Red Hot Chili Peppers to play at Apple Store opening?
The word on the street is that 58th or 59th Street near 5th Ave. in New York City will be closing down tonight around 6 p.m. for a “major live band” to play at the opening of Steve Jobs’ latest affront to God.
Curbed seems to think it’ll be U2, which was my first guess. My sources tell me, however, that it’s going to be The Red Hot Chili Peppers. This actually makes a lot of sense, seeing as how Apple held listening parties for the release of Stadium Arcadium in its stores, and gave away iTunes cards for free downloads of “Dani California.”
It’s a total mob scene anytime Apple opens a new store, but it’s a safe bet that this will be many times more insane. I’m going to try to be there, so check back for updates.
Optimus Prime Test Footage
Thoughts?
Apple Corps. loses to Apple Computer
There’s not much to say about this just yet, because there really aren’t any details, but the news out of London is that The Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps., has lost to Apple Computer in their trademark case. The judge has ruled that Apple is not a music company, merely a distributor. Hopefully this will mean that Beatles’ music may eventually end up on iTunes, or at least some online service.
I hate to see The Beatles lose, but let’s face facts: if you’re dumb enough to confuse the two you’re probably too stupid to use a computer or appreciate The Beatles’ music.
I’ll get some more details up here as soon as somebody has a full story on the decision.
UPDATE: Here’s the story.
Chris Rhee needs your help
Fellow 9rules member Chris Rhee had a rough weekend. He was helping a friend out with a film project when some no-goodnik swiped his gadgetry.
Quoth the Rhee man:
The basic story goes like this: I caught a ride to San Francisco with my buddy, Brian Hata, to help out Steven Wishnack with a film project for his class.
After we finished filming everything, we started loading up Brian’s car with our equipment. I brought two bags and a box full of stuff for the shoot, so I had to make two trips to the car. In between one of our trips, someone stole my two bags which contained pretty much every electronic thing I owned that could possibly fit into two bags.
Would it kill you to do something nice for somebody once in a while? Send the man a few bucks to help get things back to how they should be.
There’s also some discussion happening over at the 9rules blog.
The madness continues!
Round 1, Bracket A of Band Madness was a massive success that made the moon landing look like a bad student film with a boom mic in the frame.
We had some upsets and a few predicatable wins, which will make for some really hot matches in Round 2. Right now, however, it’s time to vote in Round 1, Bracket B.
Make it your mission to see that Dire Straits beats Paul McCartney’s solo work. It’ll mean a lot to a lot of people if the individual Beatles don’t dominate this tournament. Get voting and good luck to your bands!
Announcing Band Madness!
From the people who brought you Crap Filter and A Week of Kindness, it’s Band Madness!
BAND MADNESS puts 512 bands into a March Madness-style tournament bracket with the results determined by your votes. In each matchup, vote for WHICHEVER BAND YOU LIKE BETTER…
After a week, the results for Bracket A will be posted and voting will open for Bracket B, so remember to check back next week for the new matchups.
Now, you too can filter the crap! The voting for the first 64 matchups on Round 1 is open now. Head on over there and get voting. And tell ‘em Crap Filter sent ya!
Your cable TV just got a little more obsolete
Apple has been adding new TV shows to the iTunes Music Store like crazy these days, and some of the best content has been coming from Comedy Central. TUAW spotted The Showbiz Show, which joins a whole bunch of other stuff like Comedy Central Stand-Up, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, Drawn Together, and a ton of other stuff. The season/monthly passes are a good idea, if you really need to see only one or two shows, because after that, you’re throwing your money away, since cable isn’t that expensive.
There’s some more Disney/ABC content up now too, including long-overdue season passes for Desperate Housewives and Lost.
Bane has a blog
Following in the proud tradition of The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster, Batman’s muscle-bound nemesis, Bane, has started blogging. Get while the gettin’s good:
To be honest, Bane didn’t think Internet would be around long; just seemed like “fad” when Bane first hear about it. Besides, Bane very busy hurting Batman at the time (perhaps you heard???). But now Bane just get AOL dial-up service and VERY excited about possiblities.
Check out Bane Blog!
The Leprechaun lives in Alabama!
Here’s a “good story” out of Alabama of all places. Watch as grown people crowd around a tree, looking for the Leprechaun that lives in it. Also, watch as trained journalists strain to pretend that it’s a “good story.” Then weep for the fourth estate.
Don’t copy that floppy!
If you like early ’90s rap, then this will be the most entertaining anti-piracy film you’ll see all day.
Thanks to Nate Kushner for the heads up.
Your morning profanity
Good friends of Crap Filter, A Week of Kindness, have posted their latest video sketch for your enjoyment. The Internet is a funnier place now, thanks to them.
Also, why not head over to their blog and wish them a happy first birthday?
You have plans for May 26
Just in case you were planning to not see “X-Men: The Last Stand” on May 26, I submit for your approval the theatrical trailer. Prepare for lots of hot mutant-on-mutant violence followed by mutant crying and then pure glee. If the trailer is any indication (I know, trailers are rarely any indication), this one will beat out “X2”, which itself was an anomoly in that it was clearly better than the original film (which wasn’t bad either).
I’m finding it harder and harder to get excited about the recent glut of comic-film adaptations, but the gems like “X2” and “Batman Begins” keep me coming back for more. I’m predicting another winner for the X-Men series.
What a catch
Do you remember the cuddly biggot that was John Rocker? Well, these days he’s calling himself bullpenjohn and he’s looking for a “committeed retlationship” over on Match.com.
My brother gave me the heads up to this profile after reading about it on the Sons of Sam Horn message board.
What do we know about bullpenjohn? Well, for one thing, his once-promising baseball career is over after his numerous verbal slip-ups and mental meltdowns. But that’s old news. According to his profile, the 31-year-old bullpenjohn lives in Smithtown, New York, now and is seeking women 31-35. Continues after the jump »
‘Show Me’ some news from two weeks ago
So the AP has picked up a story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about The Daily Show’s interview with Missouri Governor Rod Blagojevich interview with the show from two weeks ago.
I didn’t catch it myself, but apparently Blagojevich is the only person alive that is still unaware of the fact that The Daily Show is a comedy show and ostensibly one of the biggest cultural phenomena in the past decade. I can see how it would be easy to miss.
Blagojevich got a basic Daily Show interview, but since he was so blissfully ignorant of what the show actually is, he got all flustered during the piece. And this is news. Did I mention that the segment ran two weeks ago?
At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to someone off camera and said, “Is he teasing me, or is that legit?”
The segment, which aired two weeks ago, also featured Illinois Republican Rep. Ron Stephens, a pharmacist who opposes the governor’s rule. Stephens has said he knew the show was a comedy.
“I thought the governor was hip enough that he would have known that, too,” Stephens said.
It’s not a matter of being hip. It’s a matter of being alive. It’s hard to believe that the governor of the “Show Me State” somehow managed to miss this. Maybe he was born somewhere else.
‘Chinese Democracy’… could it be?
I think that by now pretty much everybody expects to see actual democracy in actual China before we hear Axl Rose’s 10-year project. Rumors started flying a few weeks ago that he had played the album (on a CD, not live) after hours in a New York club, but nobody could really say more about it than that. This week, however, there’s something a little more real to report. Apparently some of the tracks have gotten out. And apparently they’re not bad. The AP has a short article.
The tracks leaked Wednesday take a different direction from Rose’s traditional raunchy Sunset Strip-style rock. “Better” has emo/industrial touches mixed with Rose’s trademark vocals and hard rock backdrop. “There Was A Time” is a rough studio mix of a power ballad with similarities to GNR’s classic “Estranged.” “IRS” is closer to the sound of yesteryear, with powerful guitar solos and classic rock flavor.
I haven’t heard any of them yet, but I’m sure you can just hit up the usual suspects if you’re curious.
Fans up in arms over blond Bond
I think we all saw this coming. I just didn’t know there was any organized movement of Bond fans to make it happen. James Bond fans are threatening to boycott “Casino Royale” over the choice of Daniel Craig to play the suave secret agent. Like any threatened boycott these days, this one’s on the web.
The site rounds up all the reasons why Craig is wrong for the role, including the facts that he just looks wrong, and he’s made a quasi-name for himself by playing the wrong kind of roles. They gush over Brosnan to a degree that makes me question whether it’s actually Brosnan coordinating this campaign, but at least it’s funny. They’re not totally anti-Craig, just anti-Craig-as-Bond. They even go so far as to offer up suggestions for roles he would be perfect to play.
And you know what? I think they’re right. As cartoonish as the series has become, I think Pierce Brosnan was a good Bond, and they could have salvaged it while keeping him. Invisible cars aside, he was a convincing Bond.
Lego Brokeback Mountain
You liked “Brokeback Mountain.” You love Legos. So why has it taken someone this long to combine the two? I present Lego Brokeback Mountain.
With Lego Brokeback Mountain, you get all the awkwardness of seeing two guys make out, but with the perpetually happy faces of little Lego guys. It’s a win-win situation for those of you who can’t quite bring yourselves to go to the movie, yet remain impressed by the fact that you can make just about anything out of Legos. Unless you’re Legophobic, that is.
Via Boing Boing.
Would you pay to hear Ricky Gervais?
I have to admit that I haven’t kept up with The Ricky Gervais Show podcast as much as I wanted to. OK, I only started listening yesterday. In fact, yesterday was the first time I put any podcasts on my iPod. I’m catching up on Ricky Gervais now, and I’m already considering paying for the show when they start charging for the podcasts next week.
I have to wonder a bit about the logistics of paying for podcasts. If I’m getting it through Audible, is it really a true podcast? Also, I’m afraid I’m going to lose one of the best features of iTunes and podcasts, which is the fact that there’s generally something new waiting for me when I unplug my iPod to leave for work in the morning.
For $7 you’ll get four episodes, which isn’t a bad price, but it would be nice to get hour-long shows instead. A half hour of Karl Pilkington just goes by too fast.
The Uber Geeks have a good discussion going on the topic.
Canadians… what a bunch of jerks
Here’s a story that was about 2.54 centimeters away from being heartwarming. This woman (I don’t know who she is) was on vacation in Hawaii, and she lost her camera, which was full of her vacation picures. Not being one to let a missing camera keep her down, she hit up Flickr when she got home and put together a nice little blog of the places she visited using other people’s pictures.
Then the story got more interesting. A park ranger called her recently to tell her that a Canadian couple found the camera. She called the Canadians, hoping to offer a reward. It didn’t work out quite like she was hoping…
“Well,” she said, “we have a bit of a situation. You see, my nine year old son found your camera, and we wanted to show him to do the right thing, so we called, but now he’s been using it for a week and he really loves it and we can’t bear to take it from him.”
But it gets better…
“And he was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he’s now convinced he has bad luck, and finding the camera was good luck, and so we can’t tell him that he has to give it up. Also we had to spend a lot of money to get a charger and a memory card.”
Head over there for the whole story and some really interesting ideas from the commenters about what she should do to these jerks.
Entertainment industry outsmarts blithering moron
People get busted for doing stupid stuff all the time. Hell, at any given time you can probably find a dozen shows about “World’s [insert superlative here] Criminals.” This would be one for those shows, but instead of a guy trying to knock over a liquor store with a banana, the video would be more like a neanderthal drooling on a keyboard.
Prosecutors claim Ochoa said in an Internet chat room that he wanted to put online a special copy of the Johnny Cash biopic, which was supplied in advance to Oscar voters. It is unclear how he allegedly obtained the film.
A chat room participant contacted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which set up a fake movie-swapping Web site where Ochoa uploaded the film on Dec. 21, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Hoffstadt said.
The film was taken from the mail before it reached its intended recipient, he said. A digital watermark identified it as an Academy screener film.
If you’ve ever hung around the darker corners of IRC, you know that a lot of stuff gets said without getting said. This guysis apparently unfamiliar with the idea of being low-key.
A word of advice to future pirates: If you’ve got the urge to distribute obviously watermarked stuff that you stole out of the mail, at least make sure that you trust the people you’re bragging to.
We love Paul Scrivens
Every once in a while we here at Crap Filter like to take a step away from covering all the obvious entertainment news and reviewing the not-so-obvious bands to take a look at the softer side of the Web. This is one of those times.
I think it’s important to recognize Paul Scrivens. Most of you probably know him through his work as a body double in Brokeback Mountain, but what most people don’t realize is that he’s also the brains (the kind inside your head) behind the 9rules network.
Scrivs, we love you.
Newsflash! Gay Cowboys have been hot for years!
Look, everybody knows that all cowboys are gay, especially the sheep-herding ones. Or maybe Heath “A Knight’s Tale” Ledger and Jake “The Day After Tomorrow” Gyllenhall are the only ones, who knows. What you might not have known is that this is nothing new.
Country musician Ned Sublette wrote a song about cowboys getting cozy way back in 1981. Sublette’s tune, “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)”, explores the softer side of life in the saddle. Check it:
Available exclusively through iTunes, the song features choppy Tex-Mex style guitar runs and Nelson’s deadpan delivery of lines like, “What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?” and “Inside every cowboy there’s a lady who’d love to slip out.”
Leave it to famous pot smoker, country music “outlaw,” and anti-shampoo activist Willie “The Dukes of Hazzard” Nelson to make gay cowboys cool like, literally months, before it was cool.
Someone passed a copy of the song to Nelson back in the late 1980s and, according to Nelson’s record label, Lost Highway, he recorded it last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas.
If you want to hear it, and I know you do, iTunes has your exclusive hook up. Check it out.
In your face, Dick Cheney!
Apparently the most newsworth aspect of the whole Cheney-shoots-a-man saga is that it’s being made the subject of fun on late night televison. Shocking.
If you missed The Daily Show last night, be sure to catch one of the next six re-airings before tonight. If that’s asking too much, here’s a bit of what you missed:
Jon Stewart: “I’m joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?
Rob Corddry: “Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.
“And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington’s face.”
Jon Stewart: “But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?”
Rob Corddry: “Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.”
Jon Stewart: “That’s horrible.”
Rob Corddry: “Look, the mere fact that we’re even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know ‘how’ we’re hunting them. I’m sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little ‘covey’ of theirs.
Jon Stewart: “I’m not sure birds can laugh, Rob.”
Rob Corddry: “Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they’re cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.
Jon Stewart: “Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?”
Rob Corddry: “Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man’s face. Let’s move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask.”
Better yet, check out the video.
Latest Uber Geeks podcast hits the netwaves
It slipped under my busy radar yesterday, but for some good geeky listening, point your iPods toward The Über Geeks and catch their latest podcast.
I’d tell you what topics they cover, but there’s so many that it would be easier for you to just go over there and read about it yourself. It weighs in at 64 minutes, so that’s over an hour of work you won’t have to do. This one doesn’t feature yours truly, but you can only ask for so much.
Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face, too!
Ever want to get shot in the face by the vice president? What once seemed like the kind of things you’d only find in Republican suicide pacts is now possible for even the average man. Even if it’s not your sort of thing, you can bet that he’d be more than happy to shoot you anyway. Now you too can live the dream.
Believe it or not, this is actually a lot more fun than it sounds. Prepare to get shot in the face. By Dick.
Via Boing Boing.
Super domes
Bald dudes have been kicking some serious ass lately.
If you watched “The Daily Show” last night, you might have noticed shiny-topped Rob Corddry, typically the best correspondent on the show, filling in for host Jon Stewart. Stewart is great and all with his clever wit and sarcasm, but the weird thing is Corddry was a breath of fresh air to a show getting a tad bit stale, even if his Hitler-Anne Frank joke went over like Danish cartoons in the Muslim world and his Will Arnette interview was way too buddy-buddy (they do get points from mentioning the Burlington Mall though).
Now comes news that Corddry has landed the title role in Fox’s pilot “Becoming Glen,” which is described by the Hollywood Reporter like this:
“Becoming Glen” centers on a successful fortysomething man who looks back at 1994, when he was a 32-year-old slacker (Corddry) living with his parents and spending all his time lying on the couch watching TV.
OK, a little “Get A Life,” but still, Corddry’s involved. Continues after the jump »
The ultimate tech geek gifts?
I was on FARK.com scouring for some fun and weird news and I came across Fosfor Gadgets’ Top 10 Wierdest USB Devices Ever list. I can’t help but ask, “Why oh why do some of these products exist?” Then I realized, with geeks like The Filter’s Chris Coleman, there is always a market for anything that plugs into a ‘puter.
One of the items that I think could be lots of fun is The USB Air Darts (pictured above). Though I do not work in a cubicle-type office setting, I’d imagine these could really come in handy if I did. I assume I’d be a Jim Halpert type if I were to work in that type of setting, and if there was a Dwight that I could torment with USB Air Darts, I certainly would… a bargain at only around $35, I’d pay much more because you can’t put a price on shooting darts at your co-workers with your computer. Continues after the jump »
See, they do fight in Canada
Let me set the stage for you:
— Man throws food from his car.
— Disgusted biker chick picks up said food and throws it back into man’s car.
— Person takes a shitload of photos of the ugly aftermath.
Losing whatever R-E-S-P-E-C-T was left
And here I was thinking that “Saturday Night Live” was being imaginative when its writers came up the “Janet Reno’s Dance Party” sketch. It’s actually based on fact, and not even in the James Frey sense.
Want proof?
The former U.S. Attorney General can be seen getting her groove on while singing Aretha Frankin’s “Respect” at the 10th anniversary celebration of the Human Service Coalition in Miami.
It’s not “My Sharona” (“I like this song! Play it again!”), but it’ll do.
However, Reno is still a distant second in the running for American Top Government Officials Idol. Colin Powell blew away the competition with his rendition of “YMCA” (video) in which he not only sang, but danced and wore a funny costume.
Although, I still think he regrets his WMD speech at the U.N. more.
Just in: Jessica Alba is desirable female
Here’s a hot story (pun intended)! Apparently Jessica Alba is so hot that guys want her as her girlfriend!
NEW YORK - More guys want Jessica Alba for their girlfriend than any other woman, according to AskMen.com’s top 99 list for 2006.
The 24-year-old actress tops the Web site’s list ranking female celebrities on their “long-term relationship material.” Alba is followed by “Alfie” star Sienna Miller and the ubiquitous Angelina Jolie.
But wait, there’s more…
The rest of the top 10, in order, is Brazilian model Adriana Lima (No. 1 last year), “Access Hollywood” correspondent Maria Menounos, Charlize Theron, Jessica Biel, singer Amerie, Natalie Portman and Eva Longoria.
Britney Spears — a mainstay of such lists in previous years — failed to chart.
Crap Filter on TUG Radio
Here’s a little Friday science I’d like to drop on unsuspecting visitors. At some point today, I, Chris Coleman, will be appearing on Episode No. 2 of the TUG Radio podcast over at TheUberGeeks.net. We’ll be discussing all things Crap Filter and all things über-geeky. It’ll be fun, so stop on by. I fully expect you to subscribe to it for all future episodes, put it on your iPod and then listen to it as you ride the L train to Bedford Avenue.
Hooked on Hasselhoff
I’m pretty sure this is the most awesome thing I’ll see all day, and I’m seeing MF Doom tonight.
Via The Superficial.
106.9 The Fox rocks the bandwidth theft hits!
Here’s the latest craze that’s sweeping the nation: Bandwidth theft!
Last week we had some great pictures of Drew Barrymore at the Golden Globes, and as particularly attentive readers may recall, Drew was lacking some essential support in her girly regions. We got a ton of hits from this, but it seemed like our data transfers were going up at a much faster rate than the actual traffic would imply. I scoured or stats on Google Analytics, yet I couldn’t find the cause of the rise there. Maybe I was figuring wrong.
Then I checked the Webalizer stats and it all made sense. The top referrers in Webalizer were 1069thefox.com and a few other addresses that’ll get you to the same site, which was odd because there was no mention of it in Analytics, but it adds up to 7,372 hits from this station’s site at last count. That’s not insignifigant.
You see, Google Analytics only tracks pages that contain a small piece of tracking code that sends a ping back to Google when somebody loads that page. The reason they didn’t show up Analytics was because they were simply stealing our bandwidth by loading our images of Drew Barrymore directly without so much as a link recognizing where they came from.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have a problem with someone straight up taking the picture. In fact, I would actually think it’s kind of cool to find it somewhere later on down the road. I’m not particularly attached to the photos that I took of the TV while I had it paused with TiVo. What annoys me even more than the bandwidth theft is that they didn’t even acknowledge us.
I realize that the page that the offending images are loading on isn’t linked up anymore, but I figure I’d send a few visitors over in that direction anyway. There’s just one problem: The images of Drew now show Brian Peppers for some reason.
Hmm, go figure. 106.9 The Fox doesn’t realize how close they were to loading a couple of pictures from a certain Web site that begins with goatse and ends in .cx.
Dr. Pepper + Twizzlers = Not As Good
It never ends, does it? The progression of Lazy Sunday is not stopping. The uber-popular SNL sketch has reached critical mass. Now there is a new rap sketch circulating the web that totes the virtues of chillin’ on the west coast. It is not really a copycat, since they clearly state they are responding to the Naria rap. This is more like saying, “Yeah, you rap in NYC, well, we gots that in LA too dawg.” A cute idea, although a little bit of a misfire.
So what are we to make of this? Certainly in terms of quality, this is no Lazy Sunday. It is cute to see my LA landmarks and such (I adore Color Me Mine), but the comedy is not as fresh, and the rap is weaker. It falls far short of its predecessor. The more disturbing question is why is Mark Feuerstein making a video like this? He is not on SNL, and he is not an unknown/up and comer looking to break in. So is this what his career is now? Is he reduced to praying for T-shirt sales, since “Good Morning Miami” was axed, and his scenes from “Two Weeks Notice” were left on the cutting room floor?
Check this sketch out for yourself and decide which coast you like better. Despite the worse rapping, LA’s gots the bomb weather yo!
UPDATE!!-Here’s another new vid called Lazy Monday, this time performed by some cute little kiddies.
Isiah threatens Simmons!
Just ran across this fascinating write-up by ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons, who apparently has been challenged to a fight by Knicks GM Isiah Thomas.
As faithful followers of the best sportswriter going know, the Sports Guy is constantly reminding his readers that Thomas is the worst GM in the NBA (read here for one example). Well, Thomas supposedly has been reading, and has had enough.
Apparently Isiah Thomas has threatened to kick my ass during a New York radio interview yesterday. I’m still trying to find out all the details, but I thought it was ironic that he made this threat on Martin Luther King Day — I’m sure MLK would have been proud.
Readers from the NYC area alerted Simmons about the comments Thomas made as a guest on Steven A. Smith’s show on ESPN Radio. I did not hear the words myself, but from what I gather from Simmons’ readers, Isiah said something to the effect of, “If I were to meet this Bill Simmons on the street, there would be a problem.” Continues after the jump »
It’s official: Steelers will beat Colts
Christ, and I thought I had too much time on my hands.
They don’t play games on paper, but they do play them on video games. I know I know, I’m totally sick of big sporting events being simulated by video games as well, but this Steelers-Colts preview over on Ex-‘Burgher is worth a look because a.) it was done with Tecmo Super Bowl (the greatest video game EVER) and b.) this guy spent way too much time on this for it not to be noticed.
Since our boy did this simulation with an old-school game with outdated rosters, he either is some total computer freak that rebuilt an updated version of the game or he went to the trouble of retouching the screen shots. So instead of Jeff George, we get Peyton Manning.
That’s not all.
He also provides a quarter-by-quarter breakdown with Pittsburgh commentators calling the action. Unfortunately, the guest announcer is (ugh) Chris Berman. However, he does come up with some offensively clever new nicknames for Berman:
Touchdown! Manning hooks up with Marvin “I have less personality than Terry Schiavo” Harrison!
Winners: Steelers (49-16)
Losers: Us
Like kicking fish in a barrel
I’m sure by now most of you have noticed that Chuck Norris has become this ironic Internet cult figure. The most telling evidence of this is the Chuck Norris Facts that have been circulating the Web — there’s even a site dedicated to them. Some examples:
Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. But he is so badass, he has never cried. Ever.
Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.
Well, Norris isn’t about to sit idly by while he becomes the butt of jokes on the Internet. The “Walker, Texas Ranger” star and Total Gym endorser has kicked back with a statement on his Web site. Continues after the jump »
Gold-digging mom takes PR into her own hands
Earlier this month, our intrepid man in L.A., Andy Tunnicliffe, wrote up a little piece about a Suzan Hughes, the almost-famous, but quite-divorced mother of a kid who is set to inherit $330 million dollars when he turns 35. The boy, Alex, is only 14 now, and his old man died of a drug overdose, so you can understand why she’d want her son to get to that money. The L.A. Times has a good overview of the case from September.
I didn’t think a whole lot about this story at the time, aside from the fact that it looks like her shirt is about to explode in the picture. Then the comments started coming in, and they were in support of her, and accusing the trustees of the boy’s money pile, of being the real crooks.
This sounds like a job for journalism! Continues after the jump »
Another ‘Lazy’ day
You-know-what made an appearance on CNN this morning. That’s right, the “Lazy Sunday” skit from “Saturday Night Live” which is catching immense fame on the Internet, so much so that the New York Times, New York Daily News and Village Voice all felt the need to write articles about the faux rap and its breakout star — Andy Samberg.
Peep this from the Times:
“I’ve been recognized more times since the Saturday it aired than since I started on the show,” said Mr. Samberg, 27, a featured player in his first season on “SNL.” “It definitely felt like something changed overnight.”
The Times article goes into the history of the skit, as well as the background of Samberg and his two comedy-writing friends, all of whom now work for “SNL” (Samberg as a featured player, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone as writers). The threesome produced many similar shorts for their Web site — LonelyIsland.com — which created a buzz on the Internet and caught the eye of “SNL” talent scouts. The rest is history, and perhaps a new direction for the stale “SNL.”
If you haven’t gotten over there already, I highly recommend viewing the material on LonelyIsland.com, which includes a pilot for a Fox TV series titled “Awesometown.” Despite a sweet introduction by Jack Black as George Washington, “Awesometown” feels a bit amateurish and you can see why it wasn’t picked up. But the musical videos on the site — most notably “Just 2 Guyz” and “Ka-Blamo!” — are hilarious. There’s no doubt this is where their talent lies.
Web site yo
For me, the history of the United States can now be broken down into four main events (and not particularly in this order):
1. The Declaration of Independence.
2. The Revolutionary War.
3. The Civil War.
4. Kevin Federline launching his own Web site.
So mark it down, December 28, 2005 — the day the soon-to-be former Mr. Britney Spears apparently felt the need to get the truth out there about the real Kevin Federline. Continues after the jump »
Oh I’d totally click that
I keep complaining about how the entertainment industry turns out all this sludge when I should be blaming the public. They are the ones that demand it and show biz can only oblige to make money.
I have proof.
Yahoo! recently released its top search items for 2005 and No. 1 is Britney Spears, the one-time pop music queen who did a head-first dive into Hickville this year.
Britney Spears still peaks America’s interest? Really? Why haven’t we all moved on to Jessica Alba by now?
Anyway, here’s Yahoo!’s top 10 Web searches for 2005.
1. Britney Spears
2. 50 Cent
3. Cartoon Network
4. Mariah Carey
5. Green Day Continues after the jump »
A Christmas gift for you
You don’t know how lucky you are. A Week of Kindness, New York’s only sketch comedy group, has seen fit to bless the Internet with three videos from their latest show, Barnyard Jamboree.
Ho, ho, ho-ppy (Happy) Holidays from A Week of Kindness! We got some Christmas-y commericals that we debuted at our December Barnyard Jamboree. For MAX holiday effect, watch all three in succession.
Head over to AWOK to check them out, and be patient while they load, since they’re hosted at the Internet Archive.
‘Desperate’ actor got a bad rap
Do you remember reading or hearing about that guy that got fired from “Desperate Housewives” for reportedly flashing some of the crew members?
Well, Page Kennedy, who played someone being held captive in a basement on the show (bravo again, network TV), is fighting back… through the power of rap. That’s right, following in the trashy footsteps of Kevin Federline, Kennedy has released his own rap song on his Web site to clear his name.
I won’t tell you whether the song is good or not. I’ll just leave you with one of his lines:
“The media seems to stick together like fat guys and super-sized fries.”
The protest song is back!
Diggin’ on the news
“For the people, by the people.” Not a new concept, but in today’s media we are fed whatever the moguls and powers-that-be want us to hear and see. The liberals feed us their garbage and the conservatives force their crap on us. The liberals think they’re smarter (and, for the most part, I agree… probably because I’m a liberal) and the conservatives take the so-called moral higher ground. But anyone who thinks for themselves should know it’s all bullshit. How long has the battle for the airwaves gone on? Long before our time, that’s for sure. Isn’t it about time that we can present the news to one another and not let the moguls decide which stories and pieces of culture are important?
Two sites that I recently have gotten into reading think so, reddit.com and digg.com. Both sites present a democratic and systematic way of deciding what news is important, reddit through ratings and digg through how many “diggs” an article gets. These sites allow people to subimt articles and based upon your rating or number of “diggs”, you can get to the front page… it’s not some editor or big business mogul that decides what gets press.
Here’s a quick breakdown of their similarities and differences:
-digg has no negative ratings, but does allow you to report issues with a post
-digg is meant to be specifically about technology based articles
-reddit users do not look kindly upon self-posting, so don’t post your own articles (unless you do so anonymously)
-both seem put high value on useful and/or witty articles
I personally have become more involved with digg in the past few weeks, but I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. Go check them out and see for yourself. And if you use other similar sites, please comment here and let us know to check them out.
Gay it up!
You know, the news of Elton John’s gay wedding has been so widely reported that I figured we could safely avoid it without being accused of, well, avoiding it. Congratulations to Elton and, uh, guy.
The story wasn’t really all that great until I noticed this little tidbit.
Guests at the couple’s bachelor night on Monday included heavy metal rocker turned reality TV star Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon, model and actress Liz Hurley and musicians
Bryan Adams, Gary Barlow and Kid Rock.
Kid Rock was there? What, was he a waiter or something? Probably not, but after reading tis, it certainly seems like he would fit right in:
Shirtless waiters wearing black ties and riding boots served guests flutes of champagne. The nightclub, once a strip club known as Raymond’s Revue Bar, features an auditorium with red leather and banquette seating, a bar decorated with Swarovski crystals, chairs dipped in rubber and sculptured glass walls.
Now that’s good gay.
Meta magic
For those of you who aren’t familiar with metacritic.com, it’s time to expand your popular culture horizons.
Billed as a website whose mission is: “… to help you make an informed decision about how to spend your money on entertainment,” metacritic.com assists consumers by taking a cross-section of reviews from the most respected critics and weighs out an average, or Metascore. Scores are color-coded — green, for favorable; yellow, for mixed; and red for unfavorable — and presented in a cohesive, user-friendly manner.
In keeping with the “Best Of 2005” theme for today, metacritic.com has also unveiled their latest and greatest critical best for the following:
Borat has a posse
Borat, everybody’s favorite fictional Kazakh reporter played by Sacha Baron Cohen on “Da Ali G Show” has gotten an unlikely ally. International watchdog group Reporters Without Borders is calling for Kazakhstan to chill out and stop harshing Borat’s fictional mellow for his use of a .kz domain to embarass the proud nation (home to cleanest prostitutes in whole of central Asia).
That move led the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders to issue a statement Wednesday saying that the government’s decision to block Cohen from a “.kz” domain name is censorship. The group also expressed concern about “the politicization of the administration of domain names.”
Cohen’s Borat Sagdiyev has upset the Kazakhstan government with comedic statements suggesting that Kazakhs make wine out of fermented horse urine, shoot dogs for fun and consider incest and rape popular hobbies.
Apparently their distaste for borders goes so far as to include fiction. It’s nice to see real reporters sticking up for a fictional one. They do know he’s not real, right? It would be delicious if they didn’t, but it’s nice to see that they’ve got his back either way..
Apple adds more TV shows to iTunes
I love it when the big guys do something good for the little guys. I think that’s what’s happening here, anyway. NBC, Sci-fi, and USA networks, in all their infinite wisdom have realized that people these days are actually willing to pay for content.
In addition to music videos, the iTunes Music Store also features select NBC Universal, SciFi Channel, USA Network, Disney and ABC television shows, ready to download. For $1.99, you can own the latest episode just one day after it airs. With full seasons of “The Office,” “Law and Order,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Monk” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and more at your fingertips, you’ll never miss your favorites. Plus, you can sync shows to the new iPod and watch them on the go. Just try that with your big-screen TV.
I still can’t decide if downloading TV shows is a good thing or not. On one hand, you can’t beat the convenience. If you miss an episode of Lost, it’s no big deal to lay down $2 and just download it on iTunes. Plus, it’s all ready to go for your video iPod, if you’ve got one. But there’s a flip side. I can get all of these shows and more for free with Bittorrent. Thing about Bittorrent is that it’s slightly harder than just using iTunes, and the videos you do get, while usually HDTV rips and much better quality than iTunes, won’t be iPod ready.
Each has drawbacks, but for my money, you usually can’t beat free. If the one that cost money was clearly better, I’d be more than happy to pay. In the mean time, I’ll stick to Bittorrent when I miss a show, but your mileage may vary.
Oh Ricky!
You may have missed the news last week, but Ricky Gervais, the comedy genius behind The Office, has a new podcast for Guardian Unlimited starting today.
When Ricky Gervais was asked to name the funniest man alive, he said, “my friend Karl Pilkington. The trouble is, I don’t think he knows he’s being funny”.
Each week, award-winning comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant rummage around in the mind of Karl Pilkington to prove he’s not just the village idiot, he’s beaten off all competition to take the national title.
Join Ricky and Steve as they help Karl wrestle with such burning issues as:
“Jellyfish - do we need them?” “How could an infinite number of monkeys type the complete works of Shakespeare if they’ve never read it?” “Why do you never see an old bloke eating a Twix?”
Burning issues indeed.
OK, so maybe I’m completely lost, but I have people who assure me that such things constitute humour across the pond. But don’t take it from the promotional text. Take it from me, somebody who has seen every episode in Season 1 of The Office. That should be reason enough to check out.
A quick note: As of 3 a.m. Eastern, the podcast isn’t available yet, so keep checking.
