TVSquad

Our resident Spaced-nut Annie mentioned the upcoming region 1 DVD set back in March. If you haven't seen the show, just the fact that it's coming out is reason enough to go pick it up. It really is as good as everyone says. But if you have seen the show, it looks like this one will be worth checking out for you as well.

As I was going about my workday, a little blurb popped up on twitter from Diablo Cody that said, "SPACED (The ORIGINAL!) is coming out on DVD soon! (And a lucky bitch named Diablo Cody got to contribute commentary.)" That's interesting enough, and you should check out her Twitter feed. It's an entertaining read. Even better though, she goes on to add that we can also expect commentary from Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, Quentin Tarentino, Matt Stone, and Kevin Smith. Sign me up for that.

A curious search later, Google sent me to spaced-out.org.uk, which confirms the commentary and goes into further detail about the extras included on the new set. They also have some fun quotes about the show from J.J. Abrams, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone.

(S12E03) To begin, for those unaware, South Park Studios has started to offer full episodes of the show on their official site with limited commercial interruption. I originally reported this in November.

I'll say this: when the South Park team put their minds to it, they can come up with some fantastic animation. When you watch the crudity of the animation in standard episodes, it's easy to forget that they're pretty damn talented at their craft.

It's time for us to give away some stuff ... again! One of today's giveaways is for five copies of Christmas Time in South Park on DVD, which is already available in stores. All you've got to do is submit a comment below before 5PM Eastern, November 30, and mention your favorite Christmas moment from the series. We'll randomly choose five winners to receive the DVDs!

Some other details:

• To enter, leave a confirmed comment below stating your favorite Christmas moment from South Park.
• The comment must be left before November 30, 2007 at 5:00PM Eastern Time.
  
• You may enter only once.
• Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
  
• Five winners will receive a copy of Christmas Time in South Park on DVD (valued at $19.99).
  

Click here for complete Official Rules.

Geeks get treated pretty badly in the media. Thanks to the fact that most people who get above-the-line credit in Hollywood are anything but geeky, when a script calls for a socially maladjusted character, it's almost always a terrible caricature of true geek culture. For years little geeklings only had the likes of Steve Urkel to look up to and that's not right (believe me, Jaleel White, when the geek revolution comes, you'll be the first one guillotined).

The fact that I'm about to become the father of my own little geek-spawn has led me to start looking around the current TV landscape, looking for appropriate geek role models. I was surprised to find so many...

If you've been paying attention to the credits during the last few years of South Park, you'll notice that Trey Parker has directed and written every episode. I've noticed this, too, but in my reviews I've always mentioned the two men together because the show still feels very much like a joint venture to me.

The question remains, though: what is Stone's role if he's not writing the episodes? This article helps explain. It seems that Stone, in addition to serving as an executive producer, doing voices and contributing ideas, also serves as the mouthpiece for the show while Parker works on the creative side of things. Parker would rather create than have to deal with censors and network executives, so Stone steps in to fight those battles.

ABC isn't saying what his response is, but the network does confirm that Diane Sawyer will ask Tom Cruise about the South Park controversy during her interview tonight on a special Primetime at 9pm. It is rumored that Cruise had an episode of the Comedy Central show pulled because of references to Scientology.

Cruise is going on the show as part of his media barrage for the upcoming Mission: Impossible III. Perhaps you've heard something about the film (of course, I joke but I'll be first in line to see it).

[via TV Tattle]

Unfortunately, the post title is not referring to episodes of the construction paper cartoon coming to the iTunes Music Store, which I still think that's a little ways out. Instead, this article explains the migration of the animation studio to new Apple Xserve arrays.

GEEK ALERT! "J.J. Franzen, technology supervisor at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, said the show was simply running out of storage space on its digital linear tape (DLT) library and direct-attached disk storage from Ciprico Inc., in Plymouth, Minn. So in May, a new linear tape open (LTO)-2 tape library from Exabyte Corp. in Boulder, Colo. and three Xserve RAID disk arrays from Apple Computer Inc. were installed."