It’s September and that means the new fall television season is upon us.  This year I’m introducing a new weekly column to the site called The Week In Review (unless I can think of something better).  It’s going to be a tv focused post once a week re-capping what I watched that week and brief thoughts on the new episodes and the direction of the shows.  They’ll be short and to the point.  And like I said they’ll be short musings almost based on single episodes.  Not full blown reviews.  Of course we’ll be doing reviews of as many new shows as possible (using the standard 3 episode rule), but this way I can constantly update with thoughts on how older shows are faring in my eyes.

These Week In Review posts will also be meant to be interactive.  I want people to react to what I’m saying about these shows in the comment and we can have a real discussion about these things.  I warn you I watch a lot of tv.

In other news I am sorry for the slight lack of updates lately.  I’ve been focusing a lot on the re-design and thus it hasn’t left much time to read/watch things to post about.  But I’ve got 2 great posts coming soon and hopefully some more content will get written this weekend.  Oh and also the re-design is gonna kick some ass.

I’m a huge Party Down fan and I am still reeling from it’s cancellation by the clearly retarded Starz, but BustedTees (a site who we are a part of their affiliate program to be upfront) just launched this awesome shirt.  I’m buying one and you should too. Show your Party Down love to the world.

Soup R’ Crackers Unlike Ron Donald?s business plans, this shirt is a sound investment.

Although they’ve been around for a while I’ve only recently started listening to podcasts.  So I thought like everything else on this site I’d recommend some of the ones I enjoy.  This post is all about my absolute favorite podcast Doug Loves Movies.  DLM is taped live weekly at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles before their Comedy Death Ray show (also a very good podcast that we’ll cover another time).  It’s hosted by comedian Doug Benson, best known for his appearance in the excellent documentary Super High Me(also On Demand), and each week features a panel of various actors or comedians.  Some of the guests are big stars such as Sarah Silverman or Jon Hamm, and others are lesser known people who are equally as entertaining.  The show does boast a pretty impressive guest list though.

Doug keeps the show pretty light and talks about movies he’s seen recently as well as what his guests have seen or been in.  The format is pretty loose and it’s mainly some fun joking.  The highlight of the show however is the Leonard Maltin Game.  This is a super fun and easy to play, but tough to actually be good at game that you can play at home.  It’s really funny listening to some of the guests play though.  Doug uses the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide iPhone app (also available in bookform for those of you less tech savvy) to give a clue to a movie.  First a guest must select a category Doug comes up with and then choose a year.  After that Doug reads some of Leonard Maltin’s writing about the movie (being careful to not give it away) and then the guests have to wager amongst themselves for who can name the movie in the least amount of names starting from the bottom of the list.  Now the names on the bottom of the list are usually people you’ve never heard of and the top of the list are the stars.  Eventually someone bids low enough that another guest doesn’t think they’ll get it and tells them to “name that movie”.  Then Doug reads the names and they have one guess at what the movie is given the names, the year, and Doug’s category.  If they get it right they get bragging rights and a point, if they get it wrong the person who told them to name the movie gets the point.  The guests play for audience members who receive prizes such as Doug Benson t-shirts and merchandise related to the guests (this is a more recent phenomenon).  The losing audience members get to name who is a shithead, a long standing tradition on the show is signing off by saying “_____ is a shithead”, usually someone who you’d never hear that said about, thus the joke.

Anyway Doug Loves Movies is a great fun listen that’ll easily get you through an hour of your day.  And it’s free.  You can check it out at www.douglovesmovies.com or subscribe (still free) through iTunes.  I also recommend following Doug on Twitter @DougBenson.

Pearl Jam is one of my favorite bands of all time and they’re great in concert as you can tell from the last Great Concerts post.  This week they’re playing NYC and I’ll be there.  So this week I’ll be seeing them 3 times in 4 days and re-counting every show right here on this site.  So happy Pearl Jam week on Media Decay.

PS one of the main computers I use for material for this site died on me and is in the process of being replaced so a few planned articles have been held up, like our next Great Concerts posting that’s way overdue.

Just a quick notice about some changes going on around here.  The biggest is that unless people come and really say they are enjoying and want me to keep doing them, The Real World D. C. recaps are being stopped for now.  I know it’s always annoying when a site stops a feature you like but they don’t get a ton of traffic and there’s no real revenue brought in from them and they take forever to do.  Seriously the average Real World recap takes me about 3 hours, and I’d much rather be using that to write about several things instead of one recap.  If you happen to be a fan of the recaps though let me know and I’ll continue them.  I’m all about you guys.

Second I’m currently working on a complete site re-design that won’t launch for a very long time still, but it’s being worked on.  So you might see posts titled or tagged differently, that’s why, it’s so they’ll look better when the redesign is ready.

Finally we have a great new advertiser.  This one is for all the musicians out there.  It’s Tunecore.  They allow you to sell your music through all the big sites like Amazon and iTunes.  We even have a special discount if you use the link below:

Merry Christmas I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight

Everything Else

Alright here it is at last.  The final part of our inaugural Holiday Must Have list.  We hope you find some great gift ideas somewhere in this massive pile of stuff and that you make those you care for smile when they open the awesome gift you bought them.  If you haven’t already check out the previous parts: Movies, TV, & Music.  Remember to click the links to go to the page of that product. And now without further adieu, the finale:

continue reading…

We’re going to be putting out a list of suggestions for holiday gifts for you and those you care enough about to give gifts to in a few days but we still need input from you. Comment below with some of the things you want this year and if it’s cool enough it’ll make the list. What’s some awesome stuff that’s come out recently (or ever if it’s really cool) that you’re salivating over?

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So two little bits of site news.  I’ll get the first out of the way quickly: I’m going to be adding a ton of old concert and movie reviews from my livejournal to the site over the next few weeks, but since it’s mostly old material I won’t be publicizing any of it on Twitter, etc.  So there will be a ton of new old stuff, just so that you guys have more stuff to check out.

Now onto the important piece of business: we’re starting a new article series about the best TV episodes of all time.  And we’d love to have your help.  Just leave a comment on this post with the name of the show and the name of the episode or a few of your favorites and we’ll see if they make our final judgement.  If you can’t find the name of the episode try to give us a general idea of it, like the plot, any memorable guest stars, what season it was in, or if you happen to know the exact episode number and title that would be great.

This will probably be a monthly series and will probably start later this month.