Category Archives: Hanx

2013/03/11 · 4:40 pm

Elliott Ghoul’d: JT Joins the ‘SNL’ Five Timers Club But One Member is Conspicuously Absent

Justin Timberlake made his triumphant return to Studio 8H this past weekend, delivering the episode that it felt like SNL and its fans had been waiting for all season long. The affair marked Timberlake’s fifth turn as host, inducting him into the esteemed “Five Timers Club” that includes such SNL luminaries such as Steve Martin, Paul Simon, Alec Baldwin and Tom Hanks. In fact, it was during Hanks fifth hosting appearance in December of 1990  (and before fifteen of Baldwin’s sixteen hosting turns) when we first learned about the existence of the exclusive club, with a young Conan O’Brien (going by the alias “Sean”) presenting Hanks with his club robe. For the first time in just over twenty-two years we revisited this VIP lounge this past Saturday night, with Timberlake receiving his robe from another O’Brien, SNL writer and 7 Minutes in Heaven star Mike O’Brien. Martin, Simon and Hanks were once again present, as well as fellow club members Chevy Chase and Candice Bergen (and non-club but former cast members Dan Ackroyd and Martin Short). But shockingly absent from the distinguished proceedings was Five Timer Elliott Gould, who helped initiate Hanks back in ’90. Sure, by that time Gould hadn’t hosted for ten years, and hasn’t in the twenty-two since, but once a Five Timer always a Five Timer, right? In fact, Gould was the third host to join the club (behind Buck Henry and Martin), which essentially makes him a charter member. So why then has Gould essentially been excommunicated from Saturday Night Live? Why has someone who was so instrumental and loyal in those early SNL years become a persona non-grata at the Five Timers Club? Was it his role on Friends? A falling out with Don Pardo? Or, perhaps he and his friends stole from Lorne? Most likely, while fellow club members Martin and Baldwin climb higher and higher into the double digits, we’ll never know why Gould has been away for over two decades, whether by banishment or by self-righteous declaration of independence. No matter what though, they can never take away his pool privileges.

Btw, Lindsay Lohan is one hosting appearance away from joining the club. Should she be tapped for that fifth time, expect stricter membership requirements to follow soon after.

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Filed under Flashback!, Good Humor, Hanx, Makes You Think, Saturday Night Live

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2012/10/26 · 10:48 am

Guess Who’s Coming to Halloween?

Hanx!

We’re big enough to admit when we’re wrong, and we were dead wrong when we suggested earlier this week that Tom Hanks’s breathtaking slam poetry performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was the grand finale to what had been a stellar week of appearances on talk shows and telethons. We don’t want to go out on a limb and say that he saved the best for last  – because a) we don’t want to be wrong again, and b) we hope there’s still more to come (a visit to Good Day New York, perhaps? – but the self-proclaimed (and rightly so) living legend may have topped himself again last night, as he stopped by The Colbert Report to suggest a few affordable costumes for some good, old-fashioned Spooky Time Halloween Fun (but no Josh Baskin?).

http://www.hulu.com/watch/417569

[In an interesting twist, Colbert appeared earlier that night on the latest Office, as case of someone we adore popping up on one of our favorite shows, only to have the person we adore the most pop up on Colbert’s own show later in the evening. Sort of a Russian nesting doll kinda thing]

When will the government go ahead and declare Tom Hanks a national landmark already? That’s Day One stuff.

 

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Filed under Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam, Freak Out Control, Good Humor, Hanx, Lady Holiday

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2012/10/24 · 11:29 am

<3<3<3 Hanx. <3<3<3

As if trying to break his own record for sheer awesomeness (holding both the World and Olympic titles), Tom Hanks has been on a tour of hilarity the past week, turning up on GMA (well, that was more a tour of obscenity) SNL, Night of Too Many Stars (where he was the only celebrity with the integrity and temerity to eat a White Castle slider on camera) and Late Show with David Letterman (we just regret that we were deprived of this). But he saved the best for last (assuming this was the closing night of Hanxfest 2012), reaching new levels of awesomeness on last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. We don’t like to throw around the word perfection too often, but we feel like it’s appropriate here. Perfection:

The best slam poetry since Charlie Mackenzie.

And for more about that particular episode of Full House referenced above, see here.

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Filed under Brilliance, Hanx, Intersection of the venn diagram of things that I love, Mancrush, Talkies, Wake Up, SF!

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2012/05/10 · 2:06 pm

They’re Finally Together

After more than a decade it looks like David Wain & Michael Showalter’s Wet Hot American Summer follow-up They Came Together is finally going to be made, if Variety is to be trusted (and, really, can they???).   Much like Wet Hot took on 80s summer camp flicks, this one has rom-coms in its crosshairs.  And, much like Wet Hot, They Came Together will star Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, and also likely the rest of The State and Zak Orth and A.D. Miles and Elizabeth Banks and Mather Zickel and Nina Hellman (not that we’re complaining.  In fact, we’re crossing our fingers).

You can see a very brief, very blurry clip from the They Came Together read through at this year’s SF Sketchfest here, or, instead, watch this iconic Rudd clip from Wet Hot.  The choice is yours.

We’re starting the campaign for a Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan cameo now.

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Filed under Good Humor, Good News!, Hanx, The Big Screen, The State

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2011/11/26 · 8:11 pm

Happy (Belated) T.Hanksgiving

Hope your turkey was delicious! (and its production did destroy your kitchen, nor was it launched through a window)

(and, yes, we know we posted this clip just a couple weeks back, but it’s more appropriate than ever.  And if you’re complaining about too much Hanks, well, then, you’re just not the kind of reader we want on this blog).

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Filed under Good Humor, Hanx, Lady Holiday

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2011/03/14 · 10:57 pm

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: You’ve Got Jumped the Snark

The bulk of our daily search terms continue to be Survivor: Redemption Island related – Phillip, Survivor Phillip, Former Federal Agent Phillip, Kristina boobs – so we’re going to work with the odd man out in the group, “jumped the snark.”  And we’ve previously established that when our search term is “jumped the snark” it’s a wild-card day, we can post anything our little R2D2 Mr. Potato Head heart desires.  And our little R2D2 Mr. Potato Head once again desires to honor the work of Judd Apatow.

This past weekend brought us the long-awaited Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared reunions at Los Angeles’ Paley Center (which you can read much more about here).  It’s truly amazing to see these kids grown up, truly amazing that they’ve almost all gone on to successful careers as adults, and perhaps most truly amazing of all is that none of them have developed a serious drug problem (excluding an apparent affinity for the wacky tobaccky).  We frequently mention Freaks and Geeks on this blog, so we’re going to shine the spotlight on Undeclared this time around.

Here’s a clip from the series’ third episode, “Eric Visits,” which contains probably our favorite Undeclared exchange.  At about the 30 second mark please enjoy Seth Rogen’s thoughts on a certain Tom Hanks romantic comedy.

We feel the same way.

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Filed under Count Bleh, Discos and Dragons, Freak Out Control, Gratuitous Search Term Bait, Hanx, Judd Apatow

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2011/02/04 · 8:41 pm

Reginald VelJohnson in Uniform Moment of the Week: Turner and Sutton

Okay, fine, we’re cheating this week.  In this clip Reginald VelJohnson isn’t dressed in what you’d typically call a uniform.  But he’s still playing a cop, and when we first conceived of this weekly feature it was under the moniker “Reginald VelJohnson as a Cop Moment of the Week,” so this one still sorta counts.  Plus, you could totally argue that a brown sport coat is a police detective’s uniform.  It’s a stretch, but we won’t fight you on it.

But, most importantly, this is a clip from the seminal 80s canine-crime-comedy classic Turner and Hooch, which means that Reggie VelJ carries his shield alongside Jumped the Snark favorite Tom Hanks.  And any collaboration with Hanks needs to be acknowledged, traditional uniform or not (plus this gives us an excuse to link tomhanksimals).  So, ladies and gentlemen, complete with the requisite coffee mug, here’s Detective David Sutton, learning the ins and outs of precinct paperwork from fellow Detective Scott Turner:

We do have one bone to pick with the YouTube user who was kind enough to post this video, Platypus Robot. He (or she) remarked in the description that “going from Bruce Willis to Tom Hanks is a hell of a demotion.”  Well, we would be remiss if we did not fervently disagree.  If you want to restrict this argument to whom would you want to save you in a ridiculous hostage situation, John McClane or Scott Turner, of course we’d take Willis’ McClane every time.  But if we’re talking strictly Willis or Hanks, c’mon.  Hanks all the way, no contest.  The man is one of the best actors of his generation, and by many accounts one of the funniest.  Now, as far as we know, Hanks doesn’t front any blues bands, but we shouldn’t hold that against him.  He’s too busy educating the American public about the lunar missions and World War II (and pranking Julia Roberts).

So, Reginald VelJohnson, consider yourself Hanxed.  We have no doubt you appreciate the significance.

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Filed under Hanx, Reginald VelJohnson, What? Too fabulous?

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2011/01/17 · 2:34 pm

Hanks, Hanks, a Million Times Hanks

We only caught about 1/3 of the Golden Globes last night (which, judging from what we saw, might have been 1/6 too much), but we were fortunate enough to catch the requisite Tom Hanks appearance.  And, even if we had seen the whole show, we’re certain that Hanks’ minute and a half on-screen was the highlight, as he brought more energy and laughter in his 90 seconds than the whole show did in 6 hours (or whatever).  And he did it all without a Mel Gibson joke!  The guy is just good.  Really good.  And we love and appreciate him more every time.

Now if we could just get Peter Scolari up there with him next year.

Hanx!

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Filed under Brilliance, Hanx, Mancrush

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2011/01/14 · 1:59 pm

Whooo Isss It??? It’s ‘Bosom Buddies’, Finally Getting the Recognition It Deserves!

We were pleased to encounter some well-earned commendations for Bosom Buddies this week, from two relatively varied sources.  First, in the AV Club‘s truly excellent Primer on 1980s sitcoms, they list Buddies as one of the cult hits from the decade that played with traditional sitcom conventions.  Article scribe Todd VanDerWerff continues:

Bosom Buddies, which debuted on ABC in the fall of 1980, has a reputation as one of the worst shows of all time in some circles, but it’s actually a surreal work of near-genius and the only good show to ever emerge from the Miller-Boyett factory. Miller-Boyett assigned a young writer named Chris Thompson to work on a TV spin on Some Like It Hot, and he cast Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari in the lead roles…Thompson, who would go on to work on The Larry Sanders Show, filled the series with strange sight gags and mostly abandoned his central premise as soon as he possibly could. The show allowed Hanks and Scolari to improvise freely, often leaving the script for far funnier, stranger tangents.

Some might question the rank of “near-genius,” but we’re here to defend it.  We recently used Blizzpocalypse as an excuse to revisit the series, and it’s impressive how well it holds up.  And, as a bonus, there are jokes that I didn’t get upon first viewing that, with the benefit of age and wisdom, I now understand (although, there are still others I didn’t get then and don’t get now).  However, we’re not exactly sure that we’d qualify the program as “surreal;” certainly, the premise that Hanks and Scolari, in the roles Kip and Henry, were required to dress in drag in order to maintain residence at a “hotel for women” was somewhat off-beat for the time, but, as the writer mentions, since the show was loosely based on Some Like It Hot it’s not exactly a novel premise.  But VanDerWerff is right on when he notes that they wisely jettisoned the drag plotlines, in favor of letting the talented cast (including Holland Taylor, Wendie Jo Sperber, Donna Dixon and Telma Hopkins) utilize their immense chemistry and crack timing in more successful, less gimmicky storylines.

(we urge you to go over to the AV Club and read the comprehensive essay as soon as you finish this post.  You’ll need to set aside a good 20 minutes, more if you want to watch the accompanying videos (primary source materials), but it’ll be worth it.  And be certain to also study their 1970s sitcom Primer, either before or after (however, we do take umbrage with the 80s Primer’s criticism of the shows that comprised TGIF.  Certainly, those sitcoms don’t represent the best the decade had to offer, but they have their redeeming qualities.  However, that’s a defense for a later post.))

Continue to see what a certain The Office star also has to say about the show…

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Filed under Buffy & Hildegarde, Fashion Show at Lunch, Good with Coffee, Hanx, Internet Killed the Print Media Star, Interweb, Mancrush, Nostalgia Corner, Other people's stuff, TGIF

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