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Happened upon this while looking for airports near Miami.  Supposedly named for a lake nearby shaped like same.

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So today we finally saw the much-hyped return of Christopher Jericho Robin on WWE RAW the new-ish Pooh series on USA Network the Disney Channel. If you don’t watch the Disney Channel like we watch the Disney Channel, you may not know that an all-new, all-CGI Pooh series premiered this past spring. I’m all for using the available technology to update our favorites, since they’re going to do it anyway whether I like it or not, but people of our age may be surprised to discover that Christopher Robin is virtually absent from the Hundred Acre Wood. Assuming the mantle of Sole Human is a precocious little girl named Darby who herds the titular critters, solving mysteries by charging around on a scooter and wearing a ballcap. [This costume detail leads her to exclaim "Slap My Cap!" at least once every segment, a pretty desperate attempt to create a catchphrase for a target market that doesn't really need anything else to repeat.] And for a girl who only Now Is Six, she seems to know an awful lot about the Hundred Acres. When, in one episode, she said “I know where the highest point in the wood is…” I waited for her to turn to the viewer and whisper “…because I assumed all of Christopher Robin’s knowledge when I ATE HIS BRAINS.”

Anyway, Christopher Robin finally, gleefully slapped his cap today, announcing he’d “always wanted to go on a super-sleuth adventure.” [What was stopping him? They're his stuffed animals, aren't they?] It pretty much amounted to him tagging along while Darby taunted the woozles, but it’s something, I guess.

Disney Channel execs say the series needed some new blood, but I feel like Darby is more of an F-you to the A.A. Milne estate, who unsuccessfully sued Disney a few years ago over more money. [Christopher Robin in the Milne books is based on Milne's son.] I can’t help but wonder if this and the other episode he’s scheduled for were an afterthought, a bone thrown to people like this outspoken netizen. For whatever reason, Owl is gone too. [Too old? Rabbit is still around, and he's a cranky old sonofabitch.] But a few weeks ago I was at my mom’s house watching one of the original Disney Winnie movies, with Sebastian Cabot as the narrator and the action literally taking place on pages of a book. Granted, I am the market least likely to personally enjoy the tie-in ballcaps, scooters, and Aqua Dots, but when my kidlet gets a little older we’re going to watch them both and hopefully the slower pace, drier humor, and less girl-powery human won’t bore the next [last?] generation with a chance to watch it.

If this post follows the path usually followed by posts about kids’ TV by random bloggers [hits google, winds up high in the ranks, gets many annoyed comments], let me get a few things out of the way.

• This website is intended for ages 18 and over.

• I have watched this show just as much as you have. I agree that it is largely inoffensive and I, like you, appreciate that Disney Channel doesn’t interrupt its programming for small folks with Buy My Cereal ads. You cannot convince me that Darby is great.

• You forfeited your right to tell me to get a life when you googled for a preschoolers’ TV show and clicked on a blog title with a terrible pun. You should have adjusted your expectations accordingly.

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Perhaps you have noticed the flash-based profiles on some people’s myspace accounts. There is a site providing these.  I gave them a Gmail address and hence I’m uncertain as to whether the address is on a mailing list now, but I can confirm that during the eighteen hours or so when I used their flash profile design on my myspace profile, I got about one friend request an hour from strangers who seemed to be spamming.  When I removed the Flash profile, they ceased to arrive.

I switched to the 5ThirtyOne profile.  It doesn’t feature the same seamless integration with flickr — although I imagine I could add a photostream with some CSS code — but it’s free [cc:licensed] and no-strings attached.  Ultimately, if you want a pretty myspace profile… you’re probably best off using something that isn’t myspace.

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100 GRAND® provides a richer, more rewarding snack experience because of its crunchy chocolate, abundance of soft, chewy caramel and inherent association with money.

Nestlé USA [emphasis mine]

One wonders what this marketer would say of "Milky Way," "ZAGNUT," or "Oh! Henry" bars? Almost certainly it would cause giggles, guffaws, and, um, Snickers.

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Longtime 89x listeners may remember Canadian synthers Moev. Go to the “Head Down” album and choose “In and Out.” Yeah, remember now? You can download them from this widget or from Moev.ca.

Okay, I found this for you, now get me that 24 Gone song. “Girl of Colours.” I can’t find it and their members didn’t get enlightened and release their backcatalog under a CC license like Moev did.

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This is a catchy little ditty. I wish I’d come up with Krispy as a positive adjective.

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Ian Rogers on Kid Rock. 

I haven’t had occasion to meet him yet, but from stories I’ve heard and witnessed, Kid seems like a great guy and I look forward to hearing this new album of his.  I’ll fish this issue out of the closet and give it a look-through again tonight.  He had a feature in another GR issue: “Kid Rock’s Favorite Bass Tracks.”  I remember one of them was “Cars that Go Boom” by L’Trimm, but really, who doesn’t count that one as a favorite?

But the link to Motorbooty made me wish that someone would put out reprints, or a bound collection or something.  Come to think of it, a Grand Royal mag collection would be stellar too.  I’m sure Ian and/or the Beasties get that question all the time, though.  Maybe they could include the tabloid they gave out on that one tour where they call Billy Joel “the fifth Beastie Boy.”  Surely I can’t be the only one who remembers that?

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From: Britain W.
To: James Wolcott
Subject: VF notes

Jim,

I am on my knees, Mr. Wolcott, saying thank you, thank you and thank you again for persuading Christopher Hitchens to do his first flat-out, boob-baring n00d pix. Please tell me there’s somebody on the VF team who can slip me some stills of the shooting that day… please. I’m serious. I know you think like I do in this respect, so please … as one good hombre to another … you don’t have to be the guy who passes along the stills. Just tell the still photographer or the editor or whomever caught him as he posed. I’m not a sleazebag either — I don’t pass along stills to the Slate crowd or my friends. This would be just for me, myself & I. Also, if you have any extra Gay Talese, too? Out-takes, perhaps.

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- This recipe has resulted in a number of great quality, non-skippy XviD files that play like butter in our Panasonic DVD-LS850 player and have kept children I care about quiet for hours, in the car and on planes.

- Putting other kinds of non-dvd online video files directly into Burn and choosing a DivX disc will cause burn to convert them and burn a disc that plays just fine in these players too.

Nobody on the internets has yet confirmed whether this DivX-certified player can play similar. [I did.]  I can confirm tonight that You can use free softwa re on a Mac to back up your DVDs to a playable format. I would imagine these instructions will work on the DVD-LS80 and the DVD-LS82, since the manual that came with my 850 appears to be the one packed in with those too.

• [optional] Rip the discs with MacTheRipper
• Run the DVD [or ripped VIDEO_TS] through Handbrake [up to version 0.9.3]

Change the following under Output settings
Format:AVI file
Codecs:MPEG-4 Video/MP3 Audio
Encoder: XviD
If you queue, make sure you change the file name for each segment.

• Now, fire up Burn.
  Click the Video tab at the top of the Burn window.
  Change the menu next to your disc title from “VCD” to “DivX”.
  Click the + button and find the files you want, or drag your AVI files into the window and add them to the list. Click the “Burn” button at the bottom of the window.
• Put the disc in the player. It should list each file as a video segment. You can “play all” and skip between them or I think choose the segment you want from the menu.

The manual says to name the files 001[whatever].avi, 002[whatever].avi, 003[whatever].avi and it’ll play them in that order, but from my [limited] experience, files will show up as long as they’ve got an .avi extension. To be honest, I cannot confirm whether the files will play absolutely skip-free, since they’re not officially DivX 5 or whatever. I hope to test tonight and maybe make changes in the picture settings if necessary, but I’m sure I’ll know by this time tomorrow regardless.

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The wife and I took some time last night, upon recommendation from friends, to check out a little doc called “Maxed Out,” a passionate, compassionate documentary whose central premise is that the nation’s largest banks are making the majority of their money from identifying bad credit risks, targeting them, waiting for them to screw up, and bleeding them way past dry.

My “favorite” segment was the story of the mentally impaired man who was gently ushered through signing on the dotted line for a high-interest loan they told him he needed for his mother. Citibank: if there’s a hell below… see you there, you bums.

[Edit, Friday afternoon: The really sharp Google video version that was here seems to be gone... there's a lower-quality google version still kicking around, with subtitles en Espanol -- I have it linked at my tumblr page.]

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