
38. kay lenz
39. spacex
40. shana tova
41. roshashana 2008
42. bupers online
43. heather locklear latest news
44. xbox update
45. norma collier
46. true blood episode 4
47. xbox.com
48. september 29
49. janet bauernschmitt
50. wachovia news
51. butt plug
52. eminem died
53. jewish holidays
54. the life and times of tim
55. falcon 1
56. iron sheik
57. emergency economic stabilization act
58. do not call list
59. poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed
60. robin bane
61. brian keith
62. mj morning show
63. farrah gray
64. scarlett johansson
65. free samples
66. elon musk
67. navratri
68. wachovia bailout
69. navratri 2008
70. paul newman dies
71. superjail
72. the unit
73. matt bryant son dies
74. www.lhw.com/1928_signup.aspx
75. fryeburg fair
76. sling
77. sigma designs
78. desperate housewives season 5 episode 1
79. freedom of religion
80. nfl week 4 results
81. matt ryan
82. peter the great nuclear cruiser
83. eminem dead
84. odwalla
85. benjamin disraeli
86. suicide season
87. head over heels
88. hipster
89. navy personnel command
90. my fdic
91. kokopelli
92. phillies playoff schedule
93. australia movie
94. end of ramadan 2008
95. wachovia takeover
96. hendrik schon
97. with six you get eggroll
98. icici bank bankrupt
99. uss howard
100. hsbc direct

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin - The Couric Interview

Here's the latest sketch with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. She looks so much like her, and definitely sounds like her!



You can see the first one here.

The Latest Search Terms - Captivating!

I have to say I enjoy looking at Google trends (the most popular search terms on Google at any given point).

You can learn so much about what is going on, what's at the top of people's minds and which words are the hardest to spell in the English language.

It also seems that relatively local things can, in a short period of time, become on of the top searched terms. There are a lot of missing people for instance, or searches for public school websites when it snows.

It also turns upside down and pre-conceived notions of what people care abou. For example, the top movie term as of this morning was Saw V rather than any of the new releases (Eagle Eye is the biggest). Obviously, there is a core group of people aching to see the next episode in this terrorfest.

Here are the current top terms or you can go straight there at google.com/trends.

1. mccain top ten blowups
2. alton desiree
3. carrie tucker
4. jill nicolini
5. kathleen parker
6. autoresponders
7. hurricane kyle
8. johnny appleseed
9. 102.5 the bone
10. washington mutual
11. watchersweb
12. google news
13. usc oregon state
14. i m not a princess lyrics
15. tpg capital
16. the office season 5 episode 1
17. womanizer lyrics
18. mish
19. wamu
20. bleach 327
21. 92.3 krock
22. jonathan yeo
23. jacquizz rodgers
24. taylor swift white horse
25. burundanga
26. sleepyfans
27. johnny appleseed coloring page
28. saw 5
29. jamie dimon
30. tropical storm kyle
31. i'm not a princess this ain't a fairytale
32. grey s anatomy season 5
33. irobot scooba 5806
34. saw v
35. jean jacques rousseau
36. dan lee
37. scrabulous
38. office furniture
39. babby
40. britney spears womanizer download
41. jill nicolini anthony cumia
42. leyla milani
43. storiesonline
44. led zeppelin tour
45. bernadette peters
46. ring of bright water
47. t 72
48. wamu failure
49. naughty elevator walkthrough
50. letterman top 10
51. internet status
52. elizabeth reaser
53. kathy fuld
54. pa child support
55. the office weight loss
56. voyeur dorm
57. usc football
58. miguel lausell
59. jp morgan chase
60. wamu buyout
61. internet outage
62. bleach 339
63. greg lemond
64. internet down
65. sarah palin corn maze
66. watch the office online
67. service.sap.com
68. pulsatile mass
69. survivor gabon
70. parallel parking
71. black pearl restaurant new york
72. mekhi phifer
73. sakkarakatti movie review
74. usc vs oregon st
75. kevin mckidd
76. club penguin fall fair
77. invalid aim server address
78. sasha cohen
79. mekhi pfeiffer
80. cyberknife
81. presidential debate
82. john boehner
83. cnn.com/robin
84. michael klump
85. sarah palin katie couric interview
86. commodore sex act
87. september 26
88. patricia farinelli
89. oregon state football schedule
90. jamie eason
91. date movie
92. daisuke enomoto
93. smugmug
94. bleach manga
95. travertine
96. onemanga
97. thrift
98. julianne moore
99. wamu collapse
100. er

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

It seems very hard to find the video of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL. It keeps popping up and getting taken down. Here's the video from the NBC website - hopefully this will work!

Soccer goals recalled after child's death

These soccer nets are being recalled because the holes are not big enough or not small enough. This isn't an acceptable situation - we've known this sort of thing for years so it shouldn't happen. Offshore manufacturing seems to be managed worse and worse as the years go by.

Soccer goals recalled after child's death - Yahoo! News

Season 7 of Dancing with the Stars

The cast has been announced for Season 7 of Dancing with the Stars!

This season there are 13 celebrities - six women and seven men - and two will be voted off in the first week.

There are four actors, three sports people, two models, two singers, a comedian and a chef (I've counted Ms Kardashian as a model - she could actually fit in a number of those categories).

The couples are:

Kim Kardashian & Mark Ballas
Lance Bass & Lacey Schwimmer
Toni Braxton & Alec Mazo
Brooke Burke & Derek Hough
Maurice Greene & Cheryl Burke
Cody Linley & Julianne Hough
Susan Lucci & Tony Dovolani
Warren Sapp & Kym Johnson
Misty May-Treanor & Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Ted McGinley & Inna Brayer
Cloris Leachman & Corky Ballas
Jeffrey Ross & Edyta Sliwinska
Rocco DiSpirito & Karina Smirnoff

Cloris Leachman is the oldest at 82 and Cody Linley is the youngest at 18.

The new season starts on September 22.

Why Do They Always Pick on Carol Vorderman?

The producers of Countdown, the UK game show, have offered Carol Vorderman a new contract at a 90% pay cut. She has refused.

It's pretty obvious that they don't want her to continue as they would have offered a more realistic pay cut (she suggested 35% - the budget cut percentage across all of C4) and are looking to produce a leaner, meaner show.

I seem to remember that Tomorrow's World thought they could do without Carol, using the fact she had an alleged conflict of interest to fire her. They subsequently asked her to return after the ratings plummeted. She refused.

Do they realize Carol won't budge? Or are they fooling themselves?

It doesn't really matter - the bad publicity from this and the celebrities that are backing Carol means that a) the management are going to look silly whatever happens, b) their authority is undermined and c) they will have their wish and their viewership will be leaner, the meaner ones having left!

Technorati Monster Brutally Murdered in Downtown San Francisco

[San Francisco, CA] Hundreds of horrified passers-by looked on helplessly today, as a mob of bloggers and other ne'er do-wells cornered the Technorati monster in an alley and proceeded to maim and mutilate the poor creature until it died.

Police arrested 19 people and estimate that 20-30 are still at large. The only description they could give was that most of them had beards and were wearing pizza stained t-shirts and open-toe sandals. It was not immediately clear whether the description applied to the men, the women or both.

Police Chief Heather Fong said, "I wouldn't wish on anyone what happened to this poor creature. It gives a whole new meaning to backend issues."

The crowd had been gathering outside of Technorati's headquarters, complaining about service issues, when the monster, which has a history of escaping, was seen leaving the building by the side door. They immediately gave chase brandishing wireless keyboards and swinging computer mouses around their heads. As they disappeared down the alley, they could be heard chanting "doh, doh, doh" over and over. When the police arrived, the mob dispersed, leaving a bloody pile of fur. Several of the keyboards had disappeared and could not be found. The Authorities are waiting for the results of the post-mortem.

Police cordoned off the area for several hours. Souvenir pieces of fur were available from street vendors within fifteen minutes.

Calls to Technorati headquarters were not immediately returned.

"Birds of Prey" TV Show Coming Out on DVD

I was excited when I found out the TV show "Birds of Prey" is coming out on DVD in July. I had hoped when they cancelled the series that they would bring it out then. They didn't and I'd given up hope.

In case you didn't know "Birds of Prey" is based on the DC comic books. Oracle (formerly Batgirl, now in a wheelchair), Huntress (the daughter of Batman and Catwoman) and Dinah (a telepath amongst other things, plus someone stole her superhero name!) protect New Gotham City after Batman left.

I put together a Squidoo lens - http://www.squidoo.com/birds-of-prey. I don't think it will get a lot of traffic because one of the reasons they cancelled "Birds of Prey" was declining viewership. It was nice to rediscover it again though!

"Get Vista, XP is Rubbish"

I find this very strange.  Vista may well be better than XP (despite people whining about it) but to put out a white paper essentially trashing XP (which this looks like, especially near the end) does not fill me will confidence that Microsoft have it right this time.

 

Microsoft: "There is no need to wait for Windows 7"

How does Microsoft counter the widespread perception that Vista is a failure, despite its strong sales numbers? First you release a white paper explaining why Vista is better than XP, and then you release a white paper explaining why there is no reason to wait for Windows 7. With companies still considering "bypassing Vista," Microsoft has done just that. The most recent Windows white paper to make it out of Redmond is 20 pages long and is entitled "The Business Value of Windows Vista: Five reasons to deploy now."  Full story

Low SAT? Never mind.

“Wake Forest University will no longer require prospective students to submit SAT or ACT test scores in order to be accepted into the school and have instead made the test scores optional.” Full story

 

I think it’s a great idea to try and broaden the range of students that Wake Forest enrolls.  However, I think this is somewhat of an empty gesture because I don’t think it solves the problem.

 

First of all, it’s unfair to the kids that really work hard on their SATs.  If the SATs are not that big a deal, there is less incentive to do well in them.  You still need to do well on your class work of course, but I do think big, important tests are an important part of growing up, as long as they are used sensibly.

 

The second, and more important thing, is that it’s not addressing the issue of why wealthier students do better in the SATs.  It could be genetics – more intelligent people are more likely to be wealthier, and their children are more likely to be more intelligent.  It could be social – wealthier parents can afford tutors, less wealthy have to send their kids out to part-time jobs.

 

I know those statements are a bit extreme (there is some truth in both of them), but without a discussion about the issue, and a plan to address it, the Wake Forest move just seems like a futile gesture.

An Inconvenient Embarrassment

“Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming -- including "SpongeBob SquarePants," "South Park" and "MTV Unplugged" episodes and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" -- that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times."” Full story

If I were Viacom, I’d be embarrassed to file this lawsuit. 1.5 billion views! How many did Viacom create?

They should be working out how they can generate 1.5 billion views for their other movies and shows. They should be working out how they can leverage those 1.5 billion views.

Viacom don’t seem to have learned from the music industry debacle – instead of embracing new technology, new ways of interacting, all the music industry did was kill Napster and whine because CD sales were down.

Viacom need to enable the use of modern communications, not try to disable them.