Sunday, April 19, 1998
Still puttering along on the Star Wars novels, writing plots summaries as I go! Got through four last week. Would have got through five but I took off Tuesday to nitpick the Drew Carey Show. Did any of the rest of you give that a try?
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, the Drew Carey Show had an April Fool's episode in which Drew Carey invited viewers to find the mistakes in the show, write them down and send them in. The person who finds the most mistakes that match the official producer's list wins $25,000 and a trip to Hollywood to do a walk-on on the show and have lunch with Drew. Getting paid to nitpick. What a novel concept! Anyway, I don't watch the show so I'm not really qualified to nitpick it but I thought I'd give it a shot! They are supposed to announce the winners on or about April 24 so . . . we'll see! (Given that there were over 300,000 entries I'm not expecting much since the Drewheads will obviously have an advantage. There are alot of smart people out there, I just happen to have figured out a way to get paid to do this but that doesn't mean I'm the best at it! Also the official list of gags will be posted at http://www.abc.com/primetime/drew_carey on Monday so it should be fun to compare lists!)
The really tough thing about it was trying to figure out what the creators had in mind. If a newspaper changes position, then changes again and then changes again, is that one "error" or three? Just to be safe, I documented everything that I and my daughter could find. We'll see. If nothing else, it was a fun exercise. The creators went out of their way to put in a wide genre of mistakes--almost like they were familiar with the whole "nitpickin' thang." (There *is* a bumper sticker on Drew's divider that says, "I'm pro-Spock and I vote!")
Anyway, since I took a day out last week to do that, I'm starting with X-Wing #4 on Monday, and then have The Courtship of Princess Leia and the Zahn triology.
Also, I mentioned it last week but just a reminder. Robert Pearlman of the National Space Society contacted me two weeks ago. The NSS, in cooperation with HBO, has created the Official Viewer's Guide to "From The Earth To The Moon" (E2M) [http://www.nss.org/apollo] -- the new epic miniseries covering America's quest for the Moon. Robert was interested in creating a Nitpicker's Guide for the series as well! He has access to astronauts, NASA techs, and historians (and he's already amassed quite a few nits from them) but he was also interested in hearing from you all as to your thoughts on the HBO mini series that is currently playing. Last week, I started a Brash Reflection file on From Earth To The Moon and you're welcome to send along additional comments.
John Latchem sent me a fun comment yesterday: This week's episode of Voyager, "Unforgettable," is the 500th segment of canonical Trek: 80 episodes of TOS, 178 of TNG, 144 of DS9, 90 of VOY, and 8 Films. Taking out commercials this is about 372 hours of produced Trek. Watching each episode in a row with no breaks would take 15.5 days. If you wanted to watch one episode per day, starting, April 22, 1998, you would finish on September 13, 1999.
Oh and, by the way, I thought the DS9 episode this week, "By the Pale Moon Light," was fabulous! (Aside from the rather glaring nit of the Romulan failing to report the fake recording to anyone when two days elapsed before his death! But maybe that will be cleared up in a subsequent episode.)
Monday, April 20, 1998
Uploaded nits and reflections for Vis A Vis, The Omega Particle and From Earth To The Moon.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: The Brash Reflections for the third season of Voyager are officially frozen. However, you may feel free to send in additional nits for the episodes. I will keep the information for future reference and possible inclusion in a Voyager Nitpicker's Guide. Also frozen are Trials and Tribble-ations, along with all movie files. Also, aside from "Trials and Tribble-ations"--which was a special case, there aren't any Brash Reflections for DS9 on the website. Sorry. Just don't have the time to do another series and I started with Voyager when I started the homepage.
Tuesday, April 21, 1998
No uploads planned. Will be trying to get caught up on my postal mail.
Wednesday, April 22, 1998
Uploaded a Brash Reflection for Unforgettable. (Last week, I I started a Brash Reflection for The Omega Particle with comments from other nitpickers since I didn't have my timer set correctly.)
Thursday, April 23, 1998
Hoping to update the membership files. Need to be caught up on my postal mail first! (Last week, I had a few extra minutes this morning so I started a Brash Reflection file on From Earth To The Moon.)
Friday, April 24, 1998
Uploaded a new Ask the Chief column (Click here for last week's column.)
Saturday, April 25, 1998
Never one to miss a chance to look foolish, I thought it would be fun to upload by entry for the Drew Carey April Fools Contest.
United We Nitpick!
Phil
P.S. While you're surfing, be sure to stop by my Shameless Plugs page!