Entries Tagged 'TV' ↓

I’ll give you one guess why British viewers were so outraged by this provocative anti-texting-while-driving PSA, above.

Drive safely.

Do you have to be old enough to remember Ricardo Montablan’s faux couture, 1976 Cordoba car commercial, right, to find this Chrysler/Star Trek: Wrath of Khan mashup, above, hilarious?

I’m guessing pretentiousness has no expiration date, and the answer is “No.”

My friend MaryKay sent me this riotous clip, above. Apparently, it uses Maya, Poser, or some other animation software to visualize a likely scenario for Tiger Woods’s November 27 car crash—the one that has opened up, not only the right front end of his car but, a window into his clearly troubled marriage.

The bit, produced by 1-Apple news of Taiwan and narrated in traditional Chinese, is mixed with photo stills and police press conference footage, but that’s merely styrofoam peanut padding for the good stuff.

In the videogame-looking sequence, Tiger’s wife, Elin, becomes enraged and strikes Tiger in the face, above, upon learning of his relationship with his alleged mistress, Rachel Uchitel, pictured in the thought balloon inset. The golfer escapes their home and the conflict in his car, but his wife then takes off after him, above, clutching one of his prized golf clubs, striking at the car. Woods, distracted by her pursuit, then runs into a hydrant and a tree.

Of course, this is all still hypothetical, as the couple have not detailed what actually happened, and why, that night. Also, none of this accounts for the latest revelations: That Jarius Lavar Adams, the neighbor who called 911 upon hearing the commotion, rushed out to find the star athlete “unconscious and snoring [my emphasis], in the street on the passenger side of his 2009 Cadillac Escalade.” But it does make fine entertainment out of other people’s ongoing misery.

[via huffingtonpost.com]

Fellow Scrubs-aholics, no doubt, have this duet from season 6 (“My Musical”) on total recall: After admitting a patient who hears everyone’s speech in the form of singing, the cast works out their usual issues, only tunefully.

For Turk (Donald Faison), left, and JD (Zach Braff), right, above, no topic trumps their bromance. (Favorite couplet: “It’s like I married my best friend / But in a totally manly way!”) Hence their “nothing gay about it” paean to the same.

Today, I’m thankful Scrubs, one of my all-time favorite television shows, will be starting its ninth season on Tuesday, December 1. I’m not hopeful for the series, however. I hope I’m wrong.

Part of this nimble, surreal ensemble comedy’s appeal always lay in the way that it drew nuanced, fully-fleshed out characters, then kept them bumping into each other in highly combinatorial ways. (The central cast consisted of l-r, John C. McGinley, Neil Flynn, Sarah Chalke, Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Ken Jenkins and Judy Reyes.)

Though Braff’s character was central, and, thus, certain relationships were core to the series—see above—it’s hard to think of a character that didn’t have a significant storyline with any other one. So those relationships were, as they are in the best comedies, a big part of the show’s appeal.

All that seems to have been decapitated. After numerous false starts, word is that the new season changes the show’s location from a hospital to a medical school; that McGinley, Faison, and Flynn will be the only regulars, as other cast members make occasional appearances; and that a whole “new generation!” of scrubs will be entering the cast, right.

All of which is enough to make you long for earlier, better days, when Braff wasn’t yet making $350,000 an episode, and Scrubs hadn’t yet jumped the shark.

Bobby Van’s Steak House exudes power. This is not only due to its location in the Wall St. area, or because its 28-day, dry-aged filet mignon is $50, but because it’s literally built inside the 107-year-old bank vault of J.P. Morgan & Co. As you can see behind me, in the picture, above, the wine cellar occupies one of the small safes. (In another room, antique deposit boxes cover all four walls.)

It was the perfect place to meet rapper / mogul Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, above right, whose salary in the previous year was estimated by Forbes at $20 million. Ironically, 50’s $75,000-plus-a-day income plots a dramatic fall from the year before, when his $100 million dollar take from the sale of Vitamin Water to Coca-Cola—he owned stock—pushed his annual grab to the astounding sum of $150 mil.

Obviously, Curtis could buy the place. But he was just there talk about Before I Self-Destruct, his new album, as part of BET’s continuing Food For Thought: Conversations With… series. (The first installment, talking to artist / entrepreneur Jay-Z, aired in September, and, like this one, also features Hot 97 NY on-air personality Angie Martinez and sportswriter Stephen A. Smith engaging the artist.)

The 30-minute special airs tonight, Thursday, November 19th, at 7:30 pm, and, yes, it’s true, I did ask him why, in hip-hop circles, he’s not considered the king of New York. Real talk!

Conan O’Brien aired this “Palin on Oprah” bit, above, last night—re-editing bits and pieces of the former Alaska governor / vice-presidential candidate’s Monday appearance from the popular talk show. However, the funniest aspect of it was that, except for her slightly faster speaking tempo, she actually sounds pretty much the way she always does: As though there’s a 3/4 second delay between what comes out of her mouth and when she hears it do so.

My favorite part (and soon to be yours)?: Her shameless gush over her and her husband’s clearly robust sex life. Inspire us all once again, Sarah.

[via Hulu]

It’s great to see Boost Mobile running the best written, best acted, best produced, best commercial of 2009 again, above, after a whole summer off.

An obvious advertising masterpiece from the time you first see it, “Pigs, Unwronged” is delectably dense with details: The lead’s momentary disbelief that he’s being ogled for eating hog; his candid excuse (“I like a nice ham”) and self-serving rationalization for cannibalism (“We’re just enjoying the flavors of a fallen friend.” “True,” burps his dinnermate); the fluid, expressive body language of the animatronic (watch the ears); the perfectly cast, bored urbanity of the voice actor; that dismissive hoof flick which closes the piece.

It all adds up to 30 seconds of twistedness from an alternate universe where pigs talk, go to fine restaurants, and you’re wrong for recklessly eyeballing porkers chomping pork. Boost Mobile not only gets the viewer’s attention, but makes the ad an event, rewarding you for sticking with it. In other words, they win. Though I’m not their market, those swine slay me.

The recession is affecting all of us, for sure. Leave it to reduced baller Slim Thug and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, though, to uncover the ways that rappers are, purportedly, most being affected: With fewer platinum front purchases, dinners at strip clubs, and a diminished quality in “video hos.”

You know how women with babies, or ones who really want them, go absolutely open-mouthed ga-ga anytime they even see a picture of a cute infant?

Know any ladies like that? Well, keep ’em away from Evian’s “Roller Babies” commercial, below. Better yet, just go get a mop, now, to wipe up their covetous drool. (Plus, when you’re done, take a look at the bottled water manufacturer’s brief “making of” doc, below bottom.)

The familiar, sky-blue font is there, but the usual, loud, hyperventilating, all-caps text is not.

Instead, last night on his blog, Kanye West gave the apology that, perhaps, fans and foes had wanted to hear all along.

Comparing himself to Gaylord “Greg” Focker, the luckless character played by Ben Stiller in the 2000 film, Meet the Parents, West admitted that, with his bum rush of the MTV Video Awards on Sunday, he’d “messed up everything.”

That was Taylor’s moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry.

Elegant and terse, where his original, much-derided “apology” was mouthy and glib, the remorseful statement may go a long way toward repairing West’s shattered image, particularly when coupled to his earlier, highly emotional appearance on the debut episode of The Jay Leno Show that same evening.

The same probably isn’t true, however, for the Twitterers who salted the artist with racist invective in the wake of his outburst. Perhaps the best we can hope for, in their case, is to never hear from their ilk again.

Not betting on it.