January 2007 - Posts
The story is shake-your-head unbelievable, at least if you don't live in and around Boston, and weren't inconvenienced by the shutdown of highways and bridges caused by "nine suspicious electronic devices" today. And especially if you're a fan of Cartoon Network's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."
As you've no doubt heard by now, the Boston devices turned out to be not dirty bombs, not TNT, but rather large Lite-Brite style renditions of the Mooninites Ignignokt and Err, the mouthy little aliens who often show up and try and push the Aqua Teens around, in hilariously inept ways. They once convinced little Meatwad to try and steal a DVD rack from a local electronics store, often brag about their excellent vertical leaping abilities (they can't really jump very high at all), and shoot a Quad-Glacier gun that takes forever to reach its target and doesn't really hurt anyone. CONTINUED >>
I'd kind of forgotten about the TV show "Lost," which has been on hiatus since ever (OK, since November) and returns Feb. 7. Flipping through some TiVoed shows, though, I stopped on ABC's short-and-sweet "Lost" promo (possible spoilers for the new episodes ahead).
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Courtney Love is claiming that she's been approached to replace Paula Abdul as an "American Idol" judge, US Magazine reports.
The story is a little vague on specifics, which is not the first time "Courtney Love" and "vague" have been used in the same context. It's unclear whether Love would just sit in for one day, which could be entertaining, or if she is intended to replace Paula Abdul permanently, which would really just be trading one form of crazy for another. CONTINUED >>
How is the standing ovation not still going on in Hollywood? Much has been written about the Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday night, with Julie Andrews receiving a lifetime achievement award from her "Mary Poppins" co-star, Dick Van Dyke. But the moment for me that still sticks in my head is when the cast of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" came out on stage to present an ensemble comedy award to the cast of another hilarious workplace comedy, "The Office."
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I can't stop thinking about the horrible crash singer Brandy reportedly caused. According to reports, the tiny singer was driving a Land Rover on the 405 in L.A. Traffic slowed and stopped; she did not, say reports. Her car apparently pushed a Honda into another car, the Honda then hit a center divider, and then was hit by yet another car. Awatef Aboudihaj, 38, was in the car hit by the Land Rover, and was killed. TMZ.com has put photos of the cars online, and it makes my heart sink to look at how Aboudihaj's car door is smashed in. Airbags, seat belts, nothing was going to save that driver.
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We'll resume the comics discussion in a bit, but on to Multi-link Monday for now. This week's offering has a theme: Online games. Some of these have been around for a while, but others were new to me. I want to remind readers too that you're welcome to suggest Multi-link Monday links, whether games or other fun, the idea being that we're looking for quick hits, fun sites to check out while you're taking a sanity break at work or just need to clear your head for a minute. Feel free to post your favorite sites in the comments. Don't like games? We'll get back to a regular Multi-link Monday next week.
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More than 100 of you have registered comments about
which comic strip MSNBC.com should choose to replace the now Sunday-only "FoxTrot." You've spread your choices far and wide, but a few favorites have emerged.
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It's obvious from our discussion of
"For Better or For Worse" that I'm not the only comic-strip fan reading MSNBC.com. Another favorite strip of mine, "Fox Trot," retired to Sunday-only strips on New Year's Eve, and that left a hole in the MSNBC.com
comic-strip lineup. (For now, "Fox Trot" is still up there, but in repeats.)
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On Thursday nights on ABC, the
"Grey's Anatomy" cast looks like one big happy family. Doctors are jumping in and out of bed with each other in true soap-opera form, various groupings share homes, and when the McDreamy character decided to go camping, almost every male main character conveniently decided to tag along, including the local bartender and his boyfriend. Characters are black, white, Asian, gay, Jewish, male, female and they get along just fine. Well, if cheating with your best friend's wife, getting her pregnant, and then moving across the country to wind up at the same hospital they both work at is fine, that is.
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I spent last week preparing for and participating in a wonderful wedding in Washington, D.C., and a snowstorm delayed my return. But now that I'm back, I wanted to put up a late Multi-link Monday. Have a fun time-wasting link you think would work for this topic? Feel free to add it in the comments, and thanks!
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One of the most anticipated returning shows of the still-young year, "24," jumped back onto TV screens with part one Sunday night and part two on Monday. There's got to be a sadist or two on the scriptwriting team, no? Poor Jack Bauer spends almost as much time being tortured as he does saving the world.
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Per a reader request, last week I rounded up a bunch of the most popular Multi-link Monday links and listed them all in
one post. It kind of got lost in the shuffle, though, between Yvonne DeCarlo's death and the "For Better or For Worse" news, so don't forget to check it out if you need some more Monday time-killers. And now, some new links:
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I know I'm not the only fan of Lynn Johnston's "For Better or For Worse" comic strip out there. We've talked here before about how the cartoonist had discussed ending the strip or at least cutting back, and now she's finally announced how she's going to do it -- and to my knowledge, it's a way that hasn't been tried by a cartoonist before.
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Jolita posted and asked if I could re-link some of the Multi-link Monday favorites from past weeks in the new format, and it sounded like a good idea to me.
Here are a few of the sites I liked best, or that earned the most vocal response from readers -- if I'm missing a favorite of yours, post it here, or describe it and I'll try to find it. (Some sites, sadly, are no longer around.)
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Yvonne DeCarlo, the Hollywood beauty best known to many of us as Lily Munster on "The Munsters," has died at 84.
Although one of my cats is named for Wednesday Addams of the rival monster-family series "The Addams Family," I was really a bigger fan of "The Munsters" as a kid. "Addams" wins out for edginess, but "Munsters" fulfilled its purpose beautifully -- it was a monster-starring spoof of the other black-and-white family comedies of its day, including "Leave It To Beaver" and "The Donna Reed Show."
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No, it's not yet time for our annual TV commercial contest (although this weird Seattle winter is making me long for summer). But I just wanted to touch base on some of the ads that have been sticking in my head lately, and give you a chance to do the same.
Movie promos count as commercials, right? Have you seen the ad for "Primeval" (warning: site has audio) where they trumpet that the film is "inspired by a true story ... of the world's most terrifying serial killer"? Have you perhaps wondered why none of us have heard of this killer? The movie promo is kind of pulling one over on us: If you want to know the identity of the killer (spoiler, obviously), click here. Yeah, does that count as a "serial killer" to you? Me neither.
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• All the seasons of "The Brady Bunch" are already out on DVD, but TVShowsonDVD.com reports that the complete series will be out in one giant astroturfed package come late March. Which inspires me to ask, one more time: Why was this classic sitcom given such a shoddy DVD release as far as extras go? The first season had three episode commentaries -- one with Sherwood Schwartz (yawn) and two with cast members Barry Williams, Christopher Knight and Susan Olsen. The cast member commentaries were fun and engaging, and really, it's not like fans are buying the DVD sets for episodes alone when they can see those on almost every channel in existence. Also, how busy can Susan Olsen be these days? The cast members closed the final commentary by saying something like "see you again!", so they seemed ready to record more, but none of the other seasons had any extras that I recall.
• A lovely Ella Fitzgerald stamp comes out today. Other commemorative stamps coming up for 2007 include a very cool triangular stamp honoring the settlement of Jamestown, elegant Pacific lighthouses, a Jimmy Stewart stamp, Marvel superheroes, a breathtaking Louis Comfort Tiffany stamp, cute series of Disney stamps and more. Weirdest stamp of 2007? Contenders include "Mendez vs. Westminster School District" (marking an anti-segregation lawsuit in California in 1944) and a series honoring vintage mahogany speedboats, but the weirdness winner has to be the Jury Duty stamp. Jury Duty? On a stamp?
• Maybe this should have gone with the TV commercial post above, but readers are always asking about songs in certain TV commercials. AdTunes is a good place to start your hunt, and PromoGuy.net is a Weblog that discusses songs in ads, too. AdTunes is currently leading with a post rounding up their picks for the best music used in ads in 2006.
Despite its name and the giant TV in the logo, Test Pattern isn't just about television -- topics covered include movies, books, music and other entertainment/pop-culture elements.
I wanted to resurrect the recent Movie Mistakes topic here because so many people sent in comments that I didn't have room for in the old commenting format.
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One of the best things about this new format: It's easier for me to update more often, and to toss up interesting links of the moment. (Alan Boyle does this admirably in Cosmic Log, calling it "Your Daily Dose of Science on the Web.")
Here's what I'm reading online at the moment:
• Want to know exactly when "American Idol" will get down to the final 12, or when the Smoking Gun will first discover a new contestant has a rap sheet? TV Guide has the schedule. Learn it, love it, live it. (Thanks to co-worker Paige for the link!)
• Australia, may I just say on behalf of the entire United States that we are sorry in advance. "The Real World" is heading to Sydney. Yeah, because the London and Paris seasons were such thrillers back in their day. The London season was the one that actually featured Mike and Jay sitting around on the couch at 3 a.m. reading a ketchup bottle and musing about whether ketchup was made in the U.K. Gosh, I miss those days. Now it's all "drink drank drunk FIGHT OVER ROOMS drink drank RACIAL SLUR drink more APOLOGY go to bar HOT TUB HOOK-UP drink everybody cries and goes home." (Link via MSNBC.com contributor Andy Dehnart's great Reality Blurred.)
• Speaking of awful reality shows featuring undeserving kids, I caught "I'm With Rolling Stone" Sunday night. It looks to be focusing on six aspiring writers who can't spell "emo," much less write about it. The six were all given a first assignment, to write about their hometown music scene. Almost all of the assignments were dreadful -- you can read them online here -- and one kid, Peter, blithely confessed to his new editor that he was drunk when he wrote his.
And not to be a big ol' prude, but I didn't notice any of the contestants thanking editor Jann Wenner when he called to tell them they were on the show. Even if the call was staged, and no matter how goofy Jann Wenner is, come on, be gracious and thank the man for the opportunity! Yeah, some days I do wonder when I turned into "Crankshaft," but still.
Welcome to the new world! Test Pattern is joining our friends Will Femia, at Clicked, and Alan Boyle, at Cosmic Log, and trying out an updated, more Webloggy format.
I'm so eager to jump in that I'm moving today's Multi-Link Monday into the new style. You can post comments, but they won't go up automatically -- I need to weed out spammers and other problems. But I think this will make the discussion much easier to follow and much more fun.
If you're new to Test Pattern, Multi-link Monday is a roundup of five fun links that make for decent work distractions on the worst day of the week. You're welcome to suggest new links, and now you can use the comment option to do just that.
On to the links:
• What kind of American accent do you have? Obviously, not applicable if you’re not American. I thought for sure I’d fall in the North Central (think “Fargo”) contingent, since I grew up in Minnesota, but this quiz says I don’t really have an accent. Ya, you betcha, dere. (Thanks to Molly M. for the link!)
• Retro chefs: You can buy unflavored popping candy (think Pop Rocks) and jazz it up to use in a recipe. (These Webloggers turned them violet-flavored)The thought of Pop Rocks (or, uh, the generic version) being used in a recipe is so entertaining that I immediately sent this to my chef friend. Can’t you just see “Top Chef” making its contestants work with Pop Rocks? (Via Not Martha.)
• I’m so sick of Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump’s stupid fight. Snark at each other all you want, but I don’t want to hear about it. Game Show Network has set up a Rosie-Donald online fight game. Each fighter has a secret weapon – Rosie’s Tongue-Lasher and Donald’s Killer Comb-Over. The first rule of Rosie-Donald Fight Club is don’t talk about Rosie-Donald Fight Club.
• Getting ready for the Jan. 14 return of “24”? When the show comes back, print out this Bingo card and cover squares (or give yourself points, or take a shot, whatever) when these sure-to-occur events take place. My favorite “Jack disobeys a direct order.” Yeah, like that’s gonna happen. (Via Metafilter Projects)
• This is both addictive and frightening. Click on a facial feature at Monoface and you can change it … over and over and over and over again. It’s kind of like playing Mr. Potato Head, but with real images. (If you prefer Mr. Potato Head, here's an online version of that.)
