I saw it first!

When J.D. and I went to Las Vegas last month, we tried looking up things we could do for free and one of them was the CBS Television City Research Center.

CBS essentially has studios in Las Vegas where they run pilots of new, upcoming series. The website falsely advertised that they'd offer $15 for about half an hour of your time. We watched the pilot in a room alone in front of computers then had to answer about 50 questions, multiple choice and answers.

Before entering, we had to sign that we were ok to watch a TV-14 show. We were curious as to what was going to be shown, since most TV ratings are TV-G and TV-PG. TV-14 shows, on the other hand, are reserved programs after 9 p.m. and movies that are rated PG-13 or R.

TV-14

(Parents Strongly Cautioned -- This program contains some material that many parents would find unsuitable for children under 14 years of age.)

Parents are strongly urged to exercise greater care in monitoring this program and are cautioned against letting children of any age watch unattended. This rating may be accompanied by any of the following sub-ratings:

• D for intensely suggestive dialogue
• L for strong coarse language
• S for intense sexual situations
• V for intense violence

The show we viewed was called Life, Unexpected, which airs on the CW tonight (well, it's probably currently on as I type this). Although it was a bit cheesy and slow-moving at times, it's a pretty decent drama that J.D. and I both agreed we'd try to watch and see how it develops.

The only thing I'm pretty annoyed about is the fact that it will run on the CW. I thought that channel was for middle and high school girls....

But it's gotten some pretty good reviews. I'm just curious to see how the viewers' responses from the CBS Research Center will change what we saw from what airs tonight. According to J.D., the responses will shape how they edit/alter the first run from the pilot.

The price is WRONG, bitch!

Hopefully you all remember that line out of Happy Gilmore and I don't sound like a complete ass right now. But I'm banking off your movie knowledge more than my social(-ly acceptable) skills, so I think I'm good, for now.

Anyways, being in France kind of deprived me from American television. Well, not really, since I could watch Friends, Fresh Prince and 90210 dubbed in terrible French whenever I wanted. So let me edit myself and say that I was deprived from current American television. Then again, back here in the U.S. we sort of took a page out of France's socialist mindset and embarked upon months of useless writers' strikes. My mom's conspiracy theory is that the strikes kept building up until the climax and subsequent abrupt termination of the strikes focused all of the media's attention on the 2008 Academy Awards. In short, the strikes were all a sick, prolonged way of promoting the show.

Believe what you want, but when I came back in April I was able to reconnect with my favorite show -- Grey's Anatomy -- in time to see the remaining episodes of the season as well as the season (perhaps series? doubt it....) finale.

But I haven't been watching much more beyond the occasional sports broadcast. (I saw Tiger's dramatic come-from-behind U.S. Open playoff on the final day, as well as the Lakers' EMBARRASSMENT in Boston, slamming the door on the 2008 NBA season. Honestly, that was the least fundamentally-sound basketball game I've ever seen in my life, and I've sat through J.V. and freshman high school games.)

Until today. After organizing many drawers and cabinets throughout my new house, I needed a relaxing television break.

And completely forgot that Drew Carey is the new host of The Price is Right! While he is the same bumbling personality that he was in Whose Line, I'm interested to see if he's going to take on any of Bob Barker's crankiness. Though, that may have been due to his age. So maybe Carey will pick some of that up if he stays on for 50+ years.....

The girls' half of our freshman hall who came out to see a screening of The Price is Right in Los Angeles, posing as the infamous "Barkers' Beauties." Because we had at least 25 people in our group, one of the residents from our hall made it on t.v., while the rest of us has to sit through Bob's crankiness and rude shots at guests during the commercial breaks. It was awesome!

Also, I saw an ad for a new series running this fall called The Ex List. So that pretty much means that the Eva character is no longer going to appear on Grey's Anatomy, because the actress is going to be the main character in this new show. At the end of last season, Eva's character took a total nose dive and I will happily say, "Good riddance" to that storyline.

Oh yeah, and as you can tell: I spent some time last night tweaking with my blog and this is how I think it's going to look from now on out.

...Or until I get bored with it next year.

Mixed emotions

I'm pretty bummed because Rich Harden (above, also the man I've been obsessing over for the past six years, who by the way supposedly lives somewhere down the road from us!) will be making a rehab start with the A's Triple-A affiliates the Sacramento River Cats this weekend!

While that's exciting because he's finally coming off the DL -- fingers crossed -- I'm kind of sad because I was supposed to go to a River Cats game this weekend! Bad timing. I say supposed to go, because those plans were scraped last minute. However, if he makes more than one rehab start in Sac, rest assured that I will drive my butt up to Sacramento to watch him play!

Oh yeah and I'm watching the A's-Angels game on t.v. right now... it's 14-6 in favor of the A's in the sixth inning. Wow, can we say slugathon?

In other news, I'm really immersing myself back in to the American t.v./cinema/Netflix scene since bailing on it over the past seven months.

It must be spring because every movie I've seen recently is either about babies or weddings. Is someone trying to hint something at me here?! Anyways, I was not once let down by Juno, License to Wed, 27 Dresses, or Baby Mama -- which my mom and I just saw this afternoon. It was pretty funny, seeing as how 90 percent of the cast was SNL people. One of the previews looked pretty decent, it comes out next week and is with Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz. I think my mom wants to take me out to see it when it's released.

This is definitely making up for the only time I went to the theaters in Cannes to see Sweeney Todd -- in English with French subtitles.

I'm also catching up on some episodes of The Office and Grey's Anatomy came back on last week after the conclusion of the writers' strikes. I'm a little let down and I think they could have come up with a better return episode than last week's Grey's. I feel like the writers were trying to take the safe side out, and really, if this is all they could come up with maybe the cast and crew could have hired some scabs or something who certainly could have written a better show. Heck, I could have probably done a little better.

...Here's hoping that this week significantly improves. It's already got one thing in its favor this week: Since the strikes hit, Private Practice won't resume until next season because it's too new of a series. That means Addison comes back to Grey's for possibly the rest of the season! All three episodes that are left this year.

New Shows, Pronto!

Hearing that the writers' strikes are finally over, I immediately went to ABC.com to see when the next new Grey's Anatomy will air, so that way I could go download it somewhere online.

However, they're still running old episodes for quite a while. I think I'll stick to my original plan when I found out that the bastards at ABC.com don't let you watch episodes online if you're not in the United States, and just end up putting this season on my parents' Netflix account when/if I move back home to California this summer.

Oh well.

Though, I did find a neat little way to pass 10 minutes on the website: The Grey's Anatomy personality test. Don't judge.

Also, my Valentine's Day project is going quite smoothly in all my classes. Who knew arts and crafts -- such as designing pink and red hand-made heart cards -- in English takes up the entire class period?

Good thing there are TWO MORE holidays in March before we take our two weeks' vacation in April for SPRING BREAK '08. Germany and Spain, I'm ready for you!!

Grey's Anatomy, anyone?

Alright, the image on top is a French show which apparently just made its debut a few weeks ago, called L'Hôpital. You can watch episodes online here, at the TF1 site. While I'll get to it in a second, even the appearances of these main characters is eerily similar.

Since I recently became a huge Grey's Anatomy (bottom image) fan, I got super sucked in this season -- make that last season as the next season begins in ONE WEEK! I've heard that this French series is very similar and so I figured why not start with the pilot episode? From what I can understand, and that's when nothing else is going on to distract me in the background and when I'm mentally repeating each word in my head, there are some surgical interns who go through their daily lives at Le Grand Ouest emergency -- including one of the intern's attraction to Frank Moreno, this series' McDreamy if you will.

Maybe when I'm more compelled to exhaust all of my attention and focus, I'll try to watch more than a quarter of an episode. French films and t.v. shows are slightly increasing my vocabulary, but I'm still getting extremely let down with the amount that goes over my head. If it's this much of a struggle right now, imagine what it'll be in ten days' time. The one thing I can say in my defense that watching a medical show means a plethora of medical and surgical jargon. I can barely understand half of that in English let alone French. Perhaps if I watch more, it'll ensure me a little bit of luck the first time I have to pay a little visit to a French doctor/ER... if it ever comes down to that.

And since I'm on the topic of films, last night I just watched Jeux d'enfants which I'm still trying to make up my mind on. I think I really liked it, though the ending kind of went from a very confusing moment which could have been the end, to a neatly-wrapped up finish. Either way, it was cute and I loooove the main actress -- the chick from Big Fish. So overall I retain a general good vibe from the movie and a warm sensation in my heart for the two characters at the end of their journey -- me being the hopeless romantic that I am!

...DIX (10) JOURS!!!!

Et maintenant, un peu de nostalgie

Getting excited for France, I started researching my favorite émissions online at the CANAL+ website (figures I’d wait this late in the game to do so).

I found Les Guignols de l’info!!! Which has the kind of political humor akin to your Colbert Report or Daily Shows. Anyways, you can watch recent episodes and the one from Sept. 18 in France is hysterical! They have a parody on the French immigrant bill which kills me!

The “proposed requirements” for entering France:

-4 photos d’identité
-un extrait d’acte de naissance
-un test ADN
-savoir parler francais courrament
-connaître « La Marseillaise »
-rouler en Peugeot ( !!! haha, yes )
-manger du jambon
-être abonné au Figaro
-avoir une residence secondaire en Normandie
-savoir jouer au tiercé
-avoir de la famille en France (un père ou un mère)
-dénoncer un voisin en situation irrégulière
-être blond (chatin clair accepté)

These images are so funny to me because they conjure up the stereotypical « France profonde » … which I haven’t thought of for a few years now. But yeah, that really took me back, made me laugh and I realllllllly can’t wait to get back to France and struggle through half-way understanding television shows.

...11 jours!!!