The Burbanked Basics

If this is your first or 104th visit to Burbanked, I figured it might be a good idea to provide you with a quick tour around some of the basic bells and whistles you might notice around the site, and let you know how they function (click the images below to see more detail).

The site’s Featured Article content is always found at the top of the homepage, wider than the rest of the site’s articles, and set off with a grey background. These will more often than not be the site’s newest articles, and it’s also where I tend to write more long-form pieces that sometimes jump to an inside page.

At the top of the right sidebar area you’ll see a feature called The Newest and Snarkiest. I use this space to quickly update the site’s newest items: trailers and other videos; interesting images or new screengrabs; news briefs or other movie-related items. TN&S is the area to check FIRST when you visit Burbanked, because it will always have the most recently-updated, fresh and delicious content on the site. You can also comment on these mini-posts by clicking on the number inside the parentheses at the end of each article.

Just under the Featured Article content, you’ll find a feature box called From the brains of other bloggers… This is a bit in which I remove a sentence or two from one of my favorite bloggers’ recent posts and then jam it into my site, completely removed from its original context. OH, and if you click on the quote, you’ll go to the other blogger’s post and be wildly entertained. I’m a giver that way.

Mid-way down the page in the right-most sidebar, Burbanked’s Action Figure Mood Indicator! reveals the true thoughts, feelings, dreams and aspirations of your favorite movie stars that have been forever immortalized in China-manufactured plastic. Each time you visit Burbanked, a random Action Figure Mood Indicator displays, so feel free to keep refreshing the page until you’ve cycled through them all. You can also click the picture to leave a comment about which one is your favorite or how hilarious this feature isn’t.

Right around the middle of each page, you’ll see Randomly Burbanked. This will be a picture, selected - wow! - randomly from my entire archive of posts. You’ll be able to see that post’s title, the picture’s caption, and you can read the article that the picture is from by clicking on it. It’s a delightful way to find articles from the archive that you might not have seen before, and I’d again suggest that you click on these until your fingers are sore because a new one will come up each time you do.

At the bottom of the middle sidebar - just below the blogrolls - is the Most Comments Slideshow! Here you’ll find 10 posts from my archive that have received the most comments. You can cycle through or pause the slideshow with the controls at the bottom, or simply click on the picture or text to read that entire post. Don’t see your favorite article? Simply leave 89 comments on it and you will!

When you see the Terrible Twos icon to the right of an article’s first paragraph, that tells you that I’m feeling cranky about something. In 2007, Burbanked turned two years old, which means that some particular topics, celebrities, rumors or other pieces of movie news may set off my inner toddler, sending me into a particularly crabby mood. When you see this icon, keep in mind that I should not be held responsible for any attendant insults, sarcasm, fury, irrationality, complete and total meanness, and other forms of verbal brutality contained therein. You can also click the icon to see the other posts in this category.

I do, on occasion, talk about one or all of my three little boys. In the interest of holding onto some smidgen of anonymity for them, I tend to refer to them in these pages as per the following:

In ascending age order: Michael, Sonny and Tom Hagen.

Now this is not to say that my oldest - Tom Hagen - is an orphan who I took in and made my consigliere. Tom Hagen is simply my eldest, every bit my natural son as Michael and Sonny. I’ve chosen his pseudonym simply because 1) he’s the oldest, 2) he’s responsible and dependable and because 3) even in jest, I can’t bring myself to refer to one of my boys as “Fredo”.

Those are the basics! If you get lost or confused, simply contact me and I’ll do my best to help you out. And my hourly rate is only $120.