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Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Color
Remember that old show, In Living Color? It's the first place I remember seeing Jim Carrey (or "James", as they called him), and it's the first place I don't remember seeing Jennifer Lopez. The show had some outrageously funny moments - and, it turns out, some interesting behind-the-scenes stories as well. The Root has a great "Where Are They Now?" piece up on the various fates of the various show alumni.
Animated
The Animaniacs. The Simpsons. GI Joe. Ducktails. It can only be IGN's list of the Top 100 Animated Series of All Time.
Cartman
For people who have a crass, puerile and childish sense of humour (that'll be me then), Eric Cartman has to be one of the greatest comic creations of our time. Don't agree? Then take a gander at this story at Paste magazine, which lists 10 parallels between the South Park character and the classic Devil's Dictionary.
The Road
Now here's how you start a season: for the first episode of Season 14, Top Gear set out – in an Aston Martin DBS Volante, a Ferrari California and a Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Spyder, of course – to find the world's greatest driving road. They found it in Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains, on the outskirts of Transylvania. Obviously.
The Transfăgărăşan was built in the early 1970s by order of Nicolae Ceauşescu, just in case the Soviet Union ever thought of invading Mother Romania. It took six million kilograms of dynamite to build the road's northern face... because the 1970s were a crazy time.
Here's the Top Gear clip. Turns out the 2010s are a crazy time too.
The Transfăgărăşan was built in the early 1970s by order of Nicolae Ceauşescu, just in case the Soviet Union ever thought of invading Mother Romania. It took six million kilograms of dynamite to build the road's northern face... because the 1970s were a crazy time.
Here's the Top Gear clip. Turns out the 2010s are a crazy time too.
Man
This ad ran during the SuperBowl. I'm not sure I like what it says about the state of modern man. Neither am I sure I can keep a straight face when the faux James Bond music kicks in.
Drivers Wanted
It's a beautiful, poignant work of art. And it's a car commercial. Ultimately, though, this VW Cabrio ad is proof that advertising can actually be beautiful.
Conan The Destroyer
So there's been some excitement at NBC, where Jay Leno's new show isn't working, so they're pushing Leno's show back, meaning that Conan O'Brien's show would have to be moved back to later-than-late at night, making it The Tomorrow Show instead of The Today Show, and plunging the whole network into a PR mess. (Somebody ought to write an encyclopedia entry to explain it all.) (Oh, wait. Someone did.)
Bottom line is this: Conan is going down. But Sugar, he's going down swinging. Knowing that he's being fired, and that his show is being taken off the air, he's doing what everybody else on Earth wishes they could do to their idiot boss.
When he's not outright insulting his employers, he's wasting their money (on a pointless $1,5-million prop, for starters) and getting his old buddies to join him in insulting his employers. Man, I hope I have the same bridge-burning bravado when I get my inevitable marching orders from my job.
Check out the videos here.
Bottom line is this: Conan is going down. But Sugar, he's going down swinging. Knowing that he's being fired, and that his show is being taken off the air, he's doing what everybody else on Earth wishes they could do to their idiot boss.
When he's not outright insulting his employers, he's wasting their money (on a pointless $1,5-million prop, for starters) and getting his old buddies to join him in insulting his employers. Man, I hope I have the same bridge-burning bravado when I get my inevitable marching orders from my job.
Check out the videos here.
Even Better Than The Real Thing
As a nostalgic old geezer, I love me a bit of... y'know... nostalgia. And YouTube, with its never-ending supply of copyright-flouting movie clips, TV recordings and old music videos, never fails to please. Here, for your viewing pleasure and mine, is a clip from the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards show, when Dana Carvey (as Garth from Wayne's World) played drums with U2.
Those were different times.
Those were different times.
24
I was reading New York magazine's list of Obsolete Movie Clichés That Technology Will Never Kill (seriously, when last did you hear an actual record scratch?), and I go redirected to this brilliant skit from CollegeHumor.
It's 24: the never-aired 1994 pilot episode.
It's 24: the never-aired 1994 pilot episode.
TV
The Daily Beast has a great gallery of great US TV talk show moments from 2009. (They give it the marginally less clunky title "The Year In Talk: 2009's 19 Most Pivotal Moments".) It's worth a watch.
Here's my favourite:
Late-Night Hosts Say Goodbye, Hello
It was a year of change on late-night television, too, as comedians played musical chairs: Conan O’Brien said goodbye to Late Night, as Jimmy Fallon stepped in to fill his shoes. Jay Leno bid adieu to The Tonight Show—for his new, beleaguered 10 p.m. show—as Conan stepped in to fill his shoes. Follow that? Here’s the most compelling of these transitions.
Here's my favourite:
Late-Night Hosts Say Goodbye, Hello
It was a year of change on late-night television, too, as comedians played musical chairs: Conan O’Brien said goodbye to Late Night, as Jimmy Fallon stepped in to fill his shoes. Jay Leno bid adieu to The Tonight Show—for his new, beleaguered 10 p.m. show—as Conan stepped in to fill his shoes. Follow that? Here’s the most compelling of these transitions.
Jump The Shark
In case you've been wondering (and, going into Season 3 of Friday Night Lights, I've been wondering myself), Gawker has formulated an equation for When To Quit Watching A TV Show.
Use it. It'll save you a lot of wasted time. (And a lot of frustration at Lost, which lost me in Season 2.)
Use it. It'll save you a lot of wasted time. (And a lot of frustration at Lost, which lost me in Season 2.)
Dance
So You Think You Can Dance is my (current) favourite show on television. Here's why. Check out this gorgeous routine, about a woman's struggle with breast cancer, choreographed by Tyce Diorio:
POTUS
I've been spending/wasting a ton of time on the quiz pages over at mental_floss - mostly because I have their Name All The Presidents of the United States In 8 Minutes quiz totally aced. I'm taking three minutes, tops, to complete the quiz... and it's all thanks to Yakko, Wakko and Dot.
Open Sesame
Sesame Street is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and The Smithsonian has a special online feature up to mark the grand occasion. I'd have settled for Beeker's rendition of Ode To Joy... but I'm easy to please.
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