Hi kids, thanks to a mysterious pain of the abdomen that may or may not be chronic appendicitis, I’ve been sitting on the couch watching television and the occasional movie for three weeks straight. And I’ve started to ask myself a seemingly blasphemous question. Sorry to get all “Tifaux Quarterly” on you, but is television funnier than film? I decided a long time ago that I wanted to make movies, and I wanted them to be funny. But lately I’ve been coming up against this problem: where do I go for inspiration? And the answer these days is television. Arrested Development (R.I.P.(?)) The Office, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, even The Simpsons from time to time, are where interesting comedy is happening. Look at the past year’s theatrical comedy releases and you see a bit of a wasteland. Sure the hits like 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers were funny, but there was nothing particularly special or interesting about them. They were just fun and raunchy. Probably the best comedy film released last year was The Aristocrats which has the special distinction of being nearly impossible to show on television. It was a truly hilarious and introspective look at the art of joke telling. I left that theater feeling like I had learned something.

And I guess that’s what it comes down to. I don’t learn anything from funny movies these days. I learn a lot from Arrested Development. The art of the callback was never used so well. Forget about the rule of three, those guys taught me the rule of 30.

But you can’t pull off something like that in a film. There’s a freedom of experimentation that you get when you have over 8 hours of time to work with these characters every year for many years (if you’re lucky). The complexity of the situations can play out over a much longer period of time, which can lead to better and more excruciating forms of embarrassment. Of course you can get to a point where the situations are bled dry (The Simpsons, I’m looking in your direction) and at that point it’s best to throw in the towel. The British almost get it right with their limited series, but they’re often too restrictive. I would love to have twice as much of Basil Fawlty even though it probably would have killed John Cleese. Something like the three(ish) seasons that Arrested Development had is a nice balance.

But you can’t make an 8 hour comedy film. That would suck. You have 90-120 minutes in a comedy to set up your situations and play them out. The answer to that problem ought to be sequels right? If television just gets better as the series continues (until it peaks and gets stale after the writers exhaust their ideas or bow to network pressure to finally get those crazy kids in bed) why is it so hard to make a good sequel to a funny movie? I can’t think of any great comedy sequels since After the Thin Man. Or God forbid great TV shows adapted from movies. Actually there is one. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But Party Girl the series? Ferris Bueller the series? My Big Fat Greek Life? (ok, bad example since it was adapted from a terrible movie whose success only proves my point) obviously disasters from the start. Oh, and M*A*S*H (the series) is allegedly hilarious, but I didn’t grow up in the 70s and I’ve never really understood it.

Maybe this is on my mind because when I stop being sick I’m going back to work on what I think will be a great sequel, Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim which is a sequel to his 1997 film Henry Fool. It’s made for the right reasons, which is unusual for a sequel. It’s not about cashing in on the (modest) success of the original, it’s about exploring the characters further and telling an interesting story. You don’t even need to have seen Henry Fool to enjoy Fay Grim but you enjoy it even more if you have. It’s not really a comedy, but the funny parts do tend to come from Hal’s (and the audience’s) deep familiarity with the characters.

So what’s wrong with comic filmmakers these days? Where’s our new Woody Allen? Where’s our old Woody Allen for that matter? I refuse to believe that guy doesn’t have another incredible comedy like Manhattan or Bullets Over Broadway in him. Even the Coen brothers have disappointed lately. The giants of film comedy are letting me down. Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have done some great stuff with Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays, and I’m still holding out for Judd Apatow or Mike White’s film masterpiece. And David O. Russell is on his way too. But I don’t see the breadth of talent that I see almost every night on TV.

Since this is a TV blog I figure our readers are probably already on board with this idea, but I want to ask the question to you anyway. Is there something I’m missing? Are the great comedy films out there but I’m just not going to the right film festivals? The film festivals I go to are dominated by angst. Where’s the funny?

I really wasn’t planning on watching Top Chef — the reality cooking show that took Project Runway’s spot after its season finale. I mean, it’s like when you’re a kid and you drop your ice cream and start crying. Your mom says “we’ll get you another one” but you can’t be consoled. You start sniffling and sobbing and shouting “I don’t want another one! I want THAT one!”

So imagine my surprise, when I tune in (because there really isn’t anything else on at that time) and find that it’s actually a pretty watchable show. Let’s not get crazy — it doesn’t hold a candle to Heidi and company, but the contestants are lively and the challenges are interesting.

Last week’s episode, “Food of Love,” was reasonably disturbing, seeing as how it involved some dominatrix judging the sexiness of the various dishes. Scarily enough, the top prize went to this dude for a sampling of desserts called The Total Orgasm (basically, it was cream puffs and jello).

This week’s challenge: get eight-year-olds to eat monkfish. The obvious answer? Fry the shit out of them.

The contestants are all pretty interesting, but there aren’t that many who really demand your attention (i.e. Santino). In any case, here are a few:

Stephen is the kind of reality show jerk where, at the reunion show, will say the oft-repeated phrase, “I didn’t come here to make friends, I came here to win” in an attempt to justify their assy behavior. Presumably, this even applies to the unnecessarily catty comments made during interviews.

Candice, who is 23, doesn’t stand much of a chance of winning, it seems, but last night she got into a screaming match with Stephen and called him a douchebag. And it was every bit as awesome as you’d expect it to be.

Other fun characters include Dave (the gayest gay that ever gayed), Lee Anne (who is pretty much awesome, and manages to pull off the tough-talking persona without being an ass — a rare feat) and Tiffani (who sucks). Last night, Cynthia left the competition because her father was dying and it was a rare sad moment in reality TV. Sad, as in actually sad, and not as in “Jodi, I can’t vote Ibis into the Gauntlet because she was on my season of Road Rules! What am I going to DO!”

One of the show’s big weaknesses is host Katie Lee Joel — who is as pretty as a peach and has just as much charisma. While watching the show, it’s really easy to forget that she’s involved with the production at all, and when she comes up to take a bite of someone’s Tomato Succo with Octopus Frit you suddenly realize the show actually has a host.

At first I wondered why they would get a fairly generic pretty girl to host a cooking show. Then, I read her Bravo bio, only to discover that Katie Lee Joel is married to none other than Billy Joel. First off, ew! Secondly, at least this makes sense in that it was just a little case of nepotistic ladder-climbing. You would have thought that they would find some celebrity chef to do it (Bobby Flay, Molto Mario or, sigh, my Tyler) or at least someone who didn’t look exactly like one of the judges.

Once again, Veronica’s detecting skills got slammed in the mystery of the week. This time she made a bunch of mistaken assumptions about a fleeing bride. But who can blame her, really, as these one-offs are only increasing in their twist-and-turniness to the point that it’s impossible to tell who paid who to do what?

(I know a lot of people don’t watch this show. I think you should, and I’m going to write about it anyway [high five, Dan] but it’s not like it’s easy to get into at this point. Even with a full 5 minutes of “Previously on Veronica Mars…” Those five minutes seemed particularly excessive, by the way, and not very helpful. Anyway, I’d recommend stop reading right now and go rent the first season DVDs, then join up again next week. You will not regret it.)

These types of twists and coincidences are only fleetingly entertaining, like the solutions to a Encyclopedia Brown mystery. When the bride shows up on her wedding day to foil the plans of her dastardly fiance, I want to know why this is awesome. I don’t want to be wondering who these people are, what they’re waiting for, and if the fiance’s father is the farmer from Babe. (He isn’t.) The cheap twists don’t ring true on a character level — they just earn a small smile at the writer’s ingenuity, not at Veronica’s cleverness. I want to live vicariously through Veronica’s cleverness, dammit!

All I can say is Veronica better sharpen up, post-haste, because things seem to be getting interesting (or at least intriguing) in all the everyone’s-on-trial-for-murder plots. In last night’s episode, Kendall, by request of Aaron Echolls (hi Aaron! how’s jail?), either deposited or removed something from Logan’s shower drain. I’m going to make my prediction now — I’M MAKING A PREDICTION! — and say she was removing some hair so that Aaron can somehow frame Logan for Lily’s murder. Because that’s the type of caring, selfless father he is. Who wouldn’t sacrifice your son for the sake of your own neck? After driving your wife to suicide? And screwing and murdering your son’s girlfriend?

But we know what that means… Veronica will have to prove, again, that Logan didn’t murder Lily, and that Aaron did. Hooray! It’s Season One again! Forget about Logan’s other trial, or the bus crash — let’s just continually re-hash Lily’s murder. There has to be more we don’t know about this girl. Where’s the secret diary and the psychotic shut-ins and the gigs as a prostitute, a la Laura Palmer? If this show takes one lesson from Twin Peaks, it should be that there’s always more to learn about messed-up teenagers.

And if it takes two lessons from Twin Peaks, the second should be to slow the fuck down with the constant barrage of possibly meaningless info. Or at least pace yourselves. Agent Cooper could at least enjoy a cup of coffee before trying to process some crazy shit the log lady said. I get exhausted just looking at Veronica, sometimes. She’s top of her class, works after school at a coffeeshop, goes to all Wallace’s basketball games, solves various minor mysteries, and helps out her dad on the big cases. No wonder her judgment’s occasionally off.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, I could barely manage to have a normal conversation with a boy or dress myself properly, let alone attempt to figure out what was wrong with other people’s lives and put people in jail. Which is part of the reason I like the show. I have faith that even though Veronica’s making a bit of an ass of herself so far this year, she will eventually get it together and tell everyone what they’ve been doing wrong. In a nice or funny way, of course.

So, given the resounding silence surrounding my previous American Idol postings, I’m guessing that no one watches this show but me.  In all honesty, I can’t blame you.  In fact, hats off.

Last night I found myself sitting through the two hour monstrosity, watching Barry Manilow (side note: BARRY MANILOW?!?!) coaching the kids through their fifties theme night.  We heard a very Pearljammy version of Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line,” some Patsy Cline, some Buddy Holly and poor pitiful Kevin Covais warble his way through “When I Fall in Love.”

It was all just as painful as usual, but I was glued to my television nonetheless.  Or, rather, made dinner and read a book while it played in the background.

Not that it matters, but here are my predictions for tonight’s bottom three and the ill-fated crooner of the evening.

Bucky Covington’s Buddy Holly song, “Oh Boy,” was probably the worst singing of the night.  It was all rasp and growl and cro-magnon grunting.  However, his name is Bucky and he’s from the south and there are enough people left in the competition that he will still benefit greatly from the git-er-dun demographic.  Kevin Covais was just as bad as he always is, but he might slip into the bottom three because of Simon Cowell’s decision to not mobilize hoards of tweens by tearing him limb from limb.

Even though he wasn’t the worst performer last night, I think Lisa Tucker’s done tonight.  She’s talented, but she’s not magnetic and (second to last week’s ouster Melissa McGee) the most forgettable finalist.

So, do with that information what you will.  We’ll see how it shapes up.

I recently decided that my workout playlist needed a face lift (to be frank, I mostly just listen to Since U Been Gone on repeat for 20 minutes while jogging, then go home to eat ice cream) and, because I’m a sheep with no ability to form opinions myself, turned to the iMix page on iTunes so that other, more athletically motivated people can tell me what they listen to while they’re out completing triathalons for fun and shit. If I can sidebar for a moment, let me just say that the iMix page is one of the most disturbing collections of thoughts since Craig’s List– more than a handful of people have made “tribute” mixes in honor of recently passed relatives. Okay, things you should not do on MySpace/ IM/ iTunes: (1) Announce your recent engagement (2) Converse with dead people. When I go, I hope my friends all know that I would vastly prefer having them ingest a fifth of jim beam in my name than putting together a Cristin Tribute list on iTunes which, really, would go something like this: Miss Independent, We Didn’t Start the Fire, OPP, Ignition (remix), repeat as necessary.

But, oh, the iMixes have their place. Particularly the Celebrity iMixes. And, best of all, particularly Kiefer Sutherland’s Celebrity Playlist.

Yes, jack bauer uses iTunes. I bet he’s got all his songs nestled happily on his PDA alongside his Big List of International Terrorists and Wednesday-To Do List (Kill terrorists, reconfigure government agencies, pick up dry cleaning).

As a fun little game, do your best to select which of these songs *was actually* on Kiefer’s list. Answer in the comments. Let me know how you do. And tell me what I should download for the next time I want to go running/ spend 3 hours watching “8th & Ocean.”

• “Kick Some Ass” Stroke 9
• “Break Stuff” Limp Bizkit
• “Bring the Pain” Method Man
• “Angel” Sarah MacLaclan
• Theme song to “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”
• “Bombs Over Baghdad” Outkast
• “Butterfly Kisses” Bob Carlisle
• “To Be With You” Mr Big

So, it’s March 31 at 2:00 a.m. If you’re like me, you’ll be in your room, smelling like cigarette smoke and getting ready to spend the night in a cold, empty bed. If your name sounds like “Listin’ Pickles” you might be buying your eighth round and pre-agonizing about what you’re going to put on your Christmas card in December.

What you should be doing is setting your television recording device to Comedy Central, as the fine network will be bringing you four consecutive episodes of The Comedians of Comedy.

The Comedians of Comedy was a fine series that basically captured the lives of four comics (Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Zach Galifianakis, and the always-lovely Maria Bamford) doing a tour up the eastern seaboard. It’s not a reality show per se. No toothy host, no voting out, no stunt casting — it’s just a bunch of mostly unknown comics (their biggest credits are bit parts in “Bubble Boy” and “Just Shoot Me”) being weird, intellectual and drunk.

Oswalt is the leader of the bunch. He self-professes to looking like a “little lesbian” and shares his shame for having a supporting role on “The King of Queens.”

Posehn is a god among comic book nerds and a giant among comics.

Galifianakis is the weirdest of the group, in that he has the largest disconnect from reality. An example of his schtick: “The other day I was walking along the Hollywood walk of fame and I stumbled across Tony Danza’s star… And I urinated on it yelling, ‘And who’s the boss now?!’”

Bamford is my personal favorite — using cartoonish voices to convey insecurity (”My therapist says I’m afraid of success. I guess I could understand that, because after all, fulfilling my potential would REALLY cut into my sitting-around time…”) and occasionally take down the comedy patriarchy.

Comedy Central kind of fucked this series over by airing each half-hour episode at 11 p.m. on Fridays. You could classify me as a pretty die-hard Bamford/Galifianakis fan, but even I wasn’t about to stay home/remain vigilant about taping each episode. So take this opportunity to watch ‘em all.

NOTE: I just checked the Web site and the shows will now be on Tuesday, April 4 at 2 a.m. So, that means set your VCRs on Monday night (for those of us stuck in the nineties).

We are truly flying through these episodes of Buffy, probably because I refuse to do anything but watch them. Season Two went down easily, a delightful cocktail of humor and tragedy and sassiness. I’m told this may be the best season. It’s a bit raw, and the bad guys are still surprising. Pretty much everyone found someone to smooch. A nice lady died. Many monsters met their match. And like all the best love stories, this one is DOOMED.

That doesn’t make any sense, you may be thinking — no one wants heartache and woe. But even though you think you want your favorite characters to get together, you really don’t. You’d rather see them tragically torn apart by situations outside of their control. Not even situations — you want to see them have to choose to leave each other or hurt each other or otherwise ruin everything because they have to. I am not making this up. Check your Romeo and Juliet. Or Brokeback Mountain. (Or Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, YA people.) Tragically DOOMED lovers make us feel sad in that special I-cried-SO-hard-at-that-movie-it-was-awesome type of way.

Oh sure, I was rooting for Luke and Lorelai and Josh and Donna and Veronica and Logan and all those other struggling couples-to-be. And I deeply rooted for Buffy and Angel, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen. (They would do it and he would lose his soul. Which… is pretty harsh. It may even be worse than getting preggers, but conveniently vamps can’t have babies. They don’t mention STDs, and personally I’d rather not think about the disease possibilities in someone who’s been dead hundreds of years and has sex regularly with other dead people. Ew. Maybe it’s best he just lost a soul.)

Of course, not all lovers are DOOMED. And that’s part of the fun of the second season, watching Willow and Xander find people to make out with. Not each other, naturally. That pairing is DOOMED before it even starts.

The other fun part was spotting the Hey! It’s That Guy!. For example, Wentworth Miller, the Prison Break dude, was a swimmer-slash-fish-mutant. John Hawkes, the mustachioed fellow from Me and You and Everyone We Know, was a poltergeisted janitor who shoots a teacher. Bianca Lawson, who you might (maybe) remember from Save the Last Dance as the super-bitch skank who tries to mess with the hero’s head, was Kendra, the second slayer. And more, I’m sure. Spot any?

And now I’m barreling on to Season Three, which features the new “Buffy” font in the opening credits! I have been waiting a long time for that font to show up. The old font was a little too Comic Sans for me to take seriously. And I’m sure there will be other delightful (non-typographical) surprises as well.

Technically it’s not television, but I just had to share this with our readers. It’s the trailer for the most hotly anticipated film of 2006. No, it’s not Superman or X-Men, it’s Mother$#*$&% Snakes on a Plane!

As our intrepid reporter Maggie noted earlier, Tina Fey is working on a pilot for NBC that we're very excited about. Last week Maggie found an invitation to attend the taping of said pilot and I, as an invalid/vacationer (mild appendicitis!) decided to spend the day in Studio 8H, the legendary home of Saturday Night Live.

The call time was 12:20 so I showed up at 11:30 expecting to be told I was too late and hundreds of Tina Fey fans had camped out overnight to beat me out for a place in line. Actually I was the first one there, which I believe makes me the biggest Tina Fey fan in New York City; something I've long suspected but never confirmed. After searching the labyrinthine mezzanine at 30 Rockefeller Center for any sign of the alleged NBC pages who were supposed to lead me to the line I finally found someone with a walkie talkie who radioed upstairs and was told that the call time was 12:20. They do things by the book at NBC.

At 12:20 I arrived at the line where I signed a waiver giving up my right to privacy and got ticket number 43. I was told to come back in 30 minutes when they would let me in. 30 minutes later I was told to come back 30 minutes later. This is something I would expect from a film shoot, not a TV show.

Finally at 1:30 I got in line behind number 42 and was ushered through the metal detectors and onto an elevator that brought me to the 9th floor. The hallway was filled with 8×10 black and white pictures of the SNL shows I grew up with, essentially the years that Phil Hartman was on the show. It was kind of exciting.

Then we waited in line some more.

Then we were seated in the balcony of Studio 8H. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped to sit in those great seats they have down front where J.B. Smoove and Paula Pell sometimes ask questions during the monologue. But of course the whole place was rearranged. Half the studio was curtained off and the middle section where those floor seats usually are was hidden. I managed to sneak a peek but there was nothing going on over there. What we did have was a single set for "The Girlie Show" which according to the graphics I saw on the monitors stars Rachel Dratch as an old woman.

There was an old man sitting in front of me who obviously wanted to chat but I wasn't in the mood. He started talking to the guy next to me and I listened in. He's been to almost every episode of SNL since the very first one. It seems that he and his wife wait in the ticket line every week the show is on. I'm pretty sure they met in the line. They make the Star Wars nerds look like casual fans.

We spent a while sitting around while an NBC page tried to entertain us. He managed to engage about 10% of the crowd but I spent most of the time reading. Former UCB and Conan regular, and Arrested Development "Country Club Waiter" Jack McBrayer came up dressed as an NBC page and explained that he plays a page on the show. He offered to answer any of our questions. Someone in the audience asked if he had ever been on TV before. Ahhh, stardom.

After about 90 minutes the studio started to fill up with crew members. It was a staggering array of people who moved very quickly. I watched closely but I had a very hard time determining who was in charge. There was one guy who seemed to be the director, but I think he was really the assistant director and the director just sat behind a monitor the whole time. After a while it dawned on me that we weren't going to see a show, we were just there to fill in the seats while they shot the paid extras playing audience members on the ground floor.

Here's a summary of what I managed to pick up. Tina Fey is the head writer of "The Girlie Show" which is a really boring TV show starring Rachel Dratch. Alec Baldwin is a network executive who wants to get big-time movie star Tracy Morgan on the show. Tina doesn't want this, but as far as I can tell Tracy shows up on the show and the audience goes nuts, which forces Tina to accept that he will make the show more popular.

All we got to see was the part where Tracy Morgan comes on stage and utters the immortal lines "I'm from the government and I'm here to inspect your chicken nuggets" which we were told to react very favorably to. He follows that up with "Honky Grandma must be trippin'" which gets an even bigger response. Then he takes his shirt off and tells America he's coming to their house. All of this makes the crowd go wild.

The show is what TV people call a "single camera" show, which means they only use three cameras instead of four and they shoot it like a movie rather than doing the whole thing at once. Since the audience was the focus of the scenes they didn't bother bringing out the Honky Grandma (presumably Rachel Dratch) and I didn't catch a glimpse of Mr. Baldwin or the talented and lovely Ms. Fey who was the only reason I was there.

I did, however, get a lot of reading done.

The Office, in its ground-breaking forward-thinkingness, will produce web episodes (or “webisodes,” if you want to sound like an ass) this summer. I am curious about this. They will not include Steve Carrell or Pam and Jim, but I think they’ll probably still be pretty good. And it’ll give me something to do during the long, empty, desolate summer months. Other than go outdoors, of course. Wouldn’t want to ruin my carefully cultivated “consumptively pale” look.