I am so ready for social TV. If you haven't read about it already, you can mosey on over to Plastic Bag for a good description and some prototype images of what social TV could look like.

For the impatient, here's a quick recap: you have an instant messaging app on your TV screen, letting you know which of your friends are watching television at the same time as you. You can send an instant invite to ask friends to watch TV with you, or you can respond to someone else's invite. Using a webcam mounted on your TV, you can send live images of yourself watching TV to your friends or engage in live tele-discussion.

I already have a preliminary social TV schedule mapped out. First thing, I'll message Neilalien so we can watch Alias together. I can't wait to see his huge bulbous head and insectoid eyes shining back at me from out of the TV screen.

Next, I'll issue an open invite to watch The L Word with me. I can guarantee there'll be a looooong discussion afterword. Then I want to get the list of comic bloggers who drink gin from Rose over at Peiratikos. I have no idea what we'll watch together, but I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.

In case you were watching The L Word last night, let me point out that I've previously blogged about Lisa Yuskavage , the painter discussed in the scene between Tina and the Creepy Lawyer as they tried to estimate the value of the couple's household.

Over the weekend, I read what some of the DykeWriters were saying about The L Word and I was dismayed to realize how many people dislike the character Bette. I fear I have been blinded to Bette's faults by my identification with her. Even though my gender stylings are a bit more towards the Shane end of the spectrum, I think I identify more with Bette's artsy-fartsiness and her tendency to verbally bitch-slap those around her when she's angry. I wish I was her best friend.

My sympathy for Bette has only become more intense now that's she's wallowing in depression and has started acting out with liquor and women. If the lesbian phone tree is active, please pass along to Jennifer Beals that her character needs to call me immediately. Hideous break-up? I've been there, Bette, and I'm willing to listen.

I actually missed my chance of proximity to the cast of The L Word last week. There was a fan event here in L.A., and although I didn't go, I hard about it from someone who did it. Supposedly it was like Beatlemania when the cast came out: TINA!!! IVAN!!! SHANE!!! JENNIFER!!! Shane is our Paul.

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of ebooks, but finding good hardware to read them on is not easy. That being the case, I thought I would pass along some of the devices I've chosen for different types of reading situations.

My first dedicated ebook reader was the Rocket eBook Pro, which is sadly no longer available. My Rocket eBook is still working, but its been abducted by the Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend, who uses it to read Xena fan fiction she's downloaded from the internet.

Since the Girlfriend uses the Rocket, I decided to get something just for me. For awhile I was using my Palm-powered Handspring Visor, but it eventually broke and I had to get something else. I looked at Palms, Sony Clies, the Tapwave, and Windows CE handhelds, but was turned off by various issues: crappy screens, buggy operating systems, and high prices.

I was inclined towards the Tapwave or the Palm C but wasn't able to make up my mind. They both had great screens with backlights, which I consider to be important features. Then the linux-powered Zaurus SL-6000L, known for its high-quality screen, was discontinued and went on sale at a close-out price. I wound up buying the Zaurus.

The Zaurus will take any file format I throw at it--another key feature in any ebook device--and with it's built in wireless connection I can read off the internet, too. Another good thing about my Zaurus is that it's very portable. That's not the case with the Rocket eBook Pro, which is somewhat heavy and has about the same dimensions as a quality paperback book.

Since I had such a nice portable device, I thought it would be good for the Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend to have a more portable, PDA-sized device as well. Because the Girlfriend wouldn't use the PDA functions, I wanted the model to be cheap. And although the Girlfriend digs the digital lifestyle, she is not so much into the forever-charging-mobile-devices lifestyle. So the model had to have a long battery life, too.

My research led me to the Sony Clie PEG-SJ20, with its sharp, backlit black-and-white screen. Long since discontinued, I picked one up on eBay for around $50, including postage. I recommend it if you're looking for a small-format reader. Currently, you can also buy the successor to the Rocket eBook, the discontinued RCA 1100, for a reasonable price from online publisher eBookwise. The follow-up model is lighter than the Rocket eBook Pro that I have, and it's probably the best option available now, unless you read Japanese.

After a long wait, season two of The L Word starts tomorrow night. It's been such a long wait that I've had ample time to waste mulling, debating, rumor-mongering and experiencing the backlash over the first season.

I was so relieved to read that After Ellen has reviewed the full second season and gives it a thumbs up. Most importantly, the sex is back! In case you have not been following the story closely, after the Janet Jackson/Super Bowl incident, there was talk that the hot-and-heavy lesbian scenes would be cut from the next season in order to avoid problems with the FCC.

Do you see how censorship trickles down, ripples out and eventually washes over us all? Just because some outraged family-values sports fans couldn't handle seeing Janet's nipple, everyone's supply of soft core lesbian erotica is threatened. I hope all my straight male readers will take this idea to heart--I expect to see at the next gay rights rally wearing "Hands off my lesbian porn" t-shirts.

The L Word ringtones and graphics, yay! What a perfect Los Angeles tie-in. Wallpaper and IM icons, yay! Bet that guy character doesn't get downloaded much.

Did I mention the backlash? In addition to the usual griping (summary: too beautiful, too femme, too dysfunctional), there's also The D Word, a filmed parody that Showtime has apparently tried to stop. Which of course makes us want to see it more, yay! You can watch the trailer here.

Showtime has The L Word Season 2 preview trailers up on their site for your viewing pleasure. Was that Arianna Huffington in a guest spot on video 3? If you haven't subscribed to Showtime already, do this girl a favor and sign up so they can keep the sapphic televisual candy coming my way.

The other day I was listening to NPR and heard an interesting piece about birds and learning. Some researchers studied baby birds to see how they learned complex birdsongs. Did they learn them bit by bit, or did they learn them as a whole?

Interestingly, the birds learned the notes bit by bit, then assembled the song into a whole based on their understanding of sequence. On the one hand, sequence appears to help the process of understanding, on the other hand, it contributes to creating meaning. According to NPR's web site, the research will appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine Nature.

Unless you watched it yourself, I'm not sure you could really comprehend how juvenile, shocking and tasteless Drawn Together was when it debuted last week. But that's okay, because that means you might be motivated to view the new "animated reality show" yourself, and you might enjoy it just as much as I did. That is, if you enjoy things that are juvenile and shocking and tasteless.

And I'm not kidding about the tasteless part. I was somewhat alarmed by Pop Culture Gadabout's take on the racism jokes in Drawn Together. So much so that I wound up discussing his review with the Sister, who also watched the show, to assess what I thought about how these jokes were handled. I viewed them more as a commentary on the egregious racism on display in today's reality shows, rather than as a critique of the character type of the princess. But there are certainly other ways to interpret them, including plenty of room to take offense.

Of course, the hot tub kiss between two women really sold me on the show, although I also appreciated the steady course of in-jokes for animation aficionados. The Sister and I agreed that the defecating pig was our least favorite character in the show, although I will also add that when the country you call home is on the verge of sliding into complete chaos, a good doo-doo joke may be just what the doctor ordered.

There's a blog for the forthcoming movie based on the Firefly TV series. The Universal movie site claims the release date is April 2005.

Due to popular interest, I've decided to revisit the subject of my last post and publish a few more pix from the Pride Run. Thanks to all my regular readers for your comments, and welcome to new readers who may be visiting from Lucy Lawless news sites, Xena news sites, forums and boards.

If you're coming here for the first time, you might want to check out my other Xena-related material. You can use the search feature or the Index page to help locate what you're looking for. As a starting point, may I recommend that you check out my Xena and Gabrielle Sims?

Back to the Pride Run. In the first photo shown here, Lucy has just discovered a piece of the costume she was going to wear for the gay and lesbian pride parade, and immediately put it on. You can see she is talking to one of the run competitors. I don't know her name, although I did meet several nice people, all Lucy fans, at the event. In any case, I think she wound up winning a medal at the finish, plus a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Lucy, who gave out the awards.

I selected this other photo simply as a form of torture for you all. There were no tables available, so Lucy was signing on people's backs. Can you imagine? Your frickin' back! Not only does SHE WALK AMONG US but she signs on our backs. I am astounded by this evidence of a caring and beneficent god.

By the way, for my regular readers, that is not the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend in the picture. And to my new visitors, please feel free to leave comments.

This past weekend was Gay and Lesbian Pride Weekend in L.A., or as I like to call it, Just Try To Get Parking in West Hollywood Weekend.
This year, the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I set out early on Sunday to attend the Los Angeles Frontrunners Pride Run 2004. Yes, it was a proud event, and a benefit for a good cause, but that's not why we went. We went because Lucy Lawless, former Xena: Warrior Princess and present-day goddess was scheduled as the celebrity host to kick off the run.
Aside from the fact that the girlfriend and I are big Xena fans, it was a real pleasure to see a female celebrity address her lesbian followers. We've all seen musical celebrity divas get lovey-dovey with their gay male fans, or male movie stars "acknowledging" their gay male fans, but what do the lesbians ever get? Crapola, that's what.
No female stars ever say, "I'd like to thank all my lesbian fans for faithfully going to see every one of my movies, even the really shitty ones like Sommersby" or "Thanks to all you dykes out there for padding my royalty checks over the years with your home video and DVD purchases of The Hunger." No, you just don't hear it. But Lucy has always been really cool about her lesbian fans, and we do worship her cravenly for it.
After Lucy announced the run, as shown in the picture here, she hung out with her "Xena posse," as she called us, signing autographs and chatting us up.
Very early on, the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend came down with a case of "Lucy Haze," a condition which I believe to be a modern-day variant of the condition once known as "the vapors." It really was overstimulating being around Lucy for so long. You can see just how close we were in the other picture I've posted, which shows Lucy giving us girls what we've always wanted.

Recently, the Cute-Little-Red-Headed Girlfriend and I faced a household crisis around the new show The L Word. We've known it was coming for some time, but because the history of pro-lesbian shows is not stellar, we were torn about investing in a cable or satellite system just to get it.

After the series premiere, which we caught on a videotape provided by an obliging friend, we were so sold on the show that getting access through our own TV set-up became a pressing concern. So after many years of abstaining from pay TV, I took advantage of the free-installation-in-time-for-the-Superbowl offer and got DirectTV installed with ShowTime.

The Cute-Little-Red-Headed Girlfriend is now totally obsessed with this show, and I'm fairly involved as well. I was sad to see that Television Without Pity was not offering episode recaps, however, a post on decaf venti tipped me off to the blow-by-blow coverage on After Ellen, a fantastic resource. Plus, there are multiple fan sites for the show with active message boards and a few sites have also cropped up dedicated to the various actors/characters.

It's a great ensemble show, and does a very good job at capturing some typical aspects of lesbian life. The drama and the trauma, as I like to call it. I know people have complained that the lesbian characters aren't really representative of the community, but how can you ask any group of characters living in Los Angeles--gay or straight--to represent "reality"? This ain't Kansas, Dorothy. To me, the most unrealistic part of the show has nothing to do with lesbianism. It's the sheer size of the character's houses relative to their probable incomes. But I'm picking nits.

I was interested to hear the skepticism voiced about the lesbian tennis pro character at Almost There, brand new to my blogroll. I also found this character, who is supposed to be in the closet and unable to get a date, less than believable. The idea that a female tennis pro could be sitting in a lesbian cafe and not have panties thrown at her feet by all-too-willing dykes is a ridiculous fancy.

Now that I have DirectTV I can make good use of Queery, a gay and lesbian TV guide that I happened upon somewhere. That is, when I'm not watching the cartoon network.

Last week, the New York Times ran a story on changes coming to network series television. (I haven't linked to it, since New York Times links expire in a few days.) The gist was that we may be seeing the end of the 20+ episodes a year TV series in favor of shorter series runs and one-shot mini-series.

It looks as though this affects both dramatic and comedic series. The Times article appeared to be prompted by NBC's decision to run a reality show on Thursday night instead of back-to-back sitcoms. Reality shows in general seem tied to the demise of series TV, because they allow networks to dispense with scripts, and thus, writer payrolls.

I'm happy to see shorter series appear, but I hope that long-run TV series continue. There are both short and long-run series in the comics world, and although I was initially unhappy with the growth of 4-6 issue comics series, I've come to appreciate them over time. Sometimes, a story can seem truncated by the short series format. For example, I felt the ending to the Vertigo series Cinnamon, which I praised when it first appeared, was rushed. It might have been the fault of the writing, but it might also have been that the story required a longer run to develop.

The network TV series that have my eye these days include Alias; Enterprise, which has finally become consistent amidst rumors that it may be axed; Line of Fire, for its psycho mob boss and butch FBI chief; and on the comedy side, Whoopi, for its city humor and cheeky celebration of drinking, smoking and other anti-family values.

From my recent blog reading, it sounds like a lot of bloggers found the Firefly first (and only) season DVD set under their tree. There's a new fan site up that's trying to spread Firefly to a wider audience by promoting the DVD set. They're also hoping to keep demand for the movie up.

I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King yesterday. To commemorate the occasion, I put up a picture of Arwen as the wallpaper on my computer, since she is the prettiest girl in the film--with Frodo running a very close second. One would think there would be few surprises in this film, but I was pleasantly surprised by how prominently the hobbits' tales figured in the story. I hope you all had a nice holiday. I did--in fact, one of the gifts I received was the new The Hobbit game for Game Cube.

One of the pleasures of watching series is the feeling of expectation one is left with at the end of an episode. It's a delicate balance--there are cliffhangers that heighten excitement for the story to continue and those that leave too many questions unanswered.

I felt a mixture of both emotions when I watched the Phantom Menace on DVD with the cute-little-red-headed-girlfriend some time ago. Although the film was largely unsatisfying, it left us both with one pressing question in our minds: who are the Sith?

In case you don't recall, Darth Maul was one of the Sith. But the back story of the Sith was left untold, leaving me wondering where this dramatic figure came from. Naturally, where this is twistedness and evil there are fan sites, but I wanted something more canonical--a definitive history of the Sith.

My first thought was to turn to the Star Wars novels. However, after checking out several reviews sites and a few forums I realized that the Dark Horse line of graphic novels--chronologically ordered collections of the Star Wars comics--were considered to be more consistent in quality and directly addressed the topic I was interested in.

Dark Horse has lots of useful material on their web site, and they've make it fairly easy to find what you want. I consulted their timeline to locate the Star Wars era I was interested in. Although the early graphic novels are out of print, I've found scattered titles available in most comic shops and in bookstores, and you can still buy them online.

The first one I picked up was Dark Lords of the Sith. Although it didn't answer all my questions about the Sith, it did absolutely capture my imagination. The book is both dramatic and deeply interior, showing the internal struggle of aspiring Jedi warriors confronting the pull of the Dark Side. I was initially put off by the sketchiness of some of the art work, but as I became more engrossed with a story that spanned worlds and numerous characters I came to appreciate the artist's sacrifice of graphic detail for the sake of narrative clarity and momentum.

I'm looking forward to the next "chapter" in this story. The events seem to foreshadow the fall of Anakin Skywalker and his transformation into the evil Darth Vadar. Perhaps I will be able to complete the back story by the time the next Star Wars movie opens this summer.