Listening to the latest episode of the ‘Ronna & Beverly’ podcast. I feel I may have already written about this show, but if I haven’t, I highly recommend you subscribe to and start listening to it today. It’s absolutely brilliant. Go, find it, get going!
Uh-oh! NBC is at it again, ladies and germs. They got a bunch a new shows and I don’t really wanna watch any of ‘em! Let’s break it down:
Animal Practice - The press release describes it as “a comedy where the animals are running the asylum.” So it takes place in a mental institution for animals? Oh, it doesn’t? It just takes place at an animal hospital? Then that makes no sense. Ya burnt! This probably started out as a Dr. Doolittle series. In fact there’s no way it didn’t start out as a Dr. Doolittle series. But now it’s Scrubs with fur!
Go On - Starring Chandler Bing! I always said he needed his own spin-off, and now here it is and we can all watch while eating popcorn and popsicles or whatever the fuck. In Go On Chandler Bing joins a support group after his wife dies in a car accident. Oh no, Monica! How is he gonna raise the kids they adopted all by himself? I smell some Mr. Mom-style shenanigans. This is Community with a dead wife, basically. Do they go to Central Perk at least? DO THEY?
Guys with Kids - Okay, NOW we’re talking! Guys. Kids. Guys with Kids! What the fuck is there not to love, you morose sacks of garbage? Get on board (the surfboard) and ride the wave! Something tells me these guys don’t get to have a lot a sex now that they got dem kids. “Baby, stop crying so I can put my THING in her THING, alright? Oy, gazpacho, this baby!” The press release claims this is all about guys trying to hold on to their youth “while holding onto their new babies’ hands”. WHAT? Fuck you. This is “parenting like you (and they) have never seen before.” Again: Fuck you. This is Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place without the Pizza Place and a whole lot more baby dick.
The New Normal - Another crap show from Glee’s own Ryan Murphy, eh? I bet it has a problem maintaining a consistent tone. I bet $500 on it, in fact! But what’s it about? It’s about a couple a gays and some lady having a baby together. Hey, more babies! Awesome. I hear in one scene the gays are fighting over which Ke$ha song is the best and then in the next one is furiously masturbating because an old woman ghost recently appeared before him disguised as a SEXY woman MAID. And then we all learn a little lesson about texting while fucking.
Chicago Fire - It’s all there in the title. What the fuck else do you want from them? You want NBC to hold your hand while it also holds on to its youth, you want it to chew up your food and spit it in your mouth you sacks of garbage? Eat a baby dick. This is about CHICAGO FIREMEN. Watch it. I love how the release claims “no job is more stressful” than those of this one specific Chicago firehouse. Yeah, fuck you, everyone else. You think your job is stressful? Bend over!
Revolution - No, absolutely not. I cannot do anymore of these faux-epic sci-fi dramas. No one watched The Event, no one watched Terra Nova, and no one is gonna watch Revolution. Sorry, NBC. Nice try with the four minute trailer, though. I like how it covered so much ground that I no longer have to watch the first two to three episodes. It covered that much ground! If you’re wondering what it’s about it’s about all of Earth’s electricity going buh-bye. That’s what it’s about. Fifteen years later everyone has bows and arrows and the teenagers are still SUPER hot, so there ya go. It’s a thing!
1600 Penn - Terrible title. Even worse: “They live in a very special house. The White House!” Who in God’s name writes these press releases? Someone’s Aunt? Bill Pullman plays the president, the loud guy from The Book of Mormon plays his son, stuff happens. It doesn’t matter what exactly happens stuff-wise because again, look at that title. No one wants to say that title out loud, it would hurt their mouths to do so. Why are you doing this to us, NBC? This is supposed to be a COMEDY, not a Goddamn drama mini-series.
I’m just gonna blow through the rest because holy mother of Christ.
Next Caller - This stars Dane Cook, who, as NBC helpfully points out, was also the star of My Best Friend’s Girl. Uh-huh. Next CHECK please, THANK you!
Save Me - “Let’s just say, if God had a desperate housewife as His mouthpiece, Beth would be it!” No comment.
Do No Harm - Doctors. Medicine! Oh, and it’s also a riff on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, which itself is such a Dexter rip-off. Fuck you, Mr. Stevenson.
Hannibal - Hannibal Lecter? Right there, on MY television, every week? You don’t say! But you did say? Great! Popcorn and popsicles for everyone.
Infamous - “She’s about to see once again just how the other half lives … and dies.” Man, Aunt Jessup is just PUMPING out these snappy one-liners! Take a break, Auntie J, you’ve earned it. Have a pudding cup. ON US!
In other news, NBC is moving Community to Friday with Whitney and it apparently has no plans for SMASH at the moment. Just a fountain of great ideas, this network. / FURTHER UPDATE: They’re also moving forward on a pirate drama called Crossbones. CROSSBONES.
So technically my graduate run at iO began last week but have no fear, there are still six performances to catch if you’re in the Chicago area and looking for an inexpensive night of improvised delight. My class will be performing at 8:00 pm every Sunday through 6/17 (there are 7:00 and 9:00 shows as well if you’re looking to experience an improv-athon). Admission is $5 with current students getting in free with their IDs. My class will be presenting two brand new forms (Hey Coach! / Terry Duncan’s Untouchable Cranedozer) so please come and check us out!
At the moment Zachary Little does not have direct access to his Tumblr account. You may know Zach from a little site called YOUTUBE, ever heard of it? Anyway, he sent me a few questions via e-mail (ELECTRONIC mail) and I’m going to answer them now. So drop a patty because once this gets going we are NOT stopping for anyone. Bathroom humor, I’m the best.
Q: There’s a Titus Andronicus song that goes “Down in North Carolina, I could have been / a productive member of society / but these New Jersey cigarettes and all they require / have made a fucking junkie out of me.” It’s a pretty great line, but the first part of the premise is bullshit, right? I’m saying: Nobody from North Carolina is worth a damn, right?
A: I pecked out a few Tweets regarding NC this morning because 1) everyone is thinking about it and 2) I’m gay, so I should say something, right? My thinking is that giving a middle finger to an entire state is a bad move. It’s based purely on angry instinct and reminds me of ugly Americans who bash the French in a similarly sweeping manner. Don’t go after the state, go after the individual voters, ‘cause the kind of person who votes that way is in every state. A theatre company I follow Tweeted half-seriously (I assume) about burning NC’s flag onstage in an upcoming piece. Really? That does what, exactly? Fans a mob mentality, that’s all it does. And aren’t we supposed to look down on those who write off entire sections of the population? Think about it!
Q: What kind of insect bite freaks you out the most? I got bit by a spider, which should terrify me, but I’m holding out for special powers.
A: I was terrified of spiders as a kid and probably would have thrown myself off a bridge if I’d suffered a bite from a black widow. Better to go out on MY terms, right? Fuck that black widow! Moving beyond the insect kingdom: Snakes, right? That would be horrifying, having a snake bite the fuck out of you? Answer to my own question: Yes!
Q: Why do people always pick flight over invisibility? Wouldn’t invisibility be great to have? As much as this feeling, in me, comes from a childhood desire to be in a girls’ locker room or whatever, I also just think it would be anthropologically interesting. What is Bill Pullman like on a normal day? What does Christina Ricci’s life look like when she’s just kicking around at home? Inquiring minds want to know!
A: I’m one of those who’d go with flight, honestly. Invisibility seems great in theory, but think about how quiet you’d have to be in order to spy on Pullman and Ricci. You’d have to train yourself to be assassin-level quiet, basically, and that seems like a lot of work. Flying would be hard to master, sure, but I’d be more willing to put in that work because FLIGHT! Hello. To answer your sub-questions: Bill probably masturbates. A LOT. Christina watches ‘Casper’, ‘Pan-Am’ and takes a lot of baths. And masturbates. A LOT.
Q: Do you think Mad Men is changing the critical perspective on making references to other works of art? Is referencing the Tibetan Book of the Dead really different than referencing Mitt Romney’s Dad? If Mad Men is inter-textual in some ways can’t it / shouldn’t it be inter-textual in all ways? I still haven’t seen any of the new season BTW. I just hear about it.
A: When I think ‘pre-Mad Men series that makes pointed references to other pop culture subjects’ my mind automatically goes to Family Guy, which I used to be a fan of but now avoid like the plague. The general opinion of FG is that it makes no effort to go above and beyond its initial citation. It points at something, declares what it is, then moves on. The references have zero connection to the story or characters, which is why they’re so reviled.
Mad Men, by comparison, goes out of its way to show how its cultural references directly connect to and comment on the characters we’ve been following for five seasons. So yes, I do think it’s definitely raised the bar when it comes to historical commentary. When Don’s wife Meghan hands him ‘Revolver’ and tells him to start with the last track, you don’t groan, because the preceding 45 minutes have more than led to that moment. By contrast, I remember disliking Polanski’s Youth Without Youth because it included clunky dialogue along the lines of “Have you read the papers? They say Hitler is on the move!” or some such nonsense. And we’re expected to take that seriously! It’s kind of hilarious.
And there you go! Mischief managed.
This looks good, right? This doesn’t remind us of The Event, right? This will surely run for years and prove to be a big success for NBC, right? It in no way will be widely ignored, receive middling to resentful reviews and face a quiet cancellation, right? Questions need answers.
Good morning! Here now is the first episode of Speakeasy, with my guest Ty Burrell.
Ty is as nice and friendly as he is funny. That is to say, he is very nice and friendly and also very funny. I was not trying to be slippery and intimate that Ty Burrell runs a dogfighting ring. He doesn’t! But if he did, I bet it’d be a really nice one, with passed hors d’oeuvres at each fight!
I would not blame you if you subscribed to this channel.
Is ‘great’ too strong a word for this? No!
Source: mademan.com
It would be difficult to overemphasize how much I love the audience’s reaction to Sullivan and her performance. So fun, so infectious.
These guys were just BURNING through pussy. Yards of it! @nopurpleshelves
Hello-hello, the 39th episode of the Cough Syrup podcast is here! What’s on the docket this time around? First up is the world of anime. Anime! Studio Ghibli, Akira, Dragonball, it’s all covered at length. We then bust out our respective jock sides and dish on sports. Sports! Football, baseball, tennis, hot cross country runners who may or may not be of legal age, my arrest and subsequent jail time. It’s all covered at length! Head on over to the iTunes Store to subscribe and leave a review or stream episodes at coughsyrup.libsyn.com. We love ya! XOXO Jon & Michael
