Category
tv
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humor, tv, video
say hello to iphone 3g
Gotta love The Soup:
“Keeping your calendar up-to-date is a snap. You can go back to the day you spent $600 on the first generation iPhone, then scroll forward to see the day the price was lowered by $200. You can even view pictures of your reaction when you found out you might as well have thrown two hundred dollar bills into a urinal.”
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family, tv, zLife
weekend update
So I finally had a chance to finish season two and the series finale of ‘Extras’ on DVD over the weekend. It’ll never live up to the original Office in my book, but there were plenty of bust-a-gut moments, like this:
“If we were to draw a graph of my process — of my ‘method’ — it would be something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, ACTION! - WIZARD! YOU SHALL NOT PASS! - CUT! Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.”
There’s not a lot else to report on from the weekend. We had a coffee hour with Mark in Dimondale on Saturday that went well, and I was finally able to carve out some time to knock doors for Brian’s campaign as well.
Stef’s stopping by for a visit on Thursday, going home on Friday, and then coming back to Lansing on Saturday, so it’ll be nice to spend some time with my girl this week. Morgan’s last softball game is on Wednesday, so I’ll be going to that as well, but that’s about it (so far) for this week.
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tv
curb: one of the best season finales ever
Stef and I plowed through all ten episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s sixth season over the weekend, and while I still think the third season was probably the series’ best, this was by far the best finale of the bunch:
WARNING: This is the final 2 minutes of the episode, so if you plan on watching this in the future, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Seeing Loretta tell off Susie like that was probably the funniest moment of the entire series. I just hope this isn’t the end for Curb!
One last thing… will somebody please give J.B. Smoove (a.k.a. Leon) his own damn show?!
UPDATE: The HBO S.S. have already yanked these videos from YouTube. So, just for spite, here’s a link to BitTorrent.
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tv, zLife
another christmas idea
10.05.07 | Permalink | 3 Comments
Got
$455.65$304.99 burning a hole in your pocket? Still wondering what to get me for Christmas this year? Look no further than “Star Trek The Next Generation: The Complete Series” on DVD.Come on, Amazon even has free Super Saver Shipping on this bad boy!
“Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.”
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humor, tv
save chairy!
10.04.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments
I hate quoting Best Week Ever two posts in a row, but (a) this is really depressing and (b) I’m feeling much too lazy to actually write anything original this week:
Boingboing directs us to this photo taken a few months ago. It features the sweet-voiced foot reliever from Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Chairy, abandoned in a DUMPSTER. Dirty and wonk-eyed like a stuffed Paris Hilton. No word if she was waiting to be picked up by the garbage collectors, or if the poor thing was scrounging around town for a coupla spare chicken wings to satiate her gigantic plush palate. We also noticed a baby carriage strewn careless nearby. Please, God, do not tell me there is a little hungry stuffed piano stool (Stooly?) inside.
This might be the most depressing thing we’ve ever seen. Are no Playhouse alumni lending this poor piece of furniture a hand? You’re telling me Floory doesn’t have a spare Aerobed to let his former co-star relax on for a few days? Pterry couldn’t let this guy shack up in his nest for a few days? Hell, the King of Cartoons clearly has a spare bedroom in his animated palace! We are OUTRAGED.
Please, if you see Chairy wandering around a dark alley in Brooklyn, wearing fishnets and a sports bra, take the poor girl in. She needs a whisking, and she needs it badly.
SAVE CHAIRY!
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tv
jean-luc picard for president?
Well, aside from being born in La Barre, France (meaning he is not a constitutionally viable candidate), I would fully endorse a Jean-Luc Picard candidacy (from HuffPost):
This week marks the 20th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which charted the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise a century after Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. The Emmy-winning TV series, created under the supervision of Trek mastermind Gene Roddenberry and syndicated on numerous cable channels today, lasted from 1987 to 1994 and served as the launching pad for four feature films.
The French-born, tea-drinking Picard, who popularized the catch phrase “make it so,” was far more of a refined interstellar emissary than a testosterone-oozing brawler — the Tony Blair to George W. Bush’s Kirk, or more fittingly his Zapp Brannigan — but was hardly a pacifist in an emergency. Indeed, Picard was a literate, contemplative and judicious leader, the exact opposite of what America has had so far in the Twenty-First Century.
A handful of satirical Facebook groups nominate Picard for the highest office in the land. One such group declares, “In these trying times, the resolute leadership of Jean-Luc Picard and the masculine facial hair of [first officer] William T. Riker are just what this country needs.” While these groups are farcical in nature, they raise a valid point: the fictional Picard is a greater captain — and better man — than the president of the United States of America for a number of reasons.
Oh, I’m already on board, but Marty Beckerman actually builds a solid case for Capt. Picard…
Diplomacy: Bush invaded Iraq as soon as the reactionary political atmosphere proved conducive; he did not take the time to plan strategies for occupation or exit. However, Picard has a far more cautious approach to foreign policy and greater skepticism of nation-building. “History has proved again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous,” Picard says in the TNG episode “Symbiosis.” Picard criticized “cowboy diplomacy” by name in “Unification,” supposedly the first modern usage of this disparaging phrase.
Freedom and the Rule of Law: In the wake of 9/11 the Bush Administration detained U.S. citizens indefinitely without charges, eavesdropped on citizens’ conversations without warrants, spied on domestic antiwar groups and otherwise subverted the most hallowed tents of the U.S. Constitution. Picard has infinitely more respect for the pillars of Western Civilization. In the TNG episode “The Drumhead,” an alien security breach on the Enterprise unleashes a wave of xenophobia and demands for security crackdowns but Picard has none of it, cautioning that “the path between legitimate suspicion and rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think.” He proclaims, “The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
Equality: While Bush tried to insert a federal anti-gay marriage amendment into the Constitution and has identified homosexuals as threats to American families, Picard is far more open-minded when it comes to changing definitions of identity. In the episode “A Measure of a Man,” a Starfleet cyberneticist orders the dismantling of Data for scientific study; Picard protests this decision but the cyberneticist claims that Data is the property of Starfleet, not a sentient autonomous being. However, in a legal showdown Picard dismantles the cyberneticist’s arguments for Data’s inferiority one by one. “Are we prepared to condemn him, and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery?” Picard asks. “Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life… there it sits.“
Humility: For all of his bravado and back-patting, Bush lacks the self-analysis to alter his decisions when they clash with reality. His stubbornness makes him doctrinaire, insulated and unable to change course. Unlike Bush, Picard shed his delusions of infallibility when he was a young man; after graduating from Starfleet Academy Picard started a brawl that ended with him getting stabbed through the heart and subsequently realizing that he “was no hero, but an undisciplined, opinionated, loud-mouthed young man who was far out of his league; that was a great and painful lesson, and I learned it well.”
According to StarTrek.com, Picard is also obsessed with science — anathema to modern Republicans — and “has no interest in politics.” Indeed, Picard is a superior leader to Bush in every conceivable way aside from being imaginary.
Alas, a Picard candidacy is not in the cards…
But perhaps in some alternate dimension — some transmutation of the time-space continuum, some faraway corner past the Gate of Forever, someplace that isn’t Facebook — Captain Jean-Luc Picard could be elected to lead the free world. If this mirror universe exists, its inhabitants should not hesitate to make it so.
Wait, you thought I was done with this ridiculously nerdy post? How wrong you are.
From Best Week Ever, Picard Speaks Out — No “Next Generation” on Time’s “100 Greatest TV Shows” List???
The Tamarian people have a curious habit of speaking entirely in metaphor to convey specific emotional conditions. To convey a feeling of receptiveness, for instance, a Tamarian might cite the expression “Temba, his arms wide,” recalling a specific past occurrence that evokes the proper emotion. As another example, in the language of the Tamarians, when I saw Time’s 100 Greatest TV Shows list and noticed that the original “Star Trek” was on there but Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn’t, it kind of felt more like that time Temba fell off a 50-story building onto a giant steel, bladed dildo.
In my seven seasons as captain of the Enterprise, I have never seen a crew so furious, so concentratedly irate over a single issue than when they all saw this so-called “list.” Worf took it as a dishonorable stain on his Klingon heritage and has already sworn vengeance on the magazine’s editors and their fathers. Riker issued an immediate Red Alert, though I believe he may have already been in the process of doing that and just happened to see the list incidentally. Even Data yelled “it’s total bullsh*t” when he saw original “Star Trek” on there, and he isn’t even programmed with the ability to swear, or to use contractions.
As a Federation officer, I am inherently mindful of other individuals’ opinions and backgrounds, and would certainly not tell a writer for Time to ignore a tv show’s historical implications any more than I would tell a Ferengi to not say “profitable” three times per sentence. But that being said, come the f*ck on, Time Magazine, how could you possibly think the original Star Trek was better than Next Generation??
Captain Kirk? Do you think he would have been so dashing to blue alien chicks if they had the ability to see his Priceline.com, “Show Me The Money” failure of a cameo-based future? I do one movie every two years and still have more than enough money for my rotating model girlfriends to binge on. The only time Kirk was ever fit to say “make it so” was when his agent told him that the Tulsa Comic Book Convention would pay for his meals.
Spock? What a deep character. Sometimes things are logical, sometimes they’re not logical — you just never can predict what that crazy half-Vulcan’s gonna say! Riker has traveled between dimensions, he’s an ace poker player, he plays a mean trombone, and he banged Counselor Troi in a hot tub; Spock couldn’t get laid in his own Holodeck program. He also directed “Three Men and a Baby“. Very logical career choice there, Keebler.
See? Even more reason for Picard to run for president. He’s a candidate who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.
Here he really lets the original ST crew have it:
Oh, you think your show was so culturally progressive because you had a black female as a communications officer? We had the f**king slave from “Roots” as our Lead Engineer!! You had a Russian in your crew even though the show took place during the Cold War?? Well we had a robot on our bridge even though the show took place right around the time “Terminator 2? came out. You had like three non-WASPs in your crew of a billion people — what do you want, a Tribble?
Yep, it’s hard to get more culturally diverse than having Kunta Kinte on your crew.
But does something coming before something else automatically make it a “better” television show? Harry Nilsson came before The Beatles, Bleach came before Nevermind, Temple of Doom came before Last Crusade, James Buchanan came before Abraham Lincoln, leeches came before Penicillin – all I’m saying is, I believe Next Generation got a raw deal, and I fully plan on going back through a temporal vortex, changing history so that Next Generation became the highest rated show in the history of television, then going back to 2007 and having our entertaining and philosophically provoking accomplishments recognized in a more accurate, updated Time Magazine list.
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