15 Seconds of Fame

As some of you may know, Emerson and I, along with my friend Jennifer, tried out for the second season of VH1's The World Series of Pop Culture, hosted by none other than our local news idol, Pat Kiernan of NY1. Needless to say, we did not succeed. Even though we studied for months. We didn't even pass the test. Although we are forbidden under the fullest penalty of the law to say what went on in that room, I will say that it required more knowledge of the WB than even I was capable of cramming into my brain. It's a shame. Stupid Gilmore Girls!

We had chosen what, in our opinion, was the kick-ass-est team name ever: "There Is No Dana". We even showed up to the auditions dressed as nerdy paranormal investigators. And I thought for sure that no one would get to see us. But I was wrong. In the intro to the first episode, where they showcase scenes from the written test, there we are in all our test-taking glory! Emerson even got a close-up!

Of course, I am still bitter about not getting on but I am tickled pink that last year's winners, El Chupacabra, got knocked out in the first round. I always thought those hacks got lucky!

The DaVinci Code

I am torn by the fact that Ron Howard is not putting a disclaimer up about Opus Dei when the film gets released this month. I am torn because I detest Opus Dei and would like people to have a disfavorable opinion of them, but I do think that they warrent a fair treatment. Granted, the story is fiction, and piss-poor fiction at that (give me Umberto Eco anyday). But of all the crap that Brown made up, Opus Dei is the only organization a) introduced to the general population by this drivel and b) still around. I think the Vatican is fair game in the same way that "the government" is appropriate as the Big Bad in a conspiracy story.

That said, however, I do get a tinge of delight at the twisted portrayal of Opus Dei. All fundamentalism should be stamped out.

Calgon! Get Me Up Outta Here and Take Me Somewhere!

The boy and I have taken to watching music videos in the morning, in order to stay apace of what the kiddies are listening to these days (or at least what's on MTV). It has been thoroughly enlightening, since I don't listen to the radio. It has made me come to appreciate the wonderfulness that is Kanye West's "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" and "Gold Digger".

But our story doesn't start with MTV or Kanye or bling related hip-hop. No, our story today begins with late night channel surfing a few months ago. The boy was asleep, but I was a bit wired so I started flipping through channels until I came across the local PBS station from New Jersey, you know the one that plays that scenic tour of Italy twelve times a day? Well, at 3:30 am I was taken aback to learn that, instead of some dreary travelogue, PBS was showing some "hipster" youth jumping up and down on top of his piano, acting like an asshole. I mean, come on. An edgy jazz pianist? Sneakers and shaggy hair alone will not make you cool. Especially when you're banging away on your piano keys like a teenaged boy popping his cherry (lots of show to camouflage a lack of talent) while singing a sophomoric version of "I Could Have Danced All Night". Needless to say, I wasn't in a particularly sharp state of mind at the time and didn't know quite what to make of this spectacle.

So I put it out of my mind.

Until last week when this tool showed up on MTV. Apparently he's famous. Apparently people really like him. And apparently they have all had lobotomies. His name is Jamie Cullum and let me give you a taste of his youthful wisdom:

So what game shall we play today?
How about the one where you don't get your way?
But even if you do,
That's okay.

Trust me, it isn't any more interesting with music. Anywho, let's break it down, shall we? The only defining characteristic of this "game" is that the chick he's after doesn't get her way. But, he says, even if she does get her way, he's totally fine with that. But since that was the only defining characteristic of the game he was suggesting, he's really saying that he doesn't care what game they play. Which might be mistaken for deep, if the song manages to not put you to sleep by the time you hit the chorus.

He's a got a few more gems in there, too. Like:

I opened the door and you walked in,
(Sniff) The scent of wild jasmine.

Honestly. Do women smell like anything other than jasmine or vanilla? I don't even think I know what jasmine smells like. But what I do know is that rhyming it with "walked in" is about as lame as rhyming
"get your way" with "okay"...

Or how about this one:

And who'd have thought that entertainment,
Lies in the winter of your discontent.

Oooh, Jamie Cullum read a book! Lesson 1: when you want to look smart (but aren't) quote Shakespeare.

Alright, I got one more:

Now, sit at the table, face to face,
Queen takes pawn, check or checkmate!

Check or checkmate. Got that? Lesson #2: when you want to look smart (but aren't) make references to intellectual games. Like chess. Or backgammon. Or the one where you don't get your way.

Now, for a final observation... Compare what you read above with the following:

Now I aint sayin she a gold digger (When I'm Need)
But she aint messin wit no broke niggaz

I think the answer is obvious...

The Paraphrasation of Mimi

The boy is obsessed (obsessed!) with Mariah Carey. He tries to defend it using literary theory or post-modernism or deconstructionism or some crap like that. Point is, every morning we have to scour the music video channels to see if we can find a Mariah Carey video. And it usually takes us about 30 seconds.

The big one these days is "Shake It Off" where Mariah, soaking in a tub full of rose petals, manages to paraphrase one of the simplest commercial phrases of all time, namely "Calgon, take me away!" In Mariah's brilliant rendition: "Like a Calgon commercial I / really gotta get / up outta here / and go somewhere"... Just in case you thought "take me away" wasn't clear enough, Mariah breaks it down, she "deconstucts" it, so to speak, so that we, the audience, really understand not only the essence of the original pop culture reference but exactly how Mariah is feeling, at that moment, in the tub.

As a side note, a verse was cut (for time) which went like this: "Like a Wendy's commerical I / really gotta find / out where the beef / went up and got to"...

I Am Not Making This Up

Dave Barry, beloved humorist and social commentator, retired from his weekly column last week. I, for one, will sorely miss him. Slate has a nice send off piece, very befitting of someone whose 22 year career was riddle with booger jokes. When I was growing up I used to read his column religiously as well as all his books. He certainly helped define my sense of humor. When I was in high school, I had a brief stint writing a humor column for the newspaper. To say that I borrowed Dave Barry's style would be an understatement. Of course, I was leagues behind him. I do think that some of him has bled into my more satirical writing, such as my intense love-affair with parenthetical comments, as well as his qualifying statements declaring the veracity of his too-funny-to-be-false stories. He's one of the few writers who could consistently make me laugh out loud. Of course, I haven't read him much recently, but I do go back every now and then and pick up one of his books from the eighties or early nineties. Back when he used to be funnier.

Leeches!

The other night the boy and I decided to use that whole Movies OnDemand feature of my extraordinarily expensive cable. Rather than get something good, like Kill Bill, or professional wrestling, we opted for a B horror movie called Leeches! (complete with exclamation point).

I was not previously a fan of low-budget horror movies but I have since been convinced of their appeal. You see, in Leeches!, the "plot" is as follows: There is a community college swim team who are taking steroids (oh no!) and are fond of walking around in their speedos everywhere and/or taking off their shirts. They are also fond of swimming in the local lake, which has leeches. The leeches are fond of sucking the blood of the swim team and so they end up growing really big (from the steroids, remember) and terrorizing everyone.

So pretty much the movie consisted of slow, pan-up shots of nearly naked Abercrombie models with similar acting skills being sucked dry by giant leeches which were quite clearly hand-puppets. One of the swimmers was a resident biology geek (Abercrombie model with glasses!) who was able to fill in the requisite plot holes with painfully obvious astute scientific concepts.

I think my favorite scene was when one of the swimmers was tied to the bed by his girlfriend who left him there to go get condoms and while she was out, leeches sucked him dry. Of course, the slowly crawled up his nearly naked body while he moaned, thinking it was his girlfriend.

There was, of course, deliciously humorous homoerotic subtext, mostly coming from the overly macho main asshole character, Steve-o, played by some blond with horrible poofy hair who was apparently also played River Garvey Carpenter #4 on One Life to Live. (Now, I don't watch soaps so I don't know exactly who River Garvey Carpenter is or why there needs to be four of him. But there you go.) He also apparently is allowed to do things with Jason that Jason's girlfriend doesn't need to know about.

So, in conclusion, I suggest that you go out and rent Leeches! immediately, especially if you like to see almost naked boys being erotically sucked by leeches in something that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike porn. Of course it would have been so much better if we'd been given even just one butt shot.

Requiem For a Cop

As most of you probably know, Jerry Orbach passed away a few days ago. Me, I was heart-broken. He was, in short, a New York institution. He was the reason I watched Law and Order. In college, I once planned a Jerry Orbach movie marathon (although I can't remember if it actually happened). May he not be forgotten. Nobody puts Jerry in a corner. Nobody.

What To Watch

Well, I've been doing a pretty good job of staying off of political blogs lately. This could be that I've been busier at work. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with will-power. But regardless I've decided to take this moment, post-election, post-World Series, to educate you all on what you should be watching on television, since I have DVR and can pretty much watch everything all at once, in whatever order I feel like it.

First, let's start with non-reality television. I have this inkling that reality television is increasing the quality of writing on the small screen, due to a decreased supply and increased demand (although not if you turn on ABC, where any day of the week you can see some mediocre sitcom with fat husband doing something incompetant and a skinny, beautiful wife berating him until he threatens to send her to the moon). So this season be sure to check out some goodies:

Arrested Development started its second season last week, and it is better than ever. An impeccable cast, completely with sharp writing and new twists on classic sitcom tropes (and no annoying laugh-track) makes this appointment television for Sunday nights. Look for Justine Bateman guest starring as a love-interest for Michael (her real-life brother, Jason Bateman). Trust me, hilarity will ensue. But if that doesn't float your boat, Portia di Rossi is still America's hottest real-life lesbian.

After that, take a quick jump to HBO, home of the best original programming on cable television, and tune into the third season of The Wire, by far the best show on television ever. Ever. Ever. Don't worry about catching up. Just watch it and get immersed into the seedy underworld of drugs, sex and politics. In Baltimore! If, however, you are a purest and you do need some background, Season One just came out on DVD. Buy it. Or buy it for me for my birthday. Season Two, while just as good as the rest, takes a side-trip into the world of drug smuggling, and so not much plot is advanced with regards to our favorite hot street dealer Stringer Bell and his soldiers, so you can skip it if you're just concerned with continuity.

Next, take a jaunt over to Comedy Central where South Park began its 9th season right before the election. Oh yeah, those boys are back, hot off of Team America and ready for poignant real-world satire. All I have to say is Giant Douche v. Turd Sandwich. And while you're there, you might want to stick around for Drawn Together, ostensibly a "Big Brother"-esque cartoon. In actuality, it's less a reality-show satire than absurdist pop-culture parody a la Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network (unfortunately Sealab 2021 is on hiatus). But it's not that bad.

Ok, now we jump into Thursdays, which has always been must see TV. But gone is the angsty nihilist humor of the 90s. Joey is, ironically, too smart for all that. No, instead you should start your night on the channel that began with trashy, racy soap opera and will no doubt die with it. That's right, kiddies, the OC has moved to Thursdays! And after you get your fix of attractive, back-stabbing teens, surf on over to NBC and watch attractive, back-stabbing businessmen and -women. My money's on Jen M. all the way!

And lastly, but not leastly, if you have the joys and wonders of DVR, or even HBO On Demand, postpone The Wire for a bit and check out My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss. Critics be damned, I laughed my ass off. Especially if you like The Apprentice. At least those contestants have some modicum of respectablity. But watching a bunch of mid-level ass-kissers praise the amazing quality of shitty champagne and being served ground-up Spam passed off as duck liver pate, you'll never look at reality television the same way again. If it continues to be this funny, I'll rank it right up there with The Joe Schmo Show.

So there you have it. If it's Sunday, Wednesday or Thursday, you know what I'm doing with my time. Hey, I spend $100 a month on cable; I might as well get my money's worth....

America, Fuck Yeah!

So last night I saw Team America: World Police, the latest offering from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I thought it was going to be heavy on the politics. But not really. It was pretty much all about how much Hollywood sucks, from its crappy movies to its crappy politics to its crappy self-importance. And about how utterly worthless Alec Baldwin is. It was shear genius. Genuis, I tell you. If you have any sort of sane worldview, you will laugh you ass off. And then you will cry. Cry because it is all too embarassingly true.

Don't Hate the Player...

... hate boring, pedestrian "scripties"! Reality TV is where it's at! Still!

First, there's The Player, which premiered last night on the UPN. Now, you may ask, what is so original about twenty guys living in a house and trying to win a date with a hot woman via a series of eliminations? What makes The Player different? Well, these guys aren't your average reality TV show contestents; these guys are all Players! That is to say they are overly quaffed and overly muscled and overly full of themselves, some of them to the point where they could jump into a pool fully clothed and their hair wouldn't move. If you can get through the many various urban accents of Dawn (the prize) and the over used "Don't hate the player, hate the game" that is sure to be the next office cooler catch-phrase, check out The Player, if only for my fav playah, J.J., the gotta-be-gay wigger from the West Side (of Phoenix).

And speaking of gotta-be-gay, if you haven't checked out the new season of The Joe Schmo Show on Spike TV then you haven't lived. Instead of a Big Brother-like show, this time they're duping both a man and a woman into believing they're on a reality dating show called "Last Chance For Love" where there are many challenges and "Falcon Twists". The two hour finale is next week. Watch it. And while you're at it, rent the first season which is out on DVD now.

Lastly, since it appears as though every other cable network has a reality show featuring the life of a celebrity, why not A&E? Growing Up Gotti has got to be the biggest disappointment in celebrity reality television. First of all Victoria Gotti is not crazy, a la Anna Nicole; she's kinda just normal. If I wanted to see an ugly middle aged celebrity deal with their job, family and oversensitiveness to their own wacky existence I'd watch Family Business because at least that has titties. The one upside is she's got three hot teenaged boys, if by hot you mean over-tanned, over-gelled and overly bitchy Long Island man-whores. But if all you want to do is ogle underaged spoiled brats, save yourself the trouble of watching the show and check out Hotti Gotti where you can go for all your Gotti boy-toy screensavers. You know you want to....

So remember, just when you thought reality television was dead, the networks (all the networks) have managed to scrap the bottom of the barrel to bring you more of what you crave: man-sluts.

Except I'm serious about Joe Schmo 2. Check that shit out. Like now.

Nothing To Say...

I just felt like blogging today but I've been working hard and haven't had much time to be interesting. Well, I did go to Beers of the World yesterday, an annual grad school picnic where I used to stay at for hours, get plastered and wake up drunk the next morning. Didn't this time. I must be getting old. I did get to drink Tecate in cans, however.

Oh, and I've been watching Joss Whedon's "Firefly," even though I swore I would boycott all things Whedon after that Angel finale debacle. It's actually surprisingly good. But I've figured out why it tanked (aside from the insto-death time slot of 8pm Fridays): the title sequence sucks, especially the crappy song. You can't have a successful TV show with a shitty opening. Well, maybe it was ok for "Friends," but still....

A Trip To The Movies...

Since it was a rainy, nasty day yesterday, we decided to catch an early showing of Spiderman, which was of course entertaining but didn't show enough shots of Tobey Maguire's cute little, nevermind. Anyway, like most movie experiences on E 86th St., someone managed to royally piss off the audience. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, try going to that theater to watch the new Blade flick on opening night.)

Now, I'm not about to make any assumptions about the intelligence level of your average theater attendant, but you really don't need to be all that aggressive a thinker to know that letting a five-year-old into a movie theater with a helium balloon is not the greatest idea in the world. You see, as we (and others) were waiting patiently for our $10.25 movie to begin, said child (who managed to get passed the razor-sharp security) lost his grip on said balloon. Now this resulting in two distinct, yet related situations, namely a) a balloon bobbing up and down in front of the movie screen and b) an upset child who had lost said balloon and was making it known to the rest of the theater, loudly, and without much in the way of actual vocabulary.

But our tale of helium woes has just begun. About every ten minutes the balloon, which thankfully prefered to remain close to the ceiling, would make a cameo appearance on-screen. But lo! during a stirring speech by Dr. Octopus the balloon floated closer and closer to the ground, eliciting cries of "grab it! grab it!" from the crowd. A virtuous young lady, heeding those calls, leapt up from her front row seat and snatched the offending balloon and destroying it. She was greeted by much applause. Applause which, unfortunately, had it's own nasty side effects, namely setting off an applause chain reaction, not unlike Doc Ock's self-sustaining fusion reaction which used the unrealistically solid substance of tritium. This audience started clapping at everything! Aw, they kissed. Clap clap clap. Wow, Spiderman did something cool! Clap clap clap. Hey, great use of a classic Hollywood musical score! Clap clap clap.

Needless to say, it was an enjoyably campy romp through summer blockbuster spendor as seen in the Big City. Go see the movie; it's well worth it. And try to figure out how and why they appear to have taken a quick jaunt to Chi-Town...

F*cking Kabbalah

It's the simplest recipe for success. You're a pop megastar with a twenty year career, something like 60 million albums sold, at least 50 hit singles and an athletic body that looks at least fifteen years younger than your age. You have millions of fans ready to shell out upwards of $300 a ticket for a concert. You've got billions of dollars of personal assets, access to the best choreographers, producers, promotors and videographers in the world and a stadium in every major city willing to let you play. All you have to do is play some old favorites, remix a few songs to spice things up and grind your breasts against half-naked male dancers and your fans will be screaming for more all night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Or you could do what Madonna did with her "Re-Invention Tour"...

I don't think there's any good place to begin, other than the beginning. Madonna (Esther) rises on stage in a toned-down version of her bustier days and does some yoga to "Vogue". We stayed seated because we were wating for her to warn us up. After a song that nobody seemed to recognize (which Madonna must have figured because she kept flashing the lyrics up on the screen) she stood in front of a mike stand and sang "Frozen" while a Chris Cunningham video played in the background. I hate that song but would have forced myself to get into it if I had known that it was just going to go down hill from there.

I'm not entirely sure when she lost me. It may have been her electric guitar rendition of "Material Girl". Or maybe it was when the wimple- and burkha-clad women came dancing with her on the catwalk during "American Life." Or possibly when she broke into a jazz version (a jazz version!) of "Deeper and Deeper." It's entirely possible that it was during her horribly choreographed rendition of "Die Another Day" which ended with her being strapped into an electric chair (an electric chair!) and having to endure a song from Evita, and not one of the popular songs you'd recognize immediately either (and believe me, if anyone should have recognized it, it should have been me).

It could have been at any one of those moments. But I know which moment got her heckled (by people other than us, who were doing our fair share of heckling). It was when she informed us that she was about to perform a "no-sitting down song" (and if you have to tell your audience not to sit, you're doing something wickedly wrong) and she broke into "Like a Prayer." I don't know what the hell she did to it but that song was more exciting when I used to listen to it on cassette in my old Buick Skylark with one broken speaker than being performed live by Madonna in a 20,000 seat stadium. Maybe it was the slower than natural tempo or the entirely un-ironic beating Sacred Heart and crucified Christ looming behind her. But my guess was that it led into a cover of a song that, and I quote the material girl verbatim, "was written 35 years ago but sounds like it could have been written today." Oh yes, my brothers and sisters, Madonna/Esther serenaded us with "Imagine" (yes, that "Imagine") while we were subjected to images of impoverished Palestinian children and starving Africans, ending in a commercial (a commercial!) for SpiritualityForKids.org. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the great Madonna was booed. Unfortunately not off-stage. Although I am curious to know if she appreciated the irony of singing the line "don't tell me to stop"...

I don't mean to be too negative, though. There were some highlights. We got to hear "Burning Up", a great version of "Crazy For You" and "Hanky-Panky", which unfortunately wasn't nearly as dirty as it should have been. But where was "Like a Virgin", "Ray of Light" and "Beautiful Stranger"? Where was the energy?

I'll tell you where the energy got into sucked to: Kabbalah.

Our evening was summed up best as we were forced to trek through the ghetto to get to the subway and were stopped by a homeless man asking for change. The boy replied: "Sorry, I just gave all my money to Madonna, but believe me it would've been better spent giving it all to you."

Don't Feed the Plants!

For my little sister's birthday/graduation present, I let her come visit me in the city, play Atari (because she always let me play Vice City on her PS2) and see Little Shop of Horrors. I knew that the cast was being overhauled but I didn't know what a surprise I was in for. Hunter Foster left to go to The Producers (I wish I'd known *that* before I saw it last month) and as Melissa and I were walking down the street with both caught a glimpse of the marquee.

"Little Shop of Horrors!" it said in large lettering. And, much to my pleasure (chagrin?) a sign almost as large underneath. I was flabbergasted. Flabbergasted. "Now Starring.... Joey Fatone!" Yup, kiddies, Seymour Krelborn was being played by none other than the fat one from *NSYNC. Needless to say, it made our night. Also needless to say, he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

Pop Culture Immersion

So last night I decided to immerse myself fully into middlebrow American pop culture by indulging in both a #1 pop-schlock bestseller and a made-for-TV movie based on a #1 pop-schlock bestseller, The Da Vinci Code and TNT's 'Salem's Lot.

Woo-wee! What a ride that one was. First, I finished The Da Vinci Code and I have to say that Dan Brown is no Umberto Eco, try as he might. A lot of the book was just flaunting random knowledge and useless linguistic observations which served the author's ego more than his unindoctrinated readers. Second, he lied. Well, he didn't really lie, as some people might have you think. But he definitely bent the truth to serve his story. The problem that I had was that he painted some of the historical origins of the Catholic Church as if it had been covering up some vast conspiracy. Unfortunately I knew most of everything he was saying because I, um, went to Catholic school and they told us how the early Church leaders got together and decided what should stay in the Bible and what shouldn't. For example. Of course, if I give him more credit than I ought to, I would say that all his manipulations and machinations were calculated and intentional and the reader was supposed to see through them as exactly that simply because "everyone loves a conspiracy." That would be, like, meta or something. Deep, man, deep.

My second foray into pop culture land was a TV mini-series starring Rob Lowe and about vampires. Ironically, it co-starred both Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer who also co-starred in another pop-culture vampire movie that spawned a legacy. Now, I could critique this till the cows come home because 'Salem's Lot is my favorite Stephen King novel and they just plain ruined the ending. Up until that it was very, very good. But why mess with greatness? And they were just plain inconsistent with the vampires. I did, however, realize that Stephen King has a message buried in his story: support of the FMA. Think about it: two fussy, foppish antique dealers, "partners" if you will, move into a small town. The town suspects something is funny about their relationship. Soon, small boys go missing. In no time they've converted the entire town to their evil ways. See, not only are gays responsible for the torture in Iraq, but for vampires too.

Your Beauty Effulgent...

Well did they all die or not? The series finale of Angel last night has given me pause. I don't know what to think. In some ways it was a perfect coda; we got to see a glimpse of all the characters' internal desires as they spend their 'last day' before the final battle. And yet they go into battle alone. Angel signs away his Shanshu but for what? And where were the Powers That Be? Don't get me wrong, it was a better ending than Buffy, but it didn't come full circle. The mission of the show seemed to have been lost somewhere along the way. Whereas Buffy's journey ended with Willow, Xander and Giles right their with her, Angel doesn't have Doyle or Cordelia and Wesley is dead by the time the shit truly hits the fan. It didn't ring as true as it could have.

What truly bothered me was that the Senior Partners' plans seem to have become entirely inconsistent. They spent five years meticulously trying to get Angel to turn evil yet keep him alive and then he ticks them off a bit so they crush him? Dammit, I wanted an apocalypse. They probably just didn't have the budget.

At least Spike got his recognition as a poet, even if he's still bloody awful.

And once again I am painfully reminded how much I miss Cordelia.

Well, Joss, you didn't piss me off entirely so I might give you another chance someday. It's been a good 8 years, and I'll definitely miss your world.

Post-Meta-Existentialism for the 21st Century

The existential poetry of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set to chamber music. I love this man more and more each day.

Hung Like a Horse

So I've been listening to Launchcast radio because it's free and supposedly customized to play things that it thinks you want to hear. Well apparently it thinks I want to hear William Hung of American Idol infamy sing "Shake Your Bon Bon" because that's what I just heard. It's off his new album, Inspiration, which contains some great classics as "I Believe I Can Fly", "Circle of Life" and of course "She Bangs." It also has "inspirational thoughts". I've now put him on heavy rotation because it so God-awful bad that it's mmm-mmm good. I also had the pleasure of hearing his private voicemail due to a friend of a friend in the business. Everything about this man rocks my world. I might have to buy the CD. Maybe Launchcast is smarter than I thought.

Van Hottie

Ok, so pretty much Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing has absolutely no redeeming qualities, aside from Kate Beckinsale's heaving breasts and 18th century stretch-pants. Oh, and of course Jackman gets naked and bruised at the end. Otherwise it was overacted and over-CGI'd. And we never really get to know who Van Helsing the man really is. Or what the actual plot might be. Or what the Vatican was doing with her own version of Q....

I am, however, waiting patiently for the sequel, because I'm dying to figure out the answers to all the intriguing loose ends they left...

I Got 99 Problems...

... and Angel is one of them. I swear Mutant Enemy has not only systematically mutilated every character on Angel but now they've attacked the Buffyverse as well. We've got two episodes left. Count them; one, two. And what do we get? Angel and Spike in a teenaged pissing contest over an ex-girlfriend. What about the apocalypse? Or the grand plans of Wolfram and Hart? Or that uber-demon who's inhabited the body of Amy Acker and given her the ability to act decently? No, instead we get a bad buddy-movie chase scene in a cheesy sound-staged Italian street, not to mention the dolce vita, devil-may-care Italian CEO and mafia demons wearing masks that Mutant Enemy apparently pulled out of the overstock bin in a Halloween store. And this "the apocalypse is happening all around you" crap-ola is, um, crap-ola. This show stopped being a metaphor somewhere around Pylea and not only is this plotline over-done shyte, it's over-done shyte from the second season of this very television show! Even the Dru and Darla cameo wasn't worth it. The one shining moment was, believe it or not, Andrew, who was wearing a Strong Bad t-shirt. Seriously, it's no wonder Sarah Michelle Gellar wants nothing to do with this any more. I swear if the next two episodes don't have me crapping my pants with awe, I'm officially declaring Joss Whedon a hack and will refuse to watch anything he makes ever again.

On a more positive note, Shorties Watching Shorties on Comedy Central is surprising good. The concept is simple (animated shorts set to audio clips of stand-up comics) but the execution is pretty solid. Patrice O'Neal and Nick DiPaolo need to find their voice as overly precocious infants, an over-used trope that doesn't quite resonate and I don't think ever will. But the shorts are frickin' hysterical, although I think it helps if you have an encyclopedic knowledge of stand-up.