Burbank or Oscars?

Well…we missed covering the Oscars. So, let’s talk about Burbank. I see at TMD friend Lisa Burks site that she is now a travel writer, writing on attractions in Burbank for hotelsbycity.net. There…that’s our shamless plug. The Movieland Directory has 119 entries for Burbank, including 4444 Lakeside Drive, home to Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpecker. (I swear…I clicked on that one totally at random!) You can get a look at Walter, with Woody, here at this tidy little page at Toon Tracker, and this site which “serves as an encyclopedia of every single cartoon produced by Lantz and his talented staff“.

Getting back to the Oscars, turns out that ten of Lantz’ cartoons were nominated for Academy Awards, and in 1979 Walter Lantz received an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement!

There you go! A Hollywood…er…Burbank…and Oscar moment you won’t find anywhere else on the Internet, this week!

L.A. Videos

If you scroll down the page, you’ll see that we’ve added the WordPress video applet, which points to vodpod.com.  Very easy to implement.  I began by adding the trailer for Scott Michael’s DVD.  To see a longer clip, head to findadeath.  I’ll warn you – as Scott does on his site – that the content is often adult.

I’ve also added vids posted at turnhere.com.  I spied that site about a year ago, when they must have just been starting out.  They have since updated it.  I am impressed with the controlled manner in which they have proceeded.  They have only a limited number of generally well thought out and directed shorts.  About 30 altogether, representing towns and neighborhoods all over LA.

Their films are virtual tours.  And, like The Movieland Directory, they include maps – in this case Google – with addresses.  A very nice touch.

If you’re traveling to Los Angeles, in the flesh or virtual, the films at turnhere are highly recommended.

Johnny Doesn’t Know Who To Trust

A Reuters story, coming out of something called the “Reuters Hotels and Casinos 2007 Summit” in Los Angeles, says that travel websites are clamping down on insiders shilling for hotels and other travel providers.  The story mentions that “trustworthy sources of information are sometimes difficult to find on the Internet”.  Really?  😉

Coincidentally, a Newhouse News Service story published recently suggests that consumers of any web materials, travel or otherwise, might have a hard time telling whether a site is trustworthy.  In a pilot test given to 6,300 high school and college students, “just 52 percent…could correctly judge the objectivity of a web site and only 65 percent assessed the site’s authoritativeness.”

You can be sure if you find a link at The Movieland Directory, or here at our blog, that it’s a great Los Angeles travel or history site which has passed muster with us.  We don’t have time or respect for garbage.  And, if you find a problem with any of our information, let us know.  We will explain or make corrections.

Que Sera Sera! Ray Evans: 1915-2007

Oscar-winning songwriter Ray Evans passed away Thursday, the 15th.  In a nice touch, the LA Times online obit has several of his hits to listen to.  The Movieland Directory listing we have is on Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills.

We’re back…

The site is back after over a week.  We had someone look at our code.  We shopped for and went to a new host.  And, Orville has done the heavy lifting to move the site over, and still is tweaking a few things.  So, you might find a few oddities.  Please click on the site’s Contact Us link and let us know if you find anything wrong.  We know of one or two things, e.g., as of this second, the Search button is not enabled (though in IE it still works using the [Enter] key).  Thanks for your patience as we work out these bugs and refocus on adding content.

TMD Site – Up Shortly

We’re almost there.  Orville got everything loaded up.  I set the domain to point to the new host.  So, it should be a day or two and we’ll be back in business.

TMD News

Orville is hard at work getting to know the control panel for our new host and loading up our files.  Good luck, Orville!

As the paying job was very slow, today, I spent time online.  I’m playing with this meebo chat tool.  I’m also looking into this polling application, to get a better idea of how we might make the site more valuable to our not-so-legion legions of visitors.  And because…it’s just fun.

 The Wally Reid book is now available!  Yeah!  Congratulations, EJ!

Site Down – New Host

OK…we’ve pulled the trigger.  We’re going to move the site to a new host.  Signed up, yesterday.  A couple more days, and we should be all set.  Thank you for your patience as we make the move.  In the meantime, why not check out some of our favorites here.

 An Associated Press snippet in the whirlwind surrounding Anna Nicole Smith’s death acknowledges the public curiosity with “death sites”.  Ya think!?  That was the subject of E.J.’s first book and how this whole website idea was spawned.  Certainly, if they are famous, or infamous, and live and die in LA, then Scott Michaels likely has a write up – with information and pictures you won’t find anywhere else – at findadeath.

Site Down

The site is down for the third time in a month, after running without a hiccup since May.  We haven’t changed anything.  Whatever is going on is causing problems for other sites – including some used to administer our host’s business – on our shared server, so our host has taken us down.  The folks at our host, uplinkearth, tell us the problem is with us.  So, we’ll debug.  In the meantime, we apolgize for the inconvenience.