Astonishing. The puppeteer behind Alf (Paul Fusco) stays in character through the bloopers and is generally pretty funny and quick-witted.
Then, he drops the N-bomb.
Like, a bunch.
Some commenters on BadTVBlog say that he is probably riffing on a contemporary episode of L.A. Law, but it’s still pretty startling thing to hear.
Ah, Alf, I’ll never look at you the same way again. Also, you cannot eat my cat.
(via BadTVBlog)
I am thrilled to learn that the BBC is creating a TV show around the Douglas Adams character of Dirk Gently. After I whipped my way through Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series in my youth, I craved more, so I picked up “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” and its sequel “Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.” It’s been years since I read them, but I remember them being funny in Adams’ characteristic way, although different from the Hitchhiker’s Guide stuff.
I’m looking forward to the TV show!
(via Boing Boing)
As the YouTube description says, “In 1980, the Star Trek Winnipeg organization produced their own public access show, discussing Star Trek and other science fiction.”
It’s like a pre-Internet vlog, discussing their fanzine and the other things that club does.
(via Tyler Shipley on Facebook)
Going to admit it: I’m a bit of a Mad Men junkie. Amy and I are solid fans. I even bought a vintage suit and dressed up to have a party for the Season 4 premiere.
So I’m going to eat up the Rolling Stone story (even if they kind of botched the Photoshoppery on the cover). Best of all was flipping through the behind-the-scenes photos they have in their online slideshow. They’re printed in grainy black-and-white for a vintage feel, and they often just show “Oh, a Mad Men moment, but with cameras over their shoulders.”
But there are a couple of really fun anachronisms — like Ken Cosgrove and Harry Crane checking out a Mac laptop, above. I love the awed expression on actor Rich Sommer’s face. That’s precisely what Harry Crane would look like if a 2010 laptop suddenly appeared in his office.
Here’s another one, of Don Draper and his iPhone:
This is great, and I love it:
Astute Firefly lovers will note that there is no love for Dr. Simon in the opening credits. That made me sad — very sad. Until, that is, I found out that’s because there is a spin-off show!
(from io9)
I’ve had my share of embarrassing moments — some of them even as a reporter. Mostly, for me, it’s been when a long interview has droned on and on, and I’ve suddenly been caught daydreaming, unsure how the sentence just ended, with someone staring at me, expectantly waiting for an astute followup question.
Oh, there have been a few headline, um, foul-ups. But at least it’s never been like this:
Man, you have to feel for the guy. He’s really trying!
I like that he’s the one who posted this video, too.
Keeping in with the now-we’re-Canadian idea, here’s the opening credits from a Canuck television classic:
I remember being just the right age, when The Beachcombers were on, to not really get everything that happened in the plot, and also to be disappointed every time my favourite part of the credits wasn’t actually in the show.
Ahhh, Relic.
(thanks, Colin)
by Amy Breen
This past Sunday, Lost, my favourite show of all time, ended. And in true Lost form, in ended with more questions than answers.
The guy in the video is a little peeved at all the unanswered question, and he details some of those questions from the past six seasons. Some of his points are legit, like why is Aaron special and why could only Claire raise him, but others don’t really matter, or had answers that were hinted at (this guy probably could have benefited from visiting a message board or two).
I’m not so upset with the lack of answers though, because it leaves things open for debate. Because when we do get answers (what’s the whispers? Dead souls on the island) people cry “lame!”
So I was at the gym earlier today, and they have TVs on the treadmills, but the TV on my treadmill had a very limited set of non-static channels, so I ended up watching professional darts.
I think darts is kind of where bowling was, maybe a decade ago, except crossed with poker. There are some big-money tournaments, and some large crowds, but the crowd I was watching seemed dominated by trashy-looking girls with gigantic plastic cups of beer.
And the darts players looked like they had stepped out of stereotypical central casting. Burly men with tattoos and greasy slicked-back hair dominated, and the open-chested bowling shirt seemed like it was a uniform.
Then, there was this guy: Simon Whitlock. His hair was so astonishing that I actually called Amy over from the stretching room to see it.
An Aussie, apparently Whitlock is a bit of a darts superstar. Here’s a video that recaps a recent, epic championship battle between him and Phil Taylor. Whitlock lost, but check out the hair (he’s the guy in the black and yellow):
See what I mean?
No disrespect intended, but it’s like darts is this sub-culture that is developing an odd fashion sense completely removed from the rest of the world.
Amy has been watching a new NBC show called “Community” for the past little while, online, and she finally agreed to start from the start with me, and let me catch up.
It is ridiculously funny. Most of it is silly humour, but there are a staggering amount of pop-culture references. And, fair warning, it’s a modern sitcom, so it’s borderline offensive, but it’s so sweetly done that it’s completely inoffensive in the end. Actually, each character is offensive in a specific way, which all the other characters call him or her out for, while each being offensive in their own ways. It’s like an offensive, hilarious merry-go-round.
Check out this clip, which ecapsulates my argument:
Of course, you can’t get the full flavour of the show in just one clip, so definitely try to catch it, um, on network television? Geez, I can’t believe I just typed that — why don’t you just send a Pony Express telegraph requesting the daguerreotype?
I watch most of my TV on this new station called “Bit Torrent.” Or I buy the DVDs.
I find Charlie Booker’s column in the Guardian to be somewhat hit-or-miss, but this send-up of television news reports is full-on hit. (Well, it’s maybe a little long — but so are most television news reports.)
It reminds me of a news story I read in the (I think) New York Times a few years ago, which did the same thing, but in text. Just try Googling it, though. I can’t find it for the life of me.
Amy and I got the first-season DVDs for Fringe for Christmas and we’ve been working our way through all the episodes.
Like Mad Men (which we’re also watching on DVD), Fringe is a show where we can watch the opening credits every episode — they’re short, they’re entertaining, and we like the theme music. They also aren’t made up of clips from other episodes.
In our opinion, that’s one of the marks of a quality show.
One of the other things I’ve appreciated about Fringe on DVD is that is has glyphs that appear when the commercial breaks would have been, when it was broadcast. Frankly, I’m glad to not have to fast-forward or mute the TV during actual commercials, but the breaks do provide an important dramatic structure to many shows, and I’m glad that Fringe had a way to preserve that.
Now I find out that the glyphs are actually a code! Cool!
There’s plenty of work being done online to crack the code (it’s not hard, but it’s not obvious). Here’s a cheat sheet:
Note that each glyph has a mirror image, and there are several possibilities for the location of the glowing yellow dot that accompanies it. Not every letter in the alphabet has been used yet.
Cool!
(Thanks to Mike at Atomic Robot)
Cross your fingers for this pilot episode to turn into a full new television comedy series.
I made the mistake of starting to watch this at work — but had to bite my knuckles to stop myself from laughing out loud. Shot as a one-off for a Comedy Showcase in the UK, “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret” reunites “Arrested Development’ stars Will Arnett and David Cross in a show about an American executive mistakenly sent to England to sell energy drinks.
It’s a fish-out-of-water scenario, but taken to hilarious extremes. And Spike Jonze is in it, too!
Here, in three parts, is the full ep:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Many thanks to lonerboner for posting them to YouTube.
I prefer reading my own books, and maybe discussing them with a few friends, and I suppose I’d watch the odd author interview, but I never thought I’d be interested in a public access show about books.
Not until I saw this one. Author interviews don’t get any odder than this:
