I like watching Judge Judy. I find it extremely entertaining. I find the whole process of two people going before a televised small claims court and arguing their case in front of millions of people entirely fascinating. Ironically, I get the feeling that many of the litigants going before Judge Judy have never bothered to watch the show.
That’s too bad.
I can not help but think that if they had simply watched a few episodes of Judge Judy, they may have learned things that would have helped them avoid a lot of grief and very public humiliation.
These things include:
Before you appear in Judge Judy’s court, you will be required to submit a written statement detailing your case. Much of what Judge Judy decides will be determined from your written statement. Make sure you do a good job on your written statement. Get someone who is smarter then you to help you with your written statement. Study your written statement before you appear on the show. Do not come into her courtroom and contradict your own written statement.
Um is not an answer. She hates it when when people preface an answer with um. Do not do it. It is preferable to have a few seconds of uncomfortable silence then for you to preface your answer with um.
Stand up straight and do not cross your arms. Do not lean on the table.
Look her in the eye when you speak to her. Do not look away or off to the side.
Do not raise your hand just because you think you have something to say. You will get your turn to speak.
If it appears you are winning the case, stop talking. Do not interrupt Judge Judy to add anything while she is questioning the other litigant.
Answer simple questions with either Yes or No, or preferably Yes your Honor or No your Honor.
If you have evidence to present to Judge Judy, do not attempt to approach the bench and physically hand it to her. Officer Petri Byrd (the bailiff) will stop working on his crossword puzzle and come to you to gather your evidence and present it to her. Under no circumstances should you leave your table and approach Judge Judy.
Do not tell her something someone who is not in the courtroom supposedly said. She will tell you that it is hearsay and she will not listen to hearsay. Judge Judy does not like hearsay. It does not matter how you try to reword it.
Dress for the show as if you were going on a job interview. The less skin showing, the better. Think about leaving any exposed body piercings at home.
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The New York Post is reporting that NBC has fired nearly the entire production staff from “Saturday Night Live”. The people that do all of the behind the scenes work on the show each and every week are now faced with a holiday season without the benefit of a job.
It must suck not being able to provide Christmas presents for your kids. That doesn’t matter though. What’s important is that the writers get their fair share (whatever that is) of all that Internet streaming video money the networks are raking in. It doesn’t matter that the paid advertising doesn’t even cover the bandwidth costs associated with streaming video on the Internet. It doesn’t matter that the networks only stream episodes on the Internet as a way of promoting the show and that they are not streaming them as a revenue source. That’s something for the accountants to figure out. The writers aren’t really good with numbers. They are much better with words.
Speaking of words, The New York Post included the following words in their article about the layoffs:
Despite being scrooged out of their Christmas-season paychecks, the “SNL” crew still has a big heart. Playbill reports that the cast plans to perform a nontelevised show tonight at the New York Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on West 26th Street. Ticket proceeds from the sold-out performance, which was produced by Lorne Michaels, will benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund.
The proceeds went to benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund? They could have given the money to the people that now don’t have jobs because of the strike. That actually would have been the decent thing to do. I’m not saying that the Writers Guild doesn’t need money in their strike fund. You don’t expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to buy her own red WGA strike t-shirt, do you? Now that would just be silly.
It’s a known fact that streaming video on the Internet is worth billions upon billions of dollars. Look at all the people that are now millionaires because of videos they posted on YouTube. I heard that Chocolate Rain guy bought his own island in Dubai and he’s even thinking of adopting a baby from Cambodia. The vast fortunes that can be made from streaming video on the Internet are without limits.
A percentage of this limitless streaming video Internet wealth is clearly worth fighting for no matter who gets harmed in the process.
I’ve been trying to learn more about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers strike. Much of what I’ve read or heard about the reasons for the strike seem to be contradict other things I’ve read or heard about the strike. I found a list of points at the WGA.org website. Here’s a quick summery of the main sticking points:
Home Video (Videocassettes and DVDs) Residuals - They currently get 0.3% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.36% thereafter. They want 0.6% of the distributors’ gross for the first $1 million and 0.72% thereafter.
Non-Traditional Media Residuals - They currently get .3% of the gross for downloads where the customer pays for the download. They currently get paid nothing when the customer pays nothing. They want a residual payment of 2.5% of the distributor’s gross for re-use on non-traditional media, including the Internet. I’m not sure what they want to be paid when the content is free. It’s hard to assign a percentage to free.
If you go back and watch the YouTube video I posted the other day from the people from The Office, what they say in the video seems to contradict the information found on the WGA website. B.J. Novak, actor and writer for The Office, says that every time he meets a new viewer to The Office, they are watching it on the Internet or on DVD. I’m assuming that when they say they were watching it on the Internet, they were downloading the episodes from iTunes. Only recently did NBC start streaming episodes from free. The inference is that Novak and the other writers aren’t getting paid for the episodes on the Internet or on DVD.
That’s not true. If money changes hands, the writers are getting a percentage.
I think I understand the Hollywood writers strike much better after watching this YouTube video. Some of the cast members of The Office who also write the episodes give clear and concise reasonings behind the strike.
Talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended with the two sides not being able to agree to a new contract, resulting in television and movie writers going on strike. The conflict seems to be over on how to divvy up money generated from DVD sales and the Internet.
Much of the disagreement seems to be over how earnings will be generated in the future using technology or mediums that may not even exist today.
Jay Leno and David Letterman will be in reruns until the strike comes to an end. Evidently they both need their zany wisecracks written out for them before hand. The same applies to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No new episodes until the strike is over.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t understand the concept of residuals and perpetual earnings. I’m a simple electronics technician. I repair frequency drives used to power three-phase AC electrical motors. I work for the company that makes these drives. When I repair a drive and ship it back to it’s owner, I don’t continue making money from the profits generated from the drive I repaired.
I don’t understand why somebody that wrote something for Jay Leno to say on TV should be paid more then once. I don’t understand why they should continue getting paid for said writing on a continuous basis. Its hard for me to grasp.
I think I’ve finally given up on NBC’s new fall television show Bionic Woman. It’s just too stupid. Not the concept, but the execution. I was a big fan of The Six Million Dollar Man when I was a kid, but then again, what kid wasn’t? I don’t remember watching that show’s spin off and this show’s predecessor the original Bionic Woman. I don’t need to have ever watched it to know that it was better then this show is.
It bothers me to admit this show stinks because I really had high hopes for it. There is something about the concept of a bionic woman that trumps the concept of a bionic man. It’s interesting to see the supposed weaker sex be able through the power of bionics to kick some major ass. In The Six Million Dollar Man, the main charactor Steve Austin (played by manly man Lee Majors) already looked as though he could more then take care of himself in a physical altercation. The addition of bionics only added to his already perceived physical strengths. You might not guess that Steve Austin could pick up a custom van, but you probably had an idea that he wasn’t a weakling.
With a bionic woman, you wouldn’t guess that she was strong, let alone super bionic strong. She doesn’t look like she could open a jar of pickles, let alone pick someone up off their feet and throw them 30 feet.
The problem with this show is that they have gone too far with making her look the part of the dainty female.
They constantly have the title character Jamie Sommers (played by British actress Michelle Ryan) wearing high heeled boots. They then put her into one physical altercation after another. The only thing more ridiculous looking then a woman running in high heels is a bionic woman running 60 miles an hour in high heels.
The show is called the Bionic Woman, not the Bionic Lady.
Barry Manilow is refusing to go on The View because he says he wont share the stage with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the girl that was once on Survivor and is currently The View’s lone token conservative. Evidently he doesn’t appreciate her conservative views.
Not to say that I do either, but the show is called The View for a reason. She is there to express her viewpoint on things. What Manilow is doing is a form of censorship. If he doesn’t agree with her opinion about the Iraq war or her opinion that life begins at the moment of conception, he should go on the show and confront her about it. Not that I believe either topic would come up on the view during a Barry Manilow segment.
I don’t like Barry Manilow. I never have. I hate to judge a man by his physical appearance, but he looks too much like my middle school vice-principle. I never liked her.
Yesterday’s Keith and the Girl podcast featured special guest comedian Christian Finnegan. He has been on before and he is really quite funny. They were talking about the recent Dragon*Con convention where both Keith and Chemda (The Girl) attended for the very first time. They were talking about how funny it was to see all the nerds in attendance when Christian brought up Blizzcon. It’s a convention held by the software maker Blizzard for people that play their games, mainly the popular World of WarCraft.
Christian was hired to do stand up comedy for the people in attendance. He mentioned that Jay Mohr was the guest at the most recent Blizzcon and people heckled Mohr’s act. Some got angry that there weren’t any World of WarCraft centric jokes. Jay Mohr simply did his normal stand up act and some in attendance were not impressed. Christian said that when he did Blizzcon, he “wrote” new material for his act.
Did he write it or did he borrow it?
He said that he included a joke about the women in attendance at Blizzcon maybe thinking that they are better looking then they really are. He told the women in attendance that though they may be hot for Blizzcon, they probably were not that hot in the real world. The world outside of Blizzcon. Just because you are Blizzcon hot doesn’t mean you are regular hot. He said that it went over pretty good and I am sure it did.
It was a funny bit.
I thought it was funny when I heard Christian talk about it and I thought it was funny when I read it back in 2004 in The Onion. It was the basis of a hilarious The Onion story about a mildly semi-attractive woman that attends a Farscape convention and walks away mistakingly thinking she is one hot babe. She is one of the few women in attendance and gets a lot of attention from the horny nerds in attendance.
Does Christian Finnegan read The Onion? I think he does.
Apple has removed NBC Universal television episodes from the iTunes Store.
The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.
Personally, I think even $1.99 is actually a bit too pricey for TV episodes that you can watch for free on television. But $4.99 for a 22 minute sitcom? Thats just silly. Its especially silly when you stop to realize that this was free money for NBC Universal. These were television shows they produced for their network. Allowing Apples to then go and sell the shows on the iTunes Store after they had already appeared on their network was a win-win for NBC Universal.
Greed and stupidity are a dangerous mix.
Its not like people wont be downloading NBC Universal programing. They just wont be paying for it. People will simply download NBC Universal television shows on bittorrent.
My name is Rick Rottman and this is my blog. It's where I write about stuff.
I was born and raised in southern California, but I now live in Hagerstown, Maryland. More >>
I like watching Judge Judy. I find it extremely entertaining. I find the whole process of two people going before a televised small claims court and arguing their case in front of millions of people entirely fascinating. Ironically, I get the feeling that many of the litigants going before Judge Judy have never bothered to watch the show.
Yesterday’s 
