The Corner Penthouse

Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, also known as G.L.O.W., was a women's professional wrestling promotion that aired in syndication from 1986–1990, with the majority of the action taking place at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. The show was ultra-cheesy, feature colorful (and highly stereotyped) characters and over-the-top comedy sketches. G.L.O.W. has gotten a bit of a revival over the past decade, culminating in a documentary and a scripted Netflix series this Summer starring Alison Brie.

Three volumes of episodes were released on VHS back in the 1980s by Today Home Entertainment, and were subsequently re-released on DVD by Allied Artists in the 2000s. All three DVDs contain the same slideshow and promo bonus features. I will be taking a quick look at all of them, starting with Vol. 1 - Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling - DVD, VHS - which runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. TAG TEAM: Royal Hawaiian & Spanish Red vs. California Doll & Americana
2. TAG TEAM: Sara & Mabel vs. Salt & Pepper
3. TAG TEAM: Hollywood & Vine vs. Tina Ferrari (WWF's Ivory) & Ashley
4. BATTLE FOR THE G.L.O.W. CROWN: Matilda the Hun vs. Tammy Jones

There are two minor portions at the start and end of the program from the original VHS that were edited out of the DVD. (1) Seven seconds of music on a black screen before the first visual. It's the first seven seconds of the song that's already playing as the show on the DVD begins. (2) The INI logo at the very end.

Except for these two minor portions, nothing else was edited out. The F word was used twice and racial slurs were used once (all left intact from the original VHS release).

There are two minor defects that weren't in the VHS: At 21.59 is a slight defect that is not in the original videotape. Also, at 56.16 is a minor edit that is not in the original video tape. During the end credits Tina Ferrari interview, about 21 frames (less than a second) is cut. It sounds like it was done because the audio on the master they used to make the DVD was bad at that spot. Tina's complete line is: "I like a man... that you can have a little control over." The "..." represents a one second pause in her words.


Vol. 2 - The Saga Continues - DVD, VHS - runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. SINGLES: Olympia vs. Jungle Woman (with Nature Boy at ringside)
2. GRUDGE MATCH: Spanish Red vs. Americana
3. TAG TEAM: Corporal Kelly & Attache vs. The Southern Belles Scarlett & Terror
4. TAG TEAM: Heavy Metal Sisters Chain Saw & Spike vs. The Cheerleaders Debbie Debuante & Susie Spirit
5. THE RUSSIAN: Ninotchka vs. Little Feather (with special appearance by Ebony)
6. THE TERRORIST: Palestina (from Syria) vs. Sally, The Farmer's Daughter (from Nebraska)
7. THE HANDICAP, TWO WRESTLERS AGAINST ONE: Hollywood & Vine vs. Mt. Fiji (350 lbs.)
8. SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCES: Jackie Stallone manager of the good girls & Matilda The Hun

The picture is a bit darker than the original videotape, the audio was turned up a bit too loud, and there are faint picture rolls throughout that were not in the tape. All minor video and audio defects were in the original VHS release.


Vol. 3 - Fans Beware - DVD, VHS - runs 58 minutes and features the following matches:

1. TRIPLE FEATURE: Spanish Red & Jungle Woman (with Nature Boy) vs. The Cheerleaders Suzy Spirit & Debbie Debutante (with special appearance by Tina Ferrari) (1 fall, 20 min time limit)
2. TEXAS BAR ROOM BRAWL, ANYTHING GOES: Dallas (The Texan Cowgirl) vs. Ninotchka (The Russian Colonel) (no time limit, no rules, no pin-falls, fighting both in and out of ring)
3. STREET FIGHT, LOSERS CLOTHES COME OFF: California Doll, Farmers Daughter, Tina & Ashley vs. Hollywood & Vine with The Soul Patrol (Envy & Adore from Chicago) (8 ladies in the ring at the same time, $16,000 and champagne to the winning team) (no time limit, no rules, no disqualifications, no pin-falls, weapons?) (see David McLane assaulted and disrobed)
4. SINGLE FEATURE MATCH: Dementia (Mgr: Aunt Kittie) vs. Little Egypt "The Desert Flower"

The following vignettes are also included:

1. G.L.O.W Rap - David McLane & The GLOW Girls
2. The Spanish Kitchen
3. California Dolls - "Points to Ponder"
4. Drs. Fiel and Grope - Gynecology/Plastic Surgery/Psychiatry
5. Asking Ashley
6. Tips From Tina
7. The Farmer's Daughter's Letters Home
8. Easy as K.G.B. with Colonel Ninotchka
9. Card Playing with Matilda the Hun
10. Children of the Night
11. Morning Coffee
12. Mt. Fuji's Dream
13. And Many, Many More

Nothing has been edited out. Everything from the original videotape release is include here.

I bought the Digital Concepts 89379 3.1MP Digital Camera because I needed one solely for taking photos of the items I sell on the internet. I didn't want to spend a lot of money (read: over $100) on a digital camera, so when I saw this at Wal-Mart for $60, and saw that it had a built-in flash, I figured that this would do the trick. Even though it's a cheap camera, I figured that it should be able to handle such a simple and undemanding task as taking photos indoors of various little and big items. Boy was I wrong.

This camera takes VERY POOR picture indoors, even though it has a built-in flash. In fact, the flash makes the pictures worse. Pictures taken with the flash appear all washed out.

Unless you hold the camera incredibly steady, you risk having shaky pictures. Half the photos I took were shaky, even though I held the camera as still and steady as possible. The camera has a hole on the bottom where a tripod can be inserted. I highly suggest you use one, if at all possible.

It consumes battery power at a fast rate. I put new batteries in it and within a few hours it started complaining that the battery was low. When it prompts "Low Battery," it doesn't let you use the flash (how annoying!). It uses 3 AAA batteries, but has no adapter for house current, so you're forced to feed it more batteries. It even uses up battery power when you're not using it at all. I had a set of 3 brand new AAA batteries sitting in it for two weeks, while the camera was just sitting in it's opened packaging. When I went to use it again, first I saw defects in the preview screen, then eventually the camera would keep shutting off as soon as I would turn it on. Thus I was required to put another set of three brand new AAA batteries in it.

It has a 16MB built-in flash memory which requires a constant electric current to store your photos. Should the camera lose power (for instance if the batteries die or are removed), all stored pictures will be lost. Sakar recommends always downloading your photos to your computer as soon as possible to prevent unintentional data loss. I recommend not buying this camera unless you have a SD card or buy one along with the camera (luckily I did). The SD card supercedes the built-in memory, so all photos are saved onto the card instead, where they will not be lost because of the power supply.


The package comes with the camera, instruction manual (which is easy to understand, if somewhat poorly written), drivers disc (with PhoTags software), USB wire (to connect the camera to your computer), and a hand strap. Although the manual tells you first that the PhoTags software is needed to transfer the photos to your computer, if you continue reading you'll learn that it isn't. In fact, you can use the camera without installing PhoTags at all. The driver installation is located on the CD at: \drivers\setup.exe. Once installed, when you connect your camera to your PC, it will appear as another drive on your computer (two drives if you have a SD card in it). Then you can just copy, move, and delete the photos on it from Windows Explorer or whatever way you normally work with your computer files. I don't know if it's just me, but I found that Windows kept reinstalling the drivers every time I connected the camera to it. That got very annoying real quick, especially when once it made me get out my Windows 2000 CD.

You *might* need PhoTags to use the camera as a webcam, but then again, you can probably find some other software on the internet (maybe for free) that will let you do that as well (and maybe even better).

In case you're wondering, PhoTags is a rather useless program to organize photos (to a certain degree), add text and captions to them (which can be turned on and off using "Active Captions" technology - software required on the computers of anyone you send your photos to), make minor corrections (such as red eye removal), and do simple photo print projects (calendars, greetings cards, postcards, etc.). Two of the photo projects are non-existant: Album Creator and Video CD Creator. When you click on either of them, you are taken to the PhoTags website where you are prompted to buy the full version for $10 to add these two features.

Although I didn't expect to get a top-of-the-line digital camera for $60, I did expect to get something that would take decent photos indoors. I guess I'll have to keep looking.

I'm not going to comment on the episodes found on the SpongeBob SquarePants - Sponge Buddies/Nautical Nonsense DVD because almost all of them can be found on the Season 1 & Season 2 box sets, which is how you're better off seeing them (at least they're in order and paired together with the proper companion episodes). Instead I will be focusing on the bonus features. Not the Violent Femmes music video, because that too can be found on the Season 1 box set, but on the cast and crew interviews that make up the rest of the bonus features. I love the interviews and the "in studio" voice recording re-enactments, but I *HATE* how EVERY piece of this great footage is ruined because someone thought it would be a great idea to cover up almost the entire screen with a bubble graphic frame. You can only see the video through a small round part of the middle of your tv screen, and even then it isn't clear as there's a bubble "shine" over it. I'd love for Paramount/Nick to include all of the original, non-bubblefied footage on the season 3 box set, even though most of the episodes are for seasons 1 and 2.

How can this be the "complete" 2nd season when the two alternate versions of "Shanghaied" are missing? Paramount/Viacom/Nick included the Patrick and Squidward ending versions on the "Sea Stories" DVD, but yet left them out as bonus features on this set. I'd like to know why. Double-dipping, I suppose. They've done that with almost all of the 13 (as of this writing) unnecessary individual releases, some of which contain bonus materials not found on the season sets.

Speaking of bonus materials, this set has very little of them, especially when compared to season 1. Since they already have a lot of bonus materials in the vault from the individual releases, it wouldn't have been a lot of trouble to include them in this set. Again, double-dipping, I guess, provides the answer.

Vitamin C's "More" was originally released in 2000 by Elektra Entertainment Group (a division of Warner Music Group). "The Itch" music video on the CD-ROM portion of the disc ("Enhanced CD") is crippled using HyperCD technology. (HyperCD is the brand name for a way of removing a small slice of meta-data from a digital file such that the file is made unreadable. This process is called "encrippling." Only when the "encrippled" file on a computer is linked with the piece of meta-data on a web site can the user view the content.) Unfortunately, the video will NEVER be playable because the website was taken down a long time ago.

HyperCD technology absolutely sucks and would have given me a good reason NOT to buy anymore CDs had the technology not already gone the way of the Dodo.

Let's see, where should I begin...

1. Running HYPERCD.EXE from the main/root directory of the CD installs files to C:\HYPERCD and puts an icon on my desktop without telling me it's doing this, and for no real reason anyway. This is the first instance of my hatred for HyperCD technology. Spyware does this kind of behavior. (I'll let it slide that this menu exe doesn't contain any real content, and is really pointless to have anyway.)

2. "The Itch" music video is located on the CD here: \content\Vc01.hlk. However the "content" directory is set to be hidden by Windows. There's no reason to hide the file like that. People who bought the CD don't have to be treated like pirates, though that's the basic premise for HyperCD technology when used in a manner like this.

3. The HyperCD browser plugin installer is located on the CD here: \SETUP\SETUP.EXE. However, the program runs in an endless loop on my computer. When it starts to run the second time, I quit it.

4. The plugin gets installed for IE (C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\PLUGINS\nphcd32.dll), but not for Mozilla. I had to manually copy/move the plugin to my Mozilla plugins directory. (The installer gives no indication of what the plugin is named or how many files it installs. The HyperCD.com website gave me the file name.)

5. Since I had to manually quit the install program, this of course means that my default browser (Mozilla - which the plugin was not automatically installed to) won't be launched, and I won't be taken to the site through which I can view the video. Thankfully, I found the URL of the website in this file \SETUP\HCDSETUP.INI on the CD. The website is: http://elektra.broadbridge.net/vitamin_c_001/index.html

6. If I try to go to that site, I get a "server not found" error message as that server, much less that page, was taken down long ago. This is why the internet should not be relied upon to provide exclusive content for a physical item. For example, the Jurassic Park DVDs gave you an exclusive "weblink" to online content on the making of the then in-production Jurassic Park 3. Needless to say, that "bonus feature" is non-existent now. Of course, that case is drastically different from this one. In the case of any CD using HyperCD technology, the content actually exists in the CD itself, but is crippled unless viewed from within an online webpage. It's one thing to have a link to content that can't be viewed, it's quite another to have the content itself but not be able to view/hear it.

7. Using the Internet Archive, I was able to get a copy of the files on that page: index.html, all images, and MOST IMPORTANTLY VitaminC_Vc01.hlq (which contains the missing portion of the video file already on the CD itself). Unfortunately, VitaminC_Vc01.hlq is set to *only* work if it's on the original web server (elektra.broadbridge.net). So even having an archived copy on another website or on my own computer won't work (Mozilla reports: "Error in server identifiers(008)").


Thanks to HyperCD technology, it looks like I'm going to be forced to buy the DVD for the movie "Get Over It!" which contains "The Itch" music video as a bonus feature. I shouldn't be forced to buy an additional product, at a cost of $10 more, for something that was advertised as a "bonus feature" of a product I already bought. That is just plain wrong!

By the way, the other content on the Enhanced CD are outdated copies of Java Environment (JRE13I), Netscape 6 (N6SETUP, N6UNINST, SETUP), Real Player 8 (NSRP8), Direct-X 6 (\SETUP\ DXM6PTCH, DXMEDIA), Spinner internet radio service (\SETUP\INSTALL SPINNER FREE), WinAmp music player - with Vitamin C skin (SETUP\INSTALL WINAMP FREE), ICQ Plus 2.05 instant messenger (SETUP\IPLUS205), and AOL 5 (\SETUP\AOL\).

Since Vitamin C's "Vitamin C" CD has been reviewed to death on Amazon (143 reviews as of this writing), I'll just make this short and simple, only adding what little information I can.

Two of the songs have minor cuts at the end.

Track 6 - "Do What You Want To Do" - cuts off at the end as the next track starts.

Track 10 - About Last Night" - end of song fades into track 11 "Fear of Flying."

There's a bonus song which isn't listed in the track listing on the back of the CD case. However, if you buy the CD factory-sealed, there should be an orange sticker on the front with white and yellow-orange text which reads: "Includes the anthem for all friends, for all times Graduation [Friends Forever] and the hits Me, Myself And I and Smile. Bonus Features! Graduation [Friends Forever] (The Student Interview Mix); video and interview footage for your CD-Rom (Enhanced CD)."

So, Track 13 is "Graduation [Friends Forever] (The Student Interview Mix)" (that's the official title).

The Enhanced CD video and interview footage mentioned on the label is for "Smile," though there is one brief clip of Vitamin C singing "Graduation" in a studio with the choir.

I like cartoons and I like novelty albums. Since I also like the Rugrats, I thought I would love Rugrats Holiday Classics. Boy was I wrong.

The background music isn't holiday music, but some lame hip-hop/dance beats that sound like they came from a Casio keyboard or a samples CD ("Tommy's Silent Night" is the only exception).

Some of the songs have religious themes which shouldn't be there. For example, "Toys For The Girls" degenerates from a toy song to a religious song. All of the songs should be about things babies and kids would think about around holiday time, but sung to the melodies of the classic holiday songs. If I wanted to hear the songs with religious themes, I'd listen to an album of the original versions.

Most of the songs have choruses that repeat too often. Although I like the Rugrats voices, listening to them repeat the same dumb verses to the same annoying music several times within a few minutes time, and repeat that twelve times, is too much for me to bear.

BEST SONGS - "Twelve Days of Rugrats" and "Rugrats Chanukah" (honorable mention goes to "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" because I love how Cree performs it as a sort-of rap).

WORST SONG - "Tommy's Silent Night" (hand down winner). You have Tommy singing in baby-speak about baby Jesus backed by the nice traditional "Silent Night" music, which makes this sounds offensive and sacrilegious. To add insult to injury, E.G. Daily is forced to sing off-key in character as Tommy. I know that she can sing this song beautifully if give the original lyrics and the opportunity.

If you want a great Rugrats music CD, get The Rugrats Movie soundtrack (and possibly the Rugrats In Paris soundtrack - I haven't heard it myself). STAY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ONE!

First, the track list for the More Sun Splashin' audio CD.

1.  3:45  The Heat Is On -- Glenn Frey
2.  3:24  Listen To The Music -- The Doobie Brothers
3.  2:43  California Girls -- David Lee Roth
4.  2:53  La Bamba -- Los Lobos
5.  2:30  Groovin' -- The Rascals
6.  3:38  Follow Your Daughter Home -- The Guess Who
7.  4:00  Wild, Wild West -- The Escape Club
8.  2:34  The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) -- Harpers Bizarre
9.  2:38  Summer In The City -- The Lovin' Spoonful
10.  4:10  Freeway Of Love -- Aretha Franklin
11.  4:41  The Tide Is High -- Blondie
12.  3:48  Electric Avenue -- Eddy Grant
13.  3:13  Wonderful World, Beautiful People -- Jimmy Cliff
14.  3:37  Good Vibrations -- The Beach Boys
15.  3:15  Sugar Magnolia -- Grateful Dead
16.  4:03  Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) -- C&C Music Factory
(total time - 54:52)

Sadly, eight of the sixteen songs are cut off at end. These songs are tracks 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15. I know this isn't limited to just my copy because I actually bought a second copy of the album and heard it on that one too. The first Sun Splashin' album wasn't like this (all songs were complete). It's really sad because this is a great collection of songs.

It's great to finally have all of Britney's videos on one DVD. One video is different from a previously released version. "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman" contains different film clips and some different shots than the version on the "Crossroads" DVD. This means that there are, at least, two different versions of this music video. Also the movie clips on this disc's version are squeezed (they were not anamorphically unsqueezed).

Some have complained about not having a 5.1 audio track. Since most (if not all) of the videos were originally created with a stereo audio track, I'm quite happy with what is on the DVD. Better they leave well enough alone, then use the studio recordings of the songs to make a 5.1 mix, and thus ruin the videos by leaving out sound effects and the such (like Sony did on the Billy Joel: The Essential Video Collection DVD).

However, that's not to say that they didn't mess up this DVD in other areas. The menu design has got to be the worst I have ever seen on any DVD. It's very confusing and hard to navigate. No explanation is ever given as to what the key, dice, and clock icons do. Key gives you a rather unhelpful menu explanation, and dice and clock give you a random video (as far as I can tell). Moving the highlight around is more of a chore than it needs to be. You press Up, only to be taken to the left. You press Left, only to be taken up. It's very illogical. To make matters worse, if you linger for more than a few seconds on any menu screen, it changes to another screen, thus losing you your place.

Who's idea was it to present all of the videos in reverse chronological order instead of forward chronological order? I'd rather see the evolution of Britney instead of the devolution. Would it have been that difficult to present an option to view them in either order?

The enhanced "alternate" videos are a great idea in theory, but they would have worked better as standard bonus features. Some can be confusing with prompts placed way too late (prompts are supposed to tell you to switch angles or audio tracks or to press Enter on your remote) and no clear indication of what the "enhanced features" of each video are (sometimes you're left wondering what the heck it is you're watching). The only one, to me, that truly works is "My Prerogative" (the camcorder clips), though that's dampened by the advertising of Sony's Cyber-Shot camera (including branding the website address on the screen).

In case you need more information before you buy, here's a list of what the "alternate" videos contain.

My Prerogative
* ENTER when prompted on film to view it.
* ENTER, LEFT, RIGHT on camcorder to view clips. DOWN to go back to video.

Outrageous
* NON-INTERACTIVE - Unused footage, dance sequence.

Everytime
* ANGLE 1 - Regular video, ENTER when prompted on paparazzi
* ANGLE 2 - Britney sings to camera

Toxic
[video is of Britney clad only is jewels with lyrics places over her "bare" breasts]
* AUDIO 1 - Instrumental
* AUDIO 2 - Regular Song

I'm A Slave 4 U
[ignore all ENTER prompts as they just switch angles or audio]
* AUDIO 1 - Acapella (vocals only)
* AUDIO 2 - Regular Song
* ANGLE 1 - Britney close-up in front of green screen.
* ANGLE 2 - Regular video, then one long uncut master shot.
* ANGLE 3 - Regular video with one clapboard shot.

Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know
* NON-INTERACTIVE - Outtakes from this and other videos edited together, instrumental audio.

Stronger
* NON-INTERACTIVE - Outtakes plus one home video clip, instrumental audio with occassional vocals.

* Oops!...I Did It Again
NON-INTERACTIVE - One long uncut master shot.

(You Drive Me) Crazy
* NON-INTERACTIVE - Double video and audio, left video plays in left audio channel, right video plays in right audio channel, plus outtakes.

...Baby One More Time
[ignore ENTER-UNCUT prompt too]
* ANGLE 1 - Regular Video (with some outtakes?)
* ANGLE 2 - Uncut Master Shots, ENTER-ONE MORE TIME prompt takes you to the hallway uncut master shot.

There are two hidden features (easter eggs) in the "alternate" videos, which I personally found.

-- My Prerogative (Alternate Version): After you press ENTER at the film projector prompt to see the film footage, press ENTER again *while* viewing the film footage to see black & white footage of Britney singing the song while rolling around in the bed (Title 59). There is no ENTER prompt on screen during the film footage, so this singing in bed footage is hidden.

-- Oops!...I Did It Again (Alternate Version): Press ENTER at the start of the video to go to outtakes from the video (Title 88 & 89). There is no ENTER prompt on screen, so the Outtakes are hidden. (There is an Enter prompt on the Outtakes which takes you back to the alternate version.

All of the videos, both regular and alternate, have fantastic video and audio quality, as you would expect from DVD. I did notice that the "Baby One More Time" audio is a bit lower than all the others. I also noticed two defects, which appear in several different DVD players.

-- Me Against The Music (Title 7 & 26) - At 3:16 as Madonna is on the swing singing "Just work your body and let it go," there is one frame of a man within the shot. This frame is a still from the "From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart" video (Title 18 & 37 at 4:02).

-- Crazy (Title 20 & 39) - At 3:10 is a minor freeze or jitter as Britney puts her hand on her head on the lyric "But it feels alright."

Finally, the 160 minutes run time listed on back seems incorrect. Even with all of the bonus features, I don't think it totals 2 hrs 40 mins. I'm very glad to have all of Britney's videos on one DVD, I just wish they did a better job overall.

This has been a very bad week for two of my closest friends as both of their fathers passed away. Jaclyn Anthony lost her father, James Simon, on Sunday March 13th. Doreen Mulman lost her father, Herman Mulman, on Friday March 18th.

My prayers and condolences go out to Jaclyn, Doreen, and their families.