Halloween Skins are officially here!

Hopefully this settles all the "Swaping Halloween Skins" controversy (at least until it's a subplot on next seasons' Degrassi....) The Halloween Skins are now available to everyone when they go to customize their avatars.

It's always so fun to see what people can come up with on their avatars this time of year. Hopefully we'll get some new Halloween swag in the Avi Mall to play with too. Until then I'll keep trying to make my avi look cross-eyed.

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I think I figured out what happened to the computers at TeenNick!

Those martians are trouble with technology. Let's just hope they didn't call Super Grover for Tech Support.

TV Show Rundown

Vampire Diaries
Commercial Impressions: Wow, Vampire trend - how original. And the two guys are going to fight over the girl - You know, I'm surprised this plot lines isn't used all the time because this happens to me all the time. I'm sure Seventeen magazine gets thousands of letters from girls asking for help with 2 really attractive guys literally fighting over them. [Insert eyeroll here]
My take: This could be interesting. Elana's parents being dead gives her character some interesting depth. I like her best friend being psychic. I'm still having trouble staying interested in the show, but I kind of want to keep trying. If nothing else I feel obligated to support Degrassi actors when they go off to the big scary Lala land world.
Ratings: Vampire Diaries has the best ratings on The CW, the show's probably safe.

Melrose Place
Commercial Impressions: Ok, dead person. Sex. (Of course) Blackmail. Interesting. Prostitution. Oh, good lord, what dramatic element did they not cover here? [Insert dramatic montage] Ok, that's kind of over the top. Fun!
My take: The show was fun. I want to like it, but I'm really not drawn in to keep caring about it. I don't recall being given a reason to care about the lady that was murdered. It seems like they just showed how bitchy she was then killed her off - probably not the best idea when there's an underlying story line to find her murderer. I get the feeling that just when I start to like a character on this show I will then be shown that they've really done many things that would then make me hate them.
Ratings: Majorly sucking. Especially since the show came on after 90210, it was expected to do better. TV by the Numbers has the show on their "Likely to be canceled by May 2010" list.

90210

My take: I only got to watch about half of the first season (before the CW freaked cause their ratings were majorly sucking and they decided pulling all their episodes off the internet was a good idea. This, obviously backfired on them.) I just wish the show weren't so easy to make fun of. Some of the writing seems sort of realistic, (as in I could see teens saying something similar,) but when it's actually said - it just sounds awkward. For me, I think I'll wait a little while then marathon the episodes when they break in December. I think it'll be more fun that way.
Ratings: Not as good as they were last year, but pretty solid.

America's Next Top Model
My take: Seemed like a typical season. But after seeing 2 episodes, I see why I usually just waited for the marathons on VH1.  I've never been super into ANTM, and I don't watch much reality TV, but this season just seems absurdly over the top and badly scripted. (By which I mean, they're editing/scripting cheesy or ridiculously dramatic elements into the show. Particularly when they don't need to.)If I want to see some top model with insane drama I'd watch Australia's Next Top model - they keep getting in trouble for the way the contestants/hosts behave and sometimes their episodes are uncensored. (Bonus, I learned a ton of new insults and can occasionally say something in an Australian accent after watching a few seasons.)
Ratings: Not super great but, they seem to hold on to the ratings with women viewers. ANTM seems to be pretty solid.

Glee
Commercial Impressions:
When I first saw commercials for the Pilot last spring, My first thought was "Oh great, someone new is tying to latch onto the whole high school musical trend of crappy programming to make ridiculous amounts of money. Lame."
My take: It showed up as a free download on iTunes, and who can resist a free download on iTunes? I honestly ended up liking it. (Even though that was kind of annoying because even if the show was good, it probably got picked up in major part because of the would High School Musical trend that I find annoying.) But hating it simply because it's similar to HSM is probably just as bad as loving it solely because it reminds you of HSM. So after all of that, Glee is probably one of the best new teen-oriented shows this season. It's raunchy, hilarious, and has it's moments where the characters are painfully human. I'd give it a gold star.
Ratings: Awesome. It's been pulling in big numbers, critics like it, I've noticed it usually becomes the top trending topic on twitter on Wednesday nights - Glee seems to make everyone happy.  (I pun.)

What are these "ratings" and why do that matter? "Ratings:" refers to how many viewers the show has. They're important for companies to keep track of. They can involve specific stuff like age group or sex of the viewers. Figurig this stuff out helps advertises know when and where they want their ads to run. TV Networks always want their ratings to be high so they have not only more viewers - but more companies wanting to buy up ad time. Ratings don't always mean a show will be renewed or canceled, but they play a pretty big part in the question. I recommend a site called TV by the Numbers to keep track of ratings or just check up on how your favorite shows are doing. They do a pretty good job of explaining ratings and what's good/bad for different shows.
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Less Beautiful Life, More Glee

Looks like The Beautiful Life:TBL  has been canceled. Sad, but I never really got around to watching it so I'm not too heartbroken about it.

In happier news, Glee is going to have a full season. They originally ordered 13 episodes to be made and are now asking for 9 more.

New show on the CW

Read about it here.

How to Get Secret Avatars on TeenNick.com

First off, if you have no clue what a Secret Avatar is - I'll direct you to TeenNick's FAQ.

Now, the easiest way to get Secret Avatars -
Play Rank. A Lot. For a while.
Secret Avatars are found the same way creds are, (through activeness on the site) but they usually require more time to get them. (You'll know you've found one when you see the blue box pop up in the same place creds show up). Sometimes this can depend on how rare the Secret Avis are, occasionally you'll get some of the common ones when you're doing regular stuff on TeenNick.com, but unless you regularly spend a ton of time on the site, you might need to put a little more effort into getting some of the more rare ones. (Playing Rank is the easiest & fastest way to do so) If you can manage to set up a laptop where you're sort of doing homework and clicking on Rank with your toe - that can work. Plus it'll exercise your toe. Switch the rank subjects if you start to get bored. (Note: Secret Avatars aren't found in any particular spot, going to a certain page will not make them show up - going though a lot of pages will.)
Keep the volume turned up to hear the Creds chime. Usually you tend to get a ton of creds when all you want is Secret Avatars. Which can be awesome, though you can always occasionally ignore them if you wanted.
If you do find one and it doesn't show up in your collection right away - don't freak. They can usually take a few minutes or even an hour to show up (especially with re-released older Secret Avis,) but they will show up eventually.
That being said, make sure to regularly check your Secret Avatar collection, sometimes we find them and don't realize it. (You can see your avatar collection by going to your main profile page and clicking "View Secret Avatars" under your full body avatar.)

If you get tired of all the Ranking - take a break and take some quizzes. Some have popped up that give away Secret Avatars like this one about Beyond the Break! (You do have to get all of the answers correct, but you can redo it until you do.)

 Don't forget -  Activeness really just means that you're going through pages on the website, so you can still find Secret Avatars while reading the Message Boards, looking at the @TeenNick blog, playing games, reading articles, checking out peoples' profiles and pretty much anything you'd regularly do.

Here are lists of Secret Avatars as compiled by The-Seth. (Who we still miss.)
Degrassi
South of Nowhere
Instant Star
Beyond the Break
Radio Free Roscoe
Moesha
Girls vs. Boys
Dawson's Creek
Other (Halloween, O'Grady, Daria, Best Friends' Date, Miracles Boys, Whistler)

We kind of kickass

Here's an article from USA Today about how Millennials (aka people born between 1982 and 2000) are very civic minded. As in, we like volunteering and all around helping other people.

“Other generations were reared to be more individualistic, This civic generation has a willingness to put aside some of their own personal advancement to improve society." - Michael Hais

Read the article here.

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