talking

When Oprah made her tearful, but happy, announcement about the ending of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she committed to making 2010 something special. That was clearly in her mind as Oprah has reportedly booked Susan Boyle, the Scottish singing star who catapulted to fame in 2009 after appearing on Britain's Got Talent, for a sit down interview and musical interlude on Wednesday, January 14.

That's right, the six million CD selling Boyle will actually be in Chicago's Harpo Studios. No satellite feed this time. Nope, Susan Boyle will be able to jump up and down on the couch just like Tom Cruise. Or maybe she can bring her kitty cat, Pebbles, on the set and introduce her to American audiences?

CBS' Innertube broadband site has an occasionally interesting series called Animate This! in which stars from different series tell stories about being in the industry which are then animated for comic effect. Some of the stories, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt's recollection of singing as a young child at a Texas fair, aren't that interesting, while others, such as Jeff Probst story of scuba diving while taping Survivor and ending up away from the boat with producer Mark Burnett and circled by a shark like the movie Open Water, are somewhat more gripping. The series is animated by Renegade Animation, the same studio that does Hi HI Puffy Ami Yumi on Cartoon Network.

[via Cold, Hard Flash]

Even the most realistic shows require us to suspend some disbelief. While a show may try its best to recreate a situation that's believable we as an audience have to accept that there will be things which would never occur in real life.

For example, there's the unwritten law of TV shows that states two or more people can discuss illegal activities, quite loudly, while in public and surrounded by strangers, and no one will hear them. If you keep an eye out for it, you'll notice it all the time. Criminals will meet in restaurants and chat about their plans to murder someone as if they're talking about the weather. Detectives will discuss top secret cases while walking along bustling city streets. What's even stranger than discussing these things so loudly and within earshot of everyone else is the idea that they found it necessary to come to a public place to discuss it in the first place. Of course, sometimes a show must do that in order to create a sense of atmosphere, and that's fine, it is just TV after all. Still, I find it amusing to imagine real criminals behaving this way. It would certainly make for easier arrests.