The Kmart over in Springfield is relatively nice, for a Kmart anyway, but the one here in Woodbridge (well, Dale City; the one in Woodbridge proper closed years ago and reopened as some off-the-beaten-path discount store I've never heard of) sucks ass. It's old-looking despite having the recent Sears Holdings red scheme, it's messy, there's hardly anyone working the registers half the time, and they close earlier than Walmart does. As much crap as Walmart gets, they're still better than Kmart. :P
Also, I was randomly pondering Interstates earlier and thought of CA. Specifically, I was trying to remember what all the longitudinal (north-south) routes were and failing miserably.
Summit is the House that Twilight Built, sort of like how New Line was The House That Freddy Built back in the 1980s, and I doubt they have the clout or the wherewithal to diversify like New Line did.
I'm actually kind of surprised Sony didn't make a bid for all of EMI, if only because that'd give them control over pretty much all aspects of The Beatles that Apple Corps doesn't.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
Wikipedia says that Lionsgate walked away from Summit "due to concerns over changing content", which I take to mean "what is your future after Twilight?".
...now I wanna buy Carsey-Werner again. Stupid Spelling Entertainment Group poisoning my brain!
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
I'm back.
Remember a long time ago when I said I'd get some less-blurry pictures of Meijer? Well I finally did! I'll post them in a few minutes, once I've changed into my jammies.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Lionsgate is kind of in the same boat as MGM; their strength is mainly in their back catalog. About the only things I can think of that it's actually released recently are the kind of crappy slasher flicks Phelous (and to a lesser extent, Brad Jones, though mainly out-of-character as the Snob's cutoff is 1995) likes to make fun of. Eli Roth sucks. :P
Also...odd confessions time: Squiddles! is my all-around favorite Homestuck album. It's also the only one I've paid real money for so far. Volume 8 will probably be next; two songs ("Love You" and "Ocean Stars Falling") that hearken back to Squiddles!, as well as "Frog Forager" (the first concrete musical reference to MOTHER that I know of; seriously, it sounds a LOT like "Pollyanna (I Believe In You)") and the full version of the [S] Cascade soundtrack? Sign me up!
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Yep, we were there from about 2:00 to 2:30 AM, so there were only a handful of other shoppers.
Now for photos. These are almost all from the grocery section, but we didn't really go to any other part of the store.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
I love how like nobody is at the store.
Also, lee, ABC Inc wanted to buy MGM at one point as well for their back catalog (and the "United Artists" name, which has gotten the shaft for much of MGM's ownership of it), but backed off because of the huge debts.
Also Lionsgate owns the DVD rights to much of the ABC Studios library now.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
"Slightly nicer Wal-Mart Supercenter" is probably a good way to describe it, actually.
It feels all the more Wal-Mart-like now that they've renovated it in blue and grey.
For comparison, before the renovation it strongly resembled this Meijer store.
AU: Ah, I see. It seems like MGM's debt will always be following it around until someone finally puts it out of its misery and liquidates the thing. It's been a zombie since the UA merger, and the libraries (and the tiny bit of prestige the name still holds) have been the only things keeping the lights on.
I think Lionsgate owns the Cinepix-Famous Players library as well, since I heard they own the remake rights to Meatballs (which was coproduced by CFP and Téléfilm Canada and first released here by Paramount).
CA: Wow, the old Meijer looks rather Safeway-ish. Or, at least, it looks like the tiny, ancient (1973-vintage, no major updates since the 1980s) Safeway up the street from me.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
...I keep being conflicted. You said something a while back about selling the MGM trademarks to Time Warner, which I still want to do if I were to "buy" the studio.
...but they've tried so hard to marginalize UA (to the point of scrubbing their logos in favor of the 2001 MGM logo, or the 1994 one if they're charitable) that re-introducing the name to more high-priority films would be a gamble.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Judging solely based on the decor, I'm not sure which I prefer, either. In practice, though, I am glad they renovated it, because the store had not aged well.
You know when you walk into a store that you can tell hasn't had a proper renovation in a long time, but they've made changes by swapping some signs and moving sections around and replacing some things? That's how this Meijer felt, and it had only even been open 10 years.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
...you know what's weird? I focus on one thing at a time when it comes to ABC Inc, and almost always acquisitions.
I usually want them to be in, or relate to the three "core sectors" (Broadcast Television, Cable Television, and Digital Media). I think Film would fit in there pretty well.
AU: It'd be kind of cool if MGM did sell the trademarks back to Time Warner, but I'm also wondering if it'd also be too little too late, after 25 years of the MGM library having the Turner name attached to it. Most people don't even care about MGM's name anymore, aside from what they did before 1969 and the James Bond movies, unless they spend a lot of time in Vegas.
Also, it seems like anytime the Big Three try to make a move in feature films, it never goes well. NBC never even tried; ABC Motion Pictures only lasted a few years in the 1970s and again in the 1980s, and CBS tried something like four times (Cinema Center, CBS Theatrical, TriStar, and most recently they brought back CBS Films as a feature division).
CA: The Walmart at Potomac Mills feels like that, and I'm sure it's only been there since 1991 or 1992 because the old Walmart in Manassas opened at about the same time. For the longest time, it had the old off-white paint scheme of a 1980s Walmart; I don't remember if it had electronics in the middle like the really old ones did, because it's in the back like a modern store now.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
The Meijer up here had some very obvious signs of age, like an empty space in the front where a cell-phone store had originally been (which, prior to the remodel, still had some hilariously dated images of cell phones above its entrance) and a walled-off section in the back that had originally been the location of the layaway counter. The Electronics section always felt half-empty, because the back wall was meant to display many different CRT TVs, but for a long time had only held a handful of flat-panel displays.
I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat
NBC wound up combining with Universal, though. They are both ailing right now, with NBC's ratings in the toilet and Universal bringing in low grosses.
ABC and Disney/Touchstone...they don't seem to complement each other much? (I remember being miffed when I found out Disney had sold Miramax off; by the time the deal was almost over it was too late for ABC Inc to make a bid)
And CBS and Paramount did not last, because Viacom expanding as much as it did and as quickly as it did into the hodgepodge it was turned out to be a bad idea. (CBS got to keep Paramount's television division, though.)
...I'm not sure how much of a match ABC and Lionsgate are. Their cable-TV series do well (most of them air on premium channels, too.), but their movie division is ailing and they are banking on an expensive film to do well right now.
NBC: True, though I kind of see that as a marriage of convenience rather than any bona-fide attempt by NBC to enter the feature-film market. As for why they didn't try sooner, I suspect it has something to do with RCA being one of the founders of RKO, but RKO went dormant after GenCorp bought them, so...
The news that Disney was buying ABC was kind of a shock when I first heard about it back in 1995-1996, but then, it made sense because Disney's TV holdings at the time were kind of lackluster (they had Touchstone TV, The Disney Channel -- which I don't think was trying to compete directly with Nick yet -- and what was left of The Disney Afternoon and that was really it). They also had some tenuous connections to ABC through Disneyland -- something ABC was crowing about as late as 1983 --but that program spent most of its life on NBC, not ABC, and had pretty much moved to the Disney Channel by the time the merger happened.
You're right about Viacom; they expanded way too fast, and I think the CBS merger was kind of off-putting due to the sheer number of pies the combined company had its fingers in. It was like the 2000s version of Beatrice or Kraft General Foods; this big corporate monster that was too big to really work well. That and I hear the CBS and Paramount people did not like each other much, and I would not be surprised if it was bad blood left over from the Desilu era and PTV subsequently giving ABC first pick of everything.
I'm actually not familiar with how well Lionsgate's TV division is doing. If that's healthy, they may well be able to make it on their own, though I still think they should do something to make their film division less, well, Rothy. Hammer Film Productions they ain't. Then again, they're not as one-track-minded as Summit.
AU: As long as I can remember. Having a bio-dad that was in the industry and that was also an early VCR adopter (we had the first Betamax and one of the first VHS decks), as well as a mom who loved old movies and found the studios' histories intriguing both helped, but I was also really interested in why all these big corporations seemed to own each other and why it kept seeming to pop up. (I was also terrified of the 1980s Universal and Paramount logos, which also helped. :P)
One of my favorite books when I was little was Total Television (a huge tome with just about every national TV show ever produced listed in it), and I read that thing cover-to-cover. I still have a well-thumbed (and, frankly, worn-out) copy of the 1995 edition here with me. :D
For a long time, Viacom was the one I paid the most attention to, since it seems like they were always in the news for some reason. I also remember when Loews bought CBS, and when Turner sold out to Warners.
AU: I don't think so, but in my case, I'd rather just own copies of select works rather than the whole shebang. "Playing Monopoly with real buildings", like Shady Tree said in Diamonds are Forever, was never really my big ambition; I was far more interested in playing D3T3CT1V3. :D
It's 5:39 AM by the clock on my cable box. I should probably consider sleep soon, but I want to hang out in the Heap on TV Tropes a bit longer. That and Freezy apparently wrote me back on dA, so I should go answer her. ^_^
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
STREET SIGN TIME
Here's a typical Franklin County street blade, used on county-maintained roads. Note the small "FRANKLIN CO 6" at the bottom:
This is what used to pass as a street name sign in Gahanna: a wooden post with lettering down the side. This one just says "Private Dr", but these were used at actual intersections, too...if you look closely, you can see "HAVENS CORNERS RD" down the other side:
And finally, this is Gahanna's current style of street sign, which has largely replaced the wooden posts over the past 3 years or so:
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
So it appears. Not all of them have those overly-large capitals like that, either. I just happened to get a picture of one of the uglier signs.
Also, that icon is supposed to represent a green "G" arch that stands over US 62 where it enters Gahanna.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
CA Marketplace considering ABC Inc merger
13 November 2011
COLUMBUS—CA Marketplace, a large chain of grocery stores across the midwest and also wherever AU lives, may soon join forces with media giant ABC.
"It's only logical," said CA Marketplace corporate princess Central Avenue this afternoon. "I mean, we have always been close, so I see no better time than now to make this official." Avenue then left, apparently to go try on a dress for the merger ceremony, and meet with a caterer for the reception.
CA Marketplace operates a "deliberately vague" number of stores under the CA Marketplace, CA Supermart, The Andersons, and Tumblr brands.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Yep.
Also I need you to go try on a tuxedo. It'll be fun!
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
...now I wanna buy Carsey-Werner again. Stupid Spelling Entertainment Group poisoning my brain!
Remember a long time ago when I said I'd get some less-blurry pictures of Meijer? Well I finally did! I'll post them in a few minutes, once I've changed into my jammies.
(ABC Inc wants Lionsgate, too, which it considers vulnerable.)
Now for photos. These are almost all from the grocery section, but we didn't really go to any other part of the store.
The new bakery area.
bread & baked goods
Note the "fresh cheese" sign, which proudly depicts a hunk of moldy cheese.
The back aisle of the grocery section.
Aisle 13 sign and "take a trip around the world" signage for International Foods aisle.
Cleaning aisle.
Aisle containing part of the dairy section and also paper products.
Looking toward the rear restrooms. The huge "i" sign indicates a price scanner.
The main aisle. Only at this time of night can you take a photo like this and have absolutely no people in it.
Directional signage and the 24-hour entrance/exit. (The entrance at the other end of the store is closed after 10 pm)
The produce section. In the background you can see the strangely-placed family restroom.
And one last shot of the deli area.
Also, lee, ABC Inc wanted to buy MGM at one point as well for their back catalog (and the "United Artists" name, which has gotten the shaft for much of MGM's ownership of it), but backed off because of the huge debts.
Also Lionsgate owns the DVD rights to much of the ABC Studios library now.
It feels all the more Wal-Mart-like now that they've renovated it in blue and grey.
For comparison, before the renovation it strongly resembled this Meijer store.
...what will Lionsgate do if The Hunger Games flops?
...but they've tried so hard to marginalize UA (to the point of scrubbing their logos in favor of the 2001 MGM logo, or the 1994 one if they're charitable) that re-introducing the name to more high-priority films would be a gamble.
You know when you walk into a store that you can tell hasn't had a proper renovation in a long time, but they've made changes by swapping some signs and moving sections around and replacing some things? That's how this Meijer felt, and it had only even been open 10 years.
I usually want them to be in, or relate to the three "core sectors" (Broadcast Television, Cable Television, and Digital Media). I think Film would fit in there pretty well.
ABC and Disney/Touchstone...they don't seem to complement each other much? (I remember being miffed when I found out Disney had sold Miramax off; by the time the deal was almost over it was too late for ABC Inc to make a bid)
And CBS and Paramount did not last, because Viacom expanding as much as it did and as quickly as it did into the hodgepodge it was turned out to be a bad idea. (CBS got to keep Paramount's television division, though.)
...I'm not sure how much of a match ABC and Lionsgate are. Their cable-TV series do well (most of them air on premium channels, too.), but their movie division is ailing and they are banking on an expensive film to do well right now.
And it's 3:33 AM where I am.
Here's a typical Franklin County street blade, used on county-maintained roads. Note the small "FRANKLIN CO 6" at the bottom:
This is what used to pass as a street name sign in Gahanna: a wooden post with lettering down the side. This one just says "Private Dr", but these were used at actual intersections, too...if you look closely, you can see "HAVENS CORNERS RD" down the other side:
And finally, this is Gahanna's current style of street sign, which has largely replaced the wooden posts over the past 3 years or so:
Also, that icon is supposed to represent a green "G" arch that stands over US 62 where it enters Gahanna.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
13 November 2011
COLUMBUS—CA Marketplace, a large chain of grocery stores across the midwest and also wherever AU lives, may soon join forces with media giant ABC.
"It's only logical," said CA Marketplace corporate princess Central Avenue this afternoon. "I mean, we have always been close, so I see no better time than now to make this official." Avenue then left, apparently to go try on a dress for the merger ceremony, and meet with a caterer for the reception.
CA Marketplace operates a "deliberately vague" number of stores under the CA Marketplace, CA Supermart, The Andersons, and Tumblr brands.
Also I need you to go try on a tuxedo. It'll be fun!
This thing's interesting...