New Television

Last night I sat down to check out the new fall shows, particularly ABC's Man Date (or whatever they're calling it) hour of programming. So first up was the long anticipated Geico spinoff called Cavemen.

The biggest problem with the show is that they tiptoe around all of the biggest points of conflict, presumably in the name of being family friendly. In the episode last night they had a scene where one of the cavemens' neighbors clearly had trouble telling them apart. But instead of having the caveman press the issue and actually become stereotypical angry minority by saying "I bet we all look alike to you", they just inserted awkward pauses and sheepish nods. If the show is going to take off they need to be a little more edgy in those scenes. They did it in a few other scenes with Andy's girlfriend, a homo sapien, by having his fellow caveman and roommate Joel being adamantly against dating regular women. His line was "keep your penis in your genus", and then later when Andy's girlfriend was found out to have dated a few cavemen before him they lightly touched on the idea that she might have a caveman fetish. It was decent, but its potential was definitely not filled.

The other show I watched was ABC's Carpoolers. This show was beyond awful. The premise is four guys that work at an office park and share a ride to and from work every day. The actual workplace is never shown so all the show's conflicts have to take place in the car or at home. So when the conflict takes place at home, the discussion of said conflict must take place in the car.
Last night's conflict was about one guy's wife and the $200 toaster she bought. So the entire episode revolved around four men driving in a car bitching about a toaster. And that is all you need to know.

I also watched CBS' Cane last night with Jimmy Smits. Its about a Miami-based Cuban family
that owns a sugar cane business, but also dabbles in organized crime. It was a quality show, but I am not going to get my hopes up. CBS has a way of striking down every show I ever watch.

And I should mention that I watched The Big Bang Theory on DVR last night as well. That show is actually pretty funny. Its a little heavy-handed, but it works out.

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Miss Teen USA

Just awkward and uncomfortable. I turned it off just over half way through. It gives me goosebumps or hives, I am not sure of the difference.

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The Skittles Touch

I can't wait to see this commercial on regular television.

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Bizarre Advertising

This is not fake or altered in any way.

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The Two Coreys

Last Sunday was the premiere of the A&E reality show The Two Coreys, starring Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. I watched this part of one of the two episodes. Unfortunately this clip cut out the part where Corey Feldman tried to talk about vegetarianism as the dietary lifestyle of more evolved human beings. So far, so good.

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Bratz

Do you know what Bratz are? Evidently its a line of urban hip pre-teen merchandise thats been around for about 6 years. Jade, Cloe, Sasha and Yasmin are the four girls from what Wikipedia is telling me the Bratz doll line made a serious run at Barbie for the #1 girls doll in several countries around the world. So as you can imagine in the past 6 years the Bratz have evolved and begun playing sports and having adventures and eventually someone optioned the whole thing for a movie.

So Friday August 3, the live-action Bratz movie hits theaters. Here is the plot of the movie:

Sasha, Jade, Cloe and Yasmin are four trendy friends from different racial backgrounds. Upon attending Carry Nation High School, the student body president and daughter of the principal, Meredith, drives the girls into different competing cliques. Eventually, their "bratty" ways land them in detention together where they reunite.

I feel terrible for every dad on the planet right now. The good news is that the Bratz movie featured (for a period of time) Paula Abdul as an executive producer and choreographer (for dance scenes or something presumably, I don't really know or care). At the same time Bravo, in all of their outstanding wisdom, was following Paula around with a camera crew for some sort of reality show. That allowed us to witness a mildly spectacular trainwreck when Paula Abdul was fired from the Bratz movie via e-mail.

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Mad Men On AMC

I don't know if you watch as much AMC as I do, but over the past year or so they have made a concerted effort to rid themselves of the "black & white/movies your grandparents would love/John Wayne marathon" reputation they seemed to once have. They left all of that to Turner Classic Movies. Now every Sunday night and most weeknights after 7pm AMC runs a well known movie from the 80s or 90s (and in some cases the early part of this century). Once a month they do DVD_TV, where they pretty much run a movie in widescreen and use the bottom portion of the picture to display trivia, goofs and printed director commentary about the movie being shown.

This past week they debuted an original series called Mad Men, created by Sopranos writer and executive produce Matthew Weiner. The premise of the show follows the daily business of a high level executive for an ad agency in New York circa 1960. The first episode was vaguely reminiscent of Thank You For Smoking, with that sort of slick salesman routine but one of the really interesting part of the show was much attention to detail was placed in recreating the 1960s. For example most of the women on the show are of the Marilyn Monroe body type, and they remark about the slim legs and ankles of the newest secretary who by todays standards we be fairly average. Every character smokes, even in elevators and doctors offices since during that time period the health issues of smoking were not quite a widespread social concern. Racism and sexism are fairly overt, and adultery is a seemingly accepted practice. I'd imagine that last part is a result of the sexism and women's status in the work place at the time.

Now I understand that a lot of what I just described probably sounds like That 60's Show, but there is a lot more to the story than that. As far as the cast goes it is primarily a collection of "that guy" and "that girl" from other shows.

The clip above is from the pilot episode. The show airs regularly on Thursdays at 10pm, so I'll be recording it on the DVR. The episodes will be available through iTunes as the season goes on, and is available On-Demand from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Insight Communications, Charter Communications, Mediacom Communications and Cablevision.

Also, boobie tassels!

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Baking On Television

Sometimes you really have to sit back and wonder what the hell these people were thinking to actually film these things. Above is a clip about organic or whole meal(?) bread. Below is a pizza commercial from New York state. If this guy were my friend, he would never, EVER hear the end of this. Awwww yeah!

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Tyra's Secret

If you've ever seen Robert Smigel's Fun With Real Audio on SNL's Saturday TV Funhouse (the animated stuff) you'll love this. Its an audio clip from The Tyra Banks Show (or at least I think it is) where she reveals her BIGGEST BEAUTY SECRET EVER!! The show is acted out by poorly drawn stick figures, but given whats being said in the clip the stick figures are oddly appropriate. This makes Oprah's Cars feel like a ticket line at your local deli. I still can't figure out if this is a parody from Tyra and her audience, or just insane hormonal women caught on television.

Evidently this all happened months ago, but I just came across the animated version this week.

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Futbol Meets Football

Adidas paired Reggie Bush and David Beckham for a conference of cultures. I think the video is a pretty solid testament to the tremendous athleticism each of these guys has.

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U-20 World Cup

I just found out that ESPN picked up the telecast for US/Brazil in the U-20 World Cup tonight at 7:30pm EST. I like the Spanish channel and all, but there is now a slight possibility I could watch this game in HD. To get you up to speed, the US tied S. Korea 1-1 in the opening match and then trounced Poland 6-1 Tuesday night. Brazil meanwhile beat Korea 3-2 but lost to Poland 1-0, meaning that the winner of tonight's game obviously moves on with a win, the US can move on with a loss if the Poland/S. Korea ends in a tie and either one of the teams can get bounced from the tournament with a loss followed by a win from Poland, and Brazil with a win from South Korea.

Bottom line is this; The US can advance in any of three ways:

1. A win.
2. A tie. They'd advance as the #2 team out of Group C if Poland wins, #1 if South Korea wins by virtue of goal differential (unless S. Korea kills Poland by more than 6)
3. A loss. They'd advance as the #2 seed ONLY if Poland loses to S. Korea and the combined goal differential of S. Korea's win and their own loss exceeds the current 6 goal differential between the two teams.

One last thing about the U-20 World Cup, the qualifying takes place in such a way that it allows teams like Gambia, Zambia and North Korea to qualify and have their day in the limelight.

Above are highlights from the USA/Poland game from Monday night. For a complete rundown of the tournament, click here.

Zizzo, absolute stud.

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Nike And Wayne Rooney

I bet it probably took more than one take, given the smeared, fuzzy look of the camera lens when Rooney tilts it upwards to draw on it. Thats still pretty impressive.

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The 4th Of July

If you've ever wondered what the worst hangover cure in the world might be, I think I have found your answer. After a late night Tuesday I rolled out of bed just after noon and channel surfed for about 40 minutes before I found the great Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. All week I'd been hearing about the matchup between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi, current and former world record holders in the event. So of course out of morbid curiosity I set the remote down and tried to watch. What ensued was an absolute embarrassment to humanity. I don't really want to get on a soapbox about idiocracy or hunger problems around the world or anything like that, I just want to let everyone know that I sincerely feel like when my time is up on this earth I'll remember those 12-15 minutes and wish I could have them back.

The gluttony was really only half of my problem. The ESPN broadcast team made me more sick than watcing two guys in a combined 129 hot dogs with buns in 12 minutes. Specifically you can hear the color commentary guy say (at 0:43):

"For Kobayashi to come out here and eat like this is a singular instance of valor. It is nothing short of amazing. We didn't anticipate it"

(4:28) "Kobayashi pausing, Kobayashi pausing... this would be the greatest moment in the history of American sports if Chestnut can bring the mustard belt home to Coney Island. Its been gone for 9 years."

(9:01)"It's just an emotional win, and a great day for America"

Not to mention the video replay of Kobayashi vomting a little and then finishing whatever didn't come out of his mouth. They of course referred to it as a "reversal".

At the very end the normal announcer finally did say something to the effect of "we hope you've enjoyed the fun and hyperbole of this competition...", which I took as an apology for the outlandish commentary of his broadcast partner.

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Stevie Wonder PSA

Is there irony in having a blind guy sing a song warning of the terrors of drunk driving? Technically I believe the answer is no, but I still find it distracting.

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I Wike Toodos!!

Ladies and gentleman, your real life Ralph Wiggum. It's alright kid, everyone gets a bit of stage fright now and then. The trick is to take a deep breath and don't say the first thing that pops into your head, even if it is a simple proclamation of affection for turtles.

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Mika Brzezinski

Mika Brzezinksi is my new favorite news personality. Its a small step, but at least somebody finally said something.

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My Super Sweet 16

I may have already mentioned this once before, but 10-20 years from now I am going to be the second coming of Mark Burnett (the guy that created Survivor). Here is how it will happen:

I am going to hold on to copies of every episode of My Super Sweet 16, track down the subject of each episode and then (hopefully) do a part VH1 Behind The Music, part Real World Cast Reunion show. First off we'll have a what are they up to now segment where we catch up with them and learn about how many times they've been divorced, if they actually do anything for a living yet and most importantly if they have kids of their own. Next we bring in their friends from high school and have them talk about how screwed up that whole thing was and what they learned from it then and now. Lastly we have our primary subject watch their episode and reflect on WTF they were thinking at the time and how they would do things differently. Hopefully this is where they redeem themselves and provide a warm moment where they contritely admit/apologize for being a stupid, spoiled brat and promise not to do this to their own kids.

First up, the girl that claimed a $67,000 Lexus "ruined everything".

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Jim Cramer Is Insane

Jim Cramer was on Conan last week, proving that is antics on that ridiculous MSNBC show are absolutely real. It's great to see his logic completely obliterated by a sane, rational person.

As far as those shows and pretty much all of MSNBC are concerned, I can't shake that movie Two For The Money. I know the movie was about sports gambling, but I get the feeling watching those stock market guys sit on their panel and shout their absolute certainties, that they might be a bit closer than you think. I can't stand watching them as a result. They come off as ridiculously phony.

If you've seen the movie you probably know what I mean, if not here is the trailer:

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Phobias

Do you have an irrational fear? Maury Povich knows just how to handle your delicate situation. I've got to wonder what was done to these people with these objects in order to create this fear. Honestly, how does a woman have a fear of cotton? What does she do at that time of the month? Does she use Cherokee Hair?

Peaches


Pickles


Balloons

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Local News: Career Suicide

You gotta love it when the local anchor is willing to throw his career under the bus in order to make a masturbation joke on air.

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