The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

We’re turning into the unofficial Doogie Howser fan blog here at The Sly. But it’s all good. I think people could afford to have more Doogie in their lives. So now that Dr. Horrible has ended and the numbers are being crunched as to the business side of things, which Joss himself seems to concur, what’s doing with The Doog?

Well, glad you asked. Or rather we asked. A while back we mentioned that Feist would be adding some hipster indie cred to Sesame Street on the 39th season premiere. And guess who’s going to be there with her? That’s right. It’s the Doogster*.

He’ll be playing a shoe fairy. “Not the shoe fairy – the fairy shoe person. It’s quite a different connotation. I was asked by Sesame Street to be a part of a song and I just leapt at the opportunity. Jim Henson was the only person I ever wrote a fan letter to as a kid and I’m a wild fan of puppets and the Henson Company in general,” he told After Elton. “They wrote a song, wanted me to sing it. There are all these different mythical characters this season. Sandra Oh plays another type of fairy that Abby Cadabra creates and so we got to do this big musical number with puppets and dancing. It was a great, great afternoon. It’s one demographic that I have yet to win over.”

Well consider them won over.

*Joss has the best line about people calling NPH “Doogie.” When he said that Doogie has a name and it’s “Barney.” That just kills me. Always quick with a joke that Joss Whedon character. [via]

But it’s close.  Like all things WNBA, though, it just doesn’t compare to the boys.  Lots of shovin’, lots of pushing, a few good takes downs, but unfortunately no one pulled a Kermit Washington.  Though is we had to guess, we think Candace Parker has some potential to go all Kermit on another player and give one of them gals a Rudy Tomjonovich (video evidence).

So Candace Parker was just one of man players involved in Tuesday’s “brawl.”

“I have been covering women’s basketball for 18 years and the WNBA since its inception in 1997, and I have never seen anything even close to this,” ESPN game analyst Doris Burke said. Look, girls will be girls and it was nice to see them take a break from layups and midrange jumpers, but it’s not like there were any good punches landed.

What’s up with the water in Detroit?  Between this and Ron Artest reigning hellfire on the Palace crowd there’s got to be something going on right?

I was more of a Betty White kind of kid, but Estelle Getty and the feisty character of Sophia always made me laugh. Of course she made Stop or My Mom Will Shoot um, well, not even she couldn’t make that movie bearable. Still, though, she’ll be missed. Thank goodness for reruns. And though I can’t quite eulogize everyone’s television grandma the guy below I think captured what we’re all feeling.

“I’ve played mothers to heroes and mothers to zeroes. I’ve played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Southern mothers, mothers in plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. I’ve played mother to everyone but Attila the Hun,” she said famously about her career. It was the role of Bea Arthur’s mother that made us fall in love with.

I might be able to think of a reason or two why you’re crying buddy. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Brittany Spears playing as background music. Dude, man up. I know we’re all gonna miss Estelle Getty, but seriously. He’s probably crying because we’re about seven days too late with this lame obituary.

Last night I was driving home from an Emmylou Harris concert at Oregon Zoo (short review: Awesome venue, you’re right next to the elephants and before the show they released birds of prey into the audience! There is no way to put this into proper context. I never heard anything by Harris before last night [hence the lack of formal review] and was totally blown away. She’s amazing, emotionally resonant, great stage banter, she’s the real deal. I feel like I just discovered Klondike Bars as a seven-year-old.) and listening to Love Line with Dr. Drew.

Which I forgot how awesome that show is because it’s the only place you’ll get to hear a guy nonchalantly ask about his girlfriend possibly giving him chlamydia - dude she cheated on you! - and then have an 18-year-old girl call in and ask if masturbating with a dildo five to ten times a week is safe. Five to ten times! My god. It might be safe but holy crap that can’t be healthy. I mean I know she isn’t going to end up blind. The best part was during her entire call, Dr. Drew is trying to give her honest advice and help her through her problem and Seth Green is in the background munching on In-And-Out Burger and saying things like, “Yeah Matilda it’s all good! You’re just trying to find out how you like it” in this creepy pederass voice.

Funniest show on the radio.

What stopped me on the dial, oddly enough however, was Seth Green promoting Robot Chicken and talking about Family Guy and doing much of the interview in his voice he uses for Chris and imitating Soundwave from Transformers. I’m convinced that Hollywood is the least cool place on Earth. It’s basically a cesspool for all the theater dorks in high school only with more money, better makeup and fancier clothes. And before you jump all over me, I’m the least cool person I know I was both a band dork and a theater dork and several other doses of dorkitude in high school.

Anyway, the topic turned to Matthew McConaughey because Green also does the voice for McConaughey whenever he is on Family Guy. His impression was stellar and his insight into the life of McConaughey had me chortling uncontrollably.

So when I got home, of course I was flipping around YouTube for some clips of McConaughey on Family Guy, then I wanted to find the trailer for his new movie Surfer Dude, which in turn led to this clip below which just about made my night.

And yes, I realize that this might be the only post that scatologically jumps from Emmylou Harris to Dr. Drew to Seth Green to Matthew McConaughey to some surfer guy in California. Six degrees of fun!

Newspapers are littered with random articles about Beijing, all made relevant by the 2008 Olympics.  Reporters poke fun at sloppy English translations, filth in the streets and the general fuck-all attitude of city dwellers.  But The New York Times takes the cake this morning with by far the most prejudiced and badass article on Beijing I’ve ever read.

The article is about smoking, and how even after laws were passed and anti-smoking signs hung, Beijing remains a city of smokers. One in four people smoke. Doctors smoke in hospitals. “… a 2004 government survey of 3,600 doctors found that 30 percent did not know that smoking could lead to heart disease and circulation problems.”

Holy shit, right?  Still: coolest city ever, as evidenced by this headlining pic:

Look at that guy.  Leaning back, puffing on a cancer stick with no less than eight empty beer bottles in front of him.  Who knew Beijing was the Party Capital of the World?  I do, now.

The Times article also shows a mother smoking in front of her two-year-old, telling the reporter it’ll “make [him] stronger,” and people laughing in the face of a year-old ban on smoking in taxis, even after the taxi driver politely says something, even if the taxi driver is, himself, a non-smoker.

Okay, so a lot of the article is disgusting, and paints residents in a ghastly light.  But for all the stories you’ve heard about cancer, death, disfigurement, miscarriages and other light family fare, the mythos of badassery still surrounds smoking.  And because Beijing flaunts its hard-drinking, chain-smoking cowboy ways, you’ve gotta give respect where it’s due.

I’m not sure how HBO and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under & American Beauty scribe) will pull off a vampire show or what the angle will be on vampires, but the notion that vampires can walk amongst regular humans because of a product from Japan called Tru Blood is intriguing.

The poster was sorta meh?, but the viral videos on YouTube providing lots of background for the show are promising, or maybe the right word is intriguing.

Still, it stars Anna Paquin, as a barmaid in Louisiana who can read people’s minds. It’s based on the “Southern Vampire” series of books by Charlaine Harris. We’ll at least be checking it out when it debuts on Sept. 7. Since we love all things vampires.

Hopefully, some sort of slayer or big corporation conspiracy will take place, or at the very least Kate Beckinsale will show up in some leather outfit.

One of the biggest failures of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act is its heavy reliance on standardized tests.  Studies have shown that while standardized testing may be a step forward in regularizing education, it oftentimes shoves lower-performing students—and entire school systems—further into despair.

In an eye-opening report from eSchool News, grades K - 12 still haven’t grasped the crucial nature of personalized technology assessment programs to individually foster a child’s education.  Without these technologies, children may find themselves struggling to keep up with classmates and overwhelmed and unprepared for postsecondary education.

Tailored and adaptive educational technology can pinpoint deficiencies in a student’s learning and work to strengthen weak areas.  If struggling students must rely on standardized tests, they risk the possibility of failure, devastation of the self-esteem, a lowering of the school’s NCLB scores—and, ultimately, the amount of funding President Bush’s program wants to dish out to difficult schools.

The good news is that huge strides have been made in the arena of wide-reaching Internet access and security tools to protect student data, applications and documents.

In the meantime, educational publishers are working hard to create these materials to distribute to schools.  The marketplace is booming with technology.  Publishers are less reliant on traditional manufacturing plants, all in an effort to broaden the eBook phenomenon.  Facebook, Amazon’s Kindle, the iPhone and various other personal technologies all make their way into corporate consideration.  But if public schools cannot afford these tools, or are not made aware of them, the nightmare that which is NCLB may continue unabated.

It goes something like this, and take this with a grain of salt since The Sun isn’t exactly known for its journalism integrity, but The Dark Knight star, Christian Bale, aka Batman, was allowed by police to attend the London premiere of the greatest movie in the history of the universe (internet’s description not ours) even though he was wanted for questioning in connection to assaulting his mother and sister.

That’s how you spell it.  Now, this is coming from The Sun and here’s the basis for the story.  Bale’s mother and sister went to lodge a complaint at a Hampshire, UK police station yesterday.  Today, Bale will be brought in for questioning regarding the undisclosed matter.

A Met Police spokesman said: “We can confirm we have received allegation from another force in relation to an alleged incident in central London.”

Then the story is rounded out with quotes from an unnamed source, never a good thing, and some bullshit background about Ledger’s death.  Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Tokyo Police Club come in hard and fast, with shimmering, angular songs. Tessallate is the word that comes to mind.

Their debut album Elephant Shell clocks in around 30 minutes. Which is the ideal length for an album in this ADHD musical world we live in. It’s over before you know it. The only problem is that the songs kinda song samey - they bleed together.

“Graves” gets the video treatment with the band playing in an antique store. The people are frozen and the lights have a mind of their own. It’s scary in the same way getting dragged to antique stores as a kid is scary. “Don’t touch anything!” or um, “You break it you buy it!” were two of my favorite condescending sayings. And no Mom, those were from the shop owners, so don’t worry. Strange that after all these years, I’m only now just appreciating those kind of stores. This video, though, we can appreciate now.

Mp3: Tokyo Police Club - “Graves”

This “job montage” sequence from this week’s Step Brothers, a comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, drops a lot of F-Bombs. A lot. I haven’t heard that many since my sophomore year in high school when my pre-algebra teacher called me in for a meeting. That was rough. This is just funny.

Despite the quality of his comedies trailer off sharply, we still have a soft-spot for man child Ferrell and when John C. Reilly does goofy comedy like this, there is hardly anyone better.

Best. Thing. Ever.  If only this came with a radio activated voice.  Or a way to control him like a remote control car.

More photos at Brickshelf.  [via]

The SciFi Channel just released the first trailer for the upcoming Caprica. The show, at least from the trailer, threw me for a loop. It looks remarkably different, visually anyhow, than it’s predecessor Battlestar Galactica. Looks like Ron Moore is interested in telling a science-fiction family drama that will somehow lead into the show every geek loves. It’s almost pastoral in a way, like a scifi Rockwell painting.

There will be baggage with this show, simply because of the greatness of Battlestar. Still, the premise about two families who bond over a tragedy and help create the first Cylon model looks like it will raise some fascinating questions and moral dilemmas. We all know by now how this story turns out, well, those that watch Battlestar do anyway.

Joseph Adama (Admiral Bill Adama’s father) uses his dead daughter to build the first Cylon. That’s some heavy shit right there.

According to this interview show creator Ron Moore gave with the Chicago Tribune, “Caprica” is set 51 years before the events of “Battlestar Galactica.” According to a March press release from Sci Fi, “’Caprica’ follows two rival families – the Greystones and the Adamas – as they grow, compete, and thrive in the vibrant world of the 12 Colonies. Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe.”

Moore also said during the interview that Caprica is, “shot very different, and I think I was particularly attracted to the idea of doing a science fiction piece that was not built on a foundation of action adventure. It wasn’t about Vipers and it wasn’t about the Cylons attacking every other week. It was really a character piece. It was really a drama, and you can infuse with a lot of political commentary and a lot of religious overtones and really dig into a people and a society and how and why it all came unglued.”

The adorable, blue blaz’-lovin’ comedian Liz Feldman will be back in her kitchen with new episodes of This Just Out on AfterEllen.com starting July 28th. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, I would suggest watching it, obviously, but basically it’s a talk show in which she hits on her (usually straight) guests. Her friend, Raimy Rosenduft, who, in my opinion, has great taste in music, suggests new bands every episode. Good music, comedy, and lesbians, honestly, what more do you need?

Here’s a promo for the new season with Liz and Raimy lip-synching the new theme song that Uh Huh Her wrote on the last episode.

(Man that’s a clever headline.  I am so witty.)

The Death of Entertainment—or, as some call it, the date Jimmy Fallon takes the “Late Night” reigns from Conan O’Brien—will begin a bit earlier than expected.  Lorne Michaels decided to put Fallon on the Interwebs to “work out as many of the rough spots in his presentation as possible in performances on a website.”

Read: Try his damndest not to suck so terribly that no one watches “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”  I don’t think it’s possible.  I think Fallon is going to suck hard.  He’s worse than the Iraq War.

If this were any other host—or, indeed, anyone else in the entire fucking world—it’d be an interesting idea.  Michaels intends on posting Fallon’s abortions at 12:30AM every night to get the audience in the menstrual flow.  It affords the unfunny comedian a unique opportunity to generate a “voice” and begin compiling an audience.

However, I find it hard to believe anyone will boot up their PCs during Conan to watch Fallon giggle at his own jokes to the backdrop of a silent, resentful audience.

You know, regardless of credentials and experience and direction of the country and all the nonsense we get caught up with when voting, in this information age shouldn’t using the internet be important?  Shouldn’t using a computer and understanding how they fit into contemporary life be important.  Shouldn’t things like net neutrality, etc. be important for our next president?

It’s understandable that John McCain wouldn’t use a computer, but when he admitted he didn’t know how to use one, well, shit.  That’s just confounding.  My grandma uses a computer regularly to check email, surf the internet, play scrabble, etc.

She’s not alone:

How unusual is it for a 71-year-old American to be unplugged?

That depends how you look at the statistics. Only 35 percent of Americans over age 65 are online, according to data from April and May compiled by the Pew Internet Project at the Pew Research Center.

But when you account for factors like race, wealth and education, the picture changes dramatically. “About three-quarters of white, college-educated men age over 65 use the Internet,” says Susannah Fox, director of the project.

“John McCain is an outlier when you compare him to his peers,” Fox says. “On one hand, a U.S. senator has access to information sources and staff assistance that most people do not. On the other, the Internet has become such a go-to resource that it’s a curiosity to hear that someone doesn’t rely on it the way most Americans do.”

But the best part, and I’m not making this up, comes a bit further down in the article.  “”He’s fully capable of browsing the Internet and checking Web sites,” Brooke Buchanan, McCain’s spokewoman said. “He has a Mac and uses it several times a week. He’s working on becoming more familiar with the Internet.”

Ah, let’s get him a cookie and some milk and pat him on the head before putting him down for a nap.  You’re so cute, yes you are.  Yes you are.  You can check websites!

Actually, that’s about all I use the internet for.  Well, that and porn and stealing music so you know.  We have that in common.

Buzz is we’re headed toward another economic stimulus check, perhaps as early as September 2008.  This is the work of Democrats, and, if I’m 100% right 100% of the time, will happen.

See, it’s election season, and we teeter of the precipice of a hardcore recession.  If the Democrats slide this through the cogs and Republicans reject it, guess who looks like insensitive dicks.

Republicans, of course, are wary of this tactic.  They’re also seemingly onboard with the proposal.

We friggin’ need it, folks.  The last stimulus check did nothing—nothing! I paid off a bit of a credit card and that’s it.  What I really wanted was an iPhone, or something awesome I could flash around and say, “Guess what George W. Bush bought me?  This!”

So if this next stimulus check goes through, I promise to invigorate the economy with it.  But for those with cars, is this even possible?  Won’t this additional $600 goes to paying off the credit cards you bogged down with gasoline debt?

No matter how these dice are rolled, no one worth a damn would ever reject “free” money.