Unambiguously Hilarious

INSIDE THE IDIOT BOX

April 23, 2006


Loyal Idiot Box Addicts know that I often lament the sad state of Saturday Night Live these days. This season has been a tiny bit better than the past few, highlighted mostly by the introduction of digital short films like “The Chronic(What?)cles of Narnia,” (go to "videos" section here) which starred the unlikely rapping duo of Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg and sped around the Internet over the winter.
But most of this season's skits, which have always been the show’s raison d’etre, have remained unendingly lame, and even the hard-to-mess-up "Weekend Update" segment is frequently marred by the constant giggling of co-anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Memo to the ladies: Just because you laugh at your own jokes doesn’t make them any less lame to the rest of us. Thankfully, Fey’s reign of terror as head writer might be over soon, as she has written a pilot (in a fit of creative genius, she based it on a female head writer at a late-night comedy show) that’s under consideration for NBC’s fall schedule. SNL fans can only hope it gets picked up.
But where was I? Oh, right. I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but this week’s edition of SNL is guaranteed to be funny. And I don’t mean just knee-slapping funny – I’m talking stomach-grabbing, pause-the-tivo-so-you-won’t-miss-the-jokes-while-you-laugh, tears-flowing, flat-out high-larious.That’s because this week, SNL is airing “The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse,” a 90-minute compilation of those animated shorts by Robert Smigel – the twisted genius behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog – that have been the only consistently humorous thing about the show for, oh, the past decade or so.
The show will be “hosted” by animated superheroes Ace and Gary (pictured), the stars of “The Ambiguously Gay Duo,” who have frequently saved the world, or at least the TV Funhouse universe, while cluelessly spouting out sexual double entendres and confusing everyone around them, especially the villains.
Other TV Funhouse recurring shorts you can expect to see include “The X-Presidents,” which features ex-Oval Office dwellers Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton as League of Nation style superheroes; “Fun with Real Audio,” in which Smigel takes bits of audio from actual shows and adds wholly inappropriate, completely hysterical animation; and “The Divertor,” about a superhero whose powers divert the nation’s attention away from real issues and to celebrity gossip.
The satire in the cartoon short skits is far smarter and more biting than anything achieved by the humans who now populate SNL, making this week’s show the first must-see episode since, well, right about the time Will Ferrell jumped ship. Keep a careful eye out for the compilation of holiday spoofs, including my favorite all-time TV Funhouse installment, “The Narrator That Ruined Christmas,” which manages to skillfully lampoon the holiday classic Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the same time it explores and pokes fun at the nation’s post-9/11 angst.
Oh, and here’s a little piece of TV Funhouse trivia to impress your friends at cocktail parties: The voices of Ace and Gary are supplied by Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell, who were writers along with Smigel at the short-lived Dana Carvey Show, where the shorts first aired. Sad, but true: The funniest thing on Saturday Night Live was imported from another show. How the mighty have fallen.
The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse airs Saturday night at 11:30 p.m. on NBC.

MALCOLM 150X: Tonight’s episode of Malcolm in the Middle at 7 p.m. on Fox marks the show’s sesquicentennial airing (that’s 150 for those of you too lazy to get off the couch and google it). If Malcolm were a professional golfer, the show would be known as a grinder – never a superstar, but just good enough to make a living on tour. Face it: You’ve very rarely had anyone say to you, “Yo, did you catch Malcolm last night?” and yet here the show still is, plodding along and having made a star (well, at least a B-lister) out of Frankie Muniz. That’s quite an achievement in and of itself, when you think about it.
Sorry, Frankie. We kid because we love. On tonight’s landmark episode, the gang attends something called “morp,” which is billed as the anti-prom. As to whether this Idiot will be watching it, the answer is “on."
Malcolm in the Middle airs tonight at 7 on Fox.

Monkeys Are Always Funny

http://www.trunkmonkey.com/content/view/54/59/

Bookmark Alert!

Oh.

My.

God.

My catchphrase for the weekend: "Balboa is my son." It should be yours, too.

http://balboabulldog.blogspot.com/

Five-Word Reviews

OK, movies.

I've been slacking off posting my movie reviews, ever since Firewall's utter crap factor stunned me into silence. But I feel I owe it to you to offer some guidance, so I'd like to present a new feature here at MAAF HQ: Five-word movie reviews. While you might think that five little words could never capture the entire essence of a movie, given the sheer load of manure that is the average Hollywood movie these days, you'd be surprised how often they are more than sufficient for the task. When a movie deserves it, I'll post more. But trust me - that won't happen often.

Here then, the past few months of movies in just a few short words:

The Sentinel: Bauer, Plus Suit, Minus Excitement.
Friends With Money: Surprisingly, Aniston does not stink.
Thank You For Smoking: D.C Lobbyists = Worse Than Cigarettes
The Benchwarmers: Funnier: Schneider, Spade or Anthrax?
Ice Age: The Meltdown: Humor, Originality Apparently Extinct
Inside Man: Spike's Best Joint In Years
V For Vendetta: Weee! Homicide Bombing is Fun!
Failure To Launch: Bradshaw Nude Scene. Be Afraid.
Running Scared: Two Hours You'll Want Back
Eight Below: Dogs Rescue Paul Walker's Career

Overheard

No, you're right. Yep, I get it. It's just that it looked to me as if the bear was not angry with me at that point. So I thought I could give it one more good punch in the ribs, just because, you know. In retrospect, I realize, it was an unfortunate decision, but at the time - oh, wait.

Bob Saget is "Full" of (expletive deleted)

Despite the fact that I wasn't allowed to watch much TV during my formative years, I learned through osmosis that the show Full House pretty much sucked. There must be a window table in hell reserved for the people who created a show that forced the Olsen Twins upon an unsuspecting society while simultaneously unleashing the comic genius of Bob Saget, John Stamos and that third guy, the one who showed up on Skating with Celebrities and generally acted like a jackass. The Olsen Twins have gone on to provide endless tabloid fodder, while Stamos has become one of the go-t0 guys for failed TV shows and that third guy, well, I guess he laced up the figure skates.

As for Saget, he followed up his Full House career with a gig as the wise-cracking, endlessly unfunny host of America's Funniest Home Videos, on which he provided inane voiceovers for approximately 5 million groin shots. But over the past few years (when he's not making easy money for his voiceover work on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, which is actually kind of funny), he has reinvented his comic image with an extremely foul-mouthed stand-up act. If you don't believe me, go out and rent The Aristocrats, the documentary about the dirtiest joke ever told in which Saget, I'm pretty sure, really does tell the dirtiest joke ever told. I mean, whoa. It'll blow your hair back. Personally, I like the trend of wholesome '80s-era TV stars reinventing themselves in edgy new personas. I can't wait for Urkel's gangsta rap album.

** Post-script: It's amazing what's out there. In searching for a photo of Bob Saget (or at least a photo that didn't show him flipping off the camera - see, I told you he was edgy) I came upon this website, created by some poor soul with way too much time on his hands.

Starbucks Doesn't Frost, It Enrobes

So I was waiting in line at Starbucks for my morning tea (yes, I go to Starbucks to buy tea, which I realize is wrong on many, many levels but I just can't stop myself PLEASEHELPYAGOTTAHELPMEPLEASE...) ahem, where was I?

Oh, yes, so I was waiting in line at Starbucks and I noticed that the venerable coffee house is now serving chocolate-frosted donuts. Mmmm. Only they don't call them that. They call them - get this - "Chocolate Enrobed Donuts," as if the circular piece of fried dough that is a donut has been slipped inside a chocolate negligee. Just so we're clear, if you ever attempted to order a "Chocolate Enrobed" Donut at a Dunkin' Donuts you'd more than likely be greeted with a faceful of scalding hot coffee, plus a donk on the head with the coffee pot for good measure. But I guess we should expect this from the place that forced all of us to use words like "venti" and "no-foam" and "macchiato," the latter of which, much to my chagrin, is in no way a tribute to Ralph Macchio.

Anyway, I guess this is as good a time as any to listen to the wise words of The Kid From Brooklyn and his anti-Starbucks rant that burned across the Internet a while back. Before you click on it, know that it uses some colorful language, but it's no more offensive than referring to the process of slathering a donut in chocolate as "enrobing."

Reminder

It's National High Five Day.

Give a High Five to someone you love.

Long Ball, Literally

Yes, that's Wade Boggs giving a postively Tiger-esque High Five* to Marty Barrett in that photo.

We all know about some other famous games they played in together, but I bet you didn't know that today marks the 25th anniversary of one that's not nearly as well-known, but nearly as noteworthy.

Quick. Which of the following happened in the game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox that began in Pawtucket on April 18, 1981?
A) One player aged a year before it was finished
B) Another player nearly got divorced because of it
C) A future sure-fire first ballot Hall of Famer (not Boggs) went 2 for 13. 2 for 13!
D) One player got absolutely "hammered" in the locker room
E) All of the above

If you picked E), well, you've probably already read the wonderful story about the Longest Professional Baseball Game Ever Played in today's Washington Post. If you haven't, you really should. It's a great read, penned by Dave Sheinen, one of my favorite Post scribes.

* Speaking of High Fives, Thursday is National High Five Day, and I plan on celebrating.

Senor Incredible

On last night's PTI, Hornheiser and Willy Buns actually debated whether Albert Pujols is the best hitter in baseball, which is a bit like debating whether Tom Cruise is the craziest human on the planet. When all evidence points to only one logical conclusion, debating the topic becomes like sitting through Mission: Impossible 2 - pointless and embarrassing for all involved.

Speaking of missions impossible, imagine being a pitcher trying to get Pujols out these days. As a Cards fan, I realize I'm biased about this, but in his still-young career, Pujols is simply doing things that nobody else has done. Check out this link from Tyblog, which breaks down Pujols' career stats and runs them through Sox Consultant/Baseball Sagei Bill James' "Favorite Toy" - a projection of a player's chances of achieving landmark numbers. According to James' formulas, Pujols has an outside shot of breaking the all-time MLB records for hits, home runs, RBIs, doubles AND runs scored. It's not like Pujols is toiling in anonymity, but if the guy were playing in New York or Boston, there would already be statues erected, and libraries around the country would probably need to be adding new wings just to fit in all the books about him.

Which is all a long way of getting to my point: Pujols needs a nickname, and we simply can not let ES-PiNhead Stu Scott get away with the "Phat Albert" moniker that he repeatedly shouted during the highlights of the three-homer game. Scott, who puts the "blither" in blithering idiot, also added a few gravel-voiced "Hey, hey, hey!" yelps before I was forced to hit the mute button. As with any and everything Stu Scott-related, the nickname "Phat Albert" is horrendous. And as Jeff Lebowski once said, it will not stand. So I've made it my mission to come up with an alternative.

For now, I'm going with Senor Incredible. Not only is it an apt description of Pujols, but remember the scene at the beginning of The Incredibles where Mr. Incredible says something like "No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy. Sometimes I feel like the maid ... I just cleaned up this place! Can you keep it clean for 10 minutes?!?" If you don't remember it you can see it here.

Anyway, with the Cardinals looking more and more like a one-man show this season, there are likely going to be lots of messes for Senor Incredible to take care of as the summer progresses. And hey, he even wears Cardinal Red. Well, almost.

What did I tell you about monkeys?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I haven't been around much lately. Let's just say the movies lately, well, they've kind of sucked. I'll be posting quick (and by quick, I mean quick) takes on some that are still in theaters soon, and I'm off to see Jennifer Aniston in something called Friends with Money tonight, so I'll let you know how that is, too. As for the blog, I'll keep posting thoughts on movies and TV, but I'm also going to be opining on pretty much anything I feel like, and about things that make me laugh. As for the break, sue me. I took some time off, but here we go again.

To (re) kickstart things, here's a video that proves once again the wisdom behind the title of this site. Ricky Gervais, in fact, is another who clearly knows the truth about the connection between monkeys and funny. And as the creator of the original The Office, he knows from funny. It's not Gervais' fault that the Americanized version of the show has become even funnier than its BBC precursor - we can lay that at the feet of Rainn Wilson, whose Dwight Schrute is hands-down the funniest character in present-day network sitcom-dom.

Anyway, Gervais and his Brit pals have been intermittently churning out podcasts (http://www.rickygervais.com/podcast.php) for the last few months. I highly recommend checking them out on ITunes - they're hilarious and, even better, they're free (at least for now). Every podcast includes a bit called "Monkey News," wherein Gervais and co. riff on a monkey-related subject. Do I have to tell you it's funny? Well, it is. Here's a taste - and yes I realize the monkeys aren't really the funny part of this clip. But I'm not sure how much more advanced Gervais' friend Karl is than your average chimp. You be the judge...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0VAOlB0NRA