Sunday, November 2, 2003

The Bush Boom?

Is the economy really on a rebound? I'll believe that when more people start using Paypal to donate money to this site.

• Posted at 9:56 PM · LINK

Late Night Mud Wrestling

Here's an article by Bill Carter on the relative ratings of Leno and Letterman. This one should be read the way you read any political report, with the spokesperson for each side madly spinning their weaknesses as strengths and blaming others for their own shortcomings. And keep in mind that neither show is in any jeopardy of being cancelled. This is, for the folks who put the shows together, all about ego. And for the networks, it's all about trying to make profitable shows even more profitable.

• Posted at 9:54 PM · LINK

Foxed!

A few weeks ago, a lot of sites (including this one) quoted Simpsons creator Matt Groening with a story about Fox News threatening to sue his show for an animated parody that, Fox reportedly felt, might be confused with a real newscast. According to this article, Matt now says he was kidding.

• Posted at 5:32 PM · LINK

Recommended Weblog

One of our funnier stand-up comedians, Margaret Cho, has her own weblog. Very entertaining. Read it and read back a few weeks while you're at it.

• Posted at 5:12 PM · LINK

Where Did We Go Right Wrong?

So how is that The Producers, once the hottest ticket in the history of Broadway, is not what it used to be? Here's an article entitled, "The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Blockbuster." (New York Times registration required)

• Posted at 4:17 PM · LINK

SNL: The Lost Years

Late Saturday nights (i.e., Sunday mornings), NBC airs a "classic" episode of Saturday Night Live in most cities. Unlike the reruns on Comedy Central and E!, these "NBC Up All Night" reruns are not cut down to an hour, so they include all the segments that are cut when that is done. Like the off-network reruns, they have usually avoided the years when SNL was not produced by Lorne Michaels. For a time, they were selected mainly from the Phil Hartman-Dana Carvey years with an occasional pick from the first cast. The last six-or-so months, they've all been recent enough to include shows with Will Farrell and Cheri Oteri. Neglected in all this were some decent and occasionally fine shows from the years when Mr. Michaels was away — shows that featured Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Martin Short and other very fine performers. For some reason, NBC has occasionally announced a rerun from one of those seasons, then aired a Lorne-produced episode instead.

Until last night. The listings said that the 11/1 rerun would be the 11/3/84 show hosted by Michael McKean, and that the 11/8 rerun will be the 11/10/84 show, which was hosted by George Carlin — both from non-Lorne years. I set the TiVo for last night but fully expected to wake up this morn and find an episode with Darrell Hammond. Instead, they ran the Carlin one, the one announced for next week. I'm watching it now and you know what? It's not bad. Some of the sketches are funny and there's that "time capsule" interest of jokes about how Walter Mondale just lost the election and such. The cast includes Crystal, Guest, Short, Harry Shearer, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Gary Kroeger, Mary Gross, Jim Belushi, Rich Hall and Pamela Stephenson. At the moment, Shearer is doing an uncanny impression of Alan Thicke interviewing Short as his aged songwriter character, Irving Cohen.

I dunno what they'll be running next week. The official NBC release says it's the episode they ran this morning. TiVo says it's a recent one with Rachel Dratch, Jimmy Fallon, etc. If you're interested in the less-remembered eras of SNL, you might want to record it. There's no telling what will actually air.

• Posted at 11:08 AM · LINK

November 1, 2003 • Current • November 3, 2003