Around the Tubes vol. XXII

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 Dark Blue, Eliza Dushku, Community, Saturday Night Live, Lock n Loaded, The Real L Word: Los Angeles, Mike Epps, and Jay Leno.

- Dark Blue is doing another online live chat with fans. This time Omari Hardwick will be chatting with fans Tuesday September 15 at 2 P.M. EST over at TNT.tv.

- This coming Sunday, Eliza Dushku will be interviewed by film students on Life After Film School on Fox Movie Channel at 7:30.

- Also airing this Sunday is a pair of documentaries on the National Geographic Channel. First up at 9:00 is The Girl Who Cried Blood (Scooter’s note: ewww, I hate blood) followed by The World’s Smallest Girl.

- The final three Straight A’s have been released by the Greendale Community College. Below are air conditioning (and as someone who went without some in his dormroom, it is a big draw) and Awesome New Friends. Head over to NBC.com for the last A: A lot of Class.



- Saturday Night Live has announced its first month of guests. Megan Fox (can we please end the Megan Fox era sooner than later) teams up with U2 for the opener 9/26. 10/3 is pretty much skippable with Ryan Reynolds and Lady Gaga. Drew Barrymore returns 10/10 for the sixth time (to quote Seth Myers - really?) to introduce Regina Specktor. Lastly Gerard Butler headlines 10/17 what should be the best of the first batch of episodes especially if they do a skit that follows the 300 warriors that didn’t make the cut and Sharkira shakes her hips. I tend not to be a fan of forced synergy, but shouldn’t NBC Universal have one of the stars of their movie Couples Retreat host with the movie coming out October 9. Not to mention Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau or Kristen Bell would have made a better show than the first three hosts they have lined up.

- A bunch of new coming out of Showtime. The network is getting into the reality game with the six episodes Lock n Load that takes a look at a gun shop in Englewood, Colorado starting October 21 at 8:00. Then there is The Real L World: Los Angeles which is a unscripted version of their former lesbian show which will air sometime in 2010. Mike Epps (Next Friday) get a stand up special Under Rated… Never Faded & X-Rated airing October 3 at 10:40.

- Fans of Battlestar Galactica may want to check out next Tuesday’s all new Warehouse 13 as Michael Hogan guest stars in the episode. Here is a preview:



- The Jay Leno Show takes root at the 10:00 hour starting Monday with Jerry Seinfeld and Jay-Z. Jay recently announced a bunch new corrisponance to his show which now includes D.L. Hughley, Mikey Day, Rachael Harris, Jim Norton, Dan Finnerty, The Dan Band, Liz Feldman, Brian Unger, Nick Thune, Owen Benjamin, Marina Franklin, Sebastian Maniscalco and Ross Mathews. For those that have patroned your local movie theater lately, you may have seen an ad for the show during the previews and here is an extended version:

This Ain’t for iTunes, This Ain’t for Sing-a-Longs

Before he spent even one day in retirement, Jay-Z predicted he would eventually come back to rap when he said, “When I come back like Jordan wearing the 4-5.” The problem was when Hova finally did make his return with Kingdom Come, he wasn’t wearing a Bulls uniform, he had already skipped to the Wizards phase of his career. And the follow up wasn’t that much better. For his third stab at a comeback, is drawing up another Blueprint, the first of which came out exactly eight years ago today, the same day the Twin Towers fell.

Apparently the new Blueprint for Jigga is indie music (which we can probably thank the newly emo-loving Kanye West who produced half the album), the album even open up with a guest spot from one half of the alternative group Empire of the Sun on What We Talkin’ About. The album is then bookended with a guest electro artist Mr. Hudson on Young Forever that borders 80’s new wave cheesedom.

And Jay-Z really needs to avoid songs about age (remember how he tried to convince us that 30 is the new 20?) because it only emphasizes how old he is in a genre based on youth. And by including next big things Drake and Kid Cudi on a couple songs, it is hard not to think of Jay playing the part of Mathew McConaughey in Dazed & Confused. The multiple Frank Sinatra references do not help either. Which is a silly comparison anyway, Sinatra was a triple threat, Jay-Z is barely a single threat anymore.

The Blueprint 3 can best be summed up by the first unofficial single D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune). You get really excited at the concept and if anyone can put a death nail in the vastly over abused studio, technique, it is Jay Hova. But when you actually heard the song you wanted to like it more than you actually did. The lyrics don’t actually kill Auto-Tune, it is at best a flesh wound. And the lame hook is amplified considering he is the third act this year to lift the Steam chorus behind Wale and Kristinia Debarge.

What Jay does have going for him on The Blueprint 3 is his best post-retirement song Run This Town featuring Rihanna and Kanye (well it is either that or Brooklyn (Go Hard)). It has his most adventurous flow in recent memory but still not as tongue twisting as when he spit over Timbaland beats on the original Blueprint albums. Sadly though there really is only one more song of note on the set, the Alicia Keys assisted Empire State of Mind. Maybe it is time Jay-Z complete his Jordan prophesies and begrudgingly resigns to the front office position for a crappy NBA team. On the bright side he will have time to lower his handicap like MJ.

Song to Download – Run This Town

The Blueprint 3 gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Feed Your iPod vol. XXXVI: Follow the Leader

Jay-Z drops his latest Blueprint tomorrow (except in the places where you can already buy it which kind of defeats the special release date, but anyways, look for a review tomorrow). In the first official single Run This Town, Jay spits, “Please follow the leader. So Eric B. we are microphone fiend.” This of course is a reference to the classic Eric B and Rakim track. Odd that Jay shout outs Eric B in the song, even though it is Rakim that is the Microphone Fiend. But here is the other track Jay mentions from the seminal rap duo. And if we are lucky, we may see the long awaited Rakim solo album actually released October 20.

Follow the Leader – Eric B. and Rakim

Previewing The Locator and Adoption Diaries

Being a guy, I don’t think I have ever watched anything on We TV which if I am not mistaken stands for Woman’s Entertainment. And it really isn’t a sexist thing because I haven’t watch Spike TV since they stopped airing The Dukes of Hazzard rerunswhen they converted from The Nashville Network. But We TV does have a couple shows of note airing this weekend.

First up is The Locator back for its third season with a special one hour premiere where Troy Dunn tackles two cases at once. First up is a cancer stricken woman with months to live hopes to track down her father after her mother left town before she was born and again when during a brief reunion with her father when she was thirteen. The other focuses on father trying to reconnect with his daughter after her mother left him back when he was strung out on different additions.

Naturally the show is right up the alley of anyone that likes heartwarming tales such as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and doesn’t mind that their television makes them cry. And cry you will when you hear about the mother of four that grew up without a father and now only has months to live.

The other storyline has a weird segment after Troy hunts down the daughter and leaves her alone with her friends with the camera rolling which is eerily reminiscent of The Hills. The daughter even kind of looks like a brunette Lauren (what is sad is that I have never actually watched an episode of The Hills yet I know what it looks like and all the characters).

Right after the season premiere of The Locator is new series Adoption Diaries which is exactly what the title implies. The show follows two prospective parents as they try to add to their family through an open adoption, one where the biological and adoptive parents meet each other and match up. It is also reminiscent of another MTV show that I have never watch, yet somehow know too much about, 16 and Pregnant, at least the episodes where the mother goes into knowing she is going to give her kid up for adoption. But Adoption Diaries naturally focuses on the adoption process and seems geared more to the adopting parents more.

The Locator airs Saturday at 9:00 and is followed by Adoption Diaries on We TV. You can download episodes of The Locator on iTunes. If you have someone you would like to reunite with head over to TroytheLocator.com. I wonder if Troy works on such shallow cases like me wanting to hook up with my Middle School crush Lisa Mack.

Previewing Sons of Anarchy 2.x

Sons of Anarchy is hard to get into. No, not because it is graphic in nature, it certainly pushes the standards and practices department at FX. No, it is hard to get into because of the casting. One of the first people you see on screen is a tatted up Assistant Director Skinner in a wife beater that shows off his swastika tattoo prominently on his chest. Then later in the season, Peg Bundy beats down the chick from that Britney Spears movie with a skateboard.

The actual lead of the show is the British theater student from Undeclared. Also in his motorcycle gang as a prospect is the annoying kid from MTV’s Now What (anyone else remember that horrible show?). Throughout the season you get to see Hellboy armed to the T with various an assortment of high powered weapons. And we all know Hellboy prefers to fight you on like an, beat you down with his hands and bodyslam you. Charlie Utter has been reduced to a Barny Fife cop on the take. And one guy in Charming whose moral compass is pointing due north: Danny Boyd of all people.

Once you get past all those actors in a new light, Sons of Anarchy is an enthralling take of Hamlet on a motorcycle. And as the shows gears up for its sophomore outing, it is posed to go into overdrive now that Jax suspects that Hellboy put a hit on his best friend leading to the death of his wife leading to a power struggle for the lead of SAMCRO with Peg Bundy caught in-between her boy and her man.

This won’t be an easy task for Jax to pull off with the 9’ers, the Mayans, and Skinner’s Nords still lurking around the borders of Charming. And to make things even harder is the appearance Adam Arkin (Halloween H20 - Twenty Years Later), a more assimilated white supremacist that isn’t happy with SAMCRO supplying to the brown and black. And with all the casting that took some time to get used to, here is one that doesn’t, Henry Rollins as Arkin’s white-hand seems just right. Arkin also brings his daughter, Sarah Jones (Big Love) to town. Racism hasn’t looked this hot since Kate Bosworth in Remember the Titans.

Another good bit of typecasting is Tom Arnold (Soul Plane) who shows up in the second episode as, well, I don’t want to spoil the reveal. But once you see him you with think, yep, it is totally believable to have Tom Arnold play this part. And even though her case against Bobby Elvis dissolved after her witness too a one-way ticket out of town, Ally Walker (Kazaam) seems to be sticking around Charming for a little bit to harass SAMCRO some more.

Sons of Anarchy airs Tuesdays at 10:00 on FX. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Sons of Anarchy on iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand (see below):

Feed Your iPod vol. XXXV: We're Going to Be Friends

Tomorrow is Labor Day which means summer is unofficially over. At least for those that the season didn’t at the first bell of the school year. Nothing better brings in the season for fall, especially for those whose autumn begins with that first bell, then We’re Going to Be Friends which chronically the first day of school and even starts off with the line, “Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell.”

We’re Going to Be Friends – The White Stripes