Big News of the Week: Michael Phelps, I’m Sorry, But You’re Just a Tool: Naturally whenever you make list, right after you publish it you think of a couple thing you forgot. Like last week when I gave my dream Celebrity Tool Academy list but forgot to include Michael Phelps. And that would be a deserved spot even before his most recent picture came out, but being dumb enough to put your lips half way down at a house party with dozens of co-eds with camera phones.
Gratuitous Token Hot Chick Picture of the Week (in 3-D!):
Coalition Links of the Week: Buzz wondered what's been driving viewers away from Ugly Betty this year. (BuzzSugar)
Now that the spoilers are out, Vance handicaps the alleged Top 36 American Idols and needs help making his picks for an Idol pool! (Tapeworthy)
This week, Jace landed quite a few scoops, celebrated Televisionary's third birthday, and marveled at the latest installment of HBO's deliciously taut polygamist drama Big Love. (Televisionary)
Scrubs has its faults, we all know this, but Jesse decided that people should give it a little more credit than it gets. (TiFaux)
Free Download of the Week: Sonny with a Chance (iTunes): Here is one for the kiddies. My sources tell me that Demi Lovato is huge in the underage crowd.
Video of the Week: No specific date set yet, but Rescue Me returns sometime in April. But since there hasn’t been a new episode since August 2007, I guess another two months won’t hurt. Maybe I can finally get around to watching the minisodes while I am waiting. Here is a promo:
Video Has Been Removed Due to Terms of Agreement with FX
Next Week Pick of the Week: Survivor: Torantins - The Brazilian Highlands, Thursday at 8:00 on CBS: The last time, and only other time, Survivor hit Brazil was the first time the show spilt up tribes by gender. But the show is moving out of the Amazon and to the Highlands. And please excuses me if I get weak in the knees if Tamera “Taj” Johnson-George takes it downtown to a win because it is only human nature because she is always on my mind. Although I may have root for my former Miss Ohio Candice Smith. Fun Fact: her predecessor, Kim Mullen, was in the Palau cast.
I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on Gifted Hands, Charles Darwin, Eastbound and Down, 30 Rock, Leverage, and Meet the Browns.
- On Saturday at 8:00 TNT is presenting Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. As you would expect it is cheesy, overdramatic, and sappy. Of course it is also touching, powerful, and uplifting at the same time. Check out a clip below:
- February 12, 1809 was a pretty good day for births: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born on that date. To celebrate the latter, The National Geographic Channel is holding a two day celebration next week. Here is a rundown:
Sunday 8:00 - MORPHED: FROM DINOSAUR TO TURKEY digs 230 million years back into the fossil record to witness the emergence of the first dinosaur and follows different dinosaur species as they respond to changes in the earth's environment. Sunday 9:00 - MORPHED: WHEN WHALES HAD LEGS examines the environmental pressures that turned a wolflike creature that hunted in shallow waters into a leviathan of the seas. Sunday 10:00 - MORPHED: BEFORE THEY WERE BEARS travels back 30 million years to watch the bear's doglike ancestor climb down from the trees of central Europe and set out on a journey that spanned the planet. Tuesday 9:00 - DARWIN'S SECRET NOTEBOOKS; Using Darwin's own diary and field notes as a travel guide, National Geographic Channel retrace Darwin's expedition beyond the Galapagos to uncover the forgotten evidence that inspired his revolutionary work. We see how fossils in Argentina, seashells in the Andes and fish in the South Pacific helped him cultivate his radical theory of evolution. Tuesday 10:00 - EXPLORER: MONSTER FISH OF THE CONGO; Join a team of adventurers and scientists and travel deep into the heart of Africa's Congo River Basin in search of an elusive man-sized predator known as the tiger fish. While locals believe this ravenous relative of the piranha is cursed, scientists believe the fearsome fish may hold the key to understanding the evolution of an extraordinary array of bizarre creatures found throughout the Congo.
- Danny McBride, you may remember him from recent movies Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, is starring in a new HBO show Eastbound and Down about a major league pitcher who returns home to North Carolina to teach Phy. Ed. The show debuts February 15 at 10:30 and head over to HBO.com fore some behind the scenes video.
- My sources tell me that Valentines Day is next week. And for those that you want to get something but don’t want to give them the wrong idea by actually spending money on them, head over to NBC.com to send them a 30 Rock e-card.
- A couple weeks back Leverage featured a trio of Whedon-verse actors and the show continues to cater to the sci-fi genre despite not actually being a part of that genre by recruiting three Star Trek alums Brent Spiner, Armin Shimerman and Kitty Swink for an episode where Parker gets stuck on jury duty. Naturally all the social interation doesn’t sit well with her. As an added bonus, the episode is directed by Jonathan Frakes who was on The Next Generation. In other Leverage news, the show has been renewed for a second season which is currently set to return later this year.
- Good news for those that like TBS’s Meet the Browns, after becoming cable’s number one ad supported comedy on cable for its original ten-episode run, TBS has announced they are going to produce another seventy episodes for a total of eighty.
Bit busy today so I will keep it brief. The album I am most looking forward to this spring not named No Line on the Horizan is by Michelle Branch. I am not sure when it is coming out but both of her previous solo album are worth checking out. My favorite song off of Hotel Paper is the song below.
The Fray are basically a band for those that want to get into Coldplay but in the end find them too artsy. That made it appropriate that the band got its big break by being placed in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a television show for women who would like to get into daytime soap operas, but find them to wordy.
There are no deviations on The Fray’s self-titled sophomore album from their debut. Lead singer Isaac Slade is still doing his best Chris Martin impersonation on the ivories while his band follows along with paint by numbers accompaniment. The lyrics are still geared toward relationships, be it friends family or that significant other.
But much like their big hit off the first album, How to Save a Life, when everything comes together, they can still deliver an emotional punch much like on the first single You Found Me that finds the band talking to a chain smoking deity on a street corner.
But much like the first album, when they cannot muster up enough to land a punch, it can be pretty sleep inducing like Ungodly Hour which should go into heavy rotation at any sleep inducing clinics. And when the band finally tries to change the mid-tempo, heart-bleeding template from their debut, like near the end of The Fray with the straight ahead rocker of We Build Then We Break, it just seems forced.
Coldplay were able to break their own mold with their forth album, hopefully The Fray can do that next time out with their third.
You know something wrong when Tamara Witmer, someone who acts and talks like most people when they are drunk, but she is sober, has the most profound statements of the hour and half premiere of I Love Money 2, when she laid into the crew after losing an arm wrestling contest to Leilene Ondrade. Leilene is also of note as being the only contestant on the show that ditched her Flavor Flav (or other Of Love seeker) gave her. Really, there isn’t anything sadder than someone who goes third person with a name given to them by New York. Although The Entertainer looks to going The Rock route, now going as Frank “The Entertainer” Maresca much like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
And note to 20 Pack, just because The Entertainer has done the show, does not make him an expert at anything. Case in point, how to you take Frenchie with your fourth pick? Seriously, the Gold team may not win any challenges. The two headed beast of The Entertainer and Heat can’t possible win anything that will take any strategy. A brain trust this bad may have never been forged before on reality television.
But I guess it was good that Tamara left because had she stayed and some how hooked up with It, we would have one generation closer to Mike Judge’s Idiocracy coming to fruition. That boy needs some massive help. The other stand out of the caste whom I have never experienced before was Bonez, the ultra-religious dude who yet, depite his beliefs, when on reality television to find love with New York. Wow.
With all that said, if someone at Time Warner Cable is reading this, please reconsider not dropping VH1 from your line up, because you giving the network the ax may be the only way I will stop watching all these shows. If not I may have to turn to Dr. Drew to rid my addition. I Love Money 2 airs Mondays at 10:00 on VH1.
If I were a conspiracy theorist (which I am not, just a biased Browns fan who was programmed since birth to hate the Steelers) I would point out that every questionable call just happened to be called in favor of the Pittsburg Steelers and there was such an egregious hold on the winning touchdown that a Steelers’ lineman pulled up a Cardinals’ lineman shirt over his head hockey style. But I am not, so I won’t.
I will say that once again the game well outshined the commercials which most likely have the economy to thanks with less big name celebrity cameos and big special effects. The most disappoints has to the 3-D of Aliens vs. Monsters, So-Be, and Chuck preview which pretty much like 2-D but with the added bonus of a headache. I may have to skip Chuck’s episode tomorrow and hope they stream a 2-D on Hulu.
The most surprising to me had to be G.I. Joe, a movie, much like Transformers, I wanted to avoid at all cost to avoid Jerry Bruckheimer from ruining my childhood (and that A-Team movie better not get off the ground either, unless of course Mr. T gets to play B.A. Baraccus) but the trailer drug me in before the title screen came around.
And if I learned one thing from the Super Bowl is that NBC only airs shows on Mondays. God forbid they air a promo for the football-themed Friday Night Lights during the biggest football game of the year instead showing that extremely lame Doing Alright Monday Night promo three times (with that said, more Token Hot Chick dancing please). No wonder they are dead last in the ratings. And if I were a midseason replacement (besides Medium), I’d be irritated that Jay Leno gets a spot but I don’t. The unemployment rate is reaching 10% yet Ben Silverman isn’t part of it yet? But anyways. Here is the best (and worst) commercials:
Last year during the run up to the Super Bowl it was laughable at all the Best Team Ever discussion with the New England Patriots (especially in hind sight considering they couldn’t even with the biggest game of the season). For my money, had they played an a neutral field and all things considered even (no cheating from Bill Belichicken, no HGH), the 1985 Chicago Bears would beat the 2007 Patriots by at least two touchdowns. This is why the 1985 Bears are the first ever sports team inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame.
Just to remind you how dominate the Bears were, they started the playoffs with two straight shutouts before giving up 10 points in the Super Bowl for a combined 91-10 score for that playoffs. In comparison, the 2007 Patriots out scored their playoff opponents by just 66-49. And of course they lost the final game too.
And the Bears were just as entertaining off the field as they were on thanks to their punky QB and their massive rookie, Jim McMahon and William “the Refrigerator” Perry who also participated in the most memorial part of the game when The Fridge, at 400 pounds, scored a rushing touchdown. Both of which took part in the Super Bowl Shuffle (fun fact: the song was nominated for a Grammy), which didn’t turn out to be much of a distraction as they then went out and won by five touchdowns.
(Say Anything, Garden State, Lars and the Real Girl, 
![Terror Alert Level: Elevated [YELLOW]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-iVFV0hXCTSYP16K_V0Rrxp3GqFrtBIJKeTUyQ2LpxZQ9XKHFj6QGtqqa7oxhLadLV8vUj8R84AftD8IKUSfN0u_u0CYDtJwhrpCPN2DBWquAIDv0jbVlhZL0mDFKlPKluGyxw/s400/small_elevated.png)
on my 
coming to fruition. That boy needs some massive help. The other stand out of the caste whom I have never experienced before was Bonez, the ultra-religious dude who yet, depite his beliefs, when on reality television to find love with New York. Wow.