Midnight Ramblings

Got some big release dates I have to share.

First, for Dad, circle Tuesday, March 1 on your calendar. That's the day of the 2-hour final episode of NYPD Blue. Ahh, who could forget NYPD Blue? Created by Steven Bochco with the innocent goal of doing "an R-rated police drama for television," the show was immediatly controversial for it's foul language, gratuitious bare butt shots, and just plain contributing to the moral decay of society. But, once you got past all that, there were some compelling characters and good storytelling going on, making it a darling of critics and the Emmys. Anyway, it's been on for 12 years now, probably lost it's edge about 5 years ago, but it's still pretty good. And it's Dad's favourite show.

The next big day is July 16. Scholastic has announced that this will be the release date of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, aka Harry Potter VI. JK Rowling announced yesterday that she finished it over the weekend and shipped it off to her publisher. This'll be Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts, meaning he's now a hormonally charged 16 year old. Apparently in book IV he started getting interested in girls. Hmmm... No one's wondering if there's a "losing his virginity" scene in any of these later books. The big wonderment right now is if it's longer that The Order of the Phoenix (book 5), which came in at 870 pages. Rowling has said in the past that she always intended Harry Potter to be a 7-book epic, meaning this is the second last one. (Although, she has hinted in recent years about maybe doing a 8th book about a grown-up Harry struggling with adulthood.)

And I was reading something interesting in the paper today. It's about the soft drink industy and how "diet" has become a dirty word. "Old, dated, with negative connotations," says the market studies. So, you can start saying good-bye to "Diet Coke" and "Diet Pepsi," as they'll soon be given newer, trendier, current-diet-fad names. The first victim has been Diet Sprite, which now goes by Diet Sprite Zero, soon to be Sprite Zero. In fact, it already goes by Sprite Zero in most of Europe. The name change doubled sales in Greece.

Actually, this article showed that you'll never know when a good pop culture reference will pop up. As a case study, this article mentioned that, in the 1980s, Pepsi changed the name of Caffiene Free Pepsi to Pepsi Free. The article goes on to mention that the name change "even became a set-up for a joke in the classic film Back to the Future, in which Marty McFly, visiting 1955, ordered a Pepsi Free in a diner, only to have the counterman reply, 'If you want a Pepsi, pal, ya gotta pay for it.'"

Next Issue...School's done!