Is A Part Of
I should note that in three sleepless hours after posting my previous item, I came up with sixteen captions for the latest EdgeCurve contest. I think Jeff Green should be shaking in his boots… or slippers… or whatever he wears when he surfs the web. One thing – am I crazy or does the guy in the red gunk in the new picture look an awful lot like Patrick Warburton? Because I based some of my jokes on that resemblance. Actually, he may look a little more like Kevin Kilner, but then I’d be limiting my jokes to people who remember the first season of Earth: Final Conflict.
Meanwhile, my contributions to the gang-written MSNBC.com Fall TV Preview can be found here and here. In retrospect, I am surprised how equivocal my assessment of these three sitcoms are. I really wanted to like John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor in “Twenty Good Years” (and remember, if this show fails, don’t complain if there are no shows about guys in their 60s when you’re in your 60s.). The pilot was busy setting up the two characters and the premise and did so well, but when it was over I was more than a little concerned where it was going. I also really wanted to like Brad Garrett’s “Til Death”, but would like to see more from his new TV wife Joely Fisher. I couldn’t fit it into the preview, but she showed hints of becoming a “Patricia Heaton from Hell”, which would be a lot funnier than Patricia Heaton from wherever Patricia Heaton’s from. And now (maybe) I can reveal, the scene ripped-off from “Seinfeld” involved a pool table in a too-small room, which the “freakishly tall” (his own words) Garrett didn’t handle as well as the just plain freakish Michael Richards. And I really didn’t know what to make of “Happy Hour”, created by two “That 70s Show” vets and giving off the same stupid-but-often-fun vibe that made “70s” one of my Guilty Pleasures, only “with martinis instead of pot and Dean Martin instead of Cheap Trick” (my favorite turn of phrase in the preview, although I’m pleasantly surprised that my editor left in the reference to an “excruciatingly embarrassing scene involv[ing] balls”). But be of good cheer, TV watchers, because I also got to watch but not officially write about “The Winner”, premiering on FOX when something else fails, and starring Daily Show ‘Reporter’ Rob Corddry as the funniest überslacker since Chris Elliott in “Get a Life” (although comparing the two shows does neither justice). And playing his enabling mother is Julie Hagerty, the under-rated under-acting stewardess from the classic “Airplane”. (Okay, I admit it. I had a crush on her strong enough to distract me from the comic genius of Leslie Neilsen) All I’m allowed to say is: this pilot was weird (but NOT in a “Get a Life” way), funny and very promising. Which ensures that FOX will bury it, because FOX is a part of NewsCorp and NewsCorp is totally evilll!!!
In other ME news, my prize in the mental_floss contest arrived in record time: the book Scatterbrained which takes a stream-of-consciousness approach to trivia and overflows the banks with fascinating facts and humor. I’ve barely gotten past the over-promoted first chapter (“From Greece to Grease“), but I am delighted. I may even eat something I shouldn’t just so I can spend more time on the toilet with this book – which will never be forced into service as emergency toilet paper. Well, that’s Too Much Information for now! Buh-bye!
