TVSquad

(S03E01) "All you need to be a coal miner is a weak mind and a strong back." James

One thing I love about 30 Days is that in every episode there is a wealth of information. In the first five minutes of this season's premiere episode, I more than doubled the amount of information I knew about the coal mining industry. More importantly, I was ready to learn even more.

This season's premiere, like the past premieres, stars Spurlock himself as the episode's guinea pig and just like the other times he has put himself in harm's way, Spurlock's wife Alex expresses her concerns. What I found funny is that her knowledge of the perils of your average coal miner was pretty equal to my own. It really doesn't go too far past cave-ins and black lung.

This past weekend (May 24) marked the fourth anniversary of the death of comic and writer Drake Sather. No one knows what goes on in the mind of someone who takes their own life, but this guy was brilliant and quite funny. Besides his great standup work, he was a writer and producer on NewsRadio (he also played Jimmy James' attorney in two different episodes of the show), and also wrote for such shows as Saturday Night Live, Ed, The Dennis Miller Show, Sammy,The Naked Truth, Empty Nest, and The Larry Sanders Show. He also wrote the movie Zoolander.

After the jump is a standup routine from Sather, filmed at the San Diego Improv in 1992 (split up into three different videos). It's actually rather amazing that a lot of funny bits and lines that I've used over the past 10 years came from Sather.

So sad, but his work does live on.