MsKitka.com

If I hear the words “wardrobe malfunction” again I’m going to kill someone.

Janet Jackson’s planned strip show at the Super Bowl a few years ago has forced mass paranoia amongst American networks. In the grand scheme of things, the money that networks had to pay for airing Jackson’s nipple is a drop in the bucket, but it was enough to scare them into censorship right, left and center.

While Zod and I were watching a ridiculously censored version of the Shining on Bravo last night, the Rolling Stones were rocking the Super Bowl half-time show. Well, it turns out not only was the Shining censored (I honestly don’t know why they would bother playing that film so early in the evening!), but so too were the Rolling Stones. Thanks to Jackson’s publicity stunt, the Stones’ performance had a 5-second delay and two out of three of their songs were censored. [Start Me Up and Rough Justice].

Am I upset by this? Yes. Am I going to boycott major networks in order to punish them for censoring what I get to watch? Probably not.

I truly wish there was some way to informing networks and the FCC that this is what we want to see (okay, perhaps not Jackson’s nipple). Unfortunately, it seems that Christian groups are so organized at threatening lawsuits and boycotts that any average American who believes in freedom of expression is tossed aside.

So, I guess the solution is simple; we must become more organized to demand freedom of expression or we must put censoring networks out of business by continuing to develop Internet-based entertainment without boundaries.

Last night I took a break from editing Kitkast #1.15 at just the right time. At 9:05pm I made a break from my computer to check out CSI.

There had been buzz a couple of days earlier saying that Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom was going to make a cameo appearance on the show as herself, but when I watched the beginning credits I didn’t see her name mentioned. I also realized that CSI is a show from Las Vegas and Rocketboom is produced in New York, so I wasn’t even sure if I was watching the right show. About 35 minutes into the episode, however, the murderer began browsing the Internet and, sure enough, he started watching ‘Rocketboom’.

Watching ‘Rocketboom’ on CSI was truly a surreal experience. Here are the little differences I observed:

• Amanda had slightly more coiffed hair;
• More bosom than usual;
• Different intro (instead of “Hello and good [weekday], I’m Amanda Congdon and this is Rocketboom”, she said “Hey people… Amanda Congdon from Rocketboom.com with this week’s brief report.”;
• Different background (instead of the usual RB Map of the World, there was an image of Las Vegas on a green screen);
• Completely different subject matter than a regular RB episode (instead of the usual quirky stories, she was reporting a homicide story);
• No embedded story links;
• Not the usual 320×240 (iPod size);
• RB video is already loaded when the killer clicks on the link (funny, that never happens to me… I guess you’ve got to be a serial killer…);
• The FULL Rocketboom story is written out in the Google results instead of just the brief story links;
• The Google results also showed capitalization when regular Rocketboom stories are usually typed in lower case;
• The Google results show the Rocketboom URL as being “www.www.rocketboom.com” instead of “www.rocketboom.com”.

Well, I guess that’s Hollywood for you! I really enjoyed the short segment and was smiling the whole time picking out the differences that regular CSI/Non-Rocketboom fans wouldn’t notice. It was so much fun.

I received an e-mail this morning from one of my Kitkast viewers, saying he wished it was me on CSI. I was very touched. Oh well, who knows… perhaps I’ll be approached someday to make a Kitkast segment when there’s a sex-related murder on the show! Aw hell, who am I kidding, I’d even love being the murder victim!

If you’d like to check out the Rocketboom segment on CSI, click here (via Chuck Olsen at the Yahoo Videoblogging Group).

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging as much as in the past, but a storm is brewing… and if everything goes as planned, I have no doubt you’ll all be blogging about it on Monday.