You know what’s weird? Turning on MSNBC just before Countdown comes on, during the last few minutes of Hardball, and seeing a guy you went to law school with talking to Chris Matthews. Actually, “went to law school with” doesn’t go anywhere near far enough – there are plenty of people I went to law school with I never spoke with or knew personally. So let’s make that seeing a guy you went to law school with, a guy who was in your accelerated program class, a guy you went out drinking with fairly regularly, a guy who quarterbacked the flag football team you played on, a guy who came up with the idea of going to your ex-girlfriend’s house the night you broke up and demanding that she give the flowers you gave her to try to smooth things over back or at least reimburse you the cost of the flowers and was convincing enough about it that a bunch of you got in a car to go over and do it before deciding it was a bad idea after all, to see that guy, who is now, apparently, a fairly famous Democratic consultant, talking with Chris Matthews. That’s weird.
Cross-posted at Corn'O'Copia.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
You Know What's Weird
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Plot Of Every Single Episode Of According To Jim
1. Jim is confronted with a situation that makes him uncomfortable, usually because it is threatening to his masculinity/status as head of household.
2. Jim has to take part in situation.
3. Allegedly hilarious hijinks ensue.
4. Jim begrudgingly accepts situation in a manner that will be forgotten by the time the next episode airs.
5. Somewhere, John Belushi silently weeps.
Monday, March 5, 2007
“Shows We Miss” and “Done Too Soon”
We’re going to be starting up a couple more recurring features here. I wanted to set up a couple of them, because while they seem self-explanatory, they also seem identical. But they aren’t. There’s a very key difference between them.
“Shows We Miss” will be a discussion of shows no longer airing that we miss watching. “Done Too Soon” can best be described as a subset of “Shows We Miss” but with the added factor that, as far as we are concerned, the show ended before it’s time. Here’s a couple of examples.
I miss The X-Files. It was one of my favorite shows. I started watching near the end of the first season, and continued watching through to the bitter end. But while I miss The X-Files, I would be hard pressed to make the argument that it ended before it’s time. If anything, The X-Files lasted much longer than it should have lasted. Or take a show like Buffy, another show I miss but which I think ended perfectly. On the other hand, there’s Angel, a show that could have easily gone on a couple more years.
So there you have it – “Shows We Miss” and “Done Too Soon”. Two more recurring features, coming to you from DTV.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Idol - Top Ten Women
Well, it was really nice of the women to come out and suck so badly this week, thus taking some pressure off the men.
Gina Glocksen – Alone You, Gina Glocksen, are no Carrie Underwood.
Alaina Alexander – Not Ready To Make Nice Wow. Just wow. Incredibly bad.
LaKisha Jones – Midnight Train To Georgia One of my very favorite songs, ever since I was a kid. When it was new. Did I mention I was old? Anyway, a favorite song, but an incredibly lackluster performance.
Melinda Doolittle – My Funny Valentine Remember how Constantine was on the verge of running away with Season Four after his version of this and Bohemian Rhapsody? If only he had sung more songs like this, or at least as well as he sung this. It would also be nice if Melinda had sung this as well as Constantine sang it. But she didn’t. It’s probably the best performance of the night, but that’s not saying much.
Antonella Barba – Because You Loved Me Well, as the events of the past week has shown, singing is nowhere near the best thing she does with her mouth.
Jordin Sparks – Reflections Wake me when it gets interesting.
Stephanie Edwards – Dangerously In Love Still not interesting.
Leslie Hunt – Feeling Good I didn’t enjoy this song last night when AJ did it. I don’t enjoy it now, either.
Haley Scarnato – Queen Of The Night More like handmaid of the night.
Sabrina Sloan – All The Man That I Need Well, at least the night ended on a boring note. No reason to change things this far into it.
Save Leslie!
It's actually too late to "save" Leslie. The votes are in and if she's going home, she's going home. But I would like to write about why I think we need her in the competition.
There are excellent female singers in the competition this year. Melinda, in particular, shined last night with My Funny Valentine. Then there's LaKisha (I hate a capital letter in the middle of a first name. Ugh.) who is clearly a frontrunner, but like I said last week she could run out of steam before the season ends. I like Gina and Jordin as well. Sabrina and Stephanie can belt the songs, too. But here's the thing - no one is coming across as unique. We've seen great belters before. One just won an Academy award. We've seen the punk chick before. Remember Nikki from season one? And then there's the cannon fodder we get every season. This season it's Amy-Antonella-Alaina attempting songs that are way out of their league.
Leslie is different. Her voice is unique. It's not a powerhouse, but it has a great tone. And she's willing to choose different sorts of songs, like this week's Feeling Good by Nina Simone and Micheal Buble. I had never heard of it, but it was catchy and interesting and so unlike anyone else's choices. Throw a little scatting in the middle and you have the makings of a really interesting contestant. I'm anxious to see what she might do next week.
However, I am terribly afraid we won't get the chance to find out. And that would be a real shame.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Idol - Top Ten Men (And Another Site We Love)
Rickey.org is a must for Idol fans, though for one and only one reason. Shortly after each broadcast, he has clips (either video or mp3s) of all the performances. Idol is one of the few shows that doesn’t do a Web rebroadcast – they aren’t even posting performance clips on the Idol site, though they do have exclusive video interviews. So if you want to watch or rewatch the performances, you have to either search You Tube and hope someone posted them or go straight to Rickey.org. The drawback is that he doesn’t usually include the judges comments. On the other hand, considering the songs run less than 2 minutes a piece, it means you can watch all the performances in under a half-hour. So Rickey.org is a site we love.
And now on to the Top Ten men.
Phil Stacey – Missing You If he was voted out of the competition, and weeks later someone asked me how I felt about it, I would say “I ain’t missing him at all.” Lame cover of a lame original song.
Jared Cotter – Let’s Get It On It’s funny. Every year we have a female singer attempt a song by a distinctive artist (Aretha jumps to mind) and they get criticized for choosing something by an artist so memorable that it invites unfavorable comparisons. You almost never hear this criticism of the male singers. (They say it about singers doing Stevie songs, but it’s the song, not the performance they talk about.) But Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On certainly has to be the male equivalent of that. This wasn’t a bad performance, but it certainly was not Marvin Gaye.
AJ Tabaldo – Feeling Good I think it was good, but I’m not sure – it almost put me to sleep.
Sanjaya – Steppin’ Out With My Baby I didn’t watch any of the auditions. Was there really no one better than this kid to have sent to the round of 24? This is awful, god awful.
Chris Sligh – Trouble I can’t get by his looking like a Jack Osborne clone. Sorry. Can’t do it. He’s a good singer, but he is in dire need of a makeover.
Nick Pedro – Fever Great song, crappy performance. I bet he’s gone.
Blake Lewis – Virtual Insanity Not bad, but pretty damn forgettable. Lose the hat, dude. Lose the hat.
Brandon Rogers – Time After Time Boring. There’s really nothing else to say. Boring.
Chris Richardson – Geek In The Pink I love it when an Idol singer performs a song I’ve never heard before and I like it so much I rush out to buy the record of the original performer. That happened last season when Katherine McPhee sang Black Horse and the Cherry Tree. I went out the next day and got K.T Tunstall’s Eye to the Telescope. I’m not rushing out to buy any Jason Mraz today, but I did like the song and the performance a lot. A lot.
Sundance – Mustang Sally I always think of the movie The Commitments when I hear this song. Although the band in that movie is a fake band, they are still a great band that does a great version of Mustang Sally. This version isn’t as good as that one, but it’s pretty good nonetheless.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Thoughts about the Top 12 AI Girls
The problem with writing a post entitled "Thoughts about the Top 12 AI Boys" is that you feel obligated to follow up with a post about the girls even though you're very busy at work. This will only have a few quick comments.
Gina - You didn't hit the note. Don't argue with Simon. I still like you.
Lakisha - I was gushing at my TV last night but today reality has set in. Remember Mandisa? Yeah, no one else does either. Beware the hot start.
Antonella - Get off my TV screen. Please!
Melinda and Stephanie - Love ya. Please stick around.
Hayley and Leslie - I hope you stick around because I think there's potential there.
And you know what else I realized? I prefer listening to male singers over female singers. So if the men continue to suck and the women continue to shine, I may lose interest in this season.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Condensing CSI: Miami down to the essentials
Via Defamer (another Site That We Like), here for your enjoyment is a montage of David Caruso's scenery-chewing one-liners, all-sunglasses edition:
Thoughts about the Top 12 AI Boys
Wow, that really sucked, huh? There wasn't one memorable performance on American Idol last night. There were a couple of good performances and a lot of not too bad performances, but we were also treated to some absolutely wretched singing.
Let's talk about the good first. The two best performances of the night were Phil and Blake. 
Phil started very rough, but by the end of the song ("I Could Not Ask for More") he had it under control. I wish to god he had some hair though. He's difficult to watch for any length of time. I think he ought to make hats a permanent part of his wardrobe each week.
You might remember Blake as the beat boxer. Turns out he can sing too. He was Sharon's favorite. I like the pure tone of his voice and that he didn't add any crazy embellishments to her performance. He just stood and sung the words with emotion.
Now those two were the best of the night, but they weren't amazing. Both had decent performances, but neither was unforgettable like Constantine's rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody from season four. But both were much better than everyone else last night.
I will give props to Chris Sligh for a decent if not excellent performance. But he loses some points for the stupid digs at Simon. Chris, take the criticism like a man and sing better next time.
And now the truly horrible...
This boy is the poster child for the Raise the Age Limit campaign.
His name is Sanjaya and he's got a great voice. But he's just too young and lacks the maturity to go all the way. Every year there are teenagers in the competition and every year they fail to get very far. Sanjaya's performance last night was so boring I fell asleep. Well, I wish I could have fallen asleep.
Then there's this idiot:
His name is Paul Kim and he's decided his "thing" is to go barefoot every week. If he makes it through, which would be a surprise, I think he better buy some shoes. Trying to invent something memorable about yourself doesn't work. Let it happen naturally.
Everyone else was pretty forgettable. I hope the women are better. Check 'em out tonight!
Lost Podcast
It’s Wednesday, a good day for several reasons. First, and foremost, it’s new comic book day. Second, it’s midway through the work week. Finally, it means a new episode of Lost. And what goes best with a new episode of Lost? A new Lost podcast!
New Lost podcast you ask? Why yes, new Lost podcast. Each week when new episodes are airing, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the two main producers and writers of Lost broadcast and air a podcast available at the ABC Lost site. There’s a brief introductory section where someone from the show is interviewed (this week it’s Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond) then the portion with Cuse and Lindelof. They talk about the previous episode, tease the upcoming episode, and answer questions readers post at the ABC message boards. These weekly podcasts are one of the reasons I have not lost (pun intended) faith in the show. They show that the powers that be at Lost do have an overarching plan, even if it sometimes changes, and that they are aware of the pitfalls shows like Twin Peaks and X-Files fell into in the past. Have a listen. It’s about 30 minutes long, and very entertaining. If you're a huge fan, you should go back and listen to the previous podcasts as well.
