• Office writer Mindy Kaling explains why she is fully participating in the WGA strike.
• Conservapedia are more obsessed with teh gay than I am.
• Until now, Slam Dunk didn’t sound interesting to me but if the art looks anything like the mural Takehito Inoue painted at the NY Kinokuniya store I’ve got to check it out.
• SoapNet announces it will begin airing movies on Sunday nights., using unsuccessful romantic thrillers. Could those movies really cost less than some of the classic programming they could be airing? Someone’s got to put Paper Dolls back on television.
• Gayprof lists the Seven Arguments the Left Doesn’t Need to Bother with Anymore and I’m in total agreement… except maybe on the last point. I mean, wouldn’t that include the words of Kaniger?

Hope everyone who is celebrating tomorrow has a great Thanksgiving!

This is interesting. Apparently, BBC America has already announced a date for the second season premiere of Torchwood. The Doctor Who spin-off, which the cable network boasts as their most watched series will return on January 26.

That’s pretty interesting to me for a couple reasons:

• As far as I’ve read, a second season premiere date hasn’t been announced in the UK (and if it has, I missed it in my feeds and so have the people keeping Torchwood’s Wikipedia page up to date.) Aside from Degrassi can’t think of another show where American audiences get to see new episode than the country it was originally created for.
• On BBC America, at least, the chronology between Torchwood and Doctor Who will be a bit off. BBCA is currently airing the second season of Doctor Who. The second season of Torchwood follows the events of Doctor Who’s third season (which aired on The Sci-Fi Channel). I wonder if this might shorten the delay between Doctor Who airing in the UK and showing up stateside.

Interesting. The provocative Nikki Finke recently questioned if writer/producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (you know, of thirtysomething, My So-Called Life and Once and Again fame) are undermining the current writers’ strike by making a special deal that exists outside of the strike. Herskovitz wrote Finke to say they were doing the opposite:

I’m an independent production company in television — an extinct species brought back to life. The fact that I can negotiate a separate deal with the WGA is highly significant. If enough companies do that… the AMPTP will lose all its leverage. There is a long history of this. During some previous strikes, the WGA was willing to negotiate independent contracts with non-AMPTP companies so that they could keep working while AMPTP companies couldn’t. It’s literally the mirror image of hiring scab labor to break a union. I’m a scab production company, and happy to be of service.

I find the possibility pretty fascinating, particularly since the independent producer hasn’t been around for some time.w

The spouse and I caught a performance by Matt Kirshen this weekend. As annoying as Last Comic Standing may get, this season had talent that really was worth the annoying editing. Matt was one of our favorites, check out these clips for a taste why

I was pretty surprised to hear that Dirty Sexy Money got its “back nine” order for a full season. Until now, I’d been under the impression that DSM was one of those shows whose “on the bubble” status was made worse by the writers’ strike.

So. In practical terms, I wonder what this means. Is this a sign of optimism now that talks have resumed? Is this just one of those deals meant to make sure that options stay open? I’m pretty curious to what the rationale behind ordering more episode of a scripted series may be in the middle of a strike could be.

Nikki Finke spots an article where a reporter posted a Criagslist ad looking for scab writers and notes some of the responses received. I like this one:

To Whom It May Concern,
I am very interested in writing for your television network. I have an imagination that stretches extremely wide, my writing has a stylish edge to it and my wit can knife right through you.

That’s a great deadpan snark on uninspired and formulaic writing. It sounds exactly like uninspired and formulaic writing. How hilarious.

Or am I giving the hopeful scab too much credit? Probably.

• I’ve got to tell the spouse that when I die, I don’t want my ashes to shut down a Disney ride.
• Fox News ask questions Montgomery Burns’ Mayoral Campaign would be embarassed to write.
• Scott asks if Superman would really be able to identify people by their heartbeat.
• Allison Grodner promises that the upcoming winter season of Big Brother “will be different from any other season” You know what would make the show really different from recent seasons? Strangers. No, really, the first few casts were successful with none of the houseguests knowing each other. Also, you might shock the viewers if no one gets away with being a racist, misogynistic homophobe as you and your network look the other way.
• Wha-huh? Spike TV was considering a second “season” of The Kill Point? What the rest of Mr. Wolf’s troops were going to botch another bank robbery?

So Wired did a little piece offering to match up manga with personality. (via Tokyomango) The idea is good but the execution is pretty simplistic, just a little better than saying “If you’re a guy, check out shoujo.” The one that really stands out says:

If you’re a straight girl who wishes your relationships were more exciting…
looking for stories about a pair of pretty boys who enter into an illicit, violently sexual relationship
then check out the genre called yaoi
by reading My Sexual Harassment or Sensitive Pornograph

Hm, so is Wired saying that YAOI about violent relationships? I mean, I may complain when I encounter a YAOI title with rape fantasies but I don’t see it as a defining trait of the genre. Maybe there’s an important chapter in The Moon and The Sandals or Shout Out Loud! I skipped over?

Also, is there a manga of My Sexual Harassment?

It’ll be interesting to see if YAOI fangirls react to Wired’s interesting take on the genre.

Here’s another funny video made by striking writers, this time it’s from writers of The Colbert Report:

Is this Chris Crocker joke day or something?

So, anyway, these videos certainly have given me a new cause — I think we’ve found two capable guest-hosts to take over The Daily Show and The Colbert Report when Jon and Stephen want to go on vacation. C’mon, we can’t give the current Washington crew any time unsupervised…

Who needs to get by with reruns of The Daily Show when the Daily Show writers are making funny videos from the picket lines?

I suspect the studios who took a hard line against the WGA underestimated how well they’d utilize the internet to get their message out. They’ve managed to find that tone that makes a video go viral on different occasions.