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From the family entertainment capital of the world, Orlando, Florida, the Real Yellow Pages from BellSouth presents "Santa Salutes the Stars" starring Hollywood entertainer and TV funnyman Alan Thicke; from TV's "Days of Our Lives," Patrika Darbo; with performances by "American Idol" sensation Kevin Covais; country performing artist Brian McComas; TV personality and singer Shawn King; The Gemz; CMA female vocalist of the year Janie Fricke; country great John Conlee; and featuring the one and only Gloria Gaynor; plus a special appearance by radio and TV talk legend Larry King; American Idol's Melissa McGhee; and Santa Claus!The parade was telecast on Superstation WGN. I doubt it will ever be shown again but a paradegoer did post some home video on YouTube.
Labels: celebrities, Christmas, holidays, parades, TV
Ok, so I'm one of the daily readers (and responders sometimes) to your blog. I am always impressed by the sheet number of reference links that you provide in your posts - kudos! But I do have a tip/request... see if you like the idea:When I first started my website in 2001, I made all the external links open in new windows. Before I added a blog to the site last year, I looked at a lot of other blogs to see how they operated. The blogs that influenced me the most kept all their links opening in the same window. I ultimately decided to do the same. Of course I wanted people to be able to find their way back to my site, so I put the blog in a frame on my home page with a navigation bar in a frame along the side. Those of you who type www.frankmurphy.com into your browser should know what I'm talking about. However a lot of you bypass the frames by going directly to the blog at www.frankmurphy.com/fmblog.htm (which is absolutely fine if that's what you prefer). When I'm websurfing, I'll sometimes force a link to open in a new tab and I'll sometimes let it open in the same tab. It depends on the circumstances. When I want to get back to where I started, I click the tiny little down arrow on my back button so that I can skip back multiple pages at once.
The problem with putting links in your blog posts is that when I, as the reader, clicks the link, then I'm taken away from your blog. So, I find myself getting to the linked site and sometimes poking around there... then I need some way to get back to your blog. Certainly, I can just do a right-click and open your link in a new window - this is no problem. But there's a way that you can add just a little extra and make it open in a new window anyway.
Honestly, I think Web design 'etiquette' says that if you are going to provide a link to somewhere outside your site, you really should be opening it in a new window (otherwise people will think you are the one who created that material).
It's a growing, annoying trend in the Web these days for links to external sites not to take you there unconditionally (as Web links always have in the past), but rather put the new site within a frame, or pop up an additional browser window. I've even seen sites that pop up an additional browser window that has the linked-to site in a frame... complete with an ad banner in another frame that stays there no matter where you surf on. All of these techniques have the presumptuous rationale that the user can't or won't decide on his own where he wants to surf to, whether he wants to return to the original site, and whether he wants to pull up additional Web browser windows to surf two sites at once. A "New Browser Window" command exists in most Web browser software; let the users do this if they want. You shouldn't force it on them. If the user is low on memory, the extra window can cause a system crash. As for frames, they're even worse; they take up big chunks of the screen, they keep the user from seeing the URL of the site he's surfed to, and if the destination site has frames too, the available screen space shrinks some more.You can read the rest of his essay at http://webtips.dan.info/new-window.html
Labels: blogs
Labels: celebrities, death, KLOS, radio
Labels: tortoises, TV, weight loss
Labels: movies, news anchors, sightseeing
If there was a star of the evening besides Santa Claus, it had to have been 10-year-old Logan Murrell, who has a 20-year-old's voice and the presence of a veteran performer.On Wednesday I mentioned that "America's Got Talent" winner Bianca Ryan had a style similar to Logan. Let me modify that. Logan is way better than Bianca. Logan can sing the right note and hold it while Bianca jumps around the scale trying to impress. Somebody needs to notify Simon Cowell.
Labels: Knoxville, news anchors, TV
Labels: Brian Setzer, Christmas, music, photos, TV
Labels: food
Saw your post about the home theater system. While you're rewiring the house for HD (a very good thing -- we have a basic 42 inch Panny plasma and you end up unable to stomach "regular" standard def TV again), be aware that the TiVo Series 3 is cable or OTA only, not satellite. It does take Cablecard, which isn't necessarily a reliable option.Tomorrow I will call the satellite company to get on their waiting list for one of their DVRs. Even though I have gotten into the habit of recording everything, I watched some "live" TV tonight in HD. Like Perry says, the difference is amazing. "How I Met Your Mother" looked so good it was, wait for it, leg-en-dary. During commercials, my son and I flipped over to ESPNHD. Hi-def is made for football fans. However HD could do nothing to improve the quality of "The Year Without a Santa Claus" remake. At one point I was actually looking forward to it.
Labels: blogs, The Office, TV
If you ever doubted that Christmas was a lusty, pagan solstice festival appropriated by the Church to lure Germanic tribes and, later, integrated into a Santa-industrial complex to generate much-needed end-of-the-year revenues for multinational corporations, this decidedly unchristian song should convince you. In it, [Mariah] Carey repetitively wails that what the millionaire chanteuse wants for Christmas is not world peace, an end to African famines (think "Do They Know It's Christmas") or even federal aid for farmers. O no, she selfishly wants to sate her sentimental and carnal desires. Worse yet, this song is about fifteen times better than Wham!'s "Last Christmas" and the most mediocre excuse for a pop song ever, Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime."The Beacon staff may be right about the lame McCartney tune but how dare they dis "Last Christmas." And there's a lot of that going around. A writer named Rick Ellis put Jimmy Eat World's version of "Last Christmas" ahead of the dreadful McCartney song on his list of the ten most annoying Christmas songs of all time. I praised the Jimmy Eat World song last November.
Labels: Christmas, cover songs, music
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Labels: Christmas, movies, sightseeing, TV
Labels: Brian Setzer, Christmas, music, TV
Labels: food, Knoxville, photos, restaurants, weight loss