Saturday Night Duel Masters

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Another new episode of Duel Masters 2.0. Saturday night's episode is SURPRISE! - and it involves, um, a surprise of some sorts. It's on Cartoon Network at 7pm.

And if you missed last week's episode of Duel Masters (Season 3, Episode 7), you can actually watch it online.

Hasbro has a couple Duel Masters episodes that I wrote up, including Enemy, Mine (season 2, episode 4) and Fourscore (season 3, episode 3). So if you're at work right now and you're looking for procrastination - well, more procrastination than just reading this blog - check out the toons online.

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Star Trek 2.0 - "It's Solid Beef... Baby!"

That's Charlie Murphy as the voice of Spock and Craig Kilborn as the voice of Kirk. There are four of these commercials... and they're brilliant.

NHL Playoffs

I love the NHL playoffs. My favorite sport - but with the intensity cranked up a notch. The players are hyped. The fans are hyped. The announcers and broadcasters are hyped. And the shlubby guy in front of the television set is hyped. If he wasn't a Kings fan, he'd be REALLY hyped. But since he is, he's merely at a non-really hyped level.

The problem with the NHL playoffs this year has been - typical - the bad tv coverage. Last week in game 1 of Detroit vs Edmonton on OLN, with 60 seconds to go in a tie game, with Edmonton on a power play... the footage goes black. CUT TO: the OLN studio, where broadcaster Bill Clement has to create some filler. He turns it over to a surprised Keith Jones, who mutters something about, "Uh, this is going to be an exciting end to the game."

Pause. Keith Jones smiles - realizing that he's in a no-win situation. We don't want to see him talk about the game. WE WANT TO WATCH THE GAME. And he KNOWS IT. Finally, OLN manages to restore the video and returns us to the game.

Meanwhile on NBC, they've been doing an equally mediocre job. In the San Jose vs Nashville game this weekend, the announcers explained that Shark forward Jonathon Cheechoo practices each summer by shooting 500 pucks against a wall. As soon as they finish, they cut to the sideline reporter who excitedly says, "Did you know that Shark forward Jonathon Cheechoo practices each summer by shooting 500 pucks against a wall?"

Dead silence. Painful in its obviousness. The broadcast mercifully continues again without any further mention of Cheechoo and his practices each summer.

And then there's NBC lack of high definition. We all know that NHL hockey is one of the sports that most benefits from high definition, but only the east coast games have been in high definition. If Gary Bettman had half a brain, he'd be telling NBC to maybe invest in a SECOND high definition camera. You can almost picture NBC saying, "Yeah, but we don't want to. We can just share the one camera."

But at least NBC's hockey commercials aren't annoying. OLN has the worst hockey ads. All year long they've run these stupid "we believe in hockey" ads. Now they have ads showing the Stanley Cup on a mountain protected by - of all things - a bear. A BEAR? Are we supposed to be IMPRESSED? Do we get to see hockey players have to fight the bear with hockey sticks?

Bah. We all know the truth - as soon as the commercial was over, the bear was shot to death by Ted Nugent.

Thankfully, a few of the games on OLN and the Centre Ice package have been using Canada's TSN and Sportsnet feeds. Much better. Hopefully the broadcasts will continue this way - or at least the broadcasts from OLN and NBC will rise up to the level of "almost watch-able".

Lastly, I suppose I should make some predictions - but as my heavy gambling debts show, I'm not good at predictions. Remember my NHL predictions? I only picked 6 out of 8 playoff teams in the West and only 5 out of 8 in the East. But my Stanley Cup final prediction - Ottawa over San Jose in 7.

Best... Review... EVER

The Duel Master fans liked last night's episode. In fact, this was posted on the ToonZone forums-

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>Eugene Son

Which shows why it was so funny. The man has talent.

He also has an unhealthy obsession over Clay Aiken.

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I've been found out.

Welcome Bendis Fans

A big welcome to the Brian Michael Bendis fans who've been visiting. The exact joke from last night's Duel Masters episode was-

                    YU MAMA
             (reading from her sassy
              teen heartthrob book)
          Brian Michael Bendis is so dreamy. 
          He looks as good as he writes.

I wrote the joke because I thought Duel Master fans would get a kick out of a gratuitous Bendis joke, but I'm also a big fan of his. I have a well-worn autographed copy of Fortune and Glory that I reread whenever my writing career gets me down (which is way too often). And I've actually never met Bendis, but I have friends who've worked with him and they rave about what a nice guy he is.

Here's hoping he doesn't want to beat my @#$ over being dubbed a sassy teen heartthrob.

Your Tivo + Duel Masters = CRAZY DELICIOUS

After a short hiatus, new episodes of Duel Masters 2.0 return.

This Saturday the 22nd at 7:00pm on Cartoon Network is the premiere of a brand new episode of Duel Masters. Written by yours truly, it's the seventh episode of the season.

TRIPLE THREAT. At the Duel Masters Battle Arena tournament, Boy George duels the mysterious Yu Mama, Kintaro duels the strange Bucket Man, and Mimi duels the evil Kokujo“

WOW! Doesn't reading that make you wish that it was Saturday night right now? But wait - it gets better. Because next Saturday night the 29th is ANOTHER brand new episode of Duel Masters. The eighth episode of the season, SURPRISE!, written by some Eugene guy.

So set your Tivos, tell the neighbors, ring the bells, and watch out for all the sweet sweet Duel Mastery-goodness. Saturday night at 7pm.

April 2006 Music Diary

Push - The Cure
Gravity - Embrace
Life on Mars? - David Bowie
Love Changes (Everything) - Climie Fisher
Main Theme (Final Fantasy VII/Orchestral) - Nobuo Uematsu
Aeris' Theme (Final Fantasy VII/Orchestral) - Nobuo Uematsu
Bounce of the Sugar Plums - Don Byron

I like the Cure a lot, but I'd never heard the song "Push" before. I found it while reading the Celebrity Playlists in the iTunes music store. Apparently, the drummer from the Killers learned to drum from this song - it's quite catchy.

Embrace has a new album out in the UK right now. I haven't gotten my hands on it yet, but if it's anything like their previous stuff, it's really good. "Gravity" is one of their "wow, they sound JUST like Coldplay" songs. It doesn't hurt that Coldplay actually wrote this song.

A few weeks ago I recommended the BBC series Life on Mars. From watching it, the song got stuck in my head so I've been listening to it a bit this month.

Don't ask me why I've been listening to "Love Changes (Everything)". Just one of those 80s songs that I discovered late, it ended coming in one of my random mixes, and now it's stuck in my head.

I've been reminiscing about Final Fantasy VII, which had some of the most amazing video game music ever. A few years after the game, composer Nobuo Uematsu released a "Reunion" album, where he recorded fully orchestral versions of a few of the songs. They're just such huge sweeping scores - if you never played the game, you'd find it hard to believe that these songs are from a video game.

Lastly, I always end up playing some Don Byron from his "Bug Music" album. Way back when I was just hoping to be a writer someday, someone gave me the album - which has his versions of early 20th century tunes. The album is full of great tunes that I only knew from Looney Tunes shorts. Now that I write cartoons, I always end up going back to some Don Byron.


Again, not much in the way of new music this month. But if I hear Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" one more time, I'm going to throw my iPod at Ryan Seacrest's head. Well, I would do that ANYWAYS - but there's nothing like a song getting overplayed 150 times a week to make it go from "very nice" to "kill me now".

Congrats, Dani!

My friend Dani Wolff just quit her day job and is making the transition to full-time writer. She just got a job writing on a new drama for the new My Network. My Network should be interesting - it's owned by Fox and its intended to be a television companion to MySpace.

I hope the network's shows aren't like MySpace pages. Otherwise the shows will have bright awful backgrounds, obnoxious music that plays automatically when the page loads, and lots of pictures of people posting, "DUDE, UR HOT!!111!1! Msg me back, K?????"

Anyways, congrats to Dani! Soon she'll be joining us in the club of "People Whose IMDB Listings are Messed Up". It's an exclusive group - but it's got a huge membership.

Forces conspiring against me

Other than with my constantly rapidly-declining health, I'm not a paranoid person. I don't believe that there're big conspiracy theories. I'm sure that everything happens because of luck and happenstance and not because of evil. Except in this case.

I'm absolutely certain that the French Government has teamed up with Bank of America to make me miserable.

Didn't see that coming, did ya? Oh - but you SHOULD have. Because the two A.T.O.M. episodes I wrote were for the French company, SIP Animation. Having worked for them, I got sent a set of French tax documents that go to the French government and for some reason, they need to be signed by a bank. Bank of America won't do it - they have no idea what to do with French tax documents.

I've asked my fellow writer friends. They just took them to their bank and got them signed. Of course, all of them are with Washington Mutual, the Entertainment Industry's Credit Union, or some other small bank. So unless I want to move all my accounts to another bank (which is looking AWFULLY TEMPTING at this point), I'm back to fighting the windmills - calling and emailing everyone I can find to see if someone can help me get this form signed by a bank. I've been given the contact of someone at Bank of America who has previous experience handling French tax forms. Hopefully this guy will be my savior. Wish me luck.

Otherwise, I'm just going to have to hope the French IRS can't hunt me down. So if anyone calls you in a French accent, tell them I'm dead. Thanks!

Mystery Meet

I had a meeting today. A mystery meeting. I didn't know what it was going to be about.

I'd gotten a voicemail from an executive last week to set up a meeting for this week, so I'd set it up myself with the executive's assistant - but I'd forgotten to ask what it was about. My manager didn't know either, but he said it had to be good, since they wouldn't have asked to meet with me if it wasn't.

I was driving to the meeting when I was hit with a completely illogical yet unshakeable fear - that I'd done something wrong in my past and this meeting was held as a sting so the proper authorities could more easily arrest me. Stupid, huh? And yet I spent the whole drive thinking what it was I'd done. Was it an angry ex-girlfriend? Did I forget to pay off a college loan? Did I have some past schoolyard enemy who was coming to extract revenge? Was it some sort of new sneaky way to summon me for jury duty?

That would work, by the way. To get people in L.A. to show up for jury duty, send them something like - "A high powered movie executive want to talk to you about buying your screenplay. Come see him at 9 a.m. at the courthouse. Be prepared to wait all day. Don't be late. Bring your driver's license."

Then I knew what it was. It had to be the meeting that I'd been dreading - the one where I'm told that they've discovered I have no talent, that I'm just a fraud and a sham, and that effective immediately I was to report back to my previous 8 to 5 day job. I get that irrational fear every other day or so. No matter how busy I am or how happy, I still sometimes wonder if it's all a big hoax. I've been told by successful veteran writers that this fear never goes away, so I've got that to look forward to.

Finally, after a half hour of traffic, I got to the meeting. The anti-climactic ending? They wanted to ask me if I was interested in writing for them. I said yes. They said great. We're going to talk again soon.

Mystery solved. Not a very surprising ending to the mystery, but at least this mystery had a happy ending.

The Rebirth of Blog (Cool Like Dat)

I wish I had a good excuse as to why I haven't been blogging. Here's what I've been doing instead of blogging-

-Writing. I'd love to tell you that I've been so busy working on my latest big brag-worthy project... but I'd be lying. My days have been spent writing stuff, but all stuff on spec - nothing that I'm getting paid for. Some animated series pitches, a couple sitcom pilots, a pair of graphic novels. Chances are that none of these things will lead to anything, but I have to put in the work.

Besides, who knows for how long I'm going to have this free time? I'm confident that before I know it I'll be working and up against another deadline, and then I'll be wishing I'd gotten more work done on my spec stuff. And now that I said that aloud, I'm sure I just jinxed myself to six more weeks of unemployment.

-Eating with other writers. I'd apologize for gratuitously name dropping my friends. Then again, if they didn't want to be name dropped, they should've done a better job avoiding me.

Went to the Grand Lux Cafe with John Rogers and Scott Murphy, where we discussed such weighty topics as television and comic books (John's Blue Beetle #1 is out now).

Also went to an amazing sushi place in Little Tokyo with Rob Hoegee. If you're a sushi fan, I highly recommend big-eye tuna - it's the flavor equivalent of some sort of genetically advanced SUPER TUNA. And the less English your chef can speak, the better the sushi.

Went to Barney Greengrass with Gregory Storm. Gregory had heard on NPR that this place was somehow the "hot" spot for Hollywood types. Sure enough, it's in a building right across the street from UTA. Spotted a couple celebrities, chatted with a manager and a writer/actress at the table next to us, and with a former Gersh agent-turned-producer and an entertainment lawyer on the other side. I'd recommend the place, except you should know that they charge you full price for drink refills. There was something wrong about paying the bill and seeing that our lemonade and diet coke cost more than the sandwiches.

-Breaking my electronics. My iPod broke - the hard drive started giving me wacky errors. So I took out the "non-scratch" tools and got the case open - and only gave myself three bleeding scratches and lacerations in the process. Turns out that the brand new battery I put into it a few months ago? It's defective - it's swollen up like a giant balloon, which put pressure on the hard drive, and broke my iPod. So I'm sending back the defective battery - and I'm looking around Ebay for iPod parts.

Then my cell phone gave me fits with dropping calls. Finally, it started dropping ALL calls. Did some research and troubleshooting and discovered that the battery is dead. I ordered a new one, which was supposed to arrive last week, but the good people at batteries.com FORGOT to ship it. It sat in their warehouse all week until I asked what happened. Hopefully they ship it this time. In the meantime, my cell phone only works if it's plugged in. So much for MOBILE phone, huh?

-Crying. The Los Angeles Kings are going to miss the playoffs for the third straight year. Another spectacular flame out again this year - two months ago they were chasing the Detroit Red Wings for first overall in the conference, now they're crashing and burning into eleventh place. Thankfully the misery ends this Saturday night.

I don't think I'm going to renew my season tickets for next year. I love going to games, but it was hard for me to scrape the money together for tickets this year. Even if I had a sudden influx of money, I don't think there's any way I'll put myself through this again.

Can't wait to see playoff hockey, but it sure would be nice if my favorite team was in it every now and then. Don't know who I'm rooting for. Maybe the Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, and whoever's playing against the Mighty Ducks. Then again, I might just be a Colorado fan for the next few months and hope Ian Lapperiere gets to hoist the Stanley Cup.

-Pondering the Fragile Balance Between Man, Nature, and the Nature of Man. Just kidding. It's me we're talking about. The deepest thing I've ever pondered is my innie belly-button.

-Watching TV. Right now, there're only three shows that are can't-miss tv for me - Scrubs, the Simpsons, and the Office. Lots of shows that I like and try to catch as much as possible, but those are the only three that I force the Tivo to save until I've watched it. Scrubs is still chugging along at a frenetic yet-touching pace. The Simpsons has refound its magic this season - if you gave up on it the last few years, you should dig in. The most recent "Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore" episode about outsourcing to India was inspired. And the second season of the Office has been brilliant. Just thinking about Dwight Schrute's salesman speech gives me the giggles.

Okay - I have a fish tank that needs cleaning. Cleaning the fish tank and blogging have been the two things I've been putting off for the past few weeks. Once I'm done, I can go back to pondering...

Life On Mars

The BBC drama Life On Mars. It ROCKS.

I couldn't spoil it for you even if I wanted to. It's an 8 episode murder mystery that's not quite police drama... not quite sci-fi... not quite 1970s nostalgia. Trust me. Any show where fans argue over whether the character is DEAD or TRAVELING THROUGH TIME? Good stuff.

It's supposedly coming to BBC America this fall. It'll be released on DVD in the UK next month. ABC has bought the rights to it and a remake is supposedly in the works - and Greg Daniels' work on the Office notwithstanding, we all know how well American remakes of British television shows go.

Okay - busy week this week. Hope everybody in Southern California is staying warm and dry.