Monkeys Are Always Funny

To anyone who doubts the unassailable truth behind the title of this blog...

WATCH THIS

And just to answer your question: I have no idea.

Sports Babble-On: Peter Gammons

The first in a recurring series of posts in which I simply transcribe the nonsensical ramblings of a sports talking head. We start with ESPN's Peter Gammons, whose undeniable skill at finding interesting news and rumors about baseball is matched only by his utter ineptitude at coherently explaining them to viewers. Don't get me wrong - the guy is a great baseball writer, and his blog at espn.com is a must-read, but he often makes little or no sense when the cameras are rolling.
For instance, here is what he said a few minutes ago on Baseball Tonight. To give the following quote some context, the subject was Tampa Bay's Aubrey Huff, and whether the team might have waited to long to trade him.

Gammons: A six foot seven ... million dollars. Devil Rays had some teams interested last year. He had a pretty good season last - well, he got hurt, he's playing some third base. He's his bat has really been slow and it's that kinda kills the Devil Rays. And now really, when they go to trade - I mean, OK, they can trade Julio Lugo, he may end up with the Mets or someplace like that, most likely the Mets. But Huff is now basically going to be a giveaway.

Wait. Um. What? Is Aubrey Huff six foot seven? And what's with the sudden switch over to Julio Lugo? Betcha didn't see that one coming. Thankfully, by the end of his ramble, Gammons finally strings an actual sentence together and makes his intended point. I think. Unfortunately, by that point, even co-host and legendary nincompoop John Kruk was reduced to intermittently blinking in his direction and thinking "Man, this guy's dumber 'n I am."

Sopranos Misfires, but HBO Reloads

INSIDE THE IDIOT BOX

June 11, 2006

Well, now that the disappointing season of The Sopranos has come and gone (and been figuratively hacked up, covered with lyme and buried under the highway by disgruntled fans on various Internet message boards) it's time to look forward to Sunday nights on HBOagain. Don't get me wrong. I watched the travails of Tony and the gang right up until the bitter, boring end last Sunday night. Speaking of which, I have to ask - what the heck was with that beret Tony was sporting in that last scene? He looked about as natural as a Kennedy in a convent.
Anyway, The Sopranos now heads to the sidelines until January, when it will return with eight final episodes. Considering how hideously the series nosedived this season after a promising start, it's hard to think that many people will be counting the days until its return. But its recent slump doesn't change the fact that it remains one of the most finely crafted series in TV history, so discerning Idiot Box Addicts should be rooting for a return to form and hoping that creator David Chase can end things on a fitting high note.
For its part, HBO certainly isn't sitting around waiting until then. Tonight, the cable net has the season premiere of four - count 'em four - shows, including two welcome returnees and two promising newcomers:
Deadwood (9 p.m.): The third and quite possibly final season of David Milch's wild and wooly (not to mention extremely potty-mouthed) western finds the titular outlaw town starting to take a turn toward civilized life. If you watch the show at all, you know that that spells doom for most of the colorful cast of characters, highlighted by Ian McShane's aptly named Al Swearengen. Also portending doom was the recent news that HBO released all of the show's actors from their contracts, meaning this season's visit to Deadwood is all but guaranteed to be the last. Catch it while you can.
Entourage (10 p.m.): On the flip side, this comedy/drama about hotshot young actor Vincent Chase (Adrien Grenier) and his frat pack posse of Hollywood wannabes seems to be hitting its pop culture stride as it enters its third season. More and more people are talking about it, and with good reason, since once you learn to groove to its beat it's a pretty darn entertaining show and send-up of modern-day celebrity. There's even a web site where you can learn which character you're most like - trust me, you don't want to be Turtle. Watch out for Jeremy Piven's blowhard agent Ari, one of the best creations on TV these days.
Lucky Louie (10:30 p.m.): This brand-new series has the potential to become HBO's next Curb Your Enthusiasm, i.e., a cringe-inducing, drop-dead hilarious show centered around a unique comic persona. The show stars comic Louis C.K. at the center of a traditional sitcom - he plays a middle class guy with a wife and two kids. But if you know anything about Louis CK, who has written for Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Dana Carvey Show, you know to expect anything but a traditional sitcom. Louis CK is revered by his fellow comics, but has never broken out to the mainstream. He is, after all, the guy who directed Pootie Tang. There's a high risk/reward here, and HBO is probably - no, definitely - the only network that would take a chance on this guy. Given their track record, I'm betting Lucky Louie is a hit.
Dane Cook's TourGasm (11:00 p.m.): If you're in your early to mid-twenties or (better yet) still in college, then you likely not only know who Dane Cook is, you can recite most of his stand-up routine. If you're not, then you've probably never heard of the guy. Cook's raunchy brand of purposefully dumb humor has made him a god on college campuses, and he hosted SNL last year and has a movie with Jessica Simpson coming out later this year. He's about to break out big-time, is the point, and here's his first step in that direction. TourGasm documents his 30-day comedy tour across America with fellow funnymen Gary Gulman, Bobby Kelly and Jay Davis. Expect to laugh, but don't expect to like yourself for it in the morning.

CLOSING TIME AGAIN: Last summer, TNT's The Closer emerged as a surprising hit, and the series - which stars Kyra Sedgwick as a hard-nosed LA detective - returns for its second season Monday night at 10 p.m. It's a good watch, and sports a solid supporting cast, including the irrepressible J.K. Simmons. Also tomorrow night on TNT, look for the premiere of Saved at 9 p.m. The show stars Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do!, Boiling Point) as an EMT in Portland, Oregon. Medical dramas are everywhere these days, but here's a show that at least is trying to take a different tact, and there's certainly drama inherent in the daily lives of ambulance paramedics. Color this Idiot Box Addict interested.
Saved premieres tomorrow night at 9 on TNT, followed immediately by the season premiere of The Closer.

Missouri Is No Place For A Monkey

The monkey pictured at left is making the good citizens of Sikeston, Missouri awfully nervous. According to this story, the monkey is Sikeston resident Phyllis Gates' pet. Phyllis has had her pet monkey for five years. That's important, since it means she and her monkey limboed just under the ruthless anti-having-monkey-as-a-pet bill that was passed in Sikeston just months after her she bought the monkey in Kansas City. What, doesn't everyone go to Kansas City to buy their monkeys?

Anyway, this monkey is scaring the good people in Sikeston. They think when he approaches them on the street he intends to do them harm. We at Monkeys Are Always Funny HQ know that he probably just intends to tell them a good knock-knock joke.

Sikeston citizen Peggy Bearden, who lives across the street from Phyllis and her monkey, is one of the unenlightened:

"She cannot control her monkey," Peggy Bearden said. "It attacked my grandson. Part of the material is gone in his shirt."

I think it's quite clear that Peggy Bearden, all due respect, is a big friggin' idiot who wouldn't know good comic material if a monkey came up and bit her in the tuchus. In fact, she'd probably report the monkey to the authorities without ever realizing how hilarious he is. And she is clearly passing this utter lack of appreciation for the genius of monkey humor down to her poor grandson. Get out of Sikeston, son.

I will never doubt Pixar again

I’m a huge fan of almost all of Pixar's prior animated hits (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles), but I thought they might have gone off the rails a bit when I heard about Cars, which, yes, is just what it sounds like - a story about cars. I honestly didn’t see how even the Pixar wizards could make me care all that much about a bunch of cars (clearly, I had forgotten that they once made me care about a bunch of fish) – so it says something about how good they are at what they do that I actually had a lump in my throat by the end of this charmer.

The story is about a hot shot racing car called Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson in characteristic laidback style). He’s the fastest rookie on the NASCAR circuit, a fiery red egomaniac with lots of dreams of stardom but not very many friends. In the movie's frenetic, giddy opening scene we watch him dazzle a packed stadium during the year-end Piston Cup championship race. This is about as exciting as animation gets, as the Pixar peeps literally put you in the middle of the race, right on the oval with little bits of pavement flying off the surface and whooshing past. The scene is also a spot-on riff on modern stadium sports, no small feat since the fans in the stands are all cars (that's right, there's not a human to be found in the whole flick). The cars do the wave by flashing their headlights all in a row. The pickup trucks drive right into the men’s room, while the little coupes and sedans have to wait in long lines at the women’s room. A duo of groupies asks Lightning to sign their headlights. As for the race, it ends in a three-way tie - with a legendary car appropriately voiced by Richard Petty and a grizzled frustrated vet voiced by Michael Keaton - so Lightning has a week to get himself out to California for the big tie-breaker that will decide the title.

On the way, though, he gets sidetracked in a little town off Route 66 called Radiator Springs, a sleepy burg full of mostly beat-up old buckets of bolts where no cars visit anymore since the highway was built. Our hero gets stuck there after he destroys the town's only road during a chase and is sentenced by the local judge - "Doc" Hudson Hornet, perfectly voiced by Paul Newman - to fix the damage before he can leave town. Long story short, Lightning finds that he kinda likes smalltown life. He’s charmed by the locals and ends up realizing that sometimes there's more to life when you pull off the highway and slow things down a bit. OK, so if you're looking for groundbreaking storytelling, you best look someplace else.

In fact, if you’ve ever seen Doc Hollywood, get ready to see it again, since Cars is essentially a note-for-note remake of that 1991 Michael J. Fox movie about a hotshot plastic surgeon seduced by smalltown Southern life on his way to Tinseltown. But the voices of the cars in Radiator Springs are perfectly cast, including Bonnie Hunt as a fetching Porsche who catches Lightning’s eye, George Carlin as a hippie VW bus, Cheech Marin as a flashy low-rider and Larry the Cable Guy as a particularly slack-bumpered yokel of a tow truck named Tow Mater. The animation is beautiful, and the scenery is gorgeous. To quote Tow Mater, Cars Gits 'R Done.

(Trunk) Monkeys Are Always Funny

Slow couple-a weeks here at MAAF HQ. Yeah, sorry about that. But coming soon: A summer movie breakdown at the quarter pole, a look at summer TV, a few random rants and, of course, lots and lots of monkeys.

Here's one to get you through the weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o97mywoWJ7E&search=funny%20monkey

Over The Hedge, Animal Style

Apparently, a marauding gang of monkeys has been breaking into million dollar homes in the South African beach enclave of Cape Peninsula and, ahem, "clearing out pantries, emptying fridges, and defecating over the designer furnishings."

This is one of those situations involving monkeys that sounds horrifying if you picture it actually happening to you, but sounds downright hilarious if you imagine it as a Super Bowl ad. I choose to take the latter route, and so, apparently, does a South African named Jenni Trethowan. Jenni, you see, is a uniter, not a divider (No word on whether she is also a "decider"), and she had this to say about one of the baboon gang members/serial defecators called Quizzy: "He's the nicest baboon you could ever hope to meet. I love that baboon."

Methinks Jenni's tune might change if it were her designer furnishings on which Quizzy was defecating, but still. Read on here.

FINALES GO OUT WITH GUNS ABLAZE

INSIDE THE IDIOT BOX

May 21, 2006

Like thoroughbreds gearing up for one final push in a Triple Crown race – only without all the huffing and puffing and physical exertion in general, not to mention the oats – we idiots are turning the corner and coming down the home stretch of May Sweeps. Not that there’ll be much rest for our weary remote thumbs come month’s end, since June will bring a slew of new summer shows and, yikes, The Sopranos season finale, but the end of May Sweeps has traditionally marked the close of the official TV season.
And so, like the grills that will soon be rolled out for the Memorial Day barbecue, we roll past in the opposite direction with the final installment of the May Sweeps Idiocy Factor, and remind you one final time that the higher the Factor, the more of an idiot you’d have to be to miss it.
TONIGHT
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (7 p.m., ABC): Every time I turn on this show, someone is crying. Which makes me wonder if they’re building houses for these people or tearing them down. Idiocy Factor: 5.
The Simpsons (8 p.m., FOX): Here’s how long this show has been on: If baby Maggie actually aged, she’d be going off to college in the fall. Yikes. The most amazing thing about the long-running show is that it’s still funny as it closes its 17th season. Mandy Moore and Stacy Keach are guests on tonight’s season-ender. Idiocy Factor: 7.
Charmed (8 p.m., WB): After eight seasons, the witchy trio casts their final spell and rides off on their broomsticks forever. Wait, seriously? This show ran for eight seasons? Hocus Pocus, indeed. Idiocy Factor: 6.
Family Guy (8:30 p.m., FOX): In its second time around, the show has finally shed its “Simpsons clone” baggage, even though, yes, it remains just that. Still, its pop culture-reliant jokes hit the mark more often than they miss. It’s a guilty pleasure. Idiocy Factor: 7.
Desperate Housewives (9 p.m., ABC): Yes, it still gets big ratings. But nobody talks about this show anymore. Has any hot show ever cooled off so quickly? Idiocy Factor: 6
TOMORROW
The King of Queens (8 p.m., CBS): I can't believe this show was relegated to midseason replacement status on next season's CBS fall schedule. I also can't believe it's been on for 8 years. Cripes, how old am I? Tonight, a fire in the basement has Kevin dreaming of reinventing the space as a media room. Idiocy Factor: 7.
24 (8 p.m., FOX): This has been one of the least plausible seasons for Jack Bauer and his CTU co-horts ever, and that’s saying something. Fortunately, thanks partly to a magnificent performance by Gregory Itzin as the weaselly President, it has also been one of the most addictive and entertaining. This is still TV’s biggest rush. Idiocy Factor: 10.
Two and a Half Men (9 p.m., CBS): Yes, this is the highest-rated sitcom on television. Yes, that is the sound of the writers at Scrubs, The Office and the late, great Arrested Development smacking their foreheads in frustration. Idiocy Factor: 6.
Alias (9 p.m., ABC): Back in 2001, this show and 24 were the buzzed-about new action dramas. But while Jack Bauer just keeps zipping along, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is going out for good with a whimper, and with little notice. Too bad, since for its first two seasons – before creator JJ Abrams got distracted by Lost and MI3 - this was a great, great show. Idiocy Factor: 7.
The New Adventures of Old Christine (9:30 p.m., CBS): While hosting SNL a few weeks back, Julia Louis-Dreyfus went on and on about how she had finally broken the Seinfeld curse. I think viewers of this lame sitcom might disagree. Idiocy Factor: 3.
CSI: Miami (10 p.m., CBS): I saw an article recently that claimed that, with foreign audiences factored in, this is the most-watched TV drama in the world. This only means that not everyone is as annoyed by David Caruso as I am. Idiocy Factor: 7
Medium (10 p.m., NBC): A confession: After weeks of pretending I enjoy this show because my wife likes to watch it, I actually am finding myself enjoying it. Without pretending, I mean. Is that wrong? Idiocy Factor: 8
TUESDAY
House (9 p.m., FOX): Thanks mainly to the lead-in audience supplied by American Idol, this show has exploded into a mammoth hit this season. And though it sometimes follows its blueprint a little too closely, the performances – especially by Hugh Laurie as the wacky doc of the title – always keep it watchable. Idiocy Factor: 9
WEDNESDAY
American Idol (8 p.m., FOX): People love this show. Other people. But far be it from me to swim against the stream on this one. America chooses its latest Idol tonight, and then we all begin the surprisingly swift process of entirely forgetting who that person is. Quick: Name another Idol besides Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken (and Aiken didn’t even win). Idiocy Factor: 10
Lost (9 p.m., ABC): The most confusing show on television promises to leave many, many questions unanswered, the better for its rabid fans to opine about on the Internet throughout the summer. Idiocy Factor: 10.