As Conor Friedersdorf said in Rob’s thread, we conservatives do sometimes protest too much about attacks from New York and Hollywood liberals. Everyone loves to generalize (see what I did there?) and of course we’re more likely to notice memes that rub us the wrong way.
Still, the Weekend Update bit is enlightening: note how Pelosi and Boehner are mocked. For every second Wiig acts like an airhead, Hader spends twenty seconds sobbing. The crux of the bit is that Boehner will cry about anything… except for “millions of uninsured Americans.” Pelosi is attacked for – can you guess? – not explaining Obamacare better.
Even if late-night shows ridicule politicians on both sides of the aisle, the attacks almost always come from the left. With that in mind, should we be surprised the cruelest rhetoric is reserved for those furthest from the “correct” way of thinking? Regarding Conor’s suggestion that treatment is fairly equal: has history ever produced a politician who pitched more comedic softballs than Nancy Pelosi? Yet Pelosi is shown as a tiny bit of a ditz, while Boehner will be excoriated for years because he’s gotten too emotional on-camera.
By way of IMAO, a new Parry Gripp video featuring animals doing funny things accompanied by a catchy jingle:
You’ve got to keep on keepin’ on,
get on that pig and hold on tii-iiiight!
This clip holds special significance for me because of the time I, like a baby monkey, rode backwards on a pig (for the whole story, act like you’re interested in dating me and I’m sure my sisters would provide details).
What’s that, you say you’ve never seen a Parry Gripp video? If you think sixty seconds of animal humor is worth getting a ridiculous song stuck in your head, look no further:
The Black Keys make great music, and The Black Keys are great live. The Dispatch review of last night’s show at the LC Pavilion is… okay. Describing Brothers as the band’s defining album is way off base: it features some very good stuff, but also several utterly skip-worthy tracks. I agree, though, with the tone of the Dispatch review, as I heartily recommend seeing the Keys live if you like bluesy rock even a little.
I’ve got all but the first Keys album – yes, I’m one of those late arrivals who didn’t hear of the Akron duo until Attack & Release – and couldn’t have been much happier with the set list. Although Dan Auerbach’s voice lost the battle against drums and guitar, the rocking-ness of his guitar and Patrick Carney’s drums completely made up for that. I was hoping to hear 10 A.M Automatic, but when a band has 6 albums to cover it’s hard to be picky!
If you want to see a movie based on a web comic which is itself heavily influenced by video games, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is nearly perfect. It’s more stylized than I expected, which won’t sit well with some viewers, but I was impressed. The trailers had me looking forward to indier-than-thou dry humor in a geeky wrapper, with some goofy action for good measure. That could have been entertaining, if not exactly original… given that Michael Cera himself has been in, what, 19 films matching that description? Pilgrim is, in fact, something unique, and something very, very funny.
Because I’m such an exciting guy, thinking “are they ever going to release The Norm Show on DVD?” and then Googling for the answer is the sort of thing I do on a Saturday night. It’s a topic that often comes up when I think about funny TV shows: Norm Macdonald is my favorite comedian, and The Norm Show featured a wienerdog named Wienerdog.
I was happy to find that during an extended lapse in my Norm-Show-DVD-checking routine, it was announced that Shout Factory is releasing a box set of all three seasons on September 7, 2010! Fellow TV nerds may recognize Shout Factory as the folks who released Freaks and Geeks (a boring, somewhat humorous show whose hype I wish I had ignored) on DVD.
Amazon is taking pre-orders for The Norm Show at $45 a pop. All the cool kids are pre-ordering it. On the bright side, you can do so even if you aren’t cool, as evidenced by the fact that Amazon accepted my order.
Robinson and Steyn’s discussion centers on America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which is available in paperback now and which I could not recommend more emphatically. Steyn’s mastery of historic facts and current events is mixed with just enough funny anecdotes to keep his writing from being the most depressing stuff on earth… which is no small feat given much of his subject matter!
America Alone (like the interview linked here) is packed with facts that establish the effects of mass immigration on European nations, and warns of how different classically liberal democratic states will be after imbalanced birth rates take their toll. It’s a subject that gets more important each day, with Greece leading the European nanny-states off the fiscal waterfall and American media & politicians refusing to mention Islamic extremism as a possible motive for a Pakistani’s attempted New York City bombing.
I didn’t think of this until my roommate said something a few months ago, but the relationship between those characters is the perfect template. Chuck’s got ridiculous talents, and is more of a clown than a tough guy (though admittedly about .04% as terrific as Wash from Firefly). Sarah is also extremely talented, but her sense of humor takes a back seat to all the skull-cracking she’s got to do. Like Zoe. They’re different but made for each other, blah blah etc etc.
So, yeah… if you’ve given up on Chuck as I nearly did during that string of lame episodes earlier this season, catch up! With any luck, the remaining filmed season 3 episodes feature a sturdy, non-high-school relationship between the show’s namesake and leading lady! Better late than never, and there’s still plenty the writers could conjure up besides everyone breaking everyone elses’ hearts and making sad faces 10 minutes per episode.
It doesn’t hurt that Adam Baldwin maintains a steady level of awesome.
Chuck Season Three, Episode 7 was incredibly stupid. It’s as if the writers made a list of all the creative things they could do, then lit them on fire and laughed as they re-hashed episodes from the first two seasons.
As I’ve mentioned, the writers could have easily taken the Chuck & Sarah relationship in a new direction with the start of season 3. Chuck gets super powers – as if he’s a new man! Alas, none of those powers provides for a spine, so when Sarah tells him everything he’s ever wanted to hear… he responds by being a total flake. Then, instead of patiently regaining her trust like someone over the age of 13, he gives up and starts making out with the next babe who comes along.
I’ll quote my roommate again, because the lame-ness of the new Chuck episodes annoys us both. He pointed out at the start of the season that Joss Whedon provided a perfect template for what Chuck & Sarah should be: Zoe and Wash from Firefly. Awesome, happy couple. Is that so difficult? If you’re a good writer with interesting things to say, there’s no need for an endless cycle of high school drama between every single male/female pairing on the show.
Or you could be like Chuck‘s writers this season, and liberally mix celebrity cameos into a perpetual mass of stupid love triangles. Maybe I’m underestimating them! Maybe the producers decided it would be better if viewers hated the main character.
Oh well; the end of Dollhouse was great, and Community continues to be hilarious!
As occasional readers – both of you – will know, I’ve been a big fan of NBC’s Chuck although season 2 occasionally bummed me out. I really enjoyed the season 2 finale, because it avoided further overuse of the will-they-won’t-they drama while including plenty of the show’s quality humor and action. Let’s get the spoiler alert out of the way now, in case you’re still catching up on season 2 or haven’t watched the new episodes from last night and tonight!
Season 2 ended such that I was optimistic for the third season – giving Chuck a limitless supply of skills seemed like a great way to use the silly “intersect” concept that we’ve accepted to immediately transform the character. I was looking forward to Chuck as bumbling doofus/super spy, working with Agent Sexypants and Colonel Casey on a variety of fun missions. No need for dumb on-again, off-again romance between Chuck and Sarah, since they get in enough trouble that every episode is a dramatic chance for either (or both) of them to almost die. Yes, I knew this was too much to expect.
The first episode of season 3 had its moments, but was overall a big disappointment. Why, when the woman of his dreams wants to drop everything and run away with him, would Chuck back out? I’m happy to ignore lots of unbelievable things the show does to make spy drama light and entertaining, but the Chuck and Sarah business in Chuck Versus the Pink Slip was too much. The second episode explained it away somewhat, but to quote my eminently wise roommate:
If something is an infinitely stupid thing to do and you make it less stupid by half, it is still an infinitely stupid thing to do.
There are characters who would make the decision Chuck made for the reasons he explained in Chuck Versus the Three Words. Chuck is not one of these characters. Having seen for two years how Sarah and Casey are jerked around by their superiors, he would never choose espionage over Sarah Walker unless lame writers decided it’d be a nice way to draw out the sexual tension. Also, Mopey Chuck is someone we had seen enough of by the end of season 1, so this was a bad idea all around.
On the bright side, episodes 2 and 3 were better; the show is still funny, and Adam Baldwin still rocks worlds. The sooner Chuck and Sarah get together and stay together, the sooner we can stop wasting time on longing glances and all that crap! Were I Zachary Levi, I would have demanded twice as much making out with Yvonne Strahovski months ago. But then, Zachary Levi is probably a toolbox in real life, whereas in real life Yvonne Strahovski is Australian.
Sunday, 01-09-11, 10:45:08pm 
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