putting the j in jjosh

I keep hearing about Tim & Eric Awesome Show Good Job, but have yet to see a full episode. Youtube, however, is, as always, quite helpful in the matter. Some of this stuff is freakin hilarious.

Like everyone, I am a big fan of those Old Spice ads directed by Eric of Tim&Eric Awesome Show. Did you know they've got the Old Spice guy responding to individual tweets that he's being sent? Genius. They are really funny on their own.

[from waxy]

I know I've been working on a ton of promos for BBC Earth, and I know World Cup mania is in full swing, but this ad is so good, and its use of the animals is so dead on target…the ostriches running it out, the cheetah slide tackle, over the croc jaws…really really good…

CRANK IT UP YOU GUYS!

whoa.

[from dvblog]

I'd been hearing rumblings of this new Scorsese HBO series about Prohibition, but didn't really know too much about it. Now I have a hint, and man oh man does it look fierce. No air date yet, but "sometime this year"…

Wow, who knew they did so much green-screening of normal outdoor shots…

no wonder we never see half these shows shooting in NYC…

[via kottke]

This one is tough to hear, but worth it. It's also a little heavy, so let's have it on a Thursday, with the weekend within arm's reach…

Don't worry too too much about understanding what he's saying, just go along for the ride…Jim Henson was/is amazing…

[thanks to Arthur for this one…]

Matt M mentioned Mighty Boosh last night and it got me surfing youtube…

sometimes they are amazingly funny:

the editing in that clip, especially in the beginning is really good…it really accents the comic timing…and the way it effortlessly moves through 3 sections (set up, song, existential end) is so smooth…I need to watch more of these guys…

Wow, I love Dash Shaw’s comics work (have posted it here before), but these animations he’s done for IFC are supa fantastic…go to the ifc site to see the rest…surreal and great…

Hey, it’s TV season in the Grump household…so let’s take a quick survey of what we’re watching:

– Bored To Death – getting better and better…Ted Danson is amazing, Zack Galifanikis hasn’t worn out his welcome yet (surprising!), the writing is crisp and funny, and it’s a hoot seeing a show determined to show you what Brooklyn is like…

– Mad Men – not a bad season, the one with the mower was stunning…I did recall the other day though, that season 1 had a mind-blower at the end of EVERY EPISODE, and it’s tough to hold up to that kind of standard…still, as someone said the other day, "I like the slow burn"

– 30 Rock – still funny, but the episodes seem to be getting less and less memorable…everyone still seems to be on top form (Baldwin, Tracey Morgan, Tina Fey), maybe they’re burning out a little? still funny though…

– Grey’s Anatomy – hot diggity this show is kicking out the jams…MT and I theorize that since they’ve been able to get rid of Blonde Heigel everyone’s been rejuvenized…apart from 2 weeks ago’s narrative excercise with the Rashomon-like shifting perspectives (blah) this show has been well solid…also probably helped by the fact that they’ve minimized the Ellen Pompeo since she’s pregnant…

– Friday Night Lights – I remember Luke telling me to watch this show years ago, then KG made a case for it so we gave it a shot and have been hooked hooked hooked…so solid, even with multiple misfired over the past seasons (Landry/Tyra murder thing, Tim/Lyla on again off again)…just finished watching the second episode of this season and it was really really good…they’ve done a really stellar job of tearing Coach Taylor down and having him start again…plus in the middle of the show they had this great scene…out of nowhere::

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

You might be the luckiest man in the world and not even know it.

Beautifully shot, and a good good vibe…damn them for making me post their commercial to my blog…

sidebar: I remember at some point working at BBCA and learning AVID editing, and you know how on macs you use apple-z to undo whatever you last did? Somehow Roscoe had the great inspiration to rap to the cadence of "Good Day" but instead of "I didn’t even have to use my AK" (one of the track’s best lines) he changed it to "didn’t even have to use my apple zay"; genius, and a line I still say to myself even now when things are going well editing-wise…

Been thinking about vampires a bit. A while back I read this kfan post regarding Tru Blood and Mad Men, and it keeps coming back into my frontal brain, especially as the Mad Men hype machine goes into overload preparing for the upcoming season. I’ve seen only the smallest clip of Blood, but it made me feel odd, and I have no clue if I’d like it. And I do Like Mad Men, though I understand kfan’s ambivalence.

And then last night Maxine and I watched an episode of Intervention and it made me feel awful. I hated the thing, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. As Max pointed out, at its core it’s a show about people helping other people. Friends and relatives who so love someone that they go to this crazy length to help them. Which is true, but there’s something so voyeuristic and exploitative about it that I feel it kind of cancels out all the love. Like, if you’re doing this out of love, why on earth would you want the cameras there?! That’s not going to help.

I think A & E picked up Random 1 in part because of Intervention’s success, but I think Random 1 did it cleaner — when we appeared in someone’s life to help them, it felt like winning the lottery, like against all the odds here are these 2 guys who have shown up help! Amazing!

Then today seeing one of the Mad Men bus stop posters I started thinking about how advertising and junk tv sucks the life right out of you. How you feel awful after that stuff, how advertisers are trying so hard to get you to do things, buy things. An article in today’s NYT about Woodstock and how it was the last time that advertisers would miss out on opportunity like that to merchandise a movement, a demographic. I have a book called The Conquest of Cool that is all about that, about the machinations that inevitably transform the underground cool into the purchasable mainstream; it reads like a grad school text, so I’ve never gone truly deep into it, but maybe now’s the time.

In other words, it’s the advertising guys that are the true vampires here. The guys who spend their entire careers trying to get people to give their vital essences up to buy products, to watch shows. JG sent me a book that was about a 60-minutes style tv show where vampires start to take over the show. It was pretty good, kind of simple clean spooky fun, with a metaphor built into it about the camera and people’s relationship to it.

All I’m saying is that if you think of Mad Men as a vampire story, it has a true ring to it. It’ll be interesting to see if that bears out over season 3.

I remember seeing this one as a kid and loving it. Watching it now I’m completely pumped by the subtexts of conformity and individuality, something that the Muppets deal with a lot. I don’t wanna read too much into it though, it’s just a good time, isn’t it?

Also I’m reminded of being in college and deciding to grow my hair long and my beard wild. My roommate Jeff C telling me I should grow it all to the same length and style my hair up in the air so I could look like "one of those muppets with the crazy hair and the beard all the same length". I love that look.

Hey, remember in the early 90’s when they switched the way they measured top 40? They introduced Soundscan, which actually measured the number of CD’s being sold. The way they used to measure top 40 was a bunk method of radio play and the number of records ordered by stores, etc. So when we felt like top 40 was being foisted on us, it actually really was!

Anyway, once Soundscan went into effect, the numbers turned on their heads, and we got a much better idea of what people were actually buying. It was at this time that country and hip-hop exploded in popularity. Because that’s what people were actually buying, and then when the rest of the country saw that stuff in top 40, they went to go get it too. Pop basically expanded (or was replaced) to include country and hip hop.

So how come there’s no American Idol for hip hop? You know there are a million young rappers and DJs out there, wouldn’t it be a monster hit? Why the focus on saccharine pop? Obviously, you’d have to make it a grittier format, lose the shiny sheen, but I think it would be huge.

This idea is so massiv that I’m pretty sure it’s already being pitched and in production somewhere. Million dollar idea.