A new Top Chef in just a few hours. But can anything top last week’s episode with featuring Sesame Street AND Target? Probably not!
A few highlights!
COOKIE MONSTER. DUH!
Elmo suggests perhaps making a cookie out of zucchini and daikon and dirt and cobwebs and rice cakes and Canadian pennies. Luckily, Cookie Monster tells him to shut the fuck up.
Cookie Monster invokes the five second rule and is pretty much just the best.
Well, actually, due to a rather unbelievably productive early part of 2011, we passed the 500 post mark a few weeks ago, somewhere around the time we started the Saved by the Bell Project. In fact, we’ve sped from 400 posts to 500 in just about a month, crushing any previous 100 post dash on this blog. So congrats everyone, gold medals all around! All that training, all those cold mornings getting up before dawn to take us to the ice rink, all those long weekends devoted to out-of-state tournaments, it’s all been worth it, and we can’t thank you enough for making it happen.
We promised a blow-out for #500, but since we got there so quickly, and since it’s already pretty far in the rear view mirror, and since we’ve hope to approximate this pace for the foreseeable future, we’ve going to hold off on the real fireworks for another milestone. Maybe for 600. Or 750. Or, dare we say it, 1000? Maybe. Just maybe.
But, until then, here’s a little something to celebrate this joyous occasion:
(And now that we’ve listened to this song for the first time in ages, we realize that it doesn’t make sense. Walking 500 miles and then walking 500 more would equal a total of 1,000 miles. Where do they get 5,000 miles from? They’d need to walk another 500 miles 8 times to reach 5,000 miles. But if her door is only 500 miles and then another 500 miles away that additional 4,000 miles would be totally unnecessary right? Unless they’re using some weird version of the metric system. They are Scottish, after all. Of course, if that was the case it would be 500 kilometers. Well, actually, 500 miles would be roughly 805 km, which we understand is not nearly as catchy. But we just don’t think we’ll be able to listen to this song, and The Proclaimers in general, in the same way anymore. Also, if both brothers showed up at this girl’s door would she have to choose one? They’d be the “men” who walked 5,000 (or 1,000) miles to show up at her door.)
This is it, folks. We estimated it would take us about two days to get to this point. Instead it’s taken 3 weeks. But, nevertheless, we’ve arrived. And the end. Well, the beginning of the end.
6:14pm, Season 5, Disc 1, Episode 1: ” The Fight”
00:10: Well, right out of the gate we have to compliment the DVD menus for this season. MUCH improved.
01:49: My school never had the “pool on the roof” gag. I kind of regret that. Feel like I didn’t have a proper high school experience.
02:32: Fun Fact: Elizabeth Berkley turned 44 during this season.
We’ve seen the trailer for Take Me Home Tonightthree or four times and we still don’t get it. What is the point of this movie? What year is it? Doesn’t this movie belong in 1988? Why would we want to see this movie without (the late) Corey Haim? And, even then, without Corey Feldman we’re not interested. What could this movie possibly add to the one-wild-and-crazy-life-changing-drug-and-sex-filled-night genre? And we generally adore Topher Grace, so it’s hard for us to be so down on this one.
When we heard Former Federal Agent (?) Phillip release a deep, guttural, primitive grunt (twice) during the Survivor: Redemption Island premiere we couldn’t shake the feeling that we had heard that noise somewhere before.
(Also, we really have no idea what he’s talking about here. Something about male lions sniffing each other and dancing. Is he divulging a crush on Boston Rob?)
But then it dawned on us.
NHL 93. A body check. SFX #2.
Does this mean that when Phillip informed his tribe that he was a former federal agent for three government agencies one of those organizations was EA Sports? Was Phillip, in fact, part of a deep covert operation to provide the sound effects for the greatest sports video game in the history of video games? Have we uncovered Phillip’s classified resume?
A short, fun Muppet Tuesday inspired by a video referred to us by The Geoff Man and last week’s Top Chef.
As far as Sesame Street characters go, we don’t remember being particularly enamored with Cookie Monster as a child. Certainly, we weren’t fans of that red menace Elmo, but our allegiances laid more with Ernie and that other blue monster, Grover (probably because of his aural resemblance to Yoda, his brother in Frank Oz-helmed arms). And, of course, we appreciated and admired Kermit, not just for being the straight man who tolerated all the zany creatures on Sesame Street, but because we were thoroughly impressed that he managed to moonlight as the “Muppet News” reporter while managing the Muppets full-time. That guy was basically the 70s and 80s version of Joel McHale (But really, Kermit can’t count as a favorite, because he’s a given, it’s like saying the Beatles are your favorite band (which they are not). Hall of Fame members are not options)). But for some reason, while not disliking Cookie Monster, he never struck the same chord as the others. Perhaps because he wasn’t as silly-mean as Grover, or childlike and mischievous as Ernie. He seemed rather one-note, heck bent on one thing and one thing alone, and that obscured a rather winning personality. But with his SNL audition tape, his appearance on the show with Jeff Bridges, and his guest-judging on Top Chef last week, our opinion towards the pastry pouncer began to change. With hs newly discovered nuanced sense of humor Cookie Monster was evolving into our favorite Sesame Street Muppet . Except that, as this vintage video shows, that sharp sensibility was there all along. We just missed it until now. Somehow, Cookie Monster might actually be the subtlest monster on Sesame Street.
And, as usual, we plan to recap last week’s Top Chef just before the new one airs tomorrow night, but take a look at this behind the scenes clip from featuring Cookie Monster, along with Telly and, yes, Elmo, hilariously kinda being dicks to the crew.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
And we now realize where Barbara Walters got it from…
And if just one, just one, 3 year-old decides they prefer Cookie Monster to Elmo then we’ll be happy.
We’re inclined to make this an all Saved by the Bell week of Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day, in celebration of finally finishing our (prolonged) SBTB marathon. We don’t know what Tuesday through Friday will hold, but we’re going to start off in that direction with today’s bait “nurse jennifer saved by the bell.”
If you’ve already read our Saved by the BellSeason 2 semi-live blog you’ll know that, despite our eternal affection for Kelly Kapowski, we’ve also always harbored a crush on Nurse Jennifer, as portrayed by Nancy Valen in the episode “From Nurse to Worse” (oddly enough, if we had to name five girls that we had a thing for as a young man, the list might include three ladies from Saved by the Bell: Thiessen, Valen and Rena Sofer, who played Zack’s love interest in Hawaiian Style). It was a very brief role, but Valen left an indelible impression on us, a lasting impact that stays with us today. Indeed, we remember Valen more for her turn at Bayside than her one season on Baywatch. And normally we hated any of Zack’s love interests other than Kelly, abhorring anyone who might get in the way of their eternal happiness. But this particular time we didn’t mind so much. We weren’t happy that Zack was risking his relationship with Kelly for Nurse Jennifer, but we certainly couldn’t blame him.
We mean, c’mon, what sophomore wouldn’t fall for this school nurse? (just another example of how everything was better at Bayside)
This season we’ll be taking our ‘Survivor’ recapping talents to Gawker TV. However, we’re going to also offer expanded, “Director’s Cut” recaps on this blog. So here we go. Day One.
The challenge for Survivor: Redemption Island is going to be keeping us interested in anyone not named Boston Rob or Russell Hantz. Our fear going into the premiere was that the presence of these veterans would overshadow the new Survivors. However, for one episode at least, we got just enough Boston Rob and Russell while also introducing some intriguing new cast members. We’re not entirely convinced that there are any personalities that can match up to the two masterminds, but judging from an explosive, unbelievable, train wreck of a first Tribal Council, we’re in for a season of crackpots and fireworks.
But, before we get there: helicopters! And Probst just enjoying the feel of the cool Nicaragua air hitting his face.
Jumped The Snark 