As I have admitted before, I watch All My Children. Laugh if you must, I own up to it. And not long ago, I also added watching The Young and the Restless. It is actually better than AMC, but I’ve been watching that one so long, I doubt I could stop if I wanted to. (as I’ve said before, “listening” is more accurate as to what I do with television)

However, there is something that has come to bother the hell out of me about both soaps: Geography.

Yes, I can handle poisonings, baby swaps, amnesia, cheating spouses and on and on, but their geography is just bugging the heck out of me!

The Young and the Restless happens in the semi-fictional city of Genoa City, Wisconsin (the real one has a population of under 2,000). We are to believe that this Wisconsin town has

• Multiple major corporations
• An international airport
• A leading hospital
• Is now the home of a major fashion magazine… because models pass through all the time, don’t ya know
• Not one, but two major cosmetics companies

Fine, in today’s world, corporations can be anywhere thanks to the Internet, but a major international airport? Sure a fashion magazine could use the same Internet excuse, but wouldn’t you kind of want to be near where the designers and models are?

Then there is All My Children which takes place in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania. This city suffers from some of the same problems as Genoa City.

• Multiple major corporations
• An international airport (with direct flights to and from Paris)
• Two major cosmetics companies
• A hit daytime talk show… because celebrities pass through all the time, don’t ya know
• Ocean front property

…

Yes… I said “ocean front property”. It has been referenced several times that they can take their yachts to New York City or sail them down the coast to Florida, as they did in May 2005 for a wedding, but, yet… Pennsylvania does not touch any oceans. We’ve heard the waves breaking on the beach, people talk about how cold the ocean must be… YOU’RE IN PENNSYLVANIA! Yes, it touches Lake Erie, so in theory you could get to the ocean from the north, or through the southern part of the state if you wanted to go down the Potomac, but they have clearly mentioned “the ocean”.

I think all of this first got on my nerves about a year ago when One Life To Live, which takes place 30-miles from Pine Valley in Llanview, PA was having a “dangerous blizzard”. Over in Pine Valley? They were wearing wind breakers and sleeveless dresses. Because… I don’t know, I’m sure there was a plausible explanation… we never heard…

I know, I know, its odd to argue the silliness of soap opera geographies, but come on, can’t we keep the wackiness to suddenly discovering someone is alive who “died” 20 years ago and we’ve even seen their “ghost” during that time span? Keep the oceans where they belong!

I don’t even watch the soap opera Passions, but this news is amazing to me.

Passions was recently canceled by NBC, everyone thought it was a done deal, and that was it. Now it seems NBC has reached a deal with DirecTV to continue the quirky little soap. Yes, you read that correctly, DirecTV, the satellite company. They will air the show four days a week and the budget will be cut, but the show will continue.

It just proves that standard television is in grave danger if they don’t mind their P’s and Q’s. This, in my mind, is similar to the beginnings of premium cable. Who ever thought HBO would be such a gold mine of high quality television? Could carrier-specific programming be next? Or will it be more shows going to the web?

The times are a changing for televised content, where it will all end up, or how it will even be shown, is anyone’s guess at this point.

If you read this blog, and care about this info, you’ve already heard. If you read this blog, and don’t care….too bad. This news made my day.

All My Children Head Writer Fired!

Man that feels good to read.

As you all know from my previous posts, I’ve been working on projects in my spare time for fans of this soap. One of my big things was my desire to see this head writer ousted. All My Children, no matter what you may think of it, has an extremely rich, and vibrant, history. This was something Megan McTavish did not care for one bit. She tore apart history, rewrote it, discarded characters all in an effort to twist the canvas of All My Children to her will, and it was tearing the show apart.

The above linked article is from TV Guide, and I will quote what they said as it’s worth repeating:

The return of AMC heroine Dixie Cooney Martin (Cady McClain) was totally botched. We were supposed to buy that Dixie would let her family think she was dead for four years. Then Dixie’s mixed up in some nonsense with Zach Slater (Thorsten Kaye) instead of reuniting with her true love, Tad Martin (Michael E. Knight). Just when Dixie and Tad were on track for a reunion, she eats poisoned peanut-butter pancakes and dies. What a stupid, uncreative waste of a beloved classic character!

The revelation of Tad Martin as the person who buried alive Dr. Greg Madden (Ian Buchanan) and tortured the evil MD from above ground was absurd and completely out of character. “Tad would never do that,” longtime AMC fans insisted.

This Satin Slayer serial-killer saga has sucked from day one. To cap it off, AMC viewers just found out Zach’s diabolical daddy, Alexander Cambias Sr. (Ronald Guttman), is the killer. Talk about a snooze-o-rama reveal. Why has Papa Cambias been poisoning all these young ladies and festooning them with flowers and ribbons? He’s mad at Zach for faking his death to escape from their dysfunctional family years ago. Yawn. I don’t know about you, but whenever the show delves into the convoluted Cambias family history, I get awfully bored.

McTavish’s failure to give Brooke English (Julia Barr) any kind of send off at the end of Barr’s contract also ticked us off. Barr spends 30 years on AMC and fades off screen with no on-air acknowledgment of her departure? What a cold slap in the face to Barr and the show’s loyal viewers.

Worst of all, McTavish outrageously revised history when she undid Erica Kane’s (Susan Lucci) landmark 1973 abortion. Viewers were told that the fetus was somehow stolen from Erica’s body and implanted in another woman. Now a Calvin Klein model is playing Erica’s grown son, Josh, who’s grumpy because he was almost aborted. What?!

McTavish has a left a path of destruction in her wake that I am not sure will ever be fully repairable without even more rewriting of history. Even with that in mind though….”Ding dong, the witch is dead.”

Yep…the oddness that is BAMForBeginners.com continues!

Spotted in this weeks Soap Opera Digest:

BAM Campaign
AMCers have also sent e-mails to the execs expressing their desire to see Bianca and Maggie together again — for good! “‘BAM’ fans continue to do battle for their couple by recruiting new ‘BAM’ fans around the world,” they write. “If only ABC/AMC would bring Liz [Hendrickson, Maggie] back full time…. just as they have with Eden [Riegel, Bianca], to feed this growing hunger for the supercouple of AMC.” Join the “phenomenon” at www.bamforbeginners.com

I think the thing that surprises me the most is I never hear about this stuff until after it happens! Oh well, still very cool to receive yet another major mention!

Interesting article about a group of EastEnders fans in the Washington D.C. area that rallied to save their favorite British soap. Their local PBS channel, WETA, had informed their viewers they were going to be dropping the long-running BBC soap opera from the line-up due to the cost vs. ratings. It seems the show costs the channel $25,000 a year, with a 2 year minimum. With only 8,000 households tuning in weekly, and the contract coming up, they opted not to spend the $50,000 required to renew.

Enter the fans.

Led by a classics professor and a real estate lawyer, the fans asked if they raised the money, would the channel accept the funds and renew? The channel said they would if they got the funds by January 16th, 2007. The fans went to work and gathered up 143 checks, totaling $52,504 (or ab average of $367.16 per check), and presented them to the station by the deadline. The channel was good to their word, accepted the funds and have renewed the much-loved show.

I have seen a lot of fan drives over the years to save a show, but never one that took such a direct approach, and I applaud them. I’ve heard of buying newspaper ads, mailing in small trinket that is an inside joke from the show, those never seemed to make much sense to me. Cold hard cash? Total sense. Good on them, and I hope they enjoy their two years of British drama, they’ve earned it.

So what sort of traffic did BAMForBeginners.com end up having?

Friday, 1/26 – 2,864
Saturday, 1/27 – 2,086

Our best day prior to the current plug from AfterEllen.com was Tursday, 1/25 at 1,391.

This site is getting more traffic in one day than my ecommerce site (AnimeUSA.com) does in a week. No, that’s not depressing in the least!

So…remember how I mentioned the website I was behind, BAMForBeginners.com, got mentioned on Canadian TV? That brought us some traffic, but now comes the site being mentioned by the lesbians-in-media news site, AfterEllen.com. In their weekly column, Best.Lesbian.Week.Ever., they mentioned the current storyline on All My Children and named Bam For Beginners as the place to go and get caught up on the storyline.

Wow.

It generated so much traffic that Google Analytics couldn’t keep up and the updating was way behind the normal time. I’ll post in the near future what the numbers were because, as of right now, I’m still missing five hours of data.

So why do I bring this up again? Two reasons:

1) None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the amazing folks who went out and found message boards to post links on. Without them, it wouldn’t be getting half the notice it’s getting.

2) It’s getting far more traffic than my company websites! I guess I should have more middle of the night, random ideas!

Just amazing what can still be accomplished still in this day-and-age with everyone and their dog having a website!

So, I know most of you are bored with hearing about BAMForBeginners.com, but something very, very cool happened today.

As I was logging in for the morning and checking in with my email, I was getting notes from my fellow BAM fans about if I had heard about the TV mention I got. I had no clue what they were talking about. After a few minutes of tracking down the info, it seems my little fan site got a shout out on a Canadian soap opera info show called “Soaps Up” that airs on A Channel. It seems they were discussing the return of the character Maggie and mentioned if you wanted to learn about the history of BAM you should visit my site and then listed my web address on the screen.

Someone is trying to get me a copy of the video now, but how totally unexpected and incredibly cool!

And again…no laughing, but I’ve worked my butt off on this.

Monday, the 15th, is the day Maggie (Elizabeth Hendrickson) returns to All My Children. It’s not too late to join the fun, and you can still get up to speed by visiting BAMForBeginners.com.

So join the fun! Catch BAMitis! (I blame Nik for that)

I’ve gone back and forth on telling everyone about this, but darn it, I’m proud of it!

I have admitted before I watch All My Children, but I have never revealed who my favorite characters are. Well, technically they aren’t on the show any more, though one of them keeps popping back up. They are Bianca Montgomery (played by Eden Riegel) and Maggie Stone (played by Elizabeth Hendrickson), more commonly known as BAM.

For those unfamiliar at all with this, Bianca is the lesbian daughter of the infamous Erica Kane (played by Susan Lucci). In 2001, Frankie Stone, arrived in town to pull a con on Erica by using Bianca, instead she fell for her. Three months later she was killed. Here came the problem, fans loved the actress who played Frankie! So they brought her back as, you guessed it, Frankie’s twin sister, Maggie. Maggie was straight, but there was also tension between her and Bianca over the Frankie connection. As time progressed, more and more glimmers of hope popped up that they might get together and the name BAM was born, short for Bianca and Maggie.

A lot of people give me crap over my fondness for BAM thinking I’m only in it for the lesbian angle, well, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m in to BAM because it is an amazing story performed by two wonderfully talented actresses. The tension was always something else, and on February 24th, 2005, they left Pine Valley together, bound for Paris, and a possible relationship. Bianca has been back a few times due to being Erica’s daughter, but never a sight of poor Maggie. Sure, we’re gotten mentions, and last Christmas we were told they were a couple finally.

That was until Bianca came home again in October 2006. Stupid writers! It seems Maggie cheated on Bianca with a girl named Cecelia. And when all hope was lost, and it seemed like we would never get on-screen BAM time, word came out that due to a letter writing campaign by fans, Maggie was returning for 3 weeks beginning January 15th. Not only that, she would be portrayed by Elizabeth again.

Now comes where my time has disappeared to…not only am I a BAM fan….I was kind of involved in the campaign to bring her back (not a major player mind you, just one of the nameless foot soldiers). Late in the original run, I joined the message board for BAM Fans, and honestly, it is the most welcoming, warm, and family like communtiy I have ever found on the web. They are amazing, and they fight for what they want with a passion I have never seen the likes of. And no, they aren’t all lesbians. They are married women, single heterosexual women, the wife of a minister, lesbians and, yes, me, one of only 3 – 4 men (I guess at that one, they rarely show up) out of the nearly 3000 members.

So, I love this community, and with us having won the battle to bring Maggie back, we decided we had to promote this to people to boost viewers. Enter Nik (hi Nik!) who got the idea to make a list of key scenes to the story of BAM that were on YouTube. We would then post that list on message boards to bring in new viewers. I said I would make it in to a simple web page and then we could just post a link. It was ok, but not exciting. There was my mistake.

Next I got the idea to install WordPress and make it pretty…

then I thought it needed info pages…

then I decided it needed a checklist of EVERY BAM scene, not just key ones…

then I decided each day from BAM history would get an entry just like it was a blog so people could easily look things up by date or key happenings by using the search….

It grew out of control, but we are now close to having a nearly complete catalog of the entire BAM story on this website I named BAMForBeginners.com. So every night after work I’ve been coming home, showering, eating dinner, and getting to work on BFB. I’ve been putting in close to 8 hour nights on it, so it’s been almost like a second job for a little while now, but that will be winding down now as we only need to add the Frankie info and fill in some gaps in the overall story. And believe me, there are some gaps we’re skipping such as chunks of the year long “baby swap”…parts of the Michael Cambias murder…as little Lena (Bianca’s girlfriend for awhile) as possible…it is a soap after all, some really silly, silly things do happen.

I know this will all sound incredibly silly to people outside of the soap fandom, but over the years I have come to learn you really shouldn’t pick on anyone’s passions. Sports fans tend to pick on say Star Wars fans for camping outside theaters for tickets, but yet they forget they have done the same for “the big game”. And geeky people pick on sports fans for knowing every stat of every player on their favorite team, but yet they can tell you how fast each space ship is from their favorite series. What is one’s hobby/past time is another persons joke fodder. So yes, I am a soap fan…an AMC fan…and a BAMmer through and through.

Oh, and remember in the 100 things list I said I had written a fan fiction I was proud of, but don’t tell people? Yeaaaaah, you guessed it.

Who in the world is directing All My Children this week? A film school drop out? They changed film stock and it look horrible, and now you have overcomplicated shots being filmed that the camerman can’t handle! Boom shots? POV shots? The show looks like absolute dreck this week! I’m hoping we go back to standard fare soon.

On a side note, the new Colby, Ambyr Childers, not only is a horrible actress, they SORASed the character 8 years!

The Channel I watch All My Children on in the afternoons, when I can, shows the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the version hosted by Meredith Viera. I try to avoid seeing this show, but sometimes I do flip channels early. So today I flip over and a woman gets asked on the $4,000 question “What famous Washington D.C. monument is featured on the back of the $5 dollar bill?”. I smirk thinking how easy this is.

She used the “Ask the audience lifeline”…only 65% of them got it right. The AOL Instant Messenger respondets…well…only 56% of them got it right.

Where in the world does the daily version of this show find it’s contestants? Do they only accept people with the lowest possible IQs they can find? “That man appears to have trouble tying his own shoes…quick! Snatch him up for the show!”

And if you are reading this and need to pull out a $5 bill to see which monument is….first you need to be smacked….secondly, it’s the Lincoln Memorial.