First TMQ of the new season. What can we say: we’ve got high hopes.
After the jump, oops, there goes another rubber tree plant…
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
TMQ watch: September 11, 2012.
Tuesday, September 11th, 2012TMQ Watch: August 28, 2012.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2012We are having trouble coming up with a clever introduction for this week’s TMQ, so let’s just jump right into the NFC preview, shall we?
Obit watch and other random notes for August 21, 2012.
Tuesday, August 21st, 2012Phyllis Diller. (NYT. LAT. A/V Club.)
William Windom: A/V Club.
I visited Dalton some time ago, long before the recession, back when it was still a boom town. It is a very nice little city, helped by the fact that it is located in close proximity to some beautiful state parks, forests, and recreational areas. So I’m hoping things work out for Dalton’s residents and the carpet business picks up again. Or the Volkswagen business. Or something else…
Random notes: August 15, 2012.
Wednesday, August 15th, 2012I think today is going to be a day for food writing. I have a longer post planned about last night. But in the meantime, here are some random things for you to chew on.
The NYT has made several discoveries:
- There are places outside of Manhattan, and even outside of New York state, with exotic names like “Iowa”.
- People in those exotic places sometimes gather during the summer, in what are called “state fairs”.
- At those “state fairs” you can purchase food items on sticks.
(Quote from the slide show attached to the article: “The fascination with food on a stick is difficult to explain, but it usually means a 30 to 40 percent increase in sales.”)
(I would really like to know how well the vegetarian corn dogs are selling.)
Speaking of food, today would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday. Expect festivities around the web, starting with the NYT. I kind of like Julia Moskin’s “The Gifts She Gave” and Jacques Pépin’s “Memories of a Friend, Sidekick and Foil“.
(I note, with some bitterness, that our local PBS station is showing something called “Julia Childs [sic] Memories: Bon Appetit” tonight. I say “some bitterness” because a) I expect this to not show any complete recipe preparations, from start to finish, and b) our local PBS station is in the middle of a pledge drive, so I expect constant “give us money” interruptions.)
Something I noticed over the weekend: the French Quarter Grille has opened a second location. In Round Rock. Specifically, in the old Gumbo’s location. Hmmmmm.
Obit watch for the record: Ron Palillo, “Horshack” on “Welcome Back, Kotter”.
The LAT has apparently discovered that used car dealers are…used car dealers.
Why, is this not Hell? And are we not already in it?
Tuesday, August 14th, 2012This is the single most amusing review of a NYC restaurant I’ve read since Frank Bruni reviewed Ninja for the NYT.
And a side reference on the EaterNY site led me to “Soul Daddy”. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with “Soul Daddy”: very few people were. The chain (of three restaurants: NY, LA, and the Mall of America) was the “prize” on an NBC reality series called America’s Next Great Restaurant, which nobody watched.
“Nobody” includes me, but I did follow the recaps on the A/V Club website. I hadn’t thought about “Soul Daddy” for the better part of a year, and wasn’t surprised to find out the restaurants were defunct. It did surprise me, though, that they only lasted just about two months. (Apparently, the NY and LA locations closed after six weeks so they could concentrate on the Mall of America location; that closed two weeks later.) LA Weekly has a good summary of why it failed. (Important safety tip: if you’re going to start a restaurant, it helps to have food that doesn’t suck.)
What I wonder is: how do you throw $3 million down the drain in two months? Were the locations that expensive? (Maybe.) Were the construction costs that high? (I can see that, especially if they were trying to keep the actual concept secret until the day after the last episode: that probably took a lot of bribes payments to the construction crew.) Or did they not actually burn through $3 million, and the investors just said “F— you” and pulled the plug after NBC cancelled the show?
More things I did not know.
Thursday, August 9th, 2012Chain of causality: one of my cow-orkers was bitten by a dog (not seriously) which led to a discussion of The People’s Court (which, when I was watching it, seemed to be dominated by dog and dog-bite cases), which led to a discussion of Judge Marilyn Milan, which in turn led us inevitably to Wapner and Rusty the bailiff.
From the Wikipedia entry on The People’s Court:
Patty Hearst, Chessman, Manson and the Onion Field? Rusty must have had some great stories to tell.
Obit watch: August 6, 2012.
Monday, August 6th, 2012This was on FARK’s entertainment tab over the weekend, but I wanted to make note of it here as well.
De’Andre McCullough, one of the pivotal characters in David Simon and Ed Burns’ book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
I’m not sure what else I can say about this, other than to recommend the Simon and Burns book if you haven’t read it. There’s a surprisingly decent discussion going on in the FARK comments thread.
And for what it may be worth, here’s De’Andre as Lamar in “The Wire”:
Edited to add: I couldn’t pull this up before, but David Simon has a nice post on his blog.
Obit watch: July 25, 2012
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012Sherman Hemsley.
This is for Lawrence and Andrew:
Hemsley, a former jazz keyboardist, was also a huge fan of prog-rock bands like Yes, Gong, and Nektar…and he even cut his own record with Yes frontman Jon Anderson in 1999 that, sadly, never saw release.
Morning obit roundup.
Wednesday, July 4th, 2012Andy Griffith: NYT. NYT appreciation. LAT. LAT appreciation by Ron Howard. Another one from the LAT. Onion A/V Club.
Obit watch: special Heidi Hedi Ho edition.
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012Julian Goodman, former NBC executive.
I haven’t been able to determine for sure if he was responsible for canceling “Star Trek” (which would be enough to make him one of nature’s noblemen in my book), but:
Nelson.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012Keenan Alex stole a Cadillac Escalade.
Mr. Alex did not know that the car was actually a “bait car” being used by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to bust car thieves.
Mr. Alex also did not know that the “bait car” sting was being filmed by TruTV for their series “Bait Car”.
Mr. Alex was stopped and arrested by LACSD.
Ooopsie. The case against Mr. Alex has been dropped. Detective Shapiro is being investigated by LACSD.
Obit watch: May 6, 2012.
Sunday, May 6th, 2012TMQ watch: April 24, 2012.
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012TMQ is back temporarily, for the first of his two yearly draft columns. We were actually kind of wondering about this; ESPN dropped “Page 2” a couple of weeks ago, and we were unsure if TMQ would stay or go.
Anyway, we are glad to see Easterbrook back, and, after the jump, we will mock his mockery…
Obit watch: April 8, 2012.
Sunday, April 8th, 2012These have been well covered elsewhere, but for the record and since people have emailed me about them:
“I haven’t laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother.”
Friday, March 30th, 2012Current TV fires Keith Olbermann.
Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming the moment his hiring was announced. Oh, wait: Ray Charles could have seen this coming.
But it gets better. Would you like to know who is replacing Keith Olbermann? Why, none other than Eliot “Client Number 9” Spitzer himself!
And if you’d like to read Olbermann’s response, you can find it here.
(And subject line hattip here.)