You did? Wasn't it great? Wasn't it boring? Modern Family? Blah blah blah... Homeland? Blah blah blah?
Didn't that dress look pretty on her? Didn't that dress make her look like a whore in a trash bag?
How about those mini-series?
And Tina Fey! Hey, girl.
How about you, Julia Louis Dreyfus winning that thing?
Red carpet. 360 Degree Dress-cam, Shoe-cam, Mani-cam. Ryan Seacrest.
Jimmy Kimmel, I like you but why aren't you Jimmy Fallon?
Amy Poehler was robbed. Giancarlo Esposito would have been really robbed if he hadn't lost out to the amazing Aaron Paul.
Modern Family. Wow. Look at you.
Homeland, your leading actress has some long lashes. You leading actor gives me the creeps.
Steve Carell was no where near this and was still robbed.
I will never eat birthday cake again, thanks to Lena Dunham.
Stop looking so smug, Modern Family.
Homeland, you give me hives. Too overwrought. Too much of a subject I don't enjoy.
Jon Stewart, give that award to Colbert. He deserves it.
Jon Cryer? JON CRYER? #LOSING
There's my lackluster review on a lackluster Emmy Awards.
So here's something really awesome and unrelated.
I'm not sure if this show is going to last, but if anything positive comes out of NBC's Animal Practice, it's Betsy Sodaro as Rhonda Price Lieberstein, Crystal the Monkey's new agent.
There was once a time when Childrens' Hospital was a webseries with its own webisodes. In an odd twist, this Emmy Award winning television series on Adult Swim, with mini-episodes of crazy good fun has spawned webisode extras, which can be seen before each regular episode of the Hospital drama spoof on Thursday nights at midnight. (Word of the day: Episodes)
The lastest webisode asks, "What if Everyone Forgot Each Other's Names?"
The video above is perhaps my favorite of this season's webisodes because I am genuinely bad with names. And it proves that if this neighbor, whose name I cannot remember, ever said "Hey girlfrieeeend" with the same maniacal, frightening evil smirk as he does in this video, I would have nightmares every night of my life.
My favorite line up of comedy starts tonight on the peacock network.
The final season of The Office commences, and despite my shouts of 'shut it down now!' I am sad that's it's nearing the end. Before the writers strike of 2007, this show was one of the most unique, funniest and emotionally sweet single cameras around. But something happened after the picket signs were put away and the ball got rolling again. Somewhere around the show's season four, it became a sitcom. Contrivances, continuity and lashes of deus ex machina with characters to which I'd grown ambivalent, The Office was not longer "must see" but just another DVR recording I'd delete.
Executive Producer Greg Daniels had mentioned during the hiatus, that The Office would return to form this last season. So, I'm hoping it's filled with heart warming Jim and Pam moments, less Andy and Erin and big name guest stars, with a nice Michael Scott cameo or two for good measure.
The video below made me sad. The ending is very much needed at this stage, but bittersweet nonetheless.
Also premiering is my new favorite show right on network television right now - Parks and Recreation. Leslie is now the new council-lady and Ben is off in Washington DC working on a new campaign. A little Jim-and-Pam-type long distance drama could be thrown in, but I think the powers that be have used up all their romantic-drama cards on the Halperts. Tom and Anne are moving in together, and Anne looks as annoyed as ever. Andy is moving toward a new career choice - policeman. Let's hope that Tom and Donna continue to include us in "Treat Yo-self Day"(misspelling noted) this season:
Up All Night has really grown on me. This cast is hilarious. Looks like Ava's show has been canceled, which could be a massive problem since Reagan has been the primary bread winner in the family.
One of the coolest things in Los Angeles is Largo at the Coronet in West Hollywood. One of the coolest things you can do is go see Megan Mullally (Childrens' Hospital) and Stephanie Hunt at Largo tonight. This music and style captures the pure essence of Largo LA.
I was an intern at NBC Creative Services back in the Fall of 1985, and our office sent these out to NBC affiliates. I must have seen this one hundred times. It looks really dated and dumb, but back then the network was on top.
Eleven years ago today, I was stuck on the now defunct #9 train heading downtown to West 18th Street to get to my job in Chelsea. We were stopped between 28th and 23rd streets due to, what the MTA engineers are trained to say, "an incident downtown, possible sick passenger".
All I could think of on that post Labor Day morning was how I hated the white capri pants I wore and the ugly lavender tank top that did nothing for my large torso. We were stuck for only ten minutes, but we slowly made our way south. Finally, I got off at 18th & 7th and headed for La Petite Abielle, for my morning coffee routine.
Up on sixth avenue, I saw a crowd on the corner looking downtown. That spot. The corner of 18th and 6th, held a picture postcard view. Every morning I stood there, waiting for the light, marveling at the perfection of this small plot of real estate - 6th at 18th - west side of the street. Look left and you can see the Empire State Building loom large overhead. Look right, and you'd see the majestic giant towers of the WTC, peering over buildings and trees. Best spot in the world, I thought. Thank God I'm a New Yorker.
That day, when I joined the crowd of people standing on the corner, I looked to my right, and saw that horrible site. The north tower ripped open with black horrible smoke pouring. Flames.
"A 737 plane hit the tower." said a man with a transitor radio eaplug in his ear. "And another small plane hit the other one", a vision a bit harder to see since the damage of the south tower was partially obstructed by the north one.
I started shaking.
Then a song entered in my head. A Tori Amos song that always comes to mind when I'd hear of a plane crashing:
"Not the red baron. Not Charlie Brown. Think I've got the message figured. Another pilot down."
It was a perfect day. Clear as a bell. What's wrong with air traffic control?
I was shaking as I crossed the street, zombie-like - looking into the eyes of people heading to where I had just been, looking to see if they knew, if they had already seen the damage - looking at them as if to say, your eyes about to see something horrible.
When I got to the office and watched the news, it became clear. Terrorists did this.
That Amos earworm was still wiggling. The song would not leave my head:
"And are there devils with halos and beautiful capes, taking them to the flames, taking them to the flames."
Then as more planes crashed - one in the Pentagon and another in a field in PA, the tune in my brain changed to Dylan's "Masters of War".
My whole psyche is on a mixed playlist.
Life wasn't funny for a while. Some of my neighbors perished. The smoke wafted over the upper west side where I lived. The trains were a mess. And that smell. That acrid electrical burning rubber smell. For months, that smell. For a few weeks, Baseball stopped. Television stopped, save for constant news coverage.
Comedy stopped for weeks, especially the New York based talk shows. Dave, Conan, Jon - all shut down. Dark. But they returned a week later, these jesters, always ready with a satirical shot provided a mixture of confusion, anger and pain. As a comedy fan, I turned to these comic heroes for solace, and found comforted in their humble state, in how as New Yorkers themselves (adopted through years of living there) shared the experience, up close, with a skyline viewed every day, part of our landscape, now destroyed. In this historic time, they took to the camera with pain, confusion, caution, all too aware of the question, "Is it too soon to make joke?"
It turned out, a joke was exactly what we needed.
I've found a few videos on YouTube featuring Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien and David Letterman dealing with the aftermath of the WTC attack. Sadly, SNL's return with Guiliani and Lorne Michael asking if it was okay to be funny again is lost to copyright issues.
Sandra Bernhard's Comedians Walking & Getting Mani-Pedis is a funny female take on Seinfeld's webseries Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. Personally, I prefer Berhard's version. Here, our New York gal meets up with Daily Show legend Lizz Winstead for a chin wag, ankles deep in water, at Bloomie Nails. (I can just smell the hand lotion from here.)
