Monday, April 16, 2007

 

First Embedded Videos (Huzzah!)

In celebration of this technical milestone, let me introduce you to the rock goddess that is my wife, Julie, fronting her band of yore, Jerk Alert.

First, (I’m a) Werewolf, which is true:

Click To Play

Next, a cover of GG Allin and the Jabbers’ Don’t Talk to Me, with special guest vocals by Jimmy from Sweden. Video is after the intro.

Click To Play

Did I mention she married me? I want a time machine so I can go back in time and show these to my 13-yr. old self to let him know everything’s going to be ok.

(h/t Francisco Daum, who I think took the videos. Thanks!)

Labels: linkage, music, true confessions, tv

posted by Dan 4:45 PM
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

 

Blasphemy

You might have missed this news on the big websites. Some very bright bulbs disproved evolution. No really. There’s video (h/t Brian Flemming).

All I know is, when you misunderstand the nature of peanut butter and bananas, you misunderstand The King. And that I will not stand for.

Labels: linkage, news, religion, tv

posted by Dan 5:21 PM
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Monday, February 19, 2007

 

Kicking Unfunny

I know unfunny. Believe me. (Shut Up.) And so far, the Fox Topical Comedy Ointment for Conservatives -- The Half-Hour News Hour -- looks to contain vast amounts of ethyl dyglicinotfunny. The point seems fairly obvious: as much as conservative media critics like to decry the "liberal agenda" of The Daily Show et al., in truth the only ideology driving comedians is to get laughs. All else is secondary. When ideology takes the driver's seat, your comedy Cadillac ends up in a ditch.

But as I'm no expert, let me send you to this excellent kung-fu monkey analysis of why the show is unfunny. I will say that most comedy shows take time to find their legs, and HHNH could find them yet.

Put Limbaugh back on painkillers. That would be a laff riot.

(h/t Joshua James)

Labels: tv

posted by Dan 11:41 AM
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Thursday, February 15, 2007

 

Prime Time at My House

(Scene: My living room.)

TV:
Assigned to supervise a burgeoning civilian refugee camp housed on the Galactica's starboard hangar deck, Capt. Karl Agathon faces a restive population, including many Sagittarons. Considered insular and backward by their fellow Colonial citizens, the Sagittarons are used to discrimination — and to fighting back. Worse, the civilian doctor overseeing the refugees, Dr. Mike Robert diagnoses a number of the Sagittarons with Mellorak sickness . The disease is curable if it's treated within 48 hours. Untreated, it's fatal — and the Sagittarons don't believe in medical care.

ME:
Sorry, TV. Did you say something? My mind was elsewhere. Just got home from the job, after watching the kid, after shoveling snow. Where does the day go? God and I’ve only spent two hours this week writing. I’ll never get anything done at that rate. Sorry, TV, you have my attention now. You were saying something about Sagi-trons?

TV:
A power play ensues between Jack and "The Others" as Juliet's future hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, Kate, Sawyer and Karl continue on their journey away from "Alcatraz."

ME:
I didn’t really get any of that, TV. I was trying to follow you but then I had to cook dinner and fix the plastic cover on my kid’s window and track down where the HELL this credit card bill came from. Is this about that show Lost? I’ve been meaning to get to that, the first season DVD has been sitting on top of my DVD player for three months now. I did catch the first episode. Maybe I’ll just jump in on season three, I’m sure I can pick it up quickly, right?

TV:
2:05 P.M. Morris is brought into CTU. Chloe rushes to him, but he is embarrassed and refuses to respond. Jack enters CTU for the first time in almost two years. Faces he doesn’t recognize stare back at him. Buchanan lets him know that they believe that Gredenko is aiding Fayed.

ME:
Okay you obviously can’t take a hint, TV. Would you just dial yourself to SHUT UP, please. I’m trying to change one daughter’s diapers and give the other one a bath. CRAP I MIXED THEM UP AGAIN. Look TV, I just can’t be bothered with all your comings and goings. If you can’t speak to me in Perry Mason-sized, repetitive installments, I’m not going to listen. Speaking of which, do you carry Perry Mason on any of your hundred billion channels? There we go. Maybe poor Hamilton Burger will catch a break this time.

Labels: true confessions, tv

posted by Dan 5:59 PM
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 

You Can't Do That On Public Television

If you want to be in children’s television, never hold anything remotely resembling an opinion. Certainly don’t make an obscure internet parody about said opinion. You could lose your job as host of “The Good Night Show,” as Melanie Martinez did, detailed in this interview.

Ms. Martinez made internet movies that mock abstinence-only education. She was fired when executives “discovered” this egregious left-winging on her part. I’m interested in kids TV, so I guess that means I’ll have to disavow knowledge of...everybody I know...when I get my gig on Veggie Tales. But Ms. Martinez, God bless her freakishly sprightly heart, sticks to her guns. She didn’t play the “I was young and naïve” card, which might have saved her job.

Here’s what I can’t figure out: the people who hired Ms. Martinez were too high on ‘ludes to check her resume for this tidbit? (Martinez says it was always on her resume, PBS disputes this, I don’t believe them.) And when exec Paula Kerger dumped Martinez because she isn’t “really representative of PBS and Sesame and kids' entertainment” (LA Times – sorry, no link) did she consider that a substantial percentage of her creative talent will also have credits that might make a few blue noses sniff? Will she fire them as well?

And are those blue noses really afraid for the kids, as they so often claim? I sometimes suspect that these contretemps boil down to the urge to deny incomes to those we disagree with. Children provide nice cover for that impulse. Ms. Martinez has enough talent to find work elsewhere, but I wonder if the hounds would continue to pursue her if they could think of a convenient excuse.

But let me take Kerger’s statement as true: Ms. Martinez's public satire of abstinence-only education makes her unfit to host a kids program. Enough viewers agree, or at least those that agree are organized enough to give Kerger headaches. Could she be right? If I were to discover that Dora the Explorer is voiced by an actress that writes pamphlets that Eisenhower was a Communist, would I start a letter-writing campaign to get her fired? What if Carroll Spinney (Big Bird) had a website that voiced a nostalgia for Antebellum plantation life?

I would say no, I wouldn't try to get them fired. BUT BEFORE YOU GET OUT THE LIAR STICK. I would be concerned that the voice of Dora belongs to the Birch society, and that Carroll has a few hoods in the closet. It's those larger associations that would set off the alarms. Could this be the real concern of Kerger and those blue-nosed concerned viewers, what is “unrepresentative of PBS”: that Ms. Martinez might belong to Planned Parenthood or the WWP, or give interviews on left-slanted blogs with bird-throwing mudflap girls? In other words, is it Melanie’s opinion that angered Kerger? Or is it the gang Melanie runs with?

And is it right to fire people based on that anger?

I wonder if Kerger is doling out the P.R. jive. She’s a career fundraiser and knows what raised Cain must be disavowed, whether or not she agrees. And I see she worked for the Metropolitan Opera and UNICEF, and those associations alone, with East Coast intellectuals and bleeding-heart Internationalists, ought to nix her from children’s TV that is palatable to Concerned Parents. Better watch out, Ms. Kerger, they might come for you someday.

The funny part of all this is: the kids will never know why their TV friend vanished until years later. And when they find out, most of them will probably think she’s even cooler, especially if it makes mom and dad angry.

(side note on the interview: What’s up with the weird dig at Paul Reubens? Yes, he still has a career after the Florida thing, but his bread-and-butter Pee-Wee was ruined, his syndicated show was dropped, he was unable to show his face in children’s television ever again, and he continues to be hounded by the sex police. Ms. Martinez, on the other hand, has turned down offers to return to Children’s TV. If there’s any double standard here, I think it’s a straight/gay one.)

Labels: tv

posted by Dan 12:07 PM
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Friday, September 29, 2006

 

To Cheer Us All Up

Via this stranger, let's remember that some people have it really bad. Like Grover.

Labels: tv

posted by Dan 1:37 PM
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Friday, April 21, 2006

 

Guilty Pleasure Friday

Thank the stars, George and Isaac have handed me a topic on a silver platter…what is my guilty pleasure? On TV, not the leather thing.

My TV habits are odd, since I’ve got no time for it. No adult should expose themselves to the amount of Pre-K-Noggin-Nick Jr. with which I bathe my gray matter. But that’s for the school, and the kid, and hopefully the future work, so it’s not really guilty or pleasurable. Other than that, there’s one show my wife and I don’t miss, and I’m particularly ashamed of it considering I’m a writer. It’s not as geeky-cool as Isaac’s penchant for Battlestar Galactica, and George’s admission to a penchant for House is like a confession from William Safire to owning the DVD of I, Claudius. Frankly, I crush these two poindexters when it comes to embarrassing confessions. I expect my medal forthwith.

My guilty pleasure is a reality show. This genre is tumahamongst writers, so I may have my pen taken away. Every Wednesday at ten, my wife and I make sure child is tucked in, so as not to miss Top Chef. Which is really only a substitute for our true favorite, Project Runway. I’m taken with it primarily because it affords me the opportunity to watch creative people suffer. That is a sick delight. But every time I see one of those poor dopes sweating over a sauce or hemming a skirt, and the work isn’t coming together, it’s going to taste awful or hang like a potato sack, and time’s running out, how do I salvage this so I don’t look like a complete donkey bottom OH HELP OH LORD…I watch that panic with merriment. Because it isn’t me.

I also get a perverse thrill out of watching the producers manipulate the show to create a maximum opportunity for drama, suggesting that this reality is not reality because reality is tough to cut to commercial on. The “challenges” (I use scare quotes because they really should be called “readymade disasters”) are designed to exert maximum cruelty upon the contestants. Each week brings illogical surprise twists, interviews designed to evoke the uglier statements possible, and judges that take a sadistic delight in pitting contestants against one another. As the fur flies, I don’t imagine what I would do, were I in the contestants position. I imagine what I would do, were I in the producers situation. “Steve looks like he’s about to crack. What can we do to make him cry?” “Could we spill a bit of water near the stove? How bad would the shock be? I don’t want to kill them…I don’t think…”

Doesn’t speak well of my moral state.

Labels: meme tags, tv

posted by Dan 12:27 PM
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