Happy Holidays

Hey everyone, I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that kinda stuff! I’m really looking forward to having a little time to spend with my family and friends and having to only focus on eating for a week or so. I still have a bunch of running around to do today, and Global has asked me to put together a five minute segment that can be used to fill a hole in their schedule on New Year’s Eve.

So it looks like we have to get that put together and delivered in the next couple of hours now as well, if I want to even see any stuff on television again. It seems like a great way to work my way back into the loop with some people at the network. They are getting lots of emails from fans of the show and it sounds like and I think that is what made the programming exec’s want to contact me about filling this five minute hole they had in their New Year’s Eve schedule.

Who knows what 2005 will bring, but thanks again everyone for all your support in 2004, it sure was an interesting year!

Happy Happy Holidays,

JR

Ever had the feeling...

Have you ever had the feeling that someone has an incredibly sinister plot to sabotage your every move? To trip you up at every turn? To slowly be putting poison into your fake cocoa puffs that you eat every night before you go to bed? They’re not as good as the real cocoa puffs, by the way. I promised everyone in my last blog that I would let you know if they were or not. Anyway, have you ever had that feeling?

I can’t help looking over my shoulder these days a little bit. After three and a half years on the air, last week my show was pulled off the air for reasons that still seem kind of unclear to me. All I know for sure is that a person who has never contacted me before, and therefore remains somewhat anonymous, somehow managed to put enough pressure on the network regarding their personal opinion and issues with the show, that the network decided to pull the show off the air.

Then yesterday, someone, and we don’t know who, hacked into my website and took down the site along with the message board. See, we had created a page on the site that explained why the show wasn’t on the air any more so that people who noticed the show wasn’t on TV Saturday, would know what happened.

People have been making lots of posts on the message board and encouraging fans of the show to email Global so that they will consider putting it back on the air. Fan support seemed to be growing stronger every day and the message board was a means for fans to communicate with each other. We did manage to get the site and board back up yesterday afternoon for a little bit, but it got hacked into again a few hours later.

Then, as I was walking through the mall last night, heading towards the food court I’m thinking about this sinister plot someone has in place to destroy me and make sure I never get this network deal I’ve been working towards all these years. When suddenly, this evil looking woman jumps in front of me! I was about to scream when she said excuse me and quickly walked around me and kept on going.

This morning, my truck wouldn’t start and I could smell gas underneath it. I just had a sip of my morning coffee and it’s cold. Sure, it’s been sitting here for fifteen minutes, but at this point, I gotta expect anything.

I hope we just figure out how to keep the site up and running, so I can keep you all updated on anything else that happens to me over the holidays.

If anyone hears or reads anything suspicious about a plot to sabotage my quest for a network deal, make sure you let me know.

Ten-four! Over and out!

JR

P.S. I promised I would post a song in my last blog - so here it is! It's called "Waikiki, Without Me".

Real Fans, Fake Cocoa Puffs

Just got home from seeing the new Jim Carrey movie. It was okay, I guess. After "Man On The Moon", I became a really big fan of his.

It’s good to have super loyal fans as I’m finding out these days. The support I’ve been getting from fans of the show since it was pulled off the air last week has been incredible. I’ve always appreciated the fans of the show and all of the people who post on the message board, but I’m thinking now that if I ever manage to get JR DIGS back on the air, it will be because of the fans, their actions and all of their support. It will be interesting to see what happens.

It’s been an interesting week that’s for sure. I was supposed to be in Hawaii shooting footage for the new show, but I had to stick around here to deal with all of this stuff, which ended up not having to be dealt with at all. It kind of got handled for me and there wasn’t a whole lot I could really do about it. I guess I should have just gone to Hawaii with Shane. I’m thinking, maybe I’ll head up north to our family cottage for a couple of days. Hawaii, it’s not, and there’s a ton of snow and it’s pretty cold up there right now, but I might stand a better chance at running into Santa up there – and we all know what JR wants for Xmas! But then I guess it’s going to depend on who you ask with regards to whether I’ve been naughty or nice this year.

One thing is for sure – it looks like I’m going to have a little more time these days to update my blog more often. Maybe I’ll even work on writing a little Christmas song and post it here for people to listen to if they want. The other thing I would like to get back to is the website. I really want to give it a new look and add more stuff to it, so it’s a more interesting site to check out. Look for some new video clips in the coming weeks.

You might have noticed that we have added an "Upcoming Appearances" page to the site recently. That will be updated in the next few days as well. I’ve already talked briefly to Rob, who runs the Staircase Theatre in Hamilton, about doing a Q&A kind of thing there. We’ll probably air a new episode on the movie screen, talk a little bit about the show and how I got on the air, as well as how I got taken off the air, and then wrap up the night with some live music and a few laughs.

On February 15th, I’m going to present my first movie of the month at the Staircase Theatre! I get to pick whatever movies I want, and I get a reserved theatre seat to sit in and watch it. The first movie I’m picking is "American Movie". It’s definitely one of my favourite flicks.

Well, I guess I should wrap up here, do some laundry and eat some fake cocoa puffs. They were on sale and I figured they would pretty much taste the same as the real cocoa puffs. I’ll let you all know in my next blog.

Thanks again everyone for all your support these last few days. I look forward to reading all of your very encouraging posts on the message board each day.

Later,

JR

No Invite, No Problem!

I can’t seem to fall asleep just yet, which sucks because I have to be up in the morning for a 9:15 meeting. After flipping through the channels for the last 25 minutes, I decided maybe I should get a new blog on the site. I’ve been so friggin’ overwhelmed lately, I haven’t had time to check out the message board, never mind update my blog as, and I apologize for that.

It’s been a really crazy couple weeks. I was supposed to be in Hawaii all this week shooting footage for the new show, but with all this crap going down right now with the school board and angry parents and threats of legal action, blah blah blah…I had to ditch the trip and stay around here to get things sorted out. Shane still went though. He was pumped. A friend of his went along with him as well, so they are going to shoot some footage without me. I think we might try and do some green screen stuff with it and just pretend like I was there.

There’s got to be some way I can spin this to make it work for us. It’s like the post I read on the board about how, despite the fact that everything is kind of screwed up right now for me, I have still managed to get an okay show on the air each of the last few weeks. Comments like that are really inspiring. It feels good to think that there are people out there who think that way about what I’m doing these days with the show. Let’s face it, The JR DIGS Show may have two more words in the title than it used to have, but it’s still just a stupid little independently produced TV show, without an actual network deal in place, or any budget to speak of.

Earlier tonight I was at the Gemini Awards and I found it hilarious to hear people talking about the lack of funding they have to produce their shows with. At least they were invited to the damn awards show – we had to sneak our way in again this year. Most of the cast of The Trailer Park Boys were living up to their reputations. They were half in the bag and having a pretty good time. They all know about my show and were cool about us videotaping a bunch of stuff with them. I’m hoping to get some of it in the show this week.

I think I’m going to try to get some sleep now, or at least flip through the channels for a few more minutes.

Later,

JR