Move On

I've got a bone to pick with a couple of my television shows:
They're not moving.
The story doesn't seem to really be going anywhere. It's just a lot of side story lines.


That's right, How I Met Your Mother. I'm talking to you.

Now, I haven't seen last night's episode yet, but this season has been within TWO DAYS. That's not an exaggeration. It's still the weekend of Barney and Robin's wedding, but each episode has only been a few hours later past the las episode. Nothing is happening. Nothing is moving the over arching story-line. At first it was no biggie. It was entertaining. Now, I'm just tired of waiting. That's why I haven't thrown a fit to see the last one yet.

And then there's Once Upon a Time, which hasn't been as bad, but...
They're still on the island. They're still looking for Henry. They're still fighting among themselves.

The character's have moved on a bit.
I mean, they did find Neal/Bae. He wasn't dead, yay. Hook and Neal are now in a heated love triangle with Emma, and they're not hiding it. David got a fatal poison, then Hook helped him cure it, now he can never leave the island. Regina left the Charmings for Rumple to find Henry. Ariel's giving us some insight into Storybrook...

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it. I just don't want the whole season to be about getting Henry back. There's no movement. We want Storybrook! I miss the Enchanted Forest, too.


Come on, shows. I love you for a reason. Give me some movement!

The Walkers

Alright. I avoided it as long as possible. I couldn't hold out.

I'm addicted to the Walking Dead.

Everyone who works at the optometrist office that I work at watches this show. They talked about it constantly. Honestly, I got sick of having all those conversations going over my head, so my roommate and I decided to start the show on Netflix...

It took us maybe two weeks to watch everything on Netflix, and considering we both go to school full-time, work almost full time at the office, and I have a job at the newscast on campus, this is quite a feat!

I'm now waiting a week to watch new episodes on Sunday like everyone else.
Netflix spoils you. You don't have to wait between episodes...it's just "Play Next Episode."

Anywho. Spoilers.

We're now waiting for Daryl, Michonne, Ty, and that alcoholic guy to return to the jail with the meds

from the vet college, and for Rick to return with the food and stuff from that neighborhood. No Carol since Rick exiled her for killing Ty's GF and that other guy like Simba and Pride Rock did to Kovu in Lion King 2.

Now, I haven't read the graphic novels, but I know the television show has taken certain artistic liberties with characters and events. It makes me wonder if the comic is the reason for Carol going loco. I thought her character was whiny and annoying, and that surely she was be killed off or receed into the background once they "found" Sophia. But no. She went crazy.

AND I think that little girl in Carol was molding to be able to take care of herself is CRAZY. Her little sister even said she ain't right in the head. Carol sent her into a cell with a knife, with a bunch of sick people that are more than likely going to die. How do we know she won't do like Carol and kill people before they die from the sickness?

Then there's Glen. Glen, my dear. He's been getting a tad on my nerves since the Governor went crazy on Maggie, but I still love him and he CAN NOT die.

But Daryl is my favorite. You know, I had a feeling when his character returned from hunting to fin out that is crazy brother was handcuffed to a rooftop in a zombie infested Atlanta that I would like him. Not that I liked him at the time, it took a while, but I had a feeling. You can kill Rick, Carol, Sasha, Ty, CARL, even Judith, but leave Daryl be!

And, I'm now counting down the days to Sunday like everyone else.

Adopt-a-Blog: Film Intel

Film Intel – Sam Turner

Film-intel.com

1.      History of the Blog

1. Sam Turner started the blog as a way to continue writing after he left college.
2.  The blog was started January of 2008, and he has been a part of it ever since.
3. The site was redesigned in 2012, and again this year.
4.  More professional over the years

2.      Facts of the Blog

1.  Sam Turner is the blogger, and the one who responded to me. He is 27, has a degree in English, and is the Marketing Executive for a marketing company. (The blog indirectly helped him earn his job.)
2.  For Sam to continue his writing after graduating with an English degree and getting a job that didn’t involve much writing.
3.  Ads, but no money. Just enough turnover to cover cost.
4. Recently added a second writer: Brian Broadribb.
5. Both writers are based in North England.

3.      Statistics

1. He aims to post 8 articles per week. 3-4 of those are his writings.
2.  Twitter – 3,800+ followers
3.  Average 20-25,000 page views a month
4. No Google follower. Sam believes his blog followers is around 300, but isn’t sure.

4.      Unique

• Not all recent movies, a mix

5.      Strengths

a.       Simple template

b.      Colors

c.       Rating as tag

6.      Weaknesses

7.      Advice of blogger

·         Full quote: “Only do it if you really enjoy it and realize that, unfortunately, most people have to blog for a very long time before you get any level of recognition or readership, even if you're great at content marketing. Writing is a passion and a skill but it is also a hobby: like most hobbies, the reward you get from it will be largely in how you enjoy the time you spend doing it, rather than in earned riches. That said, hey: there are lots of bloggers more read and more popular than I, who make money from essentially 'doing their hobby'. If you've got the time and you love writing, get going and you never know what will happen!”

What I got out of speaking with Sam…

o   Simplify my template

o   Review old movies, too!

o   Review the way I review, and enjoy it.

OkieFunk hits the Blogging Class

Dr. Kurt Hochenauer, journalist and English professor, came into our class to give us all insight into the world of blogging from a successful stand point.
His blog, Okie Funk, is a blog with "populist and liberal information and ideas," and it all started because he felt the desire to fill the need for news from more than just our conservative sources. He has an average of 3,000 unique visitors per month, and has been mentioned throughout news in our area.

One thing I've taken from his blog is that it is equal points journalism and opinion. His posts clearly have a voice, unlike many written news post we see. For example, he has a post called Beware: Pension Cuts Loom For State Employees, and in this post he gives his ideas of what he believes will happen; specifically using the word "I."

"I suspect the answer to that would be probably yes, in most cases, but the change will begin reducing the money pool in the defined-benefits plans, thus precipitating an eventual crisis that will lead to even more cuts."

He also has a polls (see most recent to right) run on his page that gives viewers the option of leaving their opinion on the question, but even the answers available lean in his frame of thought.

He gave us lots to think about as he went into how he got into the world of blogging, and although his information was from a political blog, there were things that all of us could learn.

He discussed formats and layouts and different places to create blogs. He also talked about how keeping the layout simple and easy to read is important.

There were two main things I took from him as far as ways to have a successful blog:

1. Be Unique
2. Good Writing

~Tonico

Josh Rushing Comes to UCO

Josh Rushing and some of us
from Ucentral News

Josh Rushing speaking at the UCO Media Ethics Conference

This past week, UCO hosted a Media Ethics Conference, where key speakers came to our school and did speeches and panels for students in the media to come learn from them and sharpen their ethics ideas. My favorite of the speakers was Josh Rushing, host of Fault Lines on Al Jazeera America.

Meredith Marney, UCentral News, interviews
Josh Rushing

          He spoke to us about his journey to for the public, to keep them informed and updated.

where he is now, a reporter and host of a show on a prominent network that isn't afraid to ask the RIGHT questions, from being an American Marine. There were some key things he said that spoke with me: one, “do the right things for the right reasons.” He talked about how he learned this in the Marines, and how in journalism, ethics can sometimes be blurred. It’s important to ask the right questions, and tell the public what they need to know when they need to know it, instead of shielding them because it’s easier. The second thing that really spoke to me was “Be a story-teller and a content creator.” This really struck home to me since I am a producer, and we write the majority of the show as well as assign the reporters their stories. I want to grow to be able to tell stories with my writing and not have a lot of filler stories that don’t really help anyone. This could apply to news as well as blogging as a journalist.

I feel very fortunate that we had the opportunity to hear this man speak. He was also very supportive

of us student broadcasters. Some of us were live-tweeting the speech and took pictures and interviews with him and posted them. About an hour later, every one of my post, as well as many others, were either Favorited or Retweeted, which meant a lot to every one of us.

But Really...This is How He Met Her

And so, we now embark of the end of the world of How I Met Your Mother. The mother was shown to us at the finale of the last season, and we now begin to see what really happened, and how Ted met the kids' mother.

Last night was the big premiere...and I missed it. After the newscast last night, I had to go grocery shopping and missed it. HOWEVER, I will be watching it tonight. I have my ways. And I will be recapping and gushing my thoughts on it afterward. Be prepared, friends!

~Tonico

Possible Adopt-A-Blog Candidates

These are blogs I am considering for my Adopt-A-Blog project. They're all movie/TV review/recap blogs that I could learn a thing or two from!

1. Film Intel
2. Cinematic Corner
3. Early Bird Film Society
4. Large Popcorn, No Butter

We're the Millers

Lately, I've been hearing all this buzz about the movie We're the Millers all over the place: Facebook, Twitter, word of mouth. Some of my aquaintences have been talking about how they're going to see it for the second and third time, and that it is simply hilarious.
So, one day I got to leave work before the late hours of the night, I pulled my fiancé along to my favorite movie theater to see this terribly funny movie.

(We're the Millers Movie Trailer)

imdb.com

Now, though I will admit, I had a few laughs, I believe this movie is vastly overrated.

It's a tale of a drug dealer, played by Jason Sudeikis, who gets roped into becoming a drug smuggler by his jerk boss. No choice. He happens upon the idea to bring together a fake family for him to travel with so him crossing the border from Mexico doesn't seem so suspicious. He and his "family," which is composed of a stripper, a runaway, and a sheltered kid that lives in his apartment building, get aboard a flashy RV and embark on a journey to bring drugs to America.

Mostly, it's what you'd expect it to be. The only thing that really surprised me was that they got to the drug keepers place and black fairly quickly. Kudos for that. The movie makers used the rest of the time to allow the family to get into all types of trouble.

*Spoiler Alert*

The Millers run into another family in the line to get back to America. It reminded me a lot of the movie RV, with Robin Williams, taking his family on a family vacation in an RV. Given, that storyline wasn't a part of a major drug smuggle, but a lot was similar. Characters: Man, woman, girl, boy, there was the other family in their RV that was almost obsessed with becoming friends, there was the RV mechanics issues that made the families have to stop overnight and be forced to bond. I guess you can't really come up with all that much new stuff for a movie set inside a moving vehicle.

Also, there was the issue of the drug dealer chasing the Millers, and the fact that the RV was STUFFED with drugs. Impossibly so. Then throw in the fact that Sudeikis's boss decides to give him a deadline to bring in the product.

The movie was entertaining, and I did laugh. But, like I said before, this movie has been vastly overrated. Everything has been done before (except maybe Jennifer Aniston's strip tease in the car shop) which made the movie pretty predictable. Now, Roberts and Anniston's characters--playing mom and sister-- were teaching Poulter's character--playing brother-- how to kiss, was new, however, them getting caught? Predictable.

I did like "Nawmsayin," a.k.a. Scotty P. He was ridiculous.

So all in all, I liked the movie, but it was nothing special.

And that's my take on We're the Millers: funny, but not hilarious.
Your opinion? Let's chat: Comment!
~Tonico

GIFs not mine :(
River: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6aw2fhUbK1r8058ko1_250.gif
Millers: http://24.media.tumblr.com/e0d242dd9b5ccd679fcfa4b865fb61b3/tumblr_mr4nwccSGe1srh411o1_500.gif

Blog Review: This Girl's Food

This is the part where I review a blog that's been around a lot longer than me, and knows what they're doing as opposed to be me being a beginner. Ah, well, let's have a go.

This Girl's Food

The photo to the right is an entry from her blog...and it looks absolutely delicious. I really just want to take all the recipes on this blog and spend a day making each and every one of them, even the ones with nuts(which I hate). Someone would eat them!

One thing I really like about this blog is that she has something to the side that has every genre of recipe she has (i.e. desserts, appetizers, breakfasts, etc.) so you can get right to the recipes you want instead of just having to scroll anything you've seen in the past. (right)


The weakness I find is that there is a lot of family talk and pictures in her recipe posts. As a new follower, I'm more interested in the recipes and foods, not her family holidays and outings before the description of the food. I'd prefer less family pictures and more food pictures, but that's not for me to decide. It's her blog, so of course she wants to blog about her family that she's so proud of.

I might, too, but as a human, I'm selfish and don't care about anyone but myself. (That's a total exaggeration. I do care. But you get my point.) I tend to scroll past the family photos and go straight to the food photos and recipes. Yum!


All in all, this is a blog I would recommend, if only for the photos of the food. Beware! They will make you hungry.


(All these photos are snapshots of her blog!)



~Tonico