(S05E15) When I used to teach high school English, one of my biggest pet peeves was reading a paper from a student who was obviously stretching two pages of ideas into the required four pages of the assignment. I actually preferred it when students came up short in page count instead of insulting my intelligence with superfluous words, plodding pacing, and ridiculous font and margin tweaks.
Watching the two hour -- that's right two hour -- finale ofLast Comic Standing, I couldn't help but be reminded of my teaching days. Tonight's finale was like an essay written using Comic Sans 16 point font...
Welcome to Subtle Subtitles. For those of you who are uninitiated to the purpose of this feature, we're asking you to come up with your funniest quote or description for what's going on in the screen grab we choose for the week. Winners are announced in the following Friday's contest.
1st place to Chris Wyant: 2nd place to Brent McKee: "I don't care what you say Henry, these things do not make us all look like professional poker players." 3rd place to Brooke Thorington: "Brush fires were ignored as thousands stood in line for Corey Hart's 'I Wear My Sunglasses at Night' comeback tour."
This week, a scene from this week's episode of Rescue Me ...
Our corporate siblings at AOL have a fun interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus posted to their "TV Tattler" site. My colleague Geoff Bennett asks her some questions about her Emmy win for Old Christine -- she took the statuette to work the next day and placed it on the craft services table -- casting Blair Underwood as a love interest, and what it's like to play a working mother while being one herself.
But the question that got my attention was when Geoff asked Julia about her reaction to the Michael Richards incident. While she wouldn't condemn her friend and Seinfeld co-star, Julia was pretty truthful about how she felt at the time it happened: "At first I thought someone was kidding. I couldn't believe it. The whole thing was just so profoundly sad and heart-breaking. I was just really devastated by it."
Last night on American Idol, we all said "Bye Bye Curly." Did curly-haired Chris Sligh deserve to go home so soon? Or was there some vast conspiracy to oust Sligh for his on-air shout-out last week to Vote for the Worst?
At the end of last week's performance, Chris reportedly said, "Hi Dave." David Della Terza is the man behind VFTW, a snarky website he founded in 2004. Dave was thrilled by Sligh's on-air acknowledgement. But the Idol producers were not amused. According to Dave, the producers edited out the "Hi Dave" when the show aired in England.
Well, Yippee. Just when I thought we were half way through the season, and my job would be getting slightly easier (Yay for half hour results shows!) the Idol producers decide to see just how much they can push their baby, by adding even more one-hour shows to the schedule.
The producers claim that they are making the switch to one-hour results shows a month earlier than expected because there hasn't even been enough time for the booted singers to perform their farewell songs on air during the crammed 30-minute editions.
Welcome to Subtle Subtitles. For those of you who are uninitiated to the purpose of this feature, we're asking you to come up with your funniest quote or description for what's going on in the screen grab we choose for the week. Winners are announced in the following Friday's contest.
3rd place to Chris W: "Ya know.... It's really hard to kill you when you won't stop laughing." 2nd place to Bus: "As the zombies moved in for the kill thinking only of their desire to feast on human flesh, Randy remembered his training. Zombies can't see you if you're happy. But, as they devoured his flesh, Randy remembered that rule only applied to Martha Stewart." 1st place to Toby OB: "In a desperate bid to raise money for the beleaguered network, NBC hired undocumented workers to get enough 'Tickle Me Randy' life-size party dolls ready in time for Christmas."
This week, some scenes from Christmas episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Everybody Hates Chris and, of course, Letterman. Choose one or do all three! Two more after the jump.
When people who have met John Stamos say that he's a nice, charming, down-to-earth guy, they're not kidding. He's so damned charming that twice during my phone conversation with him last week, I told him that since he already had my number, he should call me to talk about TV off-the record. (Hey, the guy said to me both times that he enjoyed the conversation. And we talked about New Jersey -- he did a movie in Freehold once. So I caved.)
It's that likability that has carried his career for the last twenty-five years, from General Hospital to Full House to ER. It's also what he hopes will draw people to Wedding Wars, an A&E original movie that will air Monday at 9 PM. In the comedy, he plays Shel, a gay party planner who sparks a national pro-gay-marriage movement when he goes on strike while planning the wedding of his brother Ben (Eric Dana).,The strike happens after he finds out Ben wrote an anti-gay marriage speech for his boss, the governor of Maine.
I spoke to Stamos about the movie for The New York Post, but while I had him on the phone, I couldn't resist asking him about ER, his Uncle Jesse mullet, and his friendship with Howard Stern. The interview is after the jump.
Oh, I almost didn't even write this. Should I just shut off the comments now?
Live with Regis & Kelly cohost Kelly Ripa went on a little rant (she likes little rants, it seems) on this morning's show about singer Clay Aiken. The American Idol runner-up cohosted the show with Ripa last Friday, and Ripa didn't like the way he treated her. Not only did Aiken put his hand over her month during one of the interviews, Ripa said that he was hostile towards her. Howard Stern even called her after the show to talk about it. Maybe next time they should just get Reuben Studdard or Taylor Hicks? What about Justin Guarini? I think he's free.
This isn't the first bad behavior by Aiken that has been reported. A couple of years ago it was reported that he treated people badly at a charity event at a school, something to do with his attitude, the way he acted towards both teachers and students, even the food that he got for the event.
If you listen to Howard Stern's Sirius radio show -- or was a fan of his terrestrial radio show -- and you have digital cable, you may have been skittish to pay the $9.99-13.99 per month that it costs to have access to the show's on-demand TV channel, Howard TV. The folks at on-demand provider in DEMAND know this, which is why they're offering "free" access to the channel on the weekend of November 3-5. Well, actually, it's a "penny preview" weekend, the nominal charge implemented to keep minors from accessing the channel (good luck with that, cable providers!).
For that penny, though, you'll be able to see Howard's new and raunchy Sirius shows -- think Sybian, lots of swearing, and the genitals of show flunkies Richard Christie and Sal Governale -- along with classic bits from the terrestrial show that may or may not have made it to the air when E! had the show's TV rights. To introduce the weekend, the in DEMAND folks have been putting out provocative ads, with taglines like the one in the picture above, and fuzzy pictures of lesbians kissing. What did you think the ads were going to show, Crackhead Bob?
The rumors turned out to be true. In a joint press release, attorneys for CBS Radio and Howard Stern have announced that the lawsuit CBS filed against Stern has been settled.
Sirius is going to pay CBS Radio $2 million, and Stern gets back the master tapes from his 20 years of shows.
But am I missing something here? That's a clever way to word it, but what about the actual lawsuit, that Stern was sued because he promoted Sirius while still under contract with CBS Radio? It's nice he gets the master tapes, but it's almost as if they thought of that to deflect the real outcome of the settlement, which remains undisclosed by both sides.
It will be interesting to see what Stern says about this next week (unless he did it this morning, didn't catch the show). If he's even on next week because of the holiday?
You're stuck in Indianapolis on a business
trip and facing the prospect of staring at a hotel TV that has the four networks and the History Channel. Not looking
promising, is it? Well, fear not road warriors, because if the hotel you're in has On Command, you'll soon be able to
drift off to sleep to Beetlejuice, Jeff the Drunk, or -- best of all -- Carmen Electra riding the Sybian.
Yes, that's right, folks, Howard TV is coming to a hotel room near you! On
Command, who runs the in-room pay-per-view services for most hotel chains, and iN DEMAND, who provides on-demand
programming for cable companies, have signed an
agreement to offer content from Howard Stern's channel in rooms across the country. So, if you're in the right
frame of mind, you'll be able to find entertainment for the night that will be funny and maybe a bit... uh... bawdy,
but won't be embarrasing to see on the bill you get the next morning.
Oh, and if the last sentence of my
first paragraph read "blahblahblahblahblah Carmen Electra blahblahblahblah" to you, well... there's always
Modern Marvels...
It's about freaking time! Say what you want about the quality of television, but the American
Idol auditions are the greatest two weeks known to man. I sincerely think that this is what Ben Franklin had
in mind when he invented electricity. And Chicago was given the honor of being this season's first city to be
ripped to shreds by Simon. What surprises me about Chicago isn't its lack of talent (yes, I know they air the worst
auditions), but that I spotted at least two Mike Ditka impersonators. Mike Ditka? It's been 20 years since the Bears
won the Super Bowl. It's time to let 1985 go, Chicago.
Howard Stern's nightly show on E! is coming to an end. He will tape his last show on July 1, and it will air the week of July 4. The network could possibly run reruns after that, but he's not sure yet.
Stern is moving to Sirius satellite radio in January, and the E! show isn't part of the deal. No word on whether he will make another deal with another network to run the show. According to MarksFriggin.com, Stern said this morning that he had a great story to tell about E! and the show, but he can't talk about it yet.
(S05E15) When I used to teach high school English, one of my biggest pet peeves was reading a paper from a student who was obviously stretching two pages of ideas into the required four pages of the assignment. I actually preferred it when students came up short in page count instead of insulting my intelligence with superfluous words, plodding pacing, and ridiculous font and margin tweaks.
Our corporate siblings at AOL have 
Last night on American Idol, we all said "Bye Bye Curly." Did curly-haired Chris Sligh deserve to go home so soon? Or was there some 
Well, Yippee. Just when I thought we were half way through the season, and my job would be getting slightly easier (Yay for half hour results shows!) the Idol producers decide to see just how much they can push their baby, 
When people who have met John Stamos say that he's a nice, charming, down-to-earth guy, they're not kidding. He's so damned charming that twice during my phone conversation with him last week, I told him that since he already had my number, he should call me to talk about TV off-the record. (Hey, the guy said to me both times that he enjoyed the conversation. And we talked about New Jersey -- he did a movie in Freehold once. So I caved.)
Oh, I almost didn't even write this. Should I just shut off the comments now?
If you listen to Howard Stern's Sirius radio show -- or was a fan of his terrestrial radio show -- and you have digital cable, you may have been skittish to pay the $9.99-13.99 per month that it costs to have access to the show's on-demand TV channel, 
The rumors turned out to be true. In a joint press release, attorneys for CBS Radio and Howard Stern have announced that the lawsuit CBS filed against Stern 
You're stuck in Indianapolis on a business
trip and facing the prospect of staring at a hotel TV that has the four networks and the History Channel. Not looking
promising, is it? Well, fear not road warriors, because if the hotel you're in has On Command, you'll soon be able to
drift off to sleep to Beetlejuice, Jeff the Drunk, or -- best of all -- Carmen Electra riding the Sybian.
It's about freaking time! Say what you want about the quality of television, but the American
Idol auditions are the greatest two weeks known to man. I sincerely think that this is what Ben Franklin had
in mind when he invented electricity. And Chicago was given the honor of being this season's first city to be
ripped to shreds by Simon. What surprises me about Chicago isn't its lack of talent (yes, I know they air the worst
auditions), but that I spotted at least two Mike Ditka impersonators. Mike Ditka? It's been 20 years since the Bears
won the Super Bowl. It's time to let 1985 go, Chicago. 
Howard Stern's nightly show on E! is coming to an end. He will tape his last show on July 1, and it will air the week of July 4. The network could possibly run reruns after that, but he's not sure yet. 
Giveaway Monday: That '70s Show The Complete Series Stash box set
Giveaway Monday: Back to You season one DVD
Six shows that I am watching pretty regularly this season
