Primetime TV
Newspapers as Product Placement
Thursday, June 10th, 2010Pop quiz: what’s so interesting about this screen grab from Desperate Housewives?
Answer: you’ve probably seen this newspaper before. Click here for more.
Categories: Primetime TV | 1 Comment »
My American Idol 2010 Prediction (with a little help from Facebook)
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010Crystal and Lee both posted status updates about eight hours ago. Note that Lee has more than twice as many “Likes” and more than twice as many comments. Assuming Facebook is a fairly random sample of American Idol viewers (isn’t basically everyone on Facebook at this point?), I think we have our winner, folks.
Oops – I guess I should have said ***SPOILER ALERT***, huh?
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Animal’s Secret Identity . . . Revealed!
Saturday, April 24th, 2010So, good news! The awesome Viral Videos from Muppets Studio have been nominated for two Webby Awards. Animal is very excited:
Interesting thing, though – I don’t think I’d ever heard Animal speak (other than one or two words at a time – between the screaming and the banging on the drums…). Now that I get a listen, though, I’ve come to a startling conclusion.
Animal has the same voice as The Cookie Monster! Watch:
Google as I might, I wasn’t able to find a video that showed both Animal and Cookie Monster on screen at the same time. From this investigation, I can only conclude that Animal is actually Cookie Monster in disguise! This is the biggest news since the whole Kermit the Frog / Ernie debacle…
Categories: Primetime TV | 3 Comments »
Conan, it’s yours!
Thursday, January 21st, 2010My, what a difference five years makes, huh?
Yeah – glad we avoided that whole mess this time around…
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Conan on Conan
Thursday, January 14th, 2010We’ve all been reading a lot lately about the mess that NBC late-night television has become. Most of the stories express pity for Conan O’Brien, who was promised The Tonight Show five years ago, and is now in danger of losing it after only seven months, never having had the chance to make it successful. Even Conan has been hard on himself, saying in last night’s monologue, “I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. . . unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.”
The story made me think back to the Class Day speech that Conan O’Brien gave at Harvard University in May of 2000. I wasn’t there, but someone sent me the text of it back in those halcyon Internet days when you sent anything you found moderately humorous to everyone in your e-mail address book, and you kept anything anyone sent you in a folder on your hard drive called “Funny E-mails.”
The text is after the cut. The video is on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2). It’s a funny speech, and the end of it provides the kind of inspirational message about making lemonade from life’s lemons that Conan probably needs to hear right now. And from his favorite Late Night talk show host…
Read the rest of this entry »
Categories: Primetime TV | 2 Comments »
Life Imitates Art – The Story of the Turkeys and the Frog
Thursday, September 24th, 2009OK, you’ve got to bear with me here, but trust me on this – the payoff is so worth it.
First, there’s this clip from the old WKRP in Cincinnati show:
Then, the hilarious conclusion (credits to the same show, different video clip):
And, finally, this from the Glen Beck show on Fox News Channel:
As God as my witness, I thought frogs jumped out of boiling water…
UPDATE: It’s possible that Glenn Beck did not actually throw a live frog into the water. See the comments below for more…
Categories: Primetime TV | 11 Comments »
New York City Sights – 30 Rock: A First Look
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009Walking past NBC Studios on the way home today, I saw them filming an upcoming episode of 30 Rock. Here are a few pics. It seems the NBC pages are going on strike (led by Kenneth the Page, of course…)
Keep an eye out for these scenes in the fall!
(Click each picture to see it full size)
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The Ultimate Reality Show
Thursday, August 6th, 2009Sorry I’ve been away so long – its been a combination of being busy with non-blog things, a dearth of short, pithy things to say, and a host of longer, meatier topics that I’d like to discuss, but haven’t had the time to write about. I’ll try to strike a better balance going forward…
So, while I’ve got a few minutes today, I thought I’d flesh out an idea that I had a while back when I walked by an advertisement for Dance Your Ass Off, a TV reality show that seems to combine Dancing with the Stars and The World’s Biggest Loser. Apparently, this new reality show has contestants performing dances, after which they are judged not just on how well they dance, but on how effectively all that dancing makes them lose weight.
Brilliant! If we combine these shows together, then there can be less of them, right? And then we’d be able to avoid them more easily, right? Certainly, this is an idea worth pursuing. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you my idea for. . . (cue theme music) . . .
One hundred overweight men, one hundred super-models and one hundred aspiring chefs are simultaneously stranded on a remote island just off the coast of Africa.
Categories: Primetime TV, Random Acts of Blogging | 2 Comments »
What do you think of when you see this bird?
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
When you see the picture on the right, what do you think of? Recent polling suggests that if you were born in:
…the 1940’s or 1950’s, you think: Woodstock – 3 Days of Peace & Music
…the 1960’s or 1970’s, you think: The Partridge Family – Come on, Get Happy!
…the 1980’s or 1990’s, you think: Twitter for Guitar?
(NOTE: This post inspired by a certain cousin of mine, who shall, at least for now, remain nameless…)
Categories: Primetime TV, Random Acts of Blogging, Words about Music | 2 Comments »
Going…Going…Gone.
Thursday, June 25th, 2009How different the world is today than it was just a couple of days ago…
R.I.P.: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson
Categories: Primetime TV, Words about Music | No Comments »