Sample start.SouthlandTvFans.com page

Now Google has gone one step further and introduce its iGoogle Start/Portal page as part of the whole Google Apps package!

So, dedicated fans of SouthLAnd, you can get your Southland fix at the same time as you check your gmail, monitor your chats, keep track of your calendar and add any of the thousands of “widgets” that are out there when you customize your own personal SouthlandTvFans “Start” page at http://start.southlandtvfans.com.

Here’s the catch: To really make the most of this wonderful new start page, you have to have an account at SouthlandTvFans.com. So how do you get an account with all these great features (start page, GMail, docs, calendar, chat, etc.), you ask? Why, that’s simple! You just have to Love SouthLAnd and join our team! We always need people to volunteer and help out, whether it be moderating in the Forums, contributing articles here on the website, creating graphics or who knows what – the only limitation is imagination, the only requirements are time and dedication (and the time part is minimal!).

What are you waiting for? Check out this cool new feature, and while you are at it, why not join our team and help us promote SouthLAnd at the same time.

What does all this mean?

I’m so glad you asked! It means that as we ramp up to the new season of SouthLAnd, and especially this fall as the cast starts filming the new episodes and we (hopefully) start getting some inside news & pictures, virtually anyone on the internet from any social networking site around will be able to comment and participate here – without us worrying about being overrun by spammers!

So if you’ve ever thought that you might want to comment on an article or post here, but it was just too much trouble to create an account just to say “Hey, that’s cool!” that’s no longer a valid excuse. If you have an account with one of the following services, you can log in – securely – using your existing account. Because it is secure, using the oAuth protocol, you will never be asked to give us your username and password, nor do we have any access to it. It is, in fact, the industry standard method and we are using the industry leader to provide this service – only the best for our SouthLAnd fans!

The services that we can now authenticate with are:

• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• AOL
• Windows Live ID/Hotmail
• Blogger
• flickr
• WordPress.com
• LiveJournal
• OpenID

In addition to the 10 above, if you already have a registered account on the site (which we always encourage for repeat visitors/contributors!) you can always access your Profile page and associate it with an account on one of those services plus Twitter or MySpace. Unfortunately, Twitter and MySpace do not provide email addresses on request as part of the “handshake”, so we cannot use them for first-time logins any more. Once you have an account here, though, you can use it for “easy login” access so you don’t have to keep re-entering your username and password again and again.

If you have an account with someone else not listed there, chances are pretty darned good that they support the last one on the list, OpenID, which is the Internet standard for cross-site authentication. But then again, if you are social networking and you don’t have an account with at least one of those sites, well … do I really need to say more?

So what are you waiting for, everyone? It’s time to jump in and start PARTICIPATING! No more excuses now.

Note: All service names are Trademarks, Registered Trademarks and/or Service marks of their respective owners. They are used here in accordance with all the appropriate API licensing terms.

Regina King as Det. Lydia Adams

Were you, like me, slightly irritated (yeah, that’s an understatement) at the blanket snub by the Emmy® Awards for SouthLAnd this year, considering the many outstanding performances and story lines that we saw in Season 2? Did you wonder, like me, if the lack of nominations probably had more to do with politics than talent & skills, especially considering the fact that the episodes were produced by NBC (so NBC would get the credit instead of TNT)?

Well, it looks like we aren’t the only ones who think so. Entertainment Weekly (and just about every other entertainment news organization out there) had predicted nominations in multiple categories for several of the cast members of SouthLAnd before they were announced. Now EW has posted and “Emmy Snubs” online poll, asking which actors and actresses you think should be the winners. In the Lead Actress in a Drama Series category is none other than our beloved Regina King, who we all know should have been nominated for the real Emmy.

Now it’s your chance to tell the Emmy voters that they got it wrong, and the remind the rest of the Internet just how amazing Regina King is. We need everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, to go to the link below and vote for Regina so we can get her into the #1 position. Vote yourself, then spread the word through Twitter, Facebook, email – every method you can – so we can knock that Bones woman out of the #1 spot!

So get your butts over to this page and vote, then tell everyone you know to do the same!

Now that our fan base has grown so large, and real life has reared its ugly head reducing the amount of time that Cathy has available to spend on coordinating and posting those messages, we’ve made the decision to discontinue posting Fan Birthdays on this website.

First of all, as I mentioned, they take a great deal of time to coordinate and execute. Sending out notices to people, receiving the pictures/greetings, uploading them in a post and publishing it – that all takes a lot of time and effort. As we are an all volunteer team, with real day jobs, time is definitely a premium and better spent working on stuff more directly related to the show, in our humble opinions.

Second, with so many fans out there, we are absolutely guaranteed to miss somebody’s birthday, which can lead to hurt feelings and conflict. We love all our fans and I absolutely do not want any hurt feelings or conflict. I know it has already happened, regrettably, so the only way to ensure that it doesn’t happen again is to not do any more.

Third, with very little actual news regarding SouthLAnd to post recently, all of the Birthday posts have made the site start looking like nothing more than a Happy Birthday site. While it’s true that we are a Fan site, we are supposed to be primarily a SouthLAnd site and that is what people visit us to see – SouthLAnd information. It is very detrimental to our standing in the search engines and ranking when our number 1 keyword is “birthday” or “happy birthday”, which ends up being bad for SouthLAnd in the long run. Ultimately, this is the deciding factor for me in the long run for halting the birthday greetings.

All is not lost, however! If you are really into birthdays and want to get lots of well-wishes on yours (or give them to others), we have a great alternative available. Simply join our Forums at http://www.SouthlandForums.com and make sure you fill out your personal profile after you register. The Forums will automatically keep track of your birthday and let everyone know about it when they log in. Everyone is invited, nay – encouraged, to share all of the birthday greetings there in the full social setting of the Forums.

Thank you for your understanding of this decidedly touchy subject and decision!

Visit SouthlandForums.com

SouthLAnd

“…the  production is suffused with emotion from its first moments to its last,  turbulent with the confusions of love and hope and regret and fear that fill  any family living room in a time of crisis and stress.”

- The  New York Times

The play will be showing from September 1 through October 17 at the famous, and fabulous, Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, part of the Center Theater Group that includes the Ahmanson Theater and the Kirk Douglas Theater. This 750 seat theater is an intimate smaller stage, with seating on 3 sides that brings the audience closer to the “action” giving you a feeling of really being part of the production. For those with special needs, it is also wheelchair accessible and provides Phonic Ear sound system headsets on request. Situated in downtown Los Angeles, within walking distance of a multitude of restaurants and clubs and easily accessible to public transportation, the Mark Taper Forum is the perfect destination for a complete evening out on the town for dinner and a show.

To make things even more special, SouthlandTvFans.com visitors are being extended a special offer. From September 1-8 only, for all performances, tickets are only $25 for seats in Section A (directly in front of the stage) – that’s $10-$20 off the regular pricing, depending on the night! Don’t wait, though – tickets are selling out fast. To get the special discounted rate, simply call (213) 628-2772 and mention code CALLER or go to http://www.centertheatergroup.org/caller.

For more information about the Mark Taper Forum, activities in the area such as restaurants, accessibility requirements, directions and more, please visit their website at http://www.centeertheatergroup.org

Center Theater Group/Mark Taper Forum
135 North Grand Avenue at Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

SouthLAnd

Now in her musical debut, Emily brings us Kidding On the Square, a sexy vintage cabaret that invites the audience on a roaring 20s ride through love, heartbreak, and everything in between. Come and enjoy an old fashioned romantic evening told from the perspective of a modern girl and the eccentric characters she inhabits.  Emily Bergl, along with acclaimed musical director and pianist G. Scott Lacy, creates a cabaret world that blends classic Fats Waller and Cole Porter hits with vintage takes on modern favorites from the Scissor Sisters to Madonna.

Kidding On the Square has already played to rave reviews in Chicago and San Diego, with scheduled shows in Los Angeles (Hollywood) , New York City and possibly Atlanta. To stay up to date on all the latest news, you can “Like” the show on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/kiddingonthesquare.

The Los Angeles show is for one night only on Thursday, July 15th at 8pm. There is limited seating available, so if you want to go, call and get tickets now because they are sure to sell out fast!

M Bar
1253 Vine St
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 856-0036
$20 Cover, Dinner menu available

In New York, you have 3 chances to see Emily.

Thursday, August 26 @ 9:30 pm
Monday, August 30 @ 9:30 pm
Tuesday, August 31 @ 7:00 pm

The Metropolitan Room
34 West 22nd St
New York, NY 10010
(Betw. 5th & 6th Ave.)
(212) 206-0440
$25 Cover + 2 drink minimum

For online/phone reservations in New York, check out their website at http://www.metropolitanroom.com/

You can learn more about Emily’s amazing career and volunteer work on her official website at http://www.emilybergl.net/

Since the fantastic news from TNT that SouthLAnd has been renewed for a third season a lot has been going on, both in the world of SouthLAnd and in my own personal world.

Personally, to put it simply, I have been totally and completely swamped. Business has completely overloaded me with a project that I can’t talk about (yet) but has been both extremely frustrating and extremely rewarding. Unfortunately, it has also had me working literally 60-80 hours a week to meet some very unrealistic deadlines. Needless to say, since this is what generates my paycheck (and by extension, pays for this website and pretty much everything related to it) that takes priority over everything else including site updates, new posts, or anything like that. With luck, and a little hard work, this will change in the near future and I’ll be back to regular updates again.

However, you don’t need to go without your SouthLAnd fix!

We have launched the brand new SouthLAnd Forums as a companion site to SouthlandTvFans.com, to give everyone a place to gather and discuss our favorite television show as a community. Chock full of great features and goodies, registration is open to anyone and everyone with a love of SouthLAnd. You can join in on the discussion about your favorite cast member, favorite episode, contribute some Fan Fiction, even chit chat with friends in the off topic forums. Conduct polls to find out what others think, upload a picture, emphasize your point with a huge selection of smilies – the possibilities are unlimited and new features are being added all the time (as time permits, of course) as new suggestions are made by the users.

Of course, I can’t mention the Forums without giving a huge Shout Out to our very active forum hostesses and moderators Hinako, Carefree, Smithart102 and JennNoe13. While I have not been able to get online and post recently, they have stepped in and done an amazing job keeping things active (and civil) on the forums. They have also gone above & beyond, planning and coordinating the Forum Friday parties and other activities to help keep the SouthLAnd spirit alive during this hiatus, for which we should all be very grateful. So if you haven’t been to the Forums yet, make sure you pay them a visit, and while you are there make sure you say Hi to the moderators and give them a well deserved pat on the back!

Obviously, SouthLAnd has been renewed. While we can’t take ALL the credit for it, it is worth noting that Ann Biderman acknowledged our petition in at least one interview that she gave after the show’s renewal was announced. Clearly we had an impact if the show’s creator was aware of it! Thanks to donations made by some dedicated fans, we were able to purchase advertising that got us exposure to over 4 million people on Facebook and other major sites on the internet, with over 3100 signatures on the ballot by the time the renewal was announced. To me, that’s an unqualified success. Great job, fans!

In other SouthLAnd news, many of the cast members have been active during the wait for filming to resume. There is also a lot of buzz going around Hollywood about possible Emmy® nominations for SouthLAnd this fall, both for the show and for the actors, which would be fantastic for everyone. I think we all agree that the show, and the actors, all deserve the recognition! For all of the latest news and stories, check out the News, Articles and Press Releases forum over at SouthlandForums.com. The users have been very diligent about keeping everyone updated on all the happenings there, so if it’s SouthLAnd related, you can be sure it’ll be posted there!

As always, your help is needed! As you can see, maintaining this site is more than a one person job. If you love SouthLAnd, have experience with WordPress and want to help by contributing content to this site on a regular or semi-regular basis, then please contact me.

Of course, we also always need contributions of the monetary kind. I’m not going to beg (at least not on my knees), but running the site, registering the domain names, paying for the servers, bandwidth and everything else involved is not exactly cheap. Even small amounts help in the long run. If you find it in your heart to help out, please click on the Donate button on the right side of the page.

That’s about it for this update. Thank you to all dedicated SouthLAnd fans out there – without you, this site wouldn’t exist. Without you, in all likelihood, Season 3 of SouthLAnd would not be happening. Heck, Season 2 probably wouldn’t have happened! Let’s keep the momentum going, keep the interest up over the summer and fall and get even more fans for Season 3 – SouthLAnd style!