I’m so glad it’s filmed backwards.

For people who aren’t fans of the show or haven’t seen it, don’t worry about it, I’m not going to talk much about the show. I wonder how many people who like FuddyTV like Dexter also? Anyway, one episode particularly got me thinking about the art of acting. It’s called “Dirty Harry” (ep 5) if you want to see it. I began to take notice of an actress’ ability at the start of this episode. By the end, I was wowed.  How she gained my respect was by being fearlessly realistic.

I think passionate displays of emotion on movies or television (or plays too) are overlooked as places where a good actor can excel. Certainly tantrums, death throes, hysteria, and rage are not laden with the subtlety that most critics remember when thinking about their favourite moments in an actor’s career. I would like to defend the “freak out” in this respect. It may be hard to root out overactors, but when Jennifer Carpenter had a scene in a parking lot of this episode I felt I was watching a great and difficult performance by a great actor.

This character (Debra Morgan) was shot in the stomach and stitched up, refused pain medication, and went through the understandable process of grieving her dead lover who was shot to death in the same incident. There wasn’t any eyeliner or other make-up on her face. She was wearing a t-shirt and sweat pants, and her hair wasn’t just a mess it was dirty. It’s hard to describe the tears that followed mixed with the tight breathing in trying to keep pressure off the stomach injury. It soon became hyperventilation, and then a mess of helpless crying, and yes, snot. That’s what made it real, that’s how someone in that kind of emotional and physical pain would look doing that I think. It was honestly one of the most believable moments of emotion I’ve seen on television ever.

Maybe this topic is a bit heavy for a website like this. Okay yeah, it probably is, but I can’t help but want to dust off the “freak out” and suggest it as a good area to test an actor’s mettle. Being that confident is not easy, just think of how difficult it would be to weep and scream in front of all of your co-workers (who would be holding cameras and shining lights down on you so every last pore is visible). I sure wouldn’t be able to anything close to believability.  So, due praise to Jennifer Carpenter this day for playing the character, and not just the audience.

“This occurred to me when I came home after seeing the movie, and was listening to Hans ZImmer’s score. I’m not saying the cues we hear in the movie are slowed down. Zimmer appears to be using Piaf’s song as a foundation for extrapolation. This phenomenon may be obvious to a lot of you out there, but this video serves as a way for people to hear them side by side and to visualize and understand what Zimmer is doing with the score.”

When my appendix first started to pain me I gave careful consideration to which of Calgary’s hospitals I should like to have my patronage, and quickly decided that for central location and quality of view the Peter Lougheed hospital could be ruled out. That of course leaves Rockyview hospital and Foothills Hospital. As my appendix attack took place at work and Foothills is very near to both work and my home I decided it must be the winner.

The emergency reception area was quite well decorated and finely appointed with leatherette chairs and a motley assortment of other admittees to add to the hospital ambiance. One large television was present and fixed on Global. I should have prefered CTV but all in all it was an excellent room in which to pass the agonizing time during and after my abdominal rupture.

The nurse at admissions was helpful and friendly, and asked me to wait for testing in such a polite manner that I looked forward to the wait. After much poking and prodding it was determined that I would be ending the night like a bad edition of Shakespeare… sans appendix.

After a quick prep and little ado I was out and under, by morning I was resting in my common room with three other unfortunates in unit 102 of the hospital. Soon those warrior women of the Fighting 102nd were bustling around with food, drink, and pain pills. My first breakfast consisted of a mediocre ice water with a straw. I sipped it slowly at first letting the water play around the palette but alas it was simply too pedestrian a choice. My nurse quickly followed it with a Canada Dry Club Soda however which was a more bold choice and left an effervescent finish.

By noon I was ready for my first post surgery repast, which consisted of the unlikely pairing of chicken barley soup, cut pineapple pieces and a cup of tea. While the food was hearty and nourishing there was something in the pairing which neared, but did not achieve, it’s full culinary potential. For wine pairing I suppose a Riesling would be about the only choice considering the pineapple.

There was no dinner as I had blood tests to be done in the night so my next opportunity was once Breakfast came on the second day. It consisted of:

Blueberry Muffin
Blueberry Jam
Plain Boiled Oats
Cheese Slice
Cup of Coffee
Cup of Milk
Cup of Juice

Now here is where I take issue with the menu. A blueberry muffin with blueberry jam? Why not send me marmalade for goodness sakes, what a pairing blueberry goes with… blueberry. The muffins were by no means exceptional muffins (like these, my favs) but a little thought on the chef’s part would have taken them from drab to fab in no time. The sharp cheddar cheese slice was a fine compliment to the fruit but there was no helping the boiled oats. The juice was apple so I can’t even recommend a nice champagne to go with the juice.

After the breakfast I was more motivated than ever to set myself free from this epicurean purgatory, and resolved to appeal to my captors for an early release. The maitre d’ however insisted that I sit for lunch at the least, and as such I did.

A fine lunch consisted of a turkey sandwich, a bowl of creme of broccoli soup, and a side salad. Now at the time I was thinking Chardonnay but if you could only afford corkage on one bottle for your stay I would recommend a Riesling which would have paired with both meals.

After my release, I returned home to Ms. Livingstone’s fine scallops in black bean sauce. I would have paired this with a Chablis had the pharmesist not informed me that any consumption of alcohol while on my antibiotics would immediately turn me into the Trevi Fountain of regurgitation. Fortunately, I am not off of my medication, and it is back to business as usual.

On a serious note, the men and women at the hospital did a great job on my emergency surgery and I want to thank them all for the care and attention I received while I was there. Calgary has a fine medical facility in the Foothills and I am very grateful they were there in my hour of need.

Then I received this text message and suddenly, it wasn’t so glamorous.

ERIC: Coming to you live from the Foothills hospital! It’s the appendicitis telethon. Just waking up from surgery, gonna have to take a rain check on tomorrow.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? That was pretty much my initial reaction, complete and utter shock. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t respond with some sort of witty remark, which went along the lines of:

RYAN: Holy Sh*t Eric! Did it burst? Are you alright? Is FUDDYTV going to have to get ANOTHER Eric?

Hopefully the comedic part was not lost on him, but knowing his wit, I’m sure it wasn’t. It could be that the morphine and pain medication made it funnier…or not.

Needless to say, I’m extremely happy that he’s doing well, safe and not dead. It would suck otherwise. Oh and there’s no video this week, which really doesn’t matter right now at all.

Get well soon Mr. G.

However…

As my work was pretty much completo when the editing and animating got started I do have to say that seeing the Mac’s strike poses and that crazy shaking and exploding when Directive I took over was pretty damn glammy. Sorry guys, I think I’ve gotta disagree with you on this one

I am currently putting the finishing touches on the pilot for our webisode based series, “Directive I”, and must return to that, but in closing I want to invite you all to join us in the spirit of the new Fuddy. “Participate!”

Well, first this was all made possible because of the addition of two very talented people. Eric Giesbrecht, an accomplished director and creative mastermind and Erika Livingstone, a very unique and talented writer with an eye for the not-so-obvious. Prior to their addition, fuddytv had become somewhat stale, with little to no new content and no real direction. I have had nothing but a joyous time creating what has been created over the last three years and I didn’t want to see it die.

That said, the time was absolutely right for us to reflect on our maturity as a company and the unique offering which we bring to not only our fans, but the advertising market place. In truth, our new branding position as a company that will aggressively pursue web entertainment and business avenues isn’t new, it’s a reflection of what we’ve always been. However, our new positioning does bring a much more “open source” feel and collaborative mantra. The “collective” as it were, is where you find success and where you find happiness. That’s the new fuddytv.

Over the last three years we have significant growth in the company and look forward to expanding our base of national client relationships, but no matter how big we become we will always pride ourselves on being honest, hard-working and creative craftspeople. We’ve always believed the minute you start making art for the sole purpose of obtaining money…you will fail. We are no longer about money. It’s about art, creativity and the collective.

Some things about our new-attitude company/site I’d like to highlight are:

• Open commenting, no longer restricted to members
• Open rating system
• Four Words and a Film monthly contest!
• Very active Eric Giesbrecht and Erika Livingstone in our community
• A return to a new video every week!
• A slew of new actors
• New episodic series to tickle your palette
• Boris is back

Of course there is more, but it’s an impressive list.

I’d like to touch more on our Four Words and a Film contest that will launch any day now. One of our limitations in the beginning of fuddytv was the absence of more creative people. It was a tight ship up until now. As a way to generate more creativity not just on the site, but in our community alone, we came up with the idea of a monthly contest where anyone with a camera can participate. The rules are simple, every month we release 4 random words from a list of hundreds. With those 4 words in hand, you are tasked to create a video based on those words, with one being a major part of the plot line. After the video is done, you can upload via www.fuddytv.com to your YouTube account where we’ll post it. A group of judges picks the top three and the winner gets a nice little prize. What’s more exciting about the contest will be how the words are utilized, it will be a very entertaining, fun and exciting challenge!

We are tremendously proud to be relaunching our brand with a clear focus on creativity, the collective of talented people and an energy we’ve not seen before.

As always, thanks for being a part of our little community.

Cheers,
Ryan Northcott
FUDDYTV Founder

The day was stressful though, as it was looking as if FedEx had dropped the ball and wasn’t going To deliver on time, but by some miraculous gift from god it was delivered.

First impressions are amazing. It took some finagling to get the Rogers sim card working. The issue: don’t install the sim card after you connect with iTunes. The activation button, “View Account” disappears. It took a call to Apple support and being on hold to figure out that if you run into this problem simply power down the iPad and then reconnect with iTunes. You’ll get a prompt that reads: “would you like to download an updated carrier list?” After that the “View Account” button will reappear and you can activate the Rogers 3G.

My first sync uploaded all of my iPhone apps, which do seem to work on the iPad. In fact I just gave Skype a whirl and if connected to wifi and you have the earphones with a microphone you bet it friggin works like a charm. It’s amazing. Have I said amazing enough?

One thing I noticed versus the iPhone is the speed. With the A4 processor this thing is lightning fast. Apps load quickly, websites render in great time and battery life is stellar. I have been working on this for a good hour and it’s still at a fantastic 93%.

The last thing I’ll touch on here is video. First of all, if YouTube the site was anything like YouTube the app the world would be a better place. The videos load seamlessly and even our Meet Brian’s Memory, which is full HD, played without hesitation and looked absolutely beautiful in landscape and portrait mode. Launching video and watching those stored on the iPad is a cinch and flawless.

Initial reaction is incredible and I am so so happy to have this thing. 10/10 so far.

Oh and was I missing Flash because I didn’t even notice