“Venice Beach Freakshow” Heads to TV

“Venice Beach Freakshow” Heads to TV

AMC, the home of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead, has picked up “Venice Beach Freakshow“, a new reality based drama “that centers on former music producer Todd Ray as he pursues his dream to own and operate his own ‘Freakshow’ on the famed boardwalk in Venice Beach, CA”.

The Ray Family of Venice Beach

Ray had a long career in the music industry producing and working with such artists as Jack Johnson, Nas, Mick Jagger, House of Pain, The Beastie Boys, G. Love & Special Sauce, Cypress Hill, Santana, 311, Audioslave and Korn before pursuing his true love, the Venice Freakshow. Most days of the week he is outside the Freakshow greeting guests.

Thanks to Dateline Hollywood and Justin T. for the heads up!

Santa Monica's Newest Tenant?

Santa Monica's Newest Tenant?

Add online video-streamer Hulu to the growing list of big-name companies leasing office space in Santa Monica.

Hulu's residency in Santa Monica was rumored in June when the Hollywood Reporter published a story about creative office space being in demand on the Westside. It was confirmed this week by the city's Economic Development division in an interview with the Santa Monica LookOut.

"We're delighted by it because [Hulu is] bringing lots of jobs into the City," Santa Monica's Economic Development Administrator Jennifer Taylor told the online news source.

At the northern tip of Silicon Beach, Santa Monica already boasts an impressive roster of technology and Internet companies that include Yahoo!, Demand Media and AOL (Patch's parent company), and arguably lesser-known names such as Realtime and Digiboo. This list of entertainment companies with offices and headquarters here is equally formidable: MTV, Lionsgate and CBS Television Distribution, for example.

SEE ALSO: SILICON BEACH FEST: CONSIDER ALT-CELEB POWER; SILICON BEACH STARTUP EARNS INNOVATION HONORS

According to the LookOut, Hulu is moving into a nearly 100,000-square-foot office space in the Colorado Center, formerly called the Yahoo! Center. In 2011, the Internet company reportedly made $420 million in revenue and boasted 1.5 million paying subscribers.

Dance Moms and the broken promise of reality television

TV: For Our Consideration: Dance Moms and the broken promise of reality television



Lifetime’s reality series Dance Moms draws more than 2 million viewers a week, making it one of the most-watched shows of its kind on basic cable. Here’s what happens in a typical episode: Brash dance coach Abby Lee Miller yells at a bunch of teary-eyed preteen and teenage girls; the girls’ parents snipe and gossip behind each other’s backs; the dance routines border on the inappropriate; and the audience gets the sense that all of these people’s priorities are out of whack. Like so many other cable reality shows right now, Dance Moms is steeped in schadenfreude, allowing viewers the opportunity to spend an hour cackling at colorful characters who’ve made some weird choices. And there’s nothing wrong with this, necessarily. That particular kind of emotional response to a piece of entertainment—feeling morally superior to jerks and nimrods—can be cathartic, not unlike ...

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11 uses for magnets as taught by pop culture

Inventory: 11 uses for magnets as taught by pop culture



1. Destroy incriminating evidence: Breaking Bad, “Live Free Or Die”Walter White has utilized some pretty flashy scientific know-how to get out of various jams over four seasons of Breaking Bad: killer phosphine gas, explosive mercury fulminate, magical disappearing ricin, and so on. But it took Jesse “Yeah, science!” Pinkman to determine the best, most elegant solution to the problem that faced the meth-cooking duo at the beginning of season five: Magnets, bitch. Specifically a huge electromagnet, aimed at the police station housing Gus Fring’s laptop, the one remaining loose end to tie up following Walter’s season-four-ending coup. Thanks to the inclusion of an evidence locker full of other smashable objects and an easily overturned panel truck, Jesse and Walter’s magnetic heist results in plenty of noisy chaos, but it all starts with the quiet, ominous thrum of one of nature’s most powerful, and coolest, forces ...

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Abby Elliott Not Returning to 'Saturday Night Live'

Abby Elliott Not Returning to 'Saturday Night Live'



The news comes months after the comedian booked a lead in a Fox pilot that ultimately was recast.

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'Dexter' Star Doctors Homeless Man's Head Wound Outside Grocery Store

...and then reminded him about "the code."


'Dexter' Star Doctors Homeless Man's Head Wound Outside Grocery Store



Actor James Remar came to the aid of a homeless man he encountered outside a Los Angeles grocery store recently, and went so far as to get all the supplies to help bandage his wound and give him some advice on caring for it.

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This Two-Minute Cat Video Is the Purr-fect Antidote to Kitteh Overload

This Two-Minute Cat Video Is the Purr-fect Antidote to Kitteh Overload

While making Tibs, a short film about a cat's hunt for approval, director Sam Huntley discovered it's not as easy as it looks to make a cat video -- even if you hire a "professional."