This makes me chuckle everytime. It’s not that special of an idea on paper, but everything about the commercial is done right and the actors play it perfectly and that makes something average in to something funny.
Archive for category TV
If you read this little ol’ blog o’ mine, you probably have some sense of the downward spiral back into a mild interest in pro wrestling. It started early in 2009 when my son (now at just the right age for such shenanigans) began showing a passing interest when he’d catch WWE on TV. We decided on a whim to buy Wrestlemania in April and then used some connections to score freebie tickets to a Smackdown taping in May. That was all it took. My son was hooked. He now has a collection of WWE toys and evn my daughter has a passing interest. My wife and I used to be fans and…well…we have tickets to the next Monday Night Raw on January 4th. (courtesy of Santa Claus, of course)
Turns out that it’s going to be a pretty big show. TNA (a rival wrestling organization) is running counter-programming against Raw this Monday with the return of Hulk Hogan and WWE needs to pull out all of the stops on their end to compete. Raw should be a decent show with a couple of title matches and the return of Bret Hart to the WWE for the first time in 12 years. In fact, the Montreal Screwjob happened just a few days after my daughter was born. So while my wife and I get the significance of it, the kids are like, “Who the hell is Bret Hart?”
At any rate Santa hooked us up with decent seats. Section 219 (lower), Row 3, seats 1-4.
And knowing what Santa paid for those tickets (and the three hours of entertainment they provide), I still insist that amusement parks are a ridiculous value and most coaster enthusiasts have no sense of the cost of things…
…and I’ll continue to say it every chance I get.
If only the show on at 8pm was called “Slim Shady”
It mustn’t just be my Kenan crush. Last night “What Up With That” ran right after the monologue, so somebody is liking it. I thought last night’s was the weakest yet, but still worth watching.
Probably the best SNL all season. The cold opening was finally something other than the completely unfunny political stuff they do. In fact, they opened with a favorite of mine and my daughter’s – The Lawrence Welk Show. Not the funniest one, but still laughable. (seemed to be the theme on the repeat skits, huh?) Not sure what to add as the bonus funny, so I’ll just say you can’t go wrong checking out any of last night’s show – not a real stinker in the entire bunch.
You’ve probably seen this a ton of other places, but it was 20 years ago today (December 17, 1989) that first 20-minute episode of The Simpsons aired on FOX.
That’s really nuts if you think about it. I don’t think I’ve felt much older then realizing not only has this show been on 20 years (and I’ve been rather faithful in watching it all this time) but also that I was 16 when it debuted. Sheesh. If they were real people, Bart would be 30 and Santa’s Little Helper would be dead.
Funny how much times change though. I can remember people complaining about how ‘bad’ Bart was and how that sort of thing shouldn’t be on TV – especially as a cartoon that kids would be inclined to watch. In today’s climate, the character is downright cute and nonthreatening and most of the cartoons on TV (outside of Nick and Disney) are meant for adults.
At any rate, I dig the show.
Gonch Fun Fact – I still say, “I’d like some taquitos” every time we walk past them in the grocery store and that’s a quote from a minor character in an episode that’s more than 10 years old.
From the press release:
One of America’s favorite — if not entirely functional — families first appeared on its own half-hour television show on this day 20 years ago — “The Simpsons.” Cartoonist Matt Groening’s characters Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie soon had popularity unusual for an animated feature, and created a legion of loyal fans who wouldn’t miss one of the shows. Aside from the wide range of souvenir items generated by the program, some of the character’s sayings — especially Bart’s — have become part of the language, such as “Don’t have a cow.” When “The Simpsons” first went on the air, there were 193 million television sets in U.S. homes — today, the number is more than 300 million.
The Simpsons first appeared in 1987 as a series of 30-second shorts produced by Groening for the FOX series “The Tracey Ullman Show.” The first of these shorts aired on April 19, 1987, during the third week of primetime broadcasts on FOX. Soon they had their own series, premiering on FOX as a half-hour Christmas special on Dec. 17, 1989, and then as a regular series on Jan. 14, 1990.
And yes, sadly, I remember the pre-Simpsons clips as my mother was a fan of the Tracey Ullman show…and back then we didn’t have TV’s in every room and the internets and such, so you either watched TV as a family and watched what your arents watched or you didn’t watch TV…and you actually watched things when they aired – on their schedule, not yours, rarely timeshifting with the VCR – that was for when you wouldn’t be home and really wanted to see something…hence, my viewing of the Tracey Ullman show.
Caught this yesterday on SHO:
I never in my life thought I’d be able to sit through (let alone be entertained, forced to think and laugh…and even get a bit misty-eyed by) a two hour and ten minute monologue about faith by the chick who was Pat on SNL, but I did…and I’m recommending it to you.
Definitely a must-watch holiday special.
For those who don’t know (and I assume that means those without kids and those that don’t get high and watch cartoons) – Phineas and Ferb is the Disney cartoon that has knocked Spongebob off his throne as the highest rated cartoon on TV…and with good reason. The show is great. The Phineas and Ferb world works on so many levels that you’d be hard pressed to not find something you like. (I personally am impressed by the fact that the show features well done original music – so much so that there’s even a Phineas and Ferb music countdown special)
At any rate their new X-mas special, “Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation” is showing here and there on all of the various Disney channels and is a seriously good time. I imagine it’s still entertaining if you’re new to the show, but I think one would appreciate it more if they’re already familiar with the characters and premise of the show and their little world.
That’s all I got – just wanted to mention the show and the Christmas special.
(intro)
(I think that’s the most I’ve ever used the word ‘special’ in one post)
EDITED TO ADD – turns out that the debut of Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation was the most watched show ever on the DisneyXD channel.
This is full of all kinds of funny:
Had a hard time choosing a bonus funny because the Tiger Woods thing was great, but it would only make my man crush on Kenan Thompson seem even creepier and the Shy Ronnie short is pretty great (even if it’s a little obvious).
I said it in my comments under this post over two years ago and finally I’m devoting an entry to it.
The best show currently on television by a decent margin is Californication.
The stuff they’re doing right now with Rick Springfield is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a while – from playing himself as a totally skeezy aging rocker to the subtle humor of the rest of the characters calling him by his full name everytime they address him.
Sure, it’s silly a lot of the time with tons of sex and drugs, but I think it’s one of the most human shows on TV too. Some good complex relationships that in the end you know these people care for each other – the realationship between Hank and daughter Becca is wonderful. It’s about as perfect as TV gets for me.
Plus, I wanna be Hank Moody when I grow up.
Totally enjoyed this last night – especially when they do Do-Re-Mi right about 3:04.
SNL has generally been pretty weak this year, but for some reason I thoroughly enjoy this:
With my wife and daughter out of town, my son and I are playing it lazy on a beautiful late summer day – like laying around on the couch lazy. Laying around on the couch watching “Josie and the Pussycats” on Universal HD lazy. Yeah, the movie from 2001, not the old cartoons.
So one of the commercials that runs grabs my attention for it’s silliness. It’s a Franklin Mint commercial selling the set of all 50 state quarters in uncirculated condition. First thing that struck me about the commercial was the sales angle of having people talk about times in the past when they had thought about purchasing something because they had a weird instinct that it was valuable, but passed and regretted it and then flipping that into a reason to hurry up and buy the quarters set.
On top of that they mention several times that some of these coins have appreciated in value up to 400%! Yes, the math on that says some of these coins are worth up to $1. Woo!
And as a minor note they also mention at one point that less than 1% of all Americans will have a set of all 50 quarters like this. Again, the math on that tells us that around 3,000,000 people will have a set like this.
On top of that, the damn thing was like 4 or 5 minutes long. I looked for it online, but only found a couple of shorter, edited spots. Really, the long version is a gem in it’s suckiness. Do watch if you come across it.
Then a few breaks later a slap chop commercial begins, but suddenly starts stuttering and breaks into an Auto-Tuned, remixed masterpiece of musical infomercial proportions. Turns out the thing has been circulating the internet forever and I’d just managed to escape it’s greatness. It got so hot that the Slap Chop folks realized they could run it and get a better reaction than the original commerical, I suppose.
Here is the version running on TV and here is the original.
The only difference is the extra footage. Apparently they couldn’t clear the clips from Breakin’ for the TV airing so they substitued really generic footage of a people (including someone in a rabbit suit) dancing. Quite frankly, I prefer the generic footage to the Breakin’ footage. If you have seen these, watch them now. I can’t get enough of it.
Now someone just needs to remix the Franklin Mint commercial and my world will be complete.
You know what I’m really sick of?
Commercials where cartoon bears get toilet paper chunks stuck to their asses and it’s supposed to be cute. Fuck those commercials.
The Shamwow guy would have beat Mays’ ass in a one-on-one, but with Billy’s recent passing I figured this clip from last Tuesday’s Tonight Show was worthy of posting. Worth a chuckle.
Sorry, don’t have a review. I didn’t see it. My wife and son did. They both loved the first one and made a date to see the second long ago. They seemed to have liked it. I just saw that it made a little over $60 million yesterday. That’s crazy.
I saw most of the first movie when it showed up on HBO or SHO or Starz or whoever nabbed it. I’ll probably see the second when it gets to DVD and off of my Netflix queue.
Someone should build a wooden coaster themed to the Transformers franchise.
Speaking of building things, you may have been looking forward to another “around the house” work update this weekend. I didn’t do one. This weekend we did a little concrete aork around the driveway near the garage. We’d actually like a whole new driveway done, but it’s a bunch of slabs and a bunch of cash and low on the list of priorities, so $50 and a couple of hours got us satisfactory results that will buy us some time. I also got all of the new deck lights up and working. I just need to decide how to hide the wires and give it a finished look.
Next up will probably be a full shed and garage cleaning and organizational session. After that the only thing left on our “Summer 2009 to do around the house outside” list is the retaining wall.
No more retaining wall work until someone decides to dens Daddy a check. I have a bunch of outstanding invoices floating around and I’m just waiting for someone to pay up and then we’ll be back to the brick work. After the garage/shed thing, the bricks/walls/edging for the landscaping around the front of the house is the last thing we absolutely want done before fall (and by fall, I mean school starts and we have less time outside). The actual plants can wait until spring if they have to. Just getting the brick work done would be a huge step in the right direction. We’re getting there…then it’s back inside with fall/winter projects. Notably, the basement re-do.
And to wrap this one up, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! returns for season 7 tonight on SHO. Things seem to be starting slow with the topic of orgasms, but looking ahead I see things like video game violence, 2012 and organic foods in the upcoming weeks.
Good stuff.
So on last night show Dave was forced to suck it up and give a ‘real’ apology to the Palin family and the world for a joke. I understand why he had to, but it was crap that he did. I’m not sure if there’s video of the apology online or not.
At any rate, I though this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summed it up well:
So now she thinks Letterman needs to apologize to young women in general. (see full story)
From the article:
When Lauer brought up that Letterman clarified that he wasn’t talking about her 14-year-old daughter Willow (shown here holding baby Trig), but was targeting 18-year-old Bristol, Palin said, “I would say that you and anybody else are extremely naïve to believe David Letterman’s very extremely convenient excuse.
And right there I lose all respect. She’s keeping it going. The jokes don’t even make sense unless he’s referring to Bristol. I watch Dave pretty much every night and I can tell you it never went through my mind that he meant any other of their kids when he did those monologue jokes. He made ‘knocked up’ jokes…because, you know, the 18-year old got knocked up. Where’s the mystery on this one? Who hears a “Palin’s daughter got knocked up” joke and thinks of any of their kids other than Bristol?
Someone trying to make a big deal out of nothing…that’s who.
I believe Letterman’s Friday show is taped on Monday, so there’ll be no mention of this. Wonder what’ll happen over the weekend. Maybe Sarah Palin will just let it go and quit using it for attention whoring purposes. Seems a little dirtier to keep trying to tie your 14-year-old to the joke for your own gain than to supposedly make a joke about a 14-year-old in the first place, doesn’t it?
Dave is the best!
Have I mentioned that I’m doing a member of the CVB board? (I think she’s something like that – not sure what it actually is)
Being a pillar of the tourism community has its perks – like the ability to score comp tickets for things that you wouldn’t necessarily pay for. WWE tapings, for instance.
We ended up with seats on the on-screen side in the corner opposite the entrance 6 rows off the floor. Pretty sweet seats. If you know where to look in the crowd, you’ll see us plenty. At least we saw ourselves on tonight’s ECW show. I’ve set the DVR for Smackdown and Superstars. I expect more “random faces in the crowd” time.
Was a fun evening. It’s been almost 12 years since we’ve been to a live wrestling event. (before kids!) The kids enjoyed it. My son is a huge Edge fan. We rooted for bad guys all night. I posted a few pics over on Facebook.
Wrestling fans are a goofy bunch. I imagine they’re similar to Nascar fans – just a little to the left. They’re goofy motherfuckers, but on the whole, they’re also some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Real “salt of the earth” types. We never fail to make short-term friends for the evening and tonight was no exception.
Good fun.