In case you haven’t visited it yet, you’d do well to drop by the new Daily Show Web site. It’s revamped, plucked, coiffed and waxed — leaving behind Comedy Central’s cumbersome interface.
Below, I’ve embedded one of my favorite clips from Samantha Bee [note: embedding is a pain in the ass, view it here] (who is probably my favorite correspondent — no one should be surprised by this due to my vocal preference for female comedians). It’s a bit she did late last year about Al Jazeera English. When she breaks out the keyboard and improvises lyrics — damn, that’s some funny stuff.
You weren’t planning on getting anything done this Friday anyway, face it.
Cristin sent this my way because it co-stars one of the stars of Greek, which is kind of the greatest shows ever and by far the best thing ever to come out of the ABC Family channel. But be warned: Viewing this clip may fill you with a blind rage that, unfortunately, will never leave you. Watch at your own risk.
Sadly, the answer to “Is this for real?” is a world-weary, soul-deadening “yes.”
Even the presence of Cappie, my new, slightly more cheerful Logan Echolls, does not make this any less of a horrifying debacle.
The other day, as I gallantly strode down Internet Blvd., parasol in hand, I came upon a new Web site/blog/Internet TV show that I thought you might enjoy. I certainly do.
It’s called Cute With Chris and it features several things I love (seen here in this numbered list):
boys with bedhead
Canadian accents
pictures of puppies and kittens (although I mainly prefer the puppies), and
non sequiturs.
Here’s a recent episode:
It’s a fun show — kind of like those John Hodgman Mac ads had a baby with the people who do Cute Overload and they raised it on a steady diet of SCTV reruns.
The show’s been on for a while, so there’s a whole long backlog of shows for you to watch. Plus, if you have a newfangled iPod, you can download episodes from iTunes for free and watch them on public transportation.
I can’t say anything that Maggie hasn’t already said about High School Musical 2: Havana Nights. But I can cop to the fact that I spent the first hour of my workweek scouring YouTube to get my HSM fix, and came up with the “official video” for breakout hit “I Don’t Dance,” which incorporates nearly every player I’ve ever had on any fantasy baseball team of mine. Plus Bronson Arroyo. Plenty of Jose Reyes high fives, plus David Wright exactly as I like to think of him: Sliding into home.
I think reality shows that demand two nights worth of your time per week are mean. I can’t even commit to a deodorant, let alone four hours a week of American Idol. This is why I didn’t know who Jordin Sparks was until Glamour told me she was more recognizable than Laura Bush. (Actually, I can’t remember the Legitimately Famous Person they used as a comparison, but it was Laura Bush-esque. This is Glamour’s fault for not having a search function on their website).
BUT I make an exception for So You Think You Can Dance. They follow the semi-standard Performance Show/ Results Show format, which makes it the ultimate promo for DVR as you can condense the results show (which is generally padded with dramatic music, solo dances no one cares about, and performances from the likes of Nick Lachey) down to about 7 minutes. Which makes you feel productive (because you can spend the remaining 53 minutes in the hour washing dishes or curing cancer) and lazy (because you’re watching reality tv) at the same time!
It’s hard to talk about how good this show is in words because it’s such a visual experience. It’s also hard for me to put into words how much I love the host, Cat Deeley, who is British and adorable and incredibly tall and who I’d like to keep in a box on my desk at work and have her chirp “Well done, you lot!” every time I do anything. Also, she is a perfect mix of Anne Hathaway (holla Becoming Jane! Cannot WAIT) and Jessica St Claire from Best Week Ever.
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See? SEE? You love her too, right??
My other other favorite part is that they rotate choreographers and (apparently) instruct them to use contemporary music whenever possible, which means you’ll quickly start associating Avril’s “Girlfriend” and Lifehouse’s “That terrible song that no one can ever get out of their head” with jiving and waltzing respectively (which is good, since my preexisting associations with those two were “retarded canadian” and “what’s the best angle at which to cut my wrists so that the blood flows quickly”). Unfortunately, this also means that Wade Robson has a platform through which he can force ten dancers to each perform the same solo to “Waiting on the World To Change” that ends with them peace-signing the audience. (How much do I love wikipedia, by the way? A ton. Fun facts about Wade: Born in ‘82 (younger than me! fun!); called to testify in the first michael jackson trial about sleepovers he had in the pop star’s bed with Macaulay Culkin; is nominated for a Emmy for his choreography on the show).
I’m rambling. Let’s allow the dancing to speak for itself, shall we?
1. Lacey and Kameron broadway it up to All That Jazz. (Clip includes pre-dance info, actual dancing begins at 2:44):
Lacey is my current favorite on the show, as she is (a) adorable (b) not one of the douches who said they wanted to be an astronaut when asked on the show about their future ambitions outside of dance and (c) sister to last year’s champion Benji Schwimmer. I love a good family dynasty (ask me sometime when you have 3 or so hours free about my brothers and our speeches at our respective high school graduations. Okay, yes, I was only allowed near the podium to introduce the person who was elected to speak on behalf of my class whereas my brothers were said elected person, but still. Threepeat!). Her partner for the first half of the show, Kameron, full on rode Lacey’s coattails for the first half of the season and was dropped as soon as he had to dance with someone else. You’ll notice Kameron doing his signature backflip in the opening, which every choreographer he worked with included in his routine.
2. Lauren and Pasha rock a hip hop routine:
Here’s why this is awesome: Pasha is a ballroom dancer and not supposed to be good at this. They are wearing glow in the dark Tshirts with the human skeleton on them. The opening is Transformers themed. It was choreographed by the dude who choreographed You Got Served.
In the following YouTube clip of his talk show, though, he is in the back of a cab with a pants-less Paul Rudd. And, for that, he inspires no small amount of jealousy.
I’d like to take a moment to shake my fist toward the sky and scream at God. I really don’t think it’s fair that someone can be that hot and funny at the same time. Shouldn’t he have developed humor as a coping mechanism like the rest of us? Perhaps he endured a back brace throughout junior high or had an awful childhood speech impediment that he has since recovered from (but sometimes resurfaces when he’s tired or had too much to drink).
So, we mentioned that there’s nothing to watch, right? Have we made that clear?
Anyway, here’s something for you to do while you’re busy obsessing over the Lost flash-forward — watch The Maria Bamford Show. I’ve shared my love for Ms. Bamford before, and now she has her own internet TV show. Well, it’s been around for a while, but there are now a whole bunch of episodes for you to enjoy.
Here’s the first episode, embedded right here for your viewing pleasure.
Well kids, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been active on TiFaux but I’m taking the summer off so you should be hearing from me more often. But all that free time comes just when TV goes into hibernation. Hibernation in the summer! That’s crazy! Why does TV still abandon us in the summer? The kids are out of school with no homework to get in the way of prime time. It’s not like we all go on vacation like those lazy Europeans do. Pretty much nothing changes for most adults in the summer except we don’t get any quality TV.
So rather than catch up on the brilliant indie films I haven’t been watching (although you should all go out and buy a DVD of Hal Hartley’s latest masterpiece Fay Grim if you haven’t already) I’ve decided to turn to the Internets and see what the kids are watching there.
As usual, it’s a grim scene. When I first started writing about Internets video, Lonelygirl15 was still a cute, real-life girl who made funny videos in her bedroom. I hadn’t seen it in a while, but I watched the latest episode last night.
Now, not only is it an obviously scripted piece of junk, Bree is nowhere to be seen! This new guy is really actory, and they’re still going with all this nonsense about cults. If only we could go back to the days of Proving Science Wrong. This show should have ended as soon as it was outed as a fake. It would have been legendary. The stuff they’re doing now is like making a sequel to The Blair Witch Project…
A recent hit on the uTube (notice how I shortened the name? The kids are always doing stuff like that) is The 305, a cross between The 300 and The Office. It’s a fairly funny and pretty well-made piece, but it’s a little too much like guys screwing around in their basement. I didn’t finish it.
Another thing that’s so hot right now is Machinima; using video games to make videos. It’s smart because you don’t need actors or locations or props or anything. The most popular by far is Red vs. Blue which is about to reveal its 100th and final episode. One of my old roommates once watched something like 2 hours worth of this show on DVD in our living room. I watched 10 minutes of it and thought it was a clever short. Then I found out that it just kept going. Re-watching some of it now, I have to say it’s not my thing. Here are somebody’s idea of the “best” moments from the first season.
As I mentioned earlier today, Creature Comforts got cancelled and it makes me very sad. It seems like they only aired two episodes before it got the can. However, what I saw of the show was delightful and now I’m trying to figure out how to get a copy of the British DVDs (it’s an American version of a British series).
The concept of the show is simple: you take interviews with real people and animate them with clay animals. The result is a sweet and often hilarious series that you can totally watch with your nieces and nephews (or kids — if you’ve taken that leap) and neither one of you will be bored.
Here’s a bit of the first episode. As you watch, you’ll definitely develop your favorite recurring characters (mine include the kid snails, the bird on the horse’s head and the WASPy cats). The rest is available at the CBS Web site and around YouTube.
Who knows? Maybe it’ll get picked up by someone on cable.
Spurred on by Dan’s last The More You Know I’ve been internet stalking the hell out of “My Boys,” trying to figure out when the new season starts (the best the website can tell me is “this summer.” cool, thanks). I have no useful information for you, but if you need a good chuckle you should spend some time cruising the My Boys fan forum:
