Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 September 4

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September 4

Music Video

I was watching this musice video maybe from the 60s, where the singer wears a red jacket and plays various instruements in the video. The main plot shows people eating dinner.Has anyone heard of a familiar video? Bewareofdog 04:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen loads of videos where people play instruments and wear red. I'm sure that lots also feature people eating food. Can you be any more specific? What kind of music was it? Was the singer male or female? Did it look American or Spanish or what?91.109.206.248 (talk) 07:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The gold standard of eating-dinner videos in the pop metal genre is Ratt's song Round And Round, which is found here. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The singer is an American male , and it sounded like rock. Bewareofdog 21:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

There's not really a lot of music videos from the 60s...perhaps it was a musical segment from an episode of The Monkees? Adam Bishop (talk) 18:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Episodes in a season

When I was a kid most TV series had about 26 episodes per season. It seems there is a downward trend in the number of episodes per season, depending on the series. I notice some network shows with 20 to 22 episodes in a season now. Are there any web sites that track these numbers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.223.130 (talk) 06:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the number used to go as high as 39, with 13 reruns. In fact, I think that's where the "classic 39" of The Honeymooners came from - a single season. But it varies depending on the show and decisions of the higher-ups. Star Trek had 26 or 27 in each of its three seasons. But the series Adventures of Superman, at least in its color years, only produced 13 new episodes per season. Have you checked any of the websites that specialize in cataloguing TV series? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

This may be due to economic factors, i.e. the TV stations wanting to save money. There's certainly evidence of this trend in the UK and Europe. In the '80s there were big, prestigious adaptations of novels like Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown which ran to 15 or so episodes. Nowadays the costume dramas tend to run to no more than six episodes, which makes them far less satisfactory as adaptations (you only get a flavour of the novel). In Germany, Heimat and Heimat 2 (not adaptations, but large scale episodic dramas) ran to 15 hours and 25 hours respectively, but Heimat 3 only ran to 11 hours. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 07:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not quite the same league/quality as some of the above mentionned series' but in the UK motoring magazine Top Gear and business entertainment show Dragons Den both had only 8 episodes in their latest series... But that's down to the budgets involved I think as both are high cost programmes, in their own different way... Gazhiley (talk) 11:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Remember, the US concept of a TV Season and the UK one of a series do not match. Top Gear commonly has two series per year, while US TV networks invariably considers all new episodes broadcast from September to May as one season. If considered from an American perspective, Top Gear had 16 or 17 episodes last season. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 16:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Does British TV have anything analogous to the US expectation of a batch of new shows beginning every fall? My impression is no, but I don't want to express certainty I don't have. —Tamfang (talk) 19:13, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Blame Desi Arnaz. Really. At least according to rerun. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I have absolutley no clue what to put here...

In Sandman: tales in the sand, it was implied that there are penalties when one of the Endless loves a mortal, such as the destruction of Nada's city after she slept with Dream. If this is the case, then why didn't something happen after Desire raped Unity? Is there a limit to one cosmic disaster at the time? I seriously can't figure this out. Library Seraph (talk) 13:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Never having read that book, I offer the following suggestions:

1. It's a fantasy comic book. It may not worry about following laws.
2. Rape is not the same as love.

DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Mysterious UK Cartoon from the late 90s/early 2000s.

I remember when I was a kid in the very late 90s/very early 2000s, I would often watch the various saturday morning TV that was broadcast on terrestrial. Large shows like SMTV Live and Live & Kicking, which would show cartoons inbetween various sketches and cartoons and games.

I remember that on one of these, I would watch a cartoon or anime (I had no idea what an anime was back then; but what I recall it seemed to be vaguely anime-ish), which I now would love to find the name of. Unfortunately I have no idea what channel or show it was on - though must have been either BBC1, BBC2, or ITV, and all I know is that it was broadcast at some point between 1999 and 2003.

As for the plot of this cartoon/anime...I can't remember much about it at all. It was set in a subtly futuristic city - monorails were present, and the cars were streamlines; but it was nothing over the top. Could have been set in the next 30 years or so. The city was on the coast, and it seemed to be either in Asia or North America. The characters were a bunch of children, who would go on adventures and stuff. I recall that one of the kids, a girl, belonged to a very rich family. She lived off the coast on some sort of artificial island, and their mansion had a large glass dome.

I can't remember much about the other characters at all, except that there was a black family, and two of the kids (a five year old or so and a ten year old or so) would hang out with the rest of the gang.

As for plot points, the only story that is clear in my mind goes something like this. The black family's father was mysteriously going off in the nights, and the two kids wanted to know where. The whole gang of kids then one day followed the father along the monorails and through the city, and followed him to a nightclub, where they discovered he played a trumpet/other sort of brass instrument to make money on the side, to support his wife and sons. I think there might have been a scene where the bouncers threw him out for some reason, to the horror of the other kids who were watching in the shadows.

Thats about all I can remember.

It isn't much to go on; but if someone could somehow work out the name of this cartoon/anime, I'd be very much oliged! I've been searching on and off for years.

Thanks!

92.0.22.142 (talk) 18:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)