Ryan Thomas Goodenough

Dear ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox (sorry CW, but I think you’re imaginary),

You develop wonderful pilots every day. Some of these pilots get approval and are aired on your respective networks. Granted, a few of them aren’t very good, but most of them are pretty entertaining. However, you usually premiere a show and then move it to another time slot on another day. Or, you air an episode and decide to take a winter hiatus. When you look at the numbers a week later, you decide–in your infinite wisdom–that the show should be canceled. STOP doing that!

You need to give TV shows a chance to gain an audience and a consistent following. Airing one episode one week at one time and airing the next one a few weeks later at a different time slot on another day isn’t working. I propose giving all new shows a 6-episode trial run. If at the end of those 6 episodes the show hasn’t developed a following, by all means cancel it. But throwing shows all over your networks and hoping that something sticks is like throwing spaghetti against the wall.

You want to know why your little brothers and sisters like USA, FX, and A&E are doing so much better than you in many respects? They actually give their shows a chance. Granted, their numbers aren’t as high, but they’re starting to bring in the advertisers and slowly chip away at your market share.

Based on just the first episode, I know that I wouldn’t have wanted to see shows like the Simpsons or Seinfeld ever again. Good thing your older counterparts actually knew what they were doing 10, 20 years ago.

I like recommending music a lot, but since we all don’t have a lot of money, I thought I would start reviewing the free singles on iTunes, available all week with a new one each Tuesday.

For those of you who missed out on The Cinematics “Strange Education” last week, sorry! I love that song now and, best of all, they’re coming to Tulip Fest in a couple weeks right here in Albany.

This week’s single is “Life is Beautiful” from Vega4. As others have said, there’s definitely a Snow Patrol feel here. Some nice soaring moments and Vega4 definitely takes the cake when it comes to enunciating. I’m not sure if there’s enough here to make me coming back to it in a couple weeks, but it’s got my foot-tapping right now. In fact, it’s pretty “amazing from where I’m standing” (or sitting rather).

B+ Good song, but can be rather long and may not have enough of a draw to make you come back to it again and again.

I hope I’m not outing myself as a geek here, but you all (oh, sorry Eric, “all y’all”) should check out YubNub.org. YubNub is a search engine that can search any site you want by entering a quick code. For example, say you’re like me and love IMDB like it’s your best friend. You want to find out, as I did last night, whether it’s the same person doing the music in Dead Poet’s Society and Witness. Go to YubNub and type “imdb witness.” It’ll search IMDB for the movie “Witness.” There are a lot of other abbreviations like “am” for Amazon.com, “ebay” for ebay.com, and “g” for google. Pretty cool if you ask me. Now, where did I put my pocket protector…

Okay, I definitely should be working with some of this free time, but Emily and I played another round of Wii Golf tonight and I finally broke my old record, getting into double digits under par.

In case any of you are hesitant about trying out Treasure Trooper, here is some proof that you actually get paid.

$66.28!  If you want to try it out yourself, make sure to click the link on the right.  I’ll earn 20% of whatever you make if you do that.

Since sophomore year of undergrad (about 3 years ago), I’ve been growing an avocado plant. I got extemely lucky and he got off to a great start. Lately, he’s been leaning a little bit and I decided to re-pot him this morning. Cado (avo-cado) is very excited about being straight again. Plus, he has a huge pot now.

We celebrated Emily’s birthday this weekend at her house. She got lots of gifts including golf clubs, a portrait of us*, Lois and Clark, a shirt, Ramona on VHS, and a bunch of great stuff!

*Yes, it is a portrait of us, but we have been together for quite some time. It was based on a picture that Emily’s mom had taken of us. Plus, it looks really cool!

As you’ve noticed in the news, a big storm has been pounding the coast line the past few days with enormous high tides. Unfortunately, that storm seems to have destroyed the stairs I built last summer. We’ll have to see, but here’s the proof:

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I had a great birthday this year! Emily started off last night by offering to play Wii Golf with me and managing to pull off another feat–a double eagle (look at hole 5).

After Wii Golf, we went to bed. The next day (my birthday) was greeted with lots of presents from Emily including an oil pourer (?), lottery tickets, flowers & waffles!, and, to top it all off, a breadmaker! We quickly ran out to the grocery store after class to get some yeast and bread flour so that we could try it out. We made some italian herb bread–it was delicious!

In addition, I got Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 and a tablet from my parents. A tablet is a pretty cool electronic device: it lets you draw on your computer using a pen. The pen has 250+ pressure levels allowing you to draw larger strokes as you press harder (like a paint brush). Flip it over to use the other end and you get an eraser. Nothing is ever drawn on the tablet–it’s digitized right onto your computer.

Plus, I got cards and calls from everyone! Thank you all for a terrific birthday!

There’s a variety of arguments that could be generated about yesterday’s shooting at Virginia Tech. One could argue that it’s sickening that it took school officials 2 hours after the first shooting to send out a warning email. Another argument could be that people that identified Cho as a “loner”might have noticed something wrong if they had spent more time with him. Ultimately there’s only one argument that makes any sense.

“The right to bear arms” is a flawed and inaccurate argument: handguns should be illegal.

Our constitutional right to bear arms deals with the theory that the people should have the right to fight against an oppressive, tyrannical government. In that case, they have the right to bear arms, form militias, and fight the government. The fact that any citizen needs to have a semi-automatic or a handgun is pure fiction.

“What about my right to defend myself?”

The only reason why a citizen of the USA feels that they need a gun is to protect themselves from other people with guns. When I studied abroad in London, I was amazed when it was a huge story that someone had been killed by a knifing. First, murders hardly ever happen over there. In 2006: London had “2.1 cases of murder, infanticide or manslaughter per 100,000.” Washington, DC alone had 67 cases of outright murder. Second, I much rather take my chances against someone with a knife. They can’t really shoot me down from 100 feet away with a knife and I might be able to survive a knifing.

I’m not arguing that a few people wouldn’t be able to get their hands on illegal guns each year. But if such a law was passed, monitoring these sales would be much easier. It could lead to prevention of crimes like that which took place at Virginia Tech. For a country as advanced and progressive (ha!) as the USA, we need to protect our citizens and ban the ownership of handguns.