Recently in Television Category

The problem with ABC's reality show Wife Swap, in which two familes trade matriarchs and house rules, is that from the title you'd think that this was a very sexy show, but in fact it's just depressing.

I'd like to pitch to you, the Internet, a new reality show. It's called...Key Party. Contestants are forced to party and interact with each other and be real, every day! At the end, each of them pick a key. Most of them don't work -- but one of them opens the tiger cage, and the mauled contestant is ejected from the show. Key Party, coming this March on ABC!

Having been a comic book fan for a long time, I’ve become accustomed to the concept of the crossover. It became commonplace to see characters appear in other characters’ books, even cross-company. When I watch certain TV shows, they almost seem constrained by the lack of characters showing up from a competing show resulting in an initial knock-down drag-out fight before the parties mutually agree to band together to defeat two common enemies, one from each universe.

If I were Tsar of TV, here are the Top 5 crossovers I’d like to see:

5. Grey’s Anatomy and Medicine Ball

Both are set in Seattle, the latter one of a million ER clones from 1995 and that neither I nor anyone else watched, but I would be curious to see how much ass Dr. Donal Logue would kick when confronted with the flighty, always-having-sex (including, apparently, -with-ghosts?) crew of doctors at Grey’s Seattle Grace.

(A link to Medicine Ball's opening theme.)

4. Heroes and Misfits of Science

There’s no way this one would happen, and neither show, truthfully, is really that interesting. But I can’t help but harbor love for the awful Misfits, which had a short run on NBC Friday nights getting clobbered by Dallas on a weekly basis. Plus, this one seems somewhat plausible because the shows actually share the same creator, Tim Kring.
On the other hand, I cancelled Heroes (from my DVR) after it got bogged down in a boring Season 2, and its pretentiousness got to be a little too much. Maybe a guest shot from telekinetic Courteney Cox (who is possibly the only surviving cast member, unless ALF’s dad is still with us) would provide a shot in the arm.

3. Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me
This is another one where the two shows share a creator, and in fact Bryan Fuller said in an interview that the idea of a character who can revive the dead was originally meant for a subplot on quickly cancelled Dead Like Me, where he could wreak havoc with the reapers’ job of collecting souls. Instead, Pushing Daisies became a great, quickly cancelled show of its own.

To be fair, Daisies did feature a crossover with Bryan Fuller's quickly cancelled Wonderfalls, but the character featured on that episode was so obscure that I didn't realize it was a crossover until I looked it up, despite having watched Wonderfalls in its entirety. (Was the Wax Lion booked that day?)

2. Lost and Land of the Lost
I really have been disappointed that the answer to what happened to the survivors of Oceanic Air flight #whatever was not that they actually crash landed in the same mysterious, nebulous island as the folks from Land of the Lost did when they took that fateful boat trip in somebody’s bathtub.

It makes perfect sense. The giant scary invisible monster chasing them is Bill Laimbeer as a Sleestack. Why haven’t Jack, the hot chick, and Sawyer run into Will and Holly (now in their 40s) yet? Instead, the producers are apparently keeping on with whatever plot twists they can pull out of a hat and call it a story. I think my idea wraps it all up with a nice bow.

Make it happen, J.J.

If you haven't yet been exposed to the wonder of television that is The Doctors, now's your big chance. Every weekday afternoon, a panel of "doctors" attempts to turn the human body and its potential ailments and inadequacies into an hour-long fart joke, all while trying to convince you that your breast implants should be at least one size larger than what you think they should be. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...the Vagina Show.

Yes, The Vagina Show, complete with Margaret Cho and a vagina hand puppet. If I needed proof that The Doctors was the tackiest show on television, there it is...Margaret Cho. (See what I did there?)

"Look and Read" is a series of British educational shows meant to teach reading in primary schools. Each show has a book that goes with it, so you watch the show, read the book, and listen to Wordy the Horrible Orange Thing and his librarian friend as they go over the fundamentals of learning with you.

The only one I ever saw when I was a kid was "Dark Towers", a 10-part story made in 1981 that they were still using when I saw it seven or eight years later. After years of searching, I've found it. I've removed most of the boring educational bits. For the nostalgic amongst you, here's the whole playlist of 10 episodes:

Anyway this is the first time that one of my YouTube postings has resulted in a Video Response, which is pretty hilarious:

I just have to share this obituary from the AV Club. If you're a fan of McGoohan's work (and the Prisoner in particular), you'll know exactly what this guy is talking about.

I know he lived to be 80, and that's all well and good, but couldn't we have kept this one guy? Just this one? I mean really. The Prisoner. My god.

In our grief over Patrick McGoohan, we didn't even notice that Ricardo Montalban died. I'll always remember him as Armando from "Escape from the Planet of the Apes."

You're asking me to risk imprisonment for the sake of two fugitive apes? The answer is a thousand times yes.

This guy is distraught.

FOX and Kiefer Sutherland -- noted long-time Furdell.com readers -- have taken my advice from not two years ago and brought onto the show Kurtwood Smith, aka Clarence "Bitches Leave" Boddicker from RoboCop and its famous TV prequel sitcom That 70's Show.

Hopefully also appearing this season: Nancy Allen, Miguel Ferrer, Ronny Cox, and somehow the late Dan O'Herlihy.

If you have HBO (or the means to steal its programming), check out Real Time with Bill Maher, which we've found to be consistently funny. This week Maher talked to Chris Rock about the debate.

Last week Maher unveiled FreeLevi.org:

McCain, dropping everything to save our economy, cancelled on David Letterman. Never cancel on a comedian.

Season 39 (!) starts Monday. Here's a preview:

Julia mentioned this to me a few days ago, and now it's in Slate: our government got several of its torture ideas from none other than Furdell.com favorite TV torturer Jack Bauer.

In other TV news, to follow up, another Bachelor engagement has been cancelled. It turns out picking your fiancée from a randomly-selected group of thirty doesn't work.

Holy craaaapppp The Prisoner The Prisoner The Prisoner!!1!!

The classic cult TV series "The Prisoner" is going to be remade for AMC, with Jim Caviezel starring as Number Six, the character played by Patrick McGoohan in the original. Ian McKellen will co-star.

Full article here. This could either be really great or really stupid.

Why does anybody watch The Bachelor(ette)? Can anybody explain this to me without me getting violent? (Answer: no.)

Who among ye is so cynical that you believe "true love" means picking the most acceptable of 25 reality show contestants? The one saving grace of these shows (besides the fact that their advertising money keeps me employed) is that they never work. Wikipedia has a helpful guide (which you can totally edit to contradict me) shows that only two out of twelve couples from the show have stayed together. One is from the most recent season, so give them time; the other has already been involved in a hilarious domestic battery arrest. Last season's winners? No...last season's LOSERS.

What brought this on, of course, is the season finale of the latest Bachelorette (thanks again, Wikipedia!), in which the woman pretended to be surprised as she was dopily proposed to by a man that couldn't possibly love her, because they're both hollow and soulless.

Oh, and how nice -- they've set the date! May 9th, 2008! Right during sweeps. How romantic.

This is moderately old news, but it's local to Eugene and only received minor national attention: my old station, KEZI-TV ("We're on it!"), stirred up some controversy when lead anchor Rick Dancer announced his candidacy for Secretary of State during his last broadcast. (Standard practice is to wait a couple of days after resigning and announce your candidacy elsewhere.) Here's the video, complete with KEZI's fancy new open animation, backdrop, desk monitor, and CGs.

RICK DANCER
This is the official announcement. Nobody gets to beat me with the official announcement, because it's our station.

HOLLY MENINO
Right.

Rick goes on to talk about how, as a news anchor, he worked for the community and acted as a voice for people and whatever, and he'll continue to do so if elected Secretary of State. I know we have an unusually large number of journalists reading this -- what's your take on the ethics there? Kinda iffy? Out of the ballpark? I'm interested.

Rick for Secretary of State? I have to admit, from the couple of years I got to know him, Rick reminded me of Martin Sheen's portrayal of the President.

Hey guys, sorry I haven't had time to post the update on how I finished in the pinball tournament a few weeks ago. Spoiler alert: I finished 4th, and was very happy to do so. Traditional pinball photo essay to come.

In the meantime, here's an endless series of David Caruso one-liners from CSI: Miami.

Despite the fact that Drew Carey is a woefully inadequate replacement for Bob Barker, this clip from The Price Is Right on April 1st is still pretty hilarious.

Oh man, I need one of those trans-rebounders.

...but it's worth watching again, if only for Sarah Silverman's absolute glee as she reveals a shocking secret to longtime boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel later did a response video that was, predictably, not nearly as funny.

Alex and I have been watching lots of Cookie Monster videos, which are hilarious:

Recently Cookie was interviewed on NPR; check it out here. I also loved discovering these videos of a Cookie Monster prototype who appeared in advertisements for Munchos potato chips, pre-Sesame Street:

Sorry, Jews! It's that time of year when your television gets taken over by Christmas movies, Christmas specials, and very special Christmas episodes of every show. I LOVE Christmas movies. I mean really love them. I would watch Miracle on 34th Street or Christmas in Connecticut any time of year. And if I couldn't catch A Christmas Story at least once while they're showing it over and over and over again on Christmas Day then it just wouldn't seem like Christmas. That's not unusual, everyone loves the classics. But I will also sit through the most appalling crap just because it has the word "Christmas" in the title, or because someone at some point wears a Santa hat. (Die Hard is a definite exception here. Somehow if you get slaughtered while wearing the Santa hat it somewhat detracts from that Christmasy feeling.) In fact, I am so hooked on televised Yuletide joy that I will watch any ridiculous adulteration of A Christmas Carol, even the one with Tori Spelling and William Shatner. And it should shame me greatly that a new made-for-TV movie in which Christina Milian gets trapped in a Christmas snowglobe has actually sparked my interest, but lo, I am not ashamed! To celebrate my obsession, here are some terrible Christmas specials that I will watch on TV every year until I am too old and blind to see, at which point technology will probably be such that I can get them beamed directly into my brain.

This TV writer's strike is tough... no Daily Show? How am I expected to cope?

Well, there's always YouTube. Here's a look into the smooth life of Michael McDonald:

People of my age group and background (hi, James!) might be interested to note that Southpark just aired a 3-part storyline in which a zany man in a bizarre flying contraption whisks the boys away to Imagionationland, while singing a song familiar to anyone who went to EPCOT back when it was still an acronym.

With the continued success of shows like Scrubs, The Office, 30 Rock, My Name Is Earl, and whichever ones I'm forgetting, a lot of people are acting like we're seeing the last of the traditional 3-camera, studio audience-having sitcom. (New 3-camera shows The Big Bang Theory and soon Cavemen don't make great counter-arguments.)

But the most innovative comedy on television the last two years has been an old-format one: How I Met Your Mother. For those who don't know the premise: in the year 2030, Ted tells his children the long, rambling title story. Pilot episode's last second twist: TV reporter Robin, who Ted meets, falls in love with, and pursues for the entire series, isn't your mother. (Last season ended with Ted and Robin breaking up, presumably for good -- we'll see.) The mood is lightened by Ted's friends: Willow from Buffy, the really tall guy from Freaks and Geeks, and Dr. Doogie Howser.

I appreciate that this sitcom, like Seinfeld before it, rewards loyal viewers with sly references to previous episodes, and doesn't feel the need to explain, for example, why one character suddenly slaps another for apparently no reason. But what really sets this show apart, I think, is its unprecedented use of the Internet to flesh out its characters. Yes, the Internet -- you're using it right now, friend.

Obvious example: Neil Patrick Harris's character, Barney, often makes reference in the show to his blog. Explaining his reflective silver disco shirt, Barney says: "One of the 24 similarities between women and fish are they're both attracted to shiny objects. Don't you ever read my blog?" Sure enough, he actually did write about that.

A lot of TV characters have blogs. That's de rigueur. Characters in Mother took it a step farther last year with the charmingly simplistic Swarley.com, after an episode in which they decided Barney's new nickname should be Swarley (with innumerable variations such as "Swarles Barkley"). Take a look at the thought that went into this website. The title, "Page 1," immediately indicates that this is not a polished, professional effort. A look at the source code reveals that it was made with an online web development tool -- an easy way to get a site up quick, just what a real Ted and Marshall would have used. You can even imagine the circumstances behind the site's lone photo.

Obviously the folks at NBC are capable of a much more sophistocated website, but Swarley.com looks like what it's supposed to be, which makes it that much stronger satire. The Mother crew imagined a fan's MySpace page to coincide with last season's revelation that Robin Scherbatsky used to be Robin Sparkles, a much more ridiculous, Canadian version of Tiffany. (If that doesn't sound hilarious, it's only because I'm not describing it right.) Just like Robin Sparkles, and just like a MySpace fan page, it is everything tacky crammed together at once -- garish colors, autoplay music, and don't forget the robot. (That's a line in the song. As Robin explains in the show, "The 80s didn't come to Canada until like '93.")

In fact, that episode's name was changed from "Robin Sparkles" to "Slap Bet", so that alert viewers wouldn't find the MySpace page before the show aired. In that episode, Barney and Marshall wage a "slap bet" on Robin's big secret (loser gets slapped, hard). Barney, seeing only the beginning of the Robin Sparkles video and convinced that he guessed right -- that Robin starred in Canadian pornography -- slaps Marshall. As punishment for "premature slapulation," Marshall is allowed to slap Barney five times -- but those slaps could come any time, any place. Two already happened, and both were hilariously unexpected. At the end of this week's episode, Marshall called Barney and told him to check out SlapCountDown.com. Just like in the show, it's nothing but a red countdown against a stark black background.

The really creepiest thing ever is this video.

Doctor Who, the show being interrupted by the infamous Max Headroom pirate broadcast in Chicago, is creepy enough for little kids as it is. At the time this incident happened in November 1987, I was having nightmares induced by then-current episodes of Doctor Who in England. I can't even imagine watching re-runs of Who on a cold winter night in Chicago, maybe in a dark basement, and having this pirate video suddenly interrupt things. It's so The Ring-like in nature; I'm half expecting Max Headroom to come crawling out of my computer just while watching it on YouTube.

The Max Headroom pirating incident is fascinating to me, partially because the mystery of whodunit was never solved, and partially because of the bizarre, cryptic nature of the video that took over Chicago's PBS station for a good full minute. And also because I love reading about things of a hacking nature, which this is. At first glance, it just looks like some goofball playing an impromptu, immature prank on an unsuspecting TV-viewing public. But when you start to piece together some of the clues, you realize that the perpetrators were actually pretty sophisticated, and may have actually had some kind of premeditated motive in mind.

First of all, if you blocked out most of the '80s, you may have forgotten about Max Headroom. He was a robotic, stuttering, computer-generated floating head in a room full of moving laser-lights. He had a talk show on cable, a science-fiction series on ABC, and even managed to squeeze in time for a few endorsements:

(Hey, that explains why Max flings the Pepsi can in the pirate video; he's mocking Max's Coke advertisement. Clue Club!)

Obviously, the guy in the pirate video is just a guy in a Max mask, and not computer generated. You might have noticed that, hilariously, he managed to sort-of duplicate the magical lasery background by simply spinning a large piece of corrugated metal! I'm sorry, but whoever thought of that... way to go. Utterly brilliant.

Meanwhile... Little Jamie actually loved that sci-fi Max Headroom series on ABC. It was actually cooler than you might expect a TV series about a talking computery head in a box would be. The show centered around a futuristic society in which TV stations run everything in typically ruthless fashion (e.g. "off" buttons on TV sets are illegal). A plucky investigative reporter, Edison Carter (played by Matt Frewer, one of my favorite character and voice actors from that time period) suffers a mishap while investigating TV-network wrongdoings. While unconscious, the network's resident brain manages to download the contents of Carter's brain into a computer, creating Max Headroom. Max is Edison's cyber-id, a ghost in the machine who randomly zips from screen to screen with impunity, often commenting on the shenanigans of the all-powerful network television behemoth as it rules over an oppressed, TV-watching proletariat. All much to the consternation of Amanda Pays and Jeffrey Tambor.

It was one of those sci-fi shows that's way ahead of its time; it was kind of a cross between Blade Runner and The Running Man, and every episode began with the cryptic caption, "20 minutes into the future." Yeah, I ate it up. The show ran for most of 1987 but was pulled off the air in October due to low ratings, about six weeks before the pirate video aired. I think the show actually could have been an inspiration to the pirates; it was the kind of show where the freedom fighters are the ones who are pirating TV signals (and are subject to death if caught). Heck, maybe the pirates were upset their show was getting canceled and wanted to get revenge against a convenient target. The fact that they chose Max as their mascot has to be more than a coincidence.

Of course, it's hard to discern a message considering how garbled the sound is. What the hell is Max trying to say? Why is that lady spanking him with a flyswatter? Why do I get the feeling that James Woods' character from Videodrome is going to jump out from under my bed and grab my legs after watching this video?

Well, some intrepid Internet-writing type people have attempted to discern what "Max" is saying. Opinions differ, and there are plenty of attempted transcripts out there on the Internet for you to find. But there is some consensus.

"That does it, he's a frick'n nerd" or "That doctor is a frick'n nerd."

"Yeah, I think I'm better [or, "this guy's better] than Chuck Swirsky."

"Frick'n liberal" or "He's a liberal."

"Oh, Jesus."

(Garbled)

"Yeah... Catch the wave."

(Garbled words or moaning)

"Your love is fading."

(Laughter)

(Hums theme song to Clutch Cargo show)

"I stole CBS" or "I still see the X."

(Continues humming theme song to Clutch Cargo show)

"Oh."

"Oh, my files" or "Oh, my piles."

(Laughter or moaning)

"Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece printed all over the greatest world newspaper nerds."

(Laughter or moaning)

"My brother" or "My mother," is wearing the other one, it's dirty."

(Garbled, possibly ending with "signing off.")

(Pirate broadcast now switches to "spanking scene").

"They're coming to get me."

"Come get me, bitch."

(Screaming)

"Oh, do it."

(Screaming)

OK, well that cleared everything up!

Actually, despite the disagreements and nonsensicality, there are some pretty good clues here. First of all, it helps to know that Chicago's PBS station, WTTW wasn't the only one under attack that night; independent superstation WGN also suffered a brief attack by the pirates, as you can see in this national newscast:

Dan Roan had been interrupted by Max as well, sans-sound. That may explain the reference to Chuck Swirsky, a former WGN sportscaster. It also may explain why Max starts humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, which aired on WGN years earlier in syndication. "I still see the X" could be a reference to the cartoon, whose last episode was titled "Big X"; or, if he said "I stole CBS", it could be reference to WGN's brief status as a CBS affiliate decades earlier.

And it may explain the cryptic reference to the "greatest world newspaper nerds". WGN was owned by the Tribune Company, and, in fact, the initials WGN stand for the Chicago Tribune's slogan, "World's Greatest Newspaper." And now you know... the rest... of the blah blah etc.

Another important clue to what's going on here is the fact that the pirate video must have been pre-recorded. It's tempting to think of the attack as happening live, but the video cuts from the man in the mask to the spanking scene, which betrays the fact that this is a taped image we're watching. A scary, scary taped image that will result in Max coming to kill you seven days after watching it, but a taped image nonetheless.

So, that's it... this was clearly meant to be an attack on WGN specifically. The pirates tried to take over the signal, but they couldn't get audio, and the WGN technicians who were present during the station's newscast were able to switch to a backup transmitter on the fly. WTTW was not so lucky; nobody there could switch transmitters on the fly, and so Max was able to broadcast his video in its frightening entirety. Thus, the PBS station became the unfortunate victim out of convenience; the video meant for WGN was broadcast on WTTW instead.

Make no mistake; despite the goofiness, and the spanking, this was a sophisticated attack. It would take a serious transmitter to overcome the one atop the Sears Tower, which is what the pirates did, and the speaker in the video knows about WGN's history. I don't know if these people necessarily had a grudge against WGN, or if they were disgruntled fans of the canceled TV show. But man, it takes some kind of genius to pull off that stunt, and not get caught by the FCC (unlike that lame Captain Midnight).

Seriously, what a great mystery. I'm half-tempted to track down those Clutch Cargo DVDs to see if the last episode has any significance to this story. Meanwhile, fake Max Headroom continues to haunt me, 20 years into the future.

Kind of a boring weekend, as we wait to see if Kimberly has a baby. Meanwhile, I've generally been busy with work, and haven't had any time to post. There's a bunch of stuff I want to write about, most of it involving stuff I've found on YouTube, the best website ever invented. Occasionally at work I'm just waiting for builds or tests to finish, and while that's going on, it's YouTube Research Time.

This week I've been looking at a lot of the old Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch. Sadly, this video is probably a fair representation of my Saturday mornings circa 1984, minus the actual cartoons but with the great network bumpers and commercials:

Yeah, those cartoons based on arcade video games were really bad. I would hate to have been a writer for one of those.

PRODUCERS: You, there! We need to create a cartoon about Q-Bert! GO!
WRITER: @$#$!

But the CBS bumpers I totally remember, as well as Crest vs. the Cavity Creeps, and C3PO's, which I did not make Mom buy... I think even then I could see through the poorly-conceived product tie-ins. Not that it kept me from watching the Dungeons and Dragons poorly-conceived tie-in cartoon:

Actually it's this end-credits clip that blew my mind:

...because it features the oft-watched bumpers with Rick Dees voice-overs (post-"Disco Duck", pre-Weekly Top 40), a Levi's commercial I must have seen at least 100 times that year, and the ending credits, including credits for writers I now recognize after reading way too many comic books (Mark Evanier and Steve Gerber). Plus the Marvel Productions logo. Awesome.

CBS also used to run short two-minute segments called "In the News" in a poorly-conceived and largely-ignored-by-kids effort to educate us in between ads for toothpaste and sugary cereal, and I'm pretty sure this depressing installment about the atomic bomb scared the hell out of me:

Furtherly scary: I remember watching this Muppet Babies primetime special (it's the one where they recreate Star Wars), in the basement of my grandmother's house in West Seattle in December 1984, when the whole city was totally excited about the Seahawks-Dolphins game coming up later that week. And I totally remember the promo for He's Hired, She's Fired, a poorly-conceived Mr. Mom knockoff.

By the way, you can watch all of the Saturday morning network bumpers here. Some really good ones, including the NBC ones from when Casey Kasem was the voice of all that network's promos.

Yeesh. Nostalgia is an ugly, ugly thing. You can really get caught up in it. I recommend using it sparingly.

Next up: the scariest thing ever broadcast over the airwaves. I'm not even kidding. Scariest. Thing. Ever. And it's all thanks to... Max Headroom?

Read all about a show that had a profound influence on 7-year-old Jamie Furdell: Whiz Kids.

(Posted on a work blog I'm maintaining out of my commitment to community service.)

After eleven episodes, I'm starting to warm up to Legion of Super-Heroes, a "Kids WB" cartoon on "the" CW.

Mostly quick and painless background: the Legion is a group of teenage super-heroes, 1000 years in the future. In occasional comic book appearances in the late 1950s, they generally would travel to early/mid 20th century Smallville and whisk Superboy to the mid/late 30th century for either an adventure or a practical joke. (It was about a 50/50 chance each time. Kept things interesting for Superboy, I guess.) Their three-member group quickly attracted more and more future-teens, each with their own super power; and eventually they became popular enough that they were allowed to have adventures even if Superboy wasn't around. Almost 50 years after their comic book debut, the Legion has its own cartoon, although they've once again been saddled with a young Clark Kent. (They're calling him Superman, but they actually plucked him from his Smallville youth, before he had adopted that identity.)

For the first ten episodes, I was mildly disappointed and mostly unentertained. The Legion has a rich, completely tangled background, complete with dozens of worlds populated by super-powered alien species and soap opera romance, but the cartoon predictably avoided scratching the surface. We got the occasional appearance -- in the background, silent -- of lesser-known Legion characters like Blok and Tyroc, but the stories always seemed to be about the same core team: young Superman, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy (an odd choice), and either Triplicate Girl or Phantom Girl. And we had two appearances each from the Fatal Five and Lightning Lad's moderately-malevolent brother Mekt, but each episode really felt a little too self-contained.

What really bugged me, though, was the lack of tension. Brainiac 5 -- in this incarnation a green robot with body-modifying Inspector Gadgetesque powers to go with his supposedly superior intellect -- is all friendly and super-nice to everyone, and never seems particularly smarter than any other character designed to provide exposition. Lightning Lad is about as rebellious as Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle who was a total dick to everyone (but still loved pizza). Saturn Girl was your typical totally weak female mental-powers superhero sans personality. These people are supposed to be angry at each other, or trying to have sex with each other, or both.

The latest episode aired in the states, "Chain of Command," has raised my expectations. Legion leader Cosmic Boy made his first appearance, which pissed off acting leader Lightning Lad, and I suspect that their mutual animosity wasn't fully resolved by the end of the episode. Triplicate Girl -- whose cartoon redesign is, well, pretty sexy, actually -- is starting to show affection for Bouncing Boy. (They married in the old comic books, but she wasn't nearly this hot back then, and he wasn't quite so rotund.) The action took place on Lightning Lad's homeworld of Winath, where we saw that almost everyone is a fraternal twin (evil brother Mekt being a notable exception -- not having a twin on Winath makes you an angry loner, you see).

Best of all, in this episode Cosmic Boy introduced the team to Ferro Lad, the disfigured (thus masked) boy who can turn his body to iron. Introducing Ferro Lad into a story is like bringing in Spider-Man's old girlfriend Gwen Stacy: you can be pretty sure someone's going to be taking a nose-dive off of a bridge pretty soon. Ferro will probably only make it another couple of episodes before he heroically sacrifices himself to stop the Sun Eater in the season-closing two-parter (which, true to the original story, will also involve the Legion turning to the Fatal Five for help). This is perhaps fitting, as Ferro only lasted seven issues in his original incarnation. Personally, I'm just happy he wasn't killed off in his introductory episode, like how the also-not-adult-enough Teen Titans cartoon botched the Terra story. Having a character around even a little longer makes their inevitable death or betrayal a lot more interesting.

And then there's the Misfits of Science wiki.

(No entry for the Internet's de facto last word on said Misfits? FOR SHAME.)

I noticed that this week's episode of The Office, in which a main character turns into a vampire (sort of), was directed by Buffy auteur Joss Whedon. Stunt casting perhaps, but the episode was pretty excellent.

Knights of Prosperity debuts tonight. We have all seen the pilot, and we love it. So don't miss it. (Or, if you do miss it, catch the replay on Friday.)

Right now NBC is showing a remake of The Year Without a Santa Claus, you know, the one with Heat Miser and Show Miser or whatever.

I'm at work, and to my right are three TVs (one for KEZI-ABC, one for KVAL-CBS, and one for KMTR-NBC). So I happened to look up when Chris Kattan, wearing an elf-green muscle suit, delivered -- if the closed captioning is to be believed -- this awesome line:

SPARKY defiantly, to Santa
"Sparky was my slave name. I'm Extreme Santa now!"

Please replay this movie, NBC. I will watch the shit out of it.

From Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes' live online discussion last Friday:

Alexandria, Va.: To heck with "Frosty the Snowman" and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", when are we going to see "The Star Wars Holiday Special"?

Lisa de Moraes: That airs on Life Day......

Indeed it does. A happy Life Day... to you all. (If the rundown of guest stars doesn't get you in the spirit, nothing will.)

P.S. Oh, and don't forget what's coming up at 11...

I don't know why I watch this show. Year after year, ABC finds a good-looking wealthy bachelor to star in their show and surrounds him with a bevy of beautiful young women, all vying for his attention and "love". The premise: eligible bachelors are hard to come by, but beautiful young bachelorettes are a dime a dozen. Another assumption: it's hard to find a bachelor who wants to settle down, but every single woman in her 20's can't wait to find her one and only. And yet another not so subtle message to women: You better find your soul-mate when you're young, because no one's going to want you once you hit 30. Don't think the show is that crude eh? Last week, episode 2 I believe, our bachelor Lorenzo eliminated every single woman above the 30 mark. What is the bachelor's age you ask? He's 34, and kind of a douche. The guy has absolutely NO personality. He reminds me of a muppet, and seems to look blankly into space, or cleavage, most of the time. Though the quiet, stupid type can entertain a girl with perks like diamonds and tours of the Tuscan wine country, something tells me his charm won't last long off camera.

Oh Lorenzo! Take me away on your aeroplane to Roma. But then please fly back, and quick. I want to enjoy the scenery.

is Sesame Street.

I started working in local TV in Eugene back in late October. In under ten months, I've been promoted twice, from part time to full time technical director, and then from technical director to director.

I had been directing the weekend news shows -- the simplest and least watched news shows, where they put all the newbies like me -- for only a month or so when the possibility of another promotion reared its head. A higher-up director, the guy who hired me in fact, moved to Spokane.

It's not clear if I'll get promoted to the weekday 5 and 11 o' clock directing spots, and if I had to guess I'd say the odds were against me from the start because of my relative inexperience. But, in the interim while the people upstairs figure out what to do, I've been filling in on the 5 o' clock show, which is about 10 times more complex than the weekend shows I'm used to, and it has been awesome.

That's the setup. Now you're ready to read about yesterday. Press on, true believer.

I just came up with a great idea for a game you can play at home! All you need is a cell phone, a high school education, and a group of drunk friends. Here's how it works...

Think of someone you knew at least 10 years ago, either in high school or college, but that you lost touch with completely after graduation, and so did (probably) everyone you still keep in touch with.

Starting with only the numbers currently in your cell phone -- no fair using outside sources like the internet -- call one of those friends you're still in touch with. You're only allowed to ask them for a phone number from their cell phone.

(Note: If you're too old to own a cell phone, I guess you can use your address book or rolodex or whatever old people have.)

You have one hour, during which you'll phone people you haven't spoken to or thought about in a decade, to find the person you had in mind in the first place. And you're not allowed to tell anyone why you're looking for this person, either.

If, within the allotted hour, you do manage to get this person's phone number, then you must call them and keep them on the phone for 15 minutes while you catch up in front of all your drunken friends, who watch in rapt attention as a completely awkward moment unfolds before them.

Well, now that I'm writing it out it doesn't sound so awesome.

Recently, VH1 Classic aired the first day of MTV programming in celebration of that channel's 25th Anniversary. I've just finished the first six hours. Here's what I've learned...

• The station-opening sequence, in which a spaceship takes freaking forever to launch, takes freaking forever. I can't imagine anyone enjoyed watching that.
• A good 30% of the videos in the first six hours are either Rod Stewart or the Pretenders. Especially Rod Stewart, who plays at least twice per hour. And the Pretenders songs are all pretty obscure.
• One of the videos, Thank You For Being a Friend, was probably an awesome hit to rock out to until seven years later when it became the Golden Girls theme.
• Speaking of Golden Girls, check out Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie, which ends in a truly creepy runway show featuring middle-aged rockers dressed like old women.?
• I totally forgot how great the video for "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads was. Extremely great, that's how great.
• Watching a lot of 1981 videos in a row reminds you that they only had like three video effects back then. Extremely popular: the chromakey (blue/green screen) effect. Leo Sayer's More Than I Can Say probably blew some minds back then. (The good stuff is towards the end.)
• Carly Simon makes an appearance with a completely awful song called Vengeance, which ends with a hilarious freeze frame of Carly rocking out.
• We've established that 30% of the videos are Rod Stewart or the Pretenders. About 50% are super boring concert videos of bands like REO Speedwagon, .38 Special, and The Who; and another 15% are songs and/or artists I've never heard of. Who the hell is Split Enz, and why do they have three videos in the first six hours?

Bill Simmons covers many of the important elements. YouTube is one of those awesome Internet phemonomenonaaas that comes along and awesomely revolutionizes everyone's life.

There's definitely a lot of, um... questionable/creepy stuff (then again, it wouldn't be the Internet, would it?). But the treasures outweigh the creepy... especially in the case of Almost Live, the classic Seattle-based comedy sketch show that had brief national exposure on Comedy Central, but spent most of its existence riffing on local issues from 1986-1999 on KING-TV.

My personal favorite: kids show sketch Uncle Fran's Musical Forest, featuring a drunk and angry raccoon puppet who may have been the genesis for Raffles.

"But Uncle Fran, we hate the bitches!"

ever.

It's official: the Robocop Score for 24 Season 5 is now "three." Sharp-eyed viewers will have recognized Paul McCrane, famous for having his face melt off in Robocop, as the Guy With Neat Ear-Phone Who Is Really REALLY The Main Bad Guy For Sure This Time. He joins Vice President Leland Palmer and a partially-dehydrated Robocop himself to attain this new high score.

I haven't seen a 3 since Twin Peaks Season 2, which featured the ubiquitous Miguel Ferrer (in my favorite role, as a pointlessly rude FBI agent who gets results) and The Old Man as the ghost of Christmas past or something, plus the aforementioned Leland Palmer.

If 24 wants to take the trophy from Twin Peaks permanently, they should get the dad from That 70s Show on there. I don't know why he hasn't shown up yet in the series, actually. He's the scariest person on television!

James, I know you've been avoiding all the Law & Orders all this time. TiVo just Suggestioned (tm) an episode of Criminal Intent for me, and it happens to be the first episode I ever saw. L&O:CI(tm) is even crazier than most detective shows when it comes to the sheer volumes of trivial knowledge its protagonist just happens to have at his fingertips. Really...even more than Monk! Plus, Det. Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio, medium-fat version) uses his patented Lean-Over-Sideways method of interrogation to force a confession every time, so that we don't have to sit through any court scenes.

Anyway, this episode, "The Pilgrim," is about terrorists, and actually it's kind of a lame episode. But it's the one I always think of, since it introduced me to Det. Goren in the most hilarious way. Here's a scene:

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
(answering a student, naturally)
Randy asked why the Greek Bible is called the Septuagint. "Septua" means "seventy," and the story is that it took seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek.

GOREN
(after lurking around)
At the Great Library at Alexandria, Egypt. Right Mr. Edwards?

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
Right. The library, and its 700,000 books were destroyed by fire over 1300 years ago.

GOREN
My mother was a librarian.

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
They just built a new library on the site of the original...this time with state-of-the-art smoke detectors.

GOREN
You've been?

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
Oh, I've read about it. I'm one of five people who actually reads Smithsonian Magazine.

GOREN
Six. One of six.

Notice the totally unnecessary reference to his mother. That's another tactic he's working on I think.

Anyway, later, Goren patiently explains things to his useless girl sidekick...

SCULLY
What's this?

GOREN
It's the Smithsonian article on the new library in Alexandria. When Edwards mentioned smoke detectors it didn't ring a bell.

SCULLY
You actually read this when it came out?

GOREN
(clearly deflecting)
It's the perfect size for my treadmill.

Riiiight.

Well, this is probably one of those things you have to see for yourself. So, I'll TiVoIze an episode of House, M.D. for its ethics-expanding drama, if you Digitally Video Record (tm) a Criminal Intent. Bonus points if you get an episode with Goren's nemesis Olivia d'Abo, the show's only recurring villain -- for some reason she refuses to confess! So frustrating! How are you supposed to solve a crime if the bad guy won't confess?!?! It's a lesson Goren may never learn...

So a few days ago, the morning news anchors had a satellite interview with Sean Astin. I was hoping they'd talk to him about his role as Agent Frodo from Division on 24, but no go. They just talked about how his mom, Patty Duke, had bipolar disorder. If I was a news anchor, I would've said, "Are you sure you weren't just confusing her with her identical cousin, Sean Astin? Like maybe she'd come into the room, and suddenly she's all British and proper?" Then I'd laugh, and laugh and laugh.

Speaking of 24, this week's torture scene was my favorite yet. We had to rewind and watch it twice. For those of you who missed it, it went something...like this...

Yes, he actually talked in internet slang.

It was almost a year ago that I demanded the release of The Flash and the Dark Shadows revival series on DVD, and just five months later I discovered that DVD executives everywhere had cowered and capitulated to my every order.

Unfortunately it seems the knaves, in their haste to quell my insatiable wrath, slipped up. Their Dark Shadows DVDs are inexplicably widescreen, even though the shows were originally shot and aired and intended for full screen. (Apparently DVD execs confuse our preference for intended aspect ratios with an irrational love of wide things.) The Flash, meanwhile, actually has some kind of production error that crashes your DVD player during the pilot episode.

Hey, look, I wasn't even disappointed that there were no special features. As I've addressed, these are DVD sets that only I could possibly want. But come on, DVD execs. You can do better than this.

In other, more pressing news, I'm selling my homemade 12-DVD set of Twin Peaks season 2. So, if you want to see David Duchovny in drag, this may be your last chance for a while.

Incredible news today. Smallish TV networks UPN and The WB will merge to form one gigantic, mediocre network.

This is heartbreaking, because it means the end of UPN.

If there is a God of Unintentional Comedy, surely His gift to the world was UPN. I'm talking about back in the day, before it reached moderate levels of respectability with Veronica Mars and Everybody Hates Chris. I'm talking about the original, keepin'-it-real UPN, which debuted in January 1995.

This was about the time I first attached speakers to my computer in my freshman dorm room, and, as my old roomate Vikram could attest, the UPN network ident was my startup sound for nearly two years (until it was replaced by the CNN Headline News opening theme). The announcer guy earnestly announcing "This... is UPN!", as if you're about to watch something great, always cheered me up.

From the beginning, UPN was hilariously awful; the boring Star Trek: Voyager was a hit based on name recognition, but the other shows failed to attract an audience. First, they jumped on the "let's give every stand-up comedian in the world his own sitcom because Seinfeld is a hit" train, with Platypus Man starring Richard Jeni. I didn't watch this show, probably due to the title, which disappointingly has nothing to do with a man being bitten by a radioactive platypus; apparently, it's actually a reference to Jeni's sex life resembling that of a platypus, which was a joke taken from his stand-up act. I don't know about you, but I'm LOLing all over the place right now.

(NOTE: All UPN comedy promo photos required the actors to have that look on their face that says, "Whooooa, things are about to get GOOOOFY!")

On the show, Jeni's character hosts a low-rated cooking show for guys; marvel at this fan page written by someone who felt it necessary to document what dish was cooked by Jeni's character in each episode of Platypus Man.

(As an aside, that page is why I love the Internet; not only does it show off the author's fabulous HTML 1.0 skills circa 1995, but it's a great example of how people will spend their free time putting everything nobody needs to know on the Internet. Once all humans have been eradicated by monkeypox and only the computers are left, and aliens discover the remains of our civilization, this web page will the first thing they discover, and they'll realize they shouldn't have bothered looking. I guarantee this will happen.)

The other running joke in my Turman East dorm room was The Watcher, which had nothing to do with either Buffy, Keanu, or the Fantastic Four, and everything to do with... Sir Mix-A-Lot. Because, as the promos said, Sir Mix-A-Lot IS the Watcher.

Of course he is.

This was an anthology show in which the only constant was our hero, Sir Mix-A-Lot. He's a security man in a casino; he likes to watch and he cannot lie. Despite many industry accolades, the show failed to take off. (By "many industry accolades", I mean the show was nominated for an Emmy in, naturally, the Sound Mixing category. Then again, that may have just been a cruel industry in-joke.) Again, I didn't watch the actual show, but judging from this review on IMdB written by user "hoagiemike", it totally would have ROCKED MY FOOL FACE OFF.

This show didn't last long, but at least Cheap Trick was on it. Rick, Robin, Tom and Bun E. from the legendary rock band Cheap Trick star as "Pandemonium" in an episode where they play a down n' out rock band with a dim wit manager, who wants to book them as a novelty act. Robin Zander plays lead singer Jack Stone who says "families to feed? We should bangin' showgirls and tearing down the walls" This is great stuff,funny, and the band are actually decent actors. Plus they play the rare Cheap Trick song "born to raise hell" which totally Rocks! Check this out, it's hard to find, but many cheap trick collectors have this...

In contrast, UPN's other freshmen shows struggled to attract the Cheap Trick fanbase. They were Pigsty (a kind of Friends clone, complete with a songwriter character who sings quirky/goofy original songs), Marker (starring Richard Greico!), and Legend, which took the awesome idea of putting MacGyver and Star Trek's Q in the same show, but then botched it by sending them back in time and taking away their respective omnipotent powers.

Of UPN's first-season shows, only Voyager survived; the rest were sacked.

It got slightly better from there, but only slightly less unintentionally hilarious. UPN's ratings success among African-Americans in urban areas led it to develop more shows targeting that demographic; this is how the world was blessed with the controversial, had-to-be-seen-to-be-believed The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, and, even more importantly, the seminal sci-fi classic, Homeboys from Outer Space.

(See? "Whoooa, GOOOOOFY!" Can you imagine having to write the ad copy for that show? No, you can't? Well, thanks to the magic of furdell.com, now you CAN.)

Shasta McNasty, Love Boat: The Next Wave, and even the XFL; I'll miss all of them, but they will live forever in my heart.

OK... so I didn't really watch these shows. But just the fact that they existed brightened my day.

Anyway! There you go, aliens. Let it be known that our society was founded on the principles and guidance of UPN, and in the year 2006, we abandoned that guidance in the name of "ratings". This... shall be our epitaph.

(Come to think of it, I may have just regurgitated one of the plots from Star Trek: Voyager. I apologize to everyone.)

Discuss.

Now that Julia has a new laptop, I can use it to share my most inane and ephemeral thoughts, even more than before!

Example: we're watching Celebrity Fit Club 3, and watching famous fat people reminds me that Star Jones lost like 150 pounds, which is enough to make a whole new person! And if you did make a person out of Star Jones's excess weight, I think it would look something like...The Glop!

Joe Camareno, whose IMDB page is surprisingly detailed, and who is perhaps best known by you for playing the role of "Charlie" in the blissfully short movie I made this summer...whoa, that's too many clauses. Well, now you know who I'm talking about.

Anyway, my jaw dropped when I spotted Joe in today's episode of my brother's favorite currently-doomed show, Arrested Development. Joe plays one of the Mexican painters who helps Michael and Gob teach George Sr. a lesson. (Specifically, Joe plays the one who was in the Groundlings.)

This is at least twice as awesome as the time I saw one of the guys I auditioned on an episode of Blind Date. (They did not end up in the hot tub, alas.)

You don't want to be too late on those switches. Charleston Kezi would not approve.

Being a big Superman fan, I watched Smallville for the first 2.25 seasons or so, until it became too utterly ridiculous even for me. "You're fired," I said to Smallville. That seemed like a long time ago.

And yet, the show is still going. Remember when I hilariously "blogged" about TV series that present Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol rehashed? I do. Good times. Who could resist modifications on this timeless tale? "Oh look! It's the Ghost of Christmas Beavis!"

Well, the WB (pronounced "Wooob"), which, mind you, already gave us A Roswell Christmas Carol, will air, on Thursday, December the 8th, in the year of our Lord 2005:

509 - LEXMAS

LEX IS VISITED BY THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE - Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) is given an envelope with damaging information that will destroy Jonathan's (John Schneider) life and must decide whether he will use it as it will also bring harm to Clark (Tom Welling) and Martha (Annette O'Toole). Before he can decide what to do, Lex is shot and falls into a coma. He dreams that his mother (Alisen Down) visits him and shows him the life he could lead if he walks away from his father (John Glover) and LuthorCorp. In this alternate life, Lex is happily married to Lana (Kristin Kreuk) with a baby on the way. Meanwhile, Chloe (Allison Mack) asks Clark to use his powers to deliver Christmas presents to needy kids. Erica Durance also stars. Holly Harold wrote the episode directed by Rick Rosenthal.

Knowing what I know about Smallville, this will be the gayest Christmas ever.

Seriously, so there was a Drake Hotel Bible in one of Jim Phelps's hideouts. How does that tell Tom Cruise anything? Let alone prove that Jim's the bad guy? Couldn't Jim have visited the hideout between his Drake Hotel stay and his death? Or is the fact that he stole a Bible proof that he's the villain?

Anyway, in other television news, tonight's My Name is Earl ended with star Jason Lee performing the "robot" breakdance maneuver for "comedic" effect. Unfortunately, according to Robot Movie List bylaws, TV doesn't count. However, Furdell.com would like to take this moment to commemorate ten glorious years of using the Robot as a joke.

As far as we can tell, the trend started with 1995's Major Payne, which featured the Robot scene prominently in its trailer (or else I wouldn't know, because I haven't yet seen this cinematic gem). We're proud to report that, a decade later, the Robot is still a hilarious way to show that a character is out of touch. Thank you, Hollywood.

What would you say if I told you that a producer of Prison Break died in his hotel room of a drug overdose?

Wait, don't answer yet. What if I told you... that it happened... in the DRAKE HOTEL in CHICAGO?!?! Red light... green light!

It's a mole hunt, my brother! A MOLE HUNNNNNNT! And you know how I knew, right? Because of those damned Gideons.

I'm sorry. This is awesome, merely because Andrew and I were just talking about how the revelation in the Mission: Impossible movie that Phelps took the Bible from the Drake Hotel in Chicago told you everything you needed to know about how Tom Cruise Figured It All Out. (And by "everything," I of course mean "nothing.") And Prison Break is Andrew's favorite show.

Furthermore, this is the kind of thing that would be used as a subplot on the show... like, I halfway expect that the vice president did it just to get to Michael Scofield.

Oh yeah, not that this guy's death wasn't tragic. Drugs kill kids, blah blah blah. (Although it's hard to feel bad for anybody who produced for 7th Heaven.)

Fametracker has some possible replacements for Arrested Development.

Seriously, it's awesome.

Though last night's episode had one scene that I thought was totally stupid. Michael's prison doctor, who's been treating him for Fake Diabetes, visits his old psychiatrist. The psychiatrist explained that Michael had been diagnosed with:

1.) Some condition that makes him see the components of lamps, or something. Evidently, a person with a low IQ who is burdened with this condition will go insane -- assuming IQ actually measures anything other than your ability to complete number progressions, that is.

2.) Michael puts the needs of others above his own. Gasp!

So essentially, he was seeing a psychiatrist for his smartness and for the fact that he's too giving. Riiiight. And Jack Bauer came down with a bad case of the awesomes.

While watching House: drink every time I'm compelled to say, "Oh Dr. House, that crosses into an ethical grey area."

While watching Prison Break: drink every time I'm compelled to say, "Oh dear, this is going to interfere with the PRISON BREAK! (Titular line!)"

Drink anytime a show completes a sad episode/season finale in the traditional fashion: with a Sarah McLachlan song. That list includes Buffy (as a multiple offender), and now Alias, and I even just saw it in Wonderfalls.

Get well soon, me.

I started watching this show around the fourth episode, and I thought it was pretty cool. Then I watched the first three episodes and found out it was OH MY GOD SO AWESOME.

You may or may not already know the premise: Michael, a structural engineer who's clearly smarter than you (and better looking, says Julia), gets an extremely intricate full-body tattoo and then robs a bank very poorly. (That's the only part I'm not completely happy with -- I know he wanted to get caught, but couldn't he have come up with a more awesome near-miss plan, just to prove he could've pulled it off? Well, I'm not thinking practically.)

Michael pleads no contest and gets put in maximum security prison -- the same one, it turns out, that houses his brother, on death row for killing the Vice President's brother. (And in this week's shocking finale, we learned that the VP is -- wait for it -- a chick! And not Geena Davis! What's that about?) He swears he's innocent, but honestly, who cares? Michael's tats are actually a complicated puzzle filled with mneumonic devices and mathematical formulae that translate into the prison's blueprints and an escape method.

You had me at "prison break."

If you're not yet convinced that this show is awesome, here's three components of Michael's plan that I didn't know about until I saw the first few episodes. Remember, if any of these fails, he's stuck in prison for a long time and his brother will die.

1. Michael needs frequent access to the infirmary. No problem -- he has type 1 diabetes and needs insulin shots. Except that he does not, in fact, have diabetes at all. When he starts to get the shakes, he has to buy insulin blockers from the guy in prison who can get you things (you know...Morgan Freeman), which is unfortunately complicated by a race riot and a menacing guy named T-Bag. (I won't explain that on this site, which is read by my parents.)
2. When they escape, they'll need new identities, and an airplane. Luckily, before he robbed the bank, Michael sought out and photographed a guy in the FBI's witness protection program (for some reason the guy's name is Fibonacci, like the sequence -- presumably a reference to the naming convention in Cannonball Run II). An imprisoned mob boss, played by the crazy guy from Fargo, will join in the escape in exchange for Fibonacci's whereabouts.
3. This is my favorite part. Michael realizes that they'll need a lot of money when they get out. So his plan depends on one inmate actually being D.B. Cooper. Wow.

For some reason, the story keeps getting sidetracked by some other peoples' attempts to get the brothers out of jail legitimately. The writers try to spice these scenes up by exploding people, but it just isn't working. We need more prison! MORE!!! And more of the breaking out thereof.

A warning to you, TV people: if Michael's tattoos also contain the secret for creating zombies and/or time travel, I will jump through my 9th story window knowing that I have seen humanity at its very best, and that there's simply no point in going on.

Just so you don't think all I do is watch awesome TV all day, last night Julia and I went to a play, "The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial" starring Ed Asner and The Guy Who Played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it was completely terrible. It was like listening to a reading of an encyclopedia article. I know what the writer was going for -- they saw Inherit the Wind, realized it was very inaccurate, and decided to set the record straight. But can't a story be both accurate and dramatically compelling? Does it have to be a bunch of guys reading from transcripts? Ugh.

Life... may get no better.

Unfortunately, due to cutbacks in FAA funding, I'm about to become unemployed once again.

No worries, we'll be OK. In the meantime, I've got Arrested Development to cheer me up, which, in one of the greatest miracles known to mankind, was renewed for a third season despite awful ratings.

Whether people will watch it on Mondays, now, I don't know. All I know is it's definitely a huge pick-me-up every time it comes on.

Lucille: Well, apparently, mood-altering medication leads to street drugs. That?s what this very handsome, young doctor said on The Today Show.

Michael: That was Tom Cruise, the actor.

Lucille: They said he was some kind of scientist.

Lindsay: Don?t buy! We did it, Mikey! We?re super rich again! And, I?m going to buy a car. The Volvo.

Michael: Lindsay, you?re not going to start spending money. And this is not a Volv.. oh!

Lindsay: Oh, that?s from sitting on the copier.

Michael: Hey, why don?t you pop a tent in front with your cousin Maeby?

George Michael: What?! No!

Maeby: I?m not really the outdoorsy type.

Michael: Well, then this is a good chance for you to rub off on her.

I never thought I would ever, ever say this, but... THANK YOU FOX. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Julia and I are catching up on Lost since everyone likes it so damned much.

We're almost at the end, but I thought it important to point out that, in early episodes, the little kid is reading a Spanish language copy of Green Lantern/Flash: Faster Friends, which I really wanted to like since it has a Mark Waid credit, but which I found mostly incomprehensible. Ah well.

I also think it's important to point out that, while searching for the cover to that comic book, I found about a billion other sites that were able to identify the obscure late-90s comic book in the show. So, you heard it here last.

(Did everyone else catch the reference to The Office, when Merry's girlfriend says her father just bought a paper company in Slough? Oh, only about 165,000 people noticed that. Great.)

Well, in more current news, I'm watching this Prison Break show. I'm pretty sure it's terrible...but I love it! They're trying to break out of prison!!! Have you ever seen a bad television show or movie, besides Life, where people construct elaborate schemes to escape from prison? I haven't! Besides Life.

Oh, sure, like they're really releasing The Flash TV-series and the Dark Shadows revival series on DVD. Uh-huh. Apparently the intend to reap enormous profits from the exactly one copy each they'll sell to me and me alone, and maybe to close friends and family of Ben Cross and Amanda Pays.

So you want to sleep with me, eh DVD executives? Very well.

...if you're a freak like me, is Wonder Showzen on MTV2.

I... I can't even adequately do it justice. It's a kids show on acid. Almost literally. Here's an article. TiVo it! In a Tivoesque fashion!

Random Hip-Hop Musical Interlude!

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me... Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me... Don'chaaaaaa!

(interlude over)

Seriously. We're talking hella-disturbing-ilarious. Don't watch this show if you're:

a) my parents.

I want you guys to continue to like me and think I'm a decent human being.

Fox is re-running episodes last season's Arrested Development in two-hour blocks on Fridays, 8 p.m.-10 p.m. ET, starting this Friday. Set your TiVos now.

I'll wait.

...

Not to lay down an ultimatum or anything, but if you're not watching this show, you can't fucking be my friend. I'm sorry I have to draw such a broad stroke in the sand... um... in the cybersand, but it's basically the greatest miracle the world has ever seen that this show was renewed for a third season. Last year it got lower numbers than my blog, I think. So watch it.

Meanwhile: teasers and such are available for the Tenacious D movie. As soon as Andrew gets a break from making his own movie, I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear this.

I told Andrew he had to try to work the AFLAC duck into his movie, but he refused. Then I suggested he should have the AFLAC duck playing poker with the Geico gecko, Kool-Aid Man, and the Hamburger Helper glove (who narrowly beat out the Arby's oven mitt during the casting phase). But he refused even more. So then I suggested stock footage of some buffalo being scared by nuclear explosions, but again I was rebuffed. So clearly he's never returning my calls again, once this thing he's working on opens wide. No associate producer credit for James!

How could this have happened?

Why did anybody tell me?

What kind of a world are we living in, where nobody brings to my attention the fact that A&E is running T.J. Hooker re-runs at 4 a.m. Tuesday-Saturday? With the kind, Tivolesque assistance of TiVo, I've been able to catch up a bit with this televisory masterpiece.

This is the first time I've been able to watch it; when it originally aired, I don't think my seven-year-old brain was able to conceive exactly how COMPLETELY AWESOME this show was. And by "completely awesome," I, of course, mean "unintentionally hilarious."

First of all, you've got an aging, slightly-too-chunky William Shatner as a cop. Not just any cop; a supercop, who "sprints" (I'm being generous) to take down criminals, and routinely hops on the hood of speeding getaway vehicles. Add in Dance Fever's own Adrian Zmed (I think the casting director just picked the last name on his call sheet alphabetically) as well as a bright-eyed Heather Locklear as cadets in training, and you've got a recipe for the awesomest cop show ever.

Seriously, this beats the pants off Law and Order. I assume. Yesterday, they aired the Season 2 finale, in which one of the rookies takes a... well, it's hard to physically describe how it happens, because it's not well choreographed, but she takes a bullet in the knee, and somehow has to have her entire leg amputated. The rookie is played by guest star Anne-Marie Martin, a.k.a. Doru from Sledge Hammer, so I kept expecting her to break into comedy. Not quite, but there was lots of scenery chewing... with both Martin and Shatner in a hospital room, her upset over losing a leg and him feeling guily. I really expected the walls to come tumbling down due to the sheer gale force of their acting.

So today was the first episode in Season 3. You guys... I have to say that even if you don't want to sit through a whole episode, it's worth taping this show just for the opening title sequence. It starts with Shatner, running (or, if you prefer, waddling) towards his latest assailant, in silouhette. There's some more chasing on foot, some cars doing some stunts, a few gun battles, Adrian Zmed shirtless, Adrian Zmed and Heather Locklear in bathing suits by the pool, Heather Locklear parading down a runway in skimpy clothing (uh, this is a cop show, right?).

And then, the comedic coup de grace: we see a shot of Heather throwing her nightstick, batarang style, very weakly. Cut to a criminal, fleeing the scene; the nightstick touches him in the back of the legs. He, of course, goes flying. Book 'em Heather!

That's just one of the many things in this show that seem physically impossible. Physics appears to work differently in the world of T.J. Hooker. For example, in yesterday's episode, one of the bad guys runs out into the street, being chased by a slow-moving Shatner. He stops in the middle of the road, looks and sees a car coming from about 50 feet away. Plenty of time to move or jump out of the way. But, of course, he just stands there for a good five seconds, yelling and throwing his arms in front of his head. The car appears to come only a few feet closer, and then somehow the bad guy gets hit by the car and gets seriously injured, without actually being touched by it.

Like I said: physics just works differently in Hookerland.

(Oh, did I mention that "T.J. Hooker" stands for "Thomas Jefferson Hooker?" The character is named, of course, after Thomas Jefferson's fondness for hookers. He liked the hot chocolate.)

So in conclusion: you can't know what's going on in my head on a regular basis unless you're watching T.J. Hooker. And if you can't catch it on A&E...

...wait, it's on A&E? How did that happen? Not that I'm complaining, but they did used to run, like, operas in a former life, didn't they? Somebody else must be blackmailing them. I'll bet the History Channel has some incriminating photos. Anyway...

If you can't catch it on A&E, be sure to pick up the DVDs coming soon:

And, most likely, you can look forward to a cinematic remake in 2007. Starring who? I can't even think of a suitable candidate to play the title role. Time to get Shatner back out of mothballs!

Look out, because this post includes season-ending spoilers! From Alias!

So in the last moments of the show, just as Alias's fianc? is in the middle of a totally awesome season-ending revelation, they get hit by a car. It's super-fast -- from "whoa there's a car" to impact in about 4 frames. Using TiVo to take a closer look at those frames, we discover that the car in question is a Ford Explorer. Not at all unlike the ones that come standard issue from CTU. The ones you might see driven by...

...24's Jack Bauer.

Coincidence? No, stupid! Obviously, Jack met up with Alias's mom (because they both had to travel the countryside as fugitives, and you end up meeting a lot of people that way. They probably ran into the Incredible Hulk, too.) Naturally they hit it off. And, um...obviously for some reason they decided to kill Alias and her fianc?. Well, I haven't worked out all the details yet. But it was Jack for sure!!

On this week's 24, Tony Almeida's ex-wife Michelle -- who left him because he went to prison saving her life (essentially for committing all the crimes Jack Bauer committed in the first season, but without being the star of the show) -- suddenly and improbably came around.

In a touching moment, they decided to both quit working at CTU, just as soon as the latest nuclear crisis has been solved. Then, as Tony walks out the door to help Jack hunt down terrorists, Michelle says to him -- and I quote -- "be careful."

Is she deliberately trying to kill him? She's probably a mole, right? And she realizes that the surest way to kill a law enforcement official is to dangle a happy retirement in front of him, and watch him walk into bullets. He gets kidnapped at gunpoint within the hour. Amazing.

It all makes me flash back to the first episode of the season, when we made bets on how much time would pass between the introduction of Jack's new girlfriend, and her inevitable kidnapping. (Less than 45 minutes, as it turned out.) For some reason, she still hasn't revealed that she speaks a foreign language and is therefore evil. But it's only a matter of time.

OK, so I'm a little late on this one. It's kind of been in the back of my mind for the last month-and-a-half, but I've been busy, okay?

Anyway, I waited and waited for classic superhero television program The Greatest American Hero to come out on DVD. People were selling home-made sets on Ebay for upwards of $100 per season; I ended up downloading the episodes of the first season myself and making my own DVDs, which worked out pretty well, but the quality wasn't great.

So it finally comes out on DVD, and I shell out my $35 or whatever. The set seems great -- really good video quality, nice packaging, skimpy but present features...

But then you watch the actual show, and oh my god, the music. It still has the famous opening theme song, but much of the other music has been replaced. Specifically, what used to be covers of moderately popular hits of that era (like a folky rendition of Elton John's Rocket Man in the pilot) got replaced by what can only be described as a late-90s attempt at watered-down rock. Kind of like the Friends theme, but more rockin'!

Anyway it doesn't mesh particularly well with the otherwise very late-70s early-80s show (the main character is a white dude with a 'fro -- Friends music is simply inappropriate). And the packaging doesn't so much as hint at the change.

It turns out that securing the rights to the original music is a problem specific to TV shows on DVD, and is the reason why you'll never be able to buy the box set of WKRP in Cincinnati that you've been asking for every Christmas will never come to be. Well, it also means shows like Freaks and Geeks that get the music right end up costing tons more. That show didn't even finish its first season...imagine how much the first season of Moonlighting will set you back. And I know you're planning to buy it. Because you love Bruce Willis.

Anyway, better high prices for these sets than the schlocky music they settle for to bring down the price. You need to see the Greatest American Hero DVDs to fully comprehend what I'm talking about. You can't borrow mine though; I just sold them to some sucker on Ebay. Take that, loser!

Bad news: the basketball must have run long, and I only got the first 90 minutes or so of SBSA. I'll have to miss out on the surely wild and unpredictable climax.

But here's what I have anyway.

SPRING BREAK SHARK ATTAAAAAAAACK!

0:01 - Some women just got eaten. Time it took for the movie to rip off a camera shot from Jaws (specifically, the shark-POV "hey, there are some dangling legs to eat" shot): one minute.

0:03 - We're showing some girls talking on the phone. One of them says: "If [the rumors] were true, I'd line him up spread eagle and kick him square in hislutzsch." Yes, it sounds as weird as it looks. I think they tried at the last minute to expunge the word "nuts" from that sentence, maybe by playing it backwards or something. Thanks again, FCC.

0:04 - The executive producer is "J.J. Jamieson." Surely he's using the profits from this film to go after that awful Spider-Man.

0:05 - The party is rockin' at "Seagull Beach!" Somewhere around Miami. Oooh, and there's a guy reading the "Seagull Beach Sun" newspaper. I think that's the one Pinzur writes for.

0:07 - Which one is "The OC's Shannon Lucia?" I have no idea. Uh-oh, makeover montage scene! Here, try on this floppy hat while dance music plays on the soundtrack.

0:08 - First Jell-O wrestling shot of the film. Nice mise en scene there.

0:09 - Uh-oh, there's talk of losing one's virginity. Not a good thing to do in this kind of movie.

0:10 - "I'll meet you guys back here in a half." A half? As in, half an hour? I need to start using that. I'm too lazy to actually complete my sentences anymore.

0:11 - This guy couldn't be any more Australian. I think he might be the bad guy... he was fighting "the reef" at the local city council meeting. You have to watch out for those city-council guys. Oh, and here's "Shane," the poor man's James Van Der Beek. My college roommates used to watch Dawson's Creek all the time. And 7th Heaven. That was weird, guys.

0:13 - Uh-oh, the reef is going to cause an eco-disaster-something. They've messed with nature, according to marine biologist Charlie. But Charlie's professor tells him to forget it, and "get jiggy with it." This movie may have been sitting around in a vault for a while.

0:15 - It's high time some sharks started tearing the hell out of these pretty people. Where are those sharks? They're late, dammit.

0:16 - More awkward virginity talk. They're shoehorning it into the script to appeal to the FCC. "Not enough virgins in your movies last year, CBS!"

0:18 - Come on, movie. I was promised a Spring Break Shark Attack. You're showing me people dancing in a club. On land. Unless the sharks learned to walk... oh wait, I hope they did. Maybe they're genetically engineered to walk into a bar and order a Tanqueray and cranberry. That's what I would do if I were a walking shark.

0:20 - Maybe this is supposed to be extending the "guys as shark" metaphor first suggested by the dad in the first couple minutes. Uh-oh, slowwww song time! Side-to-side middle-school dance technique GO!

0:22 - OK, here we go. Boogie-boarding at night. Guy: "What happens in Spring Break stays in Spring Break!" Girl: "I thought that was Vegas." These people are begging to be eaten.

0:24 - Oh man, this is awful. The main whats-her-name girl is flirting with Shane, the local guy who "isn't into the Spring Break scene." We've been in a bookstore watching them get close for the last, what, hour?

0:25 - Finally, back to the boogie boarding buffet. "What was that? Something touched my leg!" "Yeah right! 'Glug glug glug'... real funny! Hey, come up now! Hey!" Aaaaand... CUE BLOOD SPRAY!!!111 UAAYEAHAHA sharks!

0:26 - "SPRING BREAK SHARK ATTACK! Sponsored by Imitrex." I love CBS.

0:31 - Danielle is the marine biologist's sister. He has a "shark pod" that generates electical pulses to keep sharks away. I doubt that will in any way figure into the story later.

0:38 - The girls put together a party, but too many people showed up uninvited and made it crazy. Does that only happen on TV? Anytime someone throws a party it gets out of control. I wish people would crash my parties. I wish I had parties.

0:40 - Somebody was using the camcorder to do Girls Gone Wild. But just as the subject is about to take off her top, he points the camera at his own face and laughs! You've got a lot to learn about your audience, dude. That is not good mise en scene.

0:42 - Danielle is about to get some Date Rape Drugs in her drink. (Is it Imitrex?) They really shouldn't sell those over the counter. And now she's all disoriented. Weren't expecting to "lose it" this way, were you Danielle?

0:49 - Wow, this movie may have been written by Mormons. So far there have been scant few shark attacks. It's more about the perils of Spring Break when you're trying to stay a virgin. Fortunately, the sweet guy who lives there and drives a boat and wants to save up for college to be an engineer, Shane, is helping her out.

0:52 - Dammit, there should have already been a full-scale shark attack, and the humans should have already retaliated with bazookas. Instead we get this "very special episode of My Two Dads" crap. Ugh, Danielle just called her dad because she's all scared. He didn't know she was in Florida. Perhaps... he will be eaten... by the sharks? I'm hopeful.

0:54 - Uh-oh, that guy who drugged Danielle is going after her. Somebody's goin' a date-rapin'. Unconscious chicks are indeed hot. Cue ominous music!

0:55 - Oops, Shane walked in. "What's up man, I was just... checkin' on her stuff." Ewww. "Checking on her stuff," indeed. You're one step away from necrophilia, buddy. Way to go.

0:57 - Danielle is confused but feeling better. "Do you think someone could have slipped you something?" "Like what?" Um, like penis?

0:58 - Australian guy is throwing bloody chunks of stuff into the water. Throw some more-uh, chum on the barbie! That will... teach them... to build that reef? God, Australians are so stupid.

0:59 - Boat trip time! "Going out on the water is going to be so much fun." But it's a gay cruise?!

1:00 - Danielle's dad found her. "You don't control me!" says Danielle. That showed him.

1:02 - Shane noticed some blood in the water. Get back in the boat! Be sure to splash around as much as possible as you do so!

1:04 - "Danielle, SHARKS!"

1:11 - Danielle made it back OK. Whew. But the sharks decided to eat the boat for some reason. Boats are tasty?

1:12 - The boat is falling apart, and everybody except Shane is panicking and freaking out. He's calmly fixing the boat and telling people what to do. I feel your pain, buddy.

1:15 - Uh-oh, Danielle found J.T.'s Date Rape Drugs. Which is also tonight's sponsor! Side effects include nausea, and being raped.

1:23 - The kids escaped to an island. Lord of the Flies sure to ensue. "Sucks to your ass-mar!"

1:24 - Sure enough, Shane is fighting J.T. "This is messed up, man."

1:26 - A dead eaten guy just washed ashore on Mystery Island. Ruh-oh! It was actually somewhat effective until they zoomed in on the poor latex job.

Yeah, I think that's all TiVo got. But here's all you need to know about the rest of the movie, as described by LiAps:

I don't wanna ruin it for you, but I recommend you pay particular attention at the end when the guy is trawling a chum-laden metal cage behind the boat and spends about 10 minutes yeling at the sharks, "You hungry, sharks? You want somethin ta eat? Come on - Come 'n get it, sharks! You hungry?" etc.

That sounds pretty hilarious. They were already stretching the plot pretty thin as it was, so I can imagine the filmmakers including every single take they filmed in order to pad it up to two hours.

Let's just say I'm not expecting to find too many deleted scenes on the DVD, coming out this never.

Yes, I have TiVoed Spring Break Shark Attack. Or, as those of us in the business call it, SBSA.

No, I haven't watched it yet, but a review has been requested, and will be forthcoming. In the meantime, here's a picture.

Ohhh, look out, chicks in bikinis. There are some sharks behind you.

For her birthday, I reminded her about the Mr. T cartoon show, in which Mr. T coaches a team of multiethnic gymnasts and fights crime. Really.

We've had a lot of complaints about inaccurate weather predictions in Washington. But it could be worse, as this painful-to-watch video shows.

Once again the influence of Andrew is felt far and wide, as those television programs which I require are finally being released on DVD.

Scrubs - Every month for the last three or four years I've checked for the release date of this set.

Greatest American Hero - More hotly demanded than you might imagine. There's been a bootleg DVD market for GAH (terrible acronym) episodes for years. I even downloaded the first season and burned my own DVDs. And made my own labels. I'm so handy.

But the official set also includes the unaired Greatest American Heroine pilot. So I bought it already.

Remington Steele - This show may well be awful, but I love it. I can't even tell for sure if it's bad. Its premise is pretty complicated, but individual episodes aren't hard to follow. Hmm.

See, it's about this female P.I. that nobody respects, because it's the 80s I guess. So she drums up business by pretending to be an assistant to a totally made-up detective named Steele, who conveniently is always busy elsewhere. Then Pierce Brosnan, a thief whose name we never learn, shows up and starts calling himself Steele. He pretends to be the boss, and takes all the credit for her detective work, while she attempts to deflect his Brosnan-like charms and find out his real name.

See, that's kind of complex for a TV show synopsis. It's no "he found a superhero suit but he doesn't know how to use it," or "they're a bunch of funny doctors."

Moonlighting - Why am I embarrassed to admit I've been waiting for this release? It's a smart show, and I can never find it in syndication. Well, there you are.

But my thirst for semi-obscure television is not quenched. Nay, not by a long shot.

Dark Shadows (1991) - A remake of a cult-popular soap opera about a vampire. It is awesome. Way better than the original, I say. And its pathetic 12-episode run will never, ever be released on DVD. (Luckily, I made my own out of the VHS copies! Bwahahaha. Hmm.)

Misfits of Science - I think there were only six episodes. It's about four kooky kids with super powers, solving mysteries or something. But one of them didn't have super powers. And now they're all dead.

Hey, ever notice how the one girl on the superhero team gets saddled with psychic powers that make her faint or give her nosebleeds if she uses them too much? Like Invisible Girl, Marvel Girl, Saturn Girl, what have you. Well, in this show, Courtney Cox has telekinetic powers, but using those powers causes headaches. Meanwhile there's a dude who can shoot lightning bolts at people without any negative effect. Yeah, that's fair.

The Flash - Don't ask. Flash is one of those superheroes, like Aquaman, where there's always some loser who feels the need to point out how stupid his superpower is. "Oooh, all he can do is run really fast! That's lame!" Puh-lease. Flash must be one of the most powerful superheroes in the Justice League because of how fast he moves. And Aquaman is third in strength after Superman and Wonder Woman, so no, he doesn't just "talk to fish." Jerk.

TV gets such a bad rap sometimes. How could you hate an invention which has produced shows so unintentionally hilarious, there's no way anything intentionally funny could compete?

Just the crazy-buddy-cop shows alone send me into fits of laughter. Some examples:

Future Cop - Ernest Borgnine and his cyborg partner fight crime as cops.

Tag Team - Jesse Ventura and Rowdy Roddy Piper, um... fight crime. As cops.

And then there's my favorite example:

Tequila and Bonetti. Take Jack Scalia. Pair him with a talking dog (!). Watch them fight crime as cops.

It would be funny enough with just the talking dog, but when you throw in Jack Scalia, who, while filming a scene for a different show at Andrew's high school gym, famously yelled at Andrew's friend for "laughin' while I was tawlkin'"... well, I don't see how anybody could purposely come up with something funnier than Tequila and Bonetti. They even remade it as an Italian show years later. Hilarious.

Speaking of unintentional hilarity, don't forget there's a lot of buzz around Son of the Mask, which comes out tomorrow. As I write this, the Rotten Tomatoes meter stands at a favorable review rating of 0 percent. The prospect of making back that $100 million is not looking so good.

Andrew is busy making his latest video-film opus, and Kimberly and I are both sick. Today I re-discovered one of the joys of staying home sick from work: lying on the couch and watching The Price Is Right.

Meanwhile, TiVo decided I really wanted to watch Lassie. I had no idea that Lassie ran for 20 seasons (!), but it did. This particular episode from 1967 was even in color, and for some reason Lassie is apparently in the care of a park ranger. They run into a cute bouncy young girl with pigtails who has nicknamed herself "Walden". (And I'm now the only member of the Hilarie Thompson fan club.) Little Miss Thoreau has decided to move to the forest full-time, and of course, is trapped by a cave-in that requires rescue by a certain collie.

But it was the advertisement at the end that really caught my eye. I have five words for you that will change your life.

Deion Sanders' Hot Dog Cooker.

Stick that in your pipe, George Foreman. Is there nothing Deion can't do? He can cook hot dogs, he can throw a bucket o' water on Tim McCarver... he has certainly had a full life.

Click here to watch the ad.

The only ads I really liked were the FedEx/Kinko's one with Burt Reynolds (keys to a Super Bowl commercial: has-been celebrity, talking/dancing animal, and "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey), and the careerbuilder.com series where a guy has monkey co-workers.

Hey wait, I see a connection here, to... wait for it... Cannonball Run II, which starred both Burt Reynolds and a monkey! Thus further proving my theory that all comedy has its base in Cannonball Run II.

Also a recurring theme: MC Hammer became famous, and then lost that fame. I guess I can't complain about them using that joke.

I can't find a good video link to the ads. (You have to pay for adcritic now? What is that?) Somebody probably has video of them. At any rate, here's the annual Slate review article.

Yeah, yeah. Blogging is so last year. Now, not blogging... that's got some legs. Not blogging is the new blogging.

Not buying it? All right, then, how about some sound file downloads? Here you go. It's not what you necessarily might want, though. First, nostalgia trip! Three television shows from 1983 that only I watched. One, two, three. Good luck Googling those.

Next, the old theme music from the ABC Movie of the Week. That will get you pumped up and ready for a movie like nothing else will. I prefer to play it before watching Superman II.

What else do I have... oh yeah, this is cool. In Europe, even the news show themes have beats. Pup would approve.

Finally, it's strange how the best Saturday Night Live sketches are the ones that come on at 12:55 a.m. Time Travelling Scott Joplin's Tennis Talk, for example (sorry, that's not an audio link). I think my favorite example is Stevie Nicks' Fajita Roundup, as performed by Lucy Lawless. (That one is an audio link.)

"He placed an order, I wrote it down.
Three enchiladas, the best in town.
Then I saw my reflection in a big pile of nachos.
'Til a landslide brought in down."

...is more cowbell.

For some reason, Other Furdells think that Alias's Jack Bristow is more of a badass than 24's Jack Bauer. But as a side-by-side comparison shows, Other Furdells are wrong.

I rest my case.

This season has been a little bit of a retread for both shows. Jennifer Garner, for about the eighth time, suspected that her dad was evil only to later learn that he isn't at all evil; Jack Bauer's new girlfriend, after about fifteen minutes, was kidnapped by terrorists. (His daughter is too busy to get kidnapped these days, it seems.)

But last night's 24 put it ahead in the race, I think. Within the first minute, Jack had already killed two dudes, one with his bare hands! For the first fifteen minutes, it was as if all the great video games you'd ever played teamed up to kick your ass. What I'm trying to say is that it was cool.

Don't get me wrong -- Alias is showing a lot of improvement from last season, and I hear Gina Torres will be reprising her awesome role as Alias's arch-nemesis from three years ago. But if it's to catch up with 24, we're going to need to see Alias go on a lot more lingerie-requiring missions, that's all I'm saying.

And so is Andrew. THANKS, ANDREW!

Whoa! Vacations can really cause a blog to atrophy.

So, as the 2wenty no doubt informed you, NBC is coming out with a new show called Medium, starring Dream Warrior Patricia Arquette as real-life fraud Allison DuBois, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Hmm, she kind of looks like a televangelist.

Ah, but she's much more evil than your run-of-the-mill televangelist! This woman charges people to talk to their dead relatives. Yeah, yeah, so does everybody. But come on -- she gets a whole TV show based on her? The hell? She doesn't even have enough supernatural powers to put together a halfway decent website.

Sadly, DuBois used her amazing gifts to peer into the future and see that James Randi is totally lying about the existance of a $1 million prize to anyone who can prove a supernatural claim. (Never mind that he's provided proof on more than one occasion, and agreed to put the money in escrow for Larry King favorite Sylvia Brown. Yes, Larry King has these idiots on his show all the time, because it boosts ratings, even though their best trick is figuring out you know someone living or dead whose name starts with "J" or "S".) (Read that last link through if you have time, it's hilarious.)

OK, so, I like James Randi more than the next guy, but his latest challenge to Allison DuBois is completely senseless. He says that, according to the rules of the million dollar prize, DuBois can claim that prize by proving it doesn't exist (or by proving her claim that Randi has never provided proof of the prize's existance). Ummm...Randi? Claim what exactly? She'd have to prove it doesn't exist, man!

In conclusion, I suspect James and Kimberly will not be setting their newly acquired X-Mas Tivo to record Medium. Thumbs...down. Thumbs down thumbs down.

Be advised, TiVo users (i.e. Andrew and Staci): you're no longer allowed to say "I TiVoed my favorite show last night."

"Trademarks are always proper adjectives," the legal pedagogy at TiVo.com instructs. They are also "always singular."

"Correct: I want two TiVo DVR's," the site dictates. "Incorrect: I want two TiVos."

This implies that TiVo, in addition to not being a verb, must never be a noun.

I expect you to adjust your conversations accordingly.

I was so glad to find out today that the Hallmark Channel was airing A Carol Christmas, which is apparently a TV movie from last year, with Tori Spelling in the Scrooge role. (Ms. Spelling, of course, known best in our household for the best-titled movie ever, Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?) The movie also features Gary Coleman as the Ghost of Christmas Past, William Shatner as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and, I'm guessing, Tom Wopat at the Ghost of Christmas Future.

It's a good thing they made this movie, because If there's one thing TV doesn't have enough of, it's variations on A Christmas Carol. Seriously, I think there's some kind of TV law requiring all shows to do a Christmas Carol themed episode at least one during their run.

It'll be all like, "Oh no, Tootie has lost the Christmas spirit! But here's Jo as the Ghost of Christmas Past to show her where she went astray!" Or maybe, "Oh no, ALF has lost the Christmas spirit! But here's Willie Tanner as the Ghost of Christmas Past to show him where he went astray! 'Oh Alllf, why did you eat the caaat? In the paaast?'" And you know what, I could have just made up that episode in my head, and nobody would know, because seemingly every show on the air is contractually obligated to do one of these episodes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been told to expect the cast of 21 Jump Street every hour on the hour. Damn I hate Christmas.

Apparently, ABC's running a sappy Hallmark movie this Sunday called Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven. (Nice that they got a celebrity endorsement for it.) Jon Voight looks senile and confused standing next to an inexplicably blue Jeff Daniels:

Um, yeah. What I need is a way to anti-watch this. I don't mean just the opposite of watching something, which is to not watch it. I need, like, the super-opposite of watching it. For example: if you watch half of a movie, you've seen 50%. If you don't watch it, you've seen 0%. I need a way to watch a negative percentage of this movie, if possible. I must break the 0%-watched barrier. If there are any quantum physicists out there who can help me with this, please contact me immediately.

OK, I'm not feeling enough love for Desperate Housewives up in here. It's like 90210? It's like Sex and the City? I could barely stand to watch either of those shows. I've even heard it described as American Beauty: The Series. Closer, but not quite.

DH (acronym? I'm so cool) is different; different enough that I'm shocked it's been able to pull in the top ratings spot every week. I fully expect this kind of show to get relegated to "cult" status, but its success is highly promising for the future of our society.

I will now expound on why I like it, using the Furdell Standardized Top Five List.

5. It's not really a "drama."

At least, not in the standard TV drama sense. It's more of a dark satire merged with a mystery. Kind of like a Twin Peaks that makes sense.

And the litmus test of whether a show is a "drama" is really whether I can watch it without being bored to tears. Although this could eventually turn into the type of show where the developments in the characters' lives become the focus, right now that's secondary to setting up comedic situations and furthering the various mysteries. Plus, it's satirical of how we try to inject drama into our own lives, no matter where we can find it.

4. The Sunset Blvd. Factor.

Yes, Sex and the City also had third-person narration. But this show is narrated by a dead woman. In fact, it's a woman who has killed herself, for reasons not yet divulged. Eat that, Billy Wilder!

From the first moments of the pilot, you know this is going to be a dark, quirky series.

3. Eva Longoria.

Wow, she's hot.

OK, in the interest of equal time, the girls would like you to know that Jesse Metcalfe, who plays Eva Longoria's gardening shorty, was named sexiest man on TV. And he did five years of hard time on our favorite soap opera, Passions. Bonus!

Mom should be posting a comment claiming that he looks like me in 3, 2, 1...

2. Martha Stewart, Interrupted.

Marcia Cross' performance absolutely destroys the Martha Stewart homemaker ethic. Her character (Bree Van de Kamp... hee!) has managed to expunge any hint of passion or spontanaiety from her life. She keeps an immaculate house and prepares way-fancy dinners every night... but doesn't seem to realize her family is on the verge of mutiny, even after her husband leaves her.

Plus, she's responsible for delivering what must be one of the greatest lines in TV history. Spoken at a dinner party as other characters are revealing humorous embarrassing things about themselves, Bree chimes in with: "Rex cries after he ejaculates." I laughed so hard I almost cried. It's just the perfect representation of a passive-agressive character crossing the line into agressive-agressiveness.

1. It made me like Teri Hatcher again.

Yeah, we had broken up. I had a crush on her during the first couple seasons of Lois and Clark, when she had this fabulous head of hair that seemed to have a life of its own; then she did the unthinkable by cutting it short. Was it a coincidence that the show started to suck right about then, getting stuck in Neverending Wedding Plotland? I think not.

Now, in DH, she's completely redeemed herself as the de facto star of the show. Hatcher is perfectly sympathetic as the klutzy, sad-sack divorc?e who does her best to avoid being stepped on, with only partial success. She's too dippy to keep from getting locked out of the house while naked, but shrewd enough to worm her way out of her neighbor's blackmail scheme; through all of it, she manages to stay eminently likable.

Plus, she's Teri Hatcher.

It's all good.

So, if you've cancelled this one, I recommend giving it another chance. You can even come over and watch it after dinner with me, Kimberly and "Staci". Good times.

And remember, I'M NEVER WRONG about this kind of thing. I'm talking to you, Andrew.

Oh, the drama.

An ABC-TV cross-promotion on "Monday Night Football" for the new series "Desperate Housewives" worked a little too well, so the network apologized all over itself yesterday.

ABC's intro to Eagles-Cowboys featured a naked Nicollette Sheridan, one of the "Housewives," jumping into the arms of Philly receiver Terrell Owens. Viewers and the NFL then jumped all over the network.

"We have heard from many of our viewers about the 'MNF' opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate," ABC said in a statement.

The NFL called the intro "inappropriate and unsuitable for our 'Monday Night Football' audience."

Here we go again, with the complaints about nudity/sexual suggestiveness adjacent to football coverage. "Oh nooo, think of the children! They will be scarred for LIFE after seeing Nicolette Sheridan's NAKED BACK!" or something. (And don't forget the underexplored "white woman jumping into the arms of a black man" factor, which, in our backward-thinking nation, surely caused at least a portion of the complaints.)

This whole situation astounds me, considering the context: the three-hour orgy of violence known as Monday Night Football. Don't get me wrong, I love football. I even officiate at the high school level. But let's face it: it's an extremely violent sport. When we work games, we concentrate on safety issues in an effort to prevent players from incurring serious injuries. It's an uphill battle, because football fans tend glorify the big hits and revel in the roughness.

MNF has been the scene of some gruesome sights. The one I remember like a recurring nightmare was Napoleon McCallum's horrific knee injury during the first Monday night game of the season in 1994. I even remember where I was when I saw this -- in my freshman dorm room, watching with hallmates, who were similarly disturbed.

With the Raiders playing the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park on Monday Night Football, McCallum took a handoff and ...

"I got the ball and just tried to run through the middle, and the whole line was stopped up," McCallum recalls. "There was a big pile and I tried to go forward, and (49ers linebacker) Ken Norton had my shoulders and he was trying to pull me back. I'm pushing forward, and he's pulling me back and something gave, and that was my knee."

It was a gruesome sight, and a worldwide audience witnessed it over and over on instant replay: McCallum's left knee had been contorted so badly that his lower leg looked to be dangling by a thread. Blood was quite visible.

EWWWW. It's 10 years later and I can't even think about that scene without getting a little queasy. And, of course, the producers kept showing the replay over and over and over... and I kept yelling, "Stop, stop, STOP! I no longer want to see that man's foot touching his own stomach!" (I'm just grateful McCallum's still able to walk, because it really looked like he was going to lose a leg.)

Even more famous is the hit Lawrence Taylor put on Joe Theismann in 1985, breaking Theismann's leg in two places, sending him to the hospital and ending his career. And, again, ABC kept replaying it and replaying it until the nation collectively vomited.

Now, you can argue that violence isn't the main reason we love football, and that everyone involved is properly shocked and somber when a player is injured. But then I would have to point you to this website, where you can buy an autographed photo of Lawrence Taylor, taken right as he's about to break Theisman's leg into three pieces. We, quite simply, glorify the violence.

And, we're willing to let our kids watch players' legs get separated from their bodies, but if the network shows a topless woman from the back... NOW the children watching are scarred for life? There's nothing harmful about boobies, people. Boobies never broke anyone's leg in two. Boobies never bent anyone's knee 45 degrees in the wrong direction. (Well, not that I'm aware of.)

Yes, I realize I live in a country where gay marriage is a hotter social issue than the thousands of people who have died in Iraq, and that this is just symptomatic of that same bizarre mode of thinking. We, as a nation, fear sex and love violence. And I just don't get it. Why isn't it the other way around? It should be the other way around.

(Desperate Housewives, by the way: great show. Highly recommended. We watch it every week with our lawyer friend "Staci".)

Like I said, I'm making a more-or-less active effort to put politics behind me. Today I think I've made a huge step in that direction, when I realized something about myself:

I'm still way, way more upset that FOX cancelled Firefly two years ago, than that John Kerry lost.

I'm still not entirely sure that the differences between a Kerry presidency and the current ridiculousity would have a direct impact on my life. But I do know, with every fiber of my fibrous being, that I've missed out on multiple seasons of genre-blending, Joss Whedon-written, fantastic programming. And that disturbs and saddens me to no end.

Sure, the world has its Arrested Developments and its Scrubses, but what of the Fireflies of yesteryear, hmm? What am I supposed to do -- reread Jewel Staite's blog over and over until Serenity comes out in freaking April?!?! I might be dead by April. Plus, I've read that there's no plan to re-create the series even if the movie does well. (The best we can hope for is another two movies. Bah!)

There are those who say most Americans are retarded for voting the way they did this year.* But if you ask me, the biggest mistake our citizenry makes is passing on quality television.

* Note how I deftly snuck in my own opinion by sourcing it to "those who say." I learned it from watching you, the press!

I was going to do a "Who's Show Will Get Cancelled First?" contest between Michael Biehn (Hawaii) and D.B. Sweeney (Life As We Know It). Alas, the fantasy matchup of Terminator slayer Kyle Reese vs. hockey playing figure skater Doug Dorsey will have to be placed on hold, as the much inferior Hawaii has already been put on "indefinite hiatus." (The network can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... until you are cancelled.)

The Michael Biehn Fan Club (really!) was unavailable for comment at press time. But Biehn, who also played Corporal Hicks in Aliens, can still take heart in the fact that he helped play a part in the funniest newsgroup posting ever:

From: PD Carter (u3j98@cc.keele.ac.uk)
Subject: Re: Your Favorite Movie Lines...Ever
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Date: 1995-02-07 12:47:35 PST

YiKuong Chen (gt2868a@prism.gatech.edu) wrote:
: "Why don't you put her in charge?" (or any other Hicks line from ALIENS)

Its Hudson sir, he's Hicks

Well played, PD Carter. Ten years ago.

NBC's Friends spinoff Joey would be 100,000,000 times better if, instead of whatever dumbass Smashmouth-sounding themesong they went with, they had chosen Concrete Blonde's 1990 hit Joey. It's early-90s and therefore in perfect nostalgia-territory for Joey's key demographic (i.e. anyone who watched Friends before they became wrinkled fat-bags). It's not too late to correct this oversight, NBC. You have my number.

From a forthcoming DVD cover:

Andrew had a good idea with "Just Siegfried!"

Kimberly mentioned to me today that Kelly Ripa might be leaving her talk show, which leads us to the only obvious solution: Live with Regis and Siegfried.

Let's make some calls on this, people.

Two recent events led me to this blog. The first is that, much to James' delight, we recently had the Hallmark channel added to our cable lineup. This channel offers a steady diet of shows like M*A*S*H, Perry Mason, Matlock, and of course period family dramas like The Waltons. The second event is that James and I watched a French & Saunders spoof of the show Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, which I thought was hilarious despite never having seen an episode. The Hallmark channel shows Dr. Quinn every weekday, so I decided to check it out, hoping it would make the French & Saunders thing even funnier. The episode I caught was about a faith healer who makes people believe they don't need the real doctor. I thought, "This sure was a lot better when it was called Little House on the Prairie."

I've seen every episode of Little House so often that I can identify each episode within 30 seconds. I also have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of The Waltons, which James often pretends to confuse with Little House just to piss me off. It pains me to admit this, but he has a point. I thought about these two shows, and did some research on Dr. Quinn and Bonanza, and it seems all the writers were working from identical lists entitled, "Things That We're Pretty Sure Happened to People in the Olden Days." So here are the fruits of my labor, a list of episodes that every period family drama must have. Enjoy.

Hey, check this out! If you look and sing like a member of the Partridge Family, you can try out for VH1's new reality show. So in other words, white folks only, please.

I'm not saying it's a travesty or anything, I just think it's funny. It seems like reality shows tend to have a racist undercurrent. In the first episode of Joe Schmo 2, an otherwise-inferior sequel that spoofs Bachelor/Bachelorette type shows, all non-white contestants are immediately eliminated by the bachelor and bachelorette. SpikeTV knows what it's talking about; on those kinds of shows, blacks never even seem to be semi-finalists, let alone winners.

Joe Millionaire? Twice white, twice picks white girls. The Bachelor and his female counterpart? Over the course of seven seasons, they've always been white, and always picked white mates. Average Joe and Average Joe Hawaii? The white women twice weed out the fat black guys before the fat white guys (and then end up dumping the fatties altogether in favor of better-looking guys, but that's a whole other issue).

So, white people are just attracted to other white people, right? Well, maybe -- but on the other hand, we know reality TV is largely fixed. Evan, the first Joe Millionaire, claimed that the show's producers convinced him to pick Zora to win, for example. And non-whites don't fare too well in non-relationship reality shows, either.

Survivor, the one that started it all, has the best track record: one out of the eight survivors has been black. (In the more recent All-Stars series, two out of the 18 contestants were non-white, and neither made it to the finals.)

In four seasons, The Amazing Race has never had a winning non-white team (blacks are so lazy!). Don't expect their fifth season to be much different, as only one of the eleven teams is black.

Big Brother? White, white, white, white. Big Brother 5 has a 1:13 chance of being black. Good luck, Marvin the Mortician from Conway, SC. It ain't gonna happen.

I know what you're thinking: American Idol. Three seasons, two black winners. Well, ya got me. But if that show didn't have phone-in voting, things would be different. Believe me, the producers are not happy with the results. They'd love to make another From Justin To Kelly, but a romantic comedy about an interracial same-sex couple is just too...too...what's the phrase I'm looking for? Worth seeing?

The following joke is my gift to you, The Reader. Copy it, paste it into an email, and claim that you made it up yourself. And now...the joke.

In "a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists," the second-hardest-to-translate word is the Yiddish "shlimazl", which means, literally, "Hasenpfeffer Incorporated."

Come on, that was hilarious. You humorless bastards.

Leave it to MTV to screw up Clone High. The hilarious cartoon featuring clones of famous historical figures at a special high school was unjustly booted from the network when some very humorless people apparently complained about the satirical treatment of Mahatma Gandhi's clone as a fun-loving party animal.

The rest of the main characters were similarly portrayed in terms of high school TV show stereotypes. Abe Lincoln is our awkward, clueless hero; Joan of Arc is a Goth girl; JFK is a womanizing jock; Cleopatra is stuck-up and opportunistic. The evil Principal Scudworth lords over Clone High with the help of his robotic butler/assistant, Mr. Bultertron, who suspiciously looks a lot like Mr. Belvedere and calls everyone "Wesley."

Only about half of the 13 episodes aired in the U.S., as no other network ever picked up the fledgling show, which certainly deserved a wider audience. Hopefully it will make it to DVD one day (heck, they're releasing Punky Brewster on DVD, they should certainly release this).

In the meantime, here are my five favorite moments from Clone High.

Tonight I watched the premiere of what can only be the very worst reality TV show I have ever seen, The Casino. There are three major reasons why this show is awful. In ascending order of severity, those reasons are:

1. Like Las Vegas, a terrible show with a dishonestly good pilot episode, The Casino is a thinly disguised attempt to shove travel brochures in your face. You may as well be watching Travel Channel's Top 10 Vegas Resort Swimming Pools. (Mandalay Bay is #1 thanks to its wave machine.) These shows would be vastly more entertaining if they focused on the dark side of Mob-Free Vegas: disaffected employees, obnoxious tourists, and the general misanthropy that everyone who lives and works in Vegas seems to feel.

2. The Casino suffers from The Jury Syndrome. (Side note: If these show titles get any blander, Google will be of no use. Next up on ABC: 'The And') The Jury Syndrome occurs when a show tries to copy the formula made popular by The Fugitive, in which an engaging main character interacts with a rotating supporting cast; but then that show forgets it needs an engaging main character. The casino owners in this show are so "Look-At-Me-I-Watched-Swingers" obnoxious, that when they say the word "baby," it is like nails on the chalkboard of my soul.

3. OK, Mark Burnett. I know some scenes from Survivor are staged. I assume the same is true of The Apprentice, and I'm sure that The Restaurant is almost entirely fabricated. But I have never seen as poor an attempt as The Casino to convince me that it is, as its website promises, "unscripted." I guess if by "unscripted" you mean "improv," then okay. But this is ridiculous.

You would think that if they're going to perpetrate a reality show, they'd at least make its conflicts enticing, right? Wrong. Here's an example conflict: the new lounge singer is asked to step aside so that a Nevada polician can butcher a song. First of all, this is such a stupid little crisis, that this guy has to stand off stage for five minutes while a wheel gets greased, and he makes it seem like a deal-breaker. But forget about that, because the whole thing is entirely fake; the scene in which the lounge singer is confronted by the entertainment director looks like a botched re-enactment, complete with slow reaction times and poor acting.

Oh, yeah, it gets worse. Consider the following subplot: A 'professional gambler' arrives in Vegas and decides to go to The Casino. Somehow, the show's cameras knew he was coming and followed him from the airport; and, even though he has television cameras following him, he almost slips under the receptionist's radar.

Now, this supposed card-counter -- who the casino knows about but mysteriously doesn't ask not to play blackjack -- makes it clear that he is looking for chicks. The camera inexplicably focuses on a woman in a hat and sunglasses, playing blackjack with some loser. We see about a half-minute of this footage, when suddenly Mr. Card Counter sidles up and talks her into going to his suite. In response to an improbably direct question from the dealer ("Did you notice that your girlfriend just left with that guy, and she isn't coming back?"), the loser claims that Ms. Hat was actually a guy. Cut to the suite, where Mr. Card Counter and Ms. Hat are lightly making out or something, and Mr. Card Counter twice remarks that Ms. Hat has a sexy, deep voice.

Say it ain't so, Mark Burnett. One would think that a man of your considerable resources and reality-TV resum? could put together something a little bit less obviously fake. What were you thinking? O, how I long for the days of Joe Schmo.

An L.A. man, Juan Catalan, who was accused of murder, insisted he was at a Dodgers game 20 miles away when the crime happened. Despite being able to show his ticket stub from the game, police insisted that witnesses placed him at the scene of the murder. Catalan's lawyer combed through video footage of Dodger Stadium, but was unable to make out his client in any of the tapes.

Suddenly, a sitcom came to his rescue.

Melnik later learned that HBO had been at the stadium the night of the killing to tape an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," a self-deprecating comedy starring "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David. The lawyer found what he was looking for in footage that had not made the final cut.

"I got to one of the scenes, and there is my client sitting in a corner of the frame eating a hot dog with his daughter," Melnik said. "I nearly jumped out of my chair and said, 'There he is!"'

Television: it saves lives.

(How many of our lawyer friends would kill for a case that was actually interesting and required some detective work? This one could have come out of the movies. It definitely beats re-re-insurance, or combing through 20,000 company e-mails.)

First of all, I'm back, and yes, it was awesome. Thanks.

Now, on to the blogging.

Why is it that when the U.S. military holds suspects' relatives hostage as bargaining chips I see it as another instance of abuse, whereas I cheer every time Jack Bauer does it on 24?

Uh-oh. It's another one of Andrew's posts about 24. Looks like everyone who still insists on not watching every Tuesday in a quiet, dark room with unplugged phones will once again be bored.

Due to scenes of extreme awesomeness, viewer discretion of the following weblog is advised.

For those of you who missed last night's 24, I pray for your doomed souls. But also I shall give you a synopsis of the Most Awesome Scene in last night's episode, which may have also been the best scene of the season that didn't involve Nina.

Check out the least useful DVD review ever, of the new box set for '80s cartoon-slash-marketing-opportunity Jem and the Holograms:

Each disc features a "play video" function that will allow you to watch all of the videos from the episodes on that disc.

That's adorable.

Inexplicably, I own the five-part pilot of Jem on tape. It is really, really hard to watch. The songs are awful, and a lot of the animation is simply repeated during the music video segments. At least it's kinda funny when the members of bad-girl band The Misfits make their appearance by riding their motorcycles out of a record executive's office closet.

Now that's impressive.

An Oprah Winfrey Show featuring graphic sexual talk angered many American viewers. Some of them sent complaints to the FCC. The Smoking Gun... is there, with a random sampling.

(Not as utterly hilarious as the letters sent to the FCC after the Super Bowl, but definitely in the same ballpark.)

...is a scary thing. Here's the Keeper's Court, where people put in a "claim" on something from Passions. It can be a thing ("Maggie is the Keeper of Timmy's Martimmies"), or feelings ("Anette is the Keeper of Ivy's Obsession For Sam"), or whatever ("Theresa is the Keeper of Hank's Cuteness").

Have fun staring into the abyss!

I realize that the furdell.com target audience is probably not full of avid soap opera watchers, but I get so much joy out of watching Passions that I feel the need to share it with all of you. So here are some reasons why it?s worth watching, despite (because of?) the bad writing, worse acting, and low-even-for-a-soap production value.

1. With a couple of exceptions, almost everyone on this show is: a) evil in a way that makes George W. Bush look like he actually is compassionate; b) completely batshit crazy; and/or c) blessed with magical powers.

2. Apparently, these magical powers include the ability to freeze your cousin in an enormous block of ice, which by the way makes blood gush from your head, hide her away in a cave, and produce from thin air an evil clone of said cousin, all for the purposes of getting the cousin?s boyfriend for yourself.

3. There used to be a talking doll named Timmy. He would be in doll form whenever anyone except the witch who made him (named Tabitha, of course) was around, and then he would come to life a la Mannequin and make his special drink, ?Martimmies.? Unfortunately, the actor who played him passed away recently, which isn?t at all funny. What is funny, however, is that the doll made a Christmas wish to the blue fairy that he would become a real boy. And he did. Become a real boy. It was awesome.

4. Death periodically comes by to bargain with people to save themselves, their babies, their lovers, whatever. He?s blue. Not midnight blue, smurf blue.

5. There?s also a chimp. Her name?s Precious, and she?s a geriatric nurse. That?s right, the monkey is a nurse.

If you?re intrigued by all this, and how could you not be (there?s Death! he?s blue! he makes flirty small talk with Tabitha!), look forward later to a recounting of my favorite Passions moments! Be excited, most of them demonstrate true evil genius.

Here's a 15MB video clip of a local newswoman who, while playfully cheating at a grape-stomping contest...well, I don't want to give it away. Suffice it to say you will feel this woman's pain when you hear her speak in tongues.

So apparently the "president" thought what he had to say was SO DAMNED IMPORTANT that he needed to preempt a new episode of 24. FOX, being as it is an organization bent on my destruction, decided to reschedule 24...for the same timeslot as Alias on another network.

If you're anything like me (and you should be), you've already stabbed yourself in frustration. Stop stabbing, friend; I have created, free of charge, an artist's rendition of exactly what was going to happen in that episode. Sure, it's not the same as the real thing -- but it's shorter. You gotta give me that.

I'm glad the old Wonder Woman TV series starring Lynda Carter is coming to DVD, but I'm also disappointed that it's the relatively boring first season. Here, I'll summarize the entire first season for you:

- Wonder Woman the action figure flies an invisible plastic plane.
- Wonder Woman battles a person in a Nazi gorilla suit.
- Boring episode set in Mexico.
- Boring episode set in Texas.
- Ted Striker from Airplane! makes googly eyes at Debra Winger.
- Dick Van Patten hosts a beauty pageant, and basically spends the entire fucking episode looking at the contestants' cleavage. (Can't wait to see the deleted scenes from that one.)

And that's pretty much it. I probably just saved you $35.

You owe me $35.

But. I will. Totally get the second season. That's when the series shifts from WWII to present-day 1977. You will believe a Lite Brite can talk.

Nay... you must believe.