Starting a new weekly segment today where every week (no set date, just sometime during the weekend, maybe Monday at the latest) I discuss my favorite things that happened on television the past week. In honor of this new segment I have a new contest:
Win a Knights of Prosperity T-Shirt
Now this isn’t one of those Café Press shirts I’ve made myself, this is an official shirt like the ones worn by the cast straight from ABC (see at right, click picture to enlarge and sorry guys, Sofia Vergara not included). ABC is even throwing in cookies as part as the prize package. Here’s how to win: I’m not really sold on the title for this post to be called 57 Channels and Only This Is On so what I need from you is to send me a better name for this segment (ScooterKSU@aol.com; Subject: I Want to Rob Mick Jagger). Now for those that want the shirt but don’t think they can come up with a better title, all you have to do is tell me what pop culture reference 57 Channels and Only This Is On is referencing (be specific, I'm looking for two key phrases) then out of all the entries I will randomly pick one person to win the prize packet from everyone who sends an e-mail. Also anyone who plugs this contest on their blog will get a bonus entry into the contest (but you must e-mail me to let me know you have done so to get an entry). This contest will run until January 17 and the winner will be e-mailed shortly after.
* Fine Print: This contest is open only to those in the US and Canada. Also the only shirt size available is Large. Want more chances to win Knights of Prosperity swag? Swing over to >Ducky’s brand new website to win the contest he's running as well as the TV Addict who is also running one. And don’t forget to watch Knights of Prosperity Wednesdays at 9:00 or you can always stream the latest episode for free at ABC.com.
Now for my favorite moments on television for the past week:
Best Quote of the Week (Friday Night Lights, Coach Taylor’s wife to the failing Tim Riggins): “It’s my job to make sure you don’t grow up stupid; it’s bad for the world.” (Every teacher across the country should hang this quote up somewhere in their classroom.)
Friday Night Lights: Finally they gave my boy Landry an actual storyline this week with trying to tutor Riggins and by tutoring I mean reading Of Mice and Men to him everywhere including the weight room. And will I go to hell because I laughed that Landry wanted to call his band Stigmatlingous? In other news I never thought wheelchair sex could be so hot.
My Name Is Earl: Quite possible the funniest half hour on television since the My Name Is Earl pilot. As funny as it is to see Earl cross things off his list, seeing what he does to get such things on his list may be funnier. For this episode I’ll start at the end because there has been nothing funnier on TV this season that Randy getting shot out of the tree with a tranquillizer gun. Someone needs to send a clip of that to Tony Kornheiser quick.
Other great scenes from the episode are too many to name, but it was great to see former guests including the one-legged woman, Earl’s ex who thought he was dead, the gay dude (anyone else notice he was circling around the block with the naked dude with the snake scene), the cop who’s badge Earl stole, the voice box dude and we even learned how the mailman lost his eye. The only person missing was Ralph (Giovanni Ribisi); you know Ralph wouldn’t miss a chance to be on Cops. We were even introduced to some other Camden County locals including local celebrity Timothy Stack (who just so happened to write the episode) and Mimi from The Drew Carey Show. I can’t wait to see how Earl crosses her off his list for stealing her cop car.
If you missed the episode or just want to see it again, NBC.com has started streaming episodes of the show, so head over there to see it.
In Case of Emergency: It’s not a good sign when The Class is the funniest new impromptu reunion show of the season. In fact I haven’t laughed this little since Four Kings (the one lone laugh “Is there any chance your fiancée is a chick?”).
This most likely won’t be a weekly segment in these posts, but the best promo of the season goes to this Supernatural one that aired multiple times during the Beauty and the Geek premiere. It may come to a shock to some of you but I’m a huge Johnny Cash fan and this is just a great use of God’s Gonna Cut You Down (they need to get whoever made this promo to do one like this for Veronica Mars):
Next Week’s Pick of the Week (Yeah I need a better name for this too): Awesome, I Shot That (Saturday 9:00 VH1): The Beastie Boys gave out a bunch of camcorders to fans to film a concert. Surprisingly they got back all the camcorders which make up this concert film. You can also buy the unedited version of the concert on DVD.
Rarely does anything live up to the hype, most recently we saw this with the dismal performance of internet failure Snakes on a Plane. And after making fans wait for over fifteen years, there is no way Chinese Democracy can possibly live up to the hype even if it turns out to be the best Guns N Roses album. But finally after eight months of waiting to see it, Let’s Rob Mick Jagger (also known as Knights of Prosperity) more than lived up to my expectation. And what a pedigree the show has most importantly that it’s from the guys who brought us the second best show this decade, Ed which means it’s being produced by Worldwide Pants, David Letterman’s production company. (All pictures courtesy of ABC)
Then on the other side of the camera you have Donal Logue, one of the funniest men comedic actors around but recently has been stuck in roles that don’t fully represent his talents, but his janitorial turned crime boss Eugene is right up his alley. No annoying kids or improbably hot wife here. And his crew is all top notch too including standout Rockefeller Butts because, well, his name is Rockefeller Butts. His Barry White like delivery makes all his lines automatically funny. The other stand out in the cast, for an entirely different reason, is the gun toting token hot chick who quickly goes to the top of the hottest token hot chick on television today. I don’t really care that her accent is so thick that I can’t understand haft the things she says. Any bets on which other Knight will get lucky with her first (my money’s on the intern)?
Other Knights include Eugene’s toilet cleaning buddy Squatch who apparently isn’t too fond of foreigners (token hot chick excluded) which leads us to the Indian taxi cab driver Gourishanker who is more than happy to throw insults back to Squatch. But it’s Gourishanker who recruits the naive intern who thinks the crew is working on the Jimmy Fallon starring Taxi 2: Step on It. Now I don’t really like doing lists except for award shows but there were a lot of great moments from the first episode I just had to share them:
- “Wisdom? Who do you think I am, Morgan Freeman?”
- The generous of the Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache throughout the episode
- Eugene’s grand entrance
- Everyone’s reaction to Eugene’s “Let’s rob Mick Jagger” proposition
- “I don’t get it, why Mick Jagger? Why not some other celebrity like Alex Trebeck, Willem Defoe, James Wonder Beek, or Jeff Conoway?” “Who?” “Kenicki”
- “Whoa, whoa, Gory-what did-you-just-call-him? Yeah I’m just gonna call you Gary”
- “Issue one, that name sucks.” And there own ideas for their name
- Being criminals with bright orange shirts (win one here)
- “Then why didn’t you think of it Pocahontas” and basically every racial slur Gary and Squatch hurl at each other
- Mick’s indoor penalty kicks
- Squatch’s photo hat.
- Gary’s favorite part of a woman
- Bridges of Madison Country: Wasn’t that a movie?
- The token hot chick’s back story in Colombia
- The guys’ response to the token hot chick’s asking to join the gang: “Mi Casa Su Casa Baby”
- Instead of changing out his janitorial clothes, Eugene puts duct tape over his name
- The token hot chick packing heat. A lot of heat. “What are you, criminals or children?”
- “If either of you come near my Maria again I will humpty dumpy you punks”
- The reveal of Mick’s security while the musak version of Start Me Up plays
course it looks like Mick won’t be the other target as there will be plenty of guests for the Knights to rob including Bob Saget Ray Romano, Sally Jessie Raphael and… Screech? And of course with Letterman involved that means Regis Philbin, along with Kelly Ripa, may be targets. Hopefully Letterman himself or sidekick Paul Shaffer (who wrote the theme song) will eventually become targets. But if the original target Mick Jagger doesn’t get nominated for Best Guest Star in a Comedy Series at next year’s Emmys that will be the biggest sham ever.
Verdict: Now this is must see TV. It may not be as funny as My Name Is Earl but it’s by far the funniest new show this season. Surely it will take a while for them to rob Mick Jagger because even though they were smart enough to steal the key they weren’t smart enough to steal the key to the storage locker. Knights of Prosperity airs Wednesdays at 9:00 on ABC but you can watch an encore of the first episode tonight at 9:00 or you can watch the most recent episodes at ABC.com.
Before I get into this post, let me first say that no, I’m not the Scooter from the show. My lucky knee high socks are white with three neon green strips at the top. Also when I sport a beard I look more like the dude from The Notebook (or so I’ve been told). But if there are there are any Playboy models who want to jump on the hang out with dudes named Scooter bandwagon, shout a holla. Now back to your regularly scheduled post.
The first season Beauty and the Geek was one of the best reality seasons in the history of television. Richard Rubin set a very high bar for the Geeks while Lauren Bergfeld did the same for the beauty. Which led to a very steep drop off in the second season mostly because the contestants had an idea of what was to come as well as it seemed as if more than a few beauties faked their dumbness just to get on to the show. But after watching the two-hour premiere of the third go around, it looks like they did a better job casting because these girls all seem clueless led by Megan Hauserman, who has Playboy Model (guys check out the Google search box on the sidebar, I know you are gonna search eventually) as her credential, and Cecille Gahr, Bikini Model. But my favorite job has to be Jennylee Berns who has UFC Ring Girl on her résumé. And I swear I have seen her on one of MTV’s fifty different dating shows. Round out the beauties are Andrea Ciliberti (Beauty Pageant Queen), Erin Gipson (Voice Teacher), Nadia Underwood (Sorority Girl), Sheree Swanson (Former Hooters Waitress), and Tori Elmore (Model).
As for the Geeks, none of seem like they will dethrone Richard as the geekiest ever but overall this could be the geekiest of all the season. The crop definitely eliminates any thoughts I’ve had being a nerd myself when they have characters like Drew Sawa who informs us all a bit a trivia that I doubt anyone else knew in that Trekkie is like the “N” word to Star Trek fans who instead prefer Trekker. His explanation of this was only made funnier when his partner kept on calling the show “Star Track” and “Star Truck.” But it’s Singer for a Star Wars Band So Long Princess Nate Dern who steals the show. And sorry the band has yet to show up on iTunes. But hopefully we get to hear more songs from him throughout the series. Then there is Piao Sam (only Kissed One Girl) who like to go by Pi and even has a gang-like hand sign that resembles the Greek letter. But it was another Geek who bragged he knows Pi to over a hundred places. Other Geeks include Matt Herman (MIT Graduate), Niels Hoven (Had a Perfect SAT Score), Alan “Scooter” Zackheim (Harvard Graduate), Mario Muscar (Owns 25,000 Comics), and Sanjay Shah (Virgin) who, despite being a huge fan of rap music was under the impression that “bootie” was referring to a pirate’s treasure.
For some reason they tweaked the elimination round this year in that the partners stay in the room while the other answers the questions while all the other pairs watch from upstairs. But more puzzling is that they went from three questions each to just two. Both seem like change for the sake of change and in no way makes the show better. As for predictions, I’ll have to go with my boy Other Scooter and Megan to win. But more importantly Andrea wins my Girl I’d Most Want to Have Dirty, Dirty Sex With Award.
Verdict: After a sophomore slump Beauty and the Geek is back in fine form. It looks like I may have to bump Friday Night Lights back into the taping category at lest for the Geek’s seven week run. Beauty and the Geek airs Wednesday at 8:00 on The CW.
Be sure to check back tomorrow on my thoughts of Let’s Rob Mick Jagger which more than lived up to expectations. And don’t forget to check out my contest to win your own Knights of Prosperity T-Shirt. Also if you missed the show, head over to ABC.com to stream the episode for free or tune in this Friday at 9:00 when ABC will repair the pilot.
Some last thoughts and list of 2006. First looking back at this blog, here are the top five post of the past year by page views (a big thanks to MTV for rerunning the first two seasons of Beauty and the Geek that brought in about 100 searchers for each marathon it ran) :
One cool addition to iTunes this year was the ability to add your reviews to each album. Unfortunately there isn’t a minimum amount of word you must write as many reviews on the site are less than a sentence. But then there are people like me who write lengthy reviews for others to read and I copied the ones I do for this site can add them on iTunes. Here are the top five most helpful reviews I put there (click the review title to read it on my site or click the album title to go to its iTunes page where you can buy it or just give me another helpful vote if you like):
As for the artist that made the most impact in the last year here are the ones that showed up most on my Best of lists (for those lists, click on the Best of 2006 label at the bottom of this post):
1. KT Tunstall (Best Songs - 11, 31, 97; Best Albums - 2, 28; Readers Poll - 11) - Tunstall started the year garnishing a rare [Extreme] rating on my Terror Alert Scale and even through in an acoustic album late in the year to boot. Yeah her music has been co-opted by some crappy television shows but that in no way takes away the fact that she produced one of the best pop albums in years.
2. Johnny Cash (Best Songs - 2, 52; Best Albums - 7; Best Videos - 1; Best Mash Ups - 1, 8; Reader’s Poll - 15) - As a long time fan, A Hundred Highways was a great swan song (although Rick Rubin says there may be one more after it) giving a song that not only stands up with any song from the American Recording era, but with anything his back catalog with God’s Gonna Cut You Done.
3. The Killers (Best Songs - 10, 94; Best Albums - 48; Best Videos - 6, 12; Reader’s Poll - 4) - I gave the guys a lot of crap this year on not living up to their own hype, but they did give us the best rock song of the year and two iconic videos.
4. Rhymefest (Best Songs - 25, 68; Best Albums - 10) In a year that wasn’t kind to hip hop (maybe Nas is right) with the failed comeback of Jay-Z and Lupe Fiasco not living up to the hype, this MC, who helped Kanye West write Jesus Walk, just may be the one to resurrect hip hop, well that’s if people start listening to him.
5. Gnarls Barkley (Best Songs - 1; Best Videos - 3, 19; Best Mash Ups - 4, 14, 23; Reader’s Poll - 1) No one has done so much with just one song, a song that is inching closer and closer to the top of the One Hit Wonder pantheon.
Since 1996 I have made a CD of my favorite music from the past year and here is the CD I have made from this past year but I like to put songs in reverse order as so they are counting down to the best song. This CD clocks in at 78:07 (for links to the songs and the full top 100 check out: The 100 Best Songs of 2006).
1. Over My Head (Cable Car) - The Fray 2. Save Room - John Legend 3. The Saints Are Coming - U2 & Green Day 4. Nothing Left to Lose - Mat Kearney 5. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol 6. Smile - Lily Allen 7. Not Ready to Make Nice - Dixie Chicks 8. Hips Don’t Lie - Shakira & Wyclef Jean 9. Fidelity - Regina Spektor 10. Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield 11. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall 12. When You Were Young - The Killers 13. I Will Follow You into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie 14. Hurt - Christina Aguilera 15. Leave the Pieces - The Wreckers 16. One - Mary J. Blige & U2 17. How to Save a Life - The Fray 18. Boston - Augustana 19. Waiting on the World to Change - John Mayer 20. God’s Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash 21. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Looking ahead 2007, I'm predicting Lily Allen to be the break out star of next year. Her first single Smile has gotten some buzz behind it so look out for the release of her album stateside later this month. Just remember when she is huge, you heard it her first. Although keep in mind I haven't correctly predicted the next big thing since Hootie and the Blowfish.
My other prediction is the demise of American Karaoke as it will get thrashed in the ratings by Let's Rob Mick Jagger (be sure to check out my contest and watch the show tonight at 9:00 on ABC). Okay maybe wishful thinking but before the latest crop of karaokers hit the stage I had a chance to her a couple of Katharine McPhee's new songs and, well, I'm less than impressed. She's trying to be Mariah Carey but the only problem is that Mariah Carey is still around and does a much better job at being Mariah Carey. There was one decent song out of the bunch, Love Story and you can take a listen for it yourself below.
Very rarely do I ever do I start watching a show after it’s started, twice to be exact. The second time was when I stayed tune to watch the post-Super Bowl Alias. They had me sold with Jennifer Garner prancing in her underwear to Back in Black so I instantly queued the seasons I missed and watch them at mass. Unfortunately the show didn’t live up to the hype and I have yet to see the last season. But the only other show that I started watching during its run definitely lived up to the hype and that is why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.
The main reason why I skipped the show in its initial run was mostly because of the horrendous movie of the same name with Dylan McKay and Pee Wee Herman in his first acting appearance since, well, he opened the Video Music Awards. So there was no way after wasting and hour and a half of my life watching the movie would invest a whole hour every week for the a serialize version. But after all the praise the show received, I got a second chance when FX bought the syndication rights and started airing the show from the beginning around the start of the fifth season.
So every weekday for two hours I watch obsessively until I was fully caught up in about two months. And then the withdrawal started, going from ten episodes a week to just one was a big jolt. What really drew me into was the writing with it’s overly sarcastic characters and enough pop culture references to keep you scouring the internet each week to figure out the one’s you didn’t catch. The writing was so good it was even able to hind Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sub par acting skills (and before anyone what to argue that fact, go rent Simply Irresistible, The Grudge, or any of the Scooby Doo movies, then try to argue). And while all the fanatics fawned over the Buffy/Angel pairing, I gravitated more to Xander and the follies of his love life. Although sometimes those follies hit too close to home but luckily I never ran into a Vengence Deamon (that I know of).
But what drove the show year in and year out were the annual Big Bad’s who would make Buffy’s life miserable every year. It seemed that every Big Bad was badder than his or her predecessor. Well until we got to the nerd trio in season six, but what they lacked in scariness they definitely made up in comic relief. And who would have guessed in season six that Andrew would be the most entertain part of the last season as well as a great guest spot on Angel the following year? Thanks to the greatness of the Big Bad’s, one of the best scenes ever was the closing season of season seven’s premiere with Spike being haunted by all the other Big Bad’s.
Speaking of Spike, there is another great aspect of the show in that you never knew when a character would pop up again. Not even death kept some characters from making more appearances most notable Harmony who was actually more entertaining dead than alive and of course the previously mentioned Andrew who went from an obscure character from season one’s brother to the best part of the last season.
Unfortunately it’s not all fond memories for the show as Buffy remands the main reason why I avoid spoilers when I learned way too early that Tara would die causing Willow to become the Big Bad at the end of season six somewhat ruining that season for me. But the good definitely out weigh the bad with some iconic episodes like Hush where everyone on the show lost their voice for most of the episode. It’s weird to think that the show is now a decade old (well technically it will in March) but the episodes have aged well even with all the pop culture references and that is why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the first induction into the SHoF for 2007. Unfortunately the Buffyverse has been on hiatus since Angel ended a year after Buffy and a Faith based show and Spike centered movies have since failed to go past planning stages but it was recently announced by Joss Whedon that he will doing a season eight of the series in comic book form so look out for that.
As I write this, you can currently get all seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Amazon.com for 19.97 (that’s $0.91 per episodes of seasons 2-7) and below are my three favorite seasons. You can also download the first two seasons at iTunes.
Since 1996, long before I had a blog, I have made of my favorite songs from that year once it concluded. Sometimes songs near the top of those list haven’t stood the test of time while some songs near the bottom have over the years have become some of my favorites. This year I took a list of 162 songs that caught my ear the past twelve months and came back with my top 100 using a complex racking system that makes the BCS look like Middle School algebra. So here are the songs that you should have been listening to this past year:
Now it is time to unveil the 2006 9th Green’s Readers Top 25 and if you disagree with the list, you only have yourself to blame. For the most part I was pleased with this list because only one song from my Worst Songs of 2006 made the list and a few songs that I hyped here on the 9th Green but didn’t really catch on in the mainstream mad the list. Hopefully this means some of you have taken my advice thought the year. As for the list, Gnarls Barkley blew everyone away to take first out of the over sixty songs that were submitted. If I were to nit-pick I would say that Weird Al's parody out shined Chamillionaire's version and if I were to include a song by The Fray it would have been How to Save a Life. But anyways. Now unto the list, thanks to everyone who participated and be sure to check back out tomorrow to see where, or if, any of these songs show up on my Top 100 of the year.
One of the coolest musical innovations in recent memory is the mash-up. For those that may not be familiar with the term, it can best be described when you take the vocals from one song and place them over the instrumental from a different song. The artform didn’t get as much press this year as it has in past years but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great new mash-ups floating around the internet. And since last year’s list (see Best Mash-Ups of 2005) still brings in decent traffic here naturally I would do another list this year. I tried to give credit to the creator of the mash-up, but due to some poor labeling, some have gotten lost and I even had to create a name for a few mash-ups that I discovered nameless. Also some of these songs may have been created ealier than 2006 but this is a list of songs I’ve found this year. Please do not ask for me to send you any of these songs because for legal reasons I cannot confirm or deny that any of these songs actually exist not that I would illegally download copyrighted material even though that material has been altered from any version that could be bought anywhere. If you want the unaltered album version of the songs, on the second line I will list the main songs that make up the mash-up:
This year I was able to give a listen and review almost all the albums thanks to the record companies doing something right for the first time in years by letting fans listen to albums even before they are released. So here are the best albums I heard this year. And where most other music blogs unroll their best albums of the list full with artist you have never heard of, here is my list of pretentious free albums (okay the list is actually only 82% pretentious free, just had to put the Artic Monkeys on my list). Click on the album to buy the album in iTunes. If you like feeling the CD in your hands check out this list at My Amazon Store (including last year's list). Also if you want to read my orginal review, click the link below the album's name. Agree with my list? Disagree? Feel free to list your favorite albums of the in the comment section:
Now this isn’t one of those Café Press shirts I’ve made myself, this is an official shirt like the ones worn by the cast straight from ABC (see at right, click picture to enlarge and sorry guys, Sofia Vergara not included). ABC is even throwing in cookies as part as the prize package. Here’s how to win: I’m not really sold on the title for this post to be called 57 Channels and Only This Is On so what I need from you is to send me a better name for this segment (ScooterKSU@aol.com; Subject: I Want to Rob Mick Jagger). Now for those that want the shirt but don’t think they can come up with a better title, all you have to do is tell me what pop culture reference 57 Channels and Only This Is On is referencing (be specific, I'm looking for two key phrases) then out of all the entries I will randomly pick one person to win the prize packet from everyone who sends an e-mail. Also anyone who plugs this contest on their blog will get a bonus entry into the contest (but you must e-mail me to let me know you have done so to get an entry). This contest will run until January 17 and the winner will be e-mailed shortly after.
to him everywhere including the weight room. And will I go to hell because I laughed that Landry wanted to call his band Stigmatlingous? In other news I never thought wheelchair sex could be so hot.
