The SciFi Channel - sorry, Syfy - is currently showing a Land of the Lost marathon. For some reason, this marathon is being sponsored not by this summer's Land of the Lost movie, but by the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. As for the show itself, the actors are amazingly, jaw-droppingly bad, and they're wearing so much orange makeup they look like Oompa-Loompas.
Childhood me, why did you have such bad taste?
For those of us who didn't get enough kitsch stop-motion animation Christmas specials back in the seventies, ABC Family will be airing a new one on December 13: A Miser Brothers Christmas. It'll star our favorite characters from The Year Without A Santa Claus, Heat Miser and Snow Miser (well, duh!), and will apparently include a reprise of their original dueling songs, as well as . . . groan . . . some new crap too. Also, prepare to meet (brace yourself) "Doppler the baby reindeer". (Rudolf's child?)
Oh, this is gonna hurt.
Can The Daily Show survive the Barack Obama Presidency?
I've been thinking about this for several years now, wondering where the show could go post-Bush. There was a telling incident in 2007: Stewart tried to make a joke about Hillary Clinton (this was when she was still the presumptive nominee and liberals hadn't gone hardcore for Obama yet). The audience resisted, and IIRC even booed and hissed a little. Stewart said, "Oh, when it's your guy you don't like it!" I bet that's a taste of what's to come.
A few weeks ago during the Republican convention Jon Stewart had a bit on The Daily Show where he compared Senators Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman to, respectively, Foghorn Leghorn and Droopy Dog. The latter's an old trope with Stewart, but I believe the former was a new association, and it turns out it's more accurate than Stewart's writers probably knew. Leghorn was originally a cartoon parody of Beauregard Claghorn, a popular radio character in the forties who was a caricature of a (generic) Southern Senator. So, huh: a Southern Senator sounds like a Southern Senator. Will wonders never cease?
I first learned about Claghorn from a throwaway reference in Caro's Master of the Senate, and ever since I've had a mild interest in seeing 'his' theatrical movie, It's A Joke, Son (1947), even though I'm sure qualitatively it's down on the level of a Ma and Pa Kettle flick. "Ontological certaintude of 10!" as John McLaughlin used to intone.
Family events intervened this week, so I'm late with my comment-post.
( 'You call parking a supersonic jet in front of a titty-bar inconspicuous?' )
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