LONELYPOND PRESENTS

Well, the Olympics are over, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe has closed, we’re caught up on Chuck, Blink Kitty Love did not get a Streamy nomination(thanks to everyone and anyone who voted!) and the snow might be melting. So what now? Well, do you want the To-Do list or the quick reviews. Let’s do reviews.

Chuck — loved Season 2. And considering how well they did with guest stars in Season 2, why oh why did they INFLICT Brandon Routh on us (it can’t be only me)? Oy. Yvonne Strahovski continues excellently expressing quiet discomfort over Chuck’s evolution but the whole two people moving in separate directions with two other people plot angle is VERY forced and seems like just an excuse to shoehorn in “GUEST STARS” and rushed choices. Always nice to see Kristin Kreuk, if only they’d put her in the guest part that lasted more than four episodes.

Smallville is back and I’m remembering it’s on Fridays. Watched the morning show episode and enjoyed it, although I really wish they’d stop dressing Tom Welling all in the smooth, stylish black. I don’t like the dark color palette but the characters seem to having a little more fun.

Wizards of Waverly Place — slumping. Alex as go go over the top cheerleader? no no. Good luck Charlie is looking like fun. The actor playing the Dad (

Work on a new Blink Kitty Love — a great title hit me yesterday
Keep writing “The Lady Lost” or “Maybe Turning That Corner Wasn’t The Brightest Idea I Ever Had”
And have some fun, darn it.

Good night.

Ha…that amused me. Enjoying the Olympics, although the curling tournament seems to take as long as the entire Winter Games (did you know a good set of curling rocks costs $1500 (acc. to Wikipedia) and there’s Curling for the Wii). But it’s fun to watch. Little Brother #2 only watches curling and hockey. The last Olympics he claims to have developed a crush on the Japanese curling team; I have yet to inquire about this year’s favorite.

Quick summary of stuff:

Really want to see Judy Dench as Titania in Midsummer. Once again, Sarah Hemming envy strikes. Midsummer is one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays and I’m developing a movie related project (or two).

There’s a new Stirfry Neon chapter. Current adventure: The Lady Lost or What Was I Thinking When I Turned That Corner.

Blink Kitty Love has been dormant for a month while I steep and work on tigers — Happy Year of the Tiger. Almost done with my tiger meditation period, including an excellent animation. Look for it here or the Twitter announcement (aka follow me @lonelypond).

I am considering some Blink Kitty Love changes, taking things a bit more experimental and exploring the world around the band…or just exploring the world and having fun with my unique animation style and humor. I’m much better at contained stories than an ongoing soap opera kind of thing and the best Blink Kitty Loves are when I’m inspired to comment/riff on something happening now. So I’m going to take that thought and see where it goes. I had a lot of fun putting in some hard work on my Year of The Tiger animation and I think it’s the best I’ve done yet. So I’ve been considering what I could do if I put the work into a longer story. The Olympics has me thinking: what’s my gold medal event.

The Lonely Pond annual meeting surprised me — it always does, but this year it wasn’t in the good way. I’ve been mulling over what happened for a couple of months now. We stalled right at the beginning with a restructuring discussion and didn’t get to my grand plans. The rest of Team Lonely Pond wants to be involved and doesn’t want to give up the company or the name, but they don’t want to commit the energy to take us to the level I wanted to go for reinventing Shakespeare on the web. So we’ve put the company on hold and I have consultants available. So I’m scaling back to one project at a time and dealing with the realization that I can do what I want, but I have to be certain that I have the enthusiasm to carry it through by myself. Which means I’m revisiting some earlier ideas that I once loved and are sitting on a shelf for no real reason at all.

Pop Culture Reviews + News:

I like Lady GaGa — I’ve been wandering around singing Paparazzi. It’s Little Brother #2’s fault; his taste in music sometimes surprises me. Caught Justin Bieber’s cover “Love Me” of The Cardigan’s LoveFool and it’s simply ludicrous. I hate when there’s an American Idol style remake of song that rolls on Radio FlashCatFlash (yes, I mean you Adam Lambert’s Mad World. Alison Iraheta’s Someone To Watch Over Me seems to be the only one that doesn’t cause me to twitch but that’s a song with multiple covers already and might be my weakness for brunettes showing.)

The Web Files is branching out with their new Buzz edition, covering events + news around the wonderful world of web series. Host Kristyn Burtt has great energy always, but especially when she’s prowling an event with a microphone, capturing the spark of the moment.

Smallville: took a break from the Olympics to catch the Wonder Twins episode. Not bad. I think we might be back on Team Smallville, although their color and emotional palette remains a bit dark for me.

My robot loving buddy @spacehospital is showing episodes from their first season on KoldCast TV. It’s insane fun with puppets, models and special effects.

Starstruck — bah, slow, boring, a really poorly paced + badly written version of It Happened One Night where Sterling Knight plays the spoiled heiress part. Well acted but characters not believable. And let’s be honest: Brandon Mychal Smith should have played the lead in a better written movie. He had one musical number and he brought enough energy to it for the whole movie. Disney once again loses points for their lack of showcasing multiracial actors.

Haven’t seen The Lightning Thief because Gayle wants to finish the book first. Oy. Love the How To Train Your Dragon Olympic themed commercials.

OK, curling calls. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity in this Year of The Metal Tiger.

Aside from that, in an Olympic mood — waiting for curling + snowboarding while watching women’s hockey. Blink Kitty Love has a new post up about their favorite Canadian musicians + Winter Olympic sports.

Getting through Chuck, Season 2 in between sports and LOVING IT. GuestStar-A-Palooza — so far, I think my favorite is Dominic Monaghan in Chuck vs. The Third Dimension — I have never seen Lost so this is just a straight forward nod to good comedy. Gayle was surprised to be reminded that he was one of the hobbits.

Missing working on my new Twitter fiction, The Lady Lost or Turning That Corner Wasn’t The Brightest Idea I Ever Had, but too many other things going on and I really want to get back to it when I can get into a good writing zone.

Loved Phonogram: The Singles Club #7 (5 page preview or review) and am mulling over some art, interpretation and communication thoughts which might steep into something worth sharing. I am currently at the fulcrum of art is an individual understanding/effort/experience but communication makes us a community. And sometimes, you just howl. There will be a Phonogram: Singles Club book with all seven issues collected; it’s worth the read.

But right now, Olympics….I’ll catch up with FT links sometime. Snow delayed mail delivery so there’s a pile to go through. Which is always kind of fun.

Good night, happy New Year and thanks for stopping by.

Well, this is the question that’s been bugging me. Where’s the new Blink Kitty Love? What’s the band up to?* It’s been a month.

Yes, it’s been a month, but I think the whole Streamy push tired me out…Yes, it would be GREAT to be nominated for a Streamy and I really do think that Blink Kitty Love deserves consideration in both the Best Animated Series and Best Experimental Series categories, but I find that the energy required to promote something drains the energy required to create something.

Did you look outside, there’s winter (and snow).

I’m learning how to draw tigers for my two week Chinese New Year artistic meditation — very exciting; I love focusing on one animal a year. Here’s the collection so far and the current year.

Meanwhile, there’s been the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe set, which I am helping with but the designer is an amazing artist who has a vision in his head and doesn’t want anybody else raising a brush near it. I respect that but it is also draining in its own way.

More exciting is that I’ve been discussing (early for me) Merchant of Venice (#merven) with a really cool artist who is planning to do the logo so I’ve been getting up to speed on that (and trying to coordinate a conversation — scheduling is one of the more annoying things to do while also being one of the more important).

So I’ve been drawing less, tweeting less, blogging less and stressing more. Which is just the low point of a natural cycle so it’s time to swing back the other way.

I did remember to catch Smallville: Absolute Justice. Their viewing numbers must be a huge increase over other weeks since I think everyone I know who has ever loved a comic book watched it. Smallville has caught a lot of interest now, so we’ll see where it goes. There were some great moments in Justice - Dr. Fate putting the mask on tops the list, a moment of heroism that made you catch your breath, and the newsreel footage was excellent. It was nice to see heroes without the shades of murky grey that Smallville likes to muck everything up with. I hope this can continue without the presence of Geoff Johns’ writing. But WAY TOO MANY COMMERCIAL BREAKS, CW. You abused your audience’s tolerance there. There are other ways to make transitions.

Looking forward to The Lightning Thief opening next weekend. Finally got the books back from my mom because Gayle saw the movie trailer and said do you have the books?

What I have been reading is the Hopeless Savages collections. Finally ordered the second and it’s better than I remember (I have all the original issues but I need to sort my comics out and find them). I was initially turned off by Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art, so different from the first series, but decided to give it another go now that I’ve had the “fall in love with Scott Pilgrim (or maybe Kim Pine) experience.” I recommend both series; there need to be more comics like that. Read ‘em.

*The band continues chatting on their Twitter feed and their blog so you can still continue the Blink Kitty Love love while we’re all hibernating (warning: food cravings may occur). And I do have some live footage I’m planning to experiment with (warning: food cravings may occur) soon.

Stay warm, darn it.

The Big Bang Theory seems to be losing the group cohesiveness that has powered their comedy for two seasons of nerdalicious comedy. Insert two girls, let Sheldon out on his own and leave Raj by the side of the road and you have a Big Bang Theory that tilts dangerously to one side or the other and needs rebalancing.

Sheldon is in danger of merely existing as a collection of tics. The more he does things, the less funny they are becoming which is a criminal misuse of Jim Parsons’ comic genius. Tonight’s episode, The Einstein Approximation, badly misfired on the Sheldon front — the blogosphere seems to be trending this way as evidenced by another review — although there were a few funny moments. My brother and I were having a discussion about The Big Bang Theory this weekend and he was saying that just focusing on Sheldon’s oddities doesn’t make for the best humor. Gayle has been saying (prompted by the four writers on Wizards vs. Werewolves; The Einstein Approximation listed 3) that the more writers listed, the less successful an episode is. Opinions?

The universe, well parts of it anyway, can’t seem to get enough of the Jonas Brothers so it will be interesting to see how Nick Jonas and The Administration album sells. He’s put all the tunes on MySpace and thanks to overplay of the video on the Disney Channel, I find myself singing “Who I Am” (better than “Starstruck” though). VMan the magazine had a Nick interview with lots o’ arty photos (they seem to specialize).

I am currently working my way, one red Netflix envelope at a time, through the first season of Chuck, which I love. The third season also entertains, but the music seems to have gotten much more intrusive over time. But it’s nice to have something in the action zone that I can watch.

Caught part of Castle tonight. Now I understand why some writers have gone on the record as saying they want to be Castle, but I still do not understand the appeal of Nathan Fillion. So I’ll just stick with Chuck.

Gayle (?!?!?!?) came back into town and informed me that Lois has gone brunette on Smallville. I was already planning to watch the two hour Justice Society Absolute Justice Smallville movie event this Friday; maybe now I’ll remember. Beau (aforementioned little brother) has started watching Smallville again after 2 years of not so maybe some of the spark is back. Stay tuned.

New Blink Kitty Love blog post where the band links to their favorite TV themes.

Continuing the TV theme, still loving Chuck, although it gets bumped on Monday nights by Top Gear, one of Gayle’s top 3 shows.

Wizards vs. Werewolves — nope, fail, not really any fun at all. Solve our problems by making the bad boyfriend and the actress we’ve put on another show go away. More substantive criticism? Ok. Well, exactly in the middle, I thought I’ve seen this dramatic pose around a fountain exactly in a soap opera (yes, there was soap opera watching at some point in my past; my mom was a General Hospital/One Life To Live fanatic and so were half the GUYS in my freshman dorm) and near the end, I thought straight steal from Buffy (the why can’t we date normal people moment). Flash was so bored she slept through it — which is good, no seizure from overexcitement. I find it really annoying that Alex so changes her personality for the boy of the moment, unless this is supposed to be an example of the standard girl experience, although they’ve spent a lot of time setting up Alex as a not so standard girl. And yes, Mason was a bad boyfriend but not enough time was spent on that either. They solved too many problems too easily and had too many plots in the air for one episode, even an hour long one. And I would have liked to have seen Juliet’s parents make an appearance again; they were fun. The we pay attention to plot and character pendulum swings back toward iCarly (after the successful iSaved Your Life). Nick’s doing a Secret Crush weekend…have been catching the odd True Jackson, and although it’s nice to see more of the school (and Mikey J), there’s a moderate sized hole where the manic fun that is the Mad Style staff used to fit. Caught another episode of Big Time Crush and didn’t enjoy it. Too much loud; too little character based humor. The guys are interchangeable and the having to shoehorn in the little sister plot really drags it down.

Did I mention Chuck is great. And The Big Bang Theory continues fun, although I am getting TIRED of Howard. Bring back Leslie Winkel, put him between her and the current girlfriend, have a little frank enough for television sex talk and let’s watch his brain shrivel (that’s as low as I’m looking).

Cool glass robots (thanks to Geek Dad for the link.)

Howdy…

Can you guess the character?

Haiti: such a terrible week. Fortunately, most of the world is acting in a compassionate fashion. We donated through Episcopal Relief and Development, which has a strong ground presence through the Diocese of Haiti, and will continue to do so after the immediate crisis is over. I hope you will consider donating if you haven’t yet.

AAll right, so I’m miserable at actually taking time off; what I really need is a vacation in a city with museums, theatres + public transportation. I did get to catch up on a few web series while stressing about relaxing though.

My Movies You May Have Missed (@MYMHM) buddies reviewed one of my favorite movies to watch and laugh at: Noises Off.

Congratulations to @TheWebFiles for their Clicker Award Win as “Best Web Original Non Fiction Show” and to @SPWrite for her series Life With Kat & McKay qualifying as a Finalist in the “Best Web Original Comedy” category.

Web find: BJ Fletcher, Private Eye — very funny, very gay, very Canadian detective series — one of the characters is named Georgia Drew so that might tell you how much fun creator Regan Latimer has with all your favorite detective cliches/memories while bringing something very fresh + funny to the web series world. Plus, I finally get to work a long lost Lois Lane reference into a blog entry since George, the loyal sidekick, is going to journalism school to be an investigative journalist like LL. Great cast, great fun, watch it.

This was going to continue into a discussion of the differences between the YouTube, web series and indie film world from my experiences with each, but I’m saving that for another day when it’s not 1:33 a.m. Good night all.

Greetings, o most loyal and amazing blog visitors. Happy 2010. I’m going to give you a fairly thorough round up as I would really like to be taking a couple of weeks for some R + R while it’s cold and all my baser instincts are saying, “Stay under the covers, it’s warm.” I am not particularly good at the R + R things so I may be forced to resort to things like read all the Harry Potter books, read all the Sarah Caudwell books, read all the Terry Pratchett Watch themed books, read my MFK Fisher + Elizabeth David, dig out my Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyney, read through the pile of newspapers, watch all the movies I’ve borrowed from friends (Tristram Shandy, Bubba Ho-Tep, Steam Boy), watch the movies I watch every year and skipped in ‘09 (the original 3 American Pies, Tomb Raider, Bring It On, The Bandwagon, Strictly Ballroom, etc.)

So to tide you over, there’s the new Blink Kitty Love, all the old Blink Kitty Love, the band website and this:

Lunch With Tristram Stuart who feeds people from discarded food to highlight wastage.

Article about really cool jazz pianists CD collections I can’t afford.

The FT’s this year in culture quiz…

Stefan Stern’s suggestions for movies to watch and pick up business tips from this season (for the rest of you who don’t do R + R).

Very cool story about a native Gypsy theatre experiment/troupe in Spain. I am always amazed by the effect theatre can have on both audience and performers.

Umberto Eco’s latest looks to land on a list of fun reads.

Hoping to catch Nine at the local cinema…doesn’t look like Orson Welles and Me or The Station will make an appearance here; bumped Moon to the top of the Netflix queue and may soon give in to the buy Star Trek and/or Wizards of Waverly Place The Movie DVD urge…also on that list, the Cary Grant double feature — The Bachelor and The Bobby Soxer and Walk, Don’t Run, which I just saw on TCM and laughed at the frequently priceless moments.

TV: Zeke and Luther’s I, Skatebot episode looks cool, a bit worried about Wizards vs. Werewolves (Wizards of Waverly Place) — perhaps too soon after Wizards vs. Vampires and what will be left for Max, Wizards vs. really grumpy mythological creatures left out of the Twilight series — not really watching much on Nick at the moment except for late night What I Like About You, Top Gear kicks off a new season soon (Gayle very excited), I still miss Warehouse 13 and I really need to spend more time reading.

Merchant of Venice (#merven) planning not kicking into gear — but it’s early yet. Trying to get an artist for the logo, Gayle’s scheduling shows, I’ve decided to have people audition with their cool electronic gear (cell phones, laptops, etc.) Need to read through the play again; concerned about the Bassiano/Antonio axis –and no, I don’t mean in the gay way, just in the everybody’s always so concerned about Portia and Shylock, but hey without these two, I’ve got two right side wheels on a vehicle that needs two on the left as well.

The Lonely Pond Productions, Inc. annual meeting went in unexpected directions. But Google Wave worked well when the snow prevented travel. I need to put together scripts for a short live action adaptation and a few animations. And mull over movie related issues some more.

And Sarah Hemming’s “Twelfth Night” review left me grumping about people who weight down comedies with misery so I have been considering exactly how tragic the characters of Malvolvio, Sir Andrew, Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, et al are. And her Rope review makes the show sound like an excellent experience to have in a theatre.

Speaking of Hitchcock, there was a Vanity Fair photospread (thanks @njtam, a fellow Hitchcock fan) of modern stars in classic Hitchcock scenes…the women do better than the men, who seem to suffer from not being Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart.

My current favorite breakfast is oatmeal with hot apple cider for a drink, my current most likely to be worn shirt is this one (it amuses Gayle) and I heard this amazingly goofy song at one of our favorite restaurants that Google has been no help with finding the title of…the lyrics as we can remember go something like this: “you’re good cause you don’t do things like (or that) you should…you’re cool cause (cuz?) you don’t do things by the book.” Sounded like a guy singing, it was a Spanish-Peruvian restaurant where music usually has spanish lyrics, it was chanty, and if you drop the title/artist in the comments, there will be a reward.

And I think that gets you up to date — and should tide you over for awhile. Wishing you the best of 2010’s. Stay warm.

P.S. Cool toasters…I need one.

The new Blink Kitty Love…New Year’s Eve party got snowed out so what does your favorite crazy crushing cartoon band do? Take a peek.