Apparently just getting Jack Bauer on Mondays wasn't enough. Now I'm getting caught up on Sunday's Entourage too. And to top all that off, NBC's got their new improv show, Thank God You're Here. It looks like it's got a heck of a cast...everyone from Angel from The Office to Jason Alexander and Fred Willard. Hopefully the show does well though...when they brought Whose Line Is It Anyways over here from across the pond, it didn't seem to have the same appeal over here. This show's concept is coming from the land down under, and hopefully it is as appealing as its Australian counterpart, which is very popular over there.


Check out the cast and some details:

Guest stars who dare to try improv include Jennifer Coolidge, Bryan Cranston, Joel McHale, Tom Arnold, Fran Drescher, Fred Willard, Nicole Sullivan, Tom Green, Chelsea Handler, George Takei, Shannon Elizabeth, Paul Rodriguez, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Mo'Nique, Alanis Morrisette, Former "Seinfeld" Stars Jason Alexander and Wayne Knight, and Ana Gasteyer of "Saturday Night Live."

The press release above was dated the end of February, and had an incorrect schedule. The NBC website seems to indicate there's a two-hour premiere tonight at 8 Central, and then the regular slot is Mondays, also at 8 Central. The release also mentioned the show is "hosted by David Alan Grier (In Living Color) alongside presiding improv judge Dave Foley (NewsRadio)."

So finally, the big news you've been eagerly anticipating! I'm moving this blog from nirajsanghvi.com to its new home, symbii.com. The site's called "Something You Might Be Interested In," a name inspired by a line from HBO's Entourage. I think it fits the subject matter of the blog pretty perfectly.


Something You Might Be Interested In | symbii.com
So why the move? I decided that I want the nirajsanghvi.com domain to be used to be more of an informational page about the websites and projects/tools I'm working on. Plus the website URL is much shorter. If you're not into the whole brevity thing, you can use blog.nirajsanghvi.com, which will just redirect to the new site.

If you have already signed up as a member on this blog, nothing will change. You can still login to the blog using the name and password you have always used.

This move wasn't exactly as minor as I hoped, so let me know if you're seeing any problems with any of the pages you're using on this site, either via the feedback form, or by posting a comment to this story. Currently I have both domains up as I'm doing some final fixes, but starting Monday the nirajsanghvi.com domain will just link to the blog on symbii.com.

The new RSS feed is here.

There haven't been posts in a couple of days, and while that's happened before, this time it's the calm before the storm. There are some major site changes taking place over the next couple of weeks, so check back here to see what's new! In the meantime, I do intend to try and stick to a regular amount of posts, if possible. But something cool is on the way!

In some awesome news, 30 Rock has been renewed for another season. This show started out a little slow, but has quickly become one of my favorite comedy shows on TV. And apparently NBC realizes it's good:

"From the beginning, '30 Rock' has proven to be the kind of quality comedy that doesn't come around very often, and we are very pleased to have this show back for a second season," said [Kevin Reilly, NBC Entertainment President]. "We expect it to continue to build its increasingly loyal audience and become another of NBC's classic comedy series."

The freshman comedy has earned critical plaudits since its premiere last October while Alec Baldwin, one of the series stars, won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for his spot-on performance as Jack Donaghy, a brash network executive. In addition, "30 Rock" has received extensive praise from the nation's television critics - including magazines such as TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly and People, that have included the comedy on many of their "Top 10" lists of favorite series for 2006-07.

This news is so sweet, I wanna take it out back behind the middle school and get it pregnant!

Apparently in one of their new music videos, Fall Out Boy made a deal for product placement with Procter and Gamble to feature Tag body spray in their video.

Since CD sales are declining but the cost of making a video is not, many musicians have made product placement deals for videos in the last few years. In this deal, Tag essentially underwrote the cost of those downloads for a limited time and put a message to that effect on the band's Web site. Tag also promoted the band in advertising and helped offset the cost of making the video.

At a time when music labels are trying to reduce their promotional costs, deals like this could become more common. "If it offset the cost of the video it sounds like a great idea," said Scott Booker, who manages the alternative rock band the Flaming Lips. He said that younger fans were less likely to perceive such deals as "selling out."

In this case, Fall Out Boy was comfortable with Tag because the brand's ads have a "sarcastic spin," said Pete Wentz, the band's bassist and lyricist. "Given how the industry is right now, you have to come up with new kinds of partnerships, and when you're able to offset the cost of the video, that’s cool. Hiring chimps is not cheap."

Sounds to me like it will be tricky to not let this go to such an extent that your music video becomes nothing more than a commercial for a product (instead of your music).

As far as I know, you can get a DUI for riding a bicycle drunk. But apparently, at least in New Jersey, you can't get a DUI for driving a zamboni while drunk.

A judge ruled the four-ton ice rink-grooming machines aren't motor vehicles because they aren't useable on highways and can't carry passengers. Zamboni operator John Peragallo had been charged with drunken driving in 2005 after a fellow employee at the Mennen Sports Arena in Morristown told police the machine was speeding and nearly crashed into the boards. Police said Peragallo's blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent. A level of 0.08 is considered legally drunk in New Jersey.

Peragallo appealed, and Superior Court Judge Joseph Falcone on Monday overturned his license revocation and penalties. Peragallo, 64, testified at his trial that he did drink beer and vodka, but not until after he had groomed the ice. However, he told police he had a shot of Sambuca with his breakfast coffee and two Valium-pills before work.

So by those rules, the bicycle DUIs would not be allowed either. I wonder what the rules are in other states. Plus, what if someone was driving a Zamboni down the street while drunk? Wouldn't they have to be able to charge them for any damage or deaths they caused? I don't see how that wouldn't be a DUI, though I suppose they can categorize it as reckless endangerment or something.

Another episode, another post. This week, has definitely improved on what I've seen as some weak episodes the last few weeks. Hopefully it's just the start of some better episodes. It still feels weird not having Jack in the majority of the show...there's just so much stuff going on with other characters, and I think it's part of why it hasn't felt like the usual 24 (but not really in a good way).

At least the episode wasn't entirely predictable though. Who could have seen the twist of Palmer launching the nukes? Maybe the guy that mixed his adrenaline shots with a dose of crazy! What the hell is he doing? Tom continues to be hilarious...he's been pretty ballsy about reporting people, though I doubt that bug in the room is legal. It's gotta just be a matter of time before the VP shoots him in the face. You can tell he really wants to. And Gredenko's double-cross was pretty fantastic. Though dying on the beach wasn't...maybe he should have burned the end of what was left of his arm after he cut it off so he wouldn't lose all his blood.

As usual, the character countdown is here.

Joost is a program that's been out for a while now, but I've waited until now to post about it because I was originally only marginally impressed by it. They had the right idea, but the content was lacking. But that's all changing now. First off, here's what Joost is according to their website:

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet, which uses new and established technologies to provide the best of both the internet and TV worlds. We're in the process of making it as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts. You can also see some things that we think will enhance the TV experience: searching for programmes and channels, for example, as well as social features like chat. There are many more new features to come in future Joost releases.

Basically, it's more TV-like than YouTube, and higher quality. The program I tried a few months ago was slick and had a nice interface, but had few channels and not much content that I was interested in. But as they start moving towards going public, they are getting more content. And it looks like they are solving the problems of lag they were having as well.

They just released a new beta, and it's interesting. They've got music videos, TV content such as episodes of Stella, Freakshow, and Dog Bites Man on the Comedy Central channel, a soccer channel, poker content, and much more. While they've said it is a TV-like, it seems more like On Demand TV since at the moment you can start any show on any channel whenever you want. You can, however, also let a channel play like TV or tune to the What's Popular channel to see what others are watching.

All in all, this is a nifty app with some great potential in a space where we haven't seen much yet. And it's likely that may remain the case since it's not likely that the networks will make deals with multiple companies.

Today Apple and the music industry's third largest label, EMI, unveiled that EMI's catalog will be available on iTunes without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Removing DRM means you can get songs of higher audio quality (CD-equivalent) and without the restrictions on number and type of devices you can put that music on. Basically, you can do what you used to do with your CDs - play it anywhere, anytime. You're no longer tied to an iPod only, and no more limits on the number of computers you can transfer to.

The cost of all this freedom? An extra $0.30 per track. And you can convert anything you've already purchased through the iTunes store already.

Why is this such a slow process? The music industry is afraid that removing DRM means that people will send music to each other and not buy their own copies. But the more likely scenario is that more people will be buying music online because they're not locked in to specific software and/or hardware by doing so. Multiple studies have shown that people are more willing to buy music without DRM than with. Hopefully this model proves successful and the other labels follow suit (and maybe the price comes down). You should be free to do what you want with your music after you purchase it.

Don't forget new episodes of both 30 Rock and The Office return this week! Both episodes are supersized, meaning they're over the usual half-hour, but still under an hour. There's also a new Andy Barker episode of regular length. Under NBC's weird schedule, The Office is 44 minutes long and 30 Rock is 39 minutes long.


Will Roy kill Jim?!?

Also, Entourage starts this Sunday (April 8th). It looks like Sin City's Carla Gugino has been added to the cast for this season. I'm definitely anticipating this show more than anything right now. It just keeps getting better.