Forever A Fangirl

Californication - Episode 4.04 - Monkey Business - Promo - 2 Sneak Peeks - Synopsis - Promo Photos @SHO_Cali #giveaway

 

 

Californication 4.04 - 'Monkey Business' Synopsis:

Hank learns from his lawyer (Carla Gugino) that he will be going to trial for statutory rape. After Hank finishes the F & P script, Charlie (Evan Handler) drags him to a meeting with the director (Jonathan Kasdan), the producer (Stephen Tobolowsky) and an eccentric financier (Fisher Stepens). A dead billionaire caps off the meeting.

Official CALIFORNICATION Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Californication

Official CALIFORNICATION Twitter: http://twitter.com/sho_cali

 Official CALIFORNICATION Series Site: http://www.sho.com/site/californication/home.do

Do you like free stuff/giveaways?

How 'bout your very own, super-awesome, let's celebrate Californication getting-picked-up-for a-5th-season, Californication official poster art?

All you have to do is leave me a comment telling me one thing you like about the show Californication on Showtime and you are in the running. An announcement of the winners will be posted on Sunday, February 20th. Good Luck!

The 'Dexter' Writer's Room

The Writer's Room

The writers of Dexter discuss last year's finale and how it impacted the development of season five.

I imagine writing for Dexter is a dream job or would you bring work home and it could be more of a nightmare?

Nah. Dream job.

This season ought to be fun to write as its a total reboot. Dexter stumbles backwards in his process of painstakingly evolving into something like a normal human being (vs. feeling & acting as a.serial killer) at least at first he will. I'd be shocked if he did not "act out" his anger, guilt & grief, coupled with being totally overwhelmed by the here and now.

Prior to Dexter's season 5 premiere I'd like to note that I'm quite thrilled for Michael C. Hall  who "is" Dexter  as well as for his bride, Jennifer Carpenter, who plays his sister "Deb" on Dexter  that Michael looks great --it's a great relief to see him looking so healthy and I'm totally excited about the start of season 5 at the end of this month (Sept. 26)!

ON THIS DAY On April 21, 1910, author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as...

ON THIS DAY

On April 21, 1910, author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died in Redding, Conn.

 link I like: TwainQuotes.com

Some Twain utterances (below)

Be good or you will be lonesome . Mark Twain

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. - Mark Twain, a Biography

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. - Notebook, 1894

If husbands could realize what large returns of profit may be gotten out of a wife by a small word of praise paid over the counter when the market is just right, they would bring matters around the way they wish them much oftener than they usually do. Arguments are unsafe with wives, because they examine them; but they do not examine compliments. One can pass upon a wife a compliment that is three-fourths base metal; she will not even bite it to see if it is good; all she notices is the size of it, not the quality.
- "Hellfire Hotchkiss," reprinted in Satires and Burlesques

True Blood: The Dead Arise *Casting Spoiler*

I don't know about you but I am missing HBO's True Blood something fierce. I've kept myself partially occupied reading the entire Sookie Stackhouse series, except the last one which should be at my door step any day now.

Charlaine Harris has indeed created a memorable heroine in Sookie Stackhouse, who she puts in some truly other-worldly situations. Her heroine however remains firmly down to earth.

Since I'll be watching True Blood faithfully and blogging about it I thought it necessary to get my hands on the source material. That did help somewhat in the first season of True Blood as producer Alan Ball more or less stuck with the book(s) version(s). He changed up a few things plus he dipped into the second book in the series, "Living Dead In Dallas," so there would have been no way of knowing how much of the original Sookie Stackhouse stories he was using and how much of his own unique stamp he was putting on the series without reading the books.

With the exception of Book IV, which just did not gel for me, it would be great if Ball took as much of Charlaine Harris's original material and turned it into True Blood material. She just has the most fanciful imagination and her Stackhouse books are compulsively readable.

There has not been too much news about the production of Season Two of True Blood though this tidbit is very, very welcome news:

"True Blood is resurrecting Sookie's Gram (played by the sublime Lois Smith) in season 2! And by "resurrecting" I mean "returning in newly-created flashback scenes!"  (Thanks to the Best spoiler source evar!)

For trivia buffs, Lois Smith (Gran) made her film debut with James Dean in 1955's  "East Of Eden."

I am so, so glad that Lois Smith is going to be featured in True Blood again. Hers was such a welcome presence. She owned every scene she was in. Furthermore, Sookie often remembers things her grandmother said or did as she was a huge influence on Sookie so in my mind it would be completely natural to bring her back in flashback or other form as the series warrants.

Here are the the names of the first two episodes of True Blood: Season 2.

True Blood - Episode 2.01 - Nothing But The Blood

True Blood - Episode 2.02 - Keep This Party Going

I hope to have more True Blood news soon as production was to resume this month (January 2009). As soon as I know the official start date I'll post it as thus far we've only been told "summer 2009."

Wannabe Wordsmiths

I belong to a forum. Anyone can read it but one of it's primary functions is for those of us who do or have done paid blogging to discuss things--from technical issues to monetary rewards or lack thereof, to other stuff which can be of our choosing.

Recently a blogger expressed the opinion that the people on the forum were falling victim to "censorship" and he began actively recruiting  people on the forum to join a new forum he'd started.

Now there's a host of people who visit the forum to which I belong--from advertisers, seasoned bloggers, brand new bloggers, paid staff and everyone in-between. From the lack of responses it seemed that he did not have a lot of success in drawing from our forum to his.

I've been on forums before and of course there has to be rules in place as a forum exists as a community. What I've found on this forum is, on a scale of noose-like restrictiveness to almost no interference at all, is that this forum tries to be as hands off as possible and let the boards flow. The most involvement I've seen is when a duplicate thread (new topic) is introduced and that thread gets merged with the other or, someone asks a question in the wrong section and the thread is moved so the thread author will move likely get what they are needing.

I've seen very little of what New Forum Guy called censorship and when there was such a thing it was justified. The censorship takes the form of the topic not being able to have any more comments added to it. The thread becomes "locked."

So New Forum Guy has started a couple of new threads on the forum to which I belong and each one IMO, seemed more to promote his new forum than to discuss a relevant topic. I wasn't the only one to notice the self promotion and they called him on it. This provoked him to insult one of the volunteer moderators on the boards. She told him she didn't appreciate it and others including me, tried to give her support with kind words. New Forum Guy came back to the thread and threw more road apples around, this time provoking an all-out love fest for our mods.

Then something surprised me. A commenter downplayed it all by saying the thread comments "were just words." Just words?!
We've all heard the old Internet axiom, "you can't convey in writing what you can in person." Oh yeah? So the Constitution is "just words" and the Bible and the Koran and everything Shakespeare ever wrote--do I have to go on? These very important pieces of writing, each conveying thoughts, ideas, beliefs, stories--all in WORDS.

This is the 21st Century. We are speaking less and less to one another and more and more we communicate by typing our messages. If we feel what we are doing is "just words," than why are we doing it?  And since we are doing it frequently via instant messages, texting, weblogs, email, membership in forums, boards, and in gaming, these words are being used a great deal. And isn't something that is used frequently of import? And further, since we are using words frequently shouldn't we be getting better at expressing ourselves this way? When are we going to stop using the excuse that what we type is "just words?"
That reasoning was never truly factual and it's far less so now.

Show us a magazine to which you subscribe.

Since I was 16 years old I've subscribed to Rolling Stone Magazine. Yes, there was a time or two that "someone" else let the subscription run out but even in my very lean years when I couldn't afford it, I'd request it as a Christmas gift from my parents. It's still only $20 for a year's subscription--think it was about $9.95 for a year back then. It comes every two weeks which keeps it's content relatively fresh (in the non-Internet sense).

Why have I subscribed so long? One.They practically give it away (see above).

Two, three, etc. Annie Leibovitz, Greil Marcus, Mikal Gilmore, Hunter S. Thompson, Peter Travers, Cameron Crowe, Ben Fong-Torres...that's a start.

RS has gone through many stages over the years much like the television show Saturday Night Live. It has had it's very high points right down to (some magazine covers especially) being kitty litter box-worthy.

Though I subscribe to a couple of news magazines too, RS would be the last magazine I'd stop.

My 25 y.o. son said to me a couple of months ago that he is fond of Rolling Stone for it's sharp writing and great political commentary and because he remembers it being in our home "all (his) life."

In sum, Rolling Stone Magazine is 40 years old. It's had it's share of hits and misses. But I subscibe because the overall quality of it's feature articles is generally good-to-excellent, it leans left as I do, and throughout the years many of it's covers have been frame-worthy.

Necrophilia should be the subtext of all the issues discussed at the forthcoming Democratic convention. ~ Studs

As The Nation Eds. explain just below, they solicited diverse views on what the Democratic Platform should focus on. It's quite past my bedtime right now, so I shall go back and finish reading tomorrow in order to more fully comment on some of the views, but Studs was the first writer that made me chuckle at the outset.
As a "if-I had-a-card-I'd-carry-it" liberal, I love what Studs has to say to us all.
Humour: It's the key to winning people's hearts and minds.

The Nation

A People's Democratic Platform
[from the August 2, 2004 issue]

The Democratic Party platform to be presented at the upcoming convention has been tailored to suit the positions of the presidential nominee and to raise as few contentious issues as possible. That may be good strategy as defined by political pollsters and strategists, but to our mind it represents a missed opportunity to put forward and debate some fresh, possibly unconventional ideas. So we've asked a disparate group of people--ranging from retired newsman Walter Cronkite to hip-hop activist Bakari Kitwana--what plank each of them would like to propose. Their answers were by turns provocative, quirky and unexpected. We offer them in the hope that voters will be stirred to come up with their own "planks" and then try to turn them into reality. --The Editors
Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel is the author, most recently, of Hope Dies Last.

Necrophilia should be the subtext of all the issues discussed at the forthcoming Democratic convention. Are we a life-affirming society or one that perversely courts death? We are the only industrialized country that does not have national health insurance (my small bottle of prescription tablets and my tube of nasal spray set me back $114.35), as well as the only such nation that insists on the death penalty.

Of course, the matters of our loony Iraq maladventure, environmental rape, outsourcing and mass firings, the USA Patriot Act and the Enronism of Dubya's buddy boys should be brought forth. However, what must be made most clear is the overarching assault upon our native intelligence and our innate sense of decency, all adding up to an unprecedented menace to our general well-being.

Oh, one more thing: the perversion of the American language. The word "liberal" has assumed a dark meaning, thanks in no small part to the kept boys and girls of the mainstream media. I suggest that the chair of the gathering should immediately read to the delegates the dictionary definition of "liberal": (1) expressing social and political policies that favor progress and reform; (2) following policies that favor the freedom of individuals to act or express themselves in a manner of their own choosing--in short, a reaffirmation of FDR's New Deal.

The assemblage should impel the presumptive nominee for the presidency to abandon his mummyesque role and, instead of denying that he is a liberal, proudly affirm it.

We all have pet causes. This is one of mine. Common sense. One day it shall rule!
Eric Schlosser
Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness.

The United States must declare an end to the war on drugs. This war has filled the nation's prisons with poor drug addicts and small-time drug dealers. It has created a multibillion-dollar black market, enriched organized-crime groups and promoted the corruption of government officials throughout the world. And it has not stemmed the widespread use of illegal drugs. By any rational measure, this war has been a total failure...

In a nation where pharmaceutical companies advertise powerful antidepressants on public billboards and where alcohol companies run amusing beer ads during the Super Bowl, the idea of a "drug-free society" is absurd. Like the rest of American society, our drug policy would greatly benefit from less punishment and more compassion.