BLOGS
November 2008 Archives
This was a tough one. With True Blood finishing its first season Sunday, and Twilight hitting theaters, we put all our knowledge of the two most popular undying love stories around right now to use to figure out which one is the best bloodsucking tale adapted for the screen this year. We've read the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, we're obsessed with Alan Ball's take on them, and after reading all of the Twilight books, we'll be first in line to see the flick, no matter what those critics may say. So sink your teeth into our side-by-side comparison and see if you agree with our final judgment.
Hey, Heroes viewers! Tim Kring has thought long and hard about you loyal ladies and gents and has decided that all of you fall into one of two groups: either you're a superior sumbitch, or you're an [expletives] sap. Fun! Either way, it's everybody else's fault but his own that Heroes has crap ratings these days. Read the quote below to decipher which one you are. It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book! Oh, Tim Kring, how do you come up with all these hip nerd references all the time? And without even ever having lifted a comic book in your life, you say?! You're a national treasure.
And hopefully her character won't get treated like crap this time! Word comes from Variety that Jones will be playing a nurse whose boyfriend has "a strange injury" on the new Greg Daniels/Mike Schur series starring Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari, due out on NBC next year. We know now that the show is not, as previously reported, an Office spinoff (oh, how no one will let anyone forget it!), but since they haven't given the damn thing a name yet, I'm just calling it The Amy Poehler Show from now on because there's only so much I can take, people.
The Simpsons has always been a wellspring of cultural influence, contributing words and phrases to the lexicon ranging from surfer-pilfered Bart-isms like "Cowabunga" and "don't have a cow" to Homer's split-oath "D'Oh" and Nelson's sing-songy taunt "ha-ha." Most recently, the word "meh" was added to the Collins English dictionary, which cited The Simpsons as the term's originator. In ruminating on this latest linguistic development with my cow-orkers®, I had to agree with Zach that it was surprising to see the word affiliated specifically with The Simpsons. I can't remember when exactly I noticed people making use of the word, but I feel like I've been saying it since forever. "Meh" feels like such an instinctively onomatopoetic expression of ambivalence that it's sort of hard to imagine being able to trace it back to its roots. It seems like it's been around forever.
If there was any doubt as to whether Seth Rogen likes porn, it can be put to rest now that the word is out that he's developing a porn-centric show for Showtime. I get that all dudes look at porn, and that their predilections are often mined for comedic value, but it's one thing to make a joke or two at your own expense and another to build a career on your wanking tendencies. The hell with "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno." There's an even easier way to get your daily recommended allowance of melted cheese goodness and carbohydrates. Now you can order a pizza without even expending the energy to lift up your phone. All you have to do is use your remote. This shouldn't be hard. If you are a true couch potato it should be practically permanently affixed to your hand anyway.
This season, Life fans were given a treat in the form of Donal Logue, the veteran actor (Blade, Grounded for Life) who came in to play the role of New York transplant Captain Tidwell, the new boss of Detectives Crews and Reese. We got a chance to join in on a conference call to interview Logue and Damian Lewis (Crews) about some interesting developments for the show, including Rachel's imminent departure, Crews' daddy issues and why six seasons sounds about right.
Because like misogynistic hayseeds, homophobes and self-important fashionistas, little innocuous supernatural procedurals need to be taken! Down! Ausiello is reporting that Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno character managed to sneak onto the set of Medium a couple weeks ago, where he posed as an extra in a "tense courtroom scene," and proceeded to loudly interrupt filming until security dragged him out and production had to be shut down. Um... p0wn? I guess? I'm not saying it isn't kind of funny. I'm just saying your efforts could have been used to combat something truly evil like 90210 or 60 "If it didn't exist The Amazing Race could actually start on time" Minutes instead, Bruno.
Just as I was reminiscing about this past ANTM cycle, I was confronted with reports that one Tyra Banks will be inviting controversial Cycle 11 contestant Isis onto her chat show tomorrow and surprising her with paid-in-full sex reassignment surgery. So cute! I don't know about you, but this just warms the cockles of my otherwise black soul. Tyra truly is Bizarro Oprah, and this stunt is like a derelict version of her Favorite Things giveaway, only instead of dispensing, like, cars and spa treatments, Tyra is footing the bill for a free peen-chopping operation! Now that is love. Don't you wish you had a Fairy Godmother like Ms. Fierce? Does this act of charity justify Tyra's nutball antics elsewhere, or merely emphasize what we already know: that she's out of her tree? Is her heart in the right place, or is this just a meddlesome publicity stunt? Inquiring minds want to know.
Yipeee! Another reductive sociological study regarding pop culture! I really love these things. The latest one states that unhappy people watch more television on average than those who deem themselves to be "happy." The study, conducted (I bet) by the same pretentious elitists you find at parties bragging that they "don't even own a TV!" says that "very happy people [are] more socially active, attend more religious services, vote more and read more newspapers. By contrast, unhappy people watch significantly more television in their spare time." Church-going and newspaper-reading? Really? These are the signifiers of happiness? I call opposites day.