Adult Swim recently posted another preview of sorts of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the new sketch comedy show from Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, creators and stars of Tom Goes to the Mayor. The new series debuts February 11, and I gotta say, that day can't get here fast enough. As I've said here about fifty zillion times, I'm a big Tim and Eric fan. I wish I could call the calendar people and tell them to make the days go faster. I wish the calendar people wouldn't tell me to stop calling and making stupid requests. If you were to call me on the phone I would yak your ear off for hours about how much I love Tim and Eric's dry, surreal brand of comedy. Did I say dry cereal brand of comedy? No, I said dry surreal. If you read it aloud, it does kind of sound like "dry cereal," though. In conclusion, watch the clip.
sketches-related stories
Another preview of Tim and Eric's new show
Clips from Tim and Eric's new show
Tim and Eric care deeply about me so they sent me an e-mail to tell me about some new promos for their upcoming live-action Adult Swim series, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which debuts in February. Actually, I just happen to be on their mailing list, but I like to imagine their e-mails are just for me. I print them out, decorate them with heart stickers and glitter and think happy thoughts about what Tim and Eric are doing in Los Angeles. Then I start to worry that maybe they've forgotten about me and are seeing other people. I start to worry more and more until I've convinced myself they're cheating on me and then I go to the bar and take home some lonely middle-aged divorcee for a drunken night of sad love making and spend the next week wondering how to deal with the guilt. It's just so hard being away from Tim and Eric, you know?
Anyway, funny clips here and here and here. Some of you may not think they're all that funny, but the important thing is that I find them funny.
Artists interpret various cartoon characters
BlueSky Studios, which is owned by Fox Film Filmed Entertainment and helped bring the movie Ice Age to the screen, has a weekly challenge for their staff in which artists, animators and others are given a subject and asked to draw their interpretation of it. The work is displayed on the BlueSky Studios Challenge blog, and it's worth checking out. Some of the subjects are things like movie robots or dinosaurs, but there are also a bunch of great drawings of television characters, such as the Muppets ( I love this humanized version of Bert) and SpongeBob SquarePants. Also take a look at the '80s cartoon characters challenge, which includes this film noir version of Inspector Gadget. I love seeing these characters completely re-imagined the same way I love it when a band covers another band's song and completely changes it, making it their own. I'd love to see whole animated programs re-imagined this way, which wouldn't be anything new since The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Mighty Mouse, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Beany and Cecil were all at one time brought back by different artists with a whole new design. Still, I'd love to see more of that.
[via Cartoon Brew]
The State to be released on DVD
Thomas Lennon and Ben Garrant from Reno 911! attended Comic-Con to promote their upcoming film, Balls of Fury (Christopher Walken and ping-pong? Hell yeah). There, they announced that The State, the MTV sketch program that showcased the talents of Lennon, Garrant, and folks like Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, will be arriving on iTunes or DVD sometime this year. The only issue that kept the program from hitting DVD in the first place was, of course, the music clearances. MTV has put up money to re-score it. Sigh. I have a feeling fans are going to be complaining.Jay Leno's monologue now on iTunes
If you can't stay up late enough to watch Leno (and you actually like him), iTunes is your new best friend. Starting today, NBC will offer clips from the previous night's episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. That means Jay's full monologue and comedy sketches (like JayWalking and Headlines) will be available for $1.99. You can also get a season pass-type-deal and get 20 of Leno's monologues a month for $9.99.When SNL was funny... now on iTunes
Remember the good ol' days of Saturday Night Live? You can. On your video iPod, or just on your computer.
This week, iTunes released all sorts of video clips that span the last 30 years of Saturday Night Live. You
can purchase individual sketches, including The Hanukkah Song, Wake Up and Smile, Schwetty
Balls, Motivational Speaker, plus a few oldies-but-goodies like Word Association with Chevy
Chase and Richard Pryor, and King Tut with Steve Martin. There are also all sorts of commercial parodies such
as Colon Blow, Oops I Crapped My Pants, and Mom Jeans (what? no Clear Gravy?). You
really have to love those sketches, though, because they each cost $2. The collection is by no means complete, but it
looks as though SNL is just getting started. For instance, I didn't see any of the Wayne's World or Church
Lady sketches available for individual purchase. However, those are included on the "Best Of"
compilations that are also available for download, for $10.SNL schedules good hosts, music
Saturday Night Live has lined up some pretty impressive talent to host the show this month. I'm sure the first
host, Scarlett Johansson, will boost the ratings. Her appearance, on January 14th, coincides with the release of the
first of two Woody Allen movies that she stars in. She seems like a gutsy gal, so hopefully the SNL writers
can come up with some bold sketches for her. The band Death Cab for Cutie is scheduled to perform the same
night. And on January 21 is Peter Sarsgaard, who has had supporting roles in Jarhead, Flightplan,
Kinsey, The Skeleton Key, and was terrific in Zach Braff's Garden State. I can't
find a whole lot about Peter's background on the internet-- I was wondering whether he had any experience in improv or
stand-up comedy, but I can't tell. And, I'm not sure what his appearance coincides with since IMDB lists his last flick as Jarhead, which doesn't come out on
DVD until March. The musical guest pairing up with Sarsgaard is The Strokes. Wouldn't it be nice if these
actors could get some good sketches on SNL?Fred Armisen's iTunes playlist
Fred Armisen, one of few funny things about Saturday Night Live these days, has a celebrity
playlist on iTunes that is about unusual as Fred seems to be. The strangest track has to be "====" by Oval
(pronounced o-VAL, according to Fred). I'm not even sure that it's music. It sounds like a sound check with an
over-modulated microphone. Second most unusual track: Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk. It sounds like a video
game. Fred says he saw the band recently and "For their encore, they didn't appear on stage. It was robots of
them. What is better than that? Seriously, what?" Okay, I have to agree that would be pretty awesome. The rest of
the list includes familiar groups like Wilco, Talking Heads, Gorillaz, The Clash and Sleater-Kinney. And, of course, he
included a Prince song. After all, Fred does a kick-ass impression of the guy.
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