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Another great rock band from Japan are the Ulfuls, and they recently posted a new song, Sporty Party, that I really like. See all the athletic gear folks are wearing in this video? They recorded this as the ASICS “training ware” campaign song, which lead me to believe it might be a commercial. When I did a bit of research, it turned out the campaign was to enter a contest in which you had to answer questions on a survey. They will pull the names of 20 folks who entered and give them each a pair of premium Ulfuls live tour tickets, with a choice of venue of either Tokyo or Osaka. The contest started yesterday and runs until September 18th, so if you live near Japan or are traveling there soon and want to enter the contest go to the Sporty Party Campaign web site and fill out your entry. The tour will be recorded as part of their “Ulfuls tour 2015 Bontsubiatsuatsu (Live House ed)” release coming out later this year. The song Sporty Party will be on their new album Bonn Zwi Wai Wai being released on September 9th.

Previous Ulfuls posts: Ulfuls with Muppets, Ulfuls

In honor of the 5oth anniversary, the folks at Future Publishing are hosting a competition for AudioGO, formerly BBC Audiobooks, and they are giving away 50 Doctor Who audio presentations, 25 CDs and 25 digital downloads. These are actually Audiobooks, with a single person reading a novelization, Radio Plays, with a full cast, sound effects, interlude music, and the whole nine yards, Soundtracks from the original TV series with narration to fill in the missing visuals, and several other formats. Some of the soundtracks are from episodes that have only survived in audio form, with the full original cast. They have literally hundreds of them, they have been doing Doctor Who audio stories from the beginning and are still cranking them out. To get and idea what kind of things they involve, you can download the free sampler and listen to 45 minutes worth of excerpts from all the different kinds of programs they produce. The only bad news for this contest is it is only open to residents of the UK (if I was reading the rules correctly), but even if you don’t live there you should grab the free sampler and check out some of the amazing stories you can collect.

A quite tasty series of givaways centering around the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary have begun, and you can join in over at BBC America’s Anglophenia site. This week’s entry runs until midnight Saturday, the 8th of December; they are looking for your favorite quote from the new season seven opening episode, Asylum of the Daleks. But just giving them the quote isn’t what helps you win; you have to tell them WHY it was your favorite quote, and looking at the answers already posted, it looks like a very stiff conpetition indeed. The prizes are itunes downloads and bragging rights, and this weeks winner gets the Best of Christmas Specials program; good luck!

Today, March 22nd, is Talk Like William Shatner day because it is the birthday of both William Shatner and James T. Kirk. In honor of the event the folks at Think Geek have a Shatner Mask in PDF format they invite you to download for free, print out, wear in public, and take a picture to send them (work safe only, please). They have various Star Trek goodies they are giving away, you can see the prize list and the rules on that page.

Those of you who watched the BBC America presentation on Christmas Day of Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol probably noticed an add for Where’s The Tardis. If you didn’t follow up on it, you should have, because it is a contest with prizes that include a private Doctor Who screening event in September and over 100 Doctor Who DVDs. Whether you win or not though the fun bit for me is stated right in the rules where it says you have full permission to build your own anatomically correct Tardis and display it in public. In fact, it is a requirement, since you have to submit pictures or video of your Tardis located in interesting but legal public places. They also want at least three videos of you creating your Tardis, and the contest will be judged on four points:

1) Most Original Design of the Tardis
2) Most Creative use of Materials
3) Most Creative Placement in a Public Location
4) Most Facebook Likes on wheresthetardis.com

I am obviously not going to win, since I don’t have a Facebook account, but that will not stop me from entering. You should do the same; the contest is now open (it started when the Christmas Doctor Who episode aired), and they will be accepting entries until May 15th 2011 at 11:59PM ET. Good luck to all of us, and if you win, I am willing to travel to be in the audience for the private screening event!

BTW, do you suppose the private screening event in the US has anything to do with the fact that some of the new Who season, not to mention some new Torchwood episodes, will take place in America?

WB is doing a Supernatural Sweepstakes giveaway as a tie-in with today’s release of the season 4 DVD and the rapidly approaching start of season 5. You can grab the official rules here, but the short version is you become a WB Insider Rewards Member, bounce around the site downloading freebies and earning reward points. That gets your first entry; you can submit another entry each day of the sweepstakes period (but only one per day) by logging back onto the site and submitting a sweepstakes form. You have from now to 2Oct09 to get your forms in; thanks to SF Universe for the heads up on this one. Did I mention the prises include props that have appeared in the show?