Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Is there a new "pants free" movement in entertainment? Check out the following two items recently reported:
From Cynopsis today:
Boomerang is going commando, so to speak, with the launch of No Undies Mondays launching Monday, October 9 at 4-5p. No Undies Mondays will highlight some of most popular animated characters that are, well, simply pant-less, beginning 10/9 with Yogi Bear, Peter Potamus and So So, Squiddly Diddly, Breezly and Sneezly and Huckleberry Hound. Subsequent weeks will include Top Cat, Kwicky Koala and Wilfred Wolf, and The Hair Bear Bunch as well as Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey, Augie Doggy and Doggy Daddy, Sherriff Ricochet Rabbit and his deputy, and Punkin Puss and Mushmouse among many other pant-less characters.
From MultiChannel News yesterday:
Fuse Takes Pants-Off Again
The second season of Pants-Off Dance-Off will debut on Fuse Tuesday at 10 p.m. (EST).
Hosted by Jodie Sweetin (Full House), the new season will add face-to-face competition and live audience participation, including allowing the audience to use their cellular phones and vote live.
Season one debuted in April.
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From Cynopsis today:
Boomerang is going commando, so to speak, with the launch of No Undies Mondays launching Monday, October 9 at 4-5p. No Undies Mondays will highlight some of most popular animated characters that are, well, simply pant-less, beginning 10/9 with Yogi Bear, Peter Potamus and So So, Squiddly Diddly, Breezly and Sneezly and Huckleberry Hound. Subsequent weeks will include Top Cat, Kwicky Koala and Wilfred Wolf, and The Hair Bear Bunch as well as Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey, Augie Doggy and Doggy Daddy, Sherriff Ricochet Rabbit and his deputy, and Punkin Puss and Mushmouse among many other pant-less characters.
From MultiChannel News yesterday:
Fuse Takes Pants-Off Again
The second season of Pants-Off Dance-Off will debut on Fuse Tuesday at 10 p.m. (EST).
Hosted by Jodie Sweetin (Full House), the new season will add face-to-face competition and live audience participation, including allowing the audience to use their cellular phones and vote live.
Season one debuted in April.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Yay, it is the start of the new network television season. And there are a million shows I want to check out, which is new and exciting. I don't remember ever anticipating the new season this much. I am attempting to DVR essentially every new show, but so far have only watched a few.
I was planning to watch The Class (only caught about 5 minutes so I have no idea how it was) and The New Adventures of Old Christine, and in the middle I accidentally caught How I Met Your Mother. It's good! I was very surprised. Jason Segel (Of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared fame) plays Marshall and is awesome, as usual. And I saw him at a restaurant the other night and was caught doing the celebrity stare at him. So embarrassing. The other characters are well cast and engaging, with the exception of the horrendous Robin (Cobie Smulders, what a terrible name!) who I also saw at the restaurant, but she was wearing about a million pounds of makeup and was not awesome. I have to admit she was strikingly pretty in real life. And Neil Patrick Harris as Barney is a stroke of genius. He's actually funny. I just looked at Cobie Smulder's IMDB page (how else would I have any idea what her name is?) and the first line was: "Amazingly, newcomer Cobie Smulders never gave much thought to acting" Ha, not amazing at all. We can tell.
The New Adventures of Old Christine was average. That show had promise, and then they decided it was funnier to make Christine a loser who can't actually keep a relationship or understand herself, instead of making the difficult choice to have character progression on a sitcom. It's kind of sad, a real waste of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' talents.
The Office was awesome as usual. Brilliance. I love that Pam and Jim didn't work it out, even though you know they will down the road. I like more sexual tension rather than less. Adding the new office that Jim works at into the mix is also fun.
My Name is Earl was mediocre, and is getting very boring to me. Bring in some new characters or something!
The only real new show I watched so far was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and I wasn't terribly impressed. It has a lot of buzz because of the West Wing producer aspect, but I think a serious, very dramatic and actorly treatment of the White House is appropriate, while a serious, very dramatic and actorly treatment of Hollywood, and specially a show about a sketch comedy show, is completely inappropriate. I mean, you imagine comedians are occasionally funny in real life, right? Well, they often aren't, but at least they are self-depreciating in real life. Amanda Peet is nails on the chalkboard. Her acting is abysmal, and I can't imagine what casting misstep gave her that role. Is she supposed to be Jaime Tarses? I have always liked Matthew Perry, even in his dumbest Friends moment, so he is a breath of fresh air, and it's nice to see him in a dramatic role. This show may come off my DVR list if it doesn't lighten up a bit. I mean, the promos make it look funny, must be based on something...
Grey's Anatomy continues on the road set last season. It's still over dramatic and manipulates the emotions, plus makes doctors look like high schoolers, which they don't appreciate. I enjoyed the self-referential line when Callie says "it's basically high school with scalpels." So true. And I love it. I cannot get enough of that show. The music is great as well. I've noticed an overall trend towards better music in TV shows, which is good to see.
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I was planning to watch The Class (only caught about 5 minutes so I have no idea how it was) and The New Adventures of Old Christine, and in the middle I accidentally caught How I Met Your Mother. It's good! I was very surprised. Jason Segel (Of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared fame) plays Marshall and is awesome, as usual. And I saw him at a restaurant the other night and was caught doing the celebrity stare at him. So embarrassing. The other characters are well cast and engaging, with the exception of the horrendous Robin (Cobie Smulders, what a terrible name!) who I also saw at the restaurant, but she was wearing about a million pounds of makeup and was not awesome. I have to admit she was strikingly pretty in real life. And Neil Patrick Harris as Barney is a stroke of genius. He's actually funny. I just looked at Cobie Smulder's IMDB page (how else would I have any idea what her name is?) and the first line was: "Amazingly, newcomer Cobie Smulders never gave much thought to acting" Ha, not amazing at all. We can tell.
The New Adventures of Old Christine was average. That show had promise, and then they decided it was funnier to make Christine a loser who can't actually keep a relationship or understand herself, instead of making the difficult choice to have character progression on a sitcom. It's kind of sad, a real waste of Julia Louis-Dreyfus' talents.
The Office was awesome as usual. Brilliance. I love that Pam and Jim didn't work it out, even though you know they will down the road. I like more sexual tension rather than less. Adding the new office that Jim works at into the mix is also fun.
My Name is Earl was mediocre, and is getting very boring to me. Bring in some new characters or something!
The only real new show I watched so far was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and I wasn't terribly impressed. It has a lot of buzz because of the West Wing producer aspect, but I think a serious, very dramatic and actorly treatment of the White House is appropriate, while a serious, very dramatic and actorly treatment of Hollywood, and specially a show about a sketch comedy show, is completely inappropriate. I mean, you imagine comedians are occasionally funny in real life, right? Well, they often aren't, but at least they are self-depreciating in real life. Amanda Peet is nails on the chalkboard. Her acting is abysmal, and I can't imagine what casting misstep gave her that role. Is she supposed to be Jaime Tarses? I have always liked Matthew Perry, even in his dumbest Friends moment, so he is a breath of fresh air, and it's nice to see him in a dramatic role. This show may come off my DVR list if it doesn't lighten up a bit. I mean, the promos make it look funny, must be based on something...
Grey's Anatomy continues on the road set last season. It's still over dramatic and manipulates the emotions, plus makes doctors look like high schoolers, which they don't appreciate. I enjoyed the self-referential line when Callie says "it's basically high school with scalpels." So true. And I love it. I cannot get enough of that show. The music is great as well. I've noticed an overall trend towards better music in TV shows, which is good to see.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Check out a very cool use of the web: http://www.wefeelfine.org/
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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
My car is in the bodyshop, where it has been for several weeks. Some lady just backed right into me in a parking lot, clearly not even bothering to look in her rearview mirror. I'm sure her insurance company is thrilled to be paying basically the entire value of my mid 90s Honda on the repair of the minor dent and my rental car. It seems like a waste of valuable resources somehow, but it does seem like cars are essentially one big drag on resources. Which is why my next car will be a VW TDI and I will use biodiesel for fuel.
Driving is everyone's biggest issue with LA (by "everyone" I mean all of my friends who don't live here). While I concur that you do have to drive everywhere, I can't say I find it too painful. I have a manageable and generally traffic free commute to work, which is the crucial part of LA happiness as far as I can tell. Also, I live at the beach, which means most people are driving the opposite direction than me at all times, since they live in really hot valleys somewhere. I also enjoy driving to some extent. Yeah, sometimes it's stressful and you do have to pay attention. People in LA are also notoriously aggressive and bad drivers, and they keep running into me through no fault of my own. That's all somewhat bad. The cool thing about driving is that you can listen to the radio, of which LA has some stellar examples, most notably Indie 103.1. Generally you can just control your own environment. Temperature is under your control, radio, volume of radio, choosing to stop for a mcmuffin on the way to work - it's all under your control and it's all about you. As a selfish and picky person I find it much nicer than being squashed against some creepy guy on the subway as I am subjected to inane upper east side chatter, the smell of someone's fried chicken dinner and the capricious nature of the subway schedule.
Note on Indie 103.1: someone told me that it's owned by the evil Clearchannel corporation, which is disappointing. Also when I googled Joe Escalante who is my favorite morning show host I discovered that he is an evil member of the Vandals who tried to cheat all of his bandmates out of money and fame (well, according to Wikipedia at least.) I also find Jonesy's Jukebox kind of irritating despite the novelty of listening to Steve Jones philosophize.
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Driving is everyone's biggest issue with LA (by "everyone" I mean all of my friends who don't live here). While I concur that you do have to drive everywhere, I can't say I find it too painful. I have a manageable and generally traffic free commute to work, which is the crucial part of LA happiness as far as I can tell. Also, I live at the beach, which means most people are driving the opposite direction than me at all times, since they live in really hot valleys somewhere. I also enjoy driving to some extent. Yeah, sometimes it's stressful and you do have to pay attention. People in LA are also notoriously aggressive and bad drivers, and they keep running into me through no fault of my own. That's all somewhat bad. The cool thing about driving is that you can listen to the radio, of which LA has some stellar examples, most notably Indie 103.1. Generally you can just control your own environment. Temperature is under your control, radio, volume of radio, choosing to stop for a mcmuffin on the way to work - it's all under your control and it's all about you. As a selfish and picky person I find it much nicer than being squashed against some creepy guy on the subway as I am subjected to inane upper east side chatter, the smell of someone's fried chicken dinner and the capricious nature of the subway schedule.
Note on Indie 103.1: someone told me that it's owned by the evil Clearchannel corporation, which is disappointing. Also when I googled Joe Escalante who is my favorite morning show host I discovered that he is an evil member of the Vandals who tried to cheat all of his bandmates out of money and fame (well, according to Wikipedia at least.) I also find Jonesy's Jukebox kind of irritating despite the novelty of listening to Steve Jones philosophize.
