Thursday, October 21, 2004

Funniest Thing on TV So Far This Week

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog in "Spin Alley" after the third Bush-Kerry debate...a segment shown tonight on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I think they should forget about having Conan replace Jay and just give the job to Triumph.

Someone will probably post a clip online. If you see one before I do, let me know so I can give the link.

• Posted at 11:47 PM · LINK

Movable Maltin

You can now get my buddy Leonard Maltin's indispensible Movie Guide on your Palmtop or Pocket PC Computer. Go here to do this.

• Posted at 11:41 PM · LINK

Recycled SNL

If you're interested in seeing old episodes of Saturday Night Live that haven't been rerun to death, you'll want to set your TiVo or VCR next week. Very late Saturday night (aka very early Sunday morning), NBC is rerunning in full the 12/12/81 episode hosted by Bill Murray. This is from the season where Eddie Murphy blossomed, though I recall this particular show being dominated by Joe Piscopo and Father Guido Sarducci. I also recall it not being very good.

There's a bit of history in that episode, which was from the show's seventh season. The first five were the ones Lorne Michaels produced with the original cast, more or less. Most of the sixth was produced by Jean Doumanian and that year was generally regarded as a grand disaster. Late in that season, Doumanian was fired and Dick Ebersol was brought in to turn things around. One of the things he did was to re-hire Michael O'Donoghue as the show's creative center. "Mr. Mike" had been an influential writer during the first Michaels era but this turn of duty was contentious and unhappy. O'Donoghue, the story goes, kept writing and lobbying for bits that could never get past Standards and Practices...and in the opinion of those around him, weren't worth fighting for. In this episode, he contributed to the writing of a skit called "At Home with the Psychos" about a mutant family living near a nuclear facility. The sketch did air but without one prop that the art department whipped up under O'Donoghue's direction. It was a "blowhole" (like that of a whale) that one of the Psychos was to wear...but it looked too much like a vagina. Even others on the show's crew got fed up with O'Donoghue's attempts to get the silly thing on the air.

The final straw came a few days later when Ebersol held a post-mortem meeting with the cast to discuss what all agreed was a weak episode. O'Donoghue (the story goes) burst into the room and began insulting everyone, telling the cast members they were devoid of talent. Shortly after that, he was fired and that was the end of Michael O'Donoghue's involvement with Saturday Night Live.

Meanwhile, all next week, the E! Channel, which has mostly been running episodes of SNL from the Will Ferrell years goes back through the nineties for most of the Halloween episodes. These include a few episodes that Comedy Central rarely, if ever, reran when they had the package.

• Posted at 10:32 PM · LINK

Promises, Promises

This checklist by the Knight-Ridder news agency lists 178 campaign promises made four years ago by George W. Bush. Despite his party's control of Congress for most of that period, they estimate he has kept 46% of these promises. By contrast, Bill Clinton — though saddled with an opposition Congress — achieved about 66% of his campaign pledges. Obviously, these cannot be exact comparisons since some goals are harder to realize than others and since 9/11 did alter a lot of priorities in Washington. Still, I was surprised at how many of Bush's own proposals never made it through the House and Senate.

• Posted at 8:43 AM · LINK