First, Children’s Hospital, which enjoyed an absolutely genius smart-silly-stupid-absurd first season on Adult Swim, ended the episode “Hot Enough For You” with these completely random, wholly enjoyable Do the Right Thing-inspired closing credits.
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That was awesome. But then our friends, the gals over at Broad City, went ahead and blew that out of the water with this unbelievably brilliant Spike Lee homage that served as their season finale:
Beyond words. Mini-masterpiece.
Well, since all good things (and celebrity deaths) come in threes, we have to imagine there’s a third Spike Lee-esque joint coming down the pike. Who will it be? Sesame Street, we’re looking in your direction (oh, looks like these guys already sorta did it).
Sometimes life just hands you a gift, whether it’s turning on the TV in the morning to find Regis inadvertently giving Meryl Streep a heart attack, or turning on the TV at night to witness Anderson Cooper absolutely destroy an opportunistic, insipid politician. So this morning, while brushing out teeth, we flipped on the tube to see what was happening with WFAN’s Boomer & Carton, simulcast on the MSG Network, and, well, our birthday present came early:
Sometime around the beginning of this year I pondered the similarities between Conan O’Brien and President Barack Obama (and teased an upcoming blog post on the subject via Twitter). With Conan’s new show premiering on TBS tonight, following the Republican tidal wave that swept into congress last week, and in doing so affixing a bold question mark onto Obama’s presidency, it seems like there’s no better time to finally revisit the parallel. This comparison is perhaps more relevant, and possibly more darkly prescient, than ever.
When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 a collective sigh of relief escaped young voters across the country. Actually, it was less a sigh of relief and more of a giddy shout. Hope had won out. Yes we could. We had a charismatic leader, the sexiest president since JFK, who was certain to reverse the damage done by eight years under George W. Bush’s tyrannical reign. And just like how JFK utilized his good looks and immense charm to capture the nation’s heart in the first televised presidential debate, badly outshining a sweaty, swarthy Richard Nixon, Obama used new media, most notably the internet, in a way no President had before. He was a star for sure, but in a way we had never seen. He galvanized the young, tech savvy populace, the early adopters who proclaimed their support on their Facebook and MySpace pages. MTV had been encouraging late teens and twenty-somethings to Rock the Vote for many years, but in that election we truly had a rock star to endorse. We were fed up with the Bush regime, with Republican rule, and we were energized, we were motivated, and we had Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan immigrant, as our shining ray of hope. And in that time it was a symbiotic relationship. Obama inspired the poor, the hungry, the unemployed and recent college graduate masses, and they banded together to have their voices heard, to provide Obama with the spirit and the mandate. He gave us hope, and we gave him our vote.
And then on that Tuesday night in November our prayers were answered. Celebrations erupted on the streets of Williamsburg, citizens went wild in Chicago, and Hawaii cheered their native son. We had won. We had our guy. And he would lead us to the promised land.
As we wind down before the Halloween weekend, we would be remiss if we didn’t remind you that, two nights after Jon Hamm graces the Studio 8H, SNL will return with returning female alumni for the Women of SNL. The primetime special will include old sketches as well as new material with former cast members like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Nora Dunn and Cheri Oteri (while it’s clear there’s going to be retrospective interviews, we’re not sure if they will offer any original sketches). As we mentioned when this was announced a few weeks back, Fey, Poehler, Shannon, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch have appeared on the show frequently over the last couple seasons, so the special feels a little redundant, but we guess they deserve some specific recognition.
Well, not quite. But during a recent appearance on Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show, Stern did ask Joel if he had read Michael Ian Black‘s essay “What I Would Be Thinking About If I Were Billy Joel Driving Towards A Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going To Be A Piano” (from his delightful anthology, My Custom Van, now available in paperback), so it’s almost as if they collaborated. Sure, Joel hadn’t read or even heard of the essay, but now he knows about it, and we’re sure if he did read it he’d agree with every word (we think he’d also particularly enjoy the essay “Why I Used a Day-Glo Magic Marker to Color My Dick Yellow”).
Beyond the brief discussion about Black’s essay and Joel’s actual experience of going to party and finding out he’s supposed to be the entertainment, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable interview that delves into Joel’s personal past, and also goes in depth about Joel’s new concert film/documentary Last Play at Shea.
So that makes it Billy Joel, Michael Ian Black, and the Mets all in one conversation! That’s like Christmas for a Long Island Jew Comedy Nerd! Mazel Tov!
And so begins my long overdue thoughts on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains. It’s a shame we have to start on such a sour note.
A few weeks ago my mom and I were talking about the Tiger Woods scandal (it was what she came up with after brainstorming topics for dinner conversation) and she asked me if there was some one in the public eye, a role model perhaps, that would really break my heart if they were exposed to be in some kind of scandal or lascivious activity. I told her that as I’ve become an adult I’ve learned to let go of such things, that as a 26 year-old you can’t put another person, especially a public persona, on such a pedestal. She suggested that we should hold these people to a higher moral standard, but I argued just the opposite, that with celebrities – actors, musicians, athletes, politicians – we should expect less adherence to a moral code. These are people who are told they are great, they are special, and thus think they are exempt from common behavior, that they are above the law, both legally and morally. Now there are, of course, exceptions, but too often their celebrity status goes to their heads, and they think the rules don’t apply to them. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and the less we should be surprised when they do. Sad but true. So to answer my mother’s question, there was no one I could think of whom I believed in so deeply that any discovery of indiscretion would be utterly soul crushing (unless it was revealed that Tom Hanks has cheated on Rita Wilson with a harem of Golden Corral buffet attendants, but I can think of almost nothing less likely).
However, a couple nights later I sat down to dig into the premiere of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains and I realized that I was mistaken. There remained at least one person I felt that strongly about, whom I believed to be nearly infallible, with whom I couldn’t fault and would be shocked to learn of one. And that man is former Brooklyn firefighter Tom Westman. Yes, as a fellow Long Islander I’m biased. But the way he so thoroughly dominatedSurvivor: Palauis really unparalleled in the show’s history, and he did so by a mixture of uncanny physical prowess and the utmost integrity. In my eyes he played a flawless game, and perhaps became the last role model standing.
A couple weeks ago I decided to check out the Paley Center here in LA (formerly known as the Museum of TV & Radio). I assumed it would be basically the same as its NY brother (and my assumption proved mostly correct, as the West Coast branch actually has a little less to offer), but with The Muppets at Disney World scheduled to screen at 4pm I figured it would be worth a trip. Except that when I arrived I realized that I had been looking at the NY schedule, and the most attractive screening option was an old episode of the Carol Burnett Show. So I decided to try my luck with the video archives.
With the Muppets still on the brain I resolved to see what kind of treasures the library might offer, knowing that the Museum had put together several special Jim Henson events. Indeed, I found a series of compilations celebrating the life and work of Henson. Amongst these was an episode of The Jim Henson Hour that featured a short film I had heard of but never seen: Dog City.
Now the Paley Center has been rendered almost obsolete by YouTube; the web offers a wider selection videos, often better in quality, on demand, and with the added benefit of being viewable from your home computer instead of on an old NTSC monitor at a video carrel in an eerily quiet and sterile media room. Not to mention you don’t have to wear ratty, flaking headphones that have already been used by innumerable strangers (that must be a health hazard). But there are a few items, a couple rare gems that you can’t find on YouTube or even weird Polish websites. Dog City is one of these such rarities.
Dog City is Jim Henson’s take on film noir, but in this scenario it’s classic hard-boiled crime drama inspired by paintings of dogs playing poker. And with main characters named Ace Yu and Bugsy them, it has no shortage of corny, Abbott and Costello style jokes. Except that, with Henson’s Muppet alter-ego Rowlf the Dog playing the piano and breaking the fourth wall as our narrator, the jokes are delivered with a full-on wink at the audience and they actually work. I usually get bored during musical numbers in Muppet productions, and this was no exception, but I found the rest of the movie quite enjoyable, even with the VHS quality picture and its sometimes cranky tracking. Since the movie is almost exclusively available at the Paley Center, the best we can do here is present the trailer:
Three years later Henson would turn Dog City into a Saturday morning cartoon, “Jim Henson’s Dog City” changing Ace Yu into Ace Hart, a more standard noir detective. Luckily, the show still offered some traditional “real world” Muppets, as Dog City is animated by Eliot, a Muppet German Shepherd, and his friends and neighbors serve as inspiration for the animated canines.
So while the Paley Center has become a bit of a ghost town, made nearly irrelevant by the Internet, it can still be worth a visit, if only for that one special show.
Sometime around the beginning of this year I pondered the similarities between Conan O’Brien and President Barack Obama (and teased an upcoming blog post on the subject via Twitter). With Conan’s new show premiering on TBS tonight, following the Republican tidal wave that swept into congress last week, and in doing so affixing a bold question mark onto Obama’s presidency, it seems like there’s no better time to finally revisit the parallel. This comparison is perhaps more relevant, and possibly more darkly prescient, than ever.
Jumped The Snark 