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.”
*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?
This time they are rolling out a challenger to Wikipedia. It’s called Knol. It’s slightly different from the anything-goes Wikipedia in that the authors are identified by their real names (and verified), and that they can share in ad revenue if they choose to. The service initially features a lot of medical articles, which is coincidental because Medipedia also launched today. This medical wiki is backed by Harvard’s and Stanford’s medical schools. Wired has an in-depth look at Google’s latest plan to dominate the commodity of information.
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!
Heather has done it again and dug up a shit ton of live cover songs by Wilco. I can’t wait to dig into these tunes because I love both covers and Wilco. Among the bands Jeff Tweedy and company put a spin to are The Kinks, The Stooges, Daniel Johnston, Kermit the Frog, U2, Carole King, Brian Wilson, The Who, Bob Dylan, and so many others. She found these tunes over at Owl and Bear, but b/c they only deal in FLAC files, Heather has been generous enough to translate them all to Mp3 for your enjoyment. Grab nearly 29 covers and keep your eyes out for part 2!
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.
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.
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.
Which is like saying here are some good albums from some British bands you may have heard of. The award is given strictly on merits of music. But, it helps if you are a member of The Arctic Monkeys since they always get nominated for this prize. Among the notables in contention for the award this year are: Radiohead - In Rainbows, Adele - 19, British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?, Burial - Untrue, Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid, Estelle - Shine, Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim, Neon Neon - Stainless Style, Portico Quartet - Knee - Deep in the North Sea, Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand, and finally, The Last Shadow Puppets (Monkey’s frontman Alex Turner’s other band) - The Age of the Understatement.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Now that everyone has seen the movie, we can probably talk about it openly. How much money is the movie going to make? Bundles more, there really isn’t anything on the horizon that looks to challenge the movie. I’ll be back tonight to offer some thoughts about it and basically say goodbye to the movie after following it’s development from start to finish. Quickly: I love it. Thought it was pretty remarkable, but I did have some problems with it and I wanted to share them and see what other people thought. So look for that tonight. I don’t want to be contrarian, however, I think some things need to be discussed, things that need time to be fleshed out further.
Thank the Gods we can all put the speculation to rest. I was getting worried that the new series Caprica might be all we got for a long, long while. It’s also possible that Caprica may just go to series that the backdoor pilot/movie will be folded into the first season. Essentially, the SciFi network has enough confidence in the show’s lasting appeal and quality to make a go of it. iF Magazine has more deets about the upcoming SciFi schedule.
I’ve held off on posting about the new season of 24 for the most part simply because the last few seasons have slipped in quality with the death knell of last season, which struck me as a shameful parody of the show. It has reached a point, I believe, where they either have to call it quits or radically reinvent the show. It sounds as if the new season will be neither of those two things.
The producers had a chance to do so last season, where instead of a season where Jack Bauer skips around town doing the same old thing, battling the same old plot twists, they should have made the entire season about Jack Bauer breaking out of a Chinese prison and attempting to get back home to America. It would have been the perfect ending to the show. Jack on the run, out numbered and facing the heat in Southeast Asia.
Anyway, this time Jack Bauer plays the White savior for the fictional dark continental country of Sengala. Can’t say this trailer makes me want to see the new season, but I know I’ll watch.
1925 in Dayton, Tenn.: Quiet red-haired and boyish biology teacher and part-time football coach John Scopes was found guilty for teaching evolution in his classroom, which at that time was in violation of Tennessee state law.
Trial of the century, is what it was called. Scopes agreed reluctantly to the ACLU’s insistence on going to trial. He was cajoled into being a guinea pig to challenge the Constitutionality of the law.
Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow and the State of Tennessee and the fundamentalists were represented by super-duper lawyer William Jennings Bryan - three-time Democratic nominee for president and a paradoxical blend of progressive conservatism.
At stake was the legitimacy to teach the theories of Charles Darwin. Ironically, no one knows if Scopes actually taught his class the theory of evolution. After all these years, Scopes isn’t some noble crusader but more of a reluctant participant.
One of the enduring debates concerning the Scopes trial revolves around whether Scopes ever actually taught the subject of evolution.George Rappalyea posed the question, holding up a copy of George W. Hunter’s Civic Biology, at Robinson’s drugstore. “You have been teaching ‘em this book?” he asked. Scopes answered, “Yes,” then went on to explain that, while substituting for the regular biology teacher in April 1925, he had assigned his students Hunter’s chapter on evolution.Illness the next day, however, kept him home and, to his recollection, no class discussion of the evolution materials ever took place.Scopes, however, remembered teaching the topic in a general way earlier in the same month to his general science students.
Still, the trial went forward over eight sweltering days. National newspapers swarmed the small town (can honestly say I’ve been to Dayton and it’s charming and remote and they have a small plaque dedicated to the event) dubbing the trial “The Monkey Trial.” No reporting was more important than that of Baltimore Sun reporter H.L. Mencken, who with cynicism provided accounts back north. It’s almost difficult reading his reports that that was journalism at one point. Far different from the septic and innocuous even-handed reporting that is in vogue today.
Scopes was found guilty by a jury of his peers and ordered to pay a $100 fine.
His team appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court and though his conviction stood, his fine was overturned.
Bryan, meanwhile, died only five days after the conclusion of the Monkey Trial.
The Butler Act, as the anti-evolution law was known, remained on the books in Tennessee until its repeal by the state legislature in 1967.
It’s hard to say what the aftermath of this event had. Obviously, it paved the way for real science education in America, but the anti-evolution laws stayed on the books for nearly forty years and to this day science is still under the gun from fundamentalists seeking to teach God (and not just god but a distinctly Christian one at that) in the science classroom. It’s a thin line and it can disappear easily if people aren’t willing to stand up to those corruptible forces.
David Carr is the real deal New York Times media/culture critic and he’s coming out with a book about his days in Minnesota battling substance abuse and trying to get his life together, who only did so when his twin daughters came into his life. The early buzz is tantamount to a tsunami.
Books about substance abuse are often the most talked about books because they take place in a world that many people begin to travel down at 18-25, but most people make an abrupt U-turn when the realize the stakes involved with continuing down the darkened alley. And let’s be honest, to a certain extent for those who have never been habitual drug users, it’s a fascinating world. One that 80% of people are not privy to.
He’s the rub for The Night of the Gun. David Carr doesn’t trust his memory of those events, so rather than embellish them and become embroiled in some James Frey-type of shit (would you want Oprah bitch-slapping you?) he went out and thoroughly investigated his own life. Pouring over court documents and arrest records and interviewing over sixty people connected to his life at that time. It sounds like heady stuff. Stuff that I can’t wait to dig into.
The New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt this morning of the book titled “Me and My Girls.” It’s breathtaking, simply one of the most outstanding things I’ve read in quite some time. MORE »
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